AutoWikiBrowser is not a bot^[1]; edits made using this software are the responsibility of the editor using it.

AutoWikiBrowser

Developer(s)	AutoWikiBrowser project

Stable release	2.3.0.0 / 2006-04-09
Preview release	SVN (SVN) [±]

Repository	sourceforge.net/p/autowikibrowser/code/HEAD/tree/
Operating system	Windows
Type	Wikipedia editor
License	GPL
Website	sourceforge.net/.../autowikibrowser

[[:|WP:AWB]]

The AutoWikiBrowser is a semi-automated Wikipedia editor for Microsoft Windows 2000/XP (or newer), designed to make tedious repetitive tasks quicker and easier. It works its way through a list of articles, prompting to be saved. It can automatically make many small fixes (mainly formatting) and can find and replace (either simple or regex). According to Microsoft, regular expressions are handled much as in Perl 5.

At present, AutoWikiBrowser can create a list of articles from a category, a "what links here", the wiki links on an article, a text file, or a Google search. Planned improvements include the ability to make a list from a database dump.

The sources are available under GPL license (see Getting the sources below). It is written in C# using Microsoft Visual C# Express Edition, which is downloadable for free. There is an AWB IRC channel at [1].

Examples of AWB-assisted work are noted on the projects page.

^ AWB does have an automatic mode enabled for some bot accounts, so can be used as a bot, but it normally just assists a human.

Rules of use

Check every edit before you save it.
Don't edit too fast, consider opening a bot account if you are regularly making more than a few edits a minute.
Don't do anything controversial with it.
Avoid making extremely minor edits such as only adding or removing some white space or moving a stub tag. The Spaces section in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style Headings guideline contains details on different acceptable spacing options in and around section headings.

Versions

Version history. Select show to expand.

Version	Release date	Notes
2.3.0.0	09 April 2006	Added option to not skip blank pages. Other minor usability tweaks.
2.2.0.1	07 April 2006	Added back "using AWB" to summary by popular demand, and fixed minor bug.
2.1.9.0	04 April 2006	Many general tweaks to the parsing engine, added "paste more" option to context menu.
2.1.8.0	29 March 2006	added go to line function
2.1.7.0	28 March 2006	Improved unicodifyer, added "go to line" to context menu, some other minor improvements.
2.1.6.0	27 March 2006	Fixed bug with adding watchlist items.
2.1.5.0	26 March 2006	Many general improvements and changes.
2.1.4.0	19 March 2006	Minor improvements.
2.1.2.0	16 March 2006	Fixed re-categorisation problem, some general improvements.
2.1.1.0	14 March 2006	General tweaking, removes excess space around pipes, added checkbox to automatically unicodify entire article, makes exception for – — and
2.1.0.0	12 March 2006	General fixes and tweaks
2.0.8.0	08 March 2006	Fixed some small issues, added %%title%% keyword to find and replace to represent the article title.
2.0.7.0	07 March 2006	Fixed issue with listing from categories, some other small improvements.
2.0.3.0	06 March 2006	More features, faster, more reliable.
2.0.2.0	04 March 2006	Buttons now enabled/disabled as appropriate. Fixed some issues on other wikis. General tweaks and improvements.
2.0.1.0	02 March 2006	Fixed "find" button, added (some) support for other language wikis. And some other small tweaks.
2.0.0.0	27 February 2006	Lots of bug fixes and minor improvements.
1.98	20 February 2006	Some bugs fixed.
1.97	17 February 2006	Some small bug fixes, handles downed server a bit better.
1.96	16 February 2006	Can filter "inclusion" when making list, now has stop button.
1.95	15 February 2006	Many improvements to interface, logging in and other. Now has case sensitive option for skipping articles.
1.94	14 February 2006	Hopefully fixed logging in issue, also improved automatic mode, but most can't use this at the moment.
1.93	14 February 2006	Many minor improvements and tweaks, now checks user registered when "makelist" clicked, can load and save settings from/to specified path, if you appear unregistered it will offer to send an error report, this emails me some settings and variables, otherwise it is extremely difficult to work out what the problem is. Plus issue with usernames with some punctuation fixed.
1.92	14 February 2006	Minor regex improvements.
1.91	13 February 2006	Numerous general improvements, notably to the interface.
1.9	12 February 2006	More minor tweaks and fixes, plus addresses some issues involving clicking inside the browser.
1.89	12 February 2006	Tweaked bad-link fixing code
1.881	11 February 2006	Fixed bug involving bolding article title.
1.88	11 February 2006	Mathwiz2020 fixed the annoying issue with losing user focus, it now works seemlessy in the background. Plus some minor improvements (performance + stability).
1.87	10 February 2006	Fixed IE bug with fancy fonts in URLs (thanks to Adrian Buehlmann's research). Now converts interwiki links to unicode and option in edit textbox context menu to convert any selected text to unicode. Some other minor improvements.
1.86	09 February 2006	Two minor bugs fixed, plus handles failure of wikimedia servers better.
1.85	08 February 2006	Option in menu to skip pages that it hasn't made any changes to, fixed minor bug.
1.84	07 February 2006	Saves settings.xml file now as well.
1.83	06 February 2006	Fixed bug with moving category in deletion templates.
1.82	06 February 2006	Case insensitive find and replace. Can now load settings, not save yet though, the values can be changed in the XML file.
1.81	05 February 2006	Now does multiple find and replaces.
1.8	02 February 2006	Bug fix and minor improvements per talk page.
1.7.9	01 February 2006	Option to enable timer in menu. Make list from user contribs (last 5000, although it removes duplicates, so will be less). Core program is more efficient. Automatically does not perform "general fixes" on talk, user, template and wikipedia namespaces. Plus some other minor improvements.
1.7.8	29 January 2006	Changed how AWB works in the background.
1.7.7	29 January 2006	Fixed bug in removing categories.
1.7.6	28 January 2006	Re-arranged options, hopefully more intuitive now. Can now add/remove categories. Some other minor improvements, and possibly fixed issue some have with logging in.
1.7.5	26 January 2006	Minor tweaks and fixes, including now bulleting all links in "external links" section.
1.7.4	24 January 2006	Fixed enabled-user-checker.
1.7.3	24 January 2006	Fixed enabled-user-checker.
1.7.2	24 January 2006	Fixed enabled-user-checker.
1.7.1	18 January 2006	Minor tweaks.
1.7	17 January 2006	Minor tweaks, plus now has "ignore if doesn’t contain".
1.6.9	15 January 2006	Minor improvements.
1.6.8	13 January 2006	Yet more tweaks and minor improvements, what links here not limited to 5000 anymore.
1.6.7	12 January 2006	Even more tweaks and minor fixes, what links here limited to 5000 due to apparent change in mediawiki software.
1.6.5	11 January 2006	More tweaks and minor fixes, Mathwiz2020 fixed occasional problem with bypassing redirects.
1.6.4	9 January 2006	Multiple improvements to re-categorisation and general fixes. Now alerts user if article has multiple links to the same page.
1.6.3	9 January 2006	Improved regexes, fixed a couple of minor bugs. New messages cause the AWB to check that you are still an enabled user. Mathwiz2020 fixed security issues on enabled user-checking, and added internal and external bad link repair (under general fixes).
1.6.2	7 January 2006	A few small bug fixes.
1.6	2 January 2006	Fixed a couple of minor bugs, disabled date removal until it becomes uncontroversial.
1.5	1 January 2006	Put the Link FA template and Wikipedia:Persondata in correct place. Removes any duplicate categories.
1.4	30 December 2005	Checks you are logged in on every edit and a few other improvements.
1.3	29 December 2005	Can now make a list from a google search, a couple of other tweaks.
1.2	28 December 2005	Fixed a couple bugs, some other improvements.
1.1	27 December 2005	Fixed a few bugs, improved the layout.
1.0	27 December 2005	Sorts interwikis, categories and stubs so they are in alphabetical order at the bottom of the page, added context menu item that inserts birth and death categories (it works out the dates from the first dates in the article). Some other tweaks and fixes. New date regex.
0.995	23 December 2005	Added progress bar, tweaked the re-cat feature, added Bobblewik's new regexes, "ignore if contains" looks in title and text now.
0.99	22 December 2005	"What links here" now gets all pages rather than 5000 limit, new regex for removing dates, option to replace some html entities with unicode, worked around bug that IE has with some URLs containing fancy fonts in certain situations.
0.98	19 December 2005	Can get links from a text file now, improved ability to get links on a page. Can mark all edits as minor or add to watchlist via menu option. Improved menu system.
0.95	19 December 2005	Added "Preview instead of diff" option to menu, will make image tagging easy as it loads the preview instead of diff, (need to add more image tags to context menu). Made list a bit wider. Added "Preview" and "Diff" buttons that show or refresh (if already showing) the diff and preview. Added "beta" menu tab, which has option to remove excess links using Bobblewik's regex, be careful using this.
0.9	18 December 2005	Added context menu for article list, which now includes ability to filter out duplicates (which sorts alphetically for sake of efficiency). Bypasses redirects (disable in options menu).
0.85	17 December 2005	Fixed couple of bugs, added context menu to list of articles box, improved filter, can save list to txt file now.
0.8	15 December 2005	Couple of minor bugs fixed, added "filter" to get only main namespace articles, added regex to "ignore if contains". Disabled auto mode, as it can only be used when you have permission from Wikipedia:Bots.
0.72	14 December 2005	"Auto tag" feature will add wikify and stub tags when appropriate, couple of other features, "append message" only works on talk pages now.
0.71	14 December 2005	Bug fix release. Hey, I said it was a development version didn't I!
0.7	13 December 2005	Added ability to get links from a page (still need to be able to get links from a txt file), added Multiextended mode and remove for the list box, fixed a couple of bugs.
0.6	12 December 2005	A few bug fixes, made it so you have to be registered here to eliminate risk of vandalism. Added some features, still can't make a list by getting all the links on a page, that's next.
0.5	10 December 2005	Added a few things, fixed a few things. Bot mode is disabled for security reasons, but if you want it, please ask.
0.4	9 December 2005	Recategorisation enabled, "articles in category" finds sub-categories now, better context menu for the textbox, some other stuff.
0.3	9 December 2005	Added "what links here" support and some other tweaks.
0.2	8 December 2005	Surprisingly stable, many features to come.

Using this software

Screenshot

(1) Register

For security reasons only users listed on the check page are able to use AutoWikiBrowser. Add your name to the requests for registration if you would like to use the software.

Anyone can be registered, but only if an admin approves your registration by placing your name on the check page. As a general rule users with more than 500 edits will be registered. You will probably not be contacted when your registration has been approved, so check the page periodically for your name.

(2) Download

After you are registered, or if you just want to examine the software, you may download AutoWikiBrowser from SourceForge. Note: This is a development version!

AutoWikiBrowser requires Microsoft Windows 2000/XP or newer (Unicode doesn't work properly on Windows 98/Me). It also requires the Version 2 of the .NET framework (download .NET framework).

If the software doesn't work, it probably means that you're not registered or that you don't have the correct .NET framework installed.

(3) Get started

Select "Make from Category" then enter a category name.
Click "Make list", let the list load up.
Set any options, such as find and replace, edit summary, etc.
Click "Start!", it will load up the article, automatically make any changes and then go to the diff.
Change anything in the article you want in the textbox on the lower right, not the normal website textbox in the browser, then click "Save" or "Ignore", the next page will load up automatically.

Having problems?

Occasionally it stalls when loading, just click "start" again to give it a nudge.
- This might well be because you have navigated to a different window: AWB needs to remain in the foreground while loading up a new page.
It uses the Internet Explorer core, so if you have problems, make sure your IE is working. Make sure you have logged into Wikipedia using IE.
- If you have made changes to monobook.css (or whatever your theme is) that require CSS 2 or 3, they may not appear properly in IE and thus in AWB. Installing the newest IE7 beta may fix this problem.
If you are having problems creating a list from "what links here" try clearing your Internet Explorer cache.

User manual

This section will explain what all the bits and pieces do, please help!

"Make list"

Make from:

Category Gets a list of sub categories and articles from the category.
What links here Gets a list from the "what links here" of an article, from all namespaces, to remove articles from non-mainspaces sort the list alphabetically, then remove them.

Option: Inclusion only - same as What links here, but only gets pages that link by inclusion (i.e., ((PAGENAME)))

Links on page Gets all the wiki-links from the given page, all namespaces.
Text file Will get a list from a text file, the articles in the text should be [[Wiki linked]].
Google Wikipedia Gets a list from a google search of the English Wikipedia.
User contribs Gets articles edited by a specific user

Make list Makes list based upon given options
Add Adds item in box to list.
Remove Removes selected item from list.
Clear Clears entire list.

"Set options"

Apply general fixes
- Fixes common mistakes in "see also" and "external links" sections, removes excess white space.
- Sorts interwiki links and categories alphabetically (individually selectable in menu), and puts them at the bottom of the page with stubs.
- Unicodifies interwiki links.
- Removes duplicate interwikis and categories.
- Adds bullet points to external links after the ==External links==.
- Replaces italic and bold html markup with wiki markup.
- Repairs bad links.
- Simplifies links like [[Dog|Dog]] to [[Dog]].
- Simplifies links like [[Dog|Dogs]] to [[Dog]]s.
- Adds bold text to the first occurence of the title of the article (if there is no other bold text).
- De-links self referencing wiki-links.
Auto tag Appends ((Wikify)) and ((stub)) tags when appropriate.
Find and replace Enables multiple find and replacement. Can specify case sensitivity and Perl-style regular expression patterns. The keyword %%title%% represents the article title. For information on setting options such as multi or single line see here.
Categorisation Add/Remove/Replace categories (replace only available when making a list from a category), enter the new category name minus the Category: prefix.
Skip if contains/doesn't contain Skips articles that do or do not contain the given string/regex.

"More options"

Append message Appends the given text to the bottom of the page (talk pages only).
Auto-mode will make saves automatically at given interval, only to be used by people with bot accounts.
Subst'ing Enables subst'ing of certain templates, not enabled on release version at present.

"Start"

Summary - the edit summary, either select one from the drop down, or enter your own text.
Article statistics - various statistics such as number of characters and images.
Alerts - displays alerts when, for example, the article is uncategorized, is long but tagged as a stub, etc.
Start the process - starts the process when you have a list of articles.
Stop - stops the editing process.
Preview - changes the view to preview (and updates any extra changes you made).
Show changes - changes the view to the diff (and updates any extra changes you made).
Ignore - moves on to the next page without saving anything.
Save - saves the page, including any extra changes you made, then moves on to next article.

Menus

File

Save settings Saves settings to specified path.
Load settings Loads settings from specified path.
Exit Quits program.

List

Filter out non main space Removes all non-main space articles.
Sort alphabetically Sorts list alphabetically.
Save list to text file Saves list to text file (which can be used later on to create new list, as described above.)

General

WordWrap Wraps the text in the edit box at bottom-right.
Bypass redirects Instead of editing pages that redirect to another page, AWB edits the page to which it redirects.
Ignore non-existent pages skips pages that do not already exist. Checked by default.
Do not automatically apply changes No changes are made, instead you can use the "re-parse" option selectively.
Skip articles with no changes Skips article that it doesn't change.
Preview instead of diff Previews each article after changes made.
Mark all as minor Marks all edits as minor.
Add all to watchlist Adds all edited pages to user watchlist.
Show timer Shows timer just below save button so user can monitor interval between edits.
Alpha sort interwiki links Alphabetically sorts the interwiki links (if apply general fixes selected).
Alpha sort categories Alphabetically sorts the categories (if apply general fixes selected).

Help

About... Shows about box containing version number, etc.

Context menu

The context menu is the menu that appears when you right-click inside the edit box.

Undo undoes the last action.
Cut copies and then deletes the selected text.
Copy copies the selected text to the clipboard.
Paste pastes text from the clipboard to the selected area.
Paste more enter text into the textboxes, then double click one to paste it's contents.
Select all selects all the text in the edit box.
Go to line enter the line number and hit return.
Insert... can:

Guess birth/death cats guesses the birth and death years of the article's subject and inserts the appropriate categories. (For biographical articles only.)
Meta-data template inserts the persondata template. (For biographical articles only.)

Insert tag inserts the tag selected from the submenu to the selected area of the article. If ((stub)) is selected, the user can optionally change the type of stub by typing into the box.
Re-parse re-applies all the functions (general fixes, re-categorisation...).
Open page in browser opens the article in the default browser.
Unicodify selected converts any HTML entities or URL encoded characters in the selected text to unicode.

Getting the sources

AutoWikiBrowser is licensed under the GPL (see the license file). To get the sources, you need read access to the sourceforge CVS server with a CVS client program.

You might install TortoiseCVS (see the download link, current version is TortoiseCVS-1.8.25.exe). After installing Tortoise, create a folder AWB (or whatever name you prefer) and do "CVS Checkout..." from the context menu of that folder. In the dialog window that appears (titled "Checkout Module") enter :pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:2401/cvsroot/autowikibrowser for the field CVSROOT and enter a point (".") in the Module field, then click ok. You should then get the sources from the Sourceforge CVS server. When new sources become available execute "CVS Update" from the context menu of your AWB folder.

Please note that you cannot commit sources back to the sourceforge server by using this method (this is called "anonymous access" or "anon access" for short). You would need to get registered as a project developer for this.

Registered developers must use :ext:account_name@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/autowikibrowser for CVSROOT (replace "account_name" with your sourceforge login name).