The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA. The result of the discussion was Approved.

Operator: Bgwhite (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 05:44, Tuesday August 14, 2012 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic, supervised

Programming language(s): AWB

Source code available: AWB

Function overview: Fixing WP:CHECKWIKI errors DEFAULTSORT missing for titles with special letters (37) and DEFAULTSORT with special characters (6)

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): Periodically as CHECKWIKI is updated.

Estimated number of pages affected: Initially a few thousand.

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Already has a bot flag (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: AWB will be used to alter the DEFAULTSORT value. Per WP:MCSTJR, the DEFAULTSORT value can only contain numerical characters, a standard 26-letter English alphabet letter, "." and "-". AWB cannot handle certain names properly, for example Arabic or certain Asian names. The list of names will be manually scanned for "weird" names and any "weird" ones will be done manually. This is similar to BG19bot's initial request. Bgwhite (talk) 05:44, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• I totally support this task. Yobot has been doing this task for 2 years and I recently did a lot manually (example). BgWhite is more involved with DEFAULTSORT/Persondata/listas fixing/updating than me. We have a good cooperation and he will parallel in creating better algorithms to fix things like that. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:46, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

((BAG assistance needed))

• Approved for trial (100 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. – A cosmetic bot, perhaps, but one that addresses a very real technical problem, that MediaWiki still(!) sorts characters with accents and ligatures away from their counterparts. — madman 04:29, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Trial complete. The list of the 100 edits. FYI... Don't blame MediaWiki on how it sorts accents and ligatures. MediaWiki is following standard sorting procedure in the English world. Chicago Manual of Style section 18.65. National Institute Standards Organization page 4, and British Standard 1749, Section 4.1 states "Modified, additional and combined Roman alphabet letters used in languages other than English should be filed as the nearest equivalents of the English alphabet". Bgwhite (talk) 22:48, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Unless I'm completely misunderstanding, wouldn't that mean that something like ä should be filed as the nearest equivalent (a)? According to WP:MCSTJR, MediaWiki would sort it after Z, and last I checked, that was indeed what it does, though maybe that's been fixed at some point. — madman 01:00, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Yes to the first question. Yes, that is what MediaWiki currently does. I think I misunderstood you first statement above, Sorry. Bgwhite (talk) 04:25, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Why is the bot title casing the entire DEFAULTSORT key, like this: [1] [2]. I don't think that's the right thing to do; it shouldn't affect sorting behavior but at the least it's unintuitive. — madman 01:06, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• If I remember right (with me that is iffy), AWB should not be capitalizing the first letter ever since the MediaWiki software was changed to be case insensitive when it came to sorting. Old way was to capitalize. I have filed a bug report here. Bgwhite (talk) 04:25, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This unimportant change happens with AWB only if something else happens in the DEFAULTSORT i.e. only if a special letter is replaced. -- Magioladitis (talk)

• Also, adding extra linebreaks that show up in the article: [3]. Not thrilled with this. — madman 01:08, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This extra linebreak is due to Manual of Style asking to leave 2 (instead of 1) lines before stub tags. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:54, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. That's fine with me, then. But I do really want to see the AWB bug fixed though (I might look into fixing it this evening if it hasn't been yet) before this is approved. As Mandarax says, AWB should not be changing the case of sort keys of its own accord. — madman 13:32, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bug fixed. rev 8316 Don't change casing in DefaultSort. Now it is case insensitive. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:54, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent. I have rolled back the trial (I hope that's not a problem) and this task is Approved for trial (100 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. again so we can see what it looks like now. Thanks! — madman 00:43, 29 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. The list of the 100 edits. Used the latest version of AWB that includes patches to fix the capitalizing bugs. Bgwhite (talk) 21:20, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

((BAG assistance needed))

 Approved. — madman 01:04, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA.