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This is a page for requesting tasks to be done by bots per the bot policy. This is an appropriate place to put ideas for uncontroversial bot tasks, to get early feedback on ideas for bot tasks (controversial or not), and to seek bot operators for bot tasks. Consensus-building discussions requiring large community input (such as request for comments) should normally be held at WP:VPPROP or other relevant pages (such as a WikiProject's talk page).

You can check the "Commonly Requested Bots" box above to see if a suitable bot already exists for the task you have in mind. If you have a question about a particular bot, contact the bot operator directly via their talk page or the bot's talk page. If a bot is acting improperly, follow the guidance outlined in WP:BOTISSUE. For broader issues and general discussion about bots, see the bot noticeboard.

Before making a request, please see the list of frequently denied bots, either because they are too complicated to program, or do not have consensus from the Wikipedia community. If you are requesting that a template (such as a WikiProject banner) is added to all pages in a particular category, please be careful to check the category tree for any unwanted subcategories. It is best to give a complete list of categories that should be worked through individually, rather than one category to be analyzed recursively (see example difference).

Alternatives to bot requests

• WP:AWBREQ, for simple tasks that involve a handful of articles and/or only needs to be done once (e.g. adding a category to a few articles).
• WP:URLREQ, for tasks involving changing or updating URLs to prevent link rot (specialized bots deal with this).
• WP:SQLREQ, for tasks which might be solved with an SQL query (e.g. compiling a list of articles according to certain criteria).
• WP:TEMPREQ, to request a new template written in wiki code or Lua.
• WP:SCRIPTREQ, to request a new user script. Many useful scripts already exist, see Wikipedia:User scripts/List.
• WP:CITEBOTREQ, to request a new feature for WP:Citation bot, a user-initiated bot that fixes citations.

Note to bot operators: The ((BOTREQ)) template can be used to give common responses, and make it easier to keep track of the task's current status. If you complete a request, note that you did with ((BOTREQ|done)), and archive the request after a few days (WP:1CA is useful here).

#	Bot request	Status	💬	👥	🙋 Last editor	🕒 (UTC)	🤖 Last botop editor	🕒 (UTC)
1	Disabling categories on drafts		26	10	Wikiwerner	2024-01-20 19:07	GoingBatty	2024-01-20 18:16
2	Date ranges for noticeboard archives		6	5	Wikiwerner	2024-02-24 12:50	Primefac	2023-11-12 08:10
3	Would this need a bot?	N Not done	2	2	Queen of Hearts	2024-01-08 01:45
4	Automatic NOGALLERY keyword for categories containing non-free files		6	3	Frostly	2024-01-07 10:02
5	Early idea		22	7	Trizek (WMF)	2024-01-26 09:53	Legoktm	2023-12-29 23:53
6	Protection fallback adminbot		9	5	Suffusion of Yellow	2023-12-31 22:00	Legoktm	2023-12-29 06:27
7	Update links from http: to https:	Done	5	4	GreenC	2024-01-09 16:33
8	External links bot		20	8	Qwerfjkl	2024-01-10 17:14	Qwerfjkl	2024-01-10 17:14
9	Replacing TWL OCLC proxy links in articles	Y Done	23	9	Bsoyka	2024-01-29 22:07	Qwerfjkl	2023-12-29 11:22
10	Is there a bot	Y Done	9	3	Bearcat	2024-01-05 04:32	GoingBatty	2024-01-05 02:37
11	Add parameter for WikiProject Africa/The 10,000 Challenge	BRFA filed	4	3	GoingBatty	2024-01-05 16:03	GoingBatty	2024-01-05 16:03
12	GNU/Linux or GNU-Linux to replace Linux on Wikipedia	Not a good task for a bot.	4	4	0xDeadbeef	2024-01-06 17:07	0xDeadbeef	2024-01-06 17:07
13	Fix redirect link: Saint Francis University	Not a good task for a bot.	4	3	GoingBatty	2024-01-09 17:36	GoingBatty	2024-01-09 17:36
14	Bad citation fix for several hundred articles	Y Done	4	2	Edenaviv5	2024-01-15 22:01	GoingBatty	2024-01-15 19:36
15	DRV template bot	Not a good task for a bot.	2	2	Qwerfjkl	2024-01-15 18:13	Qwerfjkl	2024-01-15 18:13
16	Fixing uninvoked refrences	Not a good task for a bot.	11	4	Geardona	2024-01-18 18:32	GoingBatty	2024-01-18 16:12
17	List of Sejm members (2023–2027)	Done	10	5	GoingBatty	2024-01-22 17:34	GoingBatty	2024-01-22 17:34
18	Categorizing ACM Fellows by Year	BRFA filed	3	2	Frostly	2024-02-04 03:45
19	Add articles under the the following categories and subcategories to Wikiproject		6	4	GoingBatty	2024-01-30 21:06	GoingBatty	2024-01-30 21:06
20	Backlog drive leaderboard updates	Y Done	3	2	ARandomName123	2024-02-03 18:12
21	Bot request for Korean hangul text	Done	5	3	Primefac	2024-02-06 12:54	Primefac	2024-02-06 12:54
22	Bot to automatically revert date change vandalism		15	5	Geardona	2024-02-06 17:23	Primefac	2024-02-06 13:49
23	Google cache	Done	2	1	GreenC	2024-02-11 16:38
24	ID pages needing infoboxes		21	5	J04n	2024-02-24 18:33	GoingBatty	2024-02-06 18:37
25	Question or another bot request for Korean hangul text		10	7	172.56.232.239	2024-02-23 02:02	Primefac	2024-02-08 12:43
26	Copyvio bot		3	2	Novem Linguae	2024-02-07 01:41
27	Using coordinates on Wikidata	BRFA filed	2	2	GoingBatty	2024-02-07 14:13	GoingBatty	2024-02-07 14:13
28	Protection padlock bot		5	3	Geardona	2024-02-07 15:13	Primefac	2024-02-07 14:20
29	Replacing invisible space characters in short description templates		3	2	Jonesey95	2024-02-10 20:39	Primefac	2024-02-08 16:45
30	Fixing broken links to talk page discussions		12	4	Kanashimi	2024-02-26 06:22	Qwerfjkl	2024-02-17 14:02
31	Proxy Blocking Bot		3	3	Primefac	2024-02-19 18:49	Primefac	2024-02-19 18:49
32	Notifying AfC acceptors an article gets AfDed		3	3	Novem Linguae	2024-02-22 06:27
33	Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Teahouse § Bot inoperable		1	1	Rotideypoc41352	2024-02-23 02:11

Ever since the idea of immediately moving inadequate articles to draftspace emerged as a common alternative to deletion, the amount of time that has had to be invested in cleaning up polluted categories that have draftspace pages in them has gone way up, because the people who do the sandboxing frequently forget to remove or disable the categories in the process — so I wanted to ask if there's any way that a bot can be made to clean up any overlooked stuff.

Since there's already a bot, JJMC89bot, that detects main-to-draft page moves and tags them as ((Drafts moved from mainspace)), the easiest thing would probably be to just have that bot automatically disable any categories on the page at the same time as it's tagging it — but when I directly approached that bot's maintainer earlier this year to ask if this could be implemented, they declined on the basis that the bot hadn't already been approved to perform that task, while failing to give me any explanation of why taking the steps necessary to get the bot approved to perform that task was somehow not an option. As an alternative, I then approached the maintainer of DannyS712bot, which catches and disables categories on drafts that are in the active AFC submission queue (which newly sandboxed former articles generally aren't, and thus don't get caught by it), but was basically told to buzz off and talk to JJMC89bot.

So, since I've already been rebuffed by the maintainers of both of the obvious candidate bots, I wanted to ask if there's any other way to either get one of those two bots on the task or make a new bot to go through Category:All content moved from mainspace to draftspace disabling any active categories, so that editors can cut down on the amount of time we have to spend on DRAFTNOCAT cleanup. If possible, such a bot would ideally also do an ifexist check, and outright remove any redlinked categories that don't even exist at all, though just disabling redlinks too would still be preferable to editors having to manually clean up hundreds of categorized drafts at a time — it's just that merely disabling the redlinks creates another load of cleanup work later on when the draft gets approved or moved by its own creator without AFC review or whatever, so killing redlinks right away is preferable to simply deferring them for a second round of future cleanup. Bearcat (talk) 16:18, 8 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Technically, this is doable — without interfering DannyS712bot's task. But I also would like to know why this was rejected by these two bot operators, and at the BRfA as well. —usernamekiran (talk) 18:22, 8 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This seems like something we can also tackle at the source. Hey MPGuy2824. Does the WP:MOVETODRAFT script disable categories when draftifying? If not we should consider adding this feature. If so we may need to look at diffs to see where these undisabled categories are coming from (manual moves? old script?) –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:02, 8 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The MTD script wraps categories within ((Draft categories)) which disables them. (e.g. [1]) The older script disables categories by adding a ":" before the word "Category:". That leaves two possible culprits. 1. manual moves and 2. the regex in my script isn't catching all categories. Let me see if I can narrow it down by running a quarry or two. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 04:07, 9 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Maybe Bearcat can provide some diffs for us to examine. Would be interesting to see if any of these are being created by MoveToDraft, or something else. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:24, 9 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I've only ever seen manual moves; in fact, I wasn't aware that MTD even existed. Bearcat (talk) 12:41, 9 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Bearcat: I already have a bot task approved for adding ((Draft categories)). The challenge for me is identifying which drafts have article categories. There's Wikipedia:Database reports/Polluted categories to find user pages with article categories, but I'm not aware of anything comparable for drafts. Going through Category:Pending AfC submissions looked like an easy start, especially since it's so small at the moment, but I didn't find any drafts with article categories. I'm open to further discussion. GoingBatty (talk) 21:36, 8 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Wikipedia:Database reports/Polluted categories (2) catches categories with drafts in them; the minor flaw is that it's currently not correctly recognizing the ((Polluted category)) template that used to flag maintenance categories as "don't bother with this because we don't care about it", so it's picking up things it doesn't need to pick up like Category:Miscellany to be merged and Category:Wikipedia Student Program. But even if that report is failing to react to that template properly, a bot could potentially be programmed to react to that template around whatever's stopping that report from reacting to it.

In the case of the particular issue I was asking about, just working directly with Category:All content moved from mainspace to draftspace itself is also an option: have a bot go through that, and disable categories that are on the pages in that category. That won't catch all categorized drafts by itself, but it will certainly catch the ones that are categorized because they're former articles that got moved into draftspace without the mover disabling the categories in the process — and at this point, that accounts for the majority of categorized drafts, so it would become easier for human editors to catch whatever's still left if we only have to deal with 25 or 30 per cent as many pages as we do now.

I genuinely doubt that there's any way to make a bot perfect at catching all improperly categorized drafts without ever missing any — but if we can get bots to deal with as many as possible, that still reduces the amount of time that human editors have to invest in worrying about it. So I don't think we need to shoot for "the magic bullet that will make a bot infallible at instantly catching every draft that ever gets categorized at all" — let's just aim for "where can a bot make as many dents in the problem as feasibly possible by working on defined targets". Bearcat (talk) 22:48, 8 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Bearcat: Aha - thanks for telling me about that report! I ran the bot over the report, and manually cleaned up some drafts that had incorrect categories. I've added it to my favorites, so I can run the bot when it gets republished. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 04:16, 9 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Ah, ok. I think the reason you didn't know about it might be that the report you already knew about used to catch both user-polluted and draft-polluted categories in the same place — but then they were split up into two separate reports later on for whatever reason, so you might simply never have found out about the newer draft report. Bearcat (talk) 12:41, 9 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

If you don't want to have your bot churn through 8000 pages most of which don't need action, then Category:Content moved from mainspace to draftspace from November 2023 (using the current month instead) would also work fairly well. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:32, 8 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Actually, yeah, that's a good alternative too. In reality, categorized drafts will virtually always be new pages that became categorized drafts within the past couple of days (and humans can catch the less common exceptions where a much older draft gets recategorized more than a month later), so the dated categories are likely more manageable chunks for a bot to grind through. Bearcat (talk) 23:48, 8 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• The other thing is, just having a bot go through the polluted category reports doesn't solve the problem all by itself — sometimes drafts are categorized not by direct declaration of categories on the page itself, but by artificially smuggling in transcluded categories from a template or infobox. (There is a rule that templates aren't supposed to be transcluding categories at all, but people don't actually obey it, so in reality it happens quite frequently anyway.)
  A bot can't fix cases like that, which means that even if a bot is pounding through that report a human still has to go through it every few days anyway to suppress any transcluded categories that the bot couldn't fix — but if most of the categories on the report have already been cleaned up by a bot, but I still have to inspect all of them anyway to look for one or two pages that might have been missed, then that's a huge imposition on my time. So what we also need is a bot that's catching and killing categories on drafts before they even get picked up by that report at all, so that the size of the report itself is reduced — which means that there does need to be a bot that whips through Category:All content moved from mainspace to draftspace, or a dated subcategory of that, on a daily basis so that a larger percentage of categorized drafts get resolved before they even show up on the polluted categories report in the first place. Bearcat (talk) 13:43, 9 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  Does something like searching the Draft namespace with insource:/\[\[\s*[Cc]ategory\s*:/ -hastemplate:"Draft categories" -insource:/\[\[\s*[Cc]ategory\s*:[^]]*[Dd]raft/ or a variation do the job? Wikiwerner (talk) 20:48, 2 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  @Wikiwerner: The search you suggested includes pages where the categories are inside <nowiki>...</nowiki> or <!--...--> tags to prevent categorization. GoingBatty (talk) 01:59, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  There are also permissible categories for drafts, like Category:Marvel Cinematic Universe drafts. BD2412 T 02:06, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  @Wikiwerner: However, if you run the same search and "Sort by edit date", the most recent potential pages will be on top, and you may find some pages to be fixed. GoingBatty (talk) 02:33, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  I already excluded categories for which the name contains 'drafts': see the last part of my search text. Nowikis and HTML comments can be skipped easily with the existing bot? Wikiwerner (talk) 09:27, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  @GoingBatty: That's right. You have got a bot approval; could you process this search's results? Wikiwerner (talk) 10:06, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  @Wikiwerner: Done, so everything left should be a false positive. GoingBatty (talk) 18:16, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  Thank you very much. I have used a tiny script to list up the remaining draft articles found together with their categories, and they contain no article categories anymore. So, for now, we have finished! Wikiwerner (talk) 19:07, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  About transcluded categories: I have checked the report Polluted categories (2) and cleaned all categories by using ((Draft categories)). None of the drafts is categorized anymore, so no categories were transcluded at that time. Wikiwerner (talk) 12:47, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Not sure how I managed to miss this thread for so long, but one comment regarding the "finding of drafts with categories" - we have Category:AfC submissions with categories. Wouldn't it be easier to patrol that then have to parse out all of the polluted category stuff and/or use regex in searches? Primefac (talk) 09:51, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  @Primefac: While it's good to monitor Category:AfC submissions with categories, we'd want to decategorize the drafts before they become AfC submissions. GoingBatty (talk) 20:01, 17 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Wouldn't it be possible to change the Draft namespace properties so that it's contents is never shown on category pages? Wikiwerner (talk) 15:32, 17 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

No. — Qwerfjkltalk 15:33, 17 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This seems uncontroversial.

It would be pretty cool if some kind bot could go through the pre-current (should never change) archives of the boards listed in the dramaboard archivebox series, extract the earliest and latest timestamps, truncate them to dates, and use those dates to annotate the links somehow. Inactive archives at time of writing are:

• 355 at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archives
• 1140 at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchives
• 474 at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RRArchives
• 323 at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive

User story: I was recently trying to find an archived conversation from a few months ago, and the best tools I had available were a scattershot "tap an archive number, wait for the entire page to load, check top and bottom timestamps" and "search archives for exact string matched date". Improved navigability gained from annotating the archive links with date ranges should save people time.

Implementation ideas: The quickest implementation would just be a plaintext date range edited onto the archive list pages linked above. A further step could be to add a |date-span= (or similar) to ((Administrators' noticeboard navbox all)) which, if present, would display the date range of comments posted at the top of the page itself, so the information is available both on the archive page and the index of archives. The most elegant, stupid, and expensive implementation would be to add ((shortdesc)) to all the archives, set the |1= to the date range, and convert the indices to use ((annotated link)).

Anyway though: Anyway though the first step is getting the date ranges. Maybe this is already in a report somewhere? Folly Mox (talk) 18:30, 11 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Folly Mox, I suspect you'd need consensus to go through with this. Perhaps trying asking at those noticeboards first? — Qwerfjkltalk 19:06, 11 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Oh right I tacked on all those expanded scope ideas in the process of making the edit. Folly Mox (talk) 20:22, 11 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Just noting, an Index of some variety would probably be easier than going through the thousands of archives and amending them. Primefac (talk) 08:10, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yep. A user script could be useful for displaying date ranges without the need for edits. — Frostly (talk) 10:04, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The lists mentioned are generated by Template:Archive list. Could we change it's module to show the date ranges? Wikiwerner (talk) 12:50, 24 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Does the task at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Implementation of Template:Refideas editnotice require a bot, or is there another way to accomplish that? You can respond there if you like. BOZ (talk) 05:42, 14 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

N Not done. A different solution was figured out. ^Queenof_Hearts 01:45, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I have noticed that many categories, especially content categories, include non-free files without the __NOGALLERY__ magic word, which is against WP:NFCC#9. I'd suggest using a bot to auto-tag such categories, skipping a whitelist for those categories covered by WP:NFEXMP (generally those categories concerning reviews of questionable files, such as CAT:FFD, and some maintenance categories that should contain no non-free files). –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 12:01, 14 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm pretty sure that most categories on en.wikipedia should have __NOGALLERY__ and it would be actually smarter and less work to disable image showing on all categories by default (without requiring any code per page or bot work) and have a __YESGALLERY__ magic word for the much less instances of categories that actually could show images. Gonnym (talk) 12:38, 14 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I doubt that would be possible, since as a MediaWiki tweak that would have to apply to all Wikimedia wikis, many of which don't allow non-free files. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 02:48, 15 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

From a coding perspective it could just be a setting that can be activated per wiki. I'd be opposed to any bot before other solutions are researched. --Gonnym (talk) 06:23, 15 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Gonnym: Might want to report this request at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/? I'd still like to hear from other people on whether a bot would be a good solution in the short term. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 01:22, 15 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think galleries are useful to visually navigate the category, and that they should be kept enabled for free files. — Frostly (talk) 10:02, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

"The three most dangerous things in the world are a programmer with a soldering iron, a hardware type with a program patch, and a user with an idea."

— Rick Cook, The Wizardry Consulted

So I have an idea, and...

Is it possible for a bot to find articles that:

• contain a number of words of readable prose (e.g., as calculated by Wikipedia:Prosesize) between x and y (e.g., 150 and 2,000) and also
• contain fewer internal links per word than some simple mathematical formula (e.g., "less than three total" or "less than one link per 100 words")?

If a bot could automatically detect such articles, then I'd like to have it add the ((underlinked)) template, on a schedule of perhaps a few articles being tagged per hour, to feed the seemingly popular Category:Underlinked articles for the Wikipedia:Growth Team features, without giving a large number of articles to the first editor and then leaving none for anyone else.

I realize that this would require a demonstration of consensus, but I don't want to make the suggestion, get people's hopes up, and then find out that bots can't count the number of words or links in an article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:21, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The tagging part seems like a CONTEXTBOT problem, but I can imagine a bot-generated report that listed the 1,000 articles with the fewest links per 100 prose words. Humans could then look through the report and refine the bot's criteria. If somehow the bot can be made to correctly identify underlinked articles without false positives, tagging might be possible. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:22, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Related question, for WhatamIdoing: What can we do to provide feedback about this newcomer linking activity? I see that at least some edits are adding undesirable disambiguation links. Is the tool suggesting these links? – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:25, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The tool doesn't suggest any specific link. It pops up a box that says things like "All you need to do is add one or two links to make a difference." They're using the visual editor, so its link tool will de-prioritize (in the search results) and label dab links (so you can see that it's not the kind of page you were expecting). However, it doesn't tell you what a redirect points to, so if you have a redirect to a dab page, then you'll see 'redirect' and not know that it's a redirect to a dab page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:25, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It might be worth mentioning that the Suggested Links task, scheduled to be enabled on en.wp next year, does not use maintenance templates as an inclusion criterion. So if timetables are not further extended, any success in this effort will apply only to a few months of newcomer activity. Folly Mox (talk) 15:01, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Is word-counting and link-counting a realistic task, then? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:28, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

WhatamIdoing, I don't know of any way to do it using queries, but running a bot on a database dump probably wouldn't be that hard. — Qwerfjkltalk 14:23, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

From a technical perspective, word counting and link counting are pretty straightforward to do. I explained how to implement prosesize word counts on my blog a while back, and that technique is used to power, among other things, Wikipedia:Database reports/Featured articles by size. Link counts are a simple database query or extraction from page HTML/wikitext. Unfortunately much of this work is blocked on the fact that the HTML dumps are currently created using proprietary source code. Legoktm (talk) 07:20, 5 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks for that, @Legoktm. It sounds like word-counting could be done "today" (i.e., by adapting existing code). I'm not sure how to summarize what you said about link-counting. On the one hand, you say it's a "simple" query, but on the other hand, that it's blocked.

Is the database report for FAs the size at time of promotion, or the size today? Tpbradbury had been looking into that recently. (He's been hoping to find out whether there was a trend in FA size over time.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 5 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The report I threw together shows the size at time of promotion, as requested. There may be other reports based on current size. Certes (talk) 18:56, 5 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Sorry, I wasn't very clear @WhatamIdoing. Individually, getting an article's prose size and link count is simple. Finding articles out of the entire wiki that meet those criteria isn't really feasible right now because of the lack of HTML database dumps. So if there's some other way to limit the number of articles to check, e.g. just looking at a few categories, that's probably doable. Legoktm (talk) 07:43, 7 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

If I wanted to get this for, say, all the articles in Category:WikiProject Medicine articles, excluding articles in Category:Society and medicine task force articles, then it sounds like we (i.e., you/someone/not me) could make a one-time report that lists each article and the number of words and links in it, but an ongoing "monitoring" process would be less feasible. Am I closer to understanding this now? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:54, 8 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@WhatamIdoing: I just tried writing some code and seeing how it went and here you go: User:WhatamIdoing/Possibly underlinked medicine articles (feel free to move elsewhere, etc.). It took about 15 minutes to generate the listing; definitely surprised me how fast it was. So I think it's fine to run as a regular thing on categories of roughly that magnitude, probably weekly?

I used the criteria you suggested at the beginning (between 150-2000 words and less than 3 links total), but we can change that based on what you find useful without really affecting the runtime.

So let me know if that list of articles is useful and if/how you'd like to move forward :) Legoktm (talk) 04:47, 16 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Legoktm, thank you for this. Could you take a look at Motoric Cognitive Risk and Igor Smirnov (engineer), which are reported as having two links, but appear to have none? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:56, 17 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I tagged all nine of the identified articles as being underlinked. Less than 48 hours later, all of them were improved, and all of the tags had been removed by the (apparently many) watchers of the category. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:12, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks for pointing out those two articles - I found a bug in my code, so I re-ran the report and surfaced ~280 more articles that meet the criterion and have updated the listing. Should I turn this into a regular database report that updates every week? Legoktm (talk) 06:18, 29 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Probably not yet. Why is Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and Faculties in Scotland in the list? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:35, 29 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

List items don't count for prose size (see this), so those links aren't being counted. Legoktm (talk) 06:54, 29 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm not sure that using Prosesize's limitations makes sense for counting links. It's a bit tricky, because you don't want a "List of 100 most popular songs", with links to 100 articles about songs, in this list (and Prosesize will do that), but you also don't want a medium-sized ==See also== section to exclude an article with completely unlinked text (and counting all links in list-formatted text will do that).

Unless you have ideas about how to get around this, it's possible that this is not a suitable task for full bot automation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:03, 29 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Right, I think there are pros and cons both ways. The initial list missed a number of articles that were underlinked because the link was in a reference or something.

I'm also not interested in pursuing full automation, I think, if you find the list useful (but not necessarily perfect), to just regularly generate the list and let humans review it and decide whether to tag it or not. Legoktm (talk) 23:53, 29 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

{od}

An update and some observations, in case anyone else is interested:

• Status: My burn rate is about 50 articles per week. Most of these (shorter) articles get thoroughly linked within about 36 hours. I expect therefore to reach the end of this initial list about a week from now.
  • Links might be added faster for a subject area of broader interest (e.g., food or sports).
• Edits: Most new contributors follow the suggestion/instruction to only add a couple of links. Consequently, an article might have ten or more editors make one, two, or three links before it gets removed from the list.
  • A significant fraction of the new editors who are editing these articles because they are listed in Special:Homepage for needing links have surprised me by trying to improve the article through other means, e.g., copyediting, adding citations, or (unfortunately/incorrectly) adding external links to other websites (like Red Cross). (Pinging Trizek (WMF))
    • I wonder whether this desirable "side effect" will evaporate under the new link-suggesting system.
• Primary pain point: Un-tagging articles requires manual effort. I remove the tags myself sometimes, usually thanking anyone who has made a plausible contribution. Most days, other experienced editors get to it before I do.
  • Trying not to overwhelm the cat's dedicated patrollers is kind of tedious. It would be easy to review hundreds of articles in one go, and Special:Homepage would be happy to have a mass-dumping of all of them at once in Category:Articles with too few wikilinks, but it would make manually reviewing the articles to see whether it's time to remove the tag very difficult.
  • It might be nice to have a bot auto-remove the tag after edits from 10 new editors.
• Future possibilities: After I've run through the previously unidentified 'backlog', I expect future runs to be much shorter, unless we change the criteria to be a little more expansive. It might be better to pick a different topic (maybe even deliberately aiming at a theme, like Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa during Black History Month in February and Wikipedia:WikiProject Women during Women's History Month in March).

WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:32, 26 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you for the ping @WhatamIdoing!

@Folly Mox detailed a possibility to solve your problem: the Suggested Links task. It detects links and provide them to newcomers so that they can add the missing links. We will deploy it in the coming weeks, but the activation will be your community's responsibility.

It would be better to let newcomers adding these links. Easy tasks are easily solvable with a bot, but they are the best way to let newcomers discover that they can edit.

The number of links added through Suggested Links bu one use is default at 3. But this number can be changed by your community using special:EditGrowthConfig. These links are suggested on all articles where too few links are present, no matter if they are tagged or not. There is no banner to remove when enough links have been added, except on the already tagged articles.

The side effect you observed will be partially lost, as users won't be able to edit the entire article. But they have the possibility to continue editing the article in the standard way when they have published their added links. It also decreases the feeling some patrollers had at other wikis, that not all links are relevant: the tool won't suggest links into infoboxes or citations, and it won't suggest disambiguation pages.

As I write this message the Growth and Campaigns teams are working together on suggested tasks related to events. We can imagine creating focuses on topics, where newcomers would be invited to themes like you suggest.

Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 09:53, 26 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Simple idea: monitor the protection log, and any time the protection level is increased, but the expiration time is decreased, wait until a few minutes before the expiration, and restore the status quo. If it really is the intention of the protecting admin to leave the page unprotected at expiry, they can leave a keyword like NOFALLBACK or something in the protection summary. An obvious complication would arise if the bot is lagging, and some edits slip in before protection can be restored, but that's a minor detail. Yes, I know about the PC trick, but people sometimes forget, and sometimes PC is isn't enough. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 03:58, 2 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

From WP:ADMINBOT this needs a wider discussion on WP:AN or WP:VP, though I think this is a good idea. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 06:08, 2 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Wouldn't it be best to find someone willing to operate the bot before proposing it to the wider community? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:39, 2 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It's a chicken-and-egg problem, right? Operators don't want to invest time until there's consensus, and it's a waste of time to determine consensus if there's no operator...

It would be nice if we had a collective group of admin bot operators, so we don't need to rely on one single person volunteering, i.e. I'd be happy to contribute and work on such a protection bot but it would not be a good idea for me to do it alone.

P.S. Might be be easier to find an operator if this was a blue link. Legoktm (talk) 05:26, 16 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

+1— Qwerfjkltalk 22:00, 16 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Subtle hint there, Legoktm. I like it. @Suffusion of Yellow: feel free to take them up on that advice . More admin bot ops couldn't hurt. As for this idea, that does definitely seem like a doable one (technically speaking), though I am not entirely sure at just past 1am local time (my timezone) how I would implement that...but TheSandBot is an adminbot and I would be happy to entertain the idea.

I have played around with monitoring event logs on Commons, so I am sure I could find the log. The main question would honestly be keeping track of the changes and how to jump/kick-start the system. Though, as I think this through writing this, I guess it wouldn't necessarily need to have data pre-populated as it could just create entries etc (i.e. in a database) based on protection level changes that come in. Before this went to a community discussion, I would definitely like to hammer out some of the details/concepts before attaching my name to it as a bot-op. If you have any thoughts on either implementation or conceptually how this would work further, I am definitely all ears (seriously/no sarcasm). TheSandDoctor ^Talk 09:11, 24 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Oh and, just re-reading your message @Legoktm:, I would be happy to tag-team something as well, potentially. I am thinking that the bot itself might not actually have to be hyper complicated. Could potentially just, at least for part of it, watch/listen for events, shove them in a database table with some sort of action date field, and another component makes some sort of a change at that date/time. Hmm... TheSandDoctor ^Talk 09:15, 24 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yeah, that's roughly what I was thinking as well. One suggestion I'd make is to store the "database" on a wiki page. This would provide 2 features: 1) it keeps all information on-wiki, which makes transferring the bot much easier since there's no separate database and 2) it provides an easily understandable opt-out feature for admins, since they could just remove it from the wiki page. So my idea of the workflow is:

• Bot watches event stream (or polls the protection log), to identify instances of protection level being increased and expiration time being decreased.
  • If found, the bot will add an entry to a fully protected user page (aka the "database page"), and ping the protecting admin in the edit summary
  • Admins can undo the bot right away if they don't want it to apply. And if they don't want notifications, they can mute the bot.
• The second part of the bot just watches the database page, identifies when the next protection change is needed, and sleeps until then.
  • When it's time, it restores the original protection level+expiry, and then removes it from the database page. And then sleeps until the next instance.

Seem reasonable and hopefully not too complicated? Legoktm (talk) 06:27, 29 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks; that's much better than anything I could have come up with! And the first part (maintaining the page) can be done without needing community approval. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:00, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

My website runeberg.org just recently moved from http: to https: so it would be nice if someone could update the 11,000 links accordingly. This is not urgent, as everything works fine with automatic redirects, but it would be nice. Thank you. -- LA2 (talk) 22:33, 17 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@LA2: Is this a job for WP:URLREQ? Certes (talk) 22:53, 17 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Certes: Indeed, it might well be. I'll post it there. --LA2 (talk) 22:55, 17 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Deferred. ^Queenof_Hearts 01:40, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

 Done -- GreenC 16:33, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

There are quite a few external links templates created in recent years (See Category:Social media external link templates) and when used they offer a consistent style and allow for error tracking among other things. However there are still quite a lot of external links that don't use these. Sometimes they are bare links, while others have some kind of text with them. Would it possible for a bot to convert external links in the external links section (links in the body should be ignored as I'm not sure if these templates work in the body correctly or not) to use one of the listed templates at the bottom? Here is an example of an edit with IMDb title.

Templates:

• Template:Bandcamp
• Template:Blogger
• Template:Cyworld
• Template:Facebook
• Template:Facebook page
• Template:Instagram
• Template:Linkedin
• Template:LinkedIn page
• Template:LinkedIn URL
• Template:LiveJournal
• Template:Mastodon user
• Template:Medium.com
• Template:Muck Rack
• Template:Panoramio
• Template:Patreon
• Template:Pinterest
• Template:ResearchGate
• Template:ReverbNation
• Template:SoundCloud
• Template:Telegram
• Template:Threads
• Template:TikTok
• Template:Tumblr
• Template:Twitter
• Template:Vimeo
• Template:Vimeo user
• Template:Vine
• Template:VK user
• Template:Weibo
• Template:WordPress
• Template:YouTube
• Template:YouTube channel

If this is controversial and needs discussion, please point me to where it should be held. Gonnym (talk) 15:45, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Gonnym: Template:IMDb name and Template:Official website are two I manually add frequently. Template:Rotten Tomatoes and Template:Metacritic are two more to consider. There are almost 600 entries in Category:External link templates. GoingBatty (talk) 18:58, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Gonnym ...plus more in its subcategories. GoingBatty (talk) 19:08, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Maybe pick one template and start with that, to decrease the massiveness of this task. Get a consensus on a talk page somewhere, then someone can start working on a (now much smaller) bot task, then WP:BRFA it. Template:Google Scholar ID and some of the IMDB templates are the ones I find myself converting the most. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:21, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

While the task is big I think having a bot do only one at a time runs the risk of it becomming a spam bot (and having editors complaining) as a lot of times there are more than one of these on a page (Coco Lee as an example of one). Gonnym (talk) 22:41, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

My thinking is to do two two BRFAs: one that just does one template and gets the process started, then a big one for everything else later. This avoids WP:TRAINWRECK issues with deciding which templates to cleanup, minimizes the amount of bugs that are likely to crop up during the first bot run, etc. Up to y'all though. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:05, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Two cents, take it or leave it: In my workplace for something like this we'd start with a basic test of one, then do a broader test of, say, 3-5, then engage in more widescale implementation. DonIago (talk) 14:56, 29 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Sure, sounds like a good plan. Gonnym (talk) 12:17, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

These templates have a serious drawback: standardized maintenance tools don't support them. IABot, Citation bot, WaybackMedic, reFill, etc.. pass them by like they don't exist. As a result there is a lot of link rot contained within these templates. IMO we are better off not having them at all, there are thousands, they don't reduce complexity and error, they add to it. They are islands of code no one is supporting due to the sheer number and variety. -- GreenC 04:41, 4 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Perhaps the template parameters can be somewhat standardized, so that bots can be modified to recognize templates in the category. — Frostly (talk) 05:43, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@GreenC I'm sure you have much more experience than I do with link rot, but I don't see how this isn't an issue that can't be fixed. If something needs to be changed in the web address, this would ideally require only one edit instead of tens of thousands of edits. How is that not a better method to handle these simple links? Also, these aren't citation templates and should never be used as such (regarding the list of bots you mentioned). Gonnym (talk) 12:20, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think GreenC's concern is more what happens if the URL changes in a fashion that isn't easily dealt with. I can't think of any specific examples offhand (though I do know they exist) but to arbitrarily make up an example, if the URL changes from https://example.com/person/<number assigned to person> to https://example.com/profile/<persons_full_name>, the template cannot be updated in a fashion that will result in a meaningful change, since all we have on the template calls is ((example|<number>)). On the other hand, I think at least one of the URL bots has the ability to match old to new, so if it sees https://example.com/person/<number> in the text directly it can update to the new code. Either way a bot will need to update everything, but with the latter case (again, assuming it's possible) there is already a bot that can do that functionality.

In other words, an elink bot will notice a change in URL if the URL is in the article, but a user has to notice a dead link if it's in a template. Primefac (talk) 12:27, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Ah ok. So worst case, both template and non-template links need to be all edited. In best case, a single edit to the template and all non-template links need to be edited. Hopefully a bot can be coded to handle the templated data and then there isn't even that problem. Gonnym (talk) 12:31, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

"Hopefully a bot can be coded" .. That's the problem. There are thousands of these external link templates. We have limited numbers of programmers interested and able to do this kind of specialized work. Incorporating these templates into complex bots is difficult and time consuming, and for any one template limited impact, so we triage it and ignore them. A couple large templates like ((official)) might get supported. Don't forget, these templates change so if a bot supports the template, and someone changes it, the bot has to be updated to avoid making errors. And this is just Enwiki there are over 300 Wikipedias, plus hundreds more in other projects. And the underlying code of saving dead links is quite complex to do correctly, only a few programmers have this down, these are large complex tools that have taken many years of development. A BOTREQ to make a dead link fixer, for one template, doesn't make sense. At best, a bot that converts templates to CS1|2 or square-link, then run the archive bots. -- GreenC 16:30, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

GreenC, I wonder how hard it would be to parse the templates. They seem fairly formulaic. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:59, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Whatever the case, before a bot can do anything, the very first thing is all these templates need parameters for inputting an archive URL plus rendering output when the link is dead. I suppose that is easy. Try 50 template at random and see how long it takes, don't forget to update the docs. If the templates are formulaic it shouldn't be hard. -- GreenC 22:09, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@GreenC what are the parameters you want added? |url-status=, |archive-url= and |archive-date=? Gonnym (talk) 12:50, 10 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This is what most bots and tools understand by default. It's the right choice even if it gives the false impression of being a CS1|2 template which can cause some editors to reflexively add unsupported arguments like access-date. Bots and tools need some way to know if a template supports the parameters, they can't assume support exists. There are a couple ways to do this: In the template documentation include a TemplateData section eg. Template:Webarchive#TemplateData where the parameters are listed. There is also Category:External link templates with archive parameter which is probably easiest/best method. Or both because TemplateData still is useful for other things. Update: I just noticed in Category:External link templates with archive parameter the templates use |archive= like ((2006 Commonwealth Games profile)) - this looks like an alternative method in use, most of those templates are sports related so it was probably conceived by a few editors at some time.

According to Category:External link templates there are only about 700 in this category and sub-category excluding Wikidata. There is also Category:Citation templates and sub-cats which is well over 1,000. -- GreenC 16:47, 10 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Another idea is citation templates use the |archive-url= trio, and external link template use simply |archive= which if it exists the template renders this URL as a replacement for what it would have rendered. It's going to be template-specific how to best approach this. Anyway, if it's true Category:External link templates with archive parameter is only for templates that use |archive=, it will be important to have a new category for Category:External link templates with archive-url parameter, so bots and tools can differentiate which parameters to use. -- GreenC 16:58, 10 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

┌───────────────────────────┘
Maybe some sort of meta tempate would be helpful here, to standardise the templates. — Qwerfjkltalk 17:14, 10 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hey all! For some background here, for TWL users to access Newspapers.com, the library sends them through a proxied domain at https://www-newspapers-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/. This often results in this domain name making its way into the mainspace, which is problematic because it can only be accessed by those with access to TWL.

JPxG has set up a way to replace these links with the unproxied domain using JWB (see more info and an example edit), but I feel like this is an area where a bot could step in.

Citation bot is able to clean these links up automatically (see an example edit), but it has to be triggered manually. These proxy URLs are not automatically placed in a category, which means a human editor would need to assemble a list of pages to be fixed for Citation bot to even look at them. Citation bot also wouldn't deal with these links outside of citations, such as with external links.

It's worth noting that I've previously filed a tangentially similar BRFA, which was denied as Citation bot would be easier to use and give better results. With these links, however, I don't think that's the case, mainly because Citation bot is tedious to trigger on these pages, but also because Citation bot doesn't even touch other proxied URLs, only Newspapers.com.

I'd love to make this happen using Pywikibot, but based on my previous BRFA I wanted to see some thoughts on this being fully automated. This task is already being done semi-automatically way through JWB, so I think it might as well be fully automated, potentially expanding additionally to other TWL-proxied sites. (Citation bot doesn't even touch other proxied URLs, only Newspapers.com.)

(CCing Headbomb for your thorough comments on the previous BRFA—would love to hear your opinion especially.) Bsoyka (talk) 18:32, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yeah, there should be a bot for this. The JWB regex is dead-on-the-marmot simple, and never pops false positives (there's simply never any legitimate reason to link to www-newspapers-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org in mainspace so you can just replace it in ns0 indiscrim[...]ly). I run through every couple weeks and people always give me like 14 thankses for it so it seems like a particularly loved task. jp×g🗯️ 18:36, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I support this bot and would further support a task like Qwerfjkl bot Task 17, to post on the usertalk of editors who leave links like this and tell them to stop doing it. Folly Mox (talk) 18:54, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Folly Mox, my bot only tracks categories. Is there an error category for this? — Qwerfjkltalk 19:04, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Qwerfjkl: Not as far as I know. The replacement process itself would be built on a simple regex find/replace. Bsoyka (talk) 19:05, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Bsoyka, I know, I'm talking about notifying users. But thinking about it now, there's not much point if they can just be fixed. It would be trivial to setup a daily run on this with a bot. — Qwerfjkltalk 19:29, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

hrrmery mayhapsicles it could mention https://github.com/jp-x-g/PressPass which autoformats newspapers.com citations on firefox and chrome and autofixes this exact issue B^) jp×g🗯️ 19:33, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

JPxG, didn't recognise you for a moment there! I'm used to a green username, not blue. Congratulations on your adminship! — Qwerfjkltalk 19:33, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Seems like this has some general support to become fully automated. I'll give this a bit more time to sit for anyone else who wants to comment then work up some quick code and get a BRFA going. (Just trying to avoid what happened with my last one—thanks for all the feedback so far, everyone!) Bsoyka (talk) 19:33, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

As far as categories go, tracking categories could be built-in CS1/CS2 templates like Category:CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI and then Citation bot can run over them. The place to raise that is at Help talk:CS1. This is my preferred option, personally, as far as my own individual opinion is concerned.

As for bots doing this, two options. You build a list of articles and feed it to Citation bot (either via a page of links, or separated by pipes). Or you have a dedicated bot fixing that stuff.

Or you can do both, but the tracking category is what needs the least coding. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:28, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Headbomb: While I like the idea of a CS1 maintenance category paired with Citation bot to fix these, that wouldn't work for any TWL links other than Newspapers.com as far as I know.

Take, for example, this version of an article and its references 11 and 14. They link to doi.org through the TWL proxy, but Citation bot doesn't even touch them and they have to be replaced manually (or semi-automatically similar to JPxG's JWB settings mentioned above). (Edit: Probably not the best example since the DOIs are invalid to begin with, but I think the idea is still there.)

This is why I think a separate bot task would be useful—Citation bot only deals with proxied Newspapers.com links, but there are tens of other sources going through TWL proxies that it won't handle. Bsoyka (t • c • g) 22:45, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It deals with many TWL proxied links, not just newspaper.com ones. It might not deal with all of them, which is a great argument to improve Citation bot by providing it with the full list of proxies used by TWL.

But again, a separate bot specifically on this is also not a bad idea. We'd just lose many of CB's other fixes, but proxied links are bad enough to be fixed on their own. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:48, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Oh, it does? Apologies, I had tested it a few times with other proxied sites and didn't get any more hits.

Appreciate the feedback though—I'll get started on a script and BRFA for now and we'll see where it goes. Bsoyka (t • c • g) 22:53, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

BRFA filed: Thanks for the feedback everyone! I'll point you in the direction of this new BRFA for further discussion. Bsoyka (t • c • g) 01:32, 29 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I will go vouch for it if necessary. It's always fun to push the big button on a JWB run but it's imperative that this problem have a solution beyond "JPxG makes an embarrassing mistake every couple weeks and wants to hide it behind a couple dozen JWB edits" jp×g🗯️ 10:55, 29 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It appears quite a lot in other namespaces (see Special:LinkSearch/www-newspapers-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org), I assume it should also be fixed there? — Qwerfjkltalk 11:22, 29 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

No, TWL links in other namespaces are likely intentional and not bad practice. I'll often drop a TWL link on a talk page if I'm discussing a source, with the knowledge that the intended audience (other Wikipedia editors) has proxy access. Folly Mox (talk) 11:32, 29 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Just going to update this with a quick Y Done tag! Bsoyka (t • c • g) 03:08, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Bsoyka Thanks for working on this! Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 12:24, 8 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Tangentially, @Trizek (WMF), could you talk to the Editing team about whether the citoid service could automagically not add these URLs in the first place? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:48, 28 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

T356056 documents the need. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:38, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Bsoyka:, going by a search with insource:wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org which throws about 643 hits in mainspace, I wonder if expanding the scope to other wikipedialibrary domains would be warranted. It seems like there are a lot of links to that proxy. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:55, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: Thanks for the note! This is definitely on my radar and something I plan to gradually implement. I ensured my BRFA was phrased to allow expanding the scope like this, and I'm tracking progress on GitHub. Bsoyka (t • c • g) 22:07, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Category:Pages using WikiProject Film with unknown parameters, a maintenance category which exists to flag problems where a use of ((WikiProject Film)) on a talk page is calling parameters that don't exist to be called, currently has 4,808 articles in it — and after looking at it and cleaning up the tiny single-digits handful of exceptions that existed anywhere after the letter B, I was able to determine that the remaining contents all relate entirely to an old, long-deprecated practice whereby B-Class articles in that queue were each also tagged as b1=[y/n], b2=[y/n], b3=[y/n], b4=[y/n] and b5=[y/n] for their individual success or failure in meeting each of the five B-Class criteria listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Film/Assessment. That's long since been deprecated and isn't done anymore, which is why those are landing as unknown parameters now — but with 4,808 articles to deal with, actually cleaning them up is more work than any human editor would ever actually be inclined to undertake.

Accordingly, I wanted to ask if there's any bot that can be set loose on the task of stripping b#= parameters from the contents of that category. Bearcat (talk) 17:20, 1 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yes. I'll try to get to this in the next few days. Primefac (talk) 17:42, 1 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Bearcat: BattyBot 79 is going through all the subcategories of Category:WikiProject templates with unknown parameters, and will get to this if Primefac doesn't get to it first. GoingBatty (talk) 17:51, 1 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Okay, no worries. It isn't urgent or anything, I was just wondering if it was possible — so if it is, it's all good. Bearcat (talk) 17:53, 1 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Heh, thanks for the reminder GoingBatty, somehow managed to forget I approved that task... yesterday... Primefac (talk) 17:54, 1 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Primefac: No worries - it's hard to remember what we did last year.  ;-) GoingBatty (talk) 00:15, 2 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Bearcat & @Primefac: Doing... it will take about 13 hours, plus any manual work afterwards to manually clean up edge cases. GoingBatty (talk) 04:28, 4 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Bearcat & @Primefac: Y Done! GoingBatty (talk) 02:37, 5 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Awesome! Much thanks! Bearcat (talk) 04:32, 5 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

For the 5832 articles listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/The 10,000 Challenge please add |AFR10k=yes to the project banner ((WikiProject Africa)) on the talk page. This adds a note to the banner and also populates Category:Articles created or improved during the WikiProject Africa 10,000 Challenge. Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:19, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

BRFA filed; seems simple enough. Primefac (talk) 20:35, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Many thanks! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:43, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

BRFA filed by @Primefac. GoingBatty (talk) 16:03, 5 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hello,

GNU is the Operating System and Linux is one of its Kernels. Linux is not an Operating System. Hence, why I believe a bot should locate and correct these errors. Where Linux is mentioned, it should be changed to GNU/Linux or GNU-Linux. This request is being made for Richard Stallman, who has cancer. Twillisjr (talk) 16:07, 6 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This is a naming controversy well-known enough to have its own article, and I don't think the Wikipedia community would have consensus for having a bot mass-change every occurence of the word across over 18,000 pages. (Not to mention, what if the word is being used to refer to Linux as a kernel, not as an operating system?) Bsoyka (t • c • g) 16:19, 6 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Indeed, and even if this was uncontroversial the WP:CONTEXTBOT problem makes this Not a good task for a bot. Taavi (talk!) 16:47, 6 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'd like to interject for a moment, what you are referring to as Linux, is in fact GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU+Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, ..

Memes aside, I don't think this is a good task for a bot per above, even if Linux as an OS should always be referred to as GNU/Linux, this would have context bot issues (e.g. musl and Android (Operating System), and also Linux Foundation) 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 17:07, 6 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I just moved Saint Francis University to Saint Francis University (Pennsylvania), because there will be a university also named Saint Francis University in Hong Kong (Caritas Institute of Higher Education acquires university title, Government of Hong Kong Press Release). The page "Saint Francis University" will be a redirect to University of Saint Francis. Before doing so I need to fix all pages with link to [[Saint Francis University]] and replace it with [[Saint Francis University (Pennsylvania)|Saint Francis University]] (or, if the link is [[Saint Francis University|something else]], just replace the link itself, not description), which I found hundreds. Is there a bot that can do this task for me? --Leeyc0 (Talk) 12:04, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

With only 345 links to the old target, I think WP:AWB/TASKS would be the better ask here. Primefac (talk) 12:15, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks for point out this too. I will have a look. --Leeyc0 (Talk) 12:22, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Also, the WP:CONTEXTBOT problem makes this Not a good task for a bot. GoingBatty (talk) 17:36, 9 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi, I asked the following at the Help Desk, and they suggested asking here:

I noticed that there are a ton of pages tagged for needing verification from August 2022. All of the location ones really just need the first of the two notes citations (the one just going to census.gov) removed. Is there a way for someone to mass-fix this?

The note, as it is, is always in the Demographics section as:

"Note: the US Census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a separate category. Hispanics/Latinos can be of any race.<ref>http://www.census.gov ((nonspecific|date=August 2022))</ref><ref>((cite web |title=About the Hispanic Population and its Origin |url=https://www.census.gov/topics/population/hispanic-origin/about.html |website=www.census.gov |access-date=18 May 2022))</ref>"

It is the first of the two that needs to go, because the second has it covered.

To add: on all the pages I have fixed thus far with this error (see: recent Texas edits), it is the only note on the page, and always attached to a table with racial demographic data.

Thanks in advance! Edenaviv5 (talk) 16:18, 11 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Edenaviv5: Doing... This is only 278 articles, so I'll do this manually via AWB (e.g. Special:Diff/1195891794). Future small requests can be made at WP:AWBREQ. GoingBatty (talk) 19:12, 15 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Edenaviv5: Y Done! GoingBatty (talk) 19:36, 15 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you, @GoingBatty! Edenaviv5 (talk) 22:01, 15 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

See this discussion: is there a bot that can assist us with the deletion review process? Jarble (talk) 19:46, 12 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Not a good task for a bot. per the discssion there. — Qwerfjkltalk 18:13, 15 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Deleting or otherwise removing errors from uncalled references. Geardona (talk to me?) 20:24, 17 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Geardona: Could you please give some examples of these errors? GoingBatty (talk) 03:04, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yep, I will get them in a bit. Geardona (talk to me?) 13:31, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Here is one (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370&diff=prev&oldid=1196258156) The refs were in the list but never appeared in the text, generating a cite error.(Cite error: A list-defined reference named "AutoVQ-40" is not used in the content.) Geardona (talk to me?) 14:08, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I feel like there is a context issue here. Why are the refs there? Where they removed in the text by someone and they didn't realise the refs were below? Is there a typo? Is it a duplicate ref? Was it an accidental removal? Only some of these questions would have answers where "let's remove the reference entirely" would be the correct solution. Primefac (talk) 14:28, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Geardona: Agree with Primefac that this seems to require human review for context and therefore is Not a good task for a bot. GoingBatty (talk) 16:12, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Alright,  Thanks Geardona (talk to me?) 17:08, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Honestly, I wish the software wouldn't error over unused list-defined references. It's a pain if you're just adding them in advance (which is necessary before using them), and if someone has bothered to add an LDR in the first place it should probably at least display under "Further reading" even if not cited. Also, I've never known another software that yells at me for defining a variable without using it anywhere. I'm really not sure what the point of the error message is, especially so big and shouty. Folly Mox (talk) 18:14, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Not to re-open the bot discussion, but could there at least be a user-script that finds them easily, it is really annoying to have to use CMD+F to find the uncalled refs and then delete them. Geardona (talk to me?) 18:16, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Geardona, if you're going to be working on this task, I might suggest moving the uninvoked list defined references into "Further reading" unless the source is unreliable, rather than outright deletion. I haven't looked into this sort of thing in depth so I have no idea what the distribution of cases is like, but citing the source in the article might also be an option. Folly Mox (talk) 18:23, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Its mostly a visual editor issue (I think) where the user generates a second citation instead of re-using, leading to it just being there (speculation). Geardona (talk to me?) 18:32, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi, I would like to ask if it would be possible to align text to the right in the # of votes and % of votes columns in the table listing over 460 MPs located in the List of Sejm members (2023–2027)#List of members section. The use of ((Table alignment)) is imposible due to merged cells which help with wisual representation. There fore befoure every cell in mentioned columns which all contain numerical data, "align-text: right|" sholud be placed. Chears! — Antoni12345 (talk) 23:49, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Antoni12345, you should ask this at WP:VPT. — Qwerfjkltalk 23:56, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Oh now I see i wasn’t clear. My question was if the task could be done by a bot so I wouldn’t have to manually place “text-align=right|” before 920 cells. — Antoni12345 (talk) 06:20, 21 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Instead you may use Template:0. If you would like to apply this just at the page mentioned, then one could apply a one-time regex find-and-replace, for aligning right as well as using the template. Wikiwerner (talk) 10:40, 21 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

If it's a single page, then copy the text to a word processor of some variety and use a find/replace to do it all at once. Primefac (talk) 14:41, 21 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Primefac: if it would be that siple then I would do it. Unfortunately there is no unique frase befoure mentioned cells to use the find/replace tool. That's why i'm trying to request a edit by a bot. — Antoni12345 (talk) 19:26, 21 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You will not get a bot approved for a single page. Someone at WP:AWB/TASKS might be able to help.

Not a good task for a bot. Primefac (talk) 07:15, 22 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Antoni12345:  Done manually in this edit. I first played around trying to fix the column header to align the whole column right, but that didn't work, so I figured out how to do it for each row per Help:Table. As Primefac suggested, I copied the section code and pasted it into Notepad. I then used find/replace 10 times:

• Find: || 1 Replace: || style="text-align: right;" | 1
• Find: || 2 Replace: || style="text-align: right;" | 2

...

• Find: || 0 Replace: || style="text-align: right;" | 0

I then copied the new code from Notepad back into WP, previewed the change, manually fixed less than 10 rows with different formatting, and saved. Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 15:10, 22 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@GoingBatty: Thank you so much! I am aware of the using find/replace tool ability in text editors, but i was stuck and couldn't think of the frase to find/replace. It would be even easier if I would think of aligning text on the stage of editing in excel but I haven't. And after you excel2wiki there's no coming back :--P Thanks again! — Antoni12345 (talk) 17:30, 22 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Antoni12345: I also tried the VisualEditor. While it allows you to manipulate tables (e.g. adding/merging/removing rows/columns) but doesn't allow you to apply a format such as aligning right. :-( GoingBatty (talk) 17:34, 22 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Right now, there is a category "Category:Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery" - which is added to all ACM Fellows. I created a bunch of categories "Category:202x Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery" as subcategories of the main category to organize these by year. The recepients are already organised by year in this page.

1. Go through each section of the page (which corresponds to a certain year).
2. Foreach blue linked article in that section add the correct year-specific category "Category:202x Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery" to the article.
3. After all sections are done, remove the generic "Category:Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery" from all the linked articles since they are now living under a subcategory.

KNivedat (talk) 18:37, 26 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

KNivedat, Coding...— Frostly (talk) 18:37, 27 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@KNivedat, BRFA filed— Frostly (talk) 03:45, 4 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I want to add the articles under the following categories+subcategories to wikiproject: Indian caste system. Is this a good request for a bot?

Miximon (talk) 19:48, 30 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Probably not; humans will need to add the WikiProject templates based on context. I picked a couple of articles at random from the categories, and Giraudpuri and Guru Balakdas, in Category:Satnami, do not appear to have anything to do with that WikiProject. (edited to add: I believe that the OP is referring to ((WikiProject Indian caste system)) and the associated WikiProject.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:10, 30 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I would also make the argument that other than the Scheduled Tribes cat, none of these are heavily populated - a quick AWB run would probably be both faster and more accurate (since there would be human oversight). Primefac (talk) 20:15, 30 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Even the big category will need human oversight; I don't see a reference to caste in Tani people, which is in that scheduled tribes category. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:21, 30 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Just adding context to clarify - Scheduled castes and tribes are Govt of India's list of castes and tribes that are recognized for affirmative action because of historic discrimination - Caste system in India#Recognition Miximon (talk) 20:29, 30 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Miximon: If you want to post a list of pages (not categories) on the WikiProject's talk page, and there's consensus to tag each of them, I will be happy to have my bot tag them. GoingBatty (talk) 21:06, 30 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi, is there a bot that can automatically update the leaderboard for the unreferenced articles backlog drive? Ideally, it would count the number of edit summaries made by each participant with "feb24" (not case-sensistive) to unique articles. Then, it would update the "Points from references" column in the leaderboard with that number. The rest of the leaderboard doesn't need to be updated by the bot, as the points from reviews is simpler to update, and the total points is automatically provided by a template. There's a bit of prior discussion at the talk page. Thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 23:14, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I created a simple scraper which I plan to use daily to update the leaderboard. I don't think it's a very good solution, so if bot experts want to help, it would still be greatly appreciated ;) Broc (talk) 21:32, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Y Done. Bot created based on script above. See User:BaranBOT/FEB24DriveLeaderboard. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 18:12, 3 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Per the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Korea-related articles#About adding a link to each hangul syllable using Template:Linktext, I am submitting this bot request. Please perform the following.

1. Check if Template:Linktext only contains [ ]?[0-9가-힣][ ]? in each parameter.
2. If so, remove Template:Linktext and |, but retain the text entered as parameters (including space characters before and/or after [0-9가-힣]).
3. If not (that is, if Template:Linktext contains (1) any character other than [0-9가-힣], or (2) two or more adjacent [0-9가-힣] in at least one parameter), leave it as-is.

The following examples would help you understand this request.

• Cases that should be changed
  • ((linktext|국|립|중|앙|도|서|관)) → 국립중앙도서관 (currently found in National Library of Korea)
  • ((Linktext|수|도|권|제|1|순|환|고|속|도|로)) → 수도권제1순환고속도로 (currently found in Capital Region First Ring Expressway)
  • ((linktext|새|터|데|이| 나|이|트| 라|이|브| 코|리|아|)) → 새터데이 나이트 라이브 코리아 (space characters have to be retained; currently found in Saturday Night Live Korea)
  • ((linktext|구|름|은)) ((linktext|흘|러|가|도)) → 구름은 흘러가도 ((added this example just in case) a space character between two instances of Template:Linktext has to be retained; currently found in Even the Clouds Are Drifting)
• Cases that should NOT be changed
  • ((linktext|中|文|維|基|百|科)) (contains any character other than [0-9가-힣]; currently found in Chinese Wikipedia)
  • ((linktext|새|마을|호)) (contains two or more adjacent [0-9가-힣] in at least one parameter; currently found in Saemaeul-ho)

172.56.232.167 (talk) 00:24, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The regex will need to be a bit more complex than what is described above, but this should be doable. Let me do some small-scale testing and get back to you. Primefac (talk) 12:30, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

BRFA filed. Primefac (talk) 21:34, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you for running your bot. I greatly appreciate it.

But can you please also remove them in the Draft namespace? There are currently 86 pages containing them (see this). They can be moved to the main (article) namespace at any time. 172.56.232.239 (talk) 05:46, 5 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Didn't think about draft space, seems reasonably uncontroversial

 Done. Primefac (talk) 12:54, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi, I want to create a bot that automatically reverts obvious date change vandalism. For example:

"James H. (born 26 December 2002)"

And then a vandal comes and changes it to:

"James H. (born 29 December 2002)"

And the goal of the bot is to revert these changes as accurately as possible. And here's how it's gonna work:

A bot sees that someone changed the birth date. The bot looks up the name of the person on wikidata. If the person appears on wikidata, The bot searches for his birth date on his wikidata page. And if the birth date written on wikidata is different than the date the vandal changed it to, the bot automatically revert these changes. I hope this bot can be coded for me. It seems like a great idea for a bot. 93.173.38.154 (talk) 11:28, 5 February 2024 (UTC) Very minor formatting changes made for readability. Primefac (talk) 12:58, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This might require a discussion to get consensus rather than being an automatic "do now". I would check that the Wikidata matches the old date, rather than just differing from the new one. Bear in mind that Wikidata also has vandalism and good-faith errors, so (with all due respect to the IP proposer) we might want the bot to revert non-autoconfirmed editors only. Certes (talk) 12:07, 5 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This might be something that an edit filter could be able to accomplish, just disallowing changes like that. Geardona (talk to me?) 12:27, 5 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Minor changes to numbers are depressingly common. I have been combating a mobile IP from Italy for over 6 months, who modifies incorrectly the heights of buildings, in 100s and 1000s of articles. Might be game or competition. I agree watching birth/death date changes is a good idea. I have some ideas how to do this, but it gets involved, it's not easy. -- GreenC 15:22, 5 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Not sure if this is possible even remotely, but a bot to unaccept any change like these, pushing them onto pending changes, even if the page is not protected as such, just for new/unregistered users, might solve the immediate problem of false info presented to readers. Geardona (talk to me?) 15:26, 5 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• I like the gist of the proposal but not the substance. If we're going to revert number vandalism (and I would say everything from DOB to height/weight to number of albums sold, etc) it should just be done, without checking WD (which might be wrong or nonexistent anyway). If a number is being changed without a reference, it's likely to be vandalism. Basically ClueBot NG but specifically for numbers. It would need broader consensus to get implemented, though (regardless of how the bot is set up). Primefac (talk) 12:58, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  I would say that this seems more possible with a edit filter, so it should be proposed there (edit filter talk page). Then see what they think. Geardona (talk to me?) 13:11, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  That would certainly catch a lot of petty vandalism, such as changing the lead of 123 to begin "420 is..", but it might have many false positives. For example, good-faith editors regularly update sporting records for players and teams after each match, without waiting for some newspaper to mention that Smith has now played 42 matches rather than 41. Certes (talk) 13:34, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  Potentially limiting it to just dates in the past (1 year +) would alleviate false positives? Maybe also limiting it to large number changes, would stop good faith false positives. Geardona (talk to me?) 13:38, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  Oh, don't take my suggestion as what must be, just throwing out an idea that I feel is better than trusting WD. Whether edit filter or bot, I suspect that the reverts would be limited to IPs and non-AC users. Primefac (talk) 13:49, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  Potentially even having it set to revoke AC status would really solve the problem, AC is not that hard to get. Geardona (talk to me?) 13:53, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  That's an interesting idea but I don't think we have a precedent for a "Robocop" bot which removes permissions and it would need at least an RfC. Getting AC for the first time is easy, but we would need to think about how affected editors would recover AC - permission request? Certes (talk) 14:05, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  To my knowledge some of the high-power filters can revoke AC. Geardona (talk to me?) 14:07, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  From Wikipedia:EFBASICS "The strongest setting is disallow. In this case, the edit is rejected, and the user will see a customizable message. A link is provided for reporting false positives. It is also possible to have a user's autoconfirmed status revoked if a user trips the filter." Geardona (talk to me?) 17:23, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Google cache is shutting down, it is making the news. We have 5,000 pages on Enwiki. It is at WP:URLREQ#Google_cache. Thanks. -- GreenC 15:26, 5 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

 Done -- GreenC 16:38, 11 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Identify pages with Template:WikiProject Albums in their talk page but not Template:Infobox album on their main page and add |needs-infobox=yes to them. Please and thank you, J04n(talk page) 15:24, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Question, what about disambiguation or redirect pages, do they require the infobox? Would this be a 1 time run or a ongoing thing, if it is 1 time I could try to figure out some AWB or JWB regex to get this partly done. (given the pages a bot would be more efficient in my opinion)  Thanks Geardona (talk to me?) 15:37, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks for the quick response,disambiguation or redirect pages don't need them, if they can be filtered out all the better. I suppose continuous is better, not sure of the logistics. J04n(talk page) 16:07, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I am not a bot programer myself, but it seems possible, (405683 pages) would need to be checked, and thats way too many for 1 or 2 people to check manually in any reasonable time (even with AWB). Geardona (talk to me?) 17:20, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Geardona, J04n, according to my PetScan query, 29,831 results. I could run my bot on these pages. — Qwerfjkltalk 17:59, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Looking at the results though, seems there are quite a few false positives. — Qwerfjkltalk 18:01, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Less amazing, how did it fail? Geardona (talk to me?) 18:02, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Geardona, because whilst they are in WikiProject Albums, quite a few of the articles likely don't need an infobox e.g. Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. — Qwerfjkltalk 18:04, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Im not sure how to filter those out, Wikipedia:CONTEXTBOT is rearing its ugly head. Might need to be done manually, at least the list is a tiny bit shorter. Geardona (talk to me?) 18:06, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Most of those seem to be redirects. — Qwerfjkltalk 18:02, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I see a "redirects yes/no" setting, would that fix it or am I missing something? Geardona (talk to me?) 18:04, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Amazing, I thought that something like this would exist, maybe post a notice with the albums project talk page, wait a day or 2 and then start. (Not sure if a BRFA would be needed here?) Geardona (talk to me?) 18:01, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yeah, the majority seem to be false positives. Can redirects be filtered out? J04n(talk page) 18:04, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

J04n, I did so in my second query. Sorry if that was unclear. — Qwerfjkltalk 18:14, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Very cool, I don't mind filtering out other false positives by hand. Thank you so much! J04n(talk page) 18:18, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@J04n: Is there consensus that all articles should have an infobox? When creating the BRFA, it would be good to link to that consensus (whether it's a conversation or an albums style guide). Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 18:37, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'll start a conversation, thanks J04n(talk page) 18:49, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I reached out to the project, another thought I had was maybe have the bot look for any infobox template not just album. This would further reduce false positives. J04n(talk page) 19:09, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Rather than looking for the WikiProject template, you could work through yyyy albums, i.e. the subcategories of Albums by year. That might miss a few pages but should produce dramatically fewer false positives. Certes (talk) 22:21, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

That's a great idea, appreciate folks putting thought into this. J04n(talk page) 00:39, 7 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums#Bot to help identify album pages missing infoboxes, which generated pretty much no interest one way or the other. I would like to go on with this as a one-time sweep of pages in the subcategories of Albums by year that do not have an infobox, if redirects could be filtered out it would be a big help. Can this be done? Thanks! J04n(talk page) 18:33, 24 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This is also related to the #Bot request for Korean hangul text above.

Any instance of Template:Linktext in Korean personal names should also be removed.

Korean personal names are usually in the "one-syllable surname + two-syllable given name" format (e.g. 홍길동 – surname 홍, given name 길동), so some people added Linktext like this: ((linktext|홍|길동)). There are currently 726 pages containing such instances of Linktext (see this), and these are mostly—but not always—personal names.

In this case, you should not look for any space characters and [0-9]. You only need to look for \{\{[Ll]inktext\|[가-힣]\|[가-힣][가-힣]\|?\}\} (that is (([Ll]inktext|[가-힣]|[가-힣][가-힣]|?)) without the backslashes), and remove Template:Linktext and |, but retain the text entered as parameters (i.e. change ((linktext|홍|길동)) to 홍길동).

Here are my questions:

1. Is it possible to remove such instances of Linktext just from personal names?
   1. If so, please perform the bot removal.
   2. If not, if I provide pages that should not be affected by the bot removal, would that work? For example, a case like ((linktext|집|으로)) (found in The Way Home (2002 film)) should not be affected.

172.56.232.179 (talk) 21:27, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Note that "no linktext in personal names (that is, do not add any kind of link to a personal name, including other forms of segmentations such as 가|나다)" was also part of the discussion. Look under "For personal names (including pseudonyms such as pen names, stage names, etc.), no links should be added." in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Korea-related articles#About adding a link to each hangul syllable using Template:Linktext. 172.56.232.188 (talk) 04:13, 8 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I am slightly concerned about the CONTEXTBOT issues presented. Primefac (talk) 12:43, 8 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I manually checked the search results and prepared a list of pages (total 11) where \{\{[Ll]inktext\|[가-힣]\|[가-힣][가-힣]\|?\}\} is not a personal name. (As of 02:02, 23 February 2024 (UTC), this list still remains the same)

• Dal Shabet: ((linktext|달|샤벳))
• Dangui: ((linktext|당|적삼)), ((linktext|당|한삼))
• Great Escape (South Korean TV series): ((linktext|대|탈출))
• Kwang: ((linktext|옥|피리))
• Min (Korean name): ((linktext|산|이름))
• Say It with Your Eyes: ((linktext|눈|으로))
• Showbox: ((linktext|쇼|박스))
• The Way Home (2002 film): ((linktext|집|으로))
• Three Sisters (2020 film): ((linktext|세|자매))
• Young (Korean name): ((linktext|꽃|부리))
• Young-ja: ((linktext|꽃|부리))

But you don't need to add these as exceptions when running your bot because these can be manually re-added/reverted after the bot runs.

Is the task doable now? If so, please perform the bot removal. 172.56.232.101 (talk) 20:24, 8 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

FYI you can just write ((tld|linktext|꽃|부리)) --> ((linktext|꽃|부리)) without all the nowikis. Or to link the template: ((linktext|꽃|부리)) -- GreenC 21:00, 8 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

If you are still concerned about the CONTEXTBOT issue, just don't worry about it. Since there is only a small number of exceptions, and since Linktext has never been a requirement (i.e. any instance of Linktext does not have to be there in the first place), you don't really need to worry about anything. Don't even add those cases as exceptions when running your bot either. 172.56.232.239 (talk) 03:14, 10 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

insource:/\{\{[Ll]inktext\|[가-힣]\|[가-힣]\|[가-힣]\|?\}\}/ also has two. Also, I'm curious if it's necessary to leave something like ((linktext|黄|喜|燦)) behind? Kanashimi (talk) 07:46, 15 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Nothing was discussed about Chinese characters. 172.56.232.179 (talk) 21:48, 15 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I don't want to urge anyone, but can anyone please take care of this? I also want to move on. 172.56.232.179 (talk) 21:51, 15 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Can anyone please take care of this? 172.56.232.239 (talk) 02:02, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hello,
I was looking around for something like this, and did not find it, could a bot run a page against earwigs copyvio detector automatically, and flag it for human review if its score is too high? (I am willing to attempt to code this if there is not a glaring issue with it)
 Thanks Geardona (talk to me?) 22:28, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Nevermind, I see the village pump thread. Geardona (talk to me?) 00:09, 7 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You may find User:Novem Linguae/Essays/Copyvio detectors to be a good read. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:41, 7 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Category:Articles missing coordinates with coordinates on Wikidata contains 20,381 articles tagged with ((coord missing)), but they all have coordinates available on Wikidata. Would it be possible for this template to be removed and replaced with ((Coord|display=title)) which will fetch the coordinates from Wikidata? I am not familiar with previous discussion on this, but I have also contacted The Anome for comments — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:32, 7 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@MSGJ and The Anome: BRFA filed. GoingBatty (talk) 14:13, 7 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Bot to look through the page on the list of protected pages, find ones missing the padlock and add it at the correct level, and to correct the padlock level if needed.  Thanks Geardona (talk to me?) 14:06, 7 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

 Already done by User:MusikBot II. Primefac (talk) 14:20, 7 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Can we confirm is is still up? Geardona (talk to me?) 15:06, 7 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It is. You can check its user contribution for the recent edits. – robertsky (talk) 15:11, 7 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Good, thanks Geardona (talk to me?) 15:13, 7 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This is a request to replace invisible space characters with regular space characters in ((short description)) templates within articles. As the MOS says, these characters are typically placed inadvertently via copying and pasting, and they can cause problems of various sorts. The task would be to replace invisible nbsp and thinsp characters found within short descriptions in the articles listed at Wikipedia:Database reports/Short descriptions containing invalid space characters.

I am pretty sure this would be a cosmetic task that would need explicit BRFA approval. Fixing the existing 3,000 or so instances of the problem will help us understand the root causes of the problem by identifying how new instances are occurring. I have some regexes that might help at User:Jonesey95/AutoEd/pages.js. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:30, 8 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

If it's an issue and if there's consensus, I can probably run this. Of course, if these invisible formatting characters are in the "private use area" then AWB will be useless. Primefac (talk) 16:45, 8 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks, Primefac. This request follows from this discussion. My impression was that a long-standing MOS guideline was consensus enough to remove these characters. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:39, 10 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Links to talk page discussions often break when the discussions are archived by User:Lowercase sigmabot III. Could this bot be configured to replace the links (by linking to archived discussions) instead of breaking them? Jarble (talk) 18:58, 16 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Jarble, this is not the right place. Ask on the bot operator's talk page. — Qwerfjkltalk 14:02, 17 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Jarble: clubot III does this by default. See User:ClueBot III#Keeping linked. —usernamekiran (talk) 21:19, 18 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Usernamekiran: Does ClueBot III repair links to discussions that were broken by other bots, including Lowercase sigmabot III? Jarble (talk) 21:40, 18 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Jarble: To keep it short, I don't think so. —usernamekiran (talk) 21:54, 18 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

cewbot regularly fixes these types of link errors. If there are any that are not fixed, please let me know and I'll see what's wrong. Kanashimi (talk) 05:37, 19 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Kanashimi: I frequently find broken links to sections of talk pages that were archived. Does Cewbot replace these broken links with links to archived talk page discussions? Jarble (talk) 21:48, 19 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

That's what a robot would do. If the robot misses something, you can give me an example and I'll see what's wrong. Kanashimi (talk) 22:41, 19 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Kanashimi: For example, I found several broken links to talk page sections on this page. Does this bot not repair broken links from archived discussions? Jarble (talk) 17:32, 25 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Jarble The bot works by checking all the links to a specific anchor. There are too many links on this page, can you point out the exact anchor? Thank you. Kanashimi (talk) 03:18, 26 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Kanashimi: One of the broken section anchors is at the beginning of this section, but there are probably several others. Jarble (talk) 03:39, 26 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Jarble This page will be processed by the bot when it processes all the pages linked to Talk:BTS (band). Kanashimi (talk) 06:22, 26 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This bot is programmed to use a wide range of VPN services; using so, it detects the IP addresses, and then blocks them. This means that a lot of time could be saved. HedgehogLegend (talk) 18:48, 19 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

We already have a proxy blocking bot. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 18:49, 19 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Specifically, User:ST47ProxyBot. Primefac (talk) 18:49, 19 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hello, I am wanting to propose the idea of creating a bot that notifies Articles for creation acceptors when an article they accept gets AfDed around 100 days within them accepting it via their talk page. GMH Melbourne (talk) 05:41, 22 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

There is a script called User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/WatchlistAFD.js that automatically adds the AfD pages of your AfC accepts and NPP curations to your watchlist for 6 months. It's really handy because then you can easily keep track of when things are AfD'd and adjust your reviewing accordingly. – DreamRimmer (talk) 06:18, 22 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think my user script is broken. I should probably fix it one of these days. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:27, 22 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Teahouse § Bot inoperable. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 02:11, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]