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Help in re-categorizing a demoted WikiProject

The WikiProject Ice Cream is inactive and has been demoted to a task force as well as being re-tasked to the general topic of desserts. I need a bot to do a couple of things:

  1. The Project articles need to be re-categorized from Category:WikiProject Ice Cream articles to Category:Desserts Taskforce articles, including any sub categories;
  2. The Project categories need to re-categorized from Category:WikiProject Ice Cream to Category:Desserts Taskforce, including any sub categories;
  3. Any article with the {{WikiProject Ice Cream}} banner needs to be changed to {{WikiProject Food and drink|desserts=yes}} banner

At this time that is all I can think of, more will probably be coming later. --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 05:29, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Categorisation should be done by the WikiProject banner, and do you have any consensus from the WikiProject for this action to be taken? Peachey88 (Talk Page · Contribs) 06:26, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I placed a requested move notice on the page over a week ago as well as the parent project WP:WikiProject Food and Drink and not a single member responded. There has been no change in its statistics in over six months, no response on its talk page in longer than that. The only changes that have occurred in the project have been ones I have made, or have made in conjunction with others in updating "back of house" things.

The changes I have requested for the bot to do have to with page categorization that are one the project page itself (category:WikiProject Ice Cream articles) and the organization of the categories themselves and are not set through the banner. The banner changes are because I have deleted the WikiProject Ice Cream banner and redirected it to the WikiProject Food and Drink banner, both of which I created and maintain. --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 16:29, 15 December 2009 (UTC) It was done manually. --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 06:03, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Well the categories are largely empty, presumably because you redirected the banner? OK htere were 12 articles all moved to desserts. Lets take this to your talk page. Rich Farmbrough, 08:53, 16 December 2009 (UTC).

User:ImageTagBot

Hello.
Would someone here be interested in reviving User:ImageTagBot, a bot that adds and removes image captions notifying about deletion requests? The bot has shut down due to a post on its talk page, and Sam Korn is apparently MIA and doesn't reply to e-mails.
BRfAs Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Sambot 11 and Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Sambot 12, source code is linked to there, uses the Pillar framework and requires, I seem to remember, a toolserver account. I'm unsure of course whether the code posted there is up to date or not.
Thanks, Amalthea 16:45, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I can do this, many of my bots use Pillar anyway. BRFA filing in a minute. (X! · talk)  · @799  ·  18:09, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. :) Amalthea 18:49, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Unreferenced BLPs

Hello LCahill! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot alerting you that 14 of the articles that you created and 0 of the articles that you played a major role in creating, are Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons. Please note that all biographies of living persons must be sourced. If you were to add sources to these articles, it would greatly help us with the current 297 page backlog. Here is a list:

If we do have to combine the "creator" and "contributor" phases, perhaps it would be better to just use a single column. I'm not sure about the "More..." collapsibles either (partly because the numbering restarts from one). What do you (all) think? - Pointillist (talk) 01:08, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
There are not all that many users that are on the maijor contributor's list that don't have the same article on the creators list. Therefore, I will only message the creators. Using one colum, and continuing the numbers in (more). I also used <small> tags so that the find sources buttons aren't so big. Tim1357 (talk) 04:56, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Someone mentioned hugglers, - just ignore edit summaries with (HG) I thonk? Rich Farmbrough, 08:36, 16 December 2009 (UTC).
Sound good to me. What happens next? Is a formal specification required? A pilot run (messaging a small number of editors) might be a good idea, which raises the question whether the bot should add a category or leave some other "marker" on each article's talk page (e.g. <!-- unref-creator-messaged-2009-12-16 -->) so it knows the article has already been processed, etc. - Pointillist (talk) 11:53, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

This seems to be going in the right direction, but wouldn't it be simpler to limit it now to article creators who are still active, then go back in maybe 3 months and do another run on major contributors who are still active. This avoids the 2-column list thing which looks overbearing, especially when adding {{findsources}}. There may be a lot of overlap between the two runs in terms of people getting messaged twice, but that's OK. The issue is not exclude too many articles where the creator is not active any more - to find at least one person who did something substantive and is still active. And yes, a hidden marker should be added. As for testing, I'm not sure how necessary that is, people more experienced with bots would know better. My concern would be making sure the testing doesn't introduce duplicate messages for some people. Rd232 talk 15:35, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

BRFA filed Tim1357 (talk) 01:34, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Months

Today I've seen lots of misprints in months' names like Auguat (nearly 15 pages), Septenber etc. Is it possible to launch a bot in order to correct this? Thanks--Microcell (talk) 10:23, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Declined Not a good task for a bot. It is unlikely that you will get approval to do this. I suggest seeing WP:TYPO if you are interested in helping with this. There are applications that do 90% of the work of typo correction, but typos generally need to be fixed by a human. Tim1357 (talk) 01:38, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

delinking to kehilla

In a large number of articles there are hidden links "Kehilla|Jewish community" or "Kehilla|Jewish communities". As Kehilla is a disambiguation page, this leads to Kehilla being currently the second most linked-to disambiguation page on Wikipedia [1]. Kehilla just means "Jewish community" in Hebrew, but it clearly has a more restricted meaning in English, see Kehilla (modern): "kehilla", "kehilla council", "kehilla executive", "kehilla president" etc. The bot should transform "Kehilla|Jewish community" into Jewish community (without [[]]) and "Kehilla|Jewish communities" into Jewish communities (without [[]]).--Pylambert (talk) 11:06, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

WP:Wikiproject Disambiguation does a good job of sorting these, and its probably not a good idea to have a bot change hundreds of links without certainty that 90% will be the correct link. However, if you can point to a discussion with consensus for this job to be done by a bot, then it changes things. If you did not know of it already wikicleaner or the pywikipedia script are alternatives. Both do 90 percent of the work for you, all you have to do is decide which option belongs as the link. Good luck! Tim1357 (talk) 22:45, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Thank you for answering, sorry for not having reacted sooner. I think User:Woohookitty followed your advice with a Wikicleaner, I also corrected manually several other links. Now, the situation is already much better, there are less than 50 pages leading there. A bot is no longer necessary. Have a nice day. --Pylambert (talk) 07:29, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Tagging request

Could some one add the |desserts=yes switch to the {{WikiProject Food and drink}} banner in the articles listed under Category:Desserts? --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 05:59, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Should it add to all the subcategories of that cat? Has it been discussed? tedder (talk) 16:11, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I would like to ad it to the sub cats.

The project this was derived from the former Ice Cream project that died due to apathy. When I requested comment on a merge proposal to bring it back into its parent group WP:Food, it went unanswered and it was merged. I have placed prominent notices on the main pages of the parent project and task force and there still has been no comment. I am hoping the more general topic of desserts will get more interested people involved, but with only 14 out of the 1200+ or so dessert articles tagged as such it would appear to outsiders that there would be nothing to look at. --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 19:46, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

To keep from cluttering up this board, I moved the conversation to User talk:TedderBot. Join me there to get this ready to go. tedder (talk) 01:20, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Categorise the long list of articles needing copy-editing

Would it be possible to categorise the many articles in Category:Wikipedia articles needing copy edit into major subject matter categories?

Yes, but I would suggest that this would be less useful than for most clean-up cats. Anyone (with writing skills, insight and jellybeans) can copy-edit an article up to a point. Rich Farmbrough, 22:06, 20 December 2009 (UTC).

A common typo

Resolved
 – Copied task to WP:AWB/TA#"more then" → "more than". Amalthea 14:12, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

It turns out that we have about a hundred articles with "more then" instead of "more than": 1. An opportunity of fixing them manually doesn't inspire, is it possible to shift this labour onto one of bots? --Microcell (talk) 11:16, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

That's probably easiest done with WP:AWB, you might want to post that at WP:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks. Might also already be among the standard fixes. Amalthea 11:48, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm not much experienced in programming bots and these issues in general - could you help me do it properly?--Microcell (talk) 13:23, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
I can help you move the request to WP:AWB/TA#"more then" → "more than", yes. :) --Amalthea 14:12, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Orphaning a template

{{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}}

Resolved
 – 04:30, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

A bot is needed to remove ~4500 transclusions of Template:R uncategorized, which should be deleted (once it is no longer transcluded) per Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2009 December 1#Template:R uncategorized. The edit summary for the removals should link to the TfD log page. I checked the list at Wikipedia:Bots/Status but only find a few bots involved in template substitution and replacement, not removal. Thank you, –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 07:11, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm interested in this, it's straightforward, except I can't get the API result to show all entries. I assume it doesn't count transclusions as backlinks? Can someone help out? tedder (talk) 07:30, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Could the reason be that all of the transclusions are in redirect pages? If it would be useful to you, I could generate a simple bulleted list of all pages in which the template is transcluded. –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 07:41, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
(followup) So I found the correct query to run, "embeddedin". Running a pass through this now. I'll just churn up some code and see how many pages I get, and how many of those pages I can parse/detect the transclusion. So no worries I'm burn some time on this, probably tomorrow. tedder (talk) 07:45, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks! –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 07:53, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Okay, I have this stubbed out- the code changes pages without saving it. Here's my editsummary: "Removing Template:R uncategorized per TfD". What other users are interested in this? I'll have to make a bot request, and having editors watch/analyze my bot, especially while it makes test edits, is very important. tedder (talk) 14:14, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
It would be useful if the bit could make a stab at redirect-categorising the redirect at the same time. Rich Farmbrough, 02:11, 19 December 2009 (UTC).
(E.G. R from alternative capitalization, R from name without diacritics. Any more that are bottable? Rich Farmbrough, 02:13, 19 December 2009 (UTC).)
I only found 21 that are alt-cap, zero perfect no-diacritics match (the latter is probably a result of a crappy diacritics-stripping algorithm). tedder (talk) 08:17, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Well I did label all the diacritic ones about 18 months ago. Catching the alt-cap ones is cool. This was brought up again further down the page, I had forgotten about this section. Rich Farmbrough, 08:42, 23 December 2009 (UTC).

Okay, so the code for this is basically ready for a first run. I have the BRFA application ready. The limiting factor is getting community consensus and involvement. User:Black Falcon, the ball is entirely in your court on this. I've written the bot and will deal with the BRFA drama, but need you to find/notify interested parties. tedder (talk) 08:52, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Most of the interested parties, including WikiProject Redirect (see here), were notified during the deletion discussion for Cat:Uncategorized redirects. I do not expect deprecation of the template to be controversial—after all, it was uncontested at TfD for more than two weeks—however, to minimise the chance of any controversy, I have prepared notices for posting at User talk:Lenoxus (created the template), User talk:Cenarium (initiated the deletion discussion), User talk:Plastikspork (closed the deletion discussion), and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Redirect. I will also post an update at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Holding cell.
I have already prepared the text of the notices (slightly different for each case), so let me know if notification on this scale is satisfactory and I will post the notices. Also, if you need someone to check the bot's edits during the trial period (or checking a random sample of edits during the actual run), I am more than willing to help. –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 21:41, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
There is consensus for this to happen already (due to the TFD). Tedder, I hope you did not spend too much time coding the bot, because there is already a script ready to go that is included in the pywikipedia package. Black Falcon, in response to your comment on my talk page, a bot request does not necessarily mean that the bot will be allowed to work any time soon. Just FYI; don't expect the BRFA to go quickly. Good LuckTim1357 (talk) 22:11, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
P.S. Tedder, if you want, I could take this task. It is two lines in the command prompt. Seriously, but if you want to do it you way, go right ahead. Tim1357 (talk) 22:14, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Tim1357, either way, it's going to go through BRFA, right? Given that, I'll go ahead and do it. Black Falcon: thanks for postnig all of those. That's more than enough notification, and drop by my talkpage to offer bot babysitting- it'll be easier to coordinate from there (or from the BRFA request). tedder (talk) 02:25, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
I hate to be the bearer of this news, but Tim1357 and I are both orphaning the template as we speak, without the benefit of a BRFA. Speaking only for myself, I've decided to WP:IAR and get the job done. Alison22 (talk) 02:50, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
Works for me. Enjoy! tedder (talk) 02:56, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
I had prepared the notices but not posted them yet (I am just now checking back here), but it looks like there is no need anymore to post them... Anyway, I'm happy to see that the template has been orphaned. Thanks, –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 07:46, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

 Done Looks like all instances of {{R uncategorized}} have been removed from namespace:0. Tim1357 (talk) 04:30, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Note that Alison22 was indef blocked. Tim1357 (talk) 04:33, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
There are only a few transclusions remaining, most of them in the Help namespace. I will remove those with AWB. –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 07:46, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 Done - I deleted the template and removed it from Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Holding cell. Tedder and Tim, thank you. –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 07:56, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Move and Redirect a large pool of pages

{{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}} When WP:PUI was renamed to WP:PUF a large number of the subpages (logs of discussions) weren't moved to their correct name which causes some issues for templates such as Template:PUIresolved, So would it be possible to get a bot to mass move these pages to their correct naming, so for example Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images/2009 February 23 → Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files/2009 February 23. Thank you in advance, Peachey88 (Talk Page · Contribs) 12:20, 18 December 2009 (UTC).

There's about 657 pages needing to be moved. I haven't checked to see if they are duplicates or not. In any case, has this been discussed at WT:PUF or elsewhere? I have it partly implemented, but it needs community discussion first. tedder (talk) 15:55, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
There is a sysop function to "move sub-pages", that way I can be lazy and the server takes care of everything. Tim1357 (talk) 04:29, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
That was used when PUI was moved to PUF, but it stops after 100 subpages (or at least it did at the time). I had thought there was discussion at the time about having a bot finish the moving in which the general result was that no one cared one way or the other, but I can't find it now (and it may have been about IFD→FFD, or about something else entirely). Anomie⚔ 13:47, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
There are 504 pages that could be moved. What happens if you move a page back (without subpages) then move it again? Will it pick up the next 100 subpages? Or will it go fo rthe redirects it created the previous time? Rich Farmbrough, 13:07, 21 December 2009 (UTC).
I really don't see any harm in that, other then a few non-edits in the page's history. Tim1357 (talk) 15:00, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
OK will you try it and let us know? Rich Farmbrough, 16:33, 22 December 2009 (UTC).
I'm no admin, and only admins have the ability to move sub-pages.Tim1357 (talk) 04:52, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
I thought Rich was going to do it. tedder (talk) 04:59, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

bing(To prevent archiving) 03:09, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Done.

Rich Farmbrough, 18:51, 27 December 2009 (UTC).

Templates to Orphan

{{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}}

Resolved
 – 03:06, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

I just wanted to alert any bot operators (or AWB users) to the "to orphan" section of WP:TFD/H. Our regular helper has been blocked, so any assistance would be appreciated. Once you are done, you can move them to the "to be deleted" section. If I can find some spare time I may do some myself. Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 17:06, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I've started working on the backlog. Alison22 (talk) 20:32, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Me too! Tim1357 (talk) 21:45, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

For Template:R uncategorized, see the related request at #Orphaning a template. –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 22:05, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Replace hyphens with en dashes in templates

There are many templates for various sports-related articles that have content that should use en dashes instead of hyphens as per WP:DASH. Unfortunately, many editors are not aware of this and use hyphens. Obviously, going through and replacing all instances of hyphens with en dashes is not practical as the bot would have to understand the context. However, for some of these templates, I believe that if we can specify which parameters should always have en dashes, then a bot can be programmed to ensure en dashes are always used. I have gone through many sports-related template and documented parameters that, I believe, should always have en dashes. A lot of these parameters, also contain text but I could not identify a situation where a hyphen would be used. Most of these are parameters that have scores, win-loss records or year ranges. Obviously, the first run of the bot will make a lot of changes. However, after that, I think a monthly run of the bot would suffice. If there is sufficient support for this bot, I will also ask various WikiProjects to add to the list if they have additional templates I may have missed (I'm almost positive I did not get them all). However, I think if this does become a bot, the bot operator needs to make it easy for him/herself to add and remove templates and parameters.

Templates and their corresponding parameters that should always have en dashes instead of hyphens

This concept could even be applied to templates outside the realm of sports and used in templates where year ranges are specified and other scenarios. Thoughts?—NMajdan•talk 20:54, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Template:Infobox NFLactive should be included on that list.--Giants27(Contribs|WP:CFL) 20:01, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Looking at that template, the pastteams, teams, pastcoaching, and pastadmin parameters contain a team name followed by a year range, which should have an en dash. I can't think of a team that has a hyphen in the name, so I can't think of a scenario where a hyphen would be used in those parameters. I will add this template above. Thanks for the addition.—NMajdan•talk 20:22, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Well all of the players (see Drew Brees for example) have a year thing like (2000–present) and the like where the use of hyphens and en dashes is still widespread.--Giants27(Contribs|WP:CFL) 22:01, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
I have begun adding non-sports template with parameters that could use hyphens.—NMajdan•talk 13:27, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I hope the number of templates that would be included in this bot emphasizes it's potential worth.—NMajdan•talk 16:03, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Any takers?—NMajdan•talk 19:54, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes editors specify dates in the YYYY-MM-DD format (for example, today is 2009-12-04). Changing from hyphens to n dashes should not occur for any such date. Also, if you stick to sports, you are probably safe, but if you extend your reach to other fields, like military conflicts, you might run into unusual calendars (Roman Republic, China, etc.) We cannot be sure the name of such a calendar will not contain a hyphen. --Jc3s5h (talk) 20:13, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure logic could be added to the bot to check for the mask ####-##-## and skip those. Regarding different calendars, that is something I have not investigated. I am not familiar with other calendars and their use of hyphens.—NMajdan•talk 20:50, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
That is a lot of regular expression! also, you'd have to find all the redirects for those templates. Im not good with regex, and there is probably some really easy way to do it, but i just don't know it. Ill play arround with it, but i cant promise anything. Tim1357 (talk) 05:03, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. Keep me informed of the progress as I'm sure it will be slow going.—NMajdan•talk 17:59, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
The date isn't hard: \d\d\d\d\-\d\d\-\d\d.. Okay, it's the inverse of that. tedder (talk) 07:44, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I would think you could store the template names and corresponding parameters in an XML file that the bot would read. This would also make it easier to add additional templates in the future. Also, while I've never created a bot, I would think there is already some function that exists that can grab all the redirects for a given template.—NMajdan•talk 16:17, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Why on earth does it matter whether one uses a hyphen or an en-dash? They are almost impossible to tell apart on the screen anyway. This seems to me to be a solution looking for a problem. -- Alarics (talk) 23:10, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Its a MoS requirement. So, we follow it.—NMajdan•talk 01:55, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I think AWB is actually pretty smart about making this change as a General Fix, but it may only address birth and death dates. You might like to investigate that further. Rich Farmbrough, 01:24, 15 December 2009 (UTC).

I've created a feature request for AWB here although I still think this would be better for a bot. But it appears to be a bit more work than anyone's willing to devote.—NMajdan•talk 14:05, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Its not that its too much work, its just that general fixes can do this better. SmackBot goes through the pages with un-dated tags, and while it's there it does general fixes. It will be slow, but the bot will eventually fix them (sooner or later). Tim1357 (talk) 17:00, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
If this request is implemented.—NMajdan•talk 14:30, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi. Pursuant to my note of December 13th at the Bot owners' noticeboard, I'd very much like a bot that can help out at CP that is maintained by somebody who frequents the English Wikipedia who may be available to help out of when there are problems or when changes are needed to maintain efficient function. We need a bot to create a new page once a day for the copyright problems board with the standard transcluded information in it, transclude the new page to the bottom of Wikipedia:Copyright problems/NewListings and move the oldest listing there to Wikipedia:Copyright problems#Older than 7 days. Basically, I'd love to have something that can do what Zorglbot has been doing for us, but is either open for others to assist in maintaining or has a bot maintainer that is accessible.

If this isn't the appropriate place for this, I'd really appreciate some kind of pointers on other options. :) Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:46, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Alternative, create a batch of empty pages, use templates for NewListings, use template/category for the older than 7 day listings. Rich Farmbrough, 02:15, 19 December 2009 (UTC).
Thanks very much. I'm not sure how to use the template/category or what that means, being pretty non-tech. :) Your solution for the newlistings is perfect. It seems we could still use a bot to create a new page each day and to transclude it to the older listings: perhaps automatically once a day substituting {{Wikipedia:Copyright problems/{{#time:Y F j|-8 day}}}}? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:35, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

←Here's what we need, if it's available.

  • We need a single bot that can create new daily listings for CP (currently done by Zorglbot), substituting onto those daily pages {{subst:Cppage}} (currently done by DumbBot). It would be nice to have one bot do both, because when Zorglbot malfunctions, DumbBot can't do its job. :)
  • If we can get a bot to transclude to Wikipedia:CP#Older than 7 days once a day the daily listings that are eight days old, that would be fabulous. We can de-transclude them manually as we already do once they're addressed.
  • And we need a bot to transclude the daily listings to WP:SCV. The actual SCV pages are set up like Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations/2009-12-20) to the bottom of Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations. We had requested that from Zorglbot's maintainer on October 31st, too, and he said he would look into it very soon, but we have heard nothing back from him about this one, either.

Is this doable? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:41, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

As a side note, I don't think there is any problem with having a "backup bot" that checks to make sure the first bot completed its task. I wrote a MediaWiki bot script to do this sort of thing at WP:TFD, but it's not approved to run in botmode, so I run it by hand when Zorglbot is down. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 21:43, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
Back ups are good. :) (I've changed my wishlist above, since I've realized that what I was asking for wouldn't work.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:29, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Here's what I have been thinking. Relying on a daily (or periodic) process is a Bad Thing since it can break, that's why i suggested creating the days in advance, either a script creating a chunk, or a rolling process.
Now it is possible for each day page to be a template call - I use single curlies to illustrate
{Copyright checking page
<!-- Add your line below here in the form {subst:Copyvio entry|<pagename>|<source>|<reason>} -->
|{Copyvio expanded|view={view|}|page=Peter Pan|from=www.jmbarrie.co.uk|reason=Its a reprint of the entire play|reported by=Rich Farmbrough|time=16:37|resolved=no} 
|{Copyvio expanded|view={view|}|page=....
}
Here a user would add a line in a similar way to the present system. The line would be expanded as above. The view parameter would be such that if set to "compressed" nothing would be displayed if the resolved parameter was "yes". The page would transclude as blank if there were no unresolved items on it.
The main page would simply transclude a few weeks pages with the view=compressed option. The manual part would consist of ensuring that either nothing got old enough to age off the page unresolved, or that it was consolidated as it is now.
Rich Farmbrough, 03:54, 21 December 2009 (UTC).
First, I really appreciate your assistance here, and forgive me if I misunderstand something. I am not fluent in your tongue, being almost monolingual. :) If I'm following you, this would constitute a change in the reporting process, perhaps altering the template parameters at {{subst:copyvio}} so that the "add the following to the bottom" of Template:Copyviocore would conform to this new listing format? (If I've got that right, we'd also need to figure out how to fix that template so that it would direct people to the specific day listing rather than CP, or they'd probably be adding it to the wrong daily listing, if we've got a bunch transcluded at once.) I think I like the basic idea (if I understand it :D), but I don't think we need to hide completed. Sometimes these listing do turn into conversations, and frequently we refer back to the notes of the day, as we note how the matter was resolved. (I will sometimes link to the daily listing if deletion has complexities, such as if an OTRS verification failed because it did not conform to our needs.) Maybe we can just collapse the completed day. My one concern with the manual part is that I'm not at all sure that CP would be kept up to date if I got hit by a bus. When I made it my project in June 2008, it had a backlog of over three weeks. I guess DumbBot can help out with that, though. It currently detects articles that are tagged for copyvio but not displayed at CP and adds them—very helpful, since a lot of people don't follow the listing directions at all.
Is it possible with the system you envision to have it automatically segregate listings pending closure (younger than 8 days) and listings ripe for closure?
Would a bot create the chunk of daily pages in advance? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:54, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Yes the listing would go on the day listing , but it does now I think. Maybe it is accessed form the CP page.
The hide completed would only be "view=compressed" so maybe only the "old" pages would do hide completed - certainly if you went to one of the daily pages you would see everything.
The only manual part is stopping stuff older than, say, a month, from being forgotten. This is very bottable, also we could cvariosu belt-and-braces mechanisms - month pages showing any uncompleted, a category of pages with uncompleted items on for example.
Rich Farmbrough, 16:32, 22 December 2009 (UTC).

WP:Article Rescue Squadron deletion sorting page

{{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}}

Resolved
 – see discussion at WT:ARS

Whenever an editor adds the {{Rescue}} tag to an article up for deletion, the name of the Article for Deletion (not the article) is automatically adds the templated AFD page name to the top of Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron/Current articles.

For example:

Editor User:helpmeplz adds the {{rescue}} tag to the page Manon Batiste, which is up for deletion.
The bot adds {{Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Manon Batiste (2nd nomination)}} to the top of the page Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron/Current articles, right under {{-}} in the Articles currently tagged section.
Note that adding:
{{Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Manon Batiste}}
to Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron/Current articles
...would list the previous AFD, not the newest, current one.

Thank you in advance :) Merry Christmas. Ikip 23:50, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

See response at WT:ARS Tim1357 (talk) 18:07, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Testing for potential misconduct

Per this ANI thread, seeking a coder to look for unusual clusters of participation at recent BLP AFDs in terms of delete preferences and admin actions. A website recently surfaced which reportedly was being run by approximately two dozen people including administrators and may have been coordinating vote stacking campaigns. A statistical analysis may be able to determine whether there is substance to this story. Durova386 04:22, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I think you means this thread. However, I see no consensus for an automated witch hunt, which hunt could be downright disruptive.--Scott Mac (Doc) 18:44, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Clouseau! --MZMcBride (talk) 22:16, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion: "talk" to user whose text needs a citation

I hope this is the right location to suggest a new technical feature to be added to Wikipedia or maybe something that a bot could do. I'll be brief: it might be useful to put a note a user's Talk page if his or her text inside an article has "{{citation}}" right after it. It's logical to expect the user who added text to know where he or she read something that needs a citation. This won't always work, but if it's a single line of text that starts with a capital and such, Wikipedia should be able to give us information about who put it there. If there is a match, that user's Talk page could say: "A text (<text>) you added on <date> to the article <name> appears to need a citation. If possible, please try to help out." --82.171.70.54 (talk) 14:02, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

This is a nice idea (with drawbacks) I will copy this to WP:BOTREQ. Rich Farmbrough, 22:04, 20 December 2009 (UTC).
Needs wider discussion. Not a bad idea, but we must remember that people hate (HATE) getting bot messages. One could use wikiblame to find when the text was added. Perhaps some clever scripting could find who added the text. Bring this up elsewhere maybe the village pump or a corresponding wikiproject. Good luck! Tim1357 (talk) 14:58, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Non-free content outside the mainspace

Can a bot please be scripted to remove all uses of non-free content outside the mainspace? We have a list here, and it has been over a thousand for a month. We do currently have a bot that removes them from the userspace, but I believe it ignores other spaces (it certainly ignores template space, for instance) but it rarely runs anyways. This is clearly a task suitable for a bot, as it really is non-negotiable- non-free content is only for the mainspace. If you'd rather replace than remove, an image like File:Red copyright.svg may be a suitable replacement. J Milburn (talk) 20:30, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

If betacommand dosen't mind generating the list at regular intervals, its a pretty simple find and replace job. Ill talk to betacommand sometime on IRC. Tim1357 (talk) 21:28, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
The list is frequently regenerated, daily I think. I've worked off it manually before, but it's just too tedious. J Milburn (talk) 21:39, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
I finished coding. If the page is updated daily then there is no need for me to generate the list and Ill just work off betacommand's. Tim1357 (talk) 22:57, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
I would suggest to let the bot handle the Talk: namespace differently, since in most cases people want to link to the image there and only include it accidentally. Also, the bot should notify the user who added the image, so that they can rectify the concerns. Regards SoWhy 23:10, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
 Done with part one. The second one is a bit trickier, because it is hard to tell who added what. Maybe, if the image is in a user-space, the bot could message the corresponding user?. Tim1357 (talk) 01:58, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Oh yea and BRFA filed Tim1357 (talk) 02:32, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
File:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg is the image with which the old bot replaced images. J Milburn (talk) 15:41, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Project tag request

I pre-parsed about 2000 articles with AWB that need {{WPSHIPS|class=Redirect}} placed on the talk page. I can mail the text file to whomever feels like taking this on. --Brad (talk) 22:44, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't have a tagging bot, but Im going to ask you the boilerplate question so the BotOp dosen't have to. Do you have consensus at the wikiproject to do this? Tim1357 (talk) 05:13, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
The last time I tried to gather consensus on a bot request I became a solo act. I did not see any sense in going through that again. These are non-controversial additions I'm requesting. For over a year I've been the only project member working on tagging articles that fall under our scope. I've tagged and assessed thousands of articles. --Brad (talk) 19:03, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
Ill get kingpin to comment. Tim1357 (talk) 16:15, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Reflist enhancement

A bot to find articles with reflist and amend to reflist|2 if the article includes more than a certain number of references.

I'd suggest a startpoint of a dozen. --Dweller (talk) 10:59, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Instead of replacing with {{reflist|2}}, {{reflist|colwidth=30em}} would be preferable. The advantage of the second approach is that the number of columns is dynamically adjusted based on the width of the web browser window. If the width of the window is narrow (or if the font size is set very large for the sight impaired), {{reflist|2}} looks strange whereas {{reflist|colwidth=30em}} will set the number of columns to one. Boghog (talk) 12:48, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
Clever. In that case, how about the same bot replaces all reflist2 instances with your code as well? --Dweller (talk) 15:51, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
Needs wider discussion. People get touchy when you screw with their references. Go to the village pump and get some community consensus. If you do, it seems like a good feature to add to the AWB list of general fixes. Good luck! Tim1357 (talk) 03:03, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
Something that does not need discussion is a replacement of {{Reflist|3}} with {{Reflist|colwidth=30em}}. It produces that same result on an "average" screen, but also provides flexibility if someone browses Wikipedia with a netbook or something else with a small screen. --bender235 (talk) 20:49, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
That is a better change to do template-side. Bring it up at the Village Pump. Tim1357 (talk) 03:36, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Move Wikipedia-Books to the Book: namespace

AKA all Wikipedia-Books located at (for example) Wikipedia:Books/Hello World should be moved (without redirects) at Books:Hello World, and the pages that linked to former location them be updated as well. (Don't forget talk pages, which should get the same treatment.)

The no redirect/link update is so everything's presented in a consistent manner (otherwise, it will be a very confusing, since there's too much things that can already be confused with Wikipedia-Books). Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 14:01, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think leaving no redirects behind is a good idea. What about existing external links into Wikipedia:Books? How will they be fixed? Josh Parris 14:40, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Needs wider discussion. Where is the consensus to do this? Tim1357 (talk) 15:30, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
The whole point of the books namespace is to move books there. Anyway, consensus is here. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 15:39, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Ok, that seems good. The part about leaving no redirects is tricky, because you need a sysop (or sysop bot) to do that. Tim1357 (talk) 16:13, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
So don't do it without redirects. They can always be deleted later, and I'm not really convinced that it's the Right Thing To Do to suppress them in the first place. Happy‑melon 16:45, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah I didn't think of external links. So let's keep the redirects. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 16:53, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Great! There is already code that does this so I don't have to do any work! It might be a small enough task to do with Assistance (I.E. I push ok before each edit). How many pages are in question? Tim1357 (talk) 21:18, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
We're talking roughly 550 (+talk pages), but the pages that links to the books (and there talk page) should also be updated to link to the new pages (aka nothing should use the redirects on Wikipedia so users don't get confused). Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 21:24, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Ok, that seems enough for a bot. I guess if you want to change links, it might take a bit of work. Coding... Tim1357 (talk) 21:46, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
{{Featured topic box}} will need to be updated - one change that will update hundreds of links to books :) But I don't think it should be updated until the books are moved - rst20xx (talk) 22:00, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, that's an easy-enough update though. Will take 2 seconds (just drop me a message if it's not updated after the bot does its moving job). Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 00:04, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
I currently have 4 BRFA's going right now, and I don't really want to have more then 4 at a time. This task is second in line to go next. Tim1357 (talk) 18:05, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
I've taken the liberty and Y Done them all, seeing as you're kinda busy with other BRFAs. (X! · talk)  · @808  ·  18:24, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
I've updated {{Featured topic box}} and the accompanying documentation. Mindmatrix 18:36, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Tim1357 (talk) 19:16, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Were the links updated? Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 19:19, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
No ill do that now. Tim1357 (talk) 23:16, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
Do I keep the name, even if there is none piped? see [2]--Tim1357 (talk) 23:25, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
No. Convert things like Wikipedia:Books/Zeppelin to Book:Zeppelin. If you see [[Wikipedia:Books/Zeppelin|Zeppelin]], then it should become [[Book:Zeppelin|Zeppelin]].Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 03:54, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
Of course, preserve the name if there is one, but I was wondering about what to do if there is no link name. Tim1357 (talk) 04:37, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
Then leave it unpiped: [[Wikipedia:Books/Zeppelin]] → [[Book:Zeppelin]] Happy‑melon 10:00, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Sockpuppet investigations bot

While there is a bot for SPI right now, User:SPCUClerkbot, it has been down for the past two weeks. Its owner has been contacted, but his person situation makes it unlikely that he will be able to respond soon. Is there any way someone could code a replacement bot (for moving between queues and archiving) while we wait for nixeagle to get back? I'd be able to offer any (non-coding) assistance that I could. Best regards, NW (Talk) 17:58, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Could maybe someone have/get the code and simply run a replacement using that code? Regards SoWhy 22:48, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Nixeagle was supposed to make the code available months ago, but for various reasons did not. So either we are stuck waiting for nixeagle to come back, or we must code a replacement bot. NW (Talk) 22:56, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Hmm...could it be that someone else has access to it? If I recall correctly, his bots run from the toolserver, don't they? Regards SoWhy 19:25, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
I believe they do run from the toolserver, but I am positive in saying that no one else has access. This has actually been a recurring problem for us at SPI for many months. NW (Talk) 23:40, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I talked to some toolserver guys, they say that admins do have access to code on the toolserver. Tim1357 (talk) 02:50, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, color me mistaken! Any chance you or someone else with toolserver access could get the bot running? NW (Talk) 02:55, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
They told me that he is a longtime contributor and we should be patient. They also said that it would be difficult to get an admin to release the code, because nixeagle hasnt released it on his own. Tim1357 (talk) 03:14, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, they are very reluctant to try to get code released on their own. I've gone through this same problem, and they won't do it except in extreme circumstances. (X! · talk)  · @723  ·  16:21, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Guild Wars

Can someone post an Infusing Bot for the ever so popular game, "Guild Wars"? It would make small monks feel like big monks and put spikes in there place. This would'd be a economic advantage in anyway, only a competitive advantage in the PVP section. This would be really appreciated by monks everywhere :). ~trent (—Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.150.77.185 (talk • contribs) 19:58, 1 January 2010)

You should probably ask elsewhere, as this is not related to WP. Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 16:49, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

List of Minor Planets needs bot!

The list of Minor planets is seriously behind, over 10,000 minor planets behind. Humans just can't add them fast enough. We need a bot! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ace45954 (talk • contribs) 02:21, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, could you give us some more context (specifics) for what you want a bot to do? Tim1357 (talk) 04:06, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm currently requesting approval for a bot that will place a message on the talk page of any new namespace 0, 6, 10 or 14 article with ambiguous links. See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/WildBot. Josh Parris 03:00, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Ministers

Please send the articles in Category:Argentine Ministers of Finance to Category:Ministers of Finance of Argentina. They are not grouped toguether by people's nationality, but for the country's government they worked for. I have already done the work of importing the main article, subcategories and interwikis. MBelgrano (talk) 00:59, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

That is easy enough to do, but you must provide links to consensus in order for us to do this. Maybe a CfD? Tim1357 (talk) 02:52, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Change of template name

Template:Space telescopes has been moved to Template:Space observatories. Please replace {{Space telescopes}} with {{Space observatories}} in all the articles which use this template. Thanks. Cospmi (talk) 04:47, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Why not just use a redirect? tedder (talk) 05:12, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Because you can't edit the template from the v.d.e. buttons from within an article that uses the old name. The redirect was automatically created when the template was moved, but the e in v.d.e. tries to edit the old name. Cospmi (talk) 09:13, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm sure there are other bots to do this, but that's okay. Humans are interchangeable too, right? I coded this up, submitted a bot request: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TedderBot 2. Only 58 or so articles (many more templates). tedder (talk) 10:11, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Fixed that for you, we don't "fix redirects" per WP:NOTBROKEN. — Dispenser 14:20, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Thankyou both. Cospmi (talk) 04:52, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Note: This was never discussed at the WikiProject concerned with this template, namely, Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomy. 76.66.197.17 (talk) 06:45, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Substitute a cross-namespace signature template

I'm not sure if this is allowed, but I was wondering if we could have a bot substitute {{DaGizza/Sg}}, which is a cross-namespace redirect of a user signature template. The user is no longer using it, and if it were substituted, I could delete the redirect without breaking the links on the old talk pages. Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 16:21, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

 Doing.... –xenotalk 16:39, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
 Done - have at it. –xenotalk 17:19, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 17:24, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Books for chemical elements

Since most elements have systematic categories, good book drafts can be made from them. The general structure of the books should be the following, uploaded at Book:Elementname: 

{{saved book}}
== Elementname ==
===An overview===
;Overview
:[[Elementname]]

;Isotopes
:[[Isotopes of elementname]]
:[[Elementname-X]]
:[[Elementname-X+1]] (all non-redirects of [[Category:Isotopes of elementname]]
:[[Elementname-X+2]]
:... 

;Miscellany
:[[Article 1]]
:[[Article 2]] (All other articles of [[Category:Elementname]])
:[[Article 3]]
:...

The talk pages of books should be tagged with 

{{WBOOKS|class=}}
{{WP Elements|class=book|importance=na}}

After this is done, {{Wikipedia-Books|Elementname}} should be added to the Elementname and Isotopes of elementname articles (at the top of the See also section [if not present, create it])We'll do it by hand, once the books have been reviewed, and in Category:Elementname. I've set up the examples at Book:Helium and Book:Lithium (see also Helium, Lithium; Category:Helium, Category:Lithium).

Do this for elements 1–118. Previous discussion can be found here. Thanks.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 17:21, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

BRFA filed (X! · talk)  · @801  ·  18:12, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
I presume that the (All other articles of [[Category:Elementname]]) will mean that for Copper, articles from Category:Copper mining should be included in the Miscellany section? Josh Parris 00:53, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
No, just the articles directly in the category. (As far as the bot is concerned at least.) Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 03:12, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
So, only that category and no sub-categories. Josh Parris 10:19, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Protection sign adding bot

How about a bot where as soon as an admin or a bureaucrat protects an aricle, the bot places a small protection sign by the corner of the article. Would that work? Minimac94 (talk) 17:37, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

FYI, I believe ProtectionTaggingBot used to do this, but it has been inactive for a year. - Kingpin13 (talk) 17:43, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Maybe it's a manual bot rather than an automatic one, according to its contributions. Minimac94 (talk) 17:50, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
It's automatic according to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ProtectionTaggingBot - Kingpin13 (talk) 17:54, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
DumbBOT (talk · contribs) does the opposite, i.e. removing them from non-protected pages. Maybe it could do this task as well? But usually admins remember to tag pages that they protect, so I don't really see a need for such a task. Regards SoWhy 18:02, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Admins many times forget, or place the wrong one, or at best a redirect to the right one. Not to mention that they forget <noinclude>...</noinclude> tags when protection templates (and sometimes Wikipedia pages)(note:with the updated {{Documentation}} protection templates are added automatically). I am the one working alongside User:DumbBOT in cleaning Category:Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates, and the picture is not so good. Debresser (talk) 14:35, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Unsourced BLPs

There are for the moment some 14,000 articles[3] which are tagged as unsourced (Category:Articles_lacking_sources and all categories one level down, i.e. the monthly cats) and belong to the category:living people, but which are not tagged as unreferenced BLPs (Category:All unreferenced BLPs). Converting these can not introduce new errors (articles which are incorrectly tagged as unsourced, or incorrectly tagged as about living people, will remain erroneous of course). Since unsourced BLPs are a specific, higher priority subset of all unsourced articles, I believe changing the tags would be beneficial. Fram (talk) 14:28, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Adding a task force to a WikiProject banner

Resolved
 – User:Xenobot Mk V is running this task. –xenotalk 17:37, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I have created Wikipedia:WikiProject Environment/Climate change task force. There are 100's of pages that need to be added to the task force. The {{Environment}} WikiProject banner needs |climate change = yes added to it. Can I get a bot to go this? The articles that need to be added to the task force are in Category:Climate change and related categories. I can create a text file of the pages that need to be added if that helps. Cheers. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 19:42, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

The same addition will have to be done for the Sustainability task force but climate change is a priority at the mo. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 19:46, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Are there any bots that can do this already? It doesn't seem hard, except for BRFA. tedder (talk) 19:57, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Most bots in Category:WikiProject tagging bots should be able to handle it. See User talk:Xenobot Mk V/requests if you don't mind waiting in queue... –xenotalk 19:59, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Need a Bot for a Job

Moved from ANI per request.

It appears that American Broadcasting Corporation, an incorrect redirect, is being used on up to 900 pages [4]. The correct name for the US version of ABC is American Broadcasting Company. If someone with a free bot could switch the incorrect redirect to the correct name on these 900 pages, it would be appreciated. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 02:50, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh yeah, this is currently up for discussion on RfD. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 02:51, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Bot requests go Wikipedia:Bot requests. Can you move this there? --IP69.226.103.13 | Talk about me. 02:56, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks IP69., I wasn't aware there was a board for bot requests (and I have been here for 2 1/2 years :) Moving now. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 03:00, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Lots of editors know nothing about it. There should be someone with a bot already capable of this who can add it as a task, or there may be a bot already approved for this type of task, correcting redirects. Responses are usually within a day or so, also. --IP69.226.103.13 | Talk about me. 03:07, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks IP69. Much appreciated. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 03:15, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Looks like the RFD is leaning twoards keep. Tim1357 (talk) 04:14, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
They are but this redirect was used on yesterday's Featured Article. If this can get by the featured article people, it should be changed on all pages. Yes, let the redirect stand (since I am the only delete vote), but it shouldn't be used on any page. That is what I am trying to get done. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 04:20, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
The redirects should be fixed regardless of the deletion of this page. This redirect page won't be deleted. That's fine. But articles should not wikilink to an incorrect redirect, it's merely used as a courtesy for readers. It's not intended to be the direction of links. --IP69.226.103.13 | Talk about me. 04:35, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty of placing this redirect into Category:Redirects from incorrect names and generalizing your task:

Task summary

Any link linking to a redirect in Category:Redirects from incorrect names ought to be changed to the redirect's target. If the link is piped, piping is to be preserved. If the link is unpiped, it should become piped (as necessary) to:

  1. The correct name as supplied to the template {{R from incorrect name|correct name}}
  2. The target of the redirect if it isn't to a section (contains #)
  3. The redirect name

Any objections? Josh Parris 05:26, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I am cool with this. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 05:46, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

(Rearranged this after writing: generic first, then specific to ABC)

Hangon. Your proposal for unpiped links is to have the displayed name be the "incorrect" name, but to link to the "correct" (redirected) name? That would seem to fail WP:NOTBROKEN, or I have misunderstood your description of the task. Si Trew (talk) 12:56, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
For ABC in particular, I've voted at the RFD for keep but am more than happy for a bot to do this. But I'd rather it just changed to say "Corporation" instead of preserving "Company" in the displayed text; I'd also prefer it to change all uses of "American Broadcasting Corporation" (with that exact capitalisation) in linked articles, not just the links themselves: I can imagine situations where it was linked at first use then repeated in full on a second use, though one would hope it was more often along the lines of "American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)" thence used as "ABC". I'm not over worried about it, but I can't see the harm of changing the plain text too in this case, since it is probably rare and the possibility of a false positive are small, compared to doing so at e.g. British Broadcasting Corporation which was originally the B. B. Company. But if not changed, one could end up with it being Corporation in one place and Company in another. But I am not over-worried about it as it probably is not repeated in full very much. Si Trew (talk) 12:52, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I expressed myself poorly, and have also had further time to think.

Task summary 1

Any link linking to a redirect in Category:Redirects from incorrect names ought to be changed to the redirect's target. If the link is piped, piping is to be preserved. If the link is unpiped, it should replace that with:

If the correct name as supplied to the template {{R from incorrect name|correct name}}:
  • if the correct name is an article (probably a redirect), use that1
  • otherwise make a piped link using the correct name as the text and the redirect's target as the link target
Otherwise:
  • if the the target of the redirect is to a section (contains #), make a piped link using the incorrect name as the text and the redirect's target as the link target - bypass the redirect2
  • otherwise use the redirect target
1:If this article doesn't redirect to the redirect target, a human should figure out what's gone wrong.
2:WP:NOTBROKEN allows for exceptions, of which this has two. The template that puts a redirect in Category:Redirects from incorrect names also shoves them in Category:Unprintworthy redirects, explicitly mentioned in WP:NOTBROKEN. Additionally, by removing all references to these redirects, it makes a bot's task viable - any use of these redirects is invalid and must be repaired (excluding explicit bot deny commands like {{nobots}}).
Having said that, all redirects in that cat need to be checked to ensure that particular case doesn't get exercised. For a given incorrect name redirecting to a section, there ought to be a corresponding correct name redirecting to that same section. That ought to go in the correct name field of the template.

Comments? Josh Parris 14:31, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I still find this rather unclear. I am trying to sort out:
"*if the correct name is an article (probably a redirect), use that"
The correct name should not be to a redirect. It should be to an article. Otherwise it's a double redirect.
"if the the target of the redirect is to a section (contains #), make a piped link using the incorrect name as the text and the redirect's target as the link target - bypass the redirect"
You mean, in the source article you now have the section link? That's not good. I fairly frequently make redirects specifically so that only one thing has a section link (the redirect), and link everything else through that. That way, its target can be changed, or indeed the redirect changed to an article itself, without affecting incoming links. (i.e. every problem can be solved by another layer of indirection.) What you are saying seems to me to be the opposite, you are saying place section links back into the individual articles.
The case of double redirects is not relevant to this bot, because whether or not the target of the redirect is a redirect, the problem gets no worse (in fact it is one fewer layer of redirection).
Let me try:
Task summary 2
Any link to a page in Category:Redirects from incorrect names will be changed to a new link to a target specified on that page:
'[['old name['#'old section]['|'old pipe]']]' => '[['new name[new section][new pipe]']]'
where redirect target is an intermediate result derived from:
  • The value specified as the first parameter of the first transclusion of the template {{R from incorrect name}} in old name page, if present, otherwise
  • The target of the redirect at the old name page, up to but not including the first '|', if present,ST1 otherwise
  • The target of the redirect at the old name page, if present, otherwise
  • old nameST2
new name is derived from:
  • redirect target up to but not including the first '#', if present, otherwise
  • redirect target
new section is derived from:
  • '#' + old section, if present, otherwise
  • all text from the first '#' in redirect target, if present, otherwise
  • (nothing)
new pipe is derived from:
  • '|' + old pipe, if present, otherwise
  • '|' + old name + '#' + old section, if old section is present,ST3 otherwise
  • '|' + old name
ST1 A redirect should not really contain a pipe, which will only be seen if the redirect page itself is shown, so it is harmless to discard it here.
ST2 This is really a categorization error since old name is not a redirect in this case.
ST3 Section names should not appear in displayed links, but some may do.
I think that is what we want. If not, we are still misunderstanding each other.
Best wishes Si Trew (talk) 16:31, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
This is a bit overwhelming. The name is incorrect, it will just be changed everywhere to the correct name? --IP69.226.103.13 | Talk about me. 20:31, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm sorry if it is overwhelming, but there seems to be confusion, so I thought the best way was to write it as a formal set of grammar rules. Once one starts teasing the problem out, there are apparently decisions to be made over section links to redirects to sections, redirects that themselves are piped, and so on, links that are categorised as redirects but are not, in fact, and so forth, hence the complication. For a one-off task as originally requested we could probably do a manual tidy-up, but if this is intended to be run over a wider range of articles, possibly more often, then it needs specifying pretty tightly. (I note, by the way, as I have specified it, it should be useful for other kinds of redirects from e.g. misspellings). I tried to write it out in English, but really all the first bit is saying is what forms a link (i.e. name + optional section + optional pipe), gives them names for use in the rest of the description, and then describe how the old parts and those of the redirect are combined to form the new link. I can (and did) write an English description for what a link is, but really I don't think that's where you're probably overwhelmend, and the rules of application after that seem pretty simple to me. But then, I am a software engineer. But then, a bot is software. I can't think of a better way to specify it than with a formal grammar. It's too easy in English to introduce ambiguity, Q.E.D. above.
Best wishes Si Trew (talk) 23:26, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
No. It just makes it impossible to read or understand. You have a company, American Broadcasting Company. It is written as American Broadcasting Corporation in a number of articles on wikipedia. You want to change "American Broadcasting Corporation" to "American Broadcasting Company" in a number of articles. I
So, please, what is it you want the bot to do. Do you want it to change American Broadcasting Corporation to American Broadcasting Company? Do you want it to do anything else?. Please don't give a hypothetical grammar, just post what it's going to do, because it's not going to be coded on the hypotheticals, you know. --IP69.226.103.13 | Talk about me. 23:43, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
But we don't. The task was broadened to be all' pages that are in Category:Redirects from incorrect names. Therefore the problem becomes more complicated, and thus more complicated to express. Otherwise I could just write "Change American Broadcasting Corporation to American Broadcasting Company" and be done with it. With respect, I can't see that a grammar is "hypothetical". The bot will necessarily follow grammatical rules when making these changes, so I attempted to specify the right ones. The metagrammar - that is, the grammar used to specify the grammar - may not be a Wikipedia standard or something, but as far as I know Wikipedia has no standard for specifying such grammars (if it does I shall be pleased to be pointed at it.) I can't see that to specify a string-replacement task using a formal grammar is in any way "hypothetical".Si Trew (talk) 09:13, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes IP69.226.103.13, that will be the end result. There needs to be some hammering first, and I suspect that thumbs and hammers will come into contact. There may be swearing. Josh Parris 05:36, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Task statement3

Unfortunately, earlier I mixed exception processing with normal processing, which can confuse matters. This time for sure!

Task Statement 3
Excluded cases

If the redirects are unreliable in any way, processing will exclude redirects that are (semantically) broken and require a human to fix:

Where the redirect contains {{R from incorrect name}} without a parameter:
  • redirects targetting a #section
    If it's an incorrect name and it redirecting to a sub-section of the page, there ought to be a correct name redirecting to that same sub-section of the page. This correct name ought to be added to the {{R from incorrect name}} template; the correct name redirect may need to be created.
Where the redirect contains {{R from incorrect name|correct name}}:
  • Any redirect targetting a #section that doesn't exist in the target article
    The redirect has lost its semantics and needs to be checked to see that it is still correct.
  • Any redirect where correct name is not an article/redirect name
    If the correct name is not an article/redirect, but there's one for the incorrect name, something's wrong.
  • Any redirect where the target is different to the correct name redirect target
    If the correct name is a redirect that points to a different target that the incorrect name redirect points to, something's wrong.
  • Any redirect where the target is different to the correct name article
    If the correct name is an article, but the incorrect name redirect points elsewhere, something's wrong.

Within an article containing a link to an incorrect name, if the link to the incorrect name includes a #section which doesn't exist in the target article, that link will not be processed. This is because the intended target of the link is unavailable, and now requires a human to fix it.

Normal Processing

Whatever's left is reliable to work with. Any piping will be preserved. No piping will be added. Existing #section values will be retained. No #section values will be added.

The only change will be to the base link. For each link to a Redirect from incorrect name,

if the target of the Redirect from incorrect name contains a #section
that link will be replaced with the correct name
otherwise
that link will be replaced with the target of the Redirect from incorrect name

I hope that in removing all the weird cases for humans to fix, the bot task is now clear. Josh Parris 05:36, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Are you planning a bot that changes "incorrect name" to "correct name" or are you planning a bot that changes "American Broadcasting Corporation" to "American Broadcasting Company"? --IP69.226.103.13 | Talk about me. 05:48, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
IP69.226.103.13. A bot that changes all articles linking to redirects categorised as Category:Redirects from incorrect names. Si Trew (talk) 09:23, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Looney as it seems, this very long discussion actually revealed an important weakness in a simple search and replace - the #section links need to be left in place. On 9 edits that might not have mattered; on 900 subtleties matter. I can relate to being itching to get a simple task done without extended discussions, but the people around here are quite smart and won't raise objections without good reason. If the ABC->ABC bypass is urgent, encourage the BAG members to hurry Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot 2 along. Josh Parris 14:35, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
BRFA filed Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot 2 filed for this specific case. Josh Parris 00:53, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
Josh, sounds good to me. I agree with you to remove the exception cases out. Naving not written a bot I am not sure quite what facility you have for reporting these, both technically (e.g. write to a logging page?) or that will in practice be authorised (leave a comment in the page?) but I think that is perfectly fine what you have, to go on. As far as the section name goes, having thought about it, should a section link go under R from incorrect name anyway? Because the redirect is doing more than just redirecting an incorrect name, it's redirecting to a section, and probably does not belong in that category. So I think it would be best just to exclude all redirects that have sections. Other than that, I am fine with it. I hope my reasoning of some of the finer points helped you out. Si Trew (talk) 09:23, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Analysis of other redirects in that category

There's merely several hundred entries in that category, so I'll knock up some code to have a pass over each redirect and get a rough feel for how broken things are; if they're generally okay I'll fix the broken ones by hand, otherwise I'll look at building some automated assistance. Having had a little poke at the category, I'm concerned that there are entries in there that ought not be, so a manual review of the targeting of each and every one may be called for. Josh Parris 14:35, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Summary: manually fixable.
There are 706 entries in that category, 40 without the template (of those 40, two are #section redirects). 147 of the templated redirects had a parameter passed to them, less than 15 did this wrong (this is vauge because my regex was wrong; I need to resample). Of the templated redirects that got it right, about one had a correct name that pointed somewhere other than the Incorrect Redirect. 42 of the redirects target a #section, and of those 24 specify a correct name (18 to be fixed). Josh Parris 17:03, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
That's kinda interesting. I'm surprised to find so many #section links. Are there any section links in ones that use the template? And, I don't know what you mean by "about one had a a correct name that pointed somewhere other than the Incorrect Redirect". But that kinda information is useful itself, whether or not the bot is actually run to change it! (And not just for this category, as there are many similar categories for redirects). Si Trew (talk) 17:32, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
It appears that there's another template that populates this category, I'm investigating and will report back on the implications. Josh Parris 00:53, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Umm no → WP:NOTBROKEN Tim1357 (talk) 01:44, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Tim we have discussed this about NOTBROKEN. However, NOTBROKEN does not apply to unprintworthy directs, and the template also puts them into that category. That does mean, though, there is a case for only changing those articles that go via a redirect that uses the template, not those that explicitly just put it into the category (and so may not also put it into unprintworthy redirects).
That being said, it essentially changes the nature of the problem to one of being "fix links to unprintworthy redirects". While I really think that it would be useful to have a bot that would sweep up a lot of these categories (all of the R from incorrect name type categories, for example), as part of general housekeeping, this does seem to be straying a little far from the original proposal. It was, however, for this reason that I explicitly tried to set out rules about what happened with section links and piped links, the aims being not to change the surface text in the changed article, not to introduce (indeed, to reduce) layers of indirection, and thus reduce the editing burden.
I know "redirects are cheap" in the technical sense, but they have other costs, such as human maintenance costs: while it is great one can introduce a redirect to correct/change an "incorrect name" and so make the encyclopaedia better, I think it is reasonable that a housekeeping bot then tidies up links to be to the correct name, providing this does not change the way the link is displayed, because that might hurt the surrounding text (e.g. if the grammar of the incorrect and correct name differs). Josh's analysis of one category has shown up some interesting anomalies so even if the bot is not approved or run to "fix" them, it has still been useful to perform this exercise to find out what kind of troubles lay in store.
To summarise: This proposal comes under an exclusion in NOTBROKEN because it deals with unprintworthy redirects. However, it is straying from its originally devised purpose. I think it is useful at least to analyse the problem even if we decide not to "fix" it with a bot (e.g. the bot just makes a log of problematic cases). Si Trew (talk) 09:42, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

User:Josh Parris/Redirects from incorrect names has the results of the run I made against the category of 706 entries. I think there needs to be a discussion about the use of this template, I'm not entirely sure it's correctly/consistently used. There were 40 uses of {{R from incorrect capitalisation}} which is a redirect to {{R from incorrect name}}; not an error. Errors found: 11 mis-uses of parameter1 (correct name), 6 redirects to non-existent #sections, and 18 instances of a redirect to a #section without matching use of parameter1 (the bulk of the report, as I tried to suggest an alternative redirect). Josh Parris 13:02, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

That's interesting and useful. How much of this was automated? In particular, were the candidates for alternative names automatically generated? I presume so, because I would hate to think that you laboriously went through to find them all yourself, but you don't get that from What Links Here do you (or can you, via the Python API?) If it is pretty much automated I think this would be very useful as e.g. a monthly log, even if the bot doesn't change anything. Once you've ironed out any problems with it in this category, it would be interesting to try it in other categories, I am not sure if a category of the categories that we'd cover already exists, I realise this means the task's scope has greatly expanded from the original request—indeed, if the bot does not actually change thing, the scope has moved to the point this should really be made another request I suppose and this one closed with "no action", but that's something better decided by people more experienced at the etiquette of this page.
The formatting of this log, I would suggest bullet point each entry, and the alternatives etc then put as sub-bullets, as it is a little confusing. I'd also suggest, if it is easy to do, that they are sorted into sections for "nonexistent article", "nonexistent section", "not categorized correctly", and so on (I'm not insisting on those exact names, I'd be happy with any that make sense).
Please take this all as constructive criticim only, as I think this log and others like it provide a very useful idea of the size and scope of the problem we have to tackle, whether we decide to do it manually or automatically. to this end, the Rs to nonexistent articles I will mark as CSD G8. I won't do so yet for those to nonexistent sections because I imagine one would need to look at the article to see if there are more appropriate sections to redirect to (e.g. the sections have been renamed or combined).
Best wishes Si Trew (talk) 09:24, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
Don't go tagging anything for deletion. AFAIK, every redirect there points at an article. The templates given parameters sometimes have a parameter that doesn't correspond to an article or redirect, but that's a semantic issue that a human ought to resolve.
Prettying things up is soon on my to do list.
The whole thing is a program trawling through the appropriate pages. The alternative candidates were generated by looking at all the redirects in "What links here" and seeing where, exactly, they pointed to. If it was the same place, and there wasn't a template on them, they were considered a candidate. I've now added some code to determine if it's a capitalization or other ampersand issue, and filter on that as well. I figure it's better a bot checks forty redirects to a page and filters that list down to two candidates, rather than having a human with a web browser do it. Yes, this is automated such that it could be run periodically, and as you say it's just a report so it's not changing anything.
For the moment I'm just going to focus on cleaning up the category, there's plenty of time to take this further. Based on my experience thus far, detecting errors in even these simple cases is quite complex - especially if you want decent performance.
As for closing this, there's a BRFA (bot request for authorization) in place for the original task (details up in the previous section); I filed that when I realised how long the generic case would take. Lessons from generating this report will feed back into the specification, which I'll take to some appropriate talk pages to get comments on, and then I'll be back to make a BRFA for the generic case. Josh Parris 10:57, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

TFD Helper bot

I wrote WP:TFD about this and have gotten no reply. I wrote a bot to help with WP:TFD/H. Anyways, Id like some sort of response, so I asked here. The idea is, when a template needs to be orphaned, replaced, or substituted an admin would edit this page, summoning the bot into action. Thanks! Tim1357 (talk) 00:40, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Test edits...

We really should have a bot to do things like this. I spent nearly 4 hours cleaning up stray Bold texts, Italic texts, and link title over a span of over 250 articles this morning... Why isn't a bot doing all of this cleanup!? The Thing Editor Review 05:36, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Seems an easy enough task; what's the whilelist - where are those particular edits allowed to appear? Anywhere that's not article-space, or are there articles where those particular entries would make sense?
Could Cluebot add this in? Josh Parris 06:01, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
The whitelist would likely include articles on typography and articles on markup languages. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:14, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
There are also several sports articles that have "Bold text denotes", "Bold text indicates", and other similar wordings. The Thing Editor Review 06:21, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Bot for Wikipedia in other language (ckb)

Can I make a request for bot, for wiki in another language? kurdish wikipedia needs some help, that I think its bot job.
If it isn't right place to make my request please help me to fine there, because we really need a bot.
add. info: we use arabic script, right to left text align.--Marmzok (talk) 10:20, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Can you briefly describe what you need a bot to do for you? Josh Parris 10:34, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
Sure,
  • Change numbers in content of articles 1 2 3 4... to ١ ٢ ٣ ٤...
  • change this letters in articles' content:
    • ه to ھ
    • ه‌ it is (ه + no-joiner) to ە
    • ك to ک
    • ى and ي to ی
(I don't know if you can see these lettters correctly or not, but here it is an example: ckb:هەژار and ckb:هه‌ژار are pretty similar but, if you check them you find out they aren't. both of them has same look. difference is in "ه" letter. someone use it by this code: 06BE - Arabic letter Heh Doachashmee, and the others use it by: 0648 Arabic letter Heh (depends on keyboard layouts).
  • Having article with these letters used in its pagename, means a bigger problem. Users who haven't these letters in their keyboard, can not access, or find (by searching)these pages; so we need one or more redirect pages, for every pagename has those special letters. Till now, have I described clearly?--Marmzok (talk) 14:13, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
For your first part (=changing content) you should also contact the pywikipedia developers so that they can add it to cosmetic changes. Then all bots editing page content (and having enabled cosmetic changes) will change that. For the rest a bot operator could run a bot with cc-only.
But i have in mind that there was a looong discussion in irc about a problem that there are different codes for characters and the new ones are used by Vista and Windows 7 only. It was about solving this problem by converting the characters by mediawiki when a page is saved in db. Does anyone know something more? It is a long time since that was discussed. Merlissimo 21:20, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
I could add this behavior to the pywikipediabot. Could you create a test page which countains all these letter to be encoded in reallike sample for testing purposes. --Xqt (talk) 21:41, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
Its a test page; all letters are incorrect(not-standard) in page name and content. --Marmzok (talk) 22:25, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Deferred to User talk:Marmzok for further processing --Xqt (talk) 06:19, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Adding project banner to article talk pages

Is there a bot that can add project banners to article talk pages? This is for WikiProject Algae.

I would like the bot to first add the banners with a specific importance rating (High) to a list of articles that we have chosen for High importance algal species. If the article has another project banner with a class rating it should use the same class rating. If the banner is a WikiProject Plants banner it might need to combine the banners, but I would have to verify this first.

Then I would like the bot to add the banner to all organisms that list certain classes or phyla in their taxoboxes. If the article already has a class rating from another Wikipedia Project, it should use the same class rating; the bot should not use the same importance rating, however.

Is there already a bot already that does this?

--68.127.232.132 (talk) 01:28, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

You might want to consult the operators of active bots listed under Category:WikiProject tagging bots Josh Parris 10:19, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. --68.127.232.132 (talk) 19:41, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Xenobot Mk V (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights) can inherit classes as you requested. See User:Xenobot Mk V#Instructions. –xenotalk 14:44, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Elementname

An overview

Overview
Elementname
Isotopes
Isotopes of elementname
Elementname-X
Elementname-X+1 (all non-redirects of Category:Isotopes of elementname
Elementname-X+2
...
Miscellany
Article 1
Article 2 (All other articles of Category:Elementname)
Article 3
...

The talk pages of books should be tagged with 

{{WBOOKS|class=}}
{{WP Elements|class=book|importance=na}}

After this is done, {{Wikipedia-Books|Elementname}} should be added to the Elementname and Isotopes of elementname articles (at the top of the See also section [if not present, create it])We'll do it by hand, once the books have been reviewed, and in Category:Elementname. I've set up the examples at Book:Helium and Book:Lithium (see also Helium, Lithium; Category:Helium, Category:Lithium).

Do this for elements 1–118. Previous discussion can be found here. Thanks.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 17:21, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

BRFA filed (X! · talk)  · @801  ·  18:12, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
I presume that the (All other articles of [[Category:Elementname]]) will mean that for Copper, articles from Category:Copper mining should be included in the Miscellany section? Josh Parris 00:53, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
No, just the articles directly in the category. (As far as the bot is concerned at least.) Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 03:12, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
So, only that category and no sub-categories. Josh Parris 10:19, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

UKGameshows

Many articles on British gameshows provide links to UKGameshows.com as a source. However, that site recently upgraded its software and changed its URL scheme. Old-style links look like this:

http://www.ukgameshows.com/index.php/Blockbusters http://www.ukgameshows.com/page/index.php/Lose_a_Million

(Note some have page/ and some don't.)

New-style links look like this:

http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Blockbusters http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Lose_a_Million

There are over 400 of these - could the change be automated? --Q4 (talk) 14:00, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Ill message User:ThaddeusB owner and opperater of User:DeadLinkBOT. Seems pretty easy as a wild card replacement.
Find:
http://www.ukgameshows.com/(page/%7C)index.php/
Replace with:
http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/

Tim1357 (talk) 16:08, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I corrected these links on all other wikipedias (cs, cy, de, simple, eo, fa, fi, hu, id, it, ja, nl, no, pt, pl, sh, sv, th, tr, zh). There is no link on any other wmf project. I left enwiki because ThaddeusB was already asked to do these job here.
On enwiki there are left:
and three links in file namespace
Merlissimo 10:21, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
Doesn't look like they've replied - and I'm sure they wouldn't mind if you went ahead with this given that you've already done the initial legwork. Have at it! –xenotalk 17:40, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
Mmh. ThaddeusB hasn't been active this year. Ok, tomorrow i'll run this job also on enwiki. Merlissimo 21:32, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
They (or their hoster) seem to have a DoS blocker. I could not check more than 40-50 sites without getting wrong responses. I have done about the half in the last days. So it still will take some days. Merlissimo 11:41, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
 Done The only error is http://www.ukgameshows.com/index.php/T.I.G.S which is already marked as dead in GamesMaster
btw: You are getting "nice" error if a page doesn't exists: http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Xyz Merlissimo 01:18, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Change "Financial crisis of 2007–2009" to "Financial crisis of 2007–2010"

It's a new year, but the same old crisis. Unfortunately, hundreds of pages link to the article on the current financial crisis, but do so through Financial crisis of 2007–2009. A redirect has been put in place there to the new article title; could a bot bring those outdated links up to date? 66.92.188.136 (talk) 19:15, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

BRFA filed This looks like a job for Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot 2 and its successor. Josh Parris 23:52, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
Y Done Josh Parris 08:48, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Linked dates in non-article space

Now that Full-date unlinking bot (talk · contribs) has completed its job of delinking dates in article space, there are other instances where dates are linked:

1. in non-article space e.g.

2. linked solitary months have not been treated by the bot although the rationale for linking is the same as for dates in the vast majority of cases.

Would anyone care to do the job of de-linking these? Ohconfucius ¡digame! 10:12, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

As @harej said in User_talk:Full-date unlinking bot#More work to be done!, I think this would need community approval. I'm willing to bet that @harej would be happy to do it - it will be a very simple task to re-purpose for other namespaces. Garner a consensus at the proposal Village Pump. Josh Parris 10:55, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
I oppose any such bot for the file or template space, as the content of these is too unpredictable to let a bot loose on them. I'm undecided about category and portal. --Jc3s5h (talk) 16:56, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
Can you enlighten us as to what the nature of those linked dates are, compared with those in article space, which would contribute to its greater 'unpredictability', thus your objection? Ohconfucius ¡digame! 03:40, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
Templates contain complex code like

}}{{#if:{{{accessdaymonth|}}}{{{accessmonthday|}}}{{{accessday|}}}{{{accessmonth|}}}{{{accessyear|}}}{{{day|}}}{{{access-date|}}}{{{dateformat|}}}|[[Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters|{{NAMESPACE}}

Who knows what you might find in there?
As for files, I now realize you probably meant the associated file description page. If that's what you meant, I'm undecided, because I have not found a satisfying description of what the syntax of the file description page is. --Jc3s5h (talk) 03:57, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
The bot won't be able to distinguish something like that as a date, so it wouldn't touch it. Mr.Z-man 15:39, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
My point is that templates are not written in English. So far, we have relied on our intuitive knowledge of how English works to realize that a full linked date just wouldn't happen unless it actually was a date. Since our knowledge of English does not apply to templates, we need some experts in template syntax to guarantee that what looks like a full linked date would never show up in a template unless it actually was a date. --Jc3s5h (talk) 15:45, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
If something in a template looks like a linked date, then MediaWiki is probably also treating it as one and trying to autoformat it, so if it isn't actually a date, the template might already be broken. Mr.Z-man 15:54, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
Considerable caution needs to be exercised before fully automating this task in the file namespace, since year links may be legitimate in the context of describing the articles in which an image is used, and are actually required for fair use rationales of images used in year articles. Similarly, portals might use year links in the direct description of year articles, rather than mere chronological references. Any delinking of dates needs to exempt the first reference to the date described in intrinsically chronological categories, such as 1985 in baseball - something like this should never happen. Az29 (talk) 19:44, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

There are hundreds of pages that link to The Sun when they should link to The Sun (newspaper). The former page redirects to Sun after this requested move. The links that go to the wrong place should be fixed, but this task probably shouldn't be fully automated, in case there are some links that actually were meant to point to "Sun" or some other use of the term. Graham87 00:55, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like an AWB task doesn't it? Rd232 talk 16:29, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
OK, I wasn't aware of Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks. I've copied my request there. Graham87 02:27, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Standardize national lists of most populous cities

As I discussed long-windedly at the village pump, there should be a standard format to make it easier to find lists of cities by population for a given nation. I propose two (or possibly three) major tasks be done by bot:

  1. Rename all such pages to the format List of cities in ____ by population*. For example, List of cities in the People's Republic of China by population presently existsuses this format, but Largest cities in Indonesia and List of United States cities by population use other formats. The latter two articles should be renamed to use the same format.
  2. (Is there any need to provide missing redirects? E.g., List of Indonesian cities by population? Once everything redirects to a canonically-named article, I don't think there's any need to provide these, because the user won't be tempted to guess a non-canonical format. So this probably isn't necessary.)
  3. Assign all these pages to a new category, Category:Lists of most populous cities by country*. This new category will be a subcat of both Category:Lists of cities by country and Category:Lists of cities by population.

Names marked with a * could be modified before we start by consensus, but I didn't get any suggestions of alternate names from the village pump discussion linked above, so I'm just supplying my own best guess.

I have poor to moderate coding skills in several languages so my first choice would be to find an experienced 'bot author to mentor me through this process. - Regards, PhilipR (talk) 04:43, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Kind of a different request

I'm not entirely sure if this is the right place, so feel free to move this if necessary.

I'm an administrator over at the Star Trek fanfic wiki, and we've got about 2,500 rank insignia images that need to be converted from .PNG to .png. Obviously, to do so manually would be a herculean task (one rank insignia image is used on about 150 different pages), so I was wondering if any of the members here who program bots would be willing to help us out.

All of the images are by one author, so they use one licensing template, so it should be easy enough for the bot to focus on them specifically (correct me if I'm wrong on any of this). Basically, what's needed is to go through the pages that link to the images and change the links to .png, while also moving the images themselves from .PNG to .png and deleting the redirects. Is that possible?

Also, I am putting in a similar request at several other wikis, so if you're willing to do it, please let me know but don't start working on it until I confirm it with you, as I'd rather not have anyone work on a bot and then be told that their efforts aren't needed. --Kevin W. 19:45, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Couldn't you just use m:movepages.py and suppress the redirects? –xenotalk 19:47, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Well, I also need to go through all of the pages that link to the images and change the links. If I suppress the redirects without changing the pages, then all of those pages (emphasis on all) will just have red links. --Kevin W. 20:04, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
So if I understand correctly, you want to change a given list of files from .PNG to .png, then go through and change the links from .PNG to .png, and then delete the old file names? Smallman12q (talk) 20:55, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, that's correct. --Kevin W. 21:10, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
So I would say 1) use movepages.py 2) don't suppress the redirects 3) update the links using AWB or similar 4) use delete.py or Twinkle's d-batch to delete the redirects. –xenotalk 21:12, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
Ok, would you mind walking me through all of that? I'm not sure exactly how to do it. --Kevin W. 21:19, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
I downloaded AWB. I think I see what I'm supposed to do with it, but it'd probably be better if you gave me a walkthrough so I don't catastrophically screw something up. --Kevin W. 22:21, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm at a complete loss. You guys will have to walk me through this. --Kevin W. 20:18, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Um...try the wikia help forum at http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:Help_desk .Smallman12q (talk) 00:19, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
That works too. Thanks for the help. --Kevin W. 04:01, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
AWB will be a simple find and replace... The movepages.py will need a text file called moves.txt with the following composition
Image.PNG Image.png
Image2.PNG Image2.png
Then (after logging in) you just python movepages.py -file:moves.txt –xenotalk 17:21, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

db-author bot

Resolved
 – Dont fix what ain't broken. 04:24, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd like a bot my bot can call to delete a talk-page that only my bot has contributed to. Extending that, I'd like a adminbot that honors any {{db-author}} tagged page that has only one contributor. Josh Parris 23:21, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Should ignore user /user talk pages. –xenotalk 01:05, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
Why is that? The only condition for the user / usertalk pages is that the person who requested deletion is the person who owns the userspace. I was thinking something like this
Page may be deleted if
  • There has only been one editor (ever) to the page that is tagged for deletion.
  • The user who requested deletion is the same one after the User/User talk prefix. (I.E. the page is theirs)
Xeno, if you wanted to run such a bot, I would be happy to write it for you. Tim1357 (talk) 02:16, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I got confused with this and a discussion elsewhere (was thinking the bot shouldn't delete a page if the user blanks it, but if they tag it as db-author, that's fine). The bot can go ahead and delete as long as they are the only author. –xenotalk 16:53, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
Sure, I could run it... –xenotalk 17:53, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I will be changing WildBot so that when a CSD tag is placed an article, WildBot will notice that and tag the article's talk page width db-G7 (if valid), and have this proposed bot delete it. That should make the talk page disappear before a human even evaluates the CSD. If the CSD is removed by anyone, WildBot will recreate the talk page, and the cycle will continue. Josh Parris 11:05, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Why? Am I missing something? There is no reason to tag the talk page simply because the article was tagged. If the article get's deleted, the admin should delete the talk page (if they miss it, it will be cleaned up later anyhow). A valid talk page should never be deleted before the article. There may be relevant conversation that the admin should see. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:16, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
CSD-G7 allows the author and only contributor to a page to request its speedy deletion. The way WildBot works is it leaves a message on the talk page, rather than the article, detailing the errors it found. Given that a CSD almost invariably has no discussion on its talk page, the only contributor to the talk page will be WildBot, and so a {{db-g7}} tag will be viable. This will eliminate what I'm told is about six extra clicks and the associated cognitive burden. Josh Parris 12:26, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
It's 2 clicks and it's not a huge problem. –xenotalk 16:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
Okey Dokey. Tim1357 (talk) 04:24, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Children's Literature Project Banner

A couple of us have been doing some nuts and bolts work on the WP:WikiProject Children's literature. I have found that there are a lot of articles which have a category that fall under our project, such as Category:Series of children's books which have quite a few books that aren't tagged. There are literally dozens of categories. Is it proper to make such a request? If so how is the best way to communicate those categories? Barkeep49 (talk) 16:30, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

If anyone is willing to accept the request, there is a reasonably comprehensive list of the categories involved at Category:Category-Class children and young adult literature articles. strdst_grl (call me Stardust) 11:13, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Most bots in Category:WikiProject tagging bots should be able to handle it. You're looking to add the WikiProject template to the pages that fall within its purview? Josh Parris 11:42, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Prodding Notification Bot

I am sure many of you must have seen the recent requests for comment on biographies of living persons. Although it is too early to say for sure, it looks like one of the methods that will be adopted will the steady prodding of all unsourced BLPs. While this is perhaps necessary, it could be avoided if the articles were sourced instead. However, one issue is that there are simply not that many editors that know where to find articles that they actually care about. However, this could be easily remedied if there was a bot to notify relevant WikiProjects that one of their articles was being considered for deletion by this process. The message might go something along the lines of:

The following articles, which belong to your WikiProject, are being considered for deletion because they currently lack sources.

<list>

If you wish to save any of the following articles, please simply add a reliable source to the article and remove the {{prod blp}} template.

Obviously, that message could use some work, but I wouldn't think that designing this bot would be too difficult. The bot could associate articles with WikiProjects using the talk page banners, and make one set of posts to the Projects' talk pages, updating the list, each day. Thoughts? NW (Talk) 23:57, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I support this proposal. I think a bot that fulfills a purpose along these lines would be an asset, even if the prodding process does not go ahead. While I can't speak for every project on wikipedia, I'm involved in half a dozen wikiprojects with varying degrees of size and activity. In all of those, if the project were directly notified of specific, unsourced BLPs, I'm certain that action would be taken. WFCforLife (talk) 02:29, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
BTW, WP:AALERTS already does this. The article must be tagged by the Wikiproject, and the Wikiproject must be subscribed to the alerts however. And additional message might not hurt however. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Ah yes, I had thought that I remembered something like Article Alerts. However, one of the issues that I found with that was that it combined a wide variety of things into its notifications in addition to deletion issues, ranging from FAC notifications to DYK listings to RfCs. It would be nice if the DYKs could be screened out and highlighted elsewhere. NW (Talk) 03:31, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
They can. See Wikipedia:Article_alerts/Subscribing#Choosing which workflows to subscribe for. See also User:JL-Bot/Project content for listing DYKs seperatly. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 03:49, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
So, I'm...16 months behind? Not bad. Anyway, one problem I see with the Article Alerts system is that it is currently opt-in. I wouldn't think there would really be too much of a problem if we made it opt-out and added a link or a transclusion to the WikiProject's talk page. In addition, is there be a way to have two separate versions of Article Alerts for one WikiProject, one for the standard alerts and another for just proposed deletions? NW (Talk) 03:57, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Impossible to make it opt-out, as there's too much variability involved (what's the banner/what's the taskforce's category). And yes there's a way to setup more than one alerts per project. Setup one on Page A, using all the parameters you want, and it'll create a report at Page A/Article alerts. If you want to use a different set of parameters, set one on Page B, and it'll generate a report at Page B/Article Alerts. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 04:02, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Please forgive me if this is a dumb question, but I don't know anything about how these bots work, and I want to make sure I understand: Can the WP:AALERTS bot already provide Wikiprojects with lists of unreferenced BLPs that have been tagged by that project? -- JohnWBarber (talk) 03:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

There is another bot that can do that User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings. Here's what it's output looks like: Wikipedia:WikiProject Arkansas/Cleanup listing. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 03:58, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Excellent. Thanks. I also just found this from a discussion over at the Wikiproject Mathmatics talk page: [5] -- There's a Wikiprojects council page somewhere that should be informed about this deleting business so they can alert Wikiprojects to the situation. Individual editors might use the program I just linked to. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 04:03, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
I left a note at the Wikiprojects Council talk page. [6] -- JohnWBarber (talk) 04:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Ibid. etc.

A bot should check all articles for ref tags like <ref>Ibid.</ref> or <ref>Op. cit.</ref> and place {{Ibid}} (plus current date) in the "References" section for all positive returns. --bender235 (talk) 16:16, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Ill file a BRFA for this, but it seems like it could be a good job for an AWB genfix. Tim1357 (talk) 17:19, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
I thought about AWB, too, but I think this is a task the can be done fully automatic rather than semi-automatic. --bender235 (talk) 21:55, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
If added to AWB it could be automatically done as part of semi-automatic edits. File a Feature request if interested. Rjwilmsi 19:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Bot to move articles from main space to Wikipedia:Article Incubator

Hello, I am interested in a bot to automate moving main space articles from main space to a subpage of Wikipedia:Article Incubator also a subpage of wikiprojects.

Example using bob silly Johnson (flutist) :

  1. Article moved to: Wikipedia:Article Incubator/Unreferenced BLPs/Music/bob silly Johnson (flutist)
  2. the {{Article Incubator|status=new}} is added to the top of bob silly Johnson (flutist).
  3. all categories and templates on bob silly Johnson (flutist) are hidden using <!-- -->

Ikip 01:23, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

How would the bot know when to move a page? Tim1357 (talk) 04:15, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Good question, thanks for asking.
Using CatScan Wikipedia:Article Incubator will make a list, which could be posted to Wikipedia:Article Incubator/Unreferenced BLPs/Football/List the bot would use this list. Ikip 17:59, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Sure, thats pretty easy. Do you have a link to where there may be consensus? Tim1357 (talk) 18:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Another good question, working on it :) Ikip 19:15, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

BLP dustup etc

  • Sorry if this is Perennial...
  1. Go through Unreferenced BLPs, remove all Orphans. Then sort the remainders either by:
  2. priority in any Wikiproject. This would involve somehow getting master lists of "All whatever-priority" articles, which would be a huge pain in the butt, but hey, isn't that what bots are for? Or...
  3. number of mainspace articles linking to the unreferenced BLP. Or...
  4. whatever else you can think of.

The goal is to filter for high-value unreferenced BLPs, to make referencing them a bit more efficient. • Ling.Nut 18:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

This sounds similar to something being worked on, except maybe the opposite. Mr.Z-man 22:00, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Deleted template

{{Ideology-small}} has been deleted after the discussion that took place at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2010 January 9#Template:Ideology-small, which is now closed. A bot should remove it from the articles that still include it MBelgrano (talk) 22:04, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

There were only a dozen, so I removed them by hand. Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 20:21, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Bot for NFL Grid Cleanups

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

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

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

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

Bot for NFL Grid Cleanups

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

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

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

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

Maybe easy?

I hope I'm requesting at the right place. I was wondering if it's possible for a bot to collect new articles added to WikiProject Primates (or recently tagged with {{WikiProject Primates}}) and adding them to a page as a list. This information will be used to show cast the WikiProject's newest additions on the primates portal. Thanks, --ZooFari 03:04, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I think User:AlexNewArtBot does something like this. Mr.Z-man 04:52, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Book-problem bot

Wikipedia books are a bit unique in that redirects and disambiguation pages are potentially of disastrous consequences.

For example, if a book contains

Article 1
Article 2

and that Article 2 redirects to Article 1, what will be rendered/printed is

Article 1
Article 1

So it would be great if a bot could go through all books (every day/second day/week/month...?) and create a report on the talk page of the book. The bot should look for:

Redirects
Section links
Duplicate entries (including those due to redirects)
Disambiguation pages
Redlinks/deleted pages

A sample report (for a hypothetical Book:Physics journals) could be something like:

Redirects

Please verify that redirects point to the intended targets. Consider updating the links, or piping them.

Section links

Linking to an article section will include the entire article.

Duplicates

Disambiguation pages
  • Journal of Physics is a disambiguation page. Please update the link with the intended article.

Redlinks

BookProblemBot (talk) 16:36, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

This should run on both community books and user books. Further tweaks could be made to the bot over time, once more problems are identified. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 16:36, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

This isn't a huge variation on what WildBot does at the moment, so I'm willing to put my hand up. Josh Parris 23:48, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I have some code that does part of this job; the results are visible at User:Zetawoof/BookList. It's not currently in a bot form, and I'm not really feeling up to the task of writing one now -- but I'd be more than willing to pass the code on to anyone who's interested in making use of it. Zetawoof(ζ) 05:39, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
If no-one else is enthusiastic about developing a bot, I'd certainly be interested in running an eye over the sources used to produce your disturbingly voluminous reports, Zetawoof Josh Parris 14:12, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Per request, see User:Zetawoof/BookList/Code. I offer no warranties. Zetawoof(ζ) 09:14, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
It's probably appropriate, Headbomb, to ask if there's a consensus lying around suggesting that this kind of activity would be welcomed? Josh Parris 14:12, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
I've notified WP:Books and WP:WBOOKS of this discussion shortly after I made it. But honestly, there's no possible reason why someone would oppose this (at least valid ones). It would report major issues which should be fixed immediately (except in the case of redirects, which may not be critical). Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 16:17, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Having started work on the BRfA for this, I'm come to the conclusion that redirects ought not be a problem; they would be if they're a redirect to a disambiguation page, or if they create duplicates, but other than that they're a handy way of retitling a section of the book. Is this reasoning faulty? Josh Parris 04:52, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Retitling should be done as [[Target|Rename]]. For most redirects, such as Richard P. Feynman redirecting to Richard Feynmann, the book is still fine. However, for a redirect such as Nicole (Dead or Alive) (which used to be a standalone article, but now redirects to List of characters in the Dead or Alive series#Spartan-458 (Nicole)), this is more problematic, since the author didn't mean to include the list, but rather the individual entry. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 05:22, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Okay, what about notifying about redirects that contain a #section link, and ignoring the rest? Josh Parris 06:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Again, if the redirect has been made without the section link Nicole (Dead or Alive) → List of characters in the Dead or Alive series, this should be picked, because that is not what was intended. Also, can the bot-code be released/be made open source so the other editions of Wikipedia [such as .fr and .de] can benefit from it? Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 13:38, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I see. The difficulty is for the bot to be able to distinguish between ignored reports and invalid reports (invalid reports ought to have the notice removed, and not replaced). In the specific case of Nicole (Dead or Alive), it targets a #section of List of characters in the Dead or Alive series, so so can be happily reported as an error. However, there may be cases where a redirect goes to an article without a #section link and yet this is acceptable. So, is it reasonable to say "you can use redirects without the bot complaining, as long as you pipe them (perhaps as [[redirect|]] or [[redirect|redirect]])?".
Per code publication: the ethos of this project is free availability of information, except where that would affect the 'pedia negatively (anti-vandal bots, unwatched page lists). I subscribe to that view and publish the source code for all my operating bots - if I was hit by a bus, it would be a shame if my bots died with me. Josh Parris 09:43, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Hence why I used the wording "Please verify that redirects point to the intended targets. Consider updating the links, or piping them." If a user wants to eliminated these from the reports, all he has to do is use the non-redirect path. For example Richard P. Feynman should be either [[Richard Feynman]], or [[Richard Feynman|Richard P. Feynman]] (depending on what the user wants to be displayed for title), and next time the bot runs, it won't be featured in the report. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 14:03, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

BRFA filed Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot 5 Josh Parris 06:37, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Needs infobox tagging

Resolved
 –  Task running... –xenotalk 15:09, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Are there any bots which can search all the articles in a category and, if they do not contain an infobox template, tag their project box with |needs-infobox=yes ? I have tried to do this task manually but the sheer number of articles (I am looking to search and tag every article B class or under in WikiProject Children's Literature) means that it will take far too long to be practical. strdst_grl (call me Stardust) 17:46, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Sure... Should very short articles be excluded? To maximize the utility of the edits, would you like the bot to autoassesse the unassessed articles while it's there? –xenotalk 19:22, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
I think it's best to keep the very short articles, but autoassessing shouldn't be neccessary - the existing backlog is only six articles. Thanks! strdst_grl (call me Stardust) 21:08, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Hm, I probably should've checked that before suggesting it! =) Well, I have a list at User:Xenobot Mk V/sandbox, do you want to look it over briefly, maybe view a dozen or so pages at random and make sure they're all good for the tag? –xenotalk 21:11, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Looks good to me. strdst_grl (call me Stardust) 21:29, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Exclamation points in the mainspace

MZM recommended that I move this request from WT:DBR.

It would be nice if we could get a list of mainspace articles that possibly have bad usage of the "!" symbol (from vandalism, spam, unencyclopedic comments, etc).

Conditions
  • All occurrences within 'single quotes', "double quotes", italics and bold are excluded.
  • Anything within a wikilink is excluded.
  • Any ! symbol within [single brackets] that begin with a url after the [ is excluded. e.g.: [http://example.com Example Gaming! official site]
  • Anything inside <ref></ref> is excluded.
  • Any articles with a ! symbol in the title are automatically excluded (i.e., Yahoo!).
  • Certain articles should be added to a whitelist: i.e., Punctuation (I can compile a list).

We'll definitely get false positives. But, if possible, I think a bot/report of this would be quite useful. I'm not great with bot-type stuff, so lemme know if this is an implausible idea. ;) JamieS93 21:46, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I will definitely help you if I get a tooserver account. If you want the list sooner, I would suggest the database dump report request page, which is different from the Database Report Page. Tim1357 (talk) 03:02, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

One News

Can you fix "ONE News" to "One News" (on plain text) or "One News (New Zealand)" (on the links)? I'll redirect ONE News to One News soon. JSH-alive talk • cont • mail 07:18, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

List of edits that caused citation errors

Occasionally, I go through Category:Pages with broken reference names to fix citation errors which were not fixed by AnomieBOT. Using WikiBlame, I search for the word "error" to specify which edit caused the citation error.

The bot I'm requesting would help by listing the edits that caused the citation error. Something like:

Sole Soul (talk) 10:52, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_33&oldid=1197994474"