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I'm not sure what to request exactly, but articles with ((WPBeatles)) on their talk page have redlink categories due to this project banner being converted to use ((WPBannerMeta)). For example, Category:Start-Class Beatles articles has been emptied and the redlink Category:Start-Class The Beatles articles has been filled. See the discussions:

• Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2008 June 5#Template:Needsinfobox
• Template talk:WPBeatles#WPBannerMeta
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject The Beatles/Archive 17#Project temphttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Bot_requests&action=edit&section=21late

I've never heard of it before, so I'm guessing a category can't be moved. So I guess the contents of each of these article classification categories (for example, ((Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles/Article Classification/ClassificationCategoryHeader)) and some parent categories) need to be copied to the new, currently redlink, categories. There are a lot of them, so this is probably a job for a bot. --Geniac (talk) 14:35, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Its a bit of a mess because im not sure what the problem is and how it's been created. Why can't the red-linked cats just be created?? and then delete the old cats?? Am i missing somthing..Also while i was investigating came accross GA-Class The Beatles articles and GA-class The Beatles articles.the first is a blue link and the 2nd a redlink. How did this happen?? maybe there is somthing wrong with the template..I've created Category:Unknown-importance The Beatles articles and all those articles are there. This is what you wanted isn't it. Once you confirm this i will go ahead and create all the other redlinks into cats. Printer222 (talk) 15:18, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Here's how it happened... ((Needsinfobox)) was put up for deletion. ((WPBeatles)) was the only banner left that used it and so it was converted to use ((WPBannerMeta)). The conversion re-categorised all the articles with WPBeatles on their talk pages to "...The Beatles..." instead of "...Beatles..." So, yes, all the "The" cats need created with the same content as their not-"The" counterparts then the not-"The" cats deleted. Unless WPBeatles could be fixed to place articles in not-"The" cats instead of the redlinked "The" cats. --Geniac (talk) 20:07, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

A bot can't help you here. I've had a look at the template code and to me i can't see how it would be that difficult to change it so "the" s not included in the cats but i don't want to muck around with it myself. I think you guys need to decide what you want to do, change the template (ask the person who changed it or find somone who's experienced with templated) or create the new cats.Printer222 (talk) 01:09, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I switched it so you old cats work now; but that template is a mess creating redlinks and nowikied type cats. I don't have the time to look at it too much or I'd try to help. That's why WPBannerMeta is a PITA to use a lot of the time. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 01:28, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

It's OK, a couple of really simple edits sorted almost everything...... Densock .. Talk^{(Dendodge on a public network)} 11:35, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I figured the template could be fixed, but conversation about doing so stalled at "don't know how to do that". ---Geniac (talk) 17:28, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I tried scripting a simple bot to fix typos, and failed. I could run and maintain a bot, but I do not understand programming languages enough to produce this bot. I was thinking of a simple bot that checked pages for common typos. A problem with the bot is that one could easily find it correcting typos where there are none. I'd program it to use a dictionary to fix "prblems" with typing. One of the worse things i've seen is going down an article and finding that little annoying typo.

CindyAbout/T/P/C/ 02:03, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Not a good task for a bot.- see [policy#Restrictions on specific tasks]. Bots can't fix typos because of the high risk that mistakes would be made. You could use Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser, to manually go through a list of articles and fix spelling mistakes using the spell check function that is built in, but if you do this make sure to manually check each edit to make sure that no mistakes are made. Printer222 (talk) 15:29, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Not a good task for a bot.

Agony's orphantalk tool (here) finds plenty of orphaned talk pages. I've nominated a few for CSD under category G8, but this is a tiresome process. Is there any way that a bot can add CSD takes for all these articles. I appreciate the current list is not actually on the en wiki, but if I create I user subpage with a list of the pages, would it then be possible? —CycloneNimrod^Talk? 20:58, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I recently did a BRFA on this same task, and it was denied. « Milk's Favorite Cøøkie 21:13, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Do you have a link to it? I'd be interested to know why it was denied, surely it could save loads of time? —CycloneNimrod^Talk? 21:27, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

The BRFA was at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Milk's Favorite Bot 2 Printer222 (talk) 05:34, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Ahh. We have this kind of request every once in a while. There's no need to tag the pages. Admins can generate that list as easily as anyone else. Tagging adds needless revisions and needlessly floods CSD categories. (This applies to CSD#R1 as well.) There's no rush to delete orphaned talk pages. An admin will get them when he or she has time. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:37, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi, would it be possible/feasible to have a bot automatically revert anyone adding big chunks of data to templates, maybe anything over 100 kilobytes? This would help guard against the type of vandalism that can be seen in the edit histories of Template:G8 nations [1] and Template:Anglophone states [2], vandalism that can sometimes be tricky to detect and revert quickly. If this is a good idea, should this task have its own bot, or would it be better/easier to add this functionality onto an existing bot such as ClueBot? Thanks. --Bongwarrior (talk) 07:39, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Template code can fluctuate enormously as new features are added or more streamlined code is implemented: see WP Australia, for instance. How would the bot separate these genuine additions/ommissions from vandal codebloat? Happy‑melon 10:26, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I think this could be possible with a user white list. New editors are not going have the knowhow to properly restructure a template --T-rex 13:33, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

It sounds to me like protecting the template may solve your problem better than a bot would. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 00:28, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I've been protecting them as needed, but there are a lot of templates out there. We have no way of knowing which templates require protection until they are vandalized. Humans can fix the damage just fine, but a bot could do it quicker. Regarding false positives, the size threshold of 100 kilobytes I proposed above could be increased slightly if needed, but even if it stayed at 100 Kb, the rate of false positives would seem to be acceptably low. In the revision history of Template:WP_Australia for example, there are some big edits, but none big enough to trigger the bot. I don't do a great deal of template work, but adding that much data with one edit (for a legitimate reason) would seem to be a pretty rare occurrence. --Bongwarrior (talk) 04:09, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

100KB is bloody huge. How many legitimate templates are there with that much code? --Carnildo (talk) 08:12, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

((Infobox settlement)) is 31k. ((Taxobox)) is 30k. ((Infobox)) itself is 35k. I dunno... 100k isn't outside the realm of possibility, but I'm not sure any that big exist. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 18:00, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

According to the page.sql table from the 2008-06-18 database dump there are 220 templates (out of ~158 000, though this includes redirects and subpages) which are over 30 000 B, 92 over 40 000 B, and 50 over 50 000 B. There are 12 over 87 000 B, which are

• ((Ahnentafel-compact6)) 99621
• ((ListoftheDaytext)) 100280
• ((Geobox/test)) 101087
• ((WikiProject_Caribbean)) 103635
• ((Geobox)) 106325
• ((ChristianityWikiProject)) 114623
• ((Corruption_Perceptions/Corruption_perceptions_index)) 115760
• ((Do_for_every_Dutch_municipality)) 119145
• ((AfricaProject)) 133385
• ((Unicode_chart_Hangul_Syllables)) 141560
• ((Unicode_chart_CJK_Unified_Ideographs)) 264590
• ((No_wrap)) 1776055

The last one at 1.7 MB seems to be garbage, so I'm off to delete that now. Dr pda (talk) 05:05, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

If this were to be done, I think using a percentage of the total size (say 50%) would be more appropriate --T-rex 22:58, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Can someone please build this, or should I start learning code? I just fixed three more templates; one stayed vandalized for 18 minutes, affecting lots of articles. This will continue to be a problem until we take steps to prevent it. --Bongwarrior (talk) 20:00, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

It looks like you are going to have to learn code or ask someone specifically to see if they can do it. KnightLago (talk) 16:32, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Cobi has just updated cluebot to watch for this sort of vandalism, also any templates on todays fa are now protected (see these pages) --Chris 07:16, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

If he added this functionality, it's not very effective. See Template:Audio-IPA-nohelp [3] (9 minutes) and Template:Expert-verify [4](15 minutes, an IP fixed it...). --Bongwarrior (talk) 02:54, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I am willing to write a bot that does this, but so far my bot does no anti-vandalism things, so it will be some work, and quite awhile until I get around to doing so --T-rex 20:39, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Following this discussion, I now propose that a bot be made that edits the titles of all pages with the ((disambig)) template which do not end with "(Disambiguation)" are renamed so that they do. This should make searching for articles easier. It Is Me Here (talk) 14:35, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Quite frankly, I don't see as there was a consensus for this. –xeno (talk) 14:39, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. However, the quite probably could be consensus for a bot to create any missing redirects from "Sometopic (disambiguation)" to "Sometopic", where "Sometopic" is a disambiguation page, seeing as the disambiguation guideline already recommends it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:13, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure why an author is required but could someone check the 4700 Category:Images lacking an author for images having (1) ((PD-USGov-Military-Air Force)) and fill in "US Air Force" for author (like Image:32d Air Refueling Squadron.jpg) and (2) ((PD-USGov-Military-Army)) and fill in "US Army" (like Image:William C Bryan.jpg). If it's possible, could someone just cross-check against everything in Category:United States military image templates? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:24, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Coding... -- maelgwn - talk 03:00, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Y Done

Can a robot be used to add articles to new categories to produce a new child wikiproject assessment table from a parent wiki project banner? Would assessments given by the Template:WikiProject Canada, be able to produce categories for the various classes for the WikiProject Saskatchewan Communities & Neighbourhoods articles? The Template:WikiProject Canada gives assessments for the provinces, in this case, Saskatchewan, and it also assesses the departments in this case Canadian communities. Can new assessment categories be created from this template which would give an assessment table exclusively for an active assessment department at WikiProject Saskatchewan Communities & Neighbourhoods without creating another talk page banner. It is possible to compare for example Category:Stub-Class Canada-related articles and Category:WikiProject Saskatchewan Communities & Neighbourhoods articles using AWB to get an idea of stub class Saskatchewan Communities & Neighbourhoods articles and so on. Is there a better way to make a new assessment table from the parent talk page banner? SriMesh | talk 19:12, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you can use the existing banner to populate the categories. You would check that the communities parameter is set, and that the Saskatchewan parameter is set, and if they are both set you would then add the article to the appropriate categories based on its assessed quality and importance. Then WP 1.0 bot can make the assessment tables for you. You can get help doing this at WP:RT. The idea is that WP 1.0 bot will think "WikiProject Saskatchewan Communities & Neighbourhoods" is an independent project, but the categories will be populated by ((WikiProject Canada)). — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:22, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I had a few minutes, so I implemented the updated code for the wikiproject banner here. You would need to copy that on top of the old code, and set up all the assessment categories for a project named 'Saskatchewan Communities & Neighbourhoods', following these instructions. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:42, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you!!!! Will read over your notes at both places, and see what I can come up with! Your assistance is invaluable, and I hope I can make it work!.. Kind Regards 23:34, 20 July 2008 (UTC)23:34, 20 July 2008 (UTC)~~

A bot that would add links or cite sources or basically anything to help you make a perfect edit. (Sound good?)Wikidude57 23:52, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Note: I can't have my PC on ALL day.Wikidude57 23:54, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Impossible Although such a bot would be a great thing, it is impossible to write a bot to add sources or links. Such a task requires human judgement. RichardΩ612 Ɣ ɸ 15:02, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Idealy this bot could be ran on a new account and be ready to run for admin in 2 months without any outside help. I also want it to mow my lawn. Chillum 15:05, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Just give it resources and voila.Wikidude57 18:40, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

A while back I proposed creating a "conversion bot" that could find all stand alone instances of measurements given either in stadard or metric form and convert them into dual measurements listing both standard and metric measurements. I think the idea died off, but I still think that the utility of such a bot would be a welcome addition to Wikipedia, and with the conversion templates now in use here I think the time is right to bring up the suggestion again. Would there be any interst in creating a bot of this nature here on wikipedia? TomStar81 (Talk) 02:47, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Strong oppose: Bots do not possess the ability to discern if conversions are necessary and this would yield unnecessary articles cluttered with conversions every 2 lines. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 08:20, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

• Not really a task appropriate to a bot. A manual run through by a user using a semi-automated process may hold water. Stifle (talk) 11:04, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

There used to be a bot who listed subpages of WP:PUI at WP:PUI#Holding cell once they were 14 days old or older, so that they could be cleared out by an admin. But there doesn't seem to be any more. Now someone (usually me) has to manually add each new day. Can someone please create a bot task which runs once per day (ideally soon after midnight UTC) to add

 *[[Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images/((subst:#time:Y F j|-14 days))]]

to the bottom of section 1 of WP:PUI? Stifle (talk) 11:03, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Just need a bot that will search for typos I give it and correct them for me. Have some programming experience so I could do some simple maintenance on it. Please write on my page if you would be kind enough to build it for me. DxNate 16:03, 9 Apr 2024 User-Talk-Contribs

Try WP:AWB -- maelgwn - talk 00:11, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah i agree, AWB will work for what you want. but please note that you typos are not allowed to be fixed automaticly and each edit must be manually done. Printer222 (talk) 01:33, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

As per this; WesleyDodds needs someone to deliver a newsletter for WP:ALM monthly. He'll leave you a note when the newsletter is ready. Please leave a note on his talk page if you can do this (and tell him I sent you). —Giggy 03:23, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I can do this, leaving a message now. Soxπed93^(blag) 03:26, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I need to add the parameter "ManUtd=yes" to the ((Football)) template on the talk page of every article in Category:Manchester United F.C. and its sub-categories. However, there are hundreds of articles in those categories: too much for one man to do alone. Therefore, I would like a bot to add the parameter for me and, in the case that the ((Football)) template is not present on an article's talk page, it should be added with the "ManUtd=yes" parameter. – PeeJay 13:08, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Doing... have skipped talk pages that don't exist but all existing talk pages have the Football template, now just adding ManUtd=yes where it is need, should be done soon. -- maelgwn - talk 00:58, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Cheers mate. In the case of the talk pages that don't exist, could those be done later at some point? Is there a relatively large number of them compared to the number that do exist? – PeeJay 01:09, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Finished adding ManUtd=yes where it is required. Give the servers a day or so to catch up with the categories and I will check again for talk pages that dont exist but need tagging, I dont think there are very many. -- maelgwn - talk 05:20, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

That's perfect, mate. Now the task force can get on with doing some serious improvement work. – PeeJay 07:33, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Y Done -- maelgwn - talk 09:47, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Forgive me if this has been brought up before, but I have been moving tons of PD pictures from WP to the commons, but occasionally there are images that need renaming in the process (for example Image:Cathal Brugha commemorative plague.jpg -> Image:Cathal Brugha commemorative plaque.jpg). Is there a bot that updates links to these images in articles? Normally it is not a problem as most images are uploaded with the same name, but if there is a typo, or another already exists, or the name just isn't descriptive, it would be great if a bot would catch that and move the links, so the WP version can be seamlessly deleted. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 05:09, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Do you delete the local images yourself? Or do you tag them with ((subst:ncd|Image:Filename.png))? (Do you use Magnus' tool?) Does anyone know if User:MetsBot change image names in articles when it checks Commons tagging? – Quadell ^(talk) 14:29, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I think this answered my question, it looks like 718 Bot does it. Cool. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 17:39, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

As per the discussion at WP:VPP#ALL disambiguation pages to end "(disambiguation)", a bot is being requested to create "Foo (disambiguation)" pages that redirect to "Foo" in cases where

1. "Foo" is a disambiguation page (i.e. bears the ((disambig)) template), and
2. the "Foo (disambiguation)" page does not yet exist.

Again, only redirects will be created. --Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 14:31, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

There isn't yet a consensus to run that bot if it were to be created.

Also, some more work needs to be done as to defining "Foo". We might end up with Foo (place) (disambiguation), Foo (name) (disambiguation), etc.

— Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:50, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I am the person who initiated the WP:VPP#ALL disambiguation pages to end "(disambiguation)" proposal. To address your concerns, could we have the bot ignore all articles with the "(" and/or the ")" character (i.e. where we have a Foo (name), instead of a Foo, article which contains ((disambig))) for the moment, and thus at least set the bot on its way, creating the most clear-cut redirects which nobody will dispute and which do not require any thought or judgement? It Is Me Here (talk) 16:54, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

It'd be pretty simple for a bot to create redirects at Foo (disambiguation) where Foo contains ((disambig)) or one of its variants. It'd also be pretty simple to tell the bot to explicitly not do this for articles named Foo (bar). I'd be willing to do it myself - and I don't really see it as problematic. Creating redirects without changing existing content/names is pretty uncontroversial. Shereth 17:02, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks a lot - please keep us updated on the bot's progress! It Is Me Here (talk) 18:03, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm looking at this request a little more thoroughly and while I still agree that it is simple from a technical standpoint, I have a few questions/concerns that ought to be resolved. First of all, there are a lot of pages that use the ((disambig)) template. I am running a quick check to get an idea on what number there are that do not reside at Foo (disambiguation) and will report back. Secondly, it must be decided whether the scope of this work will touch only on those pages containing ((disambig)), or whether it will include its variants, such as ((Geodis)). It might be worth bringing up in a fresh thread on the VP. Shereth 18:42, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok. There are 85,625 disambiguation pages located at Foo rather than Foo (disambiguation). As far as how many of these already have a Foo (disambiguation) redirected at them, I do not know; but I can tell you that, at a bare minimum, we're looking at the creation of 60,000 redirects. This is a rather large number. If you factor in the other types of redirects, it's probably in the 75,000-100,000 range. I'm unwilling to embark upon this task without a bit more of a firm consensus - I will bring it up at the village pump, and subsequently run it by BAG for formal approval before taking off with something like this. Shereth 19:10, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Wow, I didn't know how much of a job it would really be, but I guess I should have expected the numbers to be that high when we're approaching our 2.5 millionth article. Leave a note here with a link to the discussion at the Village Pump, please. Thanks!--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 19:28, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

• Shereth: OK, thanks for taking the time to look into this. As it has taken me some time to even get most people at WP:VPP to accept creating the Foo (Disambiguation) → Foo redirects, I would certainly like to focus on getting a bot approved which only does these basic, uncontroversial edits. Then we can decide on what to do about Foo (bar) pages and all the other templates at CAT:DRT. Moreover, as I understand it, bots do not perform their duties instantaneously, but rather their edits take a while to do, and so with so much work we will have plenty of time to mull over the more difficult redirects once our bot is churning out easy ones. Also, could you please link all acronyms in future :)? I had to look WP:BAG up - I'm not very clued up on Wikipedia lingo, you see.
• Aervanath lives in the Orphanage: There are already a couple of links to it, but here is another one! :D - Clickety click. It Is Me Here (talk) 20:30, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Here is a link to a fresh discussion that touches only upon the topic of the bot task itself. You may want to check it out and send interested editors there. Shereth 20:35, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles in Category:National Cycle Routes beginning "NCR" - the following to be added to the top of their talk pages:

((multimove|new name|Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Roads#National Cycle Routes move request))

where the "new name" is s/NCR /National Cycle Route /. Thanks. 217.36.107.9 (talk) 15:15, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

This tagging looks like an ideal task for a bot. Is there any reason nobody has done this yet? 217.36.107.9 (talk) 08:55, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Y Done wouldve been quicker to do it by hand than figure out how to code it, but where is the fun in that *-) -- maelgwn - talk 13:13, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I've just tagged the following categories with ((subst:cfd|Unqualified "Terrorism")):

• Category:Terrorism by country‎
• Category:Terrorist incidents in the 1990s
• Category:Terrorist incidents in the 2000s
• Category:Terrorism victims by nationality
• Category:Terrorism deaths by country
• Category:Terrorists by nationality‎

But I believe there are an enormous number of (first level only) sub-categories that need to be tagged similarly before debate can continue. Is it possible that someone could do this with a bot, please? Thanks in advance. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 14:37, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

This makes me nervous. Could you link to relevant CFDs for terrorism-related categories, so I can see whether they were successful or unsuccessful and how much support they got? – Quadell ^(talk) 00:21, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I actually did, but I'll do it again: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2008_July_25#Unqualified_.22Terrorism.22. Thanks. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 15:29, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

The date has now rolled over twice from my original CfD, so the ((subst:cfd|Unqualified "Terrorism")) tag will no longer work. If you don't mind grabbing the code from one of the above categories and tagging the subcategories with that, it would actually work. Thanks again. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 15:32, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Hello? Please? It's not fair to debate this at CfD if these categories aren't tagged to give involved parties fair warning. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 16:14, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I started, but then the cfd template was linking incorrectly. Might be able to do it later. -- maelgwn - talk 05:25, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Y Done Post here if there are some missing but I think I got them. -- maelgwn - talk 13:26, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Amazing! Thank you so much. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 13:58, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

What I'd like, is a bot which, whenever [[domain:xxx text]] is in [[Category:xxx ntext]], the sort key is set to Otext where:

• xxx is a year period, probably restricted to one of the following:
  • a millennium (examples, Category:1st millennium, Category:1st millennium BC)
  • a century (examples, Category:1st century, Category:1st century BC)
  • a decade (examples, Category:0s, Category:0s BC, Category:1820s, etc.)
  • a year (examples, Category:1, Category:345 BC, Category:2004, etc.)

• text is arbitrary text (or empty, with the sort key being set to " " in that case)
• ntext is arbitrary text

• Otext is calculated as follows:
  • if text is empty, or contained in words within ntext, set Text = " " (sort to top level)
  • otherwise, remove leading prepositions ("by", "of", "in"), and words contained in ntext, and capitalize the first remaining letter.
  • (There may be other rules suggested later, or manual readjustments suggested for some other rules)

To avoid possible accidential sort key errors due to something else starting with 2000 being in Category:2000 AD, we might restrict ntext to be null for years. It's less likely that something would be in a category such as Category:20th Century Fox with the "Century" not capitalized.

The bot should log its output in such a way that it can be reversed if it goes WP:ROUGE, remembering that a sort key of " " is not the same as a sort key of "". Remember, if the bot works at all as I request, it won't change any categories, merely change the sort order of within categories.

Some of the categories are populated by templates, so the bot won't effect those. A couple months ago, I changed Template:DeathsInCenturyBC‎ to properly tag the nth Century BC deaths articles.

— Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:41, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm having trouble following. Could you give a couple examples of changes this bot would make? – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 14:57, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Assuming all of these were not generated by a template:

1. If Category:1st century deaths (or an article 1st century deaths)is already in Category:1st century, change the sort key to "Deaths" by changing the key line to:

   [[Category:1st century|Deaths]]

2. If 1st century is in Category:1st century, change the sort key to " " by changing the key line to:

   [[Category:1st century| ]]

3. If Category:1st century deaths by country were in Category:1st century deaths, change the sort key to Country by changing the key line to:

   [[Category:1st century deaths|Country]]

— Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:30, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I can do this, but I'd like to get some more feedback as to whether this would be useful and non-problematic. Any other opinions from folks out there? – Quadell ^(talk) 01:41, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I've never heard any objections; and I think I mentioned some of my manual changes in Wikipedia:WikiProject Years. Pehaps I should ask again in that project, or in WikiProject Time, pointing to this request? Can you think of any other venues where input should be obtained. It just seems obvious to me that articles should be sorted, in a category, by default, by whatever information is not included in the article but not in the category name, and this seems a partial implementation. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:23, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm going on vacation soon, and wouldn't want to start it before I go. I'll be back on the 23rd. (If someone else wants to create this instead of me, I don't mind a bit.) In the mean time, you could ask at those projects, yes, and perhaps set up an official request for bot authorization. Or I'll write up a BRfA when I get back, if no one else has tackled the project by then. – Quadell ^(talk) 22:23, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Discussion in the WikiProject was one "go for it" — and no other comments. I don't think this is contraversial, and I've suggested it be set up as being reversable, so perhaps we should go with this. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:08, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for your patience. While I'm trying to get the last of the Polbot #8 kinks worked out, I'll see what I can whip up here. I'll put in a bot request. And I know what you're thinking, and you're right: "The Last of the Polbot #8 Kinks" would indeed be a great name for a rock band. – Quadell ^(talk) 22:04, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

My goal: to put a BRfA up for this today. – Quadell ^(talk) 10:24, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

BRFA filed: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Polbot 9 – Quadell ^(talk) 13:03, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

A basic story. A newb comes along to an article like this and goes OMG!, there are no images, I'll put this tag on it!:((reqphoto)). He inadvertently places the image on the article, not realizing that it should go on the talk page, and this ugly message shows up. I think someone should design a bot to move these templates to the top of its talk pages. However, make it only for article namespace, as for User: and Wikipedia: namespaces, there are a lot of uses for some reason like ths category says as of 29 July 2008: Category:Main pages with misplaced talk page templates. The bot would work from this category, ignoring Wikipedia: and User: namespaces. When the template is moved, the article is now (kinda-)perfect! TALKIN PIE EATER REVIEW ME 20:55, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm really surprised that no bot does this already. – Quadell ^(talk) 21:57, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I just caught my bot substing a ((spam)) template on an article page. I manually fixed it, but it would be nice to have a bot taking care of these. --T-rex 17:15, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Generally speaking, newer editors don't understand why a page gets protected, and suddenly finding that they can't edit it can be frustrating. Over at VP/Proposals, I brought up the idea that we should automatically include the RFPP entry on the talk page of any article which gets protected, and they suggested I take it here. Essentially, the bot might be triggered by the opening of (or changes in) a protection log, and would automatically take the RFPP proceeding for any page which gets protected on the talk page for that page. Here is the discussion at VP/P:

Never requested a bot before, and I would like to help in any way possible. Mr. IP 《Defender of Open Editing》 17:03, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

On my todo list is a protection-template maintenance bot, which will ensure that protection templates on a page are synchronised with the protection that is currently in place. This function could be easily added to that bot once it gets underway. I'm essentially just waiting for my toolserver account to get itself organised. Happy‑melon 10:16, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Fantastic, thank you :D Mr. IP 《Defender of Open Editing》 00:36, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

This could likely be done with automated editing, but I don't know how to do that. If anyone here could, I'd appreciate it.

The slang term "rastas", which sounds really, really bad in an encyclopedia, is all over Wikipedia. Could a bot scan all the cases of the words "rasta" and "rastas" and replace it with "rastafarian" and "rastafarians"? ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 07:43, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Impossible See Rasta (Congo), Rasta filtering, Rasta Taco and a host of others from google to refresh on why spelling-correction bots are explicitly disallowed. Happy‑melon 10:20, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Also, I'm not sure whether this change would be useful or not. Nowhere in the Rastafari movement article does it indicate that the term "Rasta" is non-preferred, and that article uses phrases like "Rasta music" and "Rasta culture". (There's a lot I don't know about Rastafarianism, admittedly.) – Quadell ^(talk) 10:24, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Happy-melon, it's probably best done with automated editing. The problems of other words like "rasta tongo," could be dealt with by only editing articles which contain certain keywords (i.e., Selassie, Rastafari, etc..).

As for why the word shouldn't be used: It's an obvious slang term with an unecyclopedic tone. Academic sources would not likely refer to Rastafarians as "Rastas." ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 16:26, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Nonsense, the word "Rasta" is used as a synonym for the Rastafari movement throughout contemporary scholarly literature on the subject; just read some of it. On the other hand, I doubt there is any source anywhere agreeing with your POV assertion that it is not acceptable. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 17:20, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Resolved

I'm looking for a bot that can perform similar duties as did DyceBot did for WP:GL/IMPROVE. After Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Image to improve was moved to Wikipedia:Graphic Lab/Image workshop, DyceBot stopped performing it's actions. I tried contacting it's creator but no response. The bot performed the following actions:

• Mark sections as stale after 14 days of inactivity
• Archived "stale" sections after seven days.
• Archived "resolved" sections after three days.

Any help? --pbroks13^talk? 05:30, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Original bot fixed.--Dycedarg ж 12:39, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I would like to create a list of articles under the Aviation WikiProject's scope, sorted by popularity, in order to get an idea of which articles are most visible to the public and our project should work at improving to FA's quickly. The category with all the articles is Category:WikiProject Aviation articles, or alternately Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:WPAVIATION. Can the program used on Wikipedia:Popular pages be modified for this? - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 01:47, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

 Doing... working on the script now, should hopefully have a list in 24h or so. Mr.Z-man 02:26, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Sweeeeeet. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 02:50, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Would it be possible to compile this for Utah Highways Wikiproject as well? The category is Category:Utah road transport articles by quality but only the sub-categories, not the three articles in the root directory. I like the format that you provided Trevor with the Rank (by views)/Views/Views Per Day/Class Thanks --Admrb♉ltz (t • c • log) 06:29, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Hello, it'd be quite useful if a bot could take up the task of adding a new section header and Portal:Current events transclusion, like so, to Wikipedia:In the news section on the Main Page/Candidates at midnight UTC, and remove the last section (older than 7 days) to the archive for that month. It's embarrassing when nobody remembers to add a day and we sit around wondering why we aren't getting any suggestions for Template:In the news. Also, it would be great if it could create new archive pages, so it's entirely hands free from the users perspective. Thanks! - BanyanTree 02:38, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

After discussion of an odd coding problem at this Help Desk page, I'd like to have a bot to help with United States micropolitan area links. There's a difference in the Unicode between the following links:

• Mankato-North Mankato, MN µSA
• Mankato-North Mankato, MN μSA

As you can see in the Help Desk page, someone recommended having a bot work with these, going exclusively to the micron character. Could someone write a bot to convert all the "mu" links to "micron" links? I'm not entirely sure which of these characters is a mu and which is a micron, but I believe that the vast majority of links are the lower of the two Mankato links, and from what was said in the Help Desk comment, I'm guessing that these links are "mu". Ask me for clarification if this request isn't clear: as you can see in the Help Desk section, I've been quite confused with this problem, which has just appeared to me today anyway. Nyttend (talk) 00:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

What is wrong with the redirect? -- maelgwn - talk 12:17, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, but I was advised (see the help desk section) that it would be best to go to the micron. Ask User:Andrwsc, whose idea it was to come here. Nyttend (talk) 16:26, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

By the way, regardless of what you think of the mu redirects, it would definitely be helpful to have a redirect using a micron to everything where there's a redirect using a mu: it's quite confusing to link to the redirect, only to find that you're linking to the wrong redirect. For example, I had to create Mankato-North Mankato, MN µSA yesterday because only Mankato-North Mankato, MN μSA existed. Therefore: can you write a bot to create a redirect (using the micron) to every title that already has a similar redirect with a mu? Nyttend (talk) 16:30, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

My take on this is that the semantic meaning of the µ within the redirect is an abbreviation for "Micropolitan", and as such, should use the micron character. Although the "mu redirects" look the same, that character has a different semantic meaning. Since it is already causing confusion for editors working on these articles, the need for standardization on the correct character should be clear. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:50, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Andrwsc has posted a list of such links here. Can bots be operated on Commons? I know that several Commons images link to the "mu" versions. Nyttend (talk) 17:59, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

It looks like articles in Category:United_States_micropolitan_areas are typically titled '... micropolitan area' and you just want to make sure that their are redirects from '..., State µSA' and '..., State μSA' ? -- maelgwn - talk 04:49, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I think Andrwsc is saying that the "micron" redirects need to be created (as most don't exist) and links to the "mu" redirects need to be replaced with links to the "micron" redirects. Nyttend (talk) 12:27, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's it. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:09, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

You want just the 940 listed at Table of United States Micropolitan Statistical Areas? – Quadell ^(talk) 21:55, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, there are only 577 micropolitan areas (see under the "Table" header), but yes, that's all that I believe would need to be done. Nyttend (talk) 12:27, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

My take on this is: If the micropolitan area article itself is at a "mu"-title, then it needs to be moved to be at a "micron" title. But this doesn't happen often, or at all, so far as I can tell. If the "mu"-title is a redirect to another article name, then the "micron"-title needs to be an identical redirect. There's no need to delete the "mu"-redirect. And there's no need to fix links to the "mu"-redirects to link to "micron"-redirects instead, in my opinion.

I am willing to create a bot which will create the "micron"-redirects where they are missing. – Quadell ^(talk) 15:48, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Y Done Redirects created. – Quadell ^(talk) 18:27, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

There are quite a few large templates used on various mammal species and I was wondering if I could enlist a bot for some help. For example, the template ((Diprotodontia)) is on about 150 or so species articles. I go through periodically and check that the template: 1) is either on all of the species' articles or if it has legitimately been removed, then I remove the link from the template; and 2) that no page moves snuck by me (which quite a few do, since many of the animal articles on WP are still in their formative stages), and if there was a page move I fix the redirect (I currently use the "Related Changes" tool which has its drawbacks).

I've been doing these templates through WP:MAMMAL and the goal is to link all of the species (there's only 4-5 thousand or so, I say "only" because I'm nearing completion) via these templates. Is there any way a bot can compare the links on the template to the articles that contain the template and provide a report on demand? This would allow me to ensure there are no redirects on the templates and also that there is consistency on the WP articles about what is a living or extinct species, and what is a species or sub-species. Thoughts? --Tombstone (talk) 07:53, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, a bot can do this. I'm not sure I understand exactly what the output report would look like. Something like this?

It can also search for "status = " to see if it's listed as extinct, and it could also look for "subspecies =", which might tell you if it's a subspecies or not. Is this the sort of thing you were contemplating? – Quadell ^(talk) 21:53, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that is basically what I would like -- this would be a great tool for WP:MAMMAL. One of the main things I would like to easily be able to monitor is page moves of articles, so I wonder if the bot could recognize if a link on the template is to a redirect. How hard would it be to code something like you mention above? If you are willing to do such a bot, feel free to continue the conversation on my talk page. Rgrds. --Tombstone (talk) 13:59, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I think so. Where is a list of such templates to process? – Quadell ^(talk) 10:26, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Right now they are held at User:Tombstone/Mammal templates/Collection, User:Tombstone/Mammal templates/Collection1 and User:Tombstone/Mammal templates/Collection2. If you want to do testing, I think ((Cetacea)) would be a nice one to test. Much obliged. --Tombstone (talk) 11:26, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Doing...: As an update, I have run through the cetacea, putting the results here. The code notes redirects, checks to see if the template is present, checks for the taxobox template, notes in the status is extinct, and notes if it's listed as a subspecies. (None of the cetacea listed are extinct or subspecies though.) I also listed all such mammal templates at User:Polbot/templatelist.

If you're happy with the demo, I'll run it for each of the templates on User:Polbot/templatelist, but instead of depositing the results on my user subpage I thought I would put the table at, say, Template:Cetacea/stats, and leave a note on Template talk:Cetacea about its existence. Does this sound good to you? – Quadell ^(talk) 13:24, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Holy crap that is kick you in the 'nads awesome! I am working to turn all of this over to WP:MAMMAL eventually. Currently, I have Wikipedia:WikiProject Mammals/Article templates/doc that I put on each of the main templates. I wonder if you could dump the output at, say, Wikipedia:WikiProject Mammals/Article templates/stats? Eventually, I plan on moving the template pages from my userspace to Wikipedia:WikiProject Mammals/Article templates. I am also thinking there is the potential to expand on the uses of this bot down the road, by maybe somehow comparing common and species name to MSW3 -- have to play that by ear. (FYI, all of the templates that currently end in "nav" I intend to eventually merge into the main template for that Order.) Rgrds. --Tombstone (talk) 14:07, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I don't think Polbot's ever received a compliment quite like that before!

If I put all the stats for all those templates on one page, it's going to be a very long page. Possibly it would be unmanageably large. Are you sure you want everything at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mammals/Article templates/stats? Or would you rather have them at something like Wikipedia:WikiProject Mammals/Article templates/stats/Cetaceans, etc? – Quadell ^(talk) 04:25, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

That is fine. We could then utilize Wikipedia:WikiProject Mammals/Article templates/stats as a navigation or something of all of the output. Rgrds. --Tombstone (talk) 11:17, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I've been working on it, but Wikipedia seems overloaded at the moment. (Rejecting edits right and left so the servers can catch up.) I'll try running it later. – Quadell ^(talk) 01:16, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Y Done: It's at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mammals/Article templates/stats. There may still be a few errors where Wikipedia failed to return a page, so my bot thought it was a redlink when it wasn't. But it's done, and 99% right or so, and it should be obvious when it's wrong. Enjoy! – Quadell ^(talk) 15:34, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Quadell, I really appreciate it. It will take me awhile to process all of the data. If I have any questions, I'll stop by your talkpage. Thanks again. Rgrds. --Tombstone (talk) 10:38, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

From my talk page but I dont have time to do it at the moment:

Wikipedia:Bots/Status lists Maelgwnbot as doing "occasional template replacement". Does include deprecated infobox replacement? --Geniac (talk) 17:47, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Um most likely, what do you want done? -- maelgwn - talk 04:39, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

For each article that uses Template:Cheese, the infobox needs changed to Template:Infobox Cheese. The nine parameters in Template:Cheese correspond to nine of the sixteen fields in Template:Infobox Cheese; name, image, country, regiontown, source, pasteurised, texture, aging and certification. Regiontown is intentionally immediately deprecated. The other seven fields need added to each infobox in each article during conversion in the correct order, as seen at Template:Infobox Cheese/doc. --Geniac (talk) 19:38, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

-- maelgwn - talk 13:00, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

So, all you need is each instance of, say,

((Cheese
| Parmigiano Reggiano
| [[Image:Parmigiano reggiano piece.jpg|260px]]
| [[Italy]]
| [[Parma]], [[Reggio Emilia]], [[Modena]], [[Bologna]], [[Mantua]]
| [[Cow]]s
| No
| Hard
| 24 months or more
| [[protected designation of origin|PDO]] [[1992]]
))

...changed to...

((Infobox Cheese
| name          = Parmigiano Reggiano
| image         = [[Image:Parmigiano reggiano piece.jpg|260px]]
| othernames    = 
| country       = [[Italy]]
| regiontown    = [[Parma]], [[Reggio Emilia]], [[Modena]], [[Bologna]], [[Mantua]]
| region        = 
| town          = 
| source        = [[Cow]]s
| pasteurised   = No
| texture       = Hard
| fat           = 
| protein       = 
| dimensions    = 
| weight        = 
| aging         = 24 months or more
| certification = [[protected designation of origin|PDO]] [[1992]]
))

Is that it? – Quadell ^(talk) 02:05, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

That is my understanding yeah. You have to watch those vertical bars inside of links/the image cos they will throw you off if your not smart about it! -- maelgwn - talk 02:31, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Y Done I've translated all but 12 instances. These instances have really difficult stuff going on: e.g. html comments within links within templates within ref tags within a cheese parameter. I figure you can do them by hand easier than I can rejigger the code to work these. – Quadell ^(talk) 20:10, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Plz, update ru-iwiki in categories from Category:1956 albums to Category:2008 albums. Replace:

[[ru:Музыкальные альбомы .... года]]

by

[[ru:Альбомы .... года]]

Alex Spade (talk) 12:08, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Y Done – Quadell ^(talk) 02:32, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Stepshep usually helps me out but I know he's out of commission. Not talking articles here, but rather categories. Also not entirely sure this can be done by bot because of the wildcard, but I thought I'd try. I'd like to have museum categories and their descendant categories, i.e. Category: Automobile museums, Category:Automobile museums in the United States, Category:History museums and Category:History museums in Canada tagged with the project template and class as Cat: ((WikiProject Museums))

Is this doable by bot? I'm happy to vet a list of categories and sub-cats. Just let me know, thanks! TravellingCari 16:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

TinucherianBot should be able to do it easily . Shall I work on them ? -- Tinu Cherian - 16:42, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks so much, go for it. I'm around off and on in the next couple of hours if you have any questions. Saves me a lot of work and bots don't wear out. TravellingCari 16:49, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

ETA, for some reason half the template disappeared, should be ((tl|WikiProject Museums|class=Cat))

Sorry, I havent had started yet ( fallen asleep :) ).. I am now working on this ... Btw I didnt understand the above sentence ; You want me to tag the articles in the above categories or tag the categories themseleves as ((tl|WikiProject Museums|class=Cat))  ? -- Tinu Cherian - 02:25, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Doing... : Tagging categories in User:TinucherianBot/Autotagg/WPMUS/Cats after approval from the task requester -- Tinu Cherian - 04:48, 7 August 2008 (UTC) Y Done -- Tinu Cherian - 06:02, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Need a bot to work through Category:B-Class Ships articles and splice in a checklist to our project template for B-Class. Text to add would be:

<!-- B-Class-1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations. --> |B-Class-1=yes <!-- B-Class-2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies. --> |B-Class-2=yes <!-- B-Class-3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content. --> |B-Class-3=yes <!-- B-Class-4. It is free from major grammatical errors. --> |B-Class-4=yes <!-- B-Class-5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams. --> |B-Class-5=yes

We have not previously used a checklist but are having it activated soon and don't want to lose the B articles we already have. If the above text is spliced in prior to the activation it will prevent that loss. --Brad (talk) 16:59, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Doing... -- maelgwn - talk 01:34, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Y Done -- maelgwn - talk 03:16, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your fast and accurate work. Much appreciated. --Brad (talk) 16:57, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Could somebody generate a bot for Wikiproject Artemis Fowl? The Log of Active users (here) needs one.--Leolisa1997 (talk) 09:40, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

User:MelonBot/Member lists is similar to what you want, but I can't currently make any guarrantees that it could run on a regular basis. Happy‑melon 11:00, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Is there a way for a bot to check all articles that include ((ChicagoWikiProject)) and determine whether they are at WP:FAC, WP:FAR, WP:GAC, WP:GAR, WP:FLC, WP:PR, WP:AFD, WP:CFD, WP:IFD, WP:TFD, WP:FPC, WP:FPOC, WP:FTC, or WP:DRV so that our project can easily find discussions that we want to be involved in? It would be optimal if it ran daily.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 05:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

A similar bot was requested recently, and is in development: see User:B. Wolterding/Article alerts. --B. Wolterding (talk) 13:01, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Greetings. I need a know if a bot can identify and replace similar patterns of code in a template.

I'm looking at reforming ((Maintained)), whose function is to indicate that a given page is being "looked after" by a user or group of users. The way the template works at the moment is that it says something like "This page is being maintained by _____. They can help with questions.", where editors fill in the blank with whatever they like, but mostly either their bare username or templates like ((user|Username)), ((user2|Username)), ((user4|Username)) etc. This leads to discrepancy in the use of the template, with some pages having only a link to the userpage, others to talk and contribs, others to an editcounter or email link for the user and so on. I am intent on standardising it to use ((User4)) by default. The question is, if I change ((Maintained)) to include ((User4)) by default, can a bot successfully isolate only the usernames from all the various talkpages with ((maintained)) on them? So for example, the bot would need to replace: ((Maintained|((User4|Username)), Username2)) with ((Maintained|Username|Username2)) There are few enough maintained pages (less than 1000, I'd estimate) that if the bot could put the pages it couldn't deal with into Category:Maintained errors or something, I could fix those easily.

So, can this be done? Any help appreciated, Skomorokh 03:05, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Is this technically feasible even? Skomorokh 15:50, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Is there a bot that can fix the common use of a hyphen in places where an en or em dash is required? Simply replacing all instances of [space][hyphen][space] with [space][en][space] or simply [em] would probably be right 95% of the time, and if the bot could identify dates or numbers on each side of the sequence, and replace the sequence with an unspaced en, that would likely bump it up to 99%. — Swpb^{τ • c} 02:18, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

This has been previously discussed and rejected on a number of occasions. I believe AWB has this feature built-in as part of its general fixes. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:02, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Formatter handles this also, I believe, though it is out of line with MOS:DASH at this point. Skomorokh 15:49, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Since BetacommandBot is now blocked, I imagine there isn't a bot that is moving tagged images to the commons. Is this correct? Before, approved users could tag images with ((commons ok)) and then they would automatically get moved. I'm going through a bunch of (mainly orphaned) images now, and this is sorely needed. Could someone take up the cause, now that Beta can't, due to other not-really-related issues? Calliopejen1 (talk) 06:28, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

BotMultichill is currently doing this. I will be reopening Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Legobot 2 when I get the time. LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 19:42, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Would it be possible for a bot to notify the uploader of an image that their image has been moved to the commons and it's new location (especially if it has a different name). Currently these images are deleted under CSD i8 and it is possible that original uploader will have no idea what happened to their image, particularly images that are not used on WP. If the image is just in their watchlist, they will come back and find it missing. For numerous examples of this confusion, see User talk:Mets501. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 08:40, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

This sounds like a great idea. I hope someone implements this. – Quadell ^(talk) 14:32, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I hope this doesn't sound more complicated than it is, as it would simply need to follow the usage of the ((ncd)) template (which is semi-automatically used by the CommonsHelper tool) or the ((db-i8)) template, both of which list the duplicate location. I really don't like the idea of good-faith uploaders of quality images thinking their images were IfD'd with no chance to defend them, as this could discourage editors from further contributing. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 07:34, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, it is rather complicated. For example, would it be enough to check all image pages linking to ((ncd)) etc. and notify the uploaders at fixed intervals or do you need to check each edit to an image to see if such a template was added and if so, notify the uploader after say 10 minutes if he hasn't been notified by then? The first method is easier, but not foolproof. What if an image was tagged and deleted within 10 minutes? The uploader wouldn't be notified by the first method, but if this hardly ever happens I'd suggest using the first method. What do you think? --Erwin85 (talk) 15:03, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm working on a bot for the first method. Should be done soonish. --Erwin85 (talk) 15:59, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I was sleeping. :) The problem is that ((ncd)) is a form of ((db-i8)), a Speedy Delete tag, and the criteria for i8 were just changed so there is no waiting period (a hold-over from when it wasn't a speedy). If the second method is too complicated, it should be simple enough to add "notification of uploader" to the CSD-I8 criteria. I don't think anyone would object to notification to this sort of speedy. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 17:52, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll try converting an IRC bot for this and see where it ends up. At the moment there are > 700 pages linking to ((ncd)), so I'll still have to run the first method before starting the second. --Erwin85 (talk) 21:07, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Done, it's up for approval: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Erwin85Bot 4 (continuous; 2nd method) and Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Erwin85Bot 5 (one time run; 1st method). --Erwin85 (talk) 10:38, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi,

i have a suggestion that when a page gets archived, links from other pages to subsections of that page get updated, and point to:

Original_Page/Archive_X#Subsection

216.80.119.92 (talk) 19:26, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

This sounds useful, but I'm not sure how it would be automated. Different people use different archiving styles on different pages. It might be worthwhile to talk to User:Misza13, who runs User:MiszaBot III, the auto-archiving bot; Misza might be persuaded to update links at the same time, but this could be problematic as well. (Altering someone else's comments, even with good intentions, is usually frowned upon.) All the best, – Quadell ^(talk) 14:31, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

*cough* ClueBot III has done this since it was introduced to Wikipedia for archives it manages.  ;) -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 08:41, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Please change instances of Sedan in over 1500 car related articles to Sedan (car), as this had been moved. See Special:WhatLinksHere/Sedan -- Matthead  Discuß   09:15, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:REDIRECT#NOTBROKEN - there is no need to expand redirects in this fashion. Happy‑melon 11:02, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for not making myself clear: Sedan should link to Sedan (disambiguation) (this is a matter of edit warring currently, as one person insists on Sedan (car)), but links to disamb pages are discouraged according to Wikipedia:Disambiguation. Thats why the many car-related instances of [[Sedan]] should be replaced by the proper [[Sedan (car)|Sedan]] to bypass any redirect or disamb, controversial or not. -- Matthead  Discuß   12:52, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

At this moment Sedan is a redirect to Sedan (car), not Sedan (disambiguation). If this edit stays, then no change is needed. If Sedan becomes a stable redirect to Sedan (disambiguation), then this change could be useful, but the page is hardly stable, as you say. Work it out. Bots aren't used to settle content disputes. – Quadell ^(talk) 14:26, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Edit war and Talk:Sedan_(car)#Requested_move going on. The car style is (hopefully!) stable at Sedan (car), so all car-related articles should link there directly, without going over the controversial and ambiguous Sedan. The main argument of the supporters of "Sedan needs to redirect to Sedan (car)" is the work load to update the 1000 articles. If a bot can do that, the dispute is either settled, or barely does harm. -- Matthead  Discuß   15:36, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

As Quadell said, bots are used to clean up after content decisions, not to support one side or the other. Come back once you've got a consensus :D Happy‑melon 20:55, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

That said, the mere fact that a bot can do this should be enough to give little weight to "it will be hard to change all those links" as an argument. --Random832 (contribs) 15:08, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, it seems that RussBot had fixed the links in about 1000 car articles anyway, leaving some 200 miscellaneous ones and talk pages. So this request is obsolete now, can be archived, thanks. -- Matthead  Discuß   16:47, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Is there a bot whose responsability is to modify the page linking to a deprecated category ?

(Oups, I just figured out that this category is WM Commons only ... But at the same time, I am not able to find such a page on Commons ... any pointers welcome ...)

BenAllard (talk) 20:04, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Bots/Request already has a discution about that bot. BenAllard (talk) 16:27, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

There are many, many old semiprotected pages that have simply been forgotten about and have no expiry date (there are a few that were before expiries were implemented in April 2007 too). We've been discussing ideas about what to do, and I came up with this idea.

My idea is to have a bot notify the protecting admins that it's been over (say) 2 months since a page was protected without an expiry date. I manually tested the idea out yesterday, notifying about 30 admins about old protections (see an example here) with pretty good responses. In some cases, the admin did unprotect the page, some leaving a comment just saying they simply forgot about the page (which is understandable). I'm thinking someone should be able to get a bot to do this. Just start here and work forward (or a database dump would probably work too since many protections date back over a year), find the last admin to protect the page, and notify them (I used a boilerplate here).

So, is this doable? -Royalguard11(T) 21:32, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

yeah would not be that hard to code, I could do it within a week. β^_command 02:06, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Would it be possible to get a bot to alphabetise categories like this: [5]? This idea is not on 'frequently denied bots' list and does not appear to be on active bot list. Thanks very much Tom (talk) 10:44, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

No wai, it's quite cntroversial. Some editors prefer to sort them by importance. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 10:46, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Get consensus first to alphabetize. Which is very unlikely to happen. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 10:50, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I see I didn't expect alphabetising categories was so controversial. Tom (talk) 11:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I am making an attempt to make ((Flickr)) the same here on en as the one on the commons. I have created ((Flickr-inline)) and redirected Flickr. I would like a bot to move all the current usages of the old template to the new one. Once that is done, I will copy the template from the commons to here.

Thanks. Philly jawn (talk) 16:41, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Aren't pictures from Flickr encouraged to be uploaded to Commons rather than Wikipedia? — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 21:39, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but until they can be moved, it might be helpful to do this. LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 21:13, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Doing... Im not sure the guy who requested this is still around but it seems to be a sensible move so ive started it now. Will probably just mark ((Flickr)) as depreciated when the template has been 'moved'. -- maelgwn - talk 13:18, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Y Done -- maelgwn - talk 23:55, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Resolved.

When we redirect a category page to another category page we use a "soft redirect". That is we place the ((category redirect)) message box on the old category. Up until now that box accepted its parameter in two ways: ((category redirect|Category:Newcat)) or ((category redirect|Newcat)).

After some discussion at Template talk:Category redirect#Template should redirect to category, not article we decided to only accept the parameter without the "Category:" part, since accepting both caused some problems. However we now need to fix all the cases where "Category:" is fed. I made it so the template detects when it gets a faulty parameter and then lists that category page in Category:Wikipedia category-redirect box parameter needs fixing (CAT:CATREDFIX). Most of the cases in that category are such "Category:Something" cases.

It would be nice if a bot worked through the CAT:CATREDFIX and changed the cases of ((category redirect|Category:Something)) to ((category redirect|Something)). It's about 420 cases and this is a one time run.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:21, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Doing...-- maelgwn - talk 13:07, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

And I see you are done. Thanks a bunch! Only 11 tricky cases got left since they had other errors. I'll fix them manually.

--David Göthberg (talk) 23:48, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Y Done -- maelgwn - talk 23:55, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Hello. Easy one: I have just proposed to rename the subcategories of Category:Magazines by country from Fooian magazines to Magazines published in Foo. To complete the nomination, each of the subcategories should be tagged appropriately to point to the debate. One option is to use the CfR template, although it would perhaps make more sense to tweak the CfR template for this particular case. I'm thinking something like

((cmbox |type=delete |image=none |text= '''This category and other categories of the form "''Fooian magazines''" is being considered for renaming to the form "''Magazines published in Foo''"<br/> This does '''''not''''' mean that any of the '''articles''' in the category will be deleted. They may, however, be recategorized.<br/> Please share your thoughts on the matter at '''[[Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2008_August_8#Category:Fooian_magazines|at this entry]]''' on the [[Wikipedia:Categories for discussion|Categories for Discussion]] page. Please do not empty the category or remove this notice while the discussion is in progress.))

Ok... The above is completely unreadable but if you cut and paste it from the source of my request, it gives you a nice little custom-made CfR box. Pichpich (talk) 23:24, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Doing... did you want subcats of Category:Computer magazines by country and Category:News magazines by country done? -- maelgwn - talk 02:32, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

meh, not sure... I think it might be better to stick with the Fooian magazines for now to avoid confusion at CfD. In any case, thanks a lot for the tagging. Pichpich (talk) 03:03, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I wrote a bot, Disambot (previously fuBot), to go through disambiguation pages and perform various cleanup tasks based on Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). Unfortunately the BRFA has been taking much longer than expected, and with college starting in just over a week, time constraints are becoming an impediment for me.

I'm looking for someone to operate the bot and potentially update the code if necessary. The programming is essentially complete and functional, but a need for changes may arise at some point. The code is written in Python and fairly well commented; see Source.

Aside from running the bot at appropriate times and responding to any concerns that arise, the job may or may not involve reviewing a detailed log of the bot's edits. I brought this up in the BRFA but we haven't reached a clear conclusion. It may be best to start a new BFRA, as the old one is a bit of a mess already.

Thanks! — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 03:38, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

User:DumZiBoT recently caught a minor difference in idenitcally-named reference tags in the Bonobo article and made notice on the talk page. The difference that the bot caught was only a single space in the citation template that would not affect the output. In other words, the two references were effectively identical to any reader (and were also named identically). Is there a bot currently in operation that recognizes references like this—that only differ by one or more space(s) which don't affect the output—, and then corrects the reference?

If not, I propose such a bot is created. Here are some cases the bot should address:

Case 1: Identical reference names

References that have been given the same name, and whose content is effectively identical.

• Before:

<ref name="a">((template | param1="yes" | param2="12"))</ref>

<ref name="a">((template|param1="yes"|param2="12"))</ref> (crowded)

<ref name="a"> (( template | param1 = "yes" | param2 = "12" )) </ref> (well-spaced)

• After:

<ref name="a">((template | param1="yes" | param2="12"))</ref>

<ref name="a" />

<ref name="a" />

Case 2: Different reference names

Another thing this bot should address is references with different names, but identical content, or, as above, content that is effectively identical.

• Before:

<ref name="a">((template | param1="yes" | param2="12"))</ref>

<ref name="b">((template | param1="yes" | param2="12"))</ref> (perfectly identical, different name)

<ref name="c"> ((template | param1 = "yes" | param2 = "12" )) </ref> (effectively identical, different name)

<ref name="b" /> (ref b is used later in the text)

<ref name="c" /> (ref c is used later in the text)

• After:

<ref name="a">((template | param1="yes" | param2="12"))</ref>

<ref name="a" />

<ref name="a" />

<ref name="a" />

<ref name="a" />

Case 3: Non-template references

This could also work for references that are not in citation templates. See Things to avoid for when this case should fail.

• Before:

<ref name="d">Berry, Gary. ''Wrath of the Redundant References''. (2008).</ref>

<ref name="d"> Berry, Gary. ''Wrath of the Redundant References''. (2008). </ref> (extra leading & trailing space, same name)

<ref name="e"> Berry, Gary. ''Wrath of the Redundant References''. (2008). </ref> (extra leading & trailing space, different name)

• After:

<ref name="d">Berry, Gary. ''Wrath of the Redundant References''. (2008).</ref>

<ref name="d" />

<ref name="d" />

Case 4: Presence of parameter with no entry / absence of parameter

As suggested by User:Euryalus:

• Before:

<ref name="a">((template | param1="yes" | param2="12" | param3= ))</ref> (param4 absent)

<ref name="a">((template | param1="yes" | param2="12" | param4= ))</ref> (param3 absent)

<ref name="b">((template | param1="yes" | param2="12" ))</ref>

<ref name="b">((template | param1="yes" | param2="12" | param3= | param4= ))</ref>

• After:

<ref name="a">((template | param1="yes" | param2="12" | param3= ))</ref> (by default, the first instance remains unchanged)

<ref name="a" />

<ref name="a" />

<ref name="a" />

Things to avoid

The following two examples are not effectively identical, and so the bot should skip these references. User:DumZiBoT or a similar bot might later catch this discrepancy and post a notice on the talk page.

<ref name="a">((template | param1="yes" | param2="12"))</ref>

<ref name="a">((template | param1="yes " | param2="12"))</ref>

In the example of Case 3, one case that would not qualify is when the spaces are not immediately within the <ref> </ref> tag. User:DumZiBoT or a similar bot might later catch this discrepancy and post a notice on the talk page.

<ref name="d">Berry, Gary. ''Wrath of the Redundant References''. (2008).</ref>

<ref name="d">Berry, Gary.  ''Wrath of the Redundant References''.  (2008).</ref>

Another thing to avoid is cases where quotation marks appear in one template but not the other. In some cases, the output from these two might be identical, but this is not necessarily the case. It would be far too much for the bot to check the template usage and determine whether or not the output will be identical. For example, if the parameter has text input, these are identical, but if the parameter has Boolean input, these are different (and the first usage is incorrect).

<ref name="a">((template | param1="yes" | param2="12"))</ref>

<ref name="a">((template | param1=yes | param2="12"))</ref>

Comments

Since User:DumZiBoT can compare two strings, I assume it is possible (albeit more complicated) to recognize an unimportant "space" character, and from there, pretty simply to replace <ref name="a"> … </ref> with <ref name="a" />.

Thank you for reading this rather long request! − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 07:56, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

NickDumZ NicDumZ considered doing this with his bot, but decided against it. If a bot were going to do this, it would probably be his. Perhaps he could be convinced to reconsider his conservative stance to these changes? Then again, his bot task has only been approved a very short while -- he might be more likely to request a bolder strategy after his bot has been running without significant errors for a while. – Quadell ^(talk) 13:51, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

oh well, Twas Now kindly told me about this request on my talk page, so it's okay :)

However, probably while you where writing this request, Twas, I added these features to DumZiBoT.

When a reference had a similar content, but a different name, the first used name was already kept, so some of your use cases where not relevant: simply adding support to handle different space/line breaks formatting addressed the 3 above use cases. It is done pretty naively as of now, meaning that the first use case from the "things to avoid" is not avoided at the moment, but... oh well ! this is how I work :) Start small, and get better. I am not even sure that I need to handle such a complicated case ! ;)

Most of the times when users come up to me with interesting suggestions, if I have time to implement them, I simply end up improving my tool, you just have to be patient ;)

NicDumZ ~ 14:34, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I have added a fourth case. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 14:24, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Same old story :P

Also just implemented !

NicDumZ ~ 14:34, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Is it possible to use a bot to generate a list of articles with geographical co-ordinates within the Arctic Circle? That would be a good approximation to suitable articles, though there are other definitions of Arctic, and subarctic stuff is sometimes relevant as well. Still, all articles with latitude co-ordinates between 66° 33′ 39″ (or 66.56083°) and 90° North. Is that possible? User:Carcharoth/Arctic articles is one place to put the list (or link to it from there). Carcharoth (talk) 13:05, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

 Doing... Mr.Z-man 22:06, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

((done)) - Wikipedia:WikiProject Arctic/Likely articles. Mr.Z-man 20:49, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone have a bot that could run through Category:Airports in Canada and copy the the entire ((Infobox Airport)) into a text file? There's no edits required I just need the text file. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 22:49, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

How does this benefit Wikipedia? This is just for personal interest. Is there specific information that you want from these infoboxes, like the IATA code or ICAO code? — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 00:50, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

It makes life easier for when I'm making updates and corrections. I also want to pull out all the coordinates to be added to the various airport lists so that they can be used with the Template:GeoGroupTemplate. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 21:30, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

(Lame name, I know) A bot that turns all redirects into direct links. Run about once a week. Note: I am not saying I could make it, I have no programming skill whatsoever. PXK ^T /_C 01:32, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Do not "fix" links to redirects that are not broken. -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 01:38, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I never knew that. I thought that was consensus because I've seen Nikki from WP:PW (I can't remember the numbers afer her name) do it before. PXK ^T /_C 01:41, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I think this may be a good idea if it is user monitored. I was looking for something like this to monitor changes in name etc for FLRC List of districts of India, where I need to remove redirects to keep the page updated on a regular basis. If not a bot, would a script be available that I could run from my account and automatically clean up redirects? Thanks! =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:55, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Our guideline at Wikipedia:Redirect says this task "is generally an unhelpful exercise". – Quadell ^(talk) 14:57, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

It might be generally an unhelpful exercise, but not always. The list page I mentioned has about 1500 links. Quite often the names of the districts are changed, or other changes are introduced into the main article. Having a script to examine name changes on a periodic basis is practically useful. Advantages: Keeps a list article updated with the current names. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:03, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Why not just use a category? Then it is automatically updated on move. As for fixing redirects, it is about 10,000 times more expensive for the servers to fix a redirect which isn't broken, than to follow the redirect. -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 19:06, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Cannot use a category as it is a dedicated list article (Featured List). I'm not advocating constant updates, just a check to an article once in six months. =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:12, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

This is easy to code, but consensus is against having a dedicated bot to do so. However it would make sense to add this to some of the edit helper programs such as AWB, as if the page is going to be edited anyways then it only helps. --T-rex 19:37, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

No, it should not be blanketly done semi-automatically either as it doesn't always help. In fact, it sometimes hurts. Redirects are often used for valid topics where an article currently doesn't exist, but some information is located elsewhere. Such redirects often get converted into articles. If the redirect is left, the page will link to the new, more in-depth article. If the redirect has been bypassed, then the page will point to the wrong place. -- JLaTondre (talk) 00:56, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

How about a script to run once in six month? =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:12, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Can someone take a list from User:Admrboltz/disambg and tag the pages with ((U.S. Roads WikiProject|state=UT| class=Disambiguation|needs-map=NA))? Thanks. --Admrb♉ltz (t • c • log) 17:48, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

 Doing... --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:54, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

((done)) - seemed pretty uncontroversial. And I didn't even use a bot... --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:03, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I would have done it myself, but I am at work --Admrb♉ltz (t • c • log) 18:12, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm currently trying to do https performance testing and am planning on doing it on a wikimedia site that I set up for testing purposes. In order to test this well, I need large amounts of data that will fill up a large amount of space in the database. I'm looking for around a gig or two. I don't care where you get it from in wikipedia. 1 or two gigs of data that I pop into my database is fine. Thank you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Speedracerdude (talk • contribs) 18:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

You should use the database dumps for this --T-rex 21:02, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.106.23.137 (talk) 21:35, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

a bot that wikifies words in relatively new articles in introductory paragraphs for which there are articles on WP. it would try wikifying multiple word titles first, and than decrease number to single word titled articles. 216.80.119.92 (talk) 01:17, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Impossible for the bot to know which links would be relevant to the understanding of the context. Happy‑melon 11:28, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Maybe 3 and 4 word existing titles in the lead will probably be part of the context? Maybe even 2 word titles? But then again, word stemming will make it more difficult for the bot to guess. 216.80.119.92 (talk) 03:28, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Way too many false positives. "The Romance copula is a theory about Romance language origins...", "An Advance health care directive allows a patient to reject or choose life giving treatments...", "The Potemkin Affair was an opportunity for Catherine the Great to...", etc. – Quadell ^(talk)

Could a bot generate a list of all non-redirect subpages in the Portal namespace which do not have a corresponding non-redirect parent page? The presence of such pages is almost always accompanied by one or more problems that require correction (e.g. copy-paste moves, duplicate pages, invalid/outdated transclusions, etc.), and it would be much easier to correct those problems using a bot-generated list of pages (the other option is to manually go through Special:Prefixindex, which is a time-consuming method that is prone to errors). –Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:36, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

User:Erwin85/Scratch2 lists them. Got the results from the m:Toolserver's database. --Erwin85 (talk) 22:01, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! –Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:21, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

While I'm at it, here's a second request. I already suggested this twice here but got no answer (perhaps it's trickier than I imagine or perhaps everybody thinks it's a stupid idea but hey, I'm stubborn so I'll suggest it again). In any case, here's the idea: we have a huge number of categories of the form Category:Foo songs and Category:Foo albums. For convenience of navigation, it would make sense to have these two categories linked as see also. This has been done manually in a few cases, e.g. Category:Beck songs and Category:Beck albums. This should be easy to automate, particularly if the bot decides to do it systematically without checking if that see also already exists. (yeah, it's a lazy way to do it but it's not like it would be a terrible problem to have two identical see also's).

In any case, can someone at least please tell me "this is too difficult" or "this is too stupid", just so I know? Cheers, Pichpich (talk) 23:33, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

This should be doable. I see no reason to expect it to be controversial either. --T-rex 02:16, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Great! I think it'd be a plus navigation-wise though I don't expect anyone to blog about that fantastic change... Pichpich (talk) 03:04, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I've started working on this. I'll have a WP:BRFA up in a day or two --T-rex 13:22, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:BRFA#DinoBot2 Task 6 submitted --T-rex 21:17, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

This original request has been completed. Also the ((Cat see also)) template has been updated to better display this information. The below extension to this request still, may or may not be done (depending on difficulty) --T-rex 00:43, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Just be warned that once you begin to implement this for all Category:Foo songs and Category:Foo albums, you will find heavy resistance from Category:Foo Fighters songs and Category:Foo Fighters albums. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 23:08, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Can you explain further? I don't see any reference to this in the page histories. --T-rex 23:24, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks T-rex. By the way, similar connections between pairs of categories might make sense in other cases, for instance cats like Category:Progressive rock songs and Category:Progressive rock albums or the by country categories. Pichpich (talk) 05:47, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

From a navigational standpoint it would be useful, but I'm not sure this is a good task for a bot. I will give it a shot once I'm done with the songs and albums by artist, but there will likely be a lot more missed here. Without the supercatagories of Category:Songs by artist and Category:Albums by artist it would have been near impossible to do the current task with a bot, and I'm not seeing any similar supercats that can be used for album/song by country linking --T-rex 17:34, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Is there a bot that could make a list of the articles in these Arabic and French categories which don't have interlanguage links to the English Wikipedia? Thank you. Eklipse (talk) 18:43, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I guess you want to include subcategories? To what depth? The results for the top categories are User:Erwin85/Scratch1. As you can see all French articles have a link to this Wikipedia. Maybe someone else can make a recursive version? If you have toolserver access you can use

SELECT concat('* [[:w:fr:', ns_name, ':', page_title, ']]') FROM categorylinks
LEFT JOIN page
ON page_id = cl_from
LEFT JOIN toolserver.namespace
ON ns_id = page_namespace
WHERE cl_to = 'Liban'
AND NOT EXISTS
    (SELECT * FROM langlinks
    WHERE ll_from = page_id
    AND ll_lang = 'en')
AND dbname = 'frwiki_p';

to get the list from the database. --Erwin85 (talk) 21:39, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I'd like to do it myself but I don't know what you mean by Toolserver access. Could you point me to a page where it is explained? And yes I was thinking about subcategories, but to what depth? eum, maybe 6 or 7 if that doesn't put too much load? Thanks again. Eklipse (talk) 10:03, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

The toolserver is a cluster of servers with access to a copy of Wikipedia's database. I didn't mean you had to do it yourself though. I didn't have the time to write a recursive bot myself, so I thought maybe someone else with toolserver access could do it. But I just remembered I could use one of my web tools (e.g. tools:~erwin85/categorycount.php) to create a category tree up to depth 7. So I've got the results for you: tools:~erwin85/dbq/botrequest.eklipse.arwiki.txt (1595 pages) and tools:~erwin85/dbq/botrequest.eklipse.frwiki.txt (1187 pages). Both files are encoded in UTF-8. If it looks weird you need to set your browser/text editor to display it using that encoding. --Erwin85 (talk) 12:28, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks again for your fast response :-) Eklipse (talk) 10:55, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Since we've got such a huge backlog at WP:O, I was wondering if it would be difficult to write a bot to spider through CAT:ORPHAN and find other articles which should link to the orphaned article. The ideal bot would be human-assisted, with the bot throwing up options to the operator, who could then decide whether or not the link was appropriate. Failing that, it would be cool if the bot could just print link recommendations onto the article's talk page (for example), and then any de-orphaning editor could browse through at leisure and see about de-orphaning. If any assistance is required, just let us know on the WikiProject Orphanage talk page, or leave a note on my talk page. Thanks!--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 16:21, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I am in desperate need of a bot or script that can leave talk page messages on 85 or so specific WikiProject talk pages for the coordination of efforts between those projects and WikiProject Media franchises. I am on dial-up and use Firefox. Below is basically what I am hoping it will do.

1. Open "New section" on the talk page
2. Enter the New section title - "Message from [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Media franchises|]] about <subject>"
3. Enter the message - "Dear ((subst:PAGENAME)) participants...<message> ~~~~"
4. Save
5. Go to next project on the list.

Is this possible? LA (T) @ 19:31, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

There are a number of bots that do this sort of thing (their internal operation is entirely different to your suggestion, but the effect is identical). Any bot in Category:Newsletter delivery bots should be able to do what you require. Happy‑melon 19:59, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

How would I run those bots so that the edits would come from this account? I really don't know how bots work in this regard. I initially asked for a script to do this, but was told that a bot would be better. LA (T) @ 20:16, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

You wouldn't run a bot under the User:Lady Aleena, you would use something like User:LA Bot and have it post the message or give the message and a userlist to someone who has a newsletter bot and have them post the message. I have a bot that I could put in a request for to do such work if you'd like. MBisanz ^talk 20:20, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

That is a problem since the contributions of another account would not show up on my contributions. I use that as a secondary watch list, since I really don't want to have all 85+ WikiProject pages on my watch list. It looks like I may be back to the very slow, wrist killing copy-n-paste method. LA (T) @ 20:30, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, the other method would be to use WP:AWB. You can pre-load a message to append to the ages and pre-load a list of pages, and then just click save for each edit and it will show up on your main account. MBisanz ^talk 20:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Just a small note: If you're cross-posting messages to a large number of projects, by whatever technical method, I think you should take care to post them sparingly. (I don't think there's a policy or guideline for that, but common sense tells that people might start complaining otherwise...) I just noticed that you posted two messages in two days to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Forgotten Realms. Probably no one cares since that project is inactive since years and marked ((historical)) now; but if you're doing the same for 85+ projects, you probably shouldn't repeat it daily. --B. Wolterding (talk) 22:44, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

OMG! If it becomes something that regularly needs to be done, I may make one last cross posted message asking for a little transclusion somewhere in their projects where messages from the project I am working on can go. LA (T) @ 09:45, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I need a bot to revert vandalism.--Master of Pies (talk) 17:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

What's wrong with User:ClueBot? Jeremyb (talk) 18:37, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Redundant to ClueBot, VoABot, etc as Jeremy said. You could always use Huggle to revert vandalism yourself however. RichardΩ612 Ɣ ɸ 21:21, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Is it possible for a bot to either tag or list the talk pages of all articles within the Category:Gymnastics category tree that do not currently include a ((WikiProject Gymnastics)) on their talk page? -- ratarsed (talk) 18:36, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Can do, but can you please double-check your category tree for unwanted categories. I've had a look and it seems pretty self-contained, which is nice (lots of nasty loops and duplication, but little branching to unrelated topics). Do you want Category:Cheerleading and its subcats to be included? Happy‑melon 14:02, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

There's an open debate on Cheerleading, if it's simple enough to not follow that category for now, then I'd suggest that; otherwise, I'd opt for a raw list -- I think I've got all the relevant articles already, but I keep finding a few that have fallen through the proverbial cracks -- ratarsed (talk) 16:20, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Doing... avoiding Category:Cheerleading and its subcats for now. Happy‑melon 17:48, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Y Done Happy‑melon 19:29, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! reassuring I'd only missed about 10% :) -- ratarsed (talk) 20:15, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Hello, could a kind bot operator please arrange for a bot to disambiguate all occurrences of "Li Jia Wei" (currently a disambiguation page) to "Li Jiawei"? Thanks. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 08:57, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:REDIRECT#NOTBROKEN. Happy‑melon 10:31, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, right! Thanks anyway. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 16:19, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

id like a bot but i dont know how to make one i just want a bot that will help fix mispelled wordsNeon5162 (talk) 16:04, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Bots/Frequently_denied_bots, spell checking bots have been proven ineffective at Wikipedia. MBisanz ^talk 16:09, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

well i wanted one that was manually-assisted anyway and it does say manually assited ones or acceptible as long as it has a international spellchecker or something to that extentNeon5162 (talk) 17:21, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Try WP:AWB's typo fixing feature ¡ Dendodge .. Talk^Contribs! 17:24, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

...after you have 500 mainspace edits. –xeno (talk) 17:26, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

As per the idea I proposed at the Village Pump, I would need a bot to do it, if the idea is not opposed. I tried to myself but I have no experience so I'd like to ask someone here to consider doing so, it should be quite easy if you have already created bots.

The bot should do the following:

• Load the list of users currently listed at Category:Wikipedia administrator hopefuls
• Look at the time stamp of every user's last contribution and compare it with the current time
• If the last contribution is older than three months:
  • Edit this user's userpage and remove ((User wikipedia/Administrator someday)) or one of it's clones from it (these are, as far as I found them, User:Kungming2/Templates/User Administrator someday, User:Kerotan/UserBoxen/Adminhopeful, ((Admin hopeful 2)) and my own creation, User:SoWhy/UBX/possibleadmin)
  • Leave a note on his/her talk page, explaining the removal and leaving a note that his was done because of the user's inactivity which contradicts the purpose of the category to allow people to identify potential candidates for a successful RfA

I don't think that should be too hard, does anyone feel the call to set up something like this? Regards SoWhy 12:13, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

It's easy enough to do. If there is consensus at the Village Pump, I'll implement it. Let's give it a few days to see how people respond. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:07, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

You might want to leave messages on the talkpages of Category:Wikipedia administrator hopefuls and ((User wikipedia/Administrator someday)) with links to at the Village Pump thread, might get a bit more input that way. I think this bot is a good idea. Cirt (talk) 16:21, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Good point Cirt, I have done so now. Thanks for the suggestion :-) SoWhy 17:14, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

No prob. Cirt (talk) 17:16, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I'd make it a permalink, or link to a redirect you can update when the discussion is archived - remember the whole reason you're sending them the message is because they don't check in regularly enough: it'd be a long shot to expect the discussion to still be active if/when they finally get around to looking at it. Happy‑melon 19:54, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

True. Once we have discussed it at the village pump and reached positive consensus, I think I will write up the message the bot should post and include the permalink to the final consensus in there. Regards SoWhy 20:06, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

The code is done. I'll post the BRFA in awhile assuming the Village Pump discussion remains supportive. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:12, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your efforts! SoWhy 18:54, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

I think there is not much more discussion to come, I'd say you post the BRFA now, as that might be a good way to start the approval process and people there might be intrigued by it to review the Village Pump discussion and maybe contribute to it. Regards SoWhy 07:28, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Agree with SoWhy (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 12:28, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

BRFA filed before I saw the following. -- JLaTondre (talk) 01:05, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the BRFA from the main page pending further discussion. -- JLaTondre (talk) 01:12, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I have already noted my objection to this idea at the pump, you can read it there. I do consider it vandalism to just go and remove something from a userpage without warning (and I mean warning on talkpage, not a common page). -Royalguard11(T) 00:36, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

It is is fine to object to the proposal, but please do not misuse terms. It does not meet the definition of vandalism.

Under the current proposal, it will leave a message after removing the template and the message will state that they are welcome to restore it if the return to active editing. The message could be left prior to removing it and then waiting a few days, but I doubt an editor who hasn't edited in 90 days will suddenly come back. -- JLaTondre (talk) 01:05, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

There are 54 articles in which I have misspelled the location= for a certain publisher. Instead of "location=Cosa Mesa", they ought to read "location=Costa Mesa" (i.e. this place). Could a bot do this conversion please? Thanks. -- Fullstop (talk) 19:16, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Currently, a search for "Cosa Mesa" returns 56 hits. That count is stale. I've already fixed two of them (ones which were not location=).

 Doing... (semi-automatically) ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 23:04, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Y Done ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 23:23, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks. I hope it was not too much trouble. -- Fullstop (talk) 23:57, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Would it be possible for a script to run that creates a list of every (sub)category that branches off Category:Articles? It's to assist with the development of this as the original implementation would have produced too many mistakes. Thanks, ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 09:48, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

You're probably talking about 100000s of categories. Are you sure you want to list them? --Erwin85 (talk) 10:14, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I had imagined it would be around that amount but there is no way this can work. Thanks anyway. ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 10:55, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I would like the following message to be delivered to members of several WikiProjects and task forces:

"A community forum has been set up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Food and drink/Article guidelines for the various Food and Drink projects to develop a set of Manual of Style guidelines for use in articles under the auspices of all the related Food and Drink WikiProjects and task forces. This would be similar to the MoS guidelines for biographies or legal articles.

Please feel free to visit and leave a comment.

This forum was developed based on a suggestion made by ClockworkSoul in a discussion on the WP Food and drink talk page, archived here.

You have received this message because your user name appears on the member list of a Food and Drink related project. If this bot mistakenly posted this message on your talk page, please accept our apologies for the error and feel free to remove this message."

The users I would like to see this delivered are members of the following projects:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink/Cheeses task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink/Herbs and Spices task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink/Foodservice taskforce
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Mixed Drinks
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Bartending
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Soft Drinks
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Soft Drinks/Coffee and Tea task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Wine
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Beer
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Beer/Pub Taskforce

Several users are members of some or all of these projects & task forces and I wish to insure that the bot doesn't hit the same user multiple times. Also I had manually delivered the message to a dozen or so users, so I have the same request not to duplicate the message.

Thanks for the help --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 10:38, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I see some of the projects listed indicate an activity level for some or all participants. How do you want take those into account? --Jeremyb (talk) 01:09, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Please ignore those who are inactive, otherwise please deliver to the others.--Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 03:53, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

It is a one time message notifying participants of a new inter-WikiProject message board and standards drive for Food and Drink related projects and task forces. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 06:29, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

BRFA filed Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Jeremybot Jeremyb (talk) 17:01, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I was just thinking (based on the confusion over the scope of this BOTREQ) that you might want to have a spamlist just for future messages on the MOS guideline itself. I know nothing about the MOS guideline creation process (how long, how many stages, etc.) so maybe it wouldn't be useful. If you do want to have one I think it's best to setup the spamlist page and advertise it before this messages goes out so we can snag them then if they want to sign the list. (I imagine a setup where the list doesn't start out blank and is seeded with people who didn't opt in to a previous incarnation would not be be approved, so the list would have to start out blank) And of course I can add a mention of the list to the initial notice if you do decide to make one. Jeremyb (talk) 15:30, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Some of you might know about the CatScan tool that allows one to plug two categories and get a list of overlapping pages. Lately I've been using this for deletion sorting. I was wondering if it would be possible to have a bot automatically add entries to a delsort page based on the output of this tool. For some situations this would not be a wise idea, since the category and/or subcategories being scanned will contain articles that don't belong on a given delsort page. However, there are some situations that are always going to be correct (assuming the article was correctly tagged). The one situation I have in mind is Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Living people, since it uses Category:Living people.

The tool is capable of generating a CSV output [6]. Generic formatting (afd/PAGENAME) won't work all of the time, so the bot would have to find the link from the AfD template. -- Ned Scott 07:51, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

So what you want is a list of page names like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abbas Ansarifard and transclude them in Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Living people? The AfD page can be found using the page parameter in the AfD template, right? --Erwin85 (talk) 08:43, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I've got an example at User:Erwin85/Scratch1 and a request for approval at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Erwin85Bot 6. --Erwin85 (talk) 13:15, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Awesome! -- Ned Scott 04:50, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Hey. In Template:Infobox Figure skater, the parameter "turned pro" was changed to "retired" in 2006[7], but some articles still have the incorrect field name. Could a bot go through all the articles using the template[8] and change all instances of "turned pro" to "retired"? Thanks, Kolindigo (talk) 03:22, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

The information in the "turned pro" field will be different from the information in the "retired" field, correct? So changing turned pro = 25 December 2007 to retired = 25 December 2007 is not what you want? ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 04:17, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

The information will be the same. "Turned pro" = "retired" for the purposes of the infobox. Kolindigo (talk) 04:39, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Great, just wanted to check that.  Doing... (semi-auto) ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 05:22, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Y Done ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 08:46, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

List of male boxers, now deleted, has an exceptionally high number of incoming links, usually from "see also" sections. I'd greatly appreciate it if somebody armed with AWB or something more capable would go through and orphan this article. east718 // talk // email // 05:48, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I'ma go do that with WP:TW. Soxπed93^(blag) 06:00, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Please don't. The unlinking function in Twinkle only strips out the link, leaving a useless *List of male boxers in the relevant section. Either do the job right, or leave it for somebody else. east718 // talk // email // 06:09, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I just realized that. Instead...((BOTREQ|coding)) Soxπed93^(blag) 06:12, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Strike that, gotta leave right now. Soxπed93^(blag) 06:21, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Coding... I can do this but I don't have a flag (yet) and either way it would probably need a WP:BRFA (at least to play it safe). There's less than 100 articles linking to it, btw. Jeremyb (talk) 06:50, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

• Done with manual tool. β^_command 06:51, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

  Some articles were broken; I'm rolling back a lot of edits. east718 // talk // email // 06:58, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually it looks like it was quite a bit more than 100. Anyway, I'm happy to clean this up in the morning if it's still an issue but it's late and I've little interest in warring or drama over this. Jeremyb (talk) 07:09, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I've discovered an inconsistency with usage of Template:Infobox_Magazine. In certain articles the image field has an incorrect name for the image field, would it be possible for a bot to check all articles that use Infobox_Magazine and create a list of articles that have the incorrect field name?. The correct field name is image_file so I would require a list of articles where image_file = is not present or is present only as image =. This is my first bot request so I'm not sure what the normal routine is as regards the results. A sub-page underneath my sandbox would be fine by me if that's what normally happens, failing that, leave a note here or on my discussion page. Thanks. - X201 (talk) 20:26, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Why not have the bot correct instances of image = to image_file =, instead of just listing them? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 20:59, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

You're jumping straight to stage two of the operation :-) I wanted to know how many there were before requesting the more complex side of job but if it can be completed in one hit then it might as well be. The other part of the problem is that where image has been used it will probably be accompanied by image tags, caption text and image size like this

image = [[Image:SO!vol50 2.PNG|thumb|center|200px|''Sing Out!'' Volume 50 #2 (Summer [[2006]]), cover, featuring [[Dar Williams]]]]

So the following would be required.

• Change image to image_file
  • Resulting in image_file = SO!vol50 2.PNG

• Pick out the px value and add the image_size field to the article
• Pick out the caption and add the image_caption field to the article

If that is possible then it would be great, but I'm not sure how many articles need the work, hence my first inquiry. My edit to the Sing Out! article shows the changes that will probably need to be made to each article with the problem. - X201 (talk) 21:17, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

 Doing... Give me a bit, working out how to generate the list of articles with the mistake without checking all of them. ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 22:22, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

This is what I have done so far: edited infobox_magazine so that any article which used the image = parameter was added to Category:Articles using incorrect Infobox Magazine Formatting. However, because of the MediaWiki cache/touch system the articles wouldn't appear in the category straight away. They started showing up in eventual waves and I have been editing them as they show up. I've done it semi-automatically (just confirming each edit) as some of the formatting was really obscure. I don't know if I have done them all yet, there's still a chance that more will show up in the category but here's hoping. I won't mark this as done just yet though. ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 03:04, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Will check it now and report back in a while. (To others please keep this thread open for a while. Thanks) - X201 (talk) 07:55, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Just one article left and that is NOM'd for deletion :-) Thanks. How many "wrong" articles were there in total? - X201 (talk) 07:57, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Scrub that, I've just checked your edit history. Once again, thanks for fixing this. - X201 (talk) 08:00, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Y Done No problem. Nothing new has appeared so they should all be fixed. I have reverted my changes to the template. ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 01:11, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

When articles are userfied, they continue to show up in categories, for example, [9]. Sometimes users put categories on their userpages for reasons unknown. Could a bot go through and apply the colon trick to all such? Care would have to be taken to avoid categories like Category:Wikipedians from Texas. Is it possible? Phlegm Rooster (talk) 08:37, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Such a bot has already been developed and is under consideration for approval. The discussion is here. RichardΩ612 Ɣ ɸ 09:25, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Wow, I was only a few days behind the proposal. Looks like the holdup is figure out how to avoid any legitimate userpages in categories. Phlegm Rooster (talk) 09:37, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi, guys. User:Bishzilla has been copy-editing Random Article, and she keeps finding distracting low-value links irrelevant to the context. She has been unlinking them with edit summaries something like "rm low-value links per WP:CONTEXT". If you take a look at her mainspace contribs, I think you'll agree her link removals have been appropriate. But the work is partly very mechanical—removing four square brackets round the link, removing any piping in it, and typing an appropriate edit summary. She got very bored. Well, I could stick a text macro for an edit summary on an F key, but even so. Of course a live entity must make the decision about which links are irrelevant, no bot can do that. But would it be possible to have a bot that could assist with the mechanical part? As in, once the human (or whatever) has decided a word/phrase is to be unlinked, the bot would remove those accursed square brackets and any piping, and do an appropriate edit summary? Useful? (I think so. Perhaps the mere existence of such a bot would even help spread the good word don't link everything.) Possible? (No idea.) Already exists? (Dunno.) Regards, Bishonen | talk 22:30, 19 August 2008 (UTC).

Not a bot task; but a little JavaScript routine for that should not be hard to make. --B. Wolterding (talk) 22:50, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. And..? Bishonen | talk 23:56, 19 August 2008 (UTC).

Check out Advisor.js it is not quite what you are talking about, but can help with removing linked years, which are some of the worst low-value links --T-rex 00:23, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Is there a similar tool for linking? When going through an un-wikified article, it can be very tedious adding the brackets. Though I have just discovered that you can double-click on a word, and then click the "insert double brackets" bit below the edit window to put brackets around that word. Or even select a whole phrase and click the link. I suspect it is even possible to use a mouse to select words, and then use a keyboard shortcut to add the square brackets. I hasten to add that this should only be used to wikify articles that need it - overlinking is bad, as Bishonen points out. Carcharoth (talk) 00:33, 20 August 2008 (UTC) Um, I never knew bishonen was a real word!

(Hi, T-rex; I see the susceptible Bishzilla blushing with pleasure at encountering a fellow scary dinosaur.) The Advisor looks neat, but it won't do a lot for me in this case. There are so many other weak links besides years—I wonder how many useless [[United States|American]] 'Zilla has changed to simply American—it just never ends, and the piping makes it more fiddly than unlinking years. If a more specific little JavaScript routine for unlinking isn't hard to make, let me just say HINT HINT—*I* sure don't know how to make a JavaScript. Carcharoth, nothing of an anime fan, I see? Indeed it is a real word, and I've been known to get messages intended for me[10] on Talk:Bishōnen instead of User talk:Bishonen. Bishonen | talk 08:37, 20 August 2008 (UTC).

I have considered making my own fork of advisor, but like you I'm not too good at javascript either. The other problem is this is mostly a judgment call so any completely automated solutions are out of the question --T-rex 18:26, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Of course is. 'Zilla exercise plenty judgment before unlinking. 'Zilla be friends majestic t-rex? Little candlelight dinner maybe? bishzilla _ROARR!! 12:37, 22 August 2008 (UTC).

WP:POPUPS supports this very nicely for redlinks (with the "popupRedlinkRemoval=true" option). Perhaps you could try to convince the script's author to support it for other links too. --B. Wolterding (talk) 10:16, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

• Good idea, I'll try. Bishonen | talk 12:54, 20 August 2008 (UTC).
• Didn't work, though. Lupin hasn't edited since 2007. :-( Bishonen | talk 13:00, 20 August 2008 (UTC).

• That's right, but from his talk page it seems that User:TheDJ is maintaining the script now. --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:23, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

• Right, I've written to him, thanks. Bishonen | talk 12:31, 22 August 2008 (UTC).
  • So... it turns out he hasn't edited since July. OK, starting to feel like Joseph K. This is me giving up. Thanks for trying, guys. Bishonen | talk 17:35, 24 August 2008 (UTC).

It seems that many of the articles in Category:Communes of Aisne have unduly precise coordinates, due to recurring decimals. For example

  longitude=3.84333333333

  latitude=49.6338888889

Please could someone's bot truncate them to 6 decimal places; rounding as appropriate? Thank you.Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 19:36, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

No, just convert them to dms: 49° 38′ 0″ N, 3° 50′ 36″ E Phlegm Rooster (talk) 19:58, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

The template in which they are entered, ((French commune)) only accepts decimal input. The template by which they are output, ((coord)), allows them to be viewed by users as decimal values or D-M-S, according to their personal preference. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 19:00, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Probably going to show my ignorance here, but it doesn't appear to make a difference to the article or the geohack link, regardless of how many decimal places are used - is this necessary? ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 23:23, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes. The number of decimal places is an indication of precision. Precision to so many decimal places indicates a sub-centimetre accuracy. See Geographic coordinate system. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 19:00, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Doing... (semi-automatically) ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 10:51, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 14:32, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Y Done, Cheers ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 20:56, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

To add "founded", "founded date" or "foundation" dates to an infobox' hCard microformat, existing "DD Month YYYY" dates need to be converted to ((Birth date)). The conversion MUST NOT be done if only a year, or a month-year, date is available. [Update: to use ((Start date)) (bot owner notified; Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:52, 10 September 2008 (UTC))] This request applies to pages using:

• ((Hockey team))
• ((Infobox Company))
• ((Infobox Co-operative))
• ((Infobox Defunct company))
• ((Infobox Dotcom company))
• ((Infobox financial))
• ((Infobox Non-profit))
• ((NHL Team))
• ((NWHL team infobox))
• ((Pro hockey team))

and more to follow. Thank you. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 12:38, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Can do this. Rich Farmbrough, 23:15 24 August 2008 (GMT).

Request for a bot that moves all categories in Category:Video game templates that have 'series' in their names to Category:Video game templates by game series. The remainder can be cleaned up manually. Thanks. SharkD (talk) 20:02, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Doing... (semi-automatically) fairly easy one for my tool. ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 22:54, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Y Done finished. ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 01:50, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Request for a bot that moves all categories in Category:Video game templates that have 'characters' in their names to Category:Video game character templates. The remainder can be cleaned up manually. Thanks. SharkD (talk) 20:02, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Possible can you create the category first? I ask because I want to be 100% sure that the category I am moving them to is the right one. Thanks, ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 22:59, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Done. Thanks! SharkD (talk) 06:07, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Y Done there was only about 10. ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 10:48, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I created a list of templates that need to be moved from Category:Video game templates to Category:Video game templates by game series. Thanks. SharkD (talk) 20:02, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Doing... Messing up the edit summary made me realise I need to make a way for that to be changed without resetting everything! ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 11:08, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Y Done ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 12:02, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

trying to streamline the templates being used to move images to the commons. please have a bot change ((Movetocommons)) & ((Commons ok)) to ((Copy to Wikimedia Commons)). Thanks. Philly jawn (talk) 17:38, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Can't you just redirect the templates to Template:Copy to Wikimedia Commons? --Erwin85 (talk) 18:25, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I would like to ask if there is a bot that already exists, or one that could be created, to:

• Check the talkpage of WP:Featured articles, and change class=FA for all the WikiProject tags that say something lower if the article is already a FA. Cirt (talk) 22:15, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Should be pretty noncontroversial, but I don't think a bot does this yet. Thanks, Cirt (talk) 22:15, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

• Coding... Soxπed93^(blag) 03:40, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
  • East718 (talk · contribs) was also working on this but still had a few kinks to iron out last I heard. Cirt (talk) 08:37, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
  • As a side note, User:WolterBot does not fix these problems, but it reports them; see an example for good articles here. --B. Wolterding (talk) 12:08, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
    • That is very helpful information, thank you. Cirt (talk) 23:16, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Any updates? Cirt (talk) 20:05, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I asked for an update at X! (talk · contribs)'s talkpage. Cirt (talk) 14:43, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay well feel free to update me on my talkpage if this goes through, I think for the time being the tasks already performed by WolterBot (talk · contribs) will prove to be quite helpful. Cirt (talk) 18:30, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Um, all wikiproject ratings on a talk page are updated to FA when an article becomes FA. If any project templates for an FA don't say FA, it's either because the project template was added later without class=FA, or the talk page was vandalized. Gimmetrow 20:15, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I wanted to request a bot that could automatically create articles about U.S. Supreme Court cases that have not yet been created. Currently there are a bunch of Supreme Court cases that haven't been created (e.g., see the red links here List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 89 and the Supreme Court WikiProject has decided that all Supreme Court cases are notable enough for their own article. Thus, a bot could really help create these articles quickly. Obviously, the bot could not state the facts of the case or the holding, but it could create the infobox and some other wiki formatting so that other users could add to the article more easily. The following websites have a variety of information on Supreme Court cases that could be used by a bot to create the article: Findlaw.com, LII, Oyez.com, USSCPlus, SupCourt. Anyways, that was my thought. I would be interested to hear any comments on this request. Remember (talk) 10:28, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

If they have decided that all these court cases are notable, have they also decided that they have the capacity to expand all the infobox-only stubs that the bot would be creating? --B. Wolterding (talk) 10:34, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there is any formal decision where they have sat down and voted on whether they have the capacity to fill up every single Supreme Court article, but that is the long term goal as I understand it. Of course it will take time to do this, but having a bot create the page would lower the barrier to entry for adding more information and create more uniformity among the created articles. Remember (talk) 10:41, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's why I think that this is not a good task for a bot. Content (and if it's only stubs) should be produced by humans, not bots; and it should be written from sources, not assume that there are sources. Otherwise, these sub-stub articles will be sitting around in mainspace until a human takes care of them in several years from now, or eventually, or actually never, and will be unmaintained in the meantime. --B. Wolterding (talk) 13:42, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

So I suppose that you are opposed to User:ProteinBoxBot and other content generating bots. If so, that is fine, but I am looking for a coder that is not philosophically opposed to such bots to help out. Remember (talk) 16:17, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

The question is whether the task meets consensus, not whether you find a coder. Bots should only do uncontroversial tasks; and recent discussions about content-generating bots (geo stubs etc.) have shown that these tend to be quite controversial. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:31, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I did not realize that this was a controversial area. Could you point me to these discussions because I am interested in finding out more. Has there been any formal adoption of a policy regarding content-generating bots? Remember (talk) 16:33, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

No, there's no policy on that apart from WP:BOT - it is a case by case decision, as usual. The former discussion is at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/FritzpollBot (beware - large page), and I think that's a partial log only and for the 2nd or 3rd refactored proposal. The topic was on central discussion for weeks. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:43, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

It seems what you linked me to actually defended content-creating bots especially for editor-managed usage. That being the case, I am curious why a Supreme Court Case bot that would generate case articles under the supervision of a editor would be opposed or be more controversial than the bot you just linked me to. I guess my basic question is, if Fritzbot can have a test run, why not a Supreme Court case bot (which will create a lot less articles and impact Wikipedia a great deal less)? Remember (talk) 16:51, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

To answer the question above about notability, we discussed it once here (and may have discussed it other times), but I'm not aware of any case where AFD found such an article lacking. As to sources, there's an excellent primary source for every one of these articles - the decision itself. This is a special case wrt primary sources b/c the court's opinion is generally the most important source for the topic. As to manpower, we already have a few human-created articles like this sitting around (perhaps not as consistently formatted) but don't have the manpower even to fill out those in any timely fashion. That said, I think stubs are a reasonable price to pay to lower the barrier to entry. The SCOTUS infobox is particularly complex compared to the more intuitive biography infoboxes, to give just one example. One concern I have is extracting the data - what source is consistent enough that a bot could extract an appreciable amount of information from it?--chaser - t 18:25, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I would think that one of the sources mentioned above would be consistent enough to use for a certain time period. But I also figure that this is a problem that can be worked on once we have someone who is interesting in actually creating a bot. Remember (talk) 10:43, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Rather simple:

1. Find all of the pages that translude ((WP MMOG)).
2. If ((WikiProject Video games)) is on the page, remove ((WP MMOG)).
3. If ((WikiProject Video games)) is not on the page, replace ((WP MMOG)) with ((WikiProject Video games)).
4. Check if the tf= parameter is defined, if not, add |tf=MU*; if it is, do the same for tf2= and tf3=.

Thanks, MrKIA11 (talk) 16:24, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Coding... Anomie⚔ 16:35, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Do you want ((WP MMO)) and ((WP MMOG/RS)) processed too? Anomie⚔ 16:47, 31 August 2008 (UTC) Never mind, I see those have no links. Anomie⚔ 18:53, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Also, if there is no WPVG template on the page already, should any of the existing parameters to ((WP MMO)) be preserved? At the moment, I'm thinking class and importance should be copied in that case. If a WPVG template does already exist, I won't touch anything besides the tf parameter. Anomie⚔ 17:02, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

And nested and small. Anomie⚔ 18:21, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, please check these test edits to see if it seems to be doing what you want: [11][12][13][14][15][16][17] If those look good, I'll submit it for a BRFA ASAP. Anomie⚔ 18:46, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

The first is incorrect; |tf=MU* should only be moved from MMO to VG if it is on MMO to begin with. ;P. Haven't checked the rest. --Izno (talk) 19:16, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

The rest contain the same error, which may be due to an incorrectly phrased request. I would also add to the request that ((WikiProject Video games)) redirects be considered as well. These are Template:Cvgproj and Template:Vgproj, and similarly switched for the correct template of T:WikiProject Video games. Thanks. --Izno (talk) 19:23, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

As I read the request, it sounds like Wikipedia:WikiProject Massively multiplayer online games is being replaced by the MU* task force of WPVG, and thus any page that had been categorized as WP MMO is now in the scope of the WU* task force. If that is not the case, what exactly are the conditions to insert tf=MU*, since ((WP MMO)) doesn't appear to have had such a parameter or such a task force for its task force parameter.

As for the "replace vgproj/cvgproj" request, I'll consider it as a separate request once I do this one. Anomie⚔ 19:35, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, how intriguing. Guess that [there's no task force parameter for MU*] won't be an issue then. As for the rest of the story...

No, WP MMOG was redirected to WP VG, as a result of this MfD. The corresponding template was similarly redirected. MU* was a task force under WP MMOG; it was the only task force moved to a task force of WP VG. I of course thought that there was a parameter, but as there isn't... the only thing that should be considered is the original request, minus #4.

It wasn't meant to be a separate request, really. I'm just eliminating the chance that the bot will miss a double banner tagged page due to the fact that it doesn't (currently) recognize the double tagged pages as being double tagged (ie, having both a redirect of T:WP VG and T:WP MMOG).

I'm hesitant to give a go ahead on preserving importance, but class is probably fine. Nested and small are probably fine also. --Izno (talk) 22:58, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, my bot code does catch having both a redirect of T:WP VG and T:WP MMOG; I've also gone ahead and adjusted it to replace ((vgproj))/((cvgproj)) with ((WikiProject Video games)) when it does the edit to remove ((WP MMOG)) since it is editing those pages anyway. Anomie⚔ 23:24, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I guess the |tf=MU* parameter was my fault. I misunderstood what the task force actually covered. But the rest looks great. Thanks, MrKIA11 (talk) 00:16, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

BRFA filed Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT 2 Anomie⚔ 23:24, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Y Done Anomie⚔ 15:16, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Hello, I want to create a bot that can fix various spelling errors, do all sorts of various tasks on the English Wikipedia. If you can create it you are welcome to test it on any Wikipedia article. Thank you for your time!!!Mertozoro (talk) 21:55, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Spell checking bots have always been opposed (WP:BFDB), but you might want to look into AutoWikiBrowser LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 00:02, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Well then, umm, what about a bot that can work on specific Wikiprojects or a bot that can link pages, add info, or do other various things like that. Let me know soon!!! Thanks!Mertozoro (talk) 02:44, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Hello, I want to create a bot that can fix various spelling errors, do all sorts of various tasks on the English Wikipedia. If you can create it you are welcome to test it on any Wikipedia article. Thank you for your time!!!Mertozoro (talk) 21:55, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Spell checking bots have always been opposed (WP:BFDB), but you might want to look into AutoWikiBrowser LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 00:02, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Well then, umm, what about a bot that can work on specific Wikiprojects or a bot that can link pages, add info, or do other various things like that. Let me know soon!!! Thanks!Mertozoro (talk) 02:44, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm looking for someone (or multiple folks, if you want to split it up) to do a bot run to deliver the following note:

As someone who may live or work near Washington D.C., you may be interested - if you've not heard already - about the meetup scheduled for Saturday, September 6th, at Union Station. For details, please see Wikipedia:Meetup/DC 5.

And deliver it to all editors listed in the following categories:

• Category:Wikipedians in the District of Columbia

• Category:Wikipedians in Maryland

• Category:Wikipedians in Virginia

Thanks! -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:07, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll put in a bot request for it.--Rockfang (talk) 10:26, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to jump in, but if it is urgent , you may use the services of TinucherianBot or any other Newsletter delivery bots -- Tinu Cherian - 05:51, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I came up with this will doing it manually. For each three character combination .html file at acronymfinder.com and The Acronym Attic, have a bot determine whether Wikipedia has an article on the listed under "Meaning" and "Possible Meanings". If so, have the bot determine whether the name of that article is listed on Wikipedia's three character combinations disambiguation pages. If not, have the bot add the article name to the three character combination disambiguation page. I was doing this manually. For example, I added Variable Information Printing to VIP (Disambiguation) after following the above procedure for VIP.html at acronymattic.com. I thought that a bot could do this easier. -- Suntag (talk) 03:11, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I've noticed that many editors who nominate an image for deletion will notify the uploader of the image, but do not put a notification on the talk pages of the articles in which the image appears. (I believe putting such a notification is currently a suggestion and not a requirement.) I think that the IfD discussions would get a better turnout, and the debate would be more representative of the community if such notification took place routinely.

Would it be possible for a bot to cruise the image banks and place a notification that an image has been nominated for deletion on the talk pages of every article that the image appears in? Perhaps if the image has had multiple editors, they might also be notified? Thanks. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 16:56, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

i dunno how do make bots pleese tell me —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cyberdemon4 (talk • contribs) 17:05, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

• WP:MAKEBOT. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:39, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I've noticed that many editors who nominate an image for deletion will notify the uploader of the image, but do not put a notification on the talk pages of the articles in which the image appears. (I believe putting such a notification is currently a suggestion and not a requirement.) I think that the IfD discussions would get a better turnout, and the debate would be more representative of the community if such notification took place routinely.

Would it be possible for a bot to cruise the image banks and place a notification that an image has been nominated for deletion on the talk pages of every article that the image appears in? Perhaps if the image has had multiple editors, they might also be notified? Thanks. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 16:56, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

i dunno how do make bots pleese tell me —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cyberdemon4 (talk • contribs) 17:05, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

• WP:MAKEBOT. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:39, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia talk:Sandbox#restoring header more frequently. Discussion now moved here. Thanks. — Alan^✉ 09:23, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree, It just took me around 80 revisions just to find the last version that contained the header. Ideally this would be check far more frequently (with the full clean up still being every six hours or so). It should be easy to do, but will require a server that can run 24/7. Also would it be possible to make something like Huggle check for this? --T-rex 14:32, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

User:SoxBot IV is the bot that cleans it, but it is down at the moment :( --Chris 12:55, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I was just coming here to request the same thing. User:OverlordQBot was successfully replacing missing headers and fullycleaning (both Sandbox and Wikipedia:Introduction) every 12 hours, until May 1 (see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/OverlordQBot 4 also from Feb 2008). A permanent solution to this would be wonderful. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:21, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

This is a simple task so I have written a bot to restore the header. However this is only a temporary fix. Further details in the Bot Request --T-rex 20:00, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

SoxBot IV is back up now. And just after I started writing the function for my bot. Oh well. ;) Anomie⚔ 01:26, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I was down because after my name change, the bot was programmed to check User:Soxred93/sandbots.css, and it doesn't follow redirects (so it didn't know what pages to clean). Xclamation point 02:04, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

A little note my bot should also replace the headers if the header gets removed or edited but all of my bots have been down for the past few weeks. They are just starting to come up again now. ·Add§hore· ^Talk/_Cont 08:15, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

We need a few bot changes over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Succession Box Standardization#Bot changes to deprecated templates. Initially it'll be the replacing unadorned templates, such as ((s-ecc)) -> ((s-rel)), ((s-ecc | )) -> ((s-rel)), ((s-awards)) -> ((s-ach | aw)). Once the unadorned templates have been updated we may come back to convert uses which have parameters, if any exist. Hope somebody can help. Bazj (talk) 09:40, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Can they not just be redirected? For example, redirect Template:s-ecc to Template:s-rel. ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 13:05, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

It already does. It has for a year. Now we'd like to be rid of it. Bazj (talk) 14:35, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Alright, I will do this later on. Just a point, I could make it replace ((s-ecc with ((s-rel (no closing "))") this would mean ((s-ecc|foo=bar|this=that)) would become ((s-rel|foo=bar|this=that)). Would that be okay? ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 01:25, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I've not yet come across any instances where ((s-ecc)) or ((s-awards)) have any parameters, and only one where ecc had a trailing |. Doing the unadorned templates would have the benefit that places they've been used with parameters would be left behind for investigation. I have a strong suspicion there won't be any. Thanks. Bazj (talk) 09:37, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

(second thoughts) Checked every version in the history of both templates. Can't see any parameters in any version. Looks like your plan, ((s-ecc -> ((s-rel, ((s-awards -> ((s-ach | aw, will be ideal. Cheers, Bazj (talk) 09:52, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Doing... Will take a while though. ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 01:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

s-ecc's now unused and the TfD's been submitted. Thanks. Roll-on s-award! Bazj (talk) 20:14, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

s-award is done too! Thanks to Ameliorate.
Would you be interested in converting ((Succession box one to one to ((Succession box ? At present it's a bald redirect from old template to newer, so the parameters are compatible, and the redirect's been in place for 3 years. It's the last of the candidates for a straightforward fixup. Cheers, Bazj (talk) 09:40, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Sure. Doing... ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 09:51, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Y Done ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 11:18, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow, that was fast! Thank you very much, Bazj (talk) 11:42, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Pages using:

• ((Infobox Airliner accident))
• ((Infobox Album))
• ((Infobox Film))
• ((Infobox News event))
• ((Infobox Play))
• ((Infobox Single))
• ((Infobox Television))
• plus others listed at Category:Templates generating hCalendars (with a couple of exceptions)

need to have release/ premièred/ first shown/ incident dates converted from plain wiki-link entries to use ((start date)), as seen in this example edit. This will encode the date in a format valid in the templates' hCalendar microformats.

Note that ((start date)) allows for YYYY, YYYY-MM and YYYY-MM-DD formats.

Thank you. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 17:12, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Can do this. Rich Farmbrough, 23:15 24 August 2008 (GMT).

Additions

• ((Episode list)) - N.B. Multiple instances per page.
• ((Infobox hurricane season))
• ((DoctorWhoEpisodeBody)) - N.B. Multiple instances per page.
• ((Infobox Doctor Who episode))
• ((Infobox Hurricane))
• ((Infobox Information appliance))
• ((Infobox programming language))
• ((Infobox Simpsons episode))
• ((Infobox Star Trek episode))
• ((Infobox The Goodies episode))
• ((Infobox tornado outbreak))
• ((Infobox tvseason))
• ((Infobox UK Legislation))
• ((Infobox UK Legislation mini))

Last updated by: Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 17:22, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

For each "BC" year (e.g. 45 BC, 48 BC) please create a corresponding redirect, without the space in the page name (e.g. 45BC, 48BC). Thank you. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 10:48, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

OK just doing this one. Rich Farmbrough, 17:29 31 August 2008 (GMT).

Done with a few exceptions where there was already an article at the name. Rich Farmbrough, 22:23 1 September 2008 (GMT).

Superstar! Thank you. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 22:25, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Recently at WP:BASEBALL, the template ((WikiProject Baseball)) was changed to incorporate Image-Class, Category-Class, and Template-Class.

This request is quite simple, could someone please go through the category Category:NA-Class Baseball articles, and replace the following for any Template, Category, or Images.

Replace --> With

• ((Baseball-WikiProject|class=NA ---> ((WikiProject Baseball
• ((WikiProject Baseball|class=NA ---> ((WikiProject Baseball

The front is open because there may be other code after the class=NA which can stay. This will result in the pages leaving the assessment as ((WikiProject Baseball)) (or similar with task forces, etc) and the template will automatically assess these articles into the appropriate categories.

Thanks! —Borgarde^talk 18:39, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

BRFA filed - Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Chris G Bot (3rd Request) --Chris 12:38, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The following request is for a bot that can do a somewhat complicated task for the Guild of Copy Editors, in order to recognize those editors who have done the most to reduce the "copy edit needed" backlog (as per consensus). Basically, the purpose of the bot would be to maintain a list of users ordered by the number of times they have removed a template from an article. I have scanned through all the bots in Wikipedia:Bots/Status (that took a while) looking for a bot that could do this, and didn't see any, but please let me know if one already exists. In reading through those, it seems theoretically possible, though I don't know if anyone is willing to spend the time to make it. Anyway, this is how I've planned out how the bot could function, but feel free to go some other way if you prefer:

1. Detect when a ((copyedit)) or ((grammar)) template (and any possible variants, like with the "date" attribute) has been removed from an article (perhaps by using the same method that anti-vandalism bots use to detect vandalism).

2. If the editor who removed the template is on the blacklist (here, feel free to mess with that page however you want), stop. Otherwise, continue on...

3. Look at the list at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Guild_of_Copy_Editors/Left_panel#Most_prolific_copy_editors (which doesn't yet exist, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Guild_of_Copy_Editors#Most_prolific_copy_editors for an example of how this could be laid out). If the editor is in the list, do 4a-4c, otherwise skip to #5:

4a. Increment the count beside the editor's name by one.

4b. Add a link to the diff from #1 to the end of that editor's line.

4c. Move the editor's entire line above all the other editors with the same count or less (in other words, the list is sorted descendingly first by count, then descendingly by the most recent). Done.

5. Add a new line for that editor above all the other editors with the same count or less, in the following format (or something similar):

* '''1''' [[User:Example|Example]] [diff]

That's it. Anybody up for the challenge? -kotra (talk) 07:10, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Update: Moved Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Left panel/Most prolific copy editors blacklist up one level to Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Most prolific copy editors blacklist (for consistency with the other project subpages). -kotra (talk) 17:28, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I would like to request a bot that, on a periodic basis, does the following:

1. Lists the intersection of two categories.
2. Lists the subcat(s) of several other categories that the articles belong to.

For instance:

1. The bot would first find the intersection of Category:1987 video games and Category:Role-playing video games. The bot would list the games in alphabetical order in column A.
2. The bot would then list the subcat(s) of Category:Video games by company the articles belong to in column B.
3. The bot would then list the subcat(s) of Category:Video games by platform the articles belong to in column C.
4. And so on...

The bot would publish the results in a table on the Web (preferably a Wikipedia-friendly site that can be linked to from an article if need be) in table format.

How feasable is such a request? I would like there to be a large number of such "tables", acting as a replacement (or supplement) for many of the video game lists on Wikipedia. How frequent a period is too frequent for updating such tables? Ideally, I would like it if I (and other members of Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games) were able to set the tables up via a point-and-click interface. Thanks for any comments/suggestions! SharkD (talk) 15:13, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't know exactly what you are planning to use this for, other than that you say it is for the project members of "Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games". But I suggest you take a close look at the related tool CatScan. (Documentation at Wikipedia:CatScan).

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:49, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

CatScan is limited to searching through at most two categories at a time and doesn't output results in table format. I would like these tables to be sortable, too. I also plan on maybe linking to the results in the articles themselves. The remark regarding WP:VG is only pertaining to control or setup of these tables, not the viewing of them. SharkD (talk) 16:58, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I just created an account yesterday with a free web hosting service. The service supports ASP and has an ASP.NET beta program. Can I use the DotNetWikiBot framework on this system? I'm a complete newbie when it comes to server-side programming. Thanks. SharkD (talk) 15:50, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I like the random article link, but feel it is too broad. How about a bot that chooses a random article based on category. For instance. I choose categories Comic > Batman, then only random articles about batman are displayed...

I am probably in the wrong section.. I am pretty new to this...

thanks Joe —Preceding unsigned comment added by JosefBrandner (talk • contribs) 20:28, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Redundant See tools:~erwin85/randomarticle.php LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 23:22, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I need a specific, quite original bot that is best described in a subpage I've made... as my request is too lengthy to post here. Please read my subpage at User:Rcej/bot needed, and you'll see my problem. Thank you in advance for your time. --Rcej (talk) 07:40, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps a text expander is a better option. I use one for certain things; e.g., "/us/" becomes "((subst:unsigned|<contents of clipboard>))". Makes life a lot easier for certain situations. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:52, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

You should look into whether your operating system supports sticky keys; Windows XP and Mac OS X both do. That should allow you to easily enter shifted characters. Anomie⚔ 14:32, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Anomie's advice is sound. For windows, you may also find the freeware application "AllChars" useful. It allows you to type special characters, and pre-set strings of text, with three keystrokes, one after the other. You may find the accessibility project a useful place to ask for tips & shortcuts; and your contributions, as someone not using the usual mouse/ two hands on keyboard arrangement, will be useful and welcome there. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy Mabbett; Andy Mabbett's contributions 14:40, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

My reflinks tool may help with certain types of references (just put an autonumbered external link and it will convert it). If you can't get sticky keys to work, I'd suggest requst a userscript with the "bot request" specifications. — Dispenser 07:39, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

One of the more common forms of vandalism is blanking. Yet, as far as I can see, not current bot fights against that. As there is no reason why blanking articles could ever be useful, this seems like a good prospect to me. I would call it the Mechafangdestructobot. Or the anti-blanking bot. Your choice. (Note: This bot would apply only to articles, not talk pages, user pages ect). Tutthoth-Ankhre~ The Pharaoh of the Universe 20:06, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

User:ClueBot? Xclamation point 20:09, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Cluebot doesen't always get them, see User:SQL/PlzFix or, the history from User:SQL/Blanked, several (or more) a day get missed.... SQL^{Query me!} 20:21, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Then help train the new ClueBot. (ping Cobi for access) Xclamation point 21:06, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, total blanking should not be possible at all by the software! Total blanking is always total nonsense. Maybe let's file a feature request for having page blanks failed by software (or with CAPTCHA)? --- Best regards, Melancholie (talk) 18:09, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

True, there are times when ClueBot doesn't pick up on total blankings, but ... WP:BEANS. The new one should be able to catch just about every kind of vandalism, other than maybe messing with numbers. And, yes, as X said, if you can use a very simple, very efficient interface to categorize edits as vandalism or not, let me know (I am on IRC, or use my talk page). -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 18:13, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, so I'm happily trawling along, random-articling away for one reason or another, and I get presented with something like this. An ugly-ass, poorly-named Commons-based map. I think "I'm gonna be diligent here" and put a template or two down; ((BadJPEG)) and ((ifr)), to be precise. Just trying to do my part. But it just occurred to me, seconds ago, that what I just did is probably pointless when you consider that the page 'didn't exist' before I placed those templates down – it's really only on Commons. So my question is this: would there be any point at all in a bot tracking down instances like this and doing something sensible to them? Like deleting the templates here and putting them onto the image on Commons? Or would that be futile? Thoughts? Seegoon (talk) 14:15, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Those templates already exist on the commons (commons:Template:BadJPEG and commons:Template:Rename). I would recommend a bot that would create a list of images where the image is on commons, but it has templates here, and admins could just delete them. LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 23:02, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, but the templates should also be transferred across to Commons if possible. I assume the users there are more diligent about cleanups and conversions than 'pedia users. Seegoon (talk) 16:33, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Can a bot populate the coordinates column in Communes of the Nord department, A-K & Communes of the Nord department, L-Z, using ((coord)), by fetching the coordinates from each of the individual articles listed on those pages? If so, I'll add a similar column to the articles listing communes in other departments, also. then ((kml)) can be added to the pages, so that all the places can be plotted on Google Maps, downloaded to GPS devices, etc. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:06, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Hello team,

Would it be possible for someone to run a bot through the following categories and tag them with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Merseyside talk page banner (Template:WikiProject Merseyside)?

• Everything in Category:Merseyside, apart from:
  • Category:People from Merseyside (this would add people to the under the project anachronistically), and all its subcategories.
  • Category:Sport in Merseyside (this would add hundreds of articles about minor sports stars), and all its subcategories.

Thank you, hope you can help. :) --Jza84 |  Talk  21:21, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Possible : TinucherianBot can do this for you. But running recursively to all sub categories is very dangaerous. I will provide you with the entire list of subcategories , which you and other project members can have a serious look and remove all possible false positive categories. Once this is done, the bot will work on it soon. -- Tinu Cherian - 02:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. Will you let me know here, at my talk or at the project page? If there's a choice, the project page would be preferable. Thanks again, --Jza84 |  Talk  12:23, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Apologies for the delay in the response. I was away over the weekend. btw you can see the entire subcats under Category:Merseyside at Wikipedia:WikiProject Merseyside/Cats. Please double check each category and remove all the possibly wrong categories from the page. I will also leave a note on the project page. Once it is throughly checked and all the false positive categories are hopefully removed, kindly let us know. -- Tinu Cherian - 05:47, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

In case you didn't see Jza84's reply on the project talk page, we think we're ready to go. Nev1 (talk) 21:26, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Doing... : Bot working on the tagging. Thanks -- Tinu Cherian - 05:52, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Y Done : Tagging completed for over 1400+ articles for the project. Skipped Category:Mersey-built ships because I wasnt very sure as it has ships of different countries. -- Tinu Cherian - 17:11, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Consensus from WikiProject Films after discussion was to replace instances of Image:Film reel.svg on Wikipedia with Image:Video-x-generic.svg. Both images are svg and both are free-use from Wikimedia Commons. It could be done using AWB but 688 pages link to the former image. Thank you, Cirt (talk) 10:34, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I can do this (with TINA). I'll set it going in a bit. ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 11:01, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! Cirt (talk) 11:06, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Doing... sorry, took a bit longer than expected to set up. ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 12:10, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Done, sort of. There are no mainspace pages with the image, but there are still a few talk pages which include it through ((WPCHINA)) and ((WP Australia)) (you have to view the source of the templates to see that they do use the image if the right parameters are set). I think I got the bulk of the rest of them, but you might want to have a look. Cheers, ~ Ameliorate! _{U T C} @ 14:24, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very very much for your work on this! I will get to checking out ((WPCHINA)) and ((WP Australia)) within the next few days. Cirt (talk) 04:37, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Can you change all Portal:* pages that use Wiktionary-logo-en.png to Wiktionary-logo-en.svg? Also Wikipedia:*/right panel if you could.

Most of the other pages that use it should use the wiktionary template anyway, so no reason to change them. Ariel. (talk) 13:02, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Its like 100 pages, so I'll tab through it in AWB. MBisanz ^talk 13:04, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! If you could check pages that start with Wikipedia:* too that would be great - but not all of them should change, some are archives or proposals. Ariel. (talk) 13:09, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

(relisting of previous request, hoping to get discussion)

The following request is for a bot that can do a somewhat complicated task for the Guild of Copy Editors, in order to recognize those editors who have done the most to reduce the "copy edit needed" backlog (as per consensus). Basically, the purpose of the bot would be to maintain a list of users ordered by the number of times they have removed a template from an article. I have scanned through all the bots in Wikipedia:Bots/Status (that took a while) looking for a bot that could do this, and didn't see any, but please let me know if one already exists. In reading through those, it seems theoretically possible, though I don't know if anyone is willing to spend the time to make it. Anyway, this is how I've planned out how the bot could function, but feel free to go some other way if you prefer:

1. Detect when a ((copyedit)) or ((grammar)) template (and any possible variants, like with the "date" attribute) has been removed from an article (perhaps by using the same method that anti-vandalism bots use to detect vandalism).

2. If the editor who removed the template is on the blacklist (here, feel free to mess with that page however you want), stop. Otherwise, continue on...

3. Look at the list at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Guild_of_Copy_Editors/Left_panel#Most_prolific_copy_editors (which doesn't yet exist, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Guild_of_Copy_Editors#Most_prolific_copy_editors for an example of how this could be laid out). If the editor is in the list, do 4a-4c, otherwise skip to #5:

4a. Increment the count beside the editor's name by one.

4b. Add a link to the diff from #1 to the end of that editor's line.

4c. Move the editor's entire line above all the other editors with the same count or less (in other words, the list is sorted descendingly first by count, then descendingly by the most recent). Done.

5. Add a new line for that editor above all the other editors with the same count or less, in the following format (or something similar):

* '''1''' [[User:Example|Example]] [diff]

That's it. Would anyone be willing/able to do this? Any comments are welcome. -kotra (talk) 17:21, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Hello, I'd like to replace on every pages ((portal|Companies|Factory 1b.svg)) by ((Companies portal)). Can someone help me ? Jamcib (talk) 16:42, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Doing... §hep • ¡Talk to me! 19:50, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Y Done §hep • ¡Talk to me! 21:27, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying to go through certain articles, currently those on gulls, that have images on them that aren't at Commons. To do this manually can be tiresome, especially when you have to look through a lot of images to find one to transfer. Is it possible for a bot script to do this? You could give it a article, a list of articles, or maybe even a category (it would search all the pages within, perhaps also including all pages in subcategories).

Others that move images to the Commons might also find such a script useful. Richard001 (talk) 05:13, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

It would be possibly better if someone with toolserver access did this, but if noone else offers, I'll set up a wiki-based interface to do this. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹoɟʇs(st47) 19:32, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/STBot 14. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹoɟʇs(st47) 19:43, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I might try having a go at as part of an image checker/copyright tool. But don't hold your breath as I'm still new to SQL/DB thing. — Dispenser 03:43, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Would it be plausible for a bot to subst some sort of template onto user/talk pages of inactive users? Or would that be a waste of time? Seegoon (talk) 09:01, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Unnecessary. There are so many inactive accounts that would be a waste of resources, and wouldn't have very much purpose. Another factor is how can a bot decide who is inactive? Best left up to human judgement, looking at contributions etc. ~ Ameliorate! _{U T C} @ 11:27, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I have a (10) longish lists of of articles that need to be put in ten related catagories.

6th century Christian saints

7th century Christian saints

etc.

Is there a Bot that can do this please? --Carlaude ^(talk) 19:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Bot approval request will be filed momentarily. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹoɟʇs(st47) 19:29, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/STBot 13. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹoɟʇs(st47) 19:43, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you.--Carlaude ^(talk) 00:59, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Please replace

• ((Hs)) with ((Hearts))
• ((Ss)) with((Spades))
• ((Cs)) with ((Clubs))
• ((Ds)) with ((Diams))

I would like to repurpose ((Hs)) to relieve ((H)) of its double duty. --Yecril (talk) 08:19, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Some invocation of ((cards)) would be better. (also)Happy‑melon 08:31, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I have fixed ((cards)) to support stand-alone suit symbols. ((Hearts)) can me modified to invoke ((cards|hearts)) and so on and both can be supported. I think the political question whether to use ((Hearts)) or ((cards|h)) does not need solving in order for the requested bot to do the right thing as originally specified. --Yecril (talk) 09:49, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I can do this. However do we want ((Ss)) to go to ((Spades)) or ((cards|s))? Both are equally as easy for my bot to do. --T-rex 13:24, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I never use these templates anyway so it is hard to tell. I think the bot should edit in the same way an editor would. I think ((Spades)) would be more intuitive because the editor already knows she is writing about cards; she could be annoyed about having to this information. ((cards)) are more friendly to the reader in a mixed environment but the application of these templates outside card games context is minimal. I would go with the original request but I am not authoritative here. User:Happy-melon, anyone? --Yecril (talk) 15:20, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

The principle is, IMO, that we should be condoning the "editor-friendly" approach and encouraging the "meta-friendly" method. By that I mean, using ((cards)) is more technically elegant, reduces the number of templates that need to be maintained, and is generally cleaner. We shouldn't be preventing people from 'taking the easy option' by using ((hearts)) instead of ((cards|h)), but we should be using the more 'high-tech' implementation. Really the ((hearts)), ((clubs)) etc, templates should be soft redirects to ((cards)). Oh, and someone really needs to convert ((cards)) to use a switch statement: the current subpage implementation is horrible!! (also)Happy‑melon 21:13, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Mission impossible because ((cards)) is expected to process running text converting characters to symbols on the fly. A special parser function would be necessary. My failed attempt is at ((pcards)) for now (p for parse).

And the number of subtemplates required by ((cards)) is much bigger that 4. --Yecril (talk) 14:13, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Given the lack of any clear preference for one template over the other, I have decided to go with the ((Hearts)) template. Mainly because the use for this is slightly different then that for ((cards)) and that it is more or less agreed that the cards implementation is poor. If it ever becomes a good idea to switch everything over to the cards template completely, my bot is capable of doing that as well. --T-rex 13:40, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

These templates should now be completely disused. --T-rex 18:32, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Use of the "Replace this image" images has now been deprecated. You can see a before and after example here. Can this be done by a bot? Dismas|^(talk) 16:30, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Sure can. I could do this with TINA but I will do a BRFA for it so that it's done on a bot flagged account, so not to clog recent changes. ~ Ameliorate! _{U T C} @ 16:41, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! And thanks for using a bot flagged account. I hate it when my watchlist is full of bot type edits made by non-bots. Dismas|^(talk) 17:07, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually you may want to hold off as the discussion called for the stoppage of either adding or removing them generally. There apparently is ongoing debate what to do presently with this summation coming close:

Considering the weight of arguments on both sides, the two-thirds majority in favor of removing image placeholders from article space cannot be considered a consensus in my opinion. Much of the opposition seems to be answerable by less drastic measures, namely, removing image placeholders from individual articles of private individuals where a free photo is unlikely to be found, and by improving the unappealing appearance of these images. The next steps need to include a list of proposed alternative designs, and a guideline to be added at Wikipedia:Image placeholders to define which biographies should include image placeholders.

I would get clarity that mass removing them won't cause a new round of conflict. I, for one, prefer them and have seen them work. -- Banjeboi 18:02, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

BRFA filed here. Although I am very confused as to if there is a consensus for this or not. ~ User:Ameliorate! ^{(with the !) (talk)} 16:16, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

My impression is that an effort to do a variety of things is underway although that is also unclear what and how and wheer it's being discussed. Wholesale removal, however, should likely not take place until there is agreement to do so. -- Banjeboi 17:50, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Need an automated script/bot that can convert the data present in the cricketer infoboxes (Category:Deprecated cricket templates) (for example, the one present on Allan Donald) to the newer Template:Infobox cricketer biography template. If this is possible, please drop in a line at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket. Thanks! =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:25, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Why not just redirect them? LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 18:25, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Special:NewPages has a system where "unpatrolled pages" (see Wikipedia:New pages patrol/patrolled pages) are marked in yellow. If an editor clicks a yellow link at NewPages, there is some small text in the bottom right that says "[Mark this page as patrolled]"; if this is clicked, that article will no longer show up in yellow at NewPages.

After 30 days, all pages at NewPages disappear, regardless of whether they have been "patrolled" or not. Even with only 30 days' worth of new pages, there is always a backlog at NewPages. You can check this for yourself (Special:NewPages → "Hide patrolled edits" → "Earliest") and you will see that the earliest are almost exactly 30 days before the present (taking into account UTC). This means that articles are being created faster than they are being monitored at NewPages. In other words, many unpatrolled pages are slipping through because of the 30 day expiration at NewPages.

I would propose a bot that somehow identifies all of the unpatrolled pages that slipped through the NewPages system. I think the "new page patrollers" would appreciate such a facility. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 00:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I would think a tool on the Toolserver would be better. LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 17:01, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

The recentchanges table, which is replicated on the toolserver, is used to mark edits as patrolled and that table only contains edits made in the last month. So you'd have to do it some other way. This means having your own table with unpatrolled edits, but you can't mark those edits any more, because Wikipedia doesn't know about them in its recentchanges table. You'd then have to mark the pages in your tool and thus be able to identify users. What I'm trying to say is that this request is quite complicated even with toolserver access. Therefore, I'd think it's best to do this after discussion with new page patrollers about their wishes and not just code something. Even though it could indeed be useful. --Erwin(85) 20:27, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

It might be an idea to just use the Dutch method, see :nl:Wikipedia:Controlelijst vandalismebestrijding. They simply list each day and you mark an entire part of the day on that page, so you check each new page created in a certain time frame. The advantage is that you can still check new pages created more than a month ago. tools:~erwin85/newpages.php might also be of help to get a list of new pages in a given time frame. --Erwin(85) 20:32, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

It would be very helpful if a bot could remove the PD tags from images that have incompatible tags, for example Image:'Wheel', Indian red granite sculpture by --Satoru Abe--, 1991, --Hawaii State Art Museum--.JPG. An image of a 3D piece of copyrighted art cannot also be PD. I've seen a few of these get moved to Commons, and I think its confusing people. These obviously non-free images are clogging up free images categories, so it takes more time to sort/move images. If any of these images are actually free (which I don't think would be very many), they can be re-tagged with a single free tag by an editor (non-free images get more attention than free ones). ~ JohnnyMrNinja 07:39, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify: you want a bot to remove the Public Domain notice from images that also contain a non-free copyright notice? If this is the case, do you have any idea how many images are like this? ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 08:00, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I disagree, images with problems should be hand inspected, rather than be "fixed" by a bot. If there is one issue there is very likely more. BJ^Talk 08:07, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea how many images there are, though the top of Category:User-created public domain images is filled with them. I cannot see many problems with this, but would it be more agreeable to have the tag commented out? That way it would be clear to any future editors what happened. There is no way that a copyright tag and a PD tag can ever be compatible, and it's best to err on the side of non-free, as I find that 99.9% of the time that a PD tag is used incorrectly it is because the image is not PD. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 08:38, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

When I get back I'll run a query and get a list and see how many we are talking about. BJ^Talk 19:34, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I asked a question about this at Media_copyright_questions and the reply I got was:

Pretty much, there are two levels of copyright involved in a picture of a 3-dimensional work of art. The original copyright of the work of art, and the copyright of photograph itself, which though a derivative work, gets its own copyright because of the importance of light/shadow/framing involved with photographing 3D objects. To use a photo of 3D art, you need both to be okay. The photograph itself is being released to the public domain, that's what that tag means. The art works themselves (here by George Rickey and Isami Noguchi), are not in the public domain, but because the images significantly add to reader understanding of the articles and meet the rest of NFCC, we're using that copyright under fair use.

--balloonguy (talk) 19:41, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Well I guess that clears that up. Thanks! ~ JohnnyMrNinja 06:19, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether this is the gith place for this request, as I want an analysis of the dump not a bot activity. If someone can redirect me to a more appropriate page, I'd appreciate it.

Could someone please list in a file every ns:0 article Foo that satisfies all the following criteria?

• English Wiktionary (en.wiktionary) does not have the page en:wikt:foo.
• If Foo is a redirect to Bar, then the page Bar contains the word foo in it, with first letter lowercase.
• If Foo is not a redirect, then the page Foo contains the word foo in it, with first letter lowercase.

If possible, the following criterion should also be met:

• The title Foo has a space (U+0020) in it.

Thanks much.—msh210℠ 21:52, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

This is certainly doable, and it is at least a quasi-bot activity, since your first criterion requires accessing Wiktionary (or perhaps could be done from a Wiktionary dump?). Bear in mind that the most recent available Wikipedia dump is from July 23, 2008, so the results may be somewhat outdated. --Russ (talk) 14:25, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Should be doable with dumps only. It seems the latest English Wiktionary dump is from mid-June, but, assuming pages get added more often than deleted, it could be used for a first pass and the results refined afterwards (either using the toolserver or just pasting it to a temp page on Wiktionary and looking for bluelinks). I could try it, but I've never tried working with the fulltext dumps before, so if someone else is already on it I'll gladly leave it to them. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:01, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't have time to do this myself, unfortunately, but my recommendation for parsing fulltext dumps is to use an xml library like expat. Here is an example framework in C from a project I did some time ago, which simply iterates through all pages in the dump and runs each page's text through a subroutine. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:19, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm working on it. Are you sure that your specifications are correct? The part about redirects worries me a little (since several misspelled versions of Foo may redirect to the same Bar). Let me give you a couple of examples:

1. Beach ball has a space in the title, but wikt:beach ball exists, therefore Beach ball is not on your list.
2. Class room is a redirect to Classroom; wikt:class room does not exist (your first criterion is based on the redirect, not the target); and Classroom does contain the words "class room" in the text, therefore Class room goes on your list.
3. Classroom does not have a space in the title, so it does not go on your list.
4. Articles with titles like John Jones will almost certainly not go on your list, because it is unlikely that the text "john Jones" will be found on the page.
5. 1923 in aviation has a space in the title; wikt:1923 in aviation does not exist; and the text "1923 in aviation" exists on the page (in a category link), so it will go on your list (I strongly suspect this is not what you want, and there are going to be a lot of articles that are like this).
6. Market correction has a space in the title; wikt:market correction does not exist; it is a redirect to Market trends which does have the text "market correction" on the page, so Market correction goes on your list.

Do you want to make any changes in your criteria before I proceed? --Russ (talk) 16:26, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Hm, I guess also omit anything with [0-9][0-9][0-9] in the title, and anything with an open soft parenthesis (. Thanks much for working on this.—msh210℠ 03:56, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether this is the gith place for this request, as I want an analysis of the dump not a bot activity. If someone can redirect me to a more appropriate page, I'd appreciate it.

Could someone please list in a file every ns:0 article Foo that satisfies all the following criteria?

• English Wiktionary (en.wiktionary) does not have the page en:wikt:foo.
• If Foo is a redirect to Bar, then the page Bar contains the word foo in it, with first letter lowercase.
• If Foo is not a redirect, then the page Foo contains the word foo in it, with first letter lowercase.

If possible, the following criterion should also be met:

• The title Foo has a space (U+0020) in it.

Thanks much.—msh210℠ 21:52, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

This is certainly doable, and it is at least a quasi-bot activity, since your first criterion requires accessing Wiktionary (or perhaps could be done from a Wiktionary dump?). Bear in mind that the most recent available Wikipedia dump is from July 23, 2008, so the results may be somewhat outdated. --Russ (talk) 14:25, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Should be doable with dumps only. It seems the latest English Wiktionary dump is from mid-June, but, assuming pages get added more often than deleted, it could be used for a first pass and the results refined afterwards (either using the toolserver or just pasting it to a temp page on Wiktionary and looking for bluelinks). I could try it, but I've never tried working with the fulltext dumps before, so if someone else is already on it I'll gladly leave it to them. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:01, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't have time to do this myself, unfortunately, but my recommendation for parsing fulltext dumps is to use an xml library like expat. Here is an example framework in C from a project I did some time ago, which simply iterates through all pages in the dump and runs each page's text through a subroutine. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:19, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm working on it. Are you sure that your specifications are correct? The part about redirects worries me a little (since several misspelled versions of Foo may redirect to the same Bar). Let me give you a couple of examples:

1. Beach ball has a space in the title, but wikt:beach ball exists, therefore Beach ball is not on your list.
2. Class room is a redirect to Classroom; wikt:class room does not exist (your first criterion is based on the redirect, not the target); and Classroom does contain the words "class room" in the text, therefore Class room goes on your list.
3. Classroom does not have a space in the title, so it does not go on your list.
4. Articles with titles like John Jones will almost certainly not go on your list, because it is unlikely that the text "john Jones" will be found on the page.
5. 1923 in aviation has a space in the title; wikt:1923 in aviation does not exist; and the text "1923 in aviation" exists on the page (in a category link), so it will go on your list (I strongly suspect this is not what you want, and there are going to be a lot of articles that are like this).
6. Market correction has a space in the title; wikt:market correction does not exist; it is a redirect to Market trends which does have the text "market correction" on the page, so Market correction goes on your list.

Do you want to make any changes in your criteria before I proceed? --Russ (talk) 16:26, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Hm, I guess also omit anything with [0-9][0-9][0-9] in the title, and anything with an open soft parenthesis (. Thanks much for working on this.—msh210℠ 03:56, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Betacommand said he would try to work on this, but the community seems to prefer he not get within 100 feet of any not fully manual option (this is why I avoid AN/I), so I'm going to re-request this:

There are many, many old semiprotected pages that have simply been forgotten about and have no expiry date (there are a few that were before expiries were implemented in April 2007 too). We've been discussing ideas about what to do, and I came up with this idea.

My idea is to have a bot notify the protecting admins that it's been over (say) 2 months since a page was protected without an expiry date. I manually tested the idea out yesterday, notifying about 30 admins about old protections (see an example here) with pretty good responses. In some cases, the admin did unprotect the page, some leaving a comment just saying they simply forgot about the page (which is understandable). I'm thinking someone should be able to get a bot to do this. Just start here and work forward (or a database dump would probably work too since many protections date back over a year), find the last admin to protect the page, and notify them (I used a boilerplate here).

So, is this doable? -Royalguard11(T) 03:40, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Or is this too complex to do or something? -Royalguard11(T) 16:21, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

The easiest way to do this from my POV would be to analyse the stub-history DB dump. Therefore it would want to be run just after a DB dump. It's interesting, just after protection was introduced we had the feeling that perhaps 5 or 6 pages would be protected. Now we have hundreds of semi-protected and probably of protected, especially in template space. Rich Farmbrough, 12:00 2 September 2008 (GMT).

We'd be more interested in article protection. Admins have a tendency to protect and forget, leaving semiprotection on some page for over a year. I'm not an expert on DB dumps, but I'm sure even a month old dump would work since we're more concerned about the really old protections, maybe not 2 months but definitely anything over 6. -Royalguard11(T) 22:49, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

So I tried building an SQL query to do this and got a query to get pages which can tell what type of restriction a page currently has, but it does not provide any of the logging information which is a separate table. Some notes of curiosity: protected redirects and protected pages with only one editor should be examed more carefully.

SELECT page.page_namespace, page.page_title, page.page_is_redirect, page_restrictions.*
FROM page INNER JOIN page_restrictions ON page.page_id = page_restrictions.pr_page
WHERE page_restrictions.pr_type="edit" AND page_restrictions.pr_expiry="infinity"
LIMIT 50;

It should be possible to the newest entry from the logging table to find the oldest still protected pages.

SELECT *
FROM logging
WHERE log_type= "protect"
LIMIT 50;

You might want to open a ticket with tswiki:Query service and ask them to do this for you. — Dispenser 17:29, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

You could use tools:~erwin85/protectedpages.php which is a beta version of a new tool. It uses a separate table with logging and protection information. As there are quite a lot of protected pages on this Wikipedia you can't run more complex queries yourself. Leave a message on my talk page and I'll run them. --Erwin(85) 19:33, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I got the first 1000 pages at tools:~legoktm/protect.html LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 23:44, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

This has probably been asked before, and if so, my apologies. I occasionally will come across an article page which is a redirect but the associated talk page isn't. At some time in the past, the article has been moved but the talk page left unchanged. There must be many of these and I presume they'd be fairly easy to identify. I'd nearly have thought they'd be a list within Special:SpecialPages. But if not, could a Bot generate such a list? Moondyne 07:19, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

This seems possible for a special page (but I don't know what it'd be called). Xclamation point 04:16, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I have generated a (very large) list at User:X!/splitredirects. Xclamation point 04:26, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not so sure whether there is consensus to redirect those talk pages. Some editors seem to remove such redirects explicitly, even if they were automatically generated by moves (Example). --B. Wolterding (talk) 15:19, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting they be removed automatically, just a list. There'd be occasions when such a redirect was valid. Moondyne 15:55, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

What reason could there have been to break a perfectly valid redirect to advertise a Wikiproject? Moves create redirects so that if there is a link to the old title, that link will still work. They also help to prevent people from leaving messages on a talkpage that no one will ever look at. We're not a bureaucracy; we hardly need a consensus to do something so trivial. ~ User:Ameliorate! ^{(with the !) (talk)} 01:02, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I dont uderstand this'comment. Are you replying to me or someone else? Moondyne 03:02, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, that was directed at User:B. Wolterding. ~ User:Ameliorate! ^{(with the !) (talk)} 05:39, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Replace on every pages (category too) ((Portal|Companies|Factory.svg)) by ((Companies portal)) Jamcib (talk) 20:06, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Coding... Should be same configuration idea as last time. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 20:17, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Doing... §hep • ¡Talk to me! 20:19, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Y Done That should be all instances. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 21:51, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I would like some help at Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron (ARS). I'm new to the bot world so if this is the wrong place please feel free to direct me to the correct place. When any user adds the ((rescue)) tag it adds the article to Category:Articles that have been proposed for deletion but that may concern encyclopedic topics. Someone, usually myself, then lists the article at Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron/Current articles as follows:

Article X

• Article X (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Article X
  • "Lede sentence of Article X" (to give our team an idea of the content/subject area) Banjeboi 09:01, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

(we add a signature to give us a rough date of entry)

Ideally a bot would do this for us several times a day, the volume has been low so far 10-20 articles at any one time. If an article is listed already then no need. If it gets listed twice we can cope. The ARS deals almost exclusively with articles at AfD so when an article has the rescue template added we have anywhere from hours to less than 5 days to do any article rescue work. It would also be nice if the bot could add a note to the article's section when an AfD closes.

So that's my basic request for bot help - any ideas? Banjeboi 09:01, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I can't do it until this afternoon, at least, but this is similar to other bots I have written, so it should be easily adaptable. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹoɟʇs(st47) 10:39, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Any update? Banjeboi 23:29, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I've got the bot finished, but it relies on a resolution to bugzilla:15420 - it can't edit until that bug is resolved. It's been fixed, and now I'm just waiting for one of the sysadmins on Wikimedia to update Wikipedia so I can do some testing. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹoɟʇs(st47) 10:39, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/STBot 15. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹoɟʇs(st47) 19:43, 8 September 2008 (UTC)