Hi AllyUnion, i think you are working with bots for a long time. I've a problem about some Turkish characters. I can't get page for example "Yüzyıl" on tr: wiki the problem char is "ı". (other possible problematic characters İ,ş,ğ) Do you know a solution--Ugur Basak 10:54, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Several, in fact. Are you getting decode and encode errors? One suggestion, and as I have done, is to set everything I could find to UTF-8. I used a sitecustomize.py file, and added the sitecustomize.py file to my $PYTHONPATH whenever I ran any Python script that was related to the Wikipedia. My sitecustomize.py file looked like this:

import sys
sys.setdefaultencoding('utf-8')
del sys

Hope that helps. --AllyUnion (talk) 11:03, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It gave that error module object has no attribute 'setdefaultencoding'--Ugur Basak 11:11, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See The Illusive setdefaultencoding for more info. --AllyUnion (talk) 11:14, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I respect your comments, but I manage my talk page in my own way. I do not make archives and some stuff just delete from it. - Darwinek 11:57, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey AllyUnion, have you ever considered archiving requests for bot permission on Wikipedia talk:Bots? There's a lot of old stuff there; maybe it could be removed from the page to keep it fresh. Just a thought, Talrias (t | e | c) 15:01, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was looking through your user page, and it seems that Image:Uc irvine8300031.jpg has been deleted; it shows up as a red link. -- King of Hearts | (talk) 23:10, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I know, and I don't know why it was deleted. It wasn't deleted by me, it looks like it was lost. --AllyUnion (talk) 23:11, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think there could be a problem with the pywikipedia bot's touch.py and replace.py functions. I'm asking you because you seem to know a lot about it (and I've seen your name at Sourceforge).

The problem is probably due to the slight change to "What links here" in dealing with transclusion. If you take a look at Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:User zodiac there are descriptions after some entries: "(inclusion)". This makes touch.py think it's a double-redirect.

To reproduce: python touch.py -ref:"Template:User zodiac" -putthrottle:30

I'm pretty sure that the "(inclusion)" is causing the problem.

I'm spoken to a developer (on IRC) and they said that there is no way to check in advance when things like this change to "Whatlinkshere" will occur.

Thanks for your time (and diligent work at WP:BOTS).--Commander Keane 02:02, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ironic, I was actually working on that problem. The getReferences() function in the wikipedia.py needs to be modified such that it fixes and accounts for the "(inclusion)". My suggested regular expression fix for this is:

<li><a href=".*?" title=".*?">(.*?)</a> *\(*(inclusion|redirect page)*\)*.*?</li>

And the code needs to be readapted accordingly. --AllyUnion (talk) 07:07, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just curious... why does your bot not have a flag? --AllyUnion (talk) 08:11, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The entire "approval" process for bots is not very concrete. Back when I requested a bot flag, a couple users that had been quarreling with me objected. The compromise, I suppose, was that the bot could be considered "approved" (i.e. no one would block it), but have no flag. I don't care much either way, so long as I can use that tool to perform the maintenance tasks I enjoy doing. -- Netoholic @ 15:52, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since you've inherited Martin's code, I would kindly make certain that you are aware of bot policies and high speed edits on the Wikipedia. Please make certain you read over Wikipedia:Bots. Thanks! --AllyUnion (talk) 07:54, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for giving me the link. I know that Martin had at one point an "automatic edit" feature that edited every x seconds, but was removed due to the bot policy. I'll make sure that I don't violate it, either. — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 22:09, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I intend to use pywikipedia to replace sandbox at id.wiki periodically (just like your own Sandbot). Could you tell me the syntax to run the bot? I have tried, but still no luck. The idea is to replace anything with standard text right? Thanks borgx ^(talk) 03:37, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Click the 'E-mail this user' and send me an email. I'll email you instructions. --AllyUnion (talk) 09:49, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

AllyUnion, I'm just wondering. Is there a reason to keep category redirects? Looking over both Category:Wikipedia category redirects and Wikipedia:Hard category redirects, I see a number of categories that are redirects for spelling errors or capitalization changes. I mean, if there is a redirected category that is empty, is there a reason to keep it? I can understand if it's to help people find the correct category to put articles in but some redirects are silly to keep around. I started deleting some of those redirects (only those who had no like CfD or anything linking to them or were just broken redirects) but am starting to reconsider. I'm still a fairly new user here, so I'm curious to hear what's your feeling? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:28, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Forget it. I'll (as I should) put them up at WP:CFD to be voted on. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:47, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that you allowed the Interwiki bot User:Vina-iwbot to run for one week as a test. I have a minor complaint about the bot that I hope that you and Vina can take care of. The bot is making links to some articles signed in as User:71.241.248.89 rather than by bot name. See the history of contributions to Pope Pius XII. This is only a minor operational annoyance. Robert McClenon 17:05, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't actually remove the set(); it's now initialized near the top of the method. Thanks for your comments. --Russ Blau (talk) 22:33, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh... sorry, I guess I missed that. --AllyUnion (talk) 05:38, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, now that I've upgraded NekoDaemon, is there a suggested template that you wish to create? Maybe something like, {{ctma}} with a category of Category:Categories to be moved automagically (or Category:Categories to be moved automatically); Let me know something you prefer, then I'll go set up the bot to do so. --AllyUnion (talk) 07:13, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any particular reason not to keep using {{categoryredirect}} for renames? If it's a category being renamed and not a permanent redirect, the old category (and the categoryredirect or whatever template is used) will end up getting deleted so do we care whether it temporarily says "categoryredirect" or anything else? If you're volunteering to implement something that would delete category references (under the same restrictions), we might call it something like {{ctbe}} with a category of Category:Categories to be emptied. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:17, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, not really, the only reason being doing so is that the bot's comment would be different. As for the later, I can do that too. --AllyUnion (talk) 03:44, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be a good idea, personally. That way, we can monitor one category, and delete the subs when they are complete. If we continue to use categoryredirect for non-redirect bot moves, we'll have to remember what needs to be deleted at a future point so it does not remain a redirect. --Kbdank71 14:51, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding your request a month ago... I have committed the new changes for you. I hope the new version of the list is more beneficial to you. See User:AllyUnion/AFD List. --AllyUnion (talk) 09:27, 7 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's really nice. Would it be difficult to have the links for closed articles in italic so that those not-yet-closed stand out more? (Either that, or reverse the bolding so that the articles (and yes/no labels) are bolded if they have not been closed.) HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 13:05, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

...was blocked by the Curpsmaster 3000... I'm assuming that if this was yours you would have surely unblocked it by now. You should probably put a "not me" stamp on it so nobody else goes über-AGF and unblocks it. — FREAK OF NUR_xTURE (TALK) 18:47, Jan. 7, 2006

Dear Ally, I would like to have a bot so that I can collect information regarding the world universities. Someone directed me to your page. I was wondering if you can help me with that. The free web source that I can use for collecting info is findaschool.org and there are few other. Please let me know what you think. Best, Resid Gulerdem 01:48, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In order to best help you for your needs, you have to tell me what kind of data do you plan to pull and where. The easiest way to describe it is, tell me what you would have to do manually, and elaborate step by step. You'll need to elaborate the complete process from start to finish. --AllyUnion (talk) 03:42, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

hi, category:Herbal & fungal drugs/medicines went through the speedy renaming process some days ago and should now be category:Medicinal herbs and fungi; two subcats should be changed accordingly too, category:Herbal & fungal hallucinogens and Category:Herbal & fungal stimulants. i put up the redirect templates last night, expecting it all to change, but now i see that an admin needs to have made the last edit and i'm not an admin. so is there some way you can make your bot change it anyways, considering its a valid, WP:CFD approved changed? I'd rather not have to go through hundreds of articles to make the change manually. thanks a lot. --Heah ^talk 17:20, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another user has already made the requested changes, as all the categories you've given me is empty. --AllyUnion (talk) 22:48, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

yeah, bot U-571 started going through them all about 40 minutes after i left this here. Don't know who runs it, but it looks like its about to get blocked, as the owner hasn't even tried to get permission to be running it . . . thanks for your attention and time. --Heah ^talk 03:19, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi AllyUnion,

Thanks for your prompt response. I would like to collect basic information for each university from the web page findaschool.org The information I would like to gather automatically is:

• Name
• Date of Foundation
• Logo
• Brief history
• Number of sutendsstudents
• Number of instructors
• Number of departments
• Number and names of colleges
• Some demographic information
• Famous scientists taught or gracuated
• National or international awards (Nobel pr, etc) their faculty got
• May be a few others

I would like to put some information regarding the rank and comparison of the universities manually.

Is that what you were asking?

Thanks again...

Resid Gulerdem 09:57, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is rather difficult as the information you are looking for is not immediately available from a single page. But no, it is not exactly what I was asking. What I was asking was how would you collect the data and assemble it for use on the Wikipedia. I wanted to understand the process you'd use to compile the data for one school, say for example, Stanford. So you know Stanford is a school in United States, so you click "Main" next to United States. Then you would find the page containing "Stanford". This is what I meant by process. I would like you to elaborate the process in which you would compile the data you needed. From what page would you use to compile this data? The only thing I can see from findaschool.org is the name of the school, and a web link to the school. Nothing regarding any of the data above you've described. --AllyUnion (talk) 03:43, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You replied to my request at the bot requests page, and I answered you there, but I guess I should answer here also. To refresh your memory, my goal is to take the list of articles that link to {{Numismaticnotice}} and generate a neat listing of them to put at Wikipedia:WikiProject Numismatics/Articles so that I can use "related changes" to see all the changes in the project. I have a java program that does this off-wiki (I cut-and-paste into a file, run the java program, then cut-and-paste into the Articles page). I know no Python, but I was a programmer 5+ years ago -- maybe that means I could pick it up quickly, but I'm not sure.

To complicate matters, something in Wikipedia recently changed so now the list of "What links here" from {{Numismaticnotice}} just got a lot shorter. I'm pretty sure it's because some of the references use {{Template:Numismaticnotice}} and some use {{template:Numismaticnotice }} and perhaps some other forms that I'm not aware of. So, now I also need a bot to fix the references. The list of articles at the link above has not been updated since this started happening, so the talk articles listed there are the ones to check. Ingrid 23:46, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well... the first part is that a bug fix is required before we proceed. See Bug 4549. --AllyUnion (talk) 02:17, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

MarkSweep has replied your comment at my user talk page. Please take a look. Thanks. — Instantnood 22:23, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]