The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. The result of the discussion was Approved.

Operator: Anomie⚔

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic, unsupervised

Programming Language(s): Perl

Function Overview: Provide helpful information when someone reverts the OrphanReferenceFixer.

Edit period(s): continuous

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): Y

Function Details: This is a request to add functionality to a previously approved task. Every once in a while, someone will misunderstand what the bot is doing and revert its fixed because they think it is "adding bad references back to the article". Then they come to the bot's talk page, and I have to point out to them that they just forgot to delete all the orphans. It would be nice if the bot would leave them a note on their talk page.

See User talk:AnomieBOT/Archive 1#Victoria Falls for the most recent instance of this issue. Details of the notice:

• Need for the notice is defined as "The current revision is the same as the current-2 revision, and the bot wants to edit the page to match the current-1 revision, and the current-1 revision was done by the bot."
• The text of the notice is at User:AnomieBOT/OrphanReferenceFixer revert help.
• As mentioned on that page, the bot will recognize an "optout=AnomieBOT-OrphanReferenceFixer" parameter to ((bots)) to allow users to opt out of the message even though a better solution would be to just stop breaking articles! ;)
• Before each use, the bot will check the most recent editor of the notice and refuse to proceed if it has been edited by an "untrusted" editor, so it will be much less likely to subst a vandalized version.
• The bot will refuse to issue the message if a section with the same heading already exists on the target talk page.
• The bot will refuse to issue the message more than once for any revid, just in case something goes wrong elsewhere.

Since this is something that would be difficult to trial without disrupting Wikipedia just to test it, I've run through a series of edits in my userspace with a copy of the bot code modified to check my one userspace page instead of all mainspace pages in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting.

1. First, I created a sandbox page with a broken reference: [1]
2. Then I ran the slightly-modified bot: [2]
3. The revert follows, as confused users do: [3]
4. Then I ran the slightly-modified bot again: [4][5]
5. For good measure, I reverted again and ran the bot once more with the optout on my talk page. The bot edited the page,[6] but didn't edit my talk page this time.[7]

The new code can be seen here. Anomie⚔ 13:28, 12 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No comment necessary really. Approved for trial (7 days). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Hopefully that'll be long enough to see this in action? - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 08:33, 14 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We'll see, I guess. I don't know how often the problem occurs, just that people have brought it to the bot's talk page several times. Anomie⚔ 14:43, 14 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. Hasn't occurred this week. Anomie⚔ 13:51, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

((BotTrial|7 days)) Let's keep trying. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 17:55, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How about instead of repeating "7 days" until it happens, we do "1 edit" or something like that? Anomie⚔ 18:30, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for trial (1 edit). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Sure, if you'd prefer. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 18:32, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, once the bot finds an example I'll let you know. Anomie⚔ 19:47, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

← Trial complete. That was surprisingly quick. This edit resulted in this talk page message. Anomie⚔ 12:55, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

•  Approved. Well, I never thought this would require much comment, and I'm pleased to see that it has held to form. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 20:59, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.