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 The result of the discussion was Withdrawn by operator.

Operator: JLaTondre (talk)

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic (operator initiated & supervised)

Programming Language(s): Perl (uses MediaWiki::Bot)

Function Overview: Convert external links to a website that has changed its URL scheme

Edit period(s): One time

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

Function Details:

As described in this bot request, the English Heritage's Images of England website has changed their URL scheme. This site is used in external links quite extensively on Wikipedia. The bot will fix the breakage this has caused by replacing external links of the old format:

• http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/search/details.aspx

with the updated format:

• http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/details/default.aspx

I think that it should be noted that the links aren't broken per se, just don't work for people who aren't logged in. Bot's still useful, however, as most people won't want a login. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 19:31, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As the one who requested the bot I'm not sure if I'm supposed to comment here - but I think it would be really useful & save a lot of work manually editing these citations. I also put a comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography#Images of England refs and was informed that the template ((IoEentry)) uses the correct format so articles using that template or ((IoE)) are not affected by this change, but many people have done what I've done & copied the URL from the Images of England site into the citation template.— Rod ^talk 20:42, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Left on my talk page:

The bot might not be needed after all - my watchlist has lit up with AWB contributions from User:Erik9 fixing these broken links.— Rod ^talk 10:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

- Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 11:17, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As the links have been manually fixed, this is now OBE and I'm withdrawing the request. I have to say that I view this as an indication that our bot process is broken that such a simple & straight forward task cannot get handled in the time it takes an editor to make a few thousand edits. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:45, 2 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.