Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive 20

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

Archive 15

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Archive 18

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Formating inside templates

I have two problems that are related to the way AWB formats inside templates. Look at the code in Mount Whitney for examples.

I usually indent citation templates inside infobox templates. AWD removes the indent (white space). I think that coding using indents results in improved readability and code that is easier to maintain. This practice is commonly employed in the programing languages I know and for the same reason.
I like to added a space between data and Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). though... Rich Farmbrough, 17:52, 5 September 2009 (UTC).

Problem starting SVN version

I have rebuilt, if necessary I can vape my SVN directory and go from scratch. But this problem just started while AWB was runign merrily, I had one instance running, but new instances of SVN wouldn't start. The release version runs fine. Error details:

Description:
  Stopped working

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:	APPCRASH
  Application Name:	AutoWikiBrowser.exe
  Application Version:	4.9.0.1
  Application Timestamp:	4aa2a403
  Fault Module Name:	KERNEL32.dll
  Fault Module Version:	6.0.6001.18215
  Fault Module Timestamp:	49953395
  Exception Code:	e0434f4d
  Exception Offset:	000442eb
  OS Version:	6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
  Locale ID:	2057

Rgds, Rich Farmbrough, 18:11, 5 September 2009 (UTC).

I have rebuilt form scratch. Any ideas? I get the error everytime I try to start the version I build. The snapshot works fine.

specifying a template

Any luck / news yet on being able to restrict changes to the specific template specified by 'if contains'? That would make life soo much easier. kwami (talk) 22:07, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

This is down as a FR isnt it? —Ree dy 13:43, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Ah yes, you're right. And I hadn't seen the latest comment there, which is useful. kwami (talk) 07:01, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that's been working great. I can get it to do almost everything with only half a dozen subrules. However, I now have a related problem. [moved down]

A bug

hi, I was trying to make a list of "what transludes this page" and the articles in the list apear to be limited to 25000. I need to have ALL of the pages for my process to work without false postives. How do i do this? Tim1357 (talk) 04:05, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

That's a feature :). You need to access the API to get more , or put in a feature request. I suspect that 25000 is chosen to limit strain on the servers. Rich Farmbrough, 18:09, 5 September 2009 (UTC).

Yeah, most people don't need it all, so it'd be silly pulling them all. We have a plugin that provides this functionality for bots and admins... —Ree dy 13:39, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I've got the same problem - but sorry, I did not get what you mean. What can I do to load more than 25000 articles? --83.77.87.67 (talk) 23:43, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Problem with "ß"

Problem description: Replacement of character "ß" to "ss" not visible in diff view and, although performed, not recognized as an edit by AWB.
Software used: AutoWikiBrowser Version 4.6.0.0, SVN 4662; Internet Explorer version 8.0.6001.18813, .NET version 2.0.50727.4016, Windows version 6.0.
Step-by-step Description to reproduce the problem:

Add a page that contains a "ß" to the ListMaker Article list.
Use the normal settings of the Find & Replace function to replace "ß" with "ss"
Disable, if necessary, the checkbox "No changes are made" in the skip menu.
Click on "Start"
Click on "Diff"
The diff view will show "Double click on a line to undo all changes on that line, or single click to focus the edit box to that line." but no actual changes are visible even though, if you click on "Save", the edit is performed.
If "No changes are made" in the skip menu is enabled, the page will be skipped and no edit performed.

Is this a bug or a problem on my side? —Pill (talk) 10:59, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

The replacement is applied but the diff engine seems to consider "ß" and "ss" to be the same. Rjwilmsi 13:17, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Should I better report it on Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs? —Pill (talk) 17:15, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I would say it's one for Bugzilla instead. It is the Mediawiki diff we are seeing? Rich Farmbrough, 18:08, 10 September 2009 (UTC).

Nope, its "internal".. Presumably its the diff librarys fault... —Ree dy 19:23, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

The Diff.Hunk "Same" property shows "ß" and "ss" as the same (in WikiFunctions.GetDiff). It may be over the CompareInfo.Compare settings. Rjwilmsi 21:15, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

searching indefinite strings

Thanks for the above. I must be overlooking something very basic in trying to extend it.

I'd like to find the next instance of a character after a certain string, say,

class="X" ( $1 ≠ "|}" ) Y

where $1 may include line breaks. Basically, I wish to replace all instances of character Y within any table of class X. I've tried various combinations of ([.\n]*?) and \|\} to no avail, but this is the only code that makes sense to me.

A related problem: if [^abc] is the 'Set not a or b or c', how do you search for the 'set not } or |' ? I would expect [^\}\|], but that doesn't work. Besides limiting myself to the table above, I wish to search within a template, but restrict the search to the first switch in cases where switches are being used, say the first 'b' in {{IPA-xx|abc}} or {{IPA-xx|abc|abc.ogg}}. kwami (talk) 10:11, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

(Also, I thought subrules were only supposed to be called if the rule they're dependent on is activated. Am I wrong, or is this a bug?)

Adding templates at talk pages

Please, explain me how I can add templates at talk pages using AWB bot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.250.46.190 (talk) 11:37, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

See my reply on your talk page - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 13:23, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Usage question

I rarely use AWB and categories, so I'm unsure on this... Is there any way to use the Filter function in generating a page list on AWB to find what articles are in both Category:Wikipedia Did you know articles and Category:WikiProject Baseball articles? Trying to fix up Portal:Baseball, which requires the DYKs all be things that actually ran as DYKs. Also, failing an AWB route, anyone know another way to do this? Thanks! Staxringold _talk^contribs 02:26, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, the "list comparer" under the Tools menu. I cut and paste the resulting list, but there may be a simpler way. kwami (talk) 02:40, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

EXACTLY what I was looking for, thanks! Running now. Staxringold _talk^contribs 02:46, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Settings

Where are my personal settings saved? How do I save my settings when a new version is being installed? Is this done automaticaly? Perhaps have this question in the FAQ. Debresser (talk) 20:36, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

They are saved (with me) on C:\Documents and Settings\Myusername\Local Settings\Application Data\AutoWikiBrowser\Default.xml and that is not overwritten with a new install, so settings are kept automatically. Debresser (talk) 22:25, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Software Disabled?

After working fine yesterday, the AWB is not working any more for me. In the status bar it says: "Software disabled" and if I try to start it wants me to login, although I am already logged in. Is this a known issue? Thanks. FKmailliW (talk) 23:45, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I am having the same issue. DoubleBlue (talk) 01:48, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

It's probably due to the MediaWiki updates. --NE2 01:50, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, good point. Thanks. DoubleBlue (talk) 01:58, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

It would be nice to know whether it is a software issue, or related to neutered logins. I cannot login to either w: or s:. -- billinghurst (talk) 04:39, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

To confirm I am permanently "Not logged in" and the recent changes for bots is like ghost town with WP 1.0 bot wandering about and some inter-wikis riding through, while ClueBot and the other anti-vandal bits sit in the sheriff,s office splitting a fifth of Jack Daniels. Rich Farmbrough, 06:29, 17 September 2009 (UTC).

If this is of the last 12 hours or so, it is most certainly MW changes. Which versions are we talking about here guys? I will look at it tonight, if Max hasn't got to it first —Ree dy 06:32, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Acutally, I'm pretty sure it started before the "software updates" banner (and the one that was there before it) showed up; that's how I remember it, anyway. Looking at my edit history, I was booted out at about 19:25. Is there a way to figure out what time the "updates" started? Also, I'm glad to know it's not just me! I'm using v 4.6.0.0. — Skittleys (talk) 10:39, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm running 4.6.0.0 too and having the same issues, I keep being told to log-in after I have logged in. Hiding T 11:03, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I was using AWB successfully about 15 hours ago, and it stopped about 12 hours ago, so I am presuming that it is related to the upgrade, though wasn't aware whether it was MW disabling the access while they upgraded, or a quirk of of the upgrade. billinghurst (talk) 11:09, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

AWB no longer works for me either. I am using the latest version, and it does not recognize that I am logged in. Until It Sleeps ^{Wake me} 12:27, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure it is MW, all the versions I have fail to log in (apart form the self-built one which crashes on start-up). Does AWB use the API for login? ((See also Monoculture.) Rich Farmbrough, 12:29, 17 September 2009 (UTC).

Same problem. bd2412 T 19:50, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Odd, it seems Rjwilmsi is still able to use it. [1] Until It Sleeps ^{Wake me} 12:35, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Same problem on fr wiki... :( Someone have a fix or a tip for this ? --II...Richard...II (talk) 12:48, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I haven't tried it until now, but I have the same problem. I thought I'd been taken off the access list. Or desysopped. :( – B.hotep •talk• 20:29, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd try and fix it myself, but since my computer has decided not to run anything compiled locally.... Rich Farmbrough, 21:07, 17 September 2009 (UTC).

OK Noticing the above comment about rjwilmsi, and seeing from Reedy Boy's talk page that he is using a recent version I installed the latest snapshot I'd d/ld and it works. Coincidence? Maybe. Works for me. Happy editing. Rich Farmbrough, 21:13, 17 September 2009 (UTC).

It is related to MW changes. But there is also a bug with IE8 (i think) javascript, that causes Out of memory exceptions in AWB. Rjwilmsi is still editing fine as he is probably using the ApiEdit 4.9 versions. —Ree dy 21:11, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I also couldn't log in, but after reading this here, and downloading v.4901 from here, all went exceedingly well. Debresser (talk) 22:20, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Do I simply extract and overwrite the current files? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 23:09, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Yep, that does seem to work. bd2412 T 23:12, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Same problem... wouldn't let me log in. I did download the 4901, and I'm all right now. Be well, Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 23:55, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

And there we go, perfect reasoning why 4.6 and its WebBrowser should die - so we don't fall to stupid variable changes that we have to use during screen scraping. Long live the api! —Ree dy 06:27, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Same problem: I could not log in successfully. Downloaded 4901, works okay. Thanks for great work guys! // Mark Renier (talk) 08:13, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, downloaded 4901... it only bloody works and about 300% quicker! Excellent work! :D – B.hotep •talk• 18:37, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Impressive speed! Zoo Fari 06:44, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I do not find it faster at all. Debresser (talk) 09:01, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps it was the way I had the old one set up, against how the new one comes as default then. – B.hotep •talk• 09:19, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I find it a lot faster on short pages, I don't discern a difference on long ones. bd2412 T 13:55, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Horrible grey screen

It occurs many times that AWB can't save the version I would like to be saved, and then the page stays in the list and is reloaded again. In the past this also occurred and with my current version (4.9.0.1 SVN 5386) this still happens (only much more times) (possible due lost connection or so). The major difference for me between the old versions and the current version is that when I hit the Save-button, I currently do get a grey screen (in the right below area), while in the past I got/kept a white screen with the text I did want to save. When the saving is working fine, this change isn't a problem. When I want to save and I got a notice that it can't be saved (what happens many many times), the area in the right below is grey, and the changes (partly manual edited) I wanted to save are lost. In the past it was possible to copy the content of the page in the edit field right below, and then hitting Start, and then paste the copied text in the edit field right below, and then hitting Save again.
In short: please make it possible back again to select the contents of a page that I want to be saved, because now it is the grey screen of death that comes on my screen each time. Thanks! Greetings - Romaine (talk) 14:12, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Kingbotk plugin

Has anyone managed to get the Kingbotk plugin to work and do assessments? It seems to ski[p the loading of the talk page and bringing up the assessing page, so I can;t use it to assess. I'm using 4.9.0.2 because I couldn;t work out where to get 4.9.0.1 from. Hiding T 22:47, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

4.9.0.1 is dead. Have you ever been able to? As iirc, there is a specific way you have to do it. —Ree dy 09:16, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. What used to happen up to and including 4.6 was that you'd build your list and set Kingbotk to assess. Then it would load the article page, you'd click Preview to run your eye over the article, then click either save or ignore and the talk page would load and the little assessment form, which you'd fill out, and then click save, and it would save that, and then the next article would load. What's currently happening is that the article loads, but as soon as you click anything the talk page is dropped from the queue, no assessment form ever appears and the next article loads. That kind of defeats the whole purpose of that part of the plug-in. I've tried using my old settings and I've tried starting from scratch and I can't seem to get it to work. I filed a bug and I've left my settings at User:Hiding/AWB if that is any help. Hiding T 10:13, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I second this. The problem is exactly as Hiding describes it. The talk page is added as the next item in queue but upon clicking save or ignore on the article page, the talk page is dropped from queue with no opportunity to fill in assessment. DoubleBlue (talk) 18:58, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Connection

I receive a message "The underlying connection was closed: A connection that was expected to be kept alive was closed by the server". I am using the 4.9.0.1 version from the snapshot. Non of the other programs that in the background continuously use the internet have the same problem. Is this a bug? Debresser (talk) 09:54, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

And the worst thing is that upon this message I lose all my edits. Debresser (talk) 09:54, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

This seems to happen invariably after every edit that takes me more than a minute or so. Debresser (talk) 14:51, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Apart from that, I have to confirm login manually every time. Debresser (talk) 12:51, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Nobody else has this problem? Debresser (talk) 18:02, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I get that message on occasion. What do you mean by "loose all my edits"? Rjwilmsi 18:20, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

A typo. It happens to me every time I wait with saving for more then a minute or so. And then I have to make the edits anew. A few times I made partial edits, and that was even worse. It is comepletely unacceptable. Debresser (talk) 18:02, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

And has this problem been fixed? Debresser (talk) 22:17, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Number of list items

I checked through the archive, but couldn't find an answer, so apologies if this has been asked before: when creating a list of articles, is the maximum number of items in that list 25,000? I made a list which I expected to contain around 80,000. Thanks. – B.hotep •talk• 08:17, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Its a general limit to save load on the servers, as most users wont need all the lists (which could be 200,000+ —Ree dy 09:16, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

nbsp

How to disable putting &nbsp without turning off general fixes? --gregul

Not currently possible, but rev 5473 – when a snapshot is available with a revision number of 5473 or higher, you may set the 'do not apply WP:MOS fixes' option under the Options menu, and the &nbsp fixes will not be applied. Rjwilmsi 17:52, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Login issues

It keeps telling me I have to log in, even though I'm already logged in and running IE. It's done this now on two separate machines. Ideas? — e. ripley\^talk 02:13, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Are you running version 4.6? If so, a change to Wikimedia broke your version. I had this same problem. Downloading v4.9.0.2 fixed this problem for me. Robert Skyhawk ^{So sue me!} (You'll lose) 02:36, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes indeed, 4.6... never even occurred to me that it wasn't the most recent version, since I hit update and it said there was nothing to update. Thanks, I'll give it a shot -- that was driving me nuts. — e. ripley\^talk 02:40, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Had the same problem, also used 4.6. Upgrading to 4.9.0.2 fixed the problem. Thanks for the hint. – IbLeo (talk) 18:27, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Redirects

Is there a way of extracting redirects from a list AWB builds? I've tried the script which turns redirects green, but it doesn;t seem to work for me, is there a way of getting AWB to do it that I'm missing, or another way on wiki or off? Hiding T 15:52, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Found a non-AWB way at Wikipedia talk:Redirect. Am still interested in a way of doing so with AWB. Hiding T 16:39, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

You could set AWB to skip redirects, then run AWB through your list in pre-parse mode. The redirects would be in the skip log. Rjwilmsi 07:00, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Kind of related, but I've found that when the skip log gets very lengthy, AWB's preparsing slows down considerably. Can this be optimized somehow?

Also, your suggestion is good but for the caveat that if AWB crashes, your skip log is not saved. How about a skip if not redirect option? (As the preparse list does get saved). –xeno^talk 19:10, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Dates

Hi. I've been involved in a discussion about date formats which is now taking place at Wikipedia:Mosnum/proposal_on_YYYY-MM-DD_numerical_dates. I left the creator of yobot (Magioladitis) a couple of comments that he suggested I leave here.

It was my view (at least) that the current language in the MOS does not permit use of the YYYY-MM-DD format in references (though the bot is applying it in references); the MOS says at [2]:

YYYY-MM-DD style dates (1976-05-31) are uncommon in English prose, and should not be used within sentences. However, they may be useful in long lists and tables for conciseness. (If the only purpose why they are used in a particular table is ease of comparison, consider using 1 November 2008.) Because some perceive dates in that style to be in conformance with the current ISO 8601 standard, that format should never be used for a date that is not in the (proleptic) Gregorian calendar, nor for any year outside the range 1583 through 9999.").

(And it certainly does not mandate it). That could change, as the issue is under discussion, and at the moment the proposal to reflect in writing what some thought was the prior understanding to not use that format in footnotes has not attracted a consensus of those who have written so far. One matter that has confused things is the extent to which YYYY-MM-DD is already (against policy, I would argue, but others would disagree) used now in footnotes -- I've made the point that that may not reflect preferences of Wikipedia editors, as some bots have been busy turning references into the YYYY-MM-DD format. I wanted to apprise you of the situation both because it may interest you, it may impact your desire to let the bot continue to make such changes (unless/until the policy clearly allows for it), and of course you may wish to correct any misstatements I've made or otherwise contribute. Many thanks.

In the two instances I noted that the bots were making that change (there were many others, but I just grabbed two at the Sam Fuld article), the bots changed from the format that Major League Baseball (it was an article about a major league baseball player) and others use, which was not deprecated at the time of the bot edit, but is now as of just a few days ago (MM/DD/YYYY). I have no idea whether the bot was limiting its edits to changes from that format or not, but as mentioned in any event at the time of the edits that format was not deprecated.--Epeefleche (talk) 06:58, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Is it possible to tell the database scanner to scan only certain articles?

^^^ ? –xeno^talk 03:51, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

That's what skip if contains/not contains does. Rjwilmsi 07:02, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Mm, yes, but what I meant was, can I feed it a list of articles that I want it to scan and have it scan only those? –xeno^talk 13:13, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Do an export using Special:Export. As otherwise its still gotta go through it all and find them... Effectively scanning them. —Ree dy 17:39, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Will do - thanks for the tip. –xeno^talk 19:01, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Notification

As of the last 24 hours Wikipedia:Templates for deletion has moved to Wikipedia:Templates for discussion. Debresser (talk) 04:31, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Deactivate message for certain namespaces

I noticed the "No category (although etc.)" message in red is displayed for user talkpages also. I think there is no reason to have this message for pages that are not expected to have categories, like userpages and the talkpages of all namespaces. Debresser (talk) 17:46, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean alerts? —Ree dy 21:32, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Probably. Do you have any other messages displayed in red? Debresser (talk) 17:32, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

how do we log in?

How do we log in now? Or am I the only one who can't edit after repeated restarts and successful logins because I'm "not logged in"? kwami (talk) 08:32, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Update to v4.9, I had the same problem and fixed it just before. k.i.a.c (talktome - contribs) 08:37, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I'd also run update first thing, and got nothing. kwami (talk) 08:49, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

We've got one bug we have to fix then we will look at a formal release of AWB version 5. Rjwilmsi 09:47, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I also just encountered this problem. Ruslik_Zero 19:12, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I log in over and over and it keeps saying im not. I have version 4.6 and it says there is nothing to update. I have a newsletter to deliver like now so is there an immediate fix? I tried on two different computers signed into wiki on both ie and firefox and it still didn't work. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 20:37, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

The top of the page (in the AWB links box) describes how to download the newer version using an SVN snapshot. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:52, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Skip if contains

I'm sorry if this isn't the place to ask this, but how do I make awb look for more than one word that aren't necessarily right next to each other, in skip if contains? Henrik Sundbom (talk) 19:57, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Use wildcards? firstword.*?secondword —Ree dy 20:30, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

(Word|OtherWord) --Schlurcher (talk) 22:08, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Beep + flash

I'm using the most up-to-date version, and under Options – Preferences – Editing, there's the facility to turn on a beep and a flash to go off when the program's ready to save a page. These worked initially for about 10 minutes, but haven't done since (yes, the options are still checked and my sound is on!). Can anyone help? ╟─Treasury Tag►sheriff─╢ 08:55, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

searching tables

What's the syntax for searching a table? I'm having trouble with the line breaks. All I want to do is a simple find & replace in any table that has a certain class def. kwami (talk) 17:28, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Unbalanced brackets found

Sometimes I get the red "Unbalanced brackets found" alert. I have not had much success finding these unbalanced brackets by looking over the text. Is there any other way to find them? How much should I care about fixing them? --DThomsen8 (talk) 19:26, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Options>Highlight first unbalanced brackets if found, it will make the first unbalanced brackets red in the edit box. Henrik Sundbom (talk) 23:11, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Add source parameter using AWB

I created a new article and a few days later it was edited and a message "(Add source parameter using AWB" was left.

What does this mean? I couldn't see any difference between the original and the edited article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomintoul (talk • contribs) 08:34, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Which diff? I've never seen that before... —Ree dy 12:26, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

maybe this one. Rjwilmsi 13:49, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

That is because a source parameter was added to the template, and had to be added to all articles that use that template. So a willing editor added the source parameter to all instances of that template. This he did using AWB. See Wikipedia:BOTREQ#Source. Debresser (talk) 16:29, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

References

Not an AWB user but I have noticed that users with AWB change the code with regard to references and make a bit of a mess because it doesnt appear to understand or recognise the new format {{reflist|refs= and tries to add another reflist field MilborneOne (talk) 13:02, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

That was fixed under rev 5506 just over a month ago. Perhaps the users involved are using an old snapshot of AWB? Rjwilmsi 13:50, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks I have left a message with the user. MilborneOne (talk) 22:00, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I'll update it, thx.--Ipatrol (talk) 22:01, 5 November 2009 (UTC) AWB updater says it's current, odd.--Ipatrol (talk) 22:03, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

We are in a temporary period where you must manually update your 4.9 snapshot of AWB from the snapshot link at the top of this page. Rjwilmsi 22:12, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

What if you disable Internet Explorer?

Hi, I use Windows 7, and in Windows 7 you can disable Internet Explorer so I disabled it. Would it work? tablo (talk) 22:17, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

TIAS? (Try it and see). 4.9 it shouldn't affect, and same for 4.6, if it even actually worked... I think that the base of it will still be there for the .NET FW to use, so shouldnt cause a problem. —Ree dy 23:36, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Help me solve this dilemma

I need to scan some articles for a missing component. That's not a problem. The problem is that the tag I need to place belongs on the talk page of the article. So when scanning the article space finds the exception the talk page needs to be tagged. The other issue would be the possibility that the talk page has already been tagged and I could skip it anyway. I think the articles missing the component could be set aside and then convert them over to scan the talk page and tag accordingly. Trouble is that I cannot see how AWB can give the set aside I need. Hopefully this makes enough sense; if not I could explain further. Thanks. --Brad (talk) 22:02, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Here's one simple way which should do it. Set Skip options to skip articles which don't meet your criteria. Pre-parse the list (Options / Use pre-parse mode) to remove the ones that should be skipped. Then right click on the article list and select Convert to talk pages. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 22:23, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmmmm. Yes.. yes. I see how this will work. Of course there is now another issue but using the "doesn't contain" should solve that as well. Thanks. --Brad (talk) 01:01, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, "Pre-parse". That's something I didn't know about. Thanks for sharing :-) Zoo Fari 01:07, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Speedy deletion tagging

I have a mass list of orphaned unfree images that need to be tagged as CSD. I would like to use AWB. I could just prepend the tag on the file page easily, but I'm unable to notify the uploaders via AWB. Is there any modules or plugins that could do this? Any tips? Thanks, Zoo Fari 02:06, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Write your own? ;) It's never been requested, so never been implemented. Using a plugin, and another ApiEdit instance (or even the same), i suspect this wouldn't be too hard to do. —Ree dy 12:49, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Multiple searches from txtfile & searches with >500 results

hi! (iam new to AWB but iam able to do own scripts if possible/necessary....)

Questions:

how to perform wiki searches (TEXT) for a list.txt with a few 100 expressions ? (without copy&paste every single one)

how to get all results for a search with more than 500 results ?

thanks .. --Updatehelper (talk) 10:35, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I haven't used AWB in months, but overall I've been using it for years and am an admin. The latest version is new to me. When I tried logging in, it brought me to the IE page inside AWB, where I logged in. However, I still wasn't logged in in the application itself - it still said "User:" in red in the bottom right and "software disabled" in the bottom left. I could make normal edits within AWB because I was logged in, I just couldn't use any of the AWB tools. I was logged out in regular IE at the time. Pats1 ^T/C 03:40, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

HI! =) first i also got this issue, because i took the version from sourceforge

what you need is this one

http://toolserver.org/~awb/snapshots/

if i still does not work delete browser cookies and make some new ones by logging into wikipedia. --Updatehelper (talk) 05:17, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

That worked! Thanks. Pats1 ^T/C 13:30, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

<--I am having similar problems to this: Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive_8#AWB keeps restarting. Which seems to be the same problem as described in this section. I found it by searching on "You are not logged in. The log in screen will now load..." the error message that appears with the failure, as it is now included here in this section it should allow others to find this section with the same search I used. -- PBS (talk) 13:50, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Downloading the alternative worked for me. The original AWB I had loaded was: 4.6.0.0. SVN 4662 (2009-06-29 19:22:14) which gave the errors above. The working version is: 4.9.0.3 SVN 5646 (2009-11-17 00:34:12) -- PBS (talk) 14:05, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Temperature formatting failure

This bot continuously places the wrong information in existing pages. This needs to be fixed immediately.

For example, the bot modified Little Ice Age where

indicating a series of 1-2°C (2-4°F) cooling events

but the cooling events appear to be larger, ranging between 3-8°C (6-14°F)

was incorrectly changed to

indicating a series of 1–2 °C (34–36 °F) cooling events - formatted using {{convert|1|-|2|C|F}}

but the cooling events appear to be larger, ranging between 3–8 °C (37–46 °F) - formatted using {{convert|3|-|8|C|F}}

Over the last few YEARS, I have fixed this exact same problem in other pages. I am sure that this occurs in thousands of pages. Editors spend a lot of time developing an article and some misbehaving bot completely changes the meaning. It is time to fix this or to disable this bot.

By the way, it is not just the bot, some editors are simply clueless. For instance, Climate_of_India#Tropical_dry had the same type of problem except that the template was added by hand. Now that I have corrected it, the current AWB bot will change it back so that it is incorrect .. again.

There is a large diurnal range of about 14 °C (57 °F) - formatted using {{convert|14|°C|°F|0}}

should be

There is a large diurnal range of about 14 °C (25 °F)

Q Science (talk) 14:17, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

It is a mistake, in my opinion, to use the convert template where a conversion is already present - unless we are planning on changing the size of the units! Despite the attraction of the template, and the ingenuity of its authors it has several drawbacks. However you need to speak to Gaius Cornelius, I think, about that one. I am almost certain that that change is specific to how he uses AWB rather than the tool itself. Rich Farmbrough, 10:12, 21 November 2009 (UTC).

In addition, AWB incorrectly changed an exact quote to a "pretty" format

"And in this same year after the 2nd of February ... "

was incorrectly change to

"And in this same year after 2 February ... "

Q Science (talk) 14:41, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

General fixes in Bot mode

User:SmackBot is currently blocked due to an admin objecting to automatic naming of references and reordering of refs into numerical order (^{[13],[3],[8],[1]} changed to ^{[1],[3],[8],[13]}). While I have been prepared to turn of the first general fix if I can - or request a switch from the devs (the admin suggests I should hack the code and comment out the appropriate portion myself - presumably every release) the second seems so innocuous and in fact beneficial (several editors have commented on it) that I am reluctant to agree to disabling it without some evidence that there is actually a case where it would be harmful - a. because it is just plain daft to do so and b. because it would set precedent - there is not a jot or tittle in WP that you can't find someone to argue with.

Therefore I am thinking we need to look at blanket authorisation for general fixes, so that any AWB bot performing an approved task can do so with GF turned on. This would be done on an item by item basis so that when a new feature is added a single BAG request could be made, and the code enabled under bot conditions once approved.

I know that sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare...

Rich Farmbrough, 10:02, 21 November 2009 (UTC).

If the purpose of general fixes has evolved to the point where they are automatically implemented across all articles via bot, they should be subject to BAG approval. Perhaps they should be removed from AWB altogether and simply made into a standalone bot, so that BAG can approve of changes to them and not have to worry about AWB's other features that don't fall under their "jurisdiction". If bots are already applying general fixes to all articles, it seems less prudent for general fixes to continue being a part of AWB. Equazcion (talk) 10:16, 21 Nov 2009 (UTC)

In general, each bot operator is responsible for the code that their bot runs. The "rules" listed at on WP:AWB include:

Check every edit before you save it.
Avoid making insignificant or inconsequential edits ...

Approving a bot solely to go through and do AWB "general fixes" without human supervision would appear to violate these two rules: many of the fixes are not supposed to be applied automatically without human oversight.

However, I agree with Equazcion that perhaps some fixed subset of the "general fixes" could be approved by BAG to be automatically implemented, while the other fixes would still require manual oversight. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:19, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Third-party wikis

It say in the FAQ-section above: You are also able to use AWB with third-party wikis, if you go to the General menu and select "User and project preferences", you can change the wiki there. There is no General menu, or "User and project preferences", as far as I know. So what should I do? Debresser (talk) 15:01, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you mean the "Options" menu, choosing "Preferences", and then "Site"? Debresser (talk) 15:04, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Most probably. Documentation aren't always updated properly when other updates occur. —Ree dy 15:19, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

General fixes to footnotes

The general fixes section of the manual indicates that duplicate <ref> elements are combined using the name attribute. Can someone explain the logic for deciding if two <ref> elements are really duplicate or not? Does everything except white space within the two tags have to match exactly?

My concern is that two footnotes might be nearly identical, except specify a different page number, a different edition, or the like. I wouldn't want the footnotes to be consolidated in such a case. --Jc3s5h (talk) 18:51, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Consider the Template:Rp/doc in this context. --DThomsen8 (talk) 21:37, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

My own practice is to not allow AWB to make this kind of fix. Better to skip it entirely, or else do a correction without automation. --DThomsen8 (talk) 18:50, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I am not using AWB on footnotes, other people are. I want to know the logic of how AWB handles this so I can be alert for problems that might be created in articles that I watch. --Jc3s5h (talk) 19:01, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

References have to be exactly identical, ignoring leading and trailing whitespace. Refs to different pages etc. are not considered duplicates. Rjwilmsi 22:19, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Has a <ref> after <references/>

What does "Has a <ref> after <references/>" mean? Can I correct it? See Tatamy, Pennsylvania as an example of many instances.

In the case of that article it was a false positive (bug in AWB). I've now fixed the AWB version (for the next release of AWB). Thanks Rjwilmsi 17:06, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

There were many instances of this alert. I can ignore the alert for now, but I would like to know when the next AWB version is released. --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:40, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Reference reordering

Is there any way to stop AWB reordering references in an in-line list of references. The references are specified in date order yet every time AWB is run on the article they are reordered for some reason and have to be manually reset. I see no reason for this functionality to be present but may be some one can enlighten me or provide a way to prevent it happening. Keith D (talk) 00:14, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Which article(s) please? Rjwilmsi 09:59, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Hull City A.F.C. season 2009–10 but it occurs on others as well. Keith D (talk) 13:10, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

The references are put in numerical order per agreed convention. I don't think a list of 14 consecutive references is the right way to display them. Perhaps better to place them in a notes section if they can't be linked to a specific sentence/table row/stat. Rjwilmsi 13:19, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

The list is a reference list of the matches, the table is generated from the sum of the entries in the articles referenced so the cannot be placed against specific rows/items in the table. A notes section would also be just a string of references without duplicating information elsewhere in the article. The numbering is rather arbitrary depending where it appears first on the page and changes over time as the article is modified. Keith D (talk) 13:48, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

sub-categorization

I am trying to make a change across all counties in any given US state. I know I can do the following for each named county multiple 'find and replace' entries and one delete category entry:

original cats for an article:

Category:foo County, Arizona

Category:Census-designated places in Arizona

target cat for an article:

Category:Census-designated places in foo County, Arizona

This works fine with a state has a few counties, but when a state has many dozens of counties, the set up work for all the counties gets very tedious indeed. Is there any way to tell AWB to actually look for 'foo' (a variable county name) and achieve this change with less set up work?

Actually, this is a more general problem than just US counties; it occurs whenever one is trying to create a sub-cat structure. Thanks Hmains (talk) 20:25, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Can't build

I'd like to build AWB, but I can't. I checked out the SVN repository and opened AutoWikiBrowser.sln, but VS showed error message that “Kingbotk.Plugin.vbproj” cannot be opened. I think I don't have Visual Basic installed. So I tried AutoWikiBrowser no plugins.sln, but I got the following error during compilation:

ListComparer.resx(143,5): error MSB3103: Invalid Resx file. Could not load type WikiFunctions.AWBSettings.SpecialFilterPrefs, WikiFunctions, Version=4.9.0.3, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null which is used in the .RESX file.  Ensure that the necessary references have been added to your project. Line 143, position 5.

I have MS VS 2008 Professional Edition v.9.0.30729.1 SP. How can I fix this? Svick (talk) 20:55, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

FFS. rev 5703 —Ree dy 21:05, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, now it works all right. Svick (talk) 21:21, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Italics to bold

Hello, I'm not so familiar with regex. If I want to make an italicized word bold, what regex should I use? Example: word -> word. Thanks, Zoo Fari

To be more specific, I'm trying to make italicized species binomials bold. For example: H. viridis -> H. viridis. Zoo Fari 23:56, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

''(.*?)'' --> '''''$1''''' —Ree dy 01:07, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I think this is incorrect, because it matches bold too. What I came up with is (?<=[^'])(''[^'].*?[^']'')(?=[^']) → '''$1''', but it looks overcomplicated (and doesn't work in certain cases). Svick (talk) 01:19, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I think I got it. I'm using in template call with unique replacements, so I only need simple regex. I'm using ''H\.(.*?)'' --> '''''H.$1''''' to bold species ID prepending with H. (genus). It seems to work fine, though I'm not an expert at regular expressions. Zoo Fari 01:38, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

After running a few tests, I now see what Svick means about bold being matched as well. Since I'm fixing parameter fields that aren't bolded, I don't have a problem with the regex. However, it's not a regex I would use in templates with bold and italicized words everywhere. Zoo Fari 01:46, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Sort key keyword

AWB makes available the keyword %%key%% for an article's human name sort key. Is there a similar keyword for the sort keys of other, non-biography, articles? MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 19:49, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary in disambig mode

I might well be doing something weird here, but when disambiguating links to scion, I should like to use [[wikt:scion]] as a solution. The 'Wiktionary' option is giving me [[Wiktionary|scion]], which isn't so helpful. I'm on 4.9.0.3; did I miss a setting? --AndrewHowse (talk) 18:37, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Don't think anyone has wanted to do that before... —Ree dy 01:37, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Edits per minute

Does the API version use less Wikipedia resources than the old version? If so, does this mean that we're allowed to save edits more quickly? About how many is the maximum recommended edits that non-bots should be saving per minute? And does this vary by time of day and how busy the servers seem to be? 206.170.111.187 (talk) 00:26, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Due to faff caused by MaxLag, all SVN snapshots don't follow maxlag. The save/load limiting is handled by MediaWiki, as it would be if you were editing normally. As the proposal for AvgLag was declined, suggesting we don't use maxlag for normal users, and just for bots... This needs reimplementing properly. —Ree dy 01:47, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what all that means.

I've recently noticed that Rich Farmbrough (talk · contribs) has been making over 20 edits per minute and over 1000 edits per hour. Is this rate of editing acceptable for "normal" users, or does he just have special privileges since he's an admin? 159.83.4.1 (talk) 00:10, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Admins are not affected by rate limits. Ruslik_Zero 16:06, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Rich is known to bend AWB rules-of-use including apparently using some kind of auto-click or custom build to autosave to run bot tasks on his main account. –xeno^talk 16:09, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Login does not hold

I've just installed AWB to use on nl.wikipedia. Now I can login (I'm typing this from the AWB screen), but when I click on start a pop-up tells me "You are not logged in. This log in screen will load, enter your name and password, click "Log in", wait for it to complete, then start the process again."

Nevertheless I'm logged in when I look in the AWB screen and can even browse in it. Below in the right corner though, is stated in red "User:" without a user name. Even if I try more times I don't succeed. Does anybody know how I can fix this? Regards, DavinAWB (talk) 18:03, 6 December 2009 (UTC) (regular SUL-account is User:Davin)

My browser is IE version 7.05..., AWB version 4.6.0.0

I used IE until now only with a proxy server to visit unsafe internet pages (with Fire Fox as my regular browser), while on Wikipedia (.en as well as .nl) this proxy server has been blocked permanently some time ago. Now I switched back to my own IP Is there a safety lock may be?

I unsuccessfully tried:

Making IE my main web browser (this was Fire Fox)
Not to let run Fire Fox when starting AWB
Purging the nl.checkpage
Trying several times after each other to log in
Logging in first in IE and the starting AWB

So nothing worked. Who can help? DavinAWB (talk) 19:42, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Version 4.6 no longer works, since some upgrades to MediaWiki were installed. See the green box at the top of the page. 4.9.0.3 works for me. --AndrewHowse (talk) 22:35, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I had not seen that line, only that "Template:Latest stable software release/AutoWikiBrowser" is stating that 4.6.0.0. is stable. I works now indeed. Davin (talk) 08:34, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Shortcut keys not working

My shortcut keys are not working. Is there a tool window or something that I might be able to adjust from? Zoo Fari 18:22, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Which shortcuts? —Ree dy 01:36, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

The save and ignore shortcuts (ctrl+S; ctrl+I). Zoo Fari 02:17, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

This problem has been around a very long time, I think since I first started using AWB. It looks like a focus issue. More specifically what happens: the keyboard shortcuts work fine when AWB is first started. For example, to save, you can use "Ctrl-s" or "Alt-s". But if you click in the diff area or text box, then the shortcuts stop working. If you subsequently click in one of various places such as in the edit box, list box, diff area, or on the Start tab, the shortcuts will then work once but then stop working again. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 09:13, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Article names with three or more words

Moved to WP:AWB/BUGS. –xeno^talk 14:24, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Help with custom module

Easy question: in custom modules, what is "skip = false" for?

Hard question:

I would like to use AWB with a custom module which I will write, as follows

Create a list of articles about events before 1752, when the British Empire adopted the Gregorian Calendar. Such articles are likely to contain dates in the Julian calendar.
Use C# regular expressions to find and parse {{Birth date}}, {{Death date}}, {{Birth-date}}, {{Death-date}}, and related templates.
(Remember I will inspect at the end.) If the templates don't have a dash, replace with the dashed version, because the undashed versions emit false microformats when the parameters are set to a date in the Julian calendar.
Test the dashed templates to see if they already contain both a Julian and Gregorian date. If so, test the correctness of the conversion. If already correct, leave alone, otherwise provide templates so the Julian date will be displayed, but the Gregorian date will be emitted as a microformat, as the external standards for microformats require.
Manually inspect the article to see if it really does use Julian dates. If the article uses Gregorian dates, skip the article.

The reason I believe a custom module is needed is because there is no way for a regular expression to compute Julian to Gregorian calendar conversions. If someone has a C# module that does this kind of thing for me to use as an example, I would appreciate any help.

I am new at using AWB but experienced with calendar conversions, and have some experience with C#. --Jc3s5h (talk) 15:58, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Easy question. Tells AWB whether the module would like AWB to skip the page. If you only want to make edits in certain cases (ie if there is something there you want to change). True skips, false doesnt (at least, not at the modules request). —Ree dy 21:12, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Mono 2.6

tools:~awb/mono/

I've updated the report... Seemingly some of the same issues still in the way, though, a couple look a bit better. —Ree dy 02:06, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Heterogenous / heterogeneous

Please see the talk page of Polymorphism (biology), where it is argued that both versions of the word are correct usage, and both versions should be permitted in WP articles. Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:13, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

According to the Typo page, it allows both. And seemingly hasn't been changed recently... —Ree dy 13:40, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

preventing AWB users from making automatic changes that mess up the citations

How do I prevent AWB users from making changes to citations styles? They keep going through and using the named citation reference, which screws up my citations. For example, they will change a citation name to {{de icon}}, which is a useless and confusing change in an article that has 5 sources that have the de icon in them. Is there a code I can put at the beginning of articles I'm editing to prevent this bot from doing this??? Auntieruth55 (talk) 01:37, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Do you have any example edit, where it really screwed up something? Because in that case, AWB should be fixed. If it's just that you don't want any named references in that article, AWB has been recently changed, so that it doesn't use named references when the article doesn't contain any yet. Svick (talk) 01:53, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes: Here are some examples in the Friedrich Joseph, Count of Nauendorf article:

<ref name="de icon">{{de icon}} Ebert, "Nauendorf."</ref>

p. 903. had an & nbsp ; between p. and the number. I've not heard of putting a non-breaking space before a number. Is this a new rule? I could not find it in MOS.

Recently changed, perhaps in the last 2 days? This was an edit done on 12/12.

I have no problem with some helpful soul fixing typos and that sort of thing. Very nice if someone wants to do that. I do have a problem with changing a citation style that is consistent across the article, which is counter-productive. See the MOS: the first general principle of MOS is to maintain consistency within articles, and I find it presumptuous that a bot user would change a consistent style without consulting the primary editor. I refer specifically to this qualification: "Templates may be used or removed at the discretion of individual editors, subject to agreement with other editors on the article. Because templates can be contentious, editors should not change an article with a distinctive citation format to another without gaining consensus. Where no agreement can be reached, defer to the style used by the first major contributor" stipulated here: Wikipedia:Citation templates. (italics mine.)

Furthermore, "Optionally, one may add the name attribute by using <tt><ref name="''name''">''details of the citation''</ref></tt>. Thereafter, the same footnote may be used multiple times by adding <tt><ref name="name"/></tt>, which is stipulated here: citation templates. (again, italics mine.) Auntieruth55 (talk) 02:00, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

See also: Army of the Danube, " 20:58, 11 December 2009 Gaius Cornelius (talk | contribs) m (35,061 bytes) (Tidy using Project:AWB) (undo)" fortunately I could reverse, without having to manually change everything back. Auntieruth55 (talk) 02:21, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

It just took me nearly 15 minutes to undo the AWB changes on the citations in Friedrich Freiherr von Hotze. Auntieruth55 (talk) 22:26, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

It may be a few days before all users pick up the recent change to AWB by downloading a newer version. You can ask specific editors involved to do so if they haven't yet. Rjwilmsi 22:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Is there a code I can put on the article that will prevent the bot from doing the change? Auntieruth55 (talk) 02:33, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

You can add {{bots|deny=AWB}} temporarily. That should not be used as a permanent solution – just temporary until all users get the newest version.Rjwilmsi 08:25, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

How will I know when all users get the newest version? Auntieruth55 (talk) 20:01, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Older version are disabled. Every editor now has to use 4.9.0.3+ versions and soon (99% in January) AWB 5.0 will be released. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:10, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

AWB related discussion

VPP: AWB and Words to avoid Gigs (talk) 19:23, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Is there an option to skip if no general fixes are made?

Is there an option to skip if no general fixes are made? I looked through the manual, but I didn't find anything. Thanks in advance! Samwb123^T-C-@ 04:39, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes its under the options tab and then about half way down template substitution. --Kumioko (talk) 05:00, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I still don't see it. I'm using 4.9.0.3. Samwb123^T-C-@ 19:05, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

It's not in the Skip tab but in the Options tab. Press "General fixes and skip options" to see your options. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:44, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. Samwb123^T-C-@ 19:50, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

AWB thinks I'm not logged in

Resolved

When I press Start, I keep getting the message "You are not logged in. The log in screen will now load, enter your name and password, click "Log in", wait for it to complete, then start the process again. In the future you can make sure this won't happen by logging in to Wikipedia using Microsoft Internet Explorer." I've done all that over and over again, and the message just reappears. I normally use Firefox, but I closed Firefox and logged in through IE, which didn't help either. — Sebastian 17:47, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Do you still use version 4.6? 4.6 is broken. Please update to 4.9 by downloading a snapshot. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:50, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the fast reply. I've run "Help - Check for updates", but that said "nothing to update". — Sebastian 18:11, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

You have to manually download the latest snaphot. Svick (talk) 18:15, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

That page says "Please note the ApiEdit version is not stable, and could potentially have major problems." I would prefer to work with a stable version. What's the link for that? Thanks! — Sebastian 18:36, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

This is almost the final version. It's as stable as it gets. It's certainly stabler than the broken 4.6. Please download it. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:50, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, it seems to be working generally fine. — Sebastian 04:11, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Discussion regarding AWB's general fixes

There is a discussion regarding the use of AWB's general fixes by bots. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Perform AWB's general fixes from a dedicated standalone bot. All are welcome to comment. Thanks. Equazcion ^(talk) 17:48, 31 Dec 2009 (UTC)

Reference reshuffling

I found an odd "feature", which I don't seem to be able to turn off: AWB rearranges the order of references. Example: In Selvarasa Pathmanathan, it tried to change <ref name="HT191003"/><ref name="Hindu151003"/> to <ref name="Hindu151003"/><ref name="HT191003"/>. I can't think of any reason for that. Possibly it is trying to put the names in alphabetical order, but that is really destroying the work of good editors. Editors who think about what they're doing put references in the order that makes most sense in the context. I e.g. often start with a more general reference and proceed to more detailed ones, or I try to arrange the references in the same order in which topics are mentioned in the text. Can this "feature" please be cut? — Sebastian 04:11, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

It puts them in numerical order. A number of people have mentioned the possibility that someone could want a specific non-numerical order. Normally this will not be a problem, even in the first case you describe, because general works are likely to be mentioned first (in the whole article), and have lower numbers. In the second it will not reorder the references unless they are re-used and even then it may be that there is a better arrangement - rather than "Saturn and Jupiter are both very big.^{[Saturn note], [Jupiter note], [Big planets note]}" use "Saturn^{[Saturn note]} and Jupiter^{[Jupiter note]} are both very big.^{[Big planets note]}" Rich Farmbrough, 13:49, 1 January 2010 (UTC).

Erroneous corrections by Difu Wu

May I draw the project's attention to erroneous corrections by User:Difu Wu who recently gained approval. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:58, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll add a comment to the user's talk page. Rjwilmsi 14:11, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Cite book "pages=" parameter

Hello. Not sure if this is a bug or a request or what it is, so I'll mention it here, please move if this is the wrong place. The cite book template used to require editors to add "p." or "pp." manually before the page number(s) in the pages= parameter, but now has page= or pages= to distinguish between single- and multiple-page citations and the p's are added automatically as required. However, AWB just removes the manually-added p's without distinction. This is fine if there is a range of page numbers, pages=1–2 displaying correctly as "pp. 1–2", but if just one page is cited, pages=p. 3 is changed to pages=3, which displays incorrectly as "pp. 3". A real example is here. Don't know if it's feasible for AWB to spot the difference, or whether it's just something users should be aware of so they can change pages= to page= if appropriate when they review their AWB edit before saving. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 13:01, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, AWB is correct in that any 'p' or 'pp' in the page or pages parameter of {{cite book}} needs to be removed. However, you're right that it doesnt address the issue of 'pages' being used for a single page, so arguably it only does half the job. I can change AWB to correct that too, what do you think? Rjwilmsi 14:08, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I'm surprised that those involved with changing the way that parameter worked didn't commission a bot to go round removing the p's in the first place, seems like an obvious task for one. But that's by the by. I can't think of any reason why "pages" should be used with a single page, so if AWB can correct it, it seems like a legitimate general fix. thanks, Struway2 (talk) 15:38, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

rev 5921

Done. Rjwilmsi 18:59, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

"P" must not be removed from the value of the page or pages parameter. This is because some books, such as the Astronomical Almanac (AA), assign letters to chapters instead of numbers, and use page numbers such as "A1" and "N3". As of 2003, the AA only had chapters A through N, but other books, or a later edition of AA, most likely will have a chapter P. --Jc3s5h (talk) 17:47, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

rev 5920 test to prove constructs such as 'page= P50' is not changed (capital P). Rjwilmsi 18:47, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Rjwilmsi, I'm not familiar with the language rev 5920, and you did not specify any particular area to look at, so I don't know what it does. Does it preserve any capital P in the page(s) value, regardless of any characters the P might be surrounded by? --Jc3s5h (talk) 18:59, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

In short, yes. Rjwilmsi 19:02, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I can't login

I had to restore factory settings on my Dell because my system was totally screwed. I have just re-installed AWB for the first time since that factory reset; a few months since I used AWB. But now I can't seem to log on! I have clicked on file and then login. I entered my username and password and the screen said that my login was successful. I am able to compile a list, e.g. my watchlist, but when I try to open the article using the AWB menu it tells me that I'm not logged in. I've even opened IE8 and logged in manually there too; all to no avail. Any suggestions? ~~ Dr Dec (Talk) ~~ 18:27, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

p.s. I'm running version 4.6 installed from here. ~~ Dr Dec (Talk) ~~ 18:30, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Please use the "snapshots" link at the top of this page to get the new version that works. Rjwilmsi 19:01, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Connection problems.

Similar to this post, I get the 'connection closed' message frequently. Generally, if I manually edit/add something to the article (after AWB has shown me its suggested changes and is waiting for me to hit the save button) and if it takes me more than a minute or two to complete it, this message is displayed. Also, after displaying this message, AWB clears the contents of the edit box and I need to again press the start button and then add my manual edits again which I'm sure can be avoided. Can someone help me? Thanks. --Siddhant (talk) 19:32, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Note: the latter issue was mentioned in July: WT:AutoWikiBrowser/Feature requests#Preserve manual edits when page reloads. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 19:47, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the FYI. It has been six months since the request!! Anyways, I added my pleading for the feature in your request. Hoping a fast implementation. --Siddhant (talk) 20:24, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Feature Freeze for AWB v5

Hi Guys, Happy New Year.

Just a quick note to say, that, at least, as much as possible, we're now imposing a feature freeze for AWB v5. Little things may be entertained, but as much as possible, we'd rather not.

This should hopefully give us over the next week or so, enough time to catch any new bugs and look at putting v5 under general release hopefully at the weekend.

Please report any bugs, and they'll be triaged by a Dev or by Magioladitis...

Please check tools:~awb/snapshots regularily for updated versions. Now is the time to request minor tweaks and fixes to stuff.

—Ree dy 08:30, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Minor update. Couple of last minute bugs have noticed a couple of regressions. Fixing up, and hoping to release later today when i've done a bit more of the prep work. —Ree dy 11:12, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I am looking forward to the new release, since I believe a minor bug I reported has been fixed.--DThomsen8 (talk) 16:09, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion about Kumioko using AWB

Please somebody recheck whether User:Kumioko should be using AWB. See User_talk:Kumioko#Unlucky_fix and his talk page warnings. Debresser (talk) 13:37, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

URL of SVN repository in documentation

Currently, WP:AWB#Download source points to the root of the AWB SVN repository. I think that most users need only the trunk version of AWB, not all the branches and other stuff, so links to https://autowikibrowser.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/autowikibrowser should be changed to https://autowikibrowser.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/autowikibrowser/AWB. The main advantage of this is faster updating of the repository for users. Svick (talk) 19:53, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Very true. Ta —Ree dy 22:33, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Vesion 5

Very well done developers. Rich Farmbrough, 22:14, 11 January 2010 (UTC).

It's here? heck yes! Thanks devs, for all your hard work. –xeno^talk 22:15, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

1,333 SVN Revisions!! —Ree dy 22:20, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Awesome. I can't seem to find a changelog. Anyone know where that's at? Shadowjams (talk) 05:34, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/History - It's linked in the header ;) —Ree dy 07:16, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Help us to Help you!

Hi Guys, Popularity of AWB is as ever growing, as is the want to use it on non Windows platforms.

Varying amounts of luck have been had on both Wine and Mono, but neither is perfect. We've started Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Mono_and_Wine to keep track of this. AWB has a Wine entry, and Wine specific reports are there.

Please feel free to report Wine/Mono bugs, but please try to use the most up to date version of the software, both AWB and of Wine/Mono. Include as much information as you can, and we can try and work around (/disable if not implemented, in the case of Mono) many of the issues. Please do mention OS versions, Wine/Mono versions etc.

Also, the user manual is potentially out of date. Please update stuff as and when you see fit. Same with the FAQ, i think quite a few of the entries can go (JIT/Skin JS suppression), but we're not sure.

Thanks!

—Ree dy 07:36, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

The Popularity of AWB is as ever diminishing. South Bay (talk) 23:52, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I can not login

After the upgrade i can not login. Gets the message:

This user doesn't have enough privileges to make automatic edits on this wiki.

This is a private wiki. Until now I had no problem. I made several thousand editing with AWB.

Someone can help me? Sorry for my english :)--Skarabeusz (talk) 10:58, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

For a start, your mediawiki is out of date. Upgrade to 1.15.1. Also, you need to grant users the writeapi right. See mw:Manual:User_rights, and the "writeapi". Though, upgrading to 1.15.1, should do this by default

$wgGroupPermissions['user']['writeapi']         = true;

—Ree dy 11:03, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

AWB takes forever to process pages

Hope someone can help, and although it'll be embarrassing, I'm hoping it's just that I've missed something silly here.

Just started using AWB yesterday, and trying to set it just to check for and correct typos. I can create a list of pages, then either use "Normal" find and replace or RegExTypoFix to find and correct typos in those pages. Got it set to skip pages if no typos found. However, after it loads the page, and displays the different version in the top section (i.e. current version on the left, proposed changes on the right), it then locks up while it shows "processing page" at the bottom of the screen.

For anything up to around 500 words, that lasts 5-10 seconds. 500-2.5k words, 10 seconds to a minute. 2.5k-5k words, 1-5 minutes. Above that, it's close to taking 1 minute per 1k words. A page I edited this morning had 28.4k words, and it literally took around 28 minutes before it finally stopped doing whatever it's doing when it says "processing page", and displayed the raw text in the edit window, and I was able to skip or save and move on to the next file!

I've gone over the settings again and again, and switched everything off that I can find, but it doesn't seem to make any difference. I can't for the life of me think what it can be doing for all that time. No changes other than the typo corrections ever show up in the top area, though it does report various alerts in the "Alert" box. I've double checked Internet Explorer, and reset that to the original default settings. I've got a decent, mid-spec PC, which handles other stuff without any problems (editing graphic files, working with large spreadsheets, running games, browsing, etc), and a reasonably fast broadband connection, which hasn't been running slow at all.

I'm running Windows Vista Home Premium, with ~~IE 7~~ IE 8 (though I use Firefox 3.5 for browsing the web).

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what might be going on? Things I could check, or change? Any way of seeing what exactly AWB is doing for all that time?

Help! -- DMS (talk) 01:50, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm... seems I've acquired IE 8 at some point recently. Damn automatic updates.... hmph! -- DMS (talk) 10:00, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

This was happening to me too, starting, I think, about a week before the release of version 5. I never reported it because, frankly, no one else did. This problem makes AWB quite unusable, and since others had not reported it, I assumed it was a problem unique to my system. When it was happening, Windows Task Manager showed that AWB was using 80% or more of the CPU. (I use XP.) I downgraded to version 4.6.2.0, which helped, and when a new version was available, I switched to it, and everything seemed fine again. I'm currently using SVN 6037.

DMS, it's usually helpful to include the AWB version/SVN (Help/About) in your reports. Try using the latest version (click on "SVN snapshots" near the top of this page) and see if that solves the problem. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 11:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that Mandarax. You're right I should have said which version I'm running (I knew I was running the latest version available on 18/19 Jan, so everyone else should have too! Heh!). Unfortunately, it's SVN 6037 I'm running. I see a later SVN is now available - I might try that and see if it makes any difference. -- DMS (talk) 13:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Try disactivating certain parts to see which one causes the problem. For example if you run with "Section edit summaries" off then it should run faster, etc. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion Magioladitis, but as I said above, I've switched everything off that I can find to switch off, and it makes no difference. -- DMS (talk) 13:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

If the process time is really 28 minutes then I can't think it's an issue with a particular setting. DMS, can you post your AWB settings XML file somewhere please, and report what task manager says about AWB during the 28 minutes? Rjwilmsi 15:00, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Also, what specification is your machine? Though, it shouldn't make much difference. I know there is an "issue" that the first page you process with RETF enabled, it takes upto a minute to process the first page, due to further regex updates etc. It'd time out on page loads, so it's something else getting stuck. Also, as of v5, the browser version is of even less interest. As per suggested, make AWB process with nothing enabled, so it just goes through the processes of loading it, and not doing anything, bar getting to the save. We can provide a debug build that will give some debug timings (though, we need a few more timings), so we can see where it's getting stuck/delayed.

Unfortunately, i'm on Win 7 for both my laptop and desktop, though, AFAIK, there hasn't been any .NET FW updates.. Though, there could've been some windows updates. There is presumably a common link in here, though, if everyone was having a problem, we would've certainly heard about it!!—Ree dy 15:33, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, an update on this.

First, an apology to Magioladitis. Although I still swear I tried switching everything off :), I downloaded SVN 6092 and then went back through all the settings, one by one, and discovered that if I don't set AWB to highlight FIND matches, it zips through files with hardly any delay at all. There's a small delay if AWB is set to highlight syntax, but no more than a few seconds, regardless of page size. Setting it to highlight FIND matches, though, causes it to sit for ages processing the raw text before displaying it in the edit box, even though it's already done the find and replace and displayed the two different versions in the top area of the screen. Something else I then noticed is that AWB always highlights FIND matches in the different versions displayed in the top section and never highlights them in the raw text in the edit box, regardless of whether that particular setting is on or off. Not sure if that's known bug or not.

For the record, my PC spec is as follows:

Processor : Intel Core Duo E8400 (3.00 GHz)
RAM : 4 GB
Hard drive : 300 GB (200 GB free)
Display : Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT

So... switching that "highlight FIND matches" setting off enables AWB to run nice and quickly, and since it doesn't seem to actually display anything differently with that setting switched on, that's fine as far as me being able to use AWB goes. Doesn't explain why it spends so long processing the text when that setting is switched on though. If you want me to run a debug build to try and pinpoint that, I'll be happy to do so. CPU usage is high while it's doing its mystery thing, but not excessive - sits at around 60% most of the time when it's doing that. No disk thrashing or anything either. -- DMS (talk) 22:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The option “Highlight find matches” isn't for Find and Replace, but for the Find that is on the Start tab. What text do you have there? And do you have the checkboxes there (“Regex” and “Case sensitive”) checked? Svick (talk) 22:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Also, the diff at the top will always colour it in as it wants. That's not affected by that. Svick, i bet the find box is empty... —Ree dy 22:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah... If its empty, it's gonna spend a long time finding "" (which there would be infinite of these)... Don't highlight all in rev 6093 if there is no find text. —Ree dy 22:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, now we know what's causing the long processing time. It seemed logical to me that since I was running "find and replace" operations (sometimes using the "Normal" find and replace, sometimes using RegExTypoFix), a "highlight FIND matches" setting would apply to that. I know which "FIND" box you're referring to, though, and yes, it's empty. I'll add the info to the manual to indicate that that setting only applies to whatever is entered in the FIND box on the START tab, so no-one else gets caught out by that. -- DMS (talk) 22:44, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I tried to remove left-to-right mark (U+200E) character in bot mode and I can't. We have to do it manually. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:25, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Long stub maybe possible bug

All is this a bug or have I AWB setup wrong. I was replace a stub template see here and noticed AWB was removing the stub template from long stubs. So I said I'd run AWB on the whole stub category but changed some settings first. Now however I can't for the life of me get AWB to repeat this behaviour here Gnevin (talk) 19:52, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Per WP:STUB: A stub is an article containing only a few sentences of text which is too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject, but not so short as to provide no useful information, and it should be capable of expansion. Sizable articles are usually not considered stubs, even if they lack wikification or copy editing.

There is no definition such as "long-stub". In your example the article has infobox, a large introduction and more stuff. So it's definitely not a stub. You can read /Manual for how the auto-tagger works. Maybe you mean it's stub-class in Football WikiProject? -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:00, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I know there is no such thing as a long stub. I want to remove the stub tag from long articles . Why did AWB auto remove the stub from here but I can't get it to repeat the behaviour in my sandbox Gnevin (talk) 20:03, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Auto-tagger doesn't work in subpages. /Sandbox is a subpage. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Awe,ok Gnevin (talk)

I think it's slightly more subjective than this. The article does look pretty stubby. –xeno^talk 20:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The article needs expansion but it's not a stub. That's what the definition says. It would be a stub if it was "Glenbeigh-Glencar GAA is a football team". -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

No, that's a sub-stub. See User:Grutness/Croughton-London rule of stubs. –xeno^talk 20:10, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

This is an essay. I quoted the rule that holds today. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:18, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

See the final paragraph from whence you quoted. –xeno^talk 20:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Why is AWB acting like this? How can I use the prepare mode to generate a list of long stubs which I can review? Gnevin (talk) 20:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Do you want to review them by copying them in your sandbox and working there? Just open the original article with AWB, review the changes with diff and don't save if you don't like the result. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:18, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I want review the changes and not save if I think it's still a stub Gnevin (talk) 20:21, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

You can always press "skip" :P -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks all Gnevin (talk) 21:07, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Regular Expressions

Goodday fellow-AWB users, I have a question about AWB and regular expressions. I am working with AWB on the dutch wikipedia, and a request was inned for a automatic replace. The request was about a external link in articles about a spanish municipalitys. The external links goes to the Spanish Statistics bureau, which is used in the articles. All links begin in the infobox begin with: "<center>Bron: [http://www.ine.es/jaxi/ <variable link for municipality>" and end with: "Bevolkingsaantal, oppervlakte en bevolkingsdichtheid op 01/01/2007". The link for the municipality Navia looks like this: <center>Bron: [http://www.ine.es/jaxi/tabla.do?path=/t43/a011/a1998/densidad/l1/&file=t10038.px&type=pcaxis&L=1 Bevolkingsaantal, oppervlakte en bevolkingsdichtheid op 01/01/2007]</center>. All the external links in the articles about the spanish municipalitys should be replaced with the template "Bronvermelding inwonertal Spanje".

My question is:

How should I use the regular expressions to get AWB understand that he should find the link beginning with "<center>Bron: [http://www.ine.es/jaxi/</nowiki>", and replace the whole link with the template:"Bronvermelding inwonertal Spanje"? There is sadfully now information about using regular expressions for AWB available.

Thanks in advance, DustSpinner 11:23, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Post some example diffs of the correct change and I'll provide the regex for you. Rjwilmsi 13:04, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Example 1:[3]
Example 2:[4]
Example 3:[5]

Note: The external links may appaear the same, they are all 3 different!

Thanks in advance! DustSpinner 14:59, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Find:

(?s)<center><small>\s*Bron:\s+\[http://www.ine.es/jaxi/.*?Bevolkingsaantal, oppervlakte en bevolkingsdichtheid op 01/01/2007</small></center>

and replace with {{Bronvermelding inwonertal Spanje}}. Enter those in the find & replace screen, ensuring the two "ignore..." options are off. Rjwilmsi 18:12, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for providing the regex! Sadly enough, it does not work. :( I unchecked bot named boxes, and filled the regex in the search field. Also tried the advanced option with different settings, but he does not find a match. Kind regards, DustSpinner 10:21, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Doh. Use Find:

(?s)<center><small>\s*Bron:\s+\[http://www.ine.es/jaxi/.*?Bevolkingsaantal, oppervlakte en bevolkingsdichtheid op 01/01/2007\]</small></center>

Rjwilmsi 10:39, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Note: This user is dumb. I forgot to click in the box 'regex'. Thank you so much! DustSpinner 15:47, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Removing extra parameter in references

Hi, I'm sort of new to AWB. I was using it when I came across something it didn't catch in the {{cite}} parameters. I've noticed that under "pages=XX" and someone writes "pages=p.XX" AWB will remove the "p.". But it doesn't remove "pgs." like I've had to manually do here. Can someone fix this, and direct me to where I would mention something like this in the future? I wasn't sure because it's not really a typo. Thanks. Schmloof (talk) 07:10, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I will look at that today, to have a fix for the next release. You might either report similar issues as a bug, or feature request, depending on your opinion, using the links at the top of this page. Thanks Rjwilmsi 08:19, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Done rev 6117 Fixed for next release. Rjwilmsi 12:09, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Plugin documentation?

I can't seem to find descriptions of the IAutoWikiBrowser and ProcessArticleEventArgs objects. Where should I be looking? TIA Mr Stephen (talk) 00:39, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Article to talk page

Is there a way of copying or cutting something from an article and writing or appending it to its talk page perhaps modified with a regex? Snowman (talk) 18:33, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Open article page -> cut text -> Save -> Move article from log to list -> Convert to talk page -> Paste text -> Save. Not the fastest way though. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:35, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Can AWB do this semi-automatically? Can AWB find some text in the article by recognition with a regex and then cut or copy and modify the selected text and paste or append it to the talk page. The changes in the talk page (perhaps toggles with changes in the article with a click) being visible in the diff view and needing only one click on the save button to complete. I am thinking about removing sections of "===Theses===" that have got there way onto 100s of articles. It might also be useful to check if Stub tag on the article correlates with (\| ?class ?= ?[Ss]tub) in the WP project grading - some checking would then be needed to assess the grade of the article before making any changes. Snowman (talk) 19:11, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

For the 2nd task: KingbotK plugin supports assessment. Try it. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:19, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Help:sysop controls

I am தகவலுழவன், one of the ta.wiktionary-sysop.(My wiki edit history < 22,000) I want to avoid the edits of AWB in the Recent changes main page in Tamil Wiktionary; but I want to show in the bot edits section of Recent changes. What are the steps to be followed? How can i control the AWB edits of others. Thanks in advance.தகவலுழவன் (talk) 12:51, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

You can't - they would all need to use a bot account. I suppose the only way to do it to change your policies at tawikt to require that AWB use be done with a bot account. Prodego ^talk 13:28, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

To make a bot account where should i apply? what are the steps to be followed.i am new to this type of administration. Please, explain. thanks indeed.தகவலுழவன் (talk) 17:57, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Someone could write a script to eliminate the lines that have "...using AWB" (or equivalent). –xeno^talk 18:03, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Two categories

Is there a way to make a list of pages that has two specific categories? For instance I want to make a list of pages that have both the Unassessed Greek articles and the Unassessed song articles categories. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 21:34, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Use ListComparer to compare the two categories and use the list in the middle which is the intersection of both. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Where is that? Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 21:57, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Tools -> List Comparer on the menu. Load both lists and compare. You can always read the User manual or join AWB's channel in IRC -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Ok thanks I found it. And for the record, I looked and didn't see it in the user manual. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 00:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

/User_manual#Tools. Check instructions in ListComparer or help us improve them. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately ListComparer "only" displays 25k pages at the time so you can not reliably intersect categories with more pages than that. Frequent problem at Wikimedia Commons where many categories are much bigger than that. The second approach that works in those cases is to use CatScan, save results to a file and upload list from this file. --Jarekt (talk) 19:11, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

No change

I'm currently using AWB to compile a list of articles that contain a certain phrase within a group of categories, a skip all others. I'm doing this by setting it to skip article contain said phrase, and then skip all with no change, thus compiling a list in the logs. However, even though I have dechecked all the "make this change" type boxes, it still stops in an attempt to remove double spacing. Can we please have this removed? It should be part of the autofixes, not an "override always do this" type edit. J Milburn (talk) 14:34, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Why not just put it in preparse mode and "skip if not contains" (the phrase you are looking for). –xeno^talk 14:40, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, what's preparse? J Milburn (talk) 18:41, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Preparse is where the bot will just see if the article meets your criteria and highlight it in green, otherwise, move it to the skip log. Just enable it in options. –xeno^talk 22:00, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Mac compatibility

Will AWB be Mac compatible in the future? -NerdyScienceDude :) (✉ click to talk • my edits) 02:54, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

See the FAQ. =) —Ree dy 22:03, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

It is Mac compatible; you just need to run Windows on your Mac. ;-)

Seriously, though, I've run it lots on a Motorola-chipped Mac running Virtual PC, and am currently running it on an Intel-chipped Mac under Fusion. AWB runs great either way.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 22:54, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Removal of list-making options

When AWB is unable to perform a Wiki search, it removes that as a list-making option. (Although I've never experienced other failures, I assume this also applies to other list-making options.) This seems like an overreaction to a transitory situation. Is there any way to restore the option, short of closing and restarting AWB? MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 21:58, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

It's supposed to only do it when it's a disabled feature on that wiki... And it's only really that (or, if the API reports that its disabled) —Ree dy 22:02, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay. So the API is apparently reporting it as disabled occasionally. It's something which I've encountered only rarely, so it's probably not worth the effort of doing anything about it. I just thought I'd ask in case there was something I was missing. Thanks for the reply. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 22:38, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

It was put in for some of the wiki search options, text/title. If it starts happening regularly, worth investigating more. —Ree dy 22:40, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

What are we talking about here? Western Pines (talk) 02:29, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

'Open' bug archived?

Why was this bug archived though it is still open/being investigated? --Siddhant (talk) 18:51, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

25K limit

I'm working on a popular template, and there are more than 25K transclusions. How do I create a list of all the transclusions, rather than the first 25K? Is it possible? — John Cardinal (talk) 16:23, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Do you have a bot account? You can use the "nolimits" plugin. –xeno^talk 16:25, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

In case you didn't realize, you should not be editing 25,000 pages with AWB without bot approval for that specific task. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:30, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Very few of the pages will be changed, I'm looking for an error that occurs on pages that use the template. — John Cardinal (talk) 16:42, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

You could try scanning a database dump for the error. –xeno^talk 16:43, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I found the 25k limit most limiting when doing category intersections with list comparer looking for pages or categories lacking some template, etc. I will look into "nolimits" plugin. --Jarekt (talk) 16:06, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Please let me know what you find. We've been dividing articles between redundant templates to work around the 25k limit, which makes maintenance impossible. kwami (talk) 18:50, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

"nolimits" plugin did not work for me when using on Wikimedia commons. I tried loading in commons:Category:people by name and it still gives me only 25k records. I tried logging in as a bot or as an admin with no change. I also tried it in main page or in the list comparer. It seems like this plug-in needs more testing or more documentation how it suppose to be used. --Jarekt (talk) 18:52, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Nolimits gives more 25K only in the following five cases:

Category
Category (recursive)
User contributions
What trancludes page (all NS)
What trancludes page

This is done by after installing it to select the items in the Listmaker ending with "(NL, Admin & Bot)" . NL stands for No Limits. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:58, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

I created Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/NoLimits plugin for that. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:04, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! This should be very helpful. kwami (talk) 21:11, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for documentation, but I am still struggling to get more than 25k records from commons:Category:people by name when logged in as a bot or admin. Is this plugin suppose to work with with Commons? --Jarekt (talk) 01:09, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't have admin nor bot account in commons to test it.

Change to commons in Options -> Preferences -> Site -> Project.
Login as admin or bot
Choose: "Category (recursive) (NL, Admins & Bots)" in ListMaker
Type: people by name in the box
Press ok.

This should work. -- Magioladitis (talk) 02:16, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

It did work. Thank you. I was missing the "Category (recursive) (NL, Admins & Bots)" option and was still using a regular category. Looking back I should have figured it out. --Jarekt (talk) 04:30, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

How does one get a bot account for use with AWB? I looked at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval, but that seems oriented to standalone bots. Also, if I had a bot account, would AWB just know when it logged in and thus allow nolimits? — John Cardinal (talk) 21:51, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

NoLimits checks user's status. If the user is not a admin nor a bot it pops an error message. You can request a bot in Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval. It doesn't have to be a standalone bot. It can be a AWB bot i.e. an alternative account that will be used to make massive edit automatically or manually. If you need more help I can help you with creating one. alternatively, you can describe me yur task anf by bot can do it for you. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:55, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

searching indefinite strings

I'd like to find the next instance of a character after a certain string, say,

   class="X" ( $1 ≠ "|}" ) Y

where $1 may include line breaks. Basically, I wish to replace all instances of character Y within any table of class X. I've tried various combinations of ([.\n]*?) and \|\} to no avail, but this is the only code that makes sense to me.

A related problem: if [^abc] is the 'Set not a or b or c', how do you search for the 'set not } or |' ? I would expect [^\}\|], but that doesn't work. Besides limiting myself to the table above, I wish to search within a template, but restrict the search to the first switch in cases where switches are being used, say the first 'b' in {{IPA-xx|abc}} or {{IPA-xx|abc|abc.ogg}}. kwami (talk) 18:54, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Re searching for } or |. Those characters are not special within a character-class expression, so you do not escape them. So, for example, [|}] will match either of those characters. You do escape those characters outside character-class brackets. — John Cardinal (talk) 19:26, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

how do we access the bottom of the screen?

I don't know if it's the computer I'm on, or the latest update to AWB, but the bottom of the window is cut off. The only reason I can filter a list is because that option is also available in the menu bar. Am I doing s.t. obviously stupid? kwami (talk) 05:49, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Is your computer a netbook? It's a reported bug: Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs#AWB_netbook_fail. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:14, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Yup, that's it. Thanks! kwami (talk) 09:20, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

User:Lorson and AWB abuse

How does the AWB authorisation work? Can a user use AWB without requesting access? Because User:Lorson has made very contentious edits without consensus, and with significant opposition and his name does not appear on Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage nor does he ever seemed to have asked for permission. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Video_games#Moby_Games_ext._links_removal for the discussion, which started when the user was already in the midst of his editing spree. Given his edit history, I am seriously considering reverting every one of his edits. How does he have AWB access? - hahnch e n 00:01, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe he doesn't use AWB at all (anyone can add “using [[WP:AWB|AWB]]” to their edit summary) or maybe he modified AWB source code, so that it doesn't require the check. Svick (talk) 00:22, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I left a message to editor's page in User_talk:Lorson#AWB_like_edits. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:12, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The user has been reported for apparently using hacked AWB code. [6] [7] [8] Mephistophelian (talk) 15:58, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

page exist lookup

Hi, Is there any way in AWB (including AWB modules) to look-up if a page exist. For example on Wikimedia Commons most files use template:information with a field author = author name. If a page called [[creator:author name]] exist than I would like to replace author = author name with ''author = {{creator:author name}}''. Is there an easy way to do that? Similar thing with inter-wiki lookups: many people categories on Commons have matching pages on en Wikipedia. and I would like to add inter-wiki links if such pages exist. --Jarekt (talk) 16:16, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

hmm... just taking a stab at it here -

find: author[ ]*=[ ]*(.*?)\n 
replace: author = {{subst:#ifexist: creator:$1 | {{creator:$1}} | $1}}

Try that... I think it works [9]. –xeno^talk 19:14, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

thanks I will give it a try. --Jarekt (talk) 19:28, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I finally did gave it a try and found out that

find: Author\s*=\s*([^\r\n]+)
replace: Author = {{subst:#ifexist: creator:$1 | {{creator:$1}} | $1}}

Works just fine. The only annoyance is that when creator page does not exist than the only changes to the page can be white space or casing only, and the AWB skip options used to prevent that do not work. Thanks --Jarekt (talk) 04:47, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Use a custom module if you need more flexibility, especially regarding skipping. —Ree dy 10:38, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I am a big fan and frequent user of custom modules, but I do ot think they would help here. The problem is that {{subst:#ifexist: works only after saving the file (even preview does not show what it will look like). --Jarekt (talk) 18:48, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

make list special:shortpages

Is it possible to make a list upto 1KB of special:shortpages.I am from Bengali wikipedia. We have many empty /short article. I want to make a tagged {{empty}} on that.- Jayanta Nath ^{(Talk|Contrb)} 07:55, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, until bugzilla:14869 is fixed/implemented, there is no simple way. However, as of 5.0.1.0, there is a way to work around it. You can use the Advanced Regex Html Scrape. Provide it with the URL you want, and then a regex to match the items in the list... And capture the right group for the article name.. —Ree dy 15:18, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

skip-->match-->contains-->

How do I add more skip option at skip-->match-->contains-->.- Jayanta Nath ^{(Talk|Contrb)} 07:59, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Regex them? Where exactly are we looking? —Ree dy 15:15, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Getting started - edit summary

I've just started using AWB today. I've created a list; loaded a page; reviewed and understood the changes that AWB has made automatically; and made my own edits to the text. I'm now ready to save, so I click to the "Edit Summary" tab - and the text there is display-only. "Typo fixing with AWB" is a good start, perhaps, but I want to give more detail than that. What am I missing? John of Reading (talk) 15:12, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Have you clicked "Lock" (Lock edit summary) perhaps? –xeno^talk 15:14, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't make any difference to the "Edit Summary" tab; it stays display-only. The checkbox only stops you switching between the pre-configured edit summaries at the top of the "start" panel. John of Reading (talk) 15:24, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The edit summary tab is a preview only. You should be able to edit the summary box on the "Start" tab and enter your own. –xeno^talk 15:26, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

If you make manual changes, AWB will use only the edit summary you entered. Automatic generated summary is used only when page wasn't touched by the editor. The reason is that the editor may change automatic changes so there is no way to know what to keep in the dit summary and what not. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:28, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Got it! I have typed a one-off edit summary in the "Start" tab and it has been saved. Though it's a pity that the "Edit Summary" tab doesn't refresh to show the summary that is actually going to be used. John of Reading (talk) 15:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Summary in the Start tab only shows the manually added edit summary. The "edit summary| tab on the right hand side it shows the actual one. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:45, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I also find that typically when you hover over the start-tab edit summary box, it will give you a tooltip showing the actual edit summary. YMMV though - seems to be hit and miss. –xeno^talk 18:24, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

TamilBot from ta.wiktionary

Resolved

i am one of the sysop in ta.wiktionary and using AWB for category maintenance with the account viz TamilBot . for the past 10 days unable to use it. some one please, furnish the tech.problem. thanks in advance. தகவலுழவன் (talk) 18:14, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Which version of AWB do you have? -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:16, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

i tried in the versions available in SVN Snapsot .தகவலுழவன் (talk) 19:04, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Download version 5.0.1.1 from snapshots and tell me if it works. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:06, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

i tried once again. it never works.தகவலுழவன் (talk) 19:18, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I was able to edit in ta.wiktionary using 5.0.1.0 [10]. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:56, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Finally i reinstalled my computer. the problem solved. "thanks Magioladitis!,for your efforts.pls see my talk page here." தகவலுழவன் (talk) 04:49, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

How can I copy information from one place on a page and then use it in a find/replace at another place?

I've been working on some articles about some towns and villages in Switzerland. I've got a template that I want to use in the infobox and in the article. However, the template requires a number that is unique to each town/village. This number (called a SFOS number in the infobox) is at another place in the infobox. Is there a way that when I run AWB I can; 1) load this number into AWB 2)find and replace a line of text with the template format including this number from 1? I'm not very comfortable with programming or regular expressions, so any clear, basic help would be appreciated. Tobyc75 (talk) 16:16, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

There is no elementary way to do that. You ll need to create a custom module, or ask someone to do it for you. I never done it myself. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:39, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

How can I remove all Categories?

Resolved

I import many Articles (deleted from de.wikipedia) , but I don´t need the categories in my wiki. Can I remove all the categories with "Find & Replace" (find all categories and replace nothing). Ohh, and sorry, my english is not so good ;-(

LG Lady Whistler (talk) 17:23, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Du kannst "Regex" aktivieren und fuer \[\[Category:.*\]\] suchen. You can activate "Regex" and look for \[\[Category:.*\]\]. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:36, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, where must I activate "Regex"? Options -> Find & Replace -> Advanced Settings? And the next step?

Lady Whistler (talk) 09:04, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I think this is usefull: Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Find_and_replace. Options -> Find & Replace -> NORMAL Settings and then type the string I gave you at the Find column, leave Replace with column bank and check the Regex column. Tell me if it worked. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:21, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I think, I make it right (see screenshot), but it doesn´t work ;-( LG Lady Whistler (talk) 10:19, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Are you trying to remove "Category" or "Kategorie"? I am on IRC in AWB's channel if you want. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:32, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Ohhh, I´m so stupid, that was my mistake. Now it works, big thx

.

I have a Problem with the Link to Chat from the Project-Site, every time I will login at the Link, I have Error: irc.freenode.net: Terminated LG Lady Whistler (talk) 10:49, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

No problem. We sorted it out. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:54, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Filter list by a single template

Resolved

Hi. Can I filter "make list" by a single template? E.g. only the item that contein the template {{Film}}. Thanks--B3t (talk) 12:02, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I recommend that you use List Comparer (found in Tools) and use What transcludes here: Template:Film as one of the lists to compare.
Another solution would be to first create What transcludes here: Template:Film, save it in a file and then create your new list and filter it by taking the intersection with this file.

-- Magioladitis (talk)

Sorry but I don't see "What transcludes here". Where is? - There is only "What transcludes page"--B3t (talk) 12:19, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes use this one. And please read the User manual. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:23, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Better the second choice since the execution time is not trasurabile.--B3t (talk) 14:02, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Can't update AWB

Hello, I downloaded AWB just a few days ago, so I have the latest possible version. So far it ran without issues, now today when starting up it prompts me to update, when I click ok an error message appears that whochever file in the temporary folder is not available and cannot replace, then aborts update. What is the issue and how can I make it work? I mean, I have the latest version, why does it promt me to update at all? I have Windows 7. Thanks. --Timish ¤ Gül Bahçesi 19:30, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Check the bugs section. This was already reported. Please download the snapshot from latest http://toolserver.org/%7Eawb/snapshots and make a clean install. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:31, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Use also parameters of a template

Resolved

Hi, I always. A question: for an item in my list (make list), can I use also parameters of the template (contained in a page-item) for create an arbitrary string? Thanks.--B3t (talk) 14:22, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

You can't make that with Make List. Use Skip contains/doesn't contain (with regexes) to skip a page if it contains/doesn't contain a parameter. Check also if there is ant control category that 'll make your life easier (for example WPBiography has Category:Biography articles without living parameter). -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:48, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Excuse for my bad English. I want to select some parameters of a template to create a string of text that contains the values of these parameters.

E.g. in a Template:Film I want to select "Title" and "Year" to create the string: "Title" ( "Year"). Thanks.--B3t (talk) 16:19, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Nothing to do?--B3t (talk) 10:39, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

You can use a find & replace to create this string but where do you want to save it (in the article somewhere, or in a log file etc.)? Rjwilmsi 11:36, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

In a log file.--B3t (talk) 11:48, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so you would probably need to write a short custom module in C# or VB to derive the string by regular expression match and write it to a log file. The custom module would be called for each article in the list if you ran through them in pre-parse mode. Rjwilmsi 12:13, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll try.--B3t (talk) 13:29, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

It looks like AWB breaks HTML comments

It looks like AWB breaks HTML comments. See this edit to Cork (city), which, judging by the edit summary, was made with AWB. The edit removed a dash from the ending HTML comment marker, causing the entire climate table to break. JIP | Talk 05:23, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I tested against that revision on a sandbox and AWB doesn't make that change. Was probably user error by the user who made the edit. Rjwilmsi 17:28, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I am new to AWB

I was wondering if awb can create a list of categorys for articles that have none ? I guess something like the "Common Sense tool at Commons ? Mlpearc MESSAGE 02:27, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I am not familiar with that tool you mention but it has logic to add some categories such as Living people for example. You can also use the find and replace feature to add some based on logic you define (you have to be very careful with this though) and you can create a module, but thats not a trivial thing for most of us mere mortals. It also has a list comparer feature that allows you to pull in two different categories and compare them to determine if there is an intersection. There is a 25000 article limit though. For example if you wanted to pull in the category for Marine Corps Medal of Honor recipients and then the category for United States Marines, it would show you which were the same and the difference. Again, you would have to be careful because not all Marines have it but this is an example. I hope this helps but let me know if you have more questions. --Kumioko (talk) 04:54, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

- - In the tool at commons you can use it after an upload, you input key words about the file/image you've just uploaded and it will generate a list of suggested Category's. here AWB would have to pick out key words or pharses to be able to suggest a list. Don't know but it would be Very helpful tool. Mlpearc MESSAGE 15:34, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Here's the tool and it helps you fin a category for an Artcle. I choose key main words that really connected to ths subject ie. if the article was about let's say a hospital in Poland, I would input into the tool hospital Poland and it searches the category's and list some to choose from, I would in this use both [[Category:Poland]] and [[Category:Hospital]] it works very well. here's the link Common Sense Tool Good Luck Mlpearc MESSAGE 23:53, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Find and replace help

Resolved

I have text such as:

{{template|number|name}}blahblahblah

and want to replace it with:

<ref name=name>blahblahblah</ref>

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:02, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Does nothing terminate the string after the blahblahblah? –xeno^talk 16:10, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Just a newline. I could first do a standard replace of {{rf|1| with <ref name= then the lines would end with \n<ref name= ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:42, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah. I can then replace \n<ref name= with </ref>\n<ref name=. That works for all but the last line, but I can live with that. I just need to replace the terminating }}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:59, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Just out of curiousity are you referring to the find a grave or like templates?--Kumioko (talk) 16:21, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

No. {{Rf}} has been at TfD long enough to start working it. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:42, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Basically, I now need to find:

<ref name=foo}}

and replace with

<ref name=foo>

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:18, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Find
\<ref name=(.*?)\}\}

Replace
<ref name=$1>

Should work. –xeno^talk 19:21, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

And there was much rejoicing. Thanks. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:54, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Make List... of articles in a WikiProject

Is there a way in AWB to select articles based on their belonging to a WikiProject (meaning their TALK page having a given WikiProject banner template)? (Note: that's the exact straight question, please don't answer it by trying to circumvent it while assuming some categorization of the articles...). Thanks for any tip, --AlainR345^{Techno-Wiki-Geek} 20:32, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

The simple answer is yes, there are a couple ways. The bad news is there are about 500000 articles with that banner and AWB limits you to 25000 so you need to pick a smaller category.--Kumioko (talk) 20:37, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

If you look at the talk page for one of the articles in the project and scroll to the bottom you should see numerous categories relating to the article. Is there something specific you are trying to do? That might help define how to do it.--Kumioko (talk) 20:42, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

First, are you sure that they really aren't in a category? Some WikiProjects have a List class (e.g. Category:List-Class software articles). If not, get all talk pages of articles in that WikiProject (use “Category (recursive)” e.g. on Category:WikiProject Software articles), convert them from talk pages (in the menu that shows up after right-clicking on the list) and then Filter: Keep titles containing: List of. Svick (talk) 21:06, 19 March 2010 (UTC) Sorry, misread. Svick (talk) 21:07, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Generate list of “What transcludes here” for that WikiProject banner template and then right-click on that list and choose “Convert from talk pages”. Svick (talk) 21:14, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Yep Mr. Svick, I get the general idea; and I would apply an article talk namespace filter to it before doing that conversion... Many thanks, we will try that pretty soon, --AlainR345^{Techno-Wiki-Geek} 01:24, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

As far as I know most WikiProjects categorize their articles, some all in a "main" category for convenience, but others just by quality/importance. In the former case, it's easy, in the latter, it's still pretty easy: you build a list of category "WikiPoject Foo articles by quality" and then re-select all the individual by-quality categories and "Add to selected from Category". –xeno^talk 14:45, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

citation ordering

I use AutoWikiBrowser and as time has gone on I think it has got better but there are two things which I think it does that are still annoying. The first is altering the letters at the start of [Tt]emplatest and [cC]ategories to upper case. They are never seen and should be left alone as it is an internal editorial decision. It can in certain circumstances throw up a lot of differences which are unnecessary.

The second one is citation ordering as was done here, I understand why it is done, there is someone who programs it who like to see footnotes in ascending order. The problem is that they may well have been ordered as they are for functional purposes. For example a sentence that says "Milton Keynes was stormed by forces the loyal to the Earl of Chiltern in 1924.^[2][1] because two contains the mans name and one contains the date. So a I do not think that changing the order is necessarily a good idea particularly at the end of paragraphs. -- PBS (talk) 21:32, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Wouldn't that example be better as “Milton Keynes was stormed by forces the loyal to the Earl of Chiltern^[2] in 1924.^[1]”? In your example, the reader had no way of knowing that the references are meant for different parts of the sentence, so rearranging them doesn't hurt that. The only difference is that the rearranged version looks slightly better. Svick (talk) 21:40, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Svick. -- Magioladitis (talk) 02:25, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

It is usual to place footnotes after punctuation (or just before it) and as such the ordering may be important. It should not be changed unless the editor making the change checks that it is not in that order for a reason, AWB users do not usually manually check for such usage ,so it should not part of the default settings. -- PBS (talk) 03:14, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

As far as I know, references should be after punctuation. WP:CHECKWIKI asks to fix references before punctuation. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:23, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Will this work?

I want to replace this:

*{{wikicite | id=<anchor name> | reference={{cite book <citation template parameters>}} }}

with this:

*{{cite book | ref=<anchor name> <citation template parameters>}}

Would this be bot be able to do this? It's a regexp search and replace. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 01:29, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this is certainly something that AWB could be used for. However, I'm not quite clear whether you are simply asking whether it's achievable, or asking somebody to do it? If it is the latter, then I suggest you post at the AWB tasks sub page to request for somebody to carry it out for you (provided you can link to the consensus in favour of the change). Thanks Rjwilmsi 21:43, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, if the bot is easy to use, I'll do it. But before I waded through the doc, I thought I'd just ask if this was feasible or not. ---- CharlesGillingham (talk) 11:42, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Sign in problems

I'm finding that every time I load AWB I'm having to uninstall and reinstall it. It just comes up that AWB has encountered a problem and needs to close. Has anyone else come across this? --5 albert square (talk) 20:47, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I haven't heard of that problem, have you been able to successfully run previous versions of AWB? Rjwilmsi 21:41, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi, yes I have but I've come across a discovery tonight, I was able to run the program from my computers folders, just not from my desktop. The next time I run AWB I'm going to see if the same thing happens. If it happens again then I'll delete it and install it again and try transferring to my computers desktop another way. I can't help wondering if when I'm transferring it to my computers desktop from a folder that maybe somethings being altered or a file is being deleted --5 albert square (talk) 22:08, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Problem with Plugin from console

Hi initially, I developed a Custom Module and I don't have problem with console (without open AWB). So I load an article from text file in my drive and execute:

string summary;
bool skip;
myCustomModule.ProcessArticle(ArticleText, ArticleTitle, 0, summary, skip);

Now, I'm developing a little plugin but I have a exception in console mode.

Article art = new Article(title, text);
myPlugin.ProcessArticle(null, art);

and I have this expeption: ... System.NullReferenceException: ... in WikiFunctions.Article.get_SkipArticle()

But I don't view "get_SkipArticle()" method. Is there a way to workaroud this problem?--B3t (talk) 17:37, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

SkipArticle is actually a bool/property. the get_ is evidence of the underlying get/set methods of this properly. —Ree dy 23:42, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

But this property is ready only, and so it is null in my call (without open AWB). Cannot I do anything?--B3t (talk) 10:13, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Redirects and list "What redirects here"

Resolved

Hi, I'm working in the method's plugin "ProcessArticle". How can I check if a article is a redirect? This code don't work because the first method return the text of the article does not redirect:

string text = Variables.MainForm.TheSession.Editor.SynchronousEditor.Clone().Open(title)
IsRedirect(text)

Also, can I obtain the list "What redirects here"?--B3t (talk) 12:13, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Okay, let me clarify. My idea there was to get the article text of the possible redirect. If it is a redirect the returned article text will be something like "#REDIRECT[[Somewhere else]]" or for a non-redirect "Something is a genus of…". The IsRedirect method will return the correct answer for both cases. If you want to know where a redirect goes, use Tools.RedirectTarget. Rjwilmsi 12:48, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Okay, but the first request I can not make it in the method's plugin because ArticleTitle is already the title of the target. Also testing manually "RedirectTarget" not seem to work because I always returns an empty string. E.g. in it.wiki Ferzan Özpetek is the article and Ozpetek is a redirect, so my code is:

string re = Tools.RedirectTarget("Ozpetek");
logger.Debug(re+"\n");

However it as only as a check. The thing that interests me is to get the list of "What redirects here". Thanks.--B3t (talk) 14:04, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Tools.RedirectTarget requires the article text, not the article title, that's why it doesn't work the way you call it. Rjwilmsi 16:09, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

But I don't have the text of the redirect in the method. But repeat, I want the list of "What redirects here".--B3t (talk) 16:20, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

So you want: "What links" here MINUS "What links here excluding redirects" :) We have list providers for both ;) Create your own list provider using these ones or beg Reedy for mercy i.e. leave him a message to his talk page. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:52, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

It's correct. I asked, thanks.--B3t (talk) 12:03, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

It turns out that we already have "What redirects here" as a list provider! Check it please. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:10, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Behind - OK, but I cannot get a list with this code:

WikiFunctions.Lists.Providers.RedirectsListProvider redirect = new WikiFunctions.Lists.Providers.RedirectsListProvider();
// List<Article> listRedirect = redirect.ApiMakeList(nameActor, 10);
// List<Article> listRedirect = redirect.ApiMakeList("http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/" + nameActor, 10);
string url = System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlEncode(nameActor);
logger.WriteLine("url: " + url);
// List<Article> listRedirect = redirect.ApiMakeList(url, 10);
List<Article> listRedirect = redirect.ApiMakeList("http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/" + url, 10);				
logger.WriteLine("\n###: " + listRedirect.Count);
foreach(Article a in listRedirect){
 logger.WriteLine(a.Name+"\n");
}

I obtain always an empty list. Where I wrong ?--B3t (talk) 09:55, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

If you're using it in AWB as plugin/whatever... You should be able to just do

WikiFunctions.Lists.Providers.RedirectsListProvider redirect = new WikiFunctions.Lists.Providers.RedirectsListProvider();
List<Article> listRedirect = redirect.MakeList("Target Page");

—Ree dy 14:16, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

It's good. Sorry I don't see "MakeList" method. Thanks again.--B3t (talk) 14:30, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Diff font troubles

Somehow the font size for the diff window has changed and is now very large. Does anyone know how to change the diff font. I tried reinstalling AWB. I also looked through the registry. –droll [chat] 04:20, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

With the cursor focus on the diff area use the keyboard and mouse combination of the control key plus your mouse scroll wheel to adjust the text size back. Rjwilmsi 13:10, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply but it didn't work. Any other thoughts? –droll [chat] 19:32, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

This does work in the edit box and I think its a feature that I can use. –droll [chat] 20:05, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure it used to work on the diff area too... Rjwilmsi 10:49, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

update, update, update

Every darn time I start up AWB I get an update notice. Really – maybe six or seven times in the past two or three days. Whether I press YES or NO it still churns on. Is this excess of updates a bug, or are you really updating every five breathless minutes? if the latter, could you please spread them out over time? And most importantly, fix the updating dialog box so that NO really means NO and nothing happens when I press NO? Tks....mmm, OK yeah it's either a bug or a prob with my version. I pressed YES twice in a row, and let it update twice in a row, and on the third time it still tried to update. ... But even so, the way the NO option works is not pretty. It needs fixing... • Ling.Nut

Updater is broken in 5.0.0.0 and 5.0.1.0, you have to update manually. It will be fixed for 5.0.2.0. Rjwilmsi 07:22, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! I appreciate that... now, how do I turn it off so it won't try to update every time I fire it up? I'm away from the computer that has AWB right at the moment. Tomorrow I'll look around for an option to turn off the updater.• Ling.Nut 14:13, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

You can delete the updater exe from the AWB directory if you don't like it. Rjwilmsi 15:13, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Extract a template from a string

Resolved

Hi, exist a function for extract a template from a string. Also this template could contain others nested template. E.g. {{Film |... |...{{cn|nested template}} |... }} ... Thanks.--B3t (talk) 10:18, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Are you asking if such a function does exist? Rjwilmsi 10:48, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes (sorry for my bad English)--B3t (talk) 11:05, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

string inputstring = @"{{Film
|...
|...{{cn|nested template}}
|...
}}";

string filmtemplatevalue = Tools.NestedTemplateRegex("film").Match(inputstring).Value;

// your code here

Should do it. Rjwilmsi 11:27, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

It's perfect. Thanks--B3t (talk) 13:58, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Fondation → Foundation

The change of Fondation → Foundation is, I believe, incorrect when the organization is a French one, so anyone using AWB should be careful not to make that change, as I did by accident today. (I reversed it.) Perhaps someone can figure out how this could be avoided in AWB.--DThomsen8 (talk) 22:20, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

What page was the error on? Rjwilmsi 16:36, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Saint-John Perse at a guess. Mr Stephen (talk) 17:02, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Saint-John Perse slipped by me, but I corrected it. Hardly the only instance, though.--DThomsen8 (talk) 21:56, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Talk pages questions

Resolved

I don't know think this is a bug or a feature request so much as it is an observation so I wanted to post it here. I have noticed (and I know that its come up before) that talk page updates move very slowly and I wonder if there is anyway to speed that up. I also wanted to ask if there is a way to utilize the find and replace functionality in AWB to find something on the article and compare that or use that to update something on the talk page or vice versa. As one example, many articles still do not have infoboxes or persondata and it could be useful to use this to generate the needs infobox or persondata criteria to the talk page templates. Or thinking in the opposite manner, remove them from the talk page when they have been added to the article. I have found in many cases the talk pages don't have the applicable tag when the article lacks these or it continues to contain them when the article has been updated to include the infobox and persondata. These are just examples and there are many other things that could be done as well using this type of funcionality. --Kumioko (talk) 15:28, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a bot request. Rjwilmsi 16:34, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that clears up the second question. Is there a way to speed AWB up in updating talk pages. Its much much slower than articles. --Kumioko (talk) 20:11, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

This isn't completely resolved yet. The first question still isn't answered as to whether there is a way to speed up how AWB processes talk page changes. --Kumioko (talk) 16:34, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Categories descended from a single category

Hi, I want obtain in my code the categories descended from a single category. This is possible with AWB GUI in two-step:

use "Category (recursive)" provider
filter for namespace category

In my code I use "CategoryRecursiveListProvider" for the fist step, and somehow (how?) I could do the filtering. Is there a way for obtain this result in one-step (very lower expensive). Thanks--B3t (talk) 16:08, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm confused as to what you're asking. You can instantiate a copy of the provider, use the MakeList() method, and be returned a List<Article>. Then iterate through or whatever to filter it —Ree dy 16:12, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

So, I want only the categories and not other namespace, i.e. Article, in one step. I ask this because the categories of interest contain most hundreds of Articles (vs tens categories) and this implies that the elaboration of the provider "Category (recursive)" is very expensive.--B3t (talk) 13:05, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Blooper

Resolved

This major blooper committed by AWB is getting discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. Euler was the most famous person to live on earth in the 18th century, and his ideas are still discussed and his name uttered and heard by everyone every day (except non-mathematicians). If you think I exaggerate, look at how long the List of topics named after Leonhard Euler is. And that's only the things named after him.

His name is pronounced like oiler.

I hit the "rollback" button.

If this bot starts routinely changing "an Euler characteristic" a "a Euler characteristic" regularly, it will be talked about a lot on the aforementioned page and many others and could create hundreds of occasions for the "rollback" button to be used after AWB passes through. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:26, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Done Typo rules updated. If in future there are any other issues you may simply leave a short request to update the rules. Rjwilmsi 07:24, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Are general fixes suitable for an unsupervised bot?

Resolved

Is the WP:GENFIXES matrix stable enough to be turned on for an automated bot running through hundreds of thousands of articles? (User:Xenobot/6.2) –xeno^talk 14:46, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Check the fourth "Rule of use" on the project page - an AWB user is not supposed to make trivial edits. I don't know whether that would apply to your bot. John of Reading (talk) 17:17, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

In addition to bot's main task genfixes are suitable for automatic runs. Better turn off Autotagger and MOS fixes. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:27, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes - genfixes would just be icing on the cake for the main task. Thanks for the input, both. –xeno^talk 22:37, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Make sure that you are using the latest snapshot. I rearaanged the bugs page so we all have an overview of possible bugs while running genfixed and/or auto-tagger. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:51, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

It is my opinion that general fixes can be run by a bot, with the exception of the defaultsort setting logic, as there are too many rules over the defaultsort for AWB to be right all the time (there is an options menu entry to turn this one off). However, it is my understanding that the bot approvals group does not share my confidence in the quality of the general fixes, so you may struggle to get approval to run them. There has previously been discussion as to whether a subset of the available general fixes could be authorised for bot use. I'm not sure whether I'm in favour of that idea, as it might restrict the ability of AWB functions to be further developed. Probably though it could be easily implemented by agreeing a shared custom module that each bot could run. Rjwilmsi 21:47, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Re Xeno: the difficulty is that the "general fixes" include both things that are uncontroversial, and things that are controversial. Yo have to make sure that you disable things such as reference reformatting if you are going to run an unsupervized AWB bot. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:29, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

This was fixed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:30, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

I'll be sure to disable anything that might be problematic, including those suggested above by Rjwilmsi. –xeno^talk 15:33, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the main idea is: Disable autotagger, restrict defaultsort addition, disable MOS fixes and you are ok. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:35, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Would that fix the issue in the What is it doing section below, in which references are rearranged into a different order? — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:36, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Rjw fixed that in rev 6355. New version 5.0.2.0 will include this fix. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:39, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean by "fixed that" - do you mean that all automatic re-ordering of references is now disabled, or can be disabled with a switch? Even if there is only one type of reference, re-ordering them is not an uncontroversial fix. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:40, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

It was fixed in the cases it's not uncontroversial. It was not disabled in general. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:43, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Reordering references at all is something that cannot be done automatically, because the bot cannot know why they are out of order. Some people put the most important reference first, and less important ones second. With named references, that makes the footnotes appear out of order but is completely intentional. So a bot cannot automatically rearrange references into a different order. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:46, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Duplicate AWB Plugin

Resolved

Hi, just a curiosity: why can not extend the class that implements "WikiFunctions.Plugin.IAWBPlugin". If I do it, I obtain a modal window with text: "A plugin with the name ..., has already been added. ...". Thanks.--B3t (talk) 10:59, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

We already check for already loaded plugins, don't we? -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:24, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks--B3t (talk) 16:42, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Correcting deliberate "errors"

Resolved

In the past several months, severl different AWB user have been correcting the same diliberate error over and over on the English language page, as in this most recent diff. This is frustrating, because only aa few days ago, I added hidden notes in hopes of alleviationg the problem, but evidently AWB cannot show the operator the hidden notes. How can we mark this word so that AWB does not try to correct it in the future? I'm not intersted in how we can rewrite the sentence - WP does not have an editorial board, and AWB should not behave like one. Thanks. - BilCat (talk) 20:40, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the best way is to use {{sic}} in the article. AWB ignores text inside this template. Secondly, that's why typo fixes are manually only. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:46, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Ok, thanks, I'll try that, and see what happens. - BilCat (talk) 20:55, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

What is it doing?

Hi, I started using AWB today and it seems to put refs in the order that it prefers so I assume to let it do that. So, it made this edit which I assumed to be like putting the refs in the order it prefers. Someone contacted me after to complain and now I am not sure what it was doing...? ~ R.T.G 14:08, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

References next to each other are placed in numerical order to conform with the agreed style for this. However, this article is using a combination of notes and references using grouped references. AWB has not been properly set up to handle that - it is treating them all as references. Probably this is one of only a handful of articles doing this. I will need to update AWB as the edit you link to, while it is not necessarily incorrect, is not desirable. You may report back that it's an AWB bug which I'll fix for the next release. Rjwilmsi 14:21, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

OK I can watch out for it cheers. ~ R.T.G 14:23, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

This is commonplace in hundreds of lists, many of them featured. Thanks for offering to fix the bug. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:25, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Done rev 6355 Bug fixed: non-grouped and grouped references are not reordered together. Rjwilmsi 15:15, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

There is no "agreed style" for this. If an article intentionally has the footnotes in non-numerical order, putting the most important ref first, then AWB should respect this. This particular fix is one of the problems with running "general fixes" without supervision. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:33, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Lowest-numbered first is the usual way. Mr Stephen (talk) 16:44, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

It's one way, but "most important first" is also a reasonable way. The policy (WP:CITE) is that whatever way is established should be left. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:58, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Quite so. And notes are different from references and should be treated as such. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:28, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

"most important first" is also a reasonable way. Is it? I for one have never heard of it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Can you point us at a real-world example of it? Mr Stephen (talk) 18:18, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

I just opened up a journal on my desk (The March 2010 Journal of Symbolic Logic). The second paper has a single sentence ending with references in the order 3, 5, 2. The third paper has a sentence ending with references in the order 22, 17. The fifth has a sentence ending in 16, 20, 12. The point is that when you are referring to references by number, as is done here with named references, you often want to start with the most relevant reference and work towards more general or tangential ones. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:58, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

You have the advantage over me in that I cannot see that copy of the journal. I can see vol 70 number 1 (2005). The first third, fourth and fifth articles use numbered references ordered alphabetically in the bibliography; the second uses abbreviations (ordered alphabetically in the bibliography FWIW). My connection to the archive has the speed of a snail so I stopped there, but I think that small sample allows me to ask you (CBM) to check how the references are ordered in the edition you looked in. WP lists references in order of use, of course. Mr Stephen (talk) 22:11, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

In that issue of the JSL, see p. 5 near the bottom for "[5], [22], [11], and [4]". On p. 114 (different author), "[13], [18], and [5]". On p. 271, a third author has a giant citation to "[5, 13, 1, 7, 8, 9, 6, 15, 11]". I am not talking about the order of the references at the end of the articles, but rather the order in which the numbers appear in the running text. As you can see, even when there are several reference numbers back to back, they are not always ordered numerically, nor alphabetically (because that would make them numerically ordered), but instead they are ordered by the author of the article in a way that reflects the author's opinion about the relevance of each reference. In my experience this is a relatively common practice, not unique to the JSL. This is why it's dodgy for AWB to rearrange named references into numerical order; some authors will intentionally put them into some other order. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:35, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Access to the archive remains too slow for me to work out what is going on. I will do my best to remember to revisit this later. Mr Stephen (talk) 13:12, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps they are ordered not just in order of the authors opinion of relevance but ordered to reflect where the most information was taken from or where the first part of information came from ^[17] then the second part^[4] leaving.^[17],[4] But, for the sake of AWB, it does make sense to order notes before cites if you wanted. For me, if you can consider a reference to be of the most significance you should do your best to make it^[1] and go from there^[2] :) ~ R.T.G 01:21, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry but if that is a revision already made, should I download a patch somewhere or something? ~ R.T.G 17:38, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

And if you're here could you tell me where I should request additions to the spell checking (such as "swtich">"switch" which I got 100 hits for but the AWB is missing it) or even can I update the spell checker myself to seek those? ~ R.T.G 17:40, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

WP:AWB/TYPOS. –xeno^talk 18:22, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

nigerian->Nigerian

Hi, on the simple.wikipedia page simple:Internet fraud there is a ref (or a link anyway) called www.fraud.org/tips/internet/nigerian.htm and AWB wants to change it to www.fraud.org/tips/internet/Nigerian.htm (capital letter on Nigerian. I am just going to skip it but aren't some sites software such as Wikipedias sensitive to case? ~ R.T.G 06:41, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

That page requires some clean up – external links would at least be in single braces with a description, or maybe in <ref> tags in which case AWB would know not to apply typo fixes to them. Rjwilmsi 07:48, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Alphabetical order

Hi, on my last visit to "Requested articles" I ended up rearranging in alphabetical order which took some hours and barely made a dent into one subsection. Also I found a page a few days ago on meta (which I mention because it may be more complicated than Requested articles)[11]. Is it very complicated to configure AWB to do this? There are many lists which could use this edit. ~ R.T.G 20:39, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it would be possible.. Fancy Custom Module or a plugin would be able to do the job —Ree dy 21:31, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

It's beyond me but I'll try asking someone to write one up or find one for that. It's probably one of the more complicated scripts but would be v useful. ~ R.T.G 00:01, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Orphan tagging

I notice AWB users are still tagging articles with less than 3 incoming links with the {{orphan}} tag. Wasn't this was supposed to be changed to "only suggest orphan-tagging if an article has ZERO incoming links"? Could it be because some users are using an older version? Articles can continue to be identified as orphans if they're low on links however tagging good articles that have 2 incoming links (such as this) is completely unnecessary and only serves to increase the backlog of orphans ever higher. -- œ ^™ 21:19, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree with that and actually turned tagging off because some articles are new or have only one or two links in and I didn't want to completely make over every article so much as spell check and let it make its formatting. I only stated using it and purposely searched for things with large numbers of hits when I had a few hours to spell and format check such as "Wikipedia"= max hits. Today I searched "mobile television" and it's taken me so long to go through the 1000 I wont get it finished today. Every second article is full of non breaking spaces. ~ R.T.G 23:59, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

AWB now has a user option "restrict orphan tagging to linkless pages". If the latest rules on orphan tagging are to restrict orphan tagging to linkless pages then perhaps the option should be on by default. Rjwilmsi 22:10, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Found that now thanks. ~ R.T.G 01:05, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Does "restrict orphan tagging to linkless pages" mean: 'don't tag linkless pages' ie. disable orphan tagging altogether, or 'only tag linkless pages' ie. only place the orphan tag on pages with zero incoming links? If it means the latter (which is what it should be doing) I think it should be rephrased for clarity, because it can be misinterpreted to mean the former. -- œ ^™ 08:36, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

It means the latter. We have a manual for that :P For the concerns above: Keep in mind that tagging only articles with no incoming links is a temporary tactic to reduce the backlog. OlEnglish, you are right to think that some editors are still using 5.0.0.0 which has a bug on the subject. Reedy is planning to disactivate 5.0.0.0 during this week. -- Magioladitis (talk) 06:20, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Pretty sure 5.0.0.0 is already disactivated as is. Shadowjams (talk) 10:11, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Check Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage#Enabled_versions. There is a thought for releasing 5.0.2.0 this week and we don't want editors to update two times in a short period.-- Magioladitis (talk) 10:16, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm confused because I was running 5.0.0.0 and was disabled from doing so. The upgrade fixed that. Shadowjams (talk) 10:25, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

AWB Login Issue

Resolved

A recent security change in the login system has impacted AWB. I am not able to login anymore. See Wikipedia:VPT#Bots_and_Logging_In. Devs, can you please look into this asap? Thanks. Ganeshk (talk) 03:10, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

We were aware of that. In fact we were waiting for a change to MediaWiki since last week. AWB 5.0.2.0, released probably today, will fix the problem. -- Magioladitis (talk) 06:09, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Yup, patch pre-prepared. Just need to get my desktop PC out of my car and setup to get the patch. Should have an updated version out within the hour. —Ree dy 08:22, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I am able to login now with the new version 5.0.2.0. Thanks for the fix. Greatly appreciated! The download link needs updating. Ganeshk (talk) 12:31, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Official download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/autowikibrowser -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:35, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Make list automatic

I don't know if it is already possible or it should be a new feature request. On nl-wp I have made a xml for some disambiguations which come back frequently. To make a list of links to these disambiguations I have to type every disambiguation to the "make list-box" every time again. Is possible to make a list of links to these disambiguations automatically? G.e. I want to load the links to the disambiguations mentioned on w:nl:Gebruiker:Pompidom/Klad1 (nl-wp) automatic in AWB. Pompidom (talk) 18:08, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Here's an idea: Add brackets (to all of these words and then Make list from "Links on page". Another idea: Add breaks so to have one page per line and then copy-paste list. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:50, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Or, use "Target1|Target2|...|TargetN". Can be done relatively trivially with a plugin —Ree dy 20:51, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

find & replace dysfunctional in latest version

Find and replace was excruciatingly slow in the last version, so I was happy when I updated this morning and it went faster. However, it goes faster by simply deleting every page on the search list, including those that were hits when I preparsed yesterday. Am I doing s.t. wrong? kwami (talk) 14:43, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you can paste your settings file somewhere? Find/replace is working ok for me. –xeno^talk 15:01, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

WP will not accept hml files, even with a png extension appended, so I'll email it to you. kwami (talk) 15:15, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Open in notepad and copy and paste it to a sandbox, wrap it in <syntaxhighlight lang=xml> </syntaxhighlight>. –xeno^talk 15:18, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Okay, it's on this page /sandbox. Thanks!

The normal settings are working. It's only the advanced that are skipped. kwami (talk) 15:23, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

A bit too complicated for me. I seem to recall there was some issue with "Inside template" rules... (And wouldn't a preceding "{{" be extraneous to an "Inside template {{ }} rule"?) If you change them to "Entire text" it might start working again. But be careful =) –xeno^talk 15:50, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. Will try.

Adding {{ restricts the search string to the beginning of the template, so AWB ignores any switches which might contain the same string. Necessary to avoid getting hits from embedded sound files. kwami (talk) 16:11, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that works. Thanks! kwami (talk) 16:21, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

No problem. Just watch that the regex doesn't get too greedy now. –xeno^talk 16:22, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, there are a lot more false hits, but not too much of a problem with the articles preparsed from yesterday. kwami (talk) 16:48, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Hm.. with this change I can't add text to the end of a template. I was using Replace: }} with blah}}. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:41, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Regex tag br

Hi, it's possible have Regex for tag or ? Thanks.--B3t (talk) 17:29, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

\<br[ ]*(\/|)\> –xeno^talk 17:31, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks.--B3t (talk) 18:37, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Would this also work to fix or ?--Kumioko (talk) 19:43, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

\<(\/|)[ ]*br[ ]*(\/|)\> would. –xeno^talk 19:44, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Sorry I what about permeations of upper case like ?--Kumioko (talk) 19:43, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes; just make sure you don't click "case sensitive". (All this being said, doesn't general fixes convert br into line breaks?) –xeno^talk 19:50, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Good point, I think it does. But I have noticed that it doesn't always catch it. --Kumioko (talk) 19:53, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Is it just me?

My AWB selections have grown to the point where the "processing page" stage can take up to a minute. I think an edit like this is worth a minute of waiting (plus several minutes of manual review and undoing) – but please reassure me that all of Wikipedia doesn't stop until the minute is done. Art LaPella (talk) 17:54, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

heh. Processing is all done client-side. –xeno^talk 18:04, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Replace a part of a string

Hi, I want replace a string (for remove one wikilink) like this:

[[Name#1 Surname#1]], [[Name#2 Surname#2|Surname#2]], [[Name#3 Surname#3|N.#3 Surname#3]]

with (respect to "Name#2 Surname#2")

[[Name#1 Surname#1]], Name#2 Surname#2, [[Name#3 Surname#3|N.#3 Surname#3]]

How can I do? Thanks.--B3t (talk) 11:26, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

If the first string is "stringNames" and "targetName" = "Name#2 Surname#2", this code seems to work

Regex r = new Regex(@"\[\[" + targetName + @"(\|[^\]]*)?\]\]");
if(r.IsMatch(stringNames)){
    stringNames = r.Replace(stringNames, targetName);
}

Can be improved?--B3t (talk) 14:03, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Don't run if "targetName" = "Name#2 Surname#2 (activity)".--B3t (talk) 14:57, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Enough to prepare "targetName":

targetName = targetName.Replace("(", "\\(");
targetName = targetName.Replace(")", "\\)");

--B3t (talk) 16:13, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Is AWB supposed to remove the blank line between categories and interwikis?

I've just noticed it doing this. I'm using version 5.0.2.1, SVN 6405. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 00:54, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

No, there must have been a problem with my fix under rev 6400. I'll take a look. Rjwilmsi 06:59, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

rev 6410 Fixed now. Thanks Rjwilmsi 07:10, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Logging in

Can anyone help here?

I've think I've updated AWB to version 5020, the version that's been released within the last week or so. When I log in though AWB is telling me that there is an updated version so would I like to update. I go to update and I get told that one of the files can't be replaced?

In case it's of interest I'm having to download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/autowikibrowser/ as the updated version doesn't seem to be on the old download page on here --5 albert square (talk) 20:33, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Did you try the one on http://toolserver.org/~awb/snapshots/ ? –xeno^talk 20:34, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

It's the updater update not updating itself. Needs doing manually —Ree dy 20:36, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

How do you do it manually? --5 albert square (talk) 20:41, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Download the snapshot and extract to AWB directory. –xeno^talk 20:42, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

[12] - Put the file in this zip into your AutoWikiBrowser folder, and replace the AWBUpdater —Ree dy 20:42, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Reedy and Xeno, now got it working again! --5 albert square (talk) 20:53, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I have the same problem. I will try the process above, but couldn't there be a fix, rather than a circumvention? --DThomsen8 (talk) 15:14, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

(unindent) That is the fix! —Ree dy 15:42, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

ArticleTitle from a redirect

Hi, a question: I have only the title of a redirect, and I want obtain only the title of the article which is linked from the redirect. E.g.: Redirect = R(A) and ArticleTitle = A, so I want obtain A from R(A). Note that I can't use public static bool IsRedirect(string text) because it wants ArtitcleText in input.--B3t (talk) 15:40, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Where are you trying to use this code? Then we've some idea of giving you a workaround. —Ree dy 10:37, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I'll try to explain a use case. From this page I use the value of the first parameter of this template for obtain the title of the main article. But in this case the value of the template is a redirect. So the check, that I do on the title to know if the main article has already been processed, in this case will be always false.--B3t (talk) 13:04, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Where are you trying to use this? In a Custom Module? In a plugin? ? ? —Ree dy 15:42, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

In a plugin.--B3t (talk) 16:25, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Advice needed

I've been using AWB for a long time but am new to Regex so am finding it really hard to understand. At the moment, some articles use an external links template {{EEcharlink}} (for EastEnders characters) but the website has changed so I need to change {{EEcharlink|firstname_lastinitial|optional}} to {{EEcharlink|firstname-lastname|optional}} (eg {{EEcharlink|ben_m|Ben Mitchell}} to {{EEcharlink|ben-mitchell|Ben Mitchell}} (the optional part is only used if the page is disambiguated). Is there a way I can do it so it automatically changes the underscore to a hyphen and keep the firstname and lastinitial parts, so I can just complete the lastname part manually? anemoneprojectors talk 19:11, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

You can use the regular expression (\{\{EEcharlink *\| *\w+)_(\w *(?:\|[^}]*)?\}\}) and replace it with $1-$2 if you just want to replace the underscore to hyphen. The regex assumes that lastinitial is just one character. Svick (talk) 19:27, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. That works. Now once I work out why it works, I might be able to do more stuff like this. Sometimes it's not just one character but not very often. anemoneprojectors talk 19:31, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Underscores and redundant pipes

On Ed Giecek, AWB changes [[Frye_Art_Museum|Frye Art Museum]] into [[Frye Art Museum|Frye Art Museum]] and [[Mail_art|mail art]] into [[Mail art|mail art]]. I've encountered the same situation before. Would it be possible to change the order in which AWB processes things so that it would take care of underscores before it checks for redundant pipes? MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 20:00, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

rev 6417 Fixed. Rjwilmsi 22:29, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

"Unable to find AutoWikiBrowser.exe"

I downloaded the program from here but once I extracted there was no file called AutoWikiBrowser.exe or anything like it. The only file that was unzipped was AWBUpdater.exe, which, when run, tells me there is nothing to update. Am I downloading from the wrong place? ... discospinster _talk 18:21, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Probably easier to download the latest snapshot: http://toolserver.org/~awb/snapshots/ –xeno^talk 18:24, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Or a full release. SF just puts the last upload up as the feature upload, which is a PITA. Which happens to be an AWBUpdater Update. Will have a look - [13] —Ree dy 18:31, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick responses. I have a proper version of it now. ... discospinster _talk 20:21, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Sort parameters of a template

Hi, is there a way for sort parameters in a template? E.g. {{template|parm3 = val3|param2 = val2|param1 = val1}} to {{template|parm1 = val1|param2 = val2|param3 = val3}}. Thanks.

Note that Tools.UpdateTemplateParameterValue update in a bad mode if the value is empty. E.g. update paramX with the value X:
...
|paramX =
X|paramY = Y
...
--B3t (talk) 10:09, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

To sort you could do get, remove, append for whatever parameters you want to process. I don't understand what you mean by 'bad mode' for your comment about UpdateTemplateParameterValue. Rjwilmsi 12:36, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

If the issue with UpdateTemplateParameterValue is over whitespace then rev 6426 should have fixed it. Rjwilmsi 12:39, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Exact, I intended "good form":

...

|paramX = X

|paramY = Y

...
Sorry--B3t (talk) 15:48, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for this great tool

We report a lot of bugs in this tool, and ask for a lot of new features, but I wanted to say thanks to those who provide us with AWB. It's one of the most user-friendly pieces of software I've ever used, and it has a lot of helpful functionality. Thanks! --Auntof6 (talk) 04:15, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Idem. Thanks.--B3t (talk) 12:56, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Remove categories from a string pattern

Hi, I want remove category in it.wiki as "Categoria:Film del \d\d\d\d" from AWB gui "More...":"Categories":"Remove category:". It is possible?--B3t (talk) 17:27, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

That 'remove category' function doesn't support a regular expression, so no. Rjwilmsi 17:53, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks.--B3t (talk) 18:20, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

HTML Scraper?

What does the 'HTML Scraper' source under "Make List" do? We should add an explanation to the Manual. AxelBoldt (talk) 20:00, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

A very basic scraper. It grabs between body tags, and uses each line to be an article. VERY basic. —Ree dy 21:11, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Does it expect naked article titles, or URLs to wiki articles, or HTML links to wiki articles, or a wikilink syntax? AxelBoldt (talk) 15:35, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Bare article titles, one per line in HTML body – Checkwiki example. Rjwilmsi 16:13, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Question

I don't know if this is the right place to ask. I tried to make a list like this (notice the namespace), but I did not know how. Because large numbers of articles transclude this template, a limit of 25,000 pages will be reached, so I cannot filter the list by namespace. Sole Soul (talk) 04:41, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, then I'd take a different approach: use your link to fetch matches in batches of 500 (if you edit the URL it may be possible to fetch more at a time), paste them into a text file and load it as a list. Rjwilmsi 11:40, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Did it! Thank you very much. Sole Soul (talk) 12:07, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Cleaning up registry?

The FAQ above recommends to "clean up your registry and remove the folder "C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Local Settings\Application Data\AutoWikiBrowser". Two of these folders are hidden." What registry keys do we have to remove and what two folders are hidden? AxelBoldt (talk) 20:12, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I've updated the info on the folder to remove. Rjwilmsi 16:21, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but what about the registry? It still also says "Clean up your registry" without further guidance. - Fayenatic (talk) 12:27, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The registry referred to is a database structure maintained by the windows operating system. It is used to store system values. Read Windows Registry. Corruption of the registry can lead to system failure. I would suggest that you research the subject before making any changes. Because AWB is not an "installed" program it should not store any settings in the registry although windows will record a few bits. I would not worry about it. –droll [chat] 04:01, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Browse differet wikis

Hi, Can I navigate from one wiki to another? E.g. from w:it:Robert De Niro I want check if exist commons:Robert De Niro or commons:Category:Robert De Niro. Thanks--B3t (talk) 10:59, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Bypassing file redirects?

I am wanting to use AWB to bypass links to File: redirects on an external wiki, since links to those redirects make the redirects in question appear on wikia:yugioh:Special:WantedFiles, but I cannot figure out any way to do this (in my defense, I'm not well-acquainted with AWB, and its interface is pretty advanced/complicated). I have searched through the manual, several other AWB-related pages, and the talk archive index, but haven't found anything relevant. Is there a way to do so, and if so, how? --Dinoguy1000 (talk · contribs) as 72.251.164.58 (talk) 04:06, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

*bump* Anyone? --Dinoguy1000 (talk · contribs) as 67.58.229.153 (talk) 07:38, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Erm, you would just use find & replace -find "File:Blah.jpg" , replace with "File:Proper.jpg" ? Build list using image file links... Unless I'm misunderstanding? –xeno^talk 15:25, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

The problem with that is that I'm dealing with hundreds (thousands?) of different images, each of which is only used one to three times (the most-used one is only used 5 times). In addition, many of these are going to be truly wanted files, making sorting by hand highly impractical and hugely time-consuming. —Dinoguy1000 (talk · contribs) as 67.58.229.153 (talk) ^{(what's this?)} 00:20, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Alerts

I hate when AWB just stops saying I should press skip. I assume this is because of the alerts (which are usually perfectly legitimate multiple links), but I don't know how to make it stop. Can someone help? -Rrius (talk) 02:31, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Under the skip tab check 'skip if no changes'. Rjwilmsi 11:06, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

AWB needs a better description

In my opinion, AWB needs a better description. The present intro is confusing and unmotivated. It should answer these questions (I can't!):

Why use AWB?
What can AWB do?
Do I need AWB?
What do I need to know to use AWB effectively?
What is its commonest use?

An example of the last would make the concepts concrete.

Please consider this a challenge in effective writing! ;-) yoyo (talk) 05:43, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Curious about max edits

Just curious what this is used for? (Bot trials?) –xeno^talk 15:24, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I added it for that purpose. Rjwilmsi 16:41, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

How to move articles using AWB?

Hi, I am trying to move some articles using AWB. In the Start tab, when is the Move button enabled? Is this feature available only for admins? If so, then the manual needs to be updated at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/User_manual#Start. — Thaejas (talk) 10:37, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, admins only. I've updated the manual. Rjwilmsi 12:31, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Probably we could allow this function for everyone? -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:49, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Mmm. We could probably do something along those lines, see if the user has the rights to move the page... —Ree dy 12:58, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I can move the articles to a new title normally. So I feel, this should be allowed even in AWB — Thaejas (talk) 15:49, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

AWB shows deadend link for article having many links. Why?

Resolved

Hi, In AWB, I have selected "Links on page (blue links only)" as Source and "Template:Hindu temples in Orissa" in Links on. When reading the article Orissa, the tool displays the below links to be added. The tool says "No category (maybe one in a template)" in Alerts. Pls advise, if this is an issue, as I can see that the article Orissa has many links and not a stub.

{{Wikify|date={{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}}}
{{dead end|date={{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}}}
{{stub}}

Thaejas (talk) 16:13, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I think it is a bug that has already been fixed (Orissa is move-protected). Try using the latest SVN snaphot. Svick (talk) 16:45, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Svick, Thanks. I have downloaded the latest snapshot v6465. And now the above issue does not occur. Many thanks. Thaejas (talk) 00:42, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Project tagging

Hi there, is there an AWB feature to add templates such as {{WP Biography}} to biographical articles that haven't been tagged yet? If so, would I be able to do a similar sort of thing tagging sports players with, for example, {{football}}? I'm sure I've seen others using AWB to do this but can't work out how to do it myself. Cheers, Big Dom 16:13, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, using WP:Plugin++. You have to build a list from applicable categories, though. Of course, - rather than reinventing the wheel - I invite you to post a request at User:Xenobot/R. –xeno^talk 16:18, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt reply. I'll have a look at trying to do it, but if I can't manage it then I'll post a request on that page. Cheers, Big Dom 16:24, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I can do the task if you tell me in which category are the articles you want to tag. IF they are football players the best idea is the following: Use the plugin xeno mentions above to add WPBiography with sports-work-group=yes and Football. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:28, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Update on Orphan tag usage by AWB

Resolved

Hi, The Wikipedia:Orphan#Criteria says that Orphan tag should be used if there are ZERO links on the page. But AWB, as per the manual at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/User_manual#General appends the tag even if there are less than 3 links on the page. Suggest that AWB is updated as per the WP:Orphan#Criteria. I have received a complaint against the same at User_talk:Thaejas#Kunnuvarankottai_Kasi_Visalakshi-Visvanatha_temple. — Thaejas (talk) 16:20, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Under the options menu check 'restrict oprhan tagging to linkless pages'. Rjwilmsi 16:37, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Can this be a default setting so any new user need not select it and do a check? — Thaejas (talk) 16:54, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

It could, I don't know whether it should. Magioladitis may have a valuable opinion. Rjwilmsi 19:10, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

The initial idea was that we want to cover all projects and not only en.wiki. In en.wiki is recommended to add the orphan tag only in linkless pages to help the people who fix this stuff. This doesn't mean that the definition has changed. It only changed the current priority. In 3 other wikis the definition of orphan is "linkless". I don't know the status of other wikis yet. Since AWB's use is in en.wiki we could probably change it to default but I think it's a matter of habbit. I changed my settings once and I don't face problems anymore. I am ok both ways. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:02, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Rjwilmsi and Magioladitis, Thanks for the help. I have enabled and saved my user-settings.—Thaejas (talk) 01:27, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I am doing a small research to check the definition in various wikis. Just give me some time to get the bigger picture. If the majority is using the "no links" definition, I am changing it to default. -- Magioladitis (talk) 06:38, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

rev 6511 -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:50, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi Magioladitis, Thanks for the update. I have downloaded and am using the same. Will wait for the next patch/version of AWB.--Thaejas (talk) 10:35, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Append/Prepend under More section of AWB

Hi, Append/Prepend as described in manual will "append/prepend at the bottom of the page". But if I append a Template then the template should be appended in the place where other templates are present or before the Category tags. But as it appends at the bottom of the page, the subsequent edit for gen fixes takes care of sorting the template tags. This takes two edits to correct each template addition. I suggest that the template tags are appended similar to the Defaultsort tag, which appends before the category tags. Eg. Becharaji Temple. — Thaejas (talk) 00:36, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I would say that you shouldn't be using append/prepend for this. Rather, you could try doing something like the following. –xeno^talk 00:45, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Find:

{{DEFAULTSORT

Replace:

{{desired template}}
{{DEFAULTSORT

Hi Xeno, I am not replacing existing templates. I am trying to add a new template if it does not exists. In your example, if the Defaultsort tag does not exist, then the desired template also will not be added, which is not what I wanted. — Thaejas (talk) 12:06, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

What about first do what xeno suggests as a first run and then:

[[Category:

Replace:

{{desired template}}
[[:Category

-- Magioladitis (talk) 16:06, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Maybe an option to apply the prepend/append before general fixes would be enough. Rjwilmsi 16:10, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

That would be really good. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:12, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

rev 6500/rev 6501 Option to apply meta data sorter after prepend/append of text. Sorting will only be applied to mainspace articles. Rjwilmsi 18:55, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi Rjwilmsi, Thanks very much. a good idea. Also, as mentioned in my query "the subsequent edit for gen fixes takes care of sorting the template tags", this option will be mandatory. As such, "an option to apply the prepend/append before general fixes" need not be given in the GUI. Pls correct my understanding. — Thaejas (talk) 02:16, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Thaejas, it is better for it to be optional. Option to append at the bottom may be needed in other cases and needs to be default. Regards, — Ganeshk (talk) 02:27, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi Ganeshk, in that case, in the gen fixes, the default sorting of templates should be removed if the template is required to be present in the bottom of the page. --Thaejas (talk) 04:08, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi Rjwilmsi, I have download and compiled the SVN upto the latest rev 6516. Now the template tags are getting sorted after checking the Sort meta data after. But even after setting the Use newlines to zero, a blank newline is added in between the new template and existing templates. --Thaejas (talk) 10:13, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I see. It's actually that the newlines left over once categories and interwikis are moved are not all removed, leaving one between existing and new templates. I could add logic to the sorter to clean this up, but I don't know if anything else needs this spacing. Rjwilmsi 10:33, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. It would be nice if the newline char is removed instead of the subsequent gen fixes removing the newline.--Thaejas (talk) 10:40, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Add a section in order mode

Hi, I want add the section "Altri progetti" (with contains this template) in this order mode:
== Note == == Bibliografia == == Voci correlate == == Altri progetti == == Collegamenti esterni == How can I do to get this order? Thanks.--B3t (talk) 12:29, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Just got my permission and it feels bad

Ho boy! That's not so great! I could not make this thing work (5.0.2.2). I first tried AWB the way I thought I should for my intended use, with 'Find and replace', either Normal or Advanced. No matter what I try, when I press Start or Skip, I always look at a stupid
No changes

Press the "Skip" button...
panel. Then I downgraded my expectations by removing all Find and replace garb and checking on all the 'auto' changes I could possibly see. Same thing. No automatic finding, no automatic changing, no automatic skipping! In desperation, I even tried to apply that to the 'Category:Articles that need to be wikified' list, same thing, there's never a Diff (unless of course I press 'Delink selection' when it's available, but that's NOT why I installed the software)! I could confirm that I can in fact edit a page, by applying an arbitrary manual change, but frankly I can do that as easily in Firefox or IE... Is there a secret ingredient or potion to make this baby work??? --AlainR345^{Techno-Wiki-Geek} 19:29, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not a technical expert on AWB, but I'm assuming you've read the manual and buglist (linked at the top here). If they haven't sorted it out, you might want to ask User:Reedy, who wrote it. Rodhull andemu 19:42, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Probably best to take this to WT:AWB. –xeno^talk 19:45, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Here it is. Now can someone help me. Yes I read the 'Manual'; quite useful if you have a fine point to check but totally useless for a beginner as it is just a list of the interface parts. Could somebody name ANY ONE Wikipedia example page I could apply this AWB software to and it would react as expected (like tell me 'Yes this is a page that fits your criteria and if you press Save, some changing will happen'). I'm totally puzzled by it. Although it seems great with lots of options, I currently feel it does NOTHING! --AlainR345^{Techno-Wiki-Geek} 05:13, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Crazier than I thought. I did 'Reset to default settings' and it now works a bit... But there are several bugs and glitches:

The most crazy: the Save button 'works' even when there's nothing to save really (no changes to the page), therefore the 'Logs' tab will report the page as 'Successfully saved', but since it's not true, of course if you look at the page history tab in a browser, there's nothing for that date/time!
Option 'Apply changes automatically', I think that's where I had a problem (got deactivated somehow maybe), and what's the logic of having such a crazy option for a software that's precisely intended to... APPLY CHANGES AUTOMATICALLY!
The Skipped: count seems more or less arbitrary...
Option 'Highlight Find matches', I could not see it working under any condition.
Like I said earlier, the basic problem of AWB is that a Reference manual is NOT a User manual. --AlainR345^{Techno-Wiki-Geek} 07:05, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

The "most crazy" isn't crazy at all. "Saving" a page with no changes can sometimes be useful. See WP:Null edit.

To see "Highlight Find matches" in action, try entering "the" in the "Find" field located directly below the "Save" button, then load a page. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 07:42, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Skipped count should count any pages that you manually skipped as well as any that the browser skips based on the rules you have set for skipping. You can use the Skip button instead of forcing null edits on unchanged articles. —Ost (talk) 17:31, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Default settings. Use Source: New pages. Run it across a few articles. How does it go? Mr Stephen (talk) 07:42, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

What exactly are you trying to accomplish? Simply running AWB over some articles and hoping it does something useful is probably a bad idea. You'll end up just doing insignificant general fixes or something. You could try enabling typo fixing and running it over a bunch of articles and then something might happen. –xeno^talk 16:37, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Question about item on the edit box context menu, insert tag option

When I right-click in the edit box and select "Insert tag", there's a box at the bottom where I can type. What is that used for? --Auntof6 (talk) 17:26, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

The {{stub}} one that's changable? If so, it will paste whatever is in that box, if you use the stub option above. Not the most obvious... —Ree dy 17:40, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposal:Release SVN Snapshots as debug builds, rather than Release

In an attempt to increase the amount of debugging information we get form users and exceptions, I'm proposing to start releasing svn snapshots as debug builds. Usually this means they're a bit bigger, due to none optimised code (and will be slower, but shouldn't be anything significant). But it should help where we get unobvious stack traces, and let us know what lines this was on etc.

Any suggestions?

—Ree dy 23:53, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Preview text bigger under new Vector skin

When using the new Vector skin, the text in the AWB preview window is bigger. This means I don't see as much at a time, which I consider a disadvantage. Is that text size something that can be adjusted? In the mean time, I have switched back to Monobook, for this and other reasons. --Auntof6 (talk) 16:55, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Insignificant edits?

Am I off the mark in warning Magioladitis against further edits such as these: [14] ? Simply bypassing a redirect is trivial and seems to violate WP:AWB#Rules of use (both 4 and 5) as well as WP:R2D. Both Magioladitis and his bot have a proclivity to make very insignificant edits. It is especially problematic because he is both an administrator and an AWB developer, so it makes cautioning other users against such edits difficult ("If he does it, why can't I???"). Any guidance would be appreciated. –xeno^talk 16:29, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, changing redirects like that is usually a violation of the AWB rules of use. However, in this case they were done because the template was renamed. I have no idea if the wikiproject requested the renaming. If they did, then I think the edits are OK: projects have the general prerogative to organize their templates how they like. But in general one shouldn't change a project's assessment templates randomly, and there is no guideline that mandates any particular naming scheme for assessment templates. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:54, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

There is no indication that anyone in the project requested it - or that the project is even active! And even if they had, I still don't think a bunch of edits just to bypass a perfectly functional redirect is appropriate. –xeno^talk 16:58, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

My edits don't violate WP:R2D because this policy refers on changing piped links. I am changing redirects that are difficult t be understood by new editors. I am improving readability of the code. In the same course are my recent renames of various wikiproject banners. How these changes are made, with or without AWB, is not important. I can ask the various wikiprojects if the agree with these changes. Until now I limited myself to wikiprojects with a small number of transclusion in order not to trigger watchlists widely. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:35, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Is "AlienProject" really so hard to understand? And are they really going to try and figure out what it is by pressing "edit page" and looking at the raw wikitext, rather than the very easy-to-understand banner as rendered? Even if it doesn't violate the letter of WP:R2D, it violates the spirit and the AWB's rules of use: it is trivial; insignificant; inconsequential; makes no change on the rendered page; is annoying to see in watchlists, and shouldn't be done with AWB (or at all, really). –xeno^talk 18:38, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I am gonna ask some wikiprojects on their opinion. I think they ll find my idea wonderful :) -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:38, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

FWIW I support the moving of banners to the de facto standard form of Template:WikiProject Foo, but not the mass bypassing of the redirects after doing so if that is all that is being done in the edit. You might also seek guidance at WT:REDIRECT to see if these changes on their own are permissible. –xeno^talk 21:41, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

While the guidance against changing redirects is long-standing (and applicable still to only-change-to-the-redirect-to-article edits) I have long been of the opinion that it has much less validity in template space, for a number of reasons. Firstly we keep template space relatively clean, short-cuts and alternative capitalization or spacing redirects flourish, but generally typos don't, since the name-space is not really used as an index by naive users to the same extent as mainspace. Secondly there is an advantage to clearing out deprecated syntax, much WP content is created by example, so an enthusiastic Rosweller might come and create several hundred new talk pages using the deprecated form of the template name:- ideally these would be "fixed next time someone edits the page" but realistically most agents, human or not, will not be aware of the need to fix. I am pretty certain that you will find instances of "Article issues" added since the template was migrated to "Multiple issues" for example - in this case many agents will pick that up, but it is somewhat unusual. Rich Farmbrough, 11:09, 14 May 2010 (UTC).

Problem

Hello I cannot seem to get AWB to work. After I start it up it attempts to update AWB, but after getting to a certain point, it fails with message "Cannot find File C:\Docume~1\Viviot~1\Localset~1\temp\$AWB$Updater$Temp$\AWBUpdater.exe". Feinoha ^{Talk, My master} 23:33, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

There is a workaround: Don't close AWB and leave the updater dialog open. I still have this problem despite re-installing both updater and AWB. Rich Farmbrough, 10:57, 14 May 2010 (UTC).

Text search is disabled ?

When using the Wiki search (text), I often get an pop-up error "unable to generate lists using Wiki search (text). Removing from list of providers during this session". It appears randomly. Is is a feature or a bug ? If it's normal, what is the trigger (as it sometimes works fine) : is there a "max usage" of this search option ? Zetud (talk) 19:37, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Note: this was reported in February. If it's happening very often, maybe a better response to the situation would be to simply display a popup notification, but not remove the option. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 20:32, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer. Yes, it's very often (on :fr): it happens nearly always for the 2nd or the 3rd time I search this way. But no "disabled feature on :fr" is reported (the normal search function always works fine). The only way is to stop&restart AWB. So, YES, I would appreciate AWB does NOT remove the option if the search fails. Zetud (talk) 20:59, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I can fix that later. The reason I did that, was in most cases, when it fails for people, they will be staying on the same wiki, so it's easier just to remove it for them. —Ree dy 11:02, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

rev 6527 —Ree dy 17:35, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

This rev solved the problem. Thanks a lot! Zetud (talk) 20:22, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Templates not moved along with Categories to bottom of page

Resolved

Hi, Have raised this issue after discussion here. When doing the Typo fixing with the following settings, I see that the Templates in the article were not moved to the bottom of the page along with the categories. Ex. in this edit of Chittoor article.

Automatic changes checked
Enable regextypofix checked (skip unchecked)
Find and replace unchecked

--Thaejas (talk) 00:36, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

There is no simple way to find out, what templates are nabvoxes and belong to the bottom of the article and what templates are part of the body of the article and should stay there. With categories, however it's easy: all belong to the bottom. Svick (talk) 01:06, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Svick. I understand the complexity of the sorting. Maybe we can find a solution in future to distinguish the navbox templates (and similar templates) from others that need to be at the end of the page. --Thaejas (talk) 02:59, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Well thjose with "navbox" in the name would seem good candidates.... Rich Farmbrough, 20:28, 16 May 2010 (UTC).

Yes. Correct. But still, we have templates like userboxes which should not be moved to the bottom of the page. Similarly we need to find which other types of templates are not to be moved to the bottom of the page. --Thaejas (talk) 15:22, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Cosmetic changes to AWB interface

Hi, Can anyone pls do the following under Main.cs in AWB,

add horizontal scrollbars to the listboxes (Makelist, Multiple Wikilinks/Duplicatewikilinks)
change Variants (under Disambiguation) groupbox backcolor to ButtonFace

--Thaejas (talk) 03:08, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I think our strategy was "less boxes and separations" and not more... -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:06, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

rev 6542, rev 6543 —Ree dy 11:09, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi Reedy, Thanks for the update. I have updated to SVN 6543.

But unfortunately, the Makelist listbox contents are truncated to the width of the box. So the horizontal scrollbar will never by enabled. Can you pls check if the article names in the list box are not truncated.
The listbox in Multiple wikilinks still does not have the horizontal scrollbar.

--Thaejas (talk) 13:12, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I enabled verticle ones.. Doh. —Ree dy 11:16, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

rev 6552 —Ree dy 11:25, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Now makes sense. No need to have scrollbars when not needed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:11, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

How do the Alerts in Start tab help editors?

Hi, I would like to know once the Alerts are displayed, how and where an editor can locate the errors and fix them. In short, can the purpose of alerts be similar to multiple wikilinks and not just for display of errors? Pls suggest if the alerts can be modified similar to multiple wikilinks. --Thaejas (talk) 04:34, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Enable 'highlight errors' to see the errors in red in the edit box, where there's something to highlight for the error. Rjwilmsi 20:37, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Rjwilmsi, Thanks. I have done checks on some articles and observed that locating the alerts is very tedious, even though they are highlighted in red color. For ex. as in this edit, there is just one unbalanced bracket to be corrected. I had to manually scroll through the entire page to find it. Moreover, after correcting that, we are not sure that there is only one unbalanced bracket in the article. For that I need to rerun the same article to find for any other unbalanced brackets. Hence would suggest that the alerts be changed similar to multiple wikilinks. --Thaejas (talk) 00:20, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Customised "General Fixes"

Hi, I want cutomize "General Fixes" with a Custom Modules but this seems don't work and nothing change is made.--B3t (talk) 14:46, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Can I disable the insert of bold for the firt occurrence of the text that equal to article title. (Example)--B3t (talk) 22:18, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Remove EmboldenTitles then. Rjwilmsi 22:44, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Ok, now AWB work well. Thanks.--B3t (talk) 12:56, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Citation format option

Resolved

On the article 1910 London to Manchester air race is {{Citation | last = Grimsditch | first = H. B. | contribution = White, Claude Grahame- (1879–1959), rev. Robin Higham | format = Registration required | title = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography | publisher = Oxford University Press, hosted at oxforddnb.com | origyear = 2004 | date = May 2008 | edition = online | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33512 | accessdate = 19 May 2010 | doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/33512}}. AWB's general fixes wants to remove the format = Registration required part, what is the reason for that? Documentation on {{citation}} gives it as a valid option. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 22:14, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

For me the only citation affected is {{Citation | title = The Aeroplane Race | format = Registration required | url = http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/993/44/113619272w16/purl=rc1_TTDA_0_CS167967394&dyn=9!xrn_11_0_CS167967394&hst_1?sw_aep=mclib | publisher = ''The Times'', hosted at infotrac.galegroup.com | date = 2 May 1910 | page = 10 | issue = 39261 | column = A | format = Registration required}} where AWB is removing a duplicate |format= entry. Rjwilmsi 22:33, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Your quite right. My mistake. D'oh!. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 22:43, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

AWB and Words to avoid

Moved from Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks

There is a discussion at the Village Pump regarding using AWB semi-automatically to remove WP:Words to avoid. You got this notice because you have participated in a discussion regarding this in the recent past. Your input is welcomed. Kittybrewster ☎ 11:13, 24 December 2009 (UTC)