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{{Extra tracklisting}} has recently been changed so it employs a Type field, so you can designate a background colour to the template, exactly like {{Infobox album}}. The problem is now this leaves many articles using the template without the type field there, and the background being in peachpuff colour. Now from what I've seen, this has shocked and confused editors, as they are unaware of the change to the template, and they dont know what to do. All of these templates are automatically put into Category:Non-standard Extra tracklisting templates. I need a bot to go through that category and just simply add the type field. An example from New Year's Day (song):
Before:

{{Extra tracklisting
|Album = [[War (album)|War]]
|prev_track     = "[[Seconds (song)|Seconds]]"
|prev_no        = 2
|this_track     = "'''New Year's Day'''"
|track_no       = 3
|next_track     = "[[Like a Song...]]"
|next_no        = 4
}}

After:

{{Extra tracklisting
|Album = [[War (album)|War]]
|Type           = <!-- Add appropriate Type and colour code here -->
|prev_track     = "[[Seconds (song)|Seconds]]"
|prev_no        = 2
|this_track     = "'''New Year's Day'''"
|track_no       = 3
|next_track     = "[[Like a Song...]]"
|next_no        = 4
}}

This would probably clear up much confusion with the numerous song articles with this problem. Thank you, and contact me with any questions or comments. -- Reaper X 23:46, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I think we need a bot to reset Wikipedia:Introduction to a clean state, every 15 minutes. It appears that EssjayBot used to handle this, but is (obviously) no longer active (Wikipedia talk:Introduction#How about a bot?).

(2 notes: The main discussion page for the intro is at Template talk:Please leave this line alone. And, I'll point Trödel towards this thread too, as I think he's the most knowledgable admin concerning the intro's history, and might have better info/suggestions.) --Quiddity 21:33, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Ask AllyUnion to have Sandbot do it. Very simple extension of Sandbot's current code. It already resets the main sandbox automatically every 12 hours and resets the intro page on request, so combining the two functions and having the intro page be reset automatically should be trivial. —METS501 (talk) 05:24, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Sandbot has done it in the past but it still was vandalised for some time. The best solution was when AntiVandalBot was monitoring it and if any change was made to the Introduction that deleted the first two lines, they were restored in seconds instead of minutes. I am not sure why that bot stopped monitoring the page. More later --Trödel 12:09, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Additionally, AllyUnion is not as active as was before. His UserPage announces:

I am currently on a Wiki Leave of Absence, and may not check on the Wikipedia for long periods of time. I am best reachable by email should you need my attention. --AllyUnion (talk) 10:55, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

and he has made 7 edits in 2007. --Trödel 14:10, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

A while ago, a bot was created that added {{infoboxneeded}} to several U.S. County articles (need to use {{Infobox U.S. County}}). Somewhere during the bot's work, a user commented that the infoboxneeded banner need to be on the TALK page and not the article itself. Recently there has been some discussion about this, and is is quite clear that we get results when the banner is placed ON THE ARTICLE, and not on THE TALK PAGE. As an example, see any South Dakota county. Spink County, South Dakota, for example, had the infoboxneeded banner placed on the talk page on February 23 by the bot. Nothing happened. I put the infoboxneeded banner on the article itself on March 8, and on March 18 someone had updated the article to use the infobox. Now it is March 29 and you can see that the "infoboxneeded" banner was STILL on top of the talk page, quite unnecessarily.

My request for a bot is to help cleanup the US County articles. The bot needs to:

1. Remove the Infoboxneeded banner from the talk page if it exists
2. If the article has the correct infobox ({{Infobox U.S. County}}), nothing more needs to happen.
3. If the article already has an "infoboxneeded" banner, nothing more needs to happen.
4. If the article does not have the correct infobox, or if it has no infobox at all, add the infoboxneeded banner requesting the {{Infobox U.S. County}}) template to the top of the article.

Please let me know if you can help. Right now there are several articles that unnecessarily have "infoboxneeded" on the talk page even though the article is using the correct infobox. Thank you. /Timneu22 12:59, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

That would have been my bot :). can you point me to that discussion where the opinion was changed? this is a simple request and I should be able to do this fairly quickly. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 18:41, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Discussion on Template talk:Infoboxneeded, however it's not the biggest discusison. The real point is that you can see that articles with infoboxneeded on the article itself get edited; articles with the banner on the talk page do not. (See articles where Betacommandbot added to the talk page, then I added to the article itself, and then the article got updated, but infoboxneeded still appears on the talk page because no one ever looks there!) /Timneu22 21:13, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Can you point to the other conversations? just because we might agree doesn't mean that we can override consensus and place it on the article. As a Bot Op we have to follow community consensus even if we disagree with it. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 22:12, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know where else to point you. This seems like a no-brainer to me. It's all about improving wikipedia. WP:Bold... I don't see how it is useful to wait around to have others agree that this helps improve articles; I also don't see where it has been stated that infoboxneeded should be on talk pages. Even if it did say that, again I cite that we improve articles by placing it on the article itself. Looking at all the current articles that now have an infobox yet still have infoboxneeded on the talk page is evidence that the talk page is the wrong place for this template. This is not one or two articles — I personally went through a few states and added infoboxneeded to the articles, and you can see the results are far better than using it on talk pages. If nothing else, a bot needs to remove infoboxneeded from talk pages where the article now includes the appropriate infobox, but I suggest moving the notice to the article because this clearly gets results. Timneu22 00:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

WP:BOLD and WP:IAR dont apply to bots. Please get consensus to place the tag on the artilce and Id be glad to do it. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 00:00, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Can you at least remove infoboxneeded from U.S. County Talk Pages when the articles already have the correct infobox? It certainly makes no sense to have these pages tagged when the appropriate work has already been done to the article. Additionally, as for concensus, it seems that the best policy is just to wait and see if the page gets any more edits. Is there another way to attract users to the talk page and discuss concensus? /Timneu22 14:39, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I can do that, A suggestion drop a note on the WP:VP and see what the opinion is. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 23:03, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

So far, WP:VP has one editor who agrees: the banner should be on the article. Not much of a concensus. Anyway, did you get the cleanup part of the bot running? Thanks again — Timneu22 00:23, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

There's a new, template, {{LocateMe|April 2007}} (for example), for the talk pages (or main pages?) of articles which are about places, but have no coordinates. We need a bot to run through all the articles which fit the former category (perhaps by category, or by use of info boxes) and determine which have no coordinates (not sure how - perhaps by looking for a link to http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/geo/geohack.php ?), then apply the tag to the talk page. Any offers, please? A trial run, to determine the best method and the numbers involved, might be good idea. Andy Mabbett 23:26, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Andy! Do you have a set of categories in mind for this project that you can pull together on a user-page? And what coordinates would you be looking for — {{Coor dms}} and the like? Can you come up with a preliminary list of either templates that show the coordinates you're interested in or links like the geohack one you mentioned? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 00:03, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

{outdent}

I'm working on this but I have some concerns. For instance, Category:Visitor attractions looks a likely candidate, as do all of its child-categories, such as Category:Visitor attractions; and, in turn, it's child category, Category:Miniature parks - then we see that the later includes Category:30" Railways & Modelling and thus articles which are clearly not about places.

It seems to me that there are several options:

1. Proceed anyway, with a note in the template, or on the talk page or edit summary, to apologise for any possible mistake, and invite revert (my mean more bad than good edits; cause bad-will, have the baby thrown out with the bath water)
2. Change pages which include on of a list of appropriate info boxes (but that misses articles about places, but having no infobox)
3. Manually list all the individual categories to check (but that's far too long-winded)
4. Automatically build a list of possible categories, then manually edit it (ditto, but less so)
5. Start from, for example, [:Category:Visitor attractions]], but only include sub-categories with the string "visitor attractions" in their names. (May fall down if "Visitor attractions in Anytown" is sub-divided into, say "Museums in Anytown" and "Theme parks in Anytown"

The latter seems to me to be the best of these options. Has anyone come across similar issues elsewhere? Or know of an alternative solution?

Andy Mabbett 18:53, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

You've run in to exactly the issue we have with bots running through categories and their subcats. In my experience (and others chime in if you have suggestions), the best thing to do is #4. You can start with something like

FYI, that's "<categorytree>Visitor attractions</categorytree>"

When I was doing this, I started with that, hit the "+" next to every one and followed down through until the cat didn't make sense - I used the guideline that if the category wasn't at least 80% accurate, I didn't include it. And try not to duplicate, but don't worry about that too much. Then I selected the text (the code doesn't expand, so select it on the web page) and copy/pasted it into a text document, where I cleaned up duplicates and such.

It's work, but the alternative is a ton of messages from irked users that the bot is running amok. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 19:06, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. That doesn't seem very "automatic"! If there's no way to get the machines to do more, might we be able to work in it in stages? Andy Mabbett 20:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Certainly! I don't like to run the bot on more than 50 cats in a run anyway, so that's fine. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 20:12, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, Here's a Pathfinder. Note that "Theatre in London" is to be omitted, but two of its children included. Please let me know if the format is OK for you (or whether you can let me have a copy of the bot, for Windows XP, preconfigured, into which I can drop such lists). Please log the number of sites checked an the number of those tagged. Thank you. Andy Mabbett 08:53, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Also, we could run against some lists, such as anything matching "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*_postcode_area" on [[1]]. Andy Mabbett

See also Wikipedia-DE's "maybe checker"Andy Mabbett 09:27, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry; I missed your "And what coordinates would you be looking for" - I think the GeoHack link covers everything. I don't know of any coordinate templates which don't put it on the page. Andy Mabbett 20:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

At maybe-checker you can also filters some areas over categories.

A good way, for searching in a special area is Catscan Berlin Example. Unfortunaly the english language is not uptodate on Toolserver. de:Benutzer:Kolossos 09:51, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I second that, with the maybechecker there is no point in cluttering the article with LocateMe templates. --Dschwen 15:54, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Let's take this to the bot's current project page. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 15:25, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

A bot similar to Ralbot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) for delivering news to members of Wikipedia:WikiProject Automobiles could be useful for members, this could also be used for Wikipedia:WikiProject Law Enforcement too. --SunStar Net ^talk 17:39, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Easy. I'll look at the first and post a request in a few hours, and I'll look at the second - are you associated with both projects to a degree that you can request the bots and give the final word on what to send? If so, I can set up the bots, I already have a pending request and I'll just add the other bots if needed. ST47Talk 18:07, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

This may have already been suggested, so let me apologize in advance if it has (I searched through 5 pages of the archive). Would it be possible to create a bot that looks at the fair use images and checks for rationale? Fair use images uploaded after 2006-05-04 must have rationale. I've notice d that many new FU images are beginning to use the {{Fair use rationale}} template. Basically, the bot would go through fair use categories, determine the upload date, then search the image description page for either the above template or any header with the word "Rationale" (or phrase "Fair use rationale"). If rationale is found, it moves on (or should we create a category for verified FU rationale images?). If it does not, then it tags the image with {{nrd}} and notifies the uploader with {{Missing rationale}}. Thoughts?↔NMajdan•talk 21:45, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

To complete some outstanding work at WP:CFD/W, I'd like to request botomatic help with the following large, one-off task. The work required is pretty simple but there are around 12500 pages to be processed.

Using a supplied list of pages (all in talkspace) the bot would create pages which did not exist with the content {{1911}} *or* add {{1911}} to an existing page near the top where the other templates are. The should be placed at the top of the page if it does not contain {{skiptotoctalk}}. If it does contain {{skiptotoctalk}} it should be placed immediately following that (on the same line or a new line, whichever is easier).

There's no particular urgency here. I wouldn't be ready to start around mid-April as I need to have all the necessary template changes prepared in advance and thoroughly tested. Can anyone help out? There are many smaller categories which can be used to test the proposed solution. Angus McLellan (Talk) 19:25, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds simple i could do it. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 21:37, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer! I'll be in touch when I've got all the template stuff sorted and had a chance to things manually. Cheers, Angus McLellan (Talk) 00:12, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I cannot find a bot that specifically does this simple task: find articles that contain choice words. The bot would be useful to WikiProjects in that one could find articles pertaining to their project. It could simply search periodically for a list of words and display new results to a user who can then check each article for relavance. By the way, I am specifically looking for a bot to work on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Stagecraft. I appreciate ay input into this bot, thanks, --Wforlines 22:02, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

this might be doable. but I'd use google search. care to generate a list of words? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 22:05, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

After more thinking, I'd like to add some other stuff to the bot. The ability to prioritize some words over the other so that higher priorities come up first in the results list, and are notated by priority. Further more, a page can be excluded from the results because it has already been looked over and posted with a Project banner, the page is a Wikipedia page (such as guidelines, rules, etc), or if the page is a userpage/template/bot page, etc. So I made it quite a bit more complex... --Wforlines 22:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

A) I can limit it to the mainspace. B.) I can have an exclude list. C)priority could be an issue. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 22:34, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The various cleanup tags create global categories that are too large to be useful to editors of specific areas. For instance, editors interested in classical music will have a hard time sifting through Category:Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007 for places where they can help out. Is there some way to recursively scan down a classical music specific category like Category:Compositions by composer, search for and tweak the maintenance tags so that they either switch to (or also create) a classical music version of that maintenance category? This seems like a logical request for any specific field of wikipedia, has it been asked before? Thanks in advance. DavidRF 04:13, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

If you have or can get AutoWikiBrowser, you can just load a list of articles in category A, a list of articles in category B, and use the list comparer to come up with a list of articles in both categories. You don't even have to be approved for this to work as it doesn't involve editing. If you don't have it, I'm sure anyone who has it would be able to help you. If you want I could dump a list of the articles in both of the categories you mentioned to a subpage. This is a much easier approach than the thousands of edits necessary to add all the articles needing maintenance in Wikipedia to new category-specific maintenance categories, let alone convincing people to use them in the future.--Dycedarg ж 04:20, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

A couple WikiProjects have started something like this. Take a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies/to do full list and Wikipedia:WikiProject Caribbean/To-do list. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 04:38, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Those are exactly the types of lists that I'm looking to make. The trouble is that classical music is a fairly large area with hundreds of categories. I'm playing with the AutoWikiBrowser right now. Its pretty cool, but it doesn't look like there is a way to recursively list pages in all child categories. Take a look at the Category:Compositions by composer above. Is there anyway to burrow down and get a long list of all the pages that are descended from that top-level category? I'm just getting a list of items that belong explicitly to the top-level category. Thanks again for all of your help. DavidRF 05:19, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow. That's the least recursive category tree I've seen on wikipedia - especially since it has 462 cats!!!

So would this be a one-time run? Because I can definitely do this - from that top level cat recursive - I think it only goes three deep. Review all articles for any of the cleanup templates. Let me know if it's going to be periodic or a one-shot and I'll give it a go tomorrow. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 06:15, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

A periodic run would be great, but if that's too difficult, a one-shot run would be a good start as well. We'd like the list posted on some child page of Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music. The exact name doesn't matter. "Full To Do List" or "Pages with maintenance tags". That would be amazing. Let me know if you need any more information. Thanks. DavidRF 06:56, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I could set a bot up on the toolserver and have it run say once a week, if your interested. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 12:39, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, BC :) SatyrBot already runs automaticelly for the other two WikiProjects, so this is just an addition to that. If I add many more wikiprojects to its scope, I may take you up on that, though! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 14:18, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

The results are available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music/To-do list and Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music/Small to-do list. The bot will update that list weekly on Wednesday nights. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 18:09, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

This is great. I can't thank you enough. I noticed that the "unsourced statements" tag is not being checked. Only the "lacking sources" tag. (See Symphony No. 88 (Haydn) which missed the list). Could that tag be added for the next time? Thanks again! DavidRF 20:09, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Is there a bot for common mistakes? It is a long time since most were checked, so I think a bot (if nonexistent) should be created. The WikiWhippet (deeds) 09:28, 4 April 2007 (UTC)(09:29, 4 April 2007 (UTC))

What kind of mistakes? Many are corrected with AutoWikiBrowser's general fixes and typo-fixing capabilities. —METS501 (talk) 03:28, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I'm posting this request in the correct place, if not can you direct me to the correct forum.

I would like a program/template/(bot?) that will generate a link to a random stub-article in a prescribed category.

The idea is to place a simple template in a user's homepage. That simple template will then generated a box with a link to a random stub e.g.

"Stub of the Day" = Thioether

Hopefully the template dropped into the user's homepage should be simple and tweakable e.g.:

{{Stub-of-the-Day|[Category:Chem-stubs]}} <-- this is just by way of illustrative example.

The category that I'm specifically interested in is chemistry stubs, but I hope that other editors might like the idea and use the program/(bot?) in their user homepage for other stub-categories e.g. stubs in the category "1960s music groups" - hence the requirement that the template/bot is easily tweakable to a specific category.

Finally - (if at all possible!) I'd quite like the stub to be fixed for 24 hr period (e.g. midnight to midnight GMT), i.e. to be a stub-of-the-day, that way a person coming back to the user-page will see the same stub and will be more likely to act to add information to de-stub the article!

I think this program/template/bot? would be a great tool and motivation to improving stub articles!!!

If the above make sense, and you can do it, want to do it, then that would be wonderful thanks! -- Quantockgoblin 22:16, 29 March 2007 (UTC).

Generating a random stub would not be hard but identifying said category would be hard to program Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 22:21, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I think without a category option then it is just a link to another random article. I have a strong background in chemistry and so would like stubs to be suggested in my field of interest. I know I could go to the chem-stub list every day and pick an article - but where is the fun in that! I guess if a general bot can't be made, could a specific bot be made if I fix the category?

However if a general & tweakable bot could be made I think many people would be interested not just me!!!! The creator would be showered in glory!!!! Thanks -- Quantockgoblin 22:32, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Well if you can find a template genius to give us a hand I think I can get the bot to work. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 22:36, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Sadly, that is not me ... any idea how we might find one? Do I dare ask what sort of information you might need? -- Quantockgoblin 22:40, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

What sort of template work would this need? Sounds like you just need a template with a little text and a link to an article. Couldn't the bot simply change the link in the template? Gimmetrow 22:43, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I see the number of requested categories growing very fast. It would far simpler to code a bot to simpley output data to a subpage of its userpace with the categor's name as the subpage. that way users can use a template with parser functions to select the proper page. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 22:50, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

To my mind I pleased to see that the conversation has escaped my understanding - keep it up, maybe there is a solution in there somewhere, again thanks for your efforts -- Quantockgoblin 22:59, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

It sounds like you want the template to be roughly something like

<includeonly>Stub of the day is [[:{{ThisTemplate/{{{Category}}}}}]]</includeonly>

and there would be article names at Template:ThisTemplate/Category for some set of categories that would get updated daily by a bot? Gimmetrow 23:31, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Basically Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 23:35, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

If the bot is going to be working with a specific list of categories, couldn't it generate an entire template based on a switch function, with the appropriate page for each potential option? Is it better to create 100 tiny subpages, or to use a switch with 100 options? Gimmetrow 23:42, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I dont know templates that well that is why I asked for a template maker :) . I just make bots Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 23:43, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I can make templates :) My inclination is to avoid zillions of tiny subpages - but this would mean the bot would generate the entire template and replace it daily.

Stub of the day = {{#switch:{{{1}}}|Chem|chem=[[Some article]]|Math|math=[[Some other article]]|improper category}}

This would be used as {{Stub-of-day|Chem}} or {{Stub-of-day|math}}. Invalid categories would fall through to the default text. Or something like that. Gimmetrow 23:52, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I love the high-tech banter - does this mean we are getting somewhere? Or is this so above my head that you have already come to a conclusion, and I just haven't realised yet !! :) -- Quantockgoblin 00:11, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

You chaps given up on me ... maybe your still thinking???????? Did I mention the Gory?! -- Quantockgoblin 19:45, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Im coding Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 00:02, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Brilliant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -- Quantockgoblin 16:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

can I get a list of cats that I should start with? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 01:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm doing a straw poll on the Chemisty Project to see what cats are of most interest. If you need just one cat for testing, I'm sure {{organic-compound-stub}} - organic compounds will be in the list of cats of most interest. If it no big deal then I guess Category:Chemistry_stubs is the 'umbrella stub', but people might want further refinement so as to be able to select a sub-category(s) from the 'umbrella cat' list. Hope the above makes sense - will report back soon, again many thanks -- Quantockgoblin 09:37, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I have a working bot (I think) check out User:Betacommand/Sandbox and have a template person fix it for us. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 21:40, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Betacommand - I had a look at the link mentioned above, but only saw "{{Stub-of-the-day =" on the screen, although if I go to edit the sandbox I see "1-Butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate" nested in the middle of the template ... is this in effect the "stub" ... I presume somehting isn't quite right yet, or just as likely if not more so ... I haven't done something that I need to?!? Looking forward to seeing it in action -- cheers Quantockgoblin 23:18, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

{{tl|User:Betacommand/Sandbox|Chem}} produces {{User:Betacommand/Sandbox}} Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 23:21, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Aside from making sure "default" is spelled right, it looks OK. (That's why no link shows on the page itself.) Gimmetrow 04:26, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Hey it looks really good ...!!! What do I/we need to do next. Is it more or less ready to go and will this thing live in your sandbox forever, or will it get set-up else where? Would you like me to place the current link on the chemistry web group for testing? ... and btw, you chaps are great!!! -- Many thanks! Quantockgoblin 10:04, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Ill file a BRFA later and once that is approved Ill move the template into the template namespace. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 12:37, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello Chaps - can I ask at what time does 'the stub of the day' refresh itself? -- Thanks Quantockgoblin 07:18, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I discovered a bug that breaks it, ill fix that later. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 11:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Dear Betacommand ^(talk can you please tell me what the new template to "stub of the day" is ... at the moment I have text from 20000 league under the sea !!!!!!! Quantockgoblin 18:42, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Changing all ISBN-10s to ISBN-13s (per International Standard Book Number and http://www.bisg.org/pi/index.html) seems like an obvious and necessary thing to do. It might also, if there's no dissent (wishful thinking?), give the opportunity to standrardise the formatting, so that only one of these (or another other) styles:

• 978-81-7525-766-5
• 9788175257665
• 978 81 7525 766 5

(et al) is used. Andy Mabbett 19:20, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd be willing to code a bot for that, if I can figure out exactly how to convert them :-) Also, according to the official site, it's 5 groups separate by hyphens, so your first example would be correct. —METS501 (talk) 19:48, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Andy Mabbett 19:54, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

From an external website:

1. Drop the check digit (the last digit) from your existing ISBN-10.
2. Add the prefix “978” to the beginning of your 9-digit number.
3. Recalculate your check digit using the modulus 10 check digit routine.

I can get the bot to do this perfectly, but the problem is placing the hyphens. How should they be placed? It's seemingly random. —METS501 (talk) 19:57, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

pywikipedia has a bot already coded for this. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 23:01, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Conversion. I don't think you will quickly get a consensus for converting all ISBN-10s to ISBN-13s. (SmackBot started doing that in December, 2006 but was persuaded to stop). Consider these reasons for us not to convert:

• There is no mandate from isbn.org for all *users* of ISBNs to convert to ISBN-13. Contrast this with the requirements on the publishers and book dealers that kicked in on 1 January 2007. They must handle ISBN-13s correctly and need to print *at least* an ISBN-13 on each newly-issued book. Nothing rules out issuing *both* an ISBN-13 and an ISBN-10 for the same book, and many publishers do that. ISBN-10s will continue to circulate and be recognized as valid.

• The reference lists of Wikipedia articles are full of older books that were originally issued with ISBN-10s and have no official requirement to change, and probably no practical benefit either.

Hyphenation. Since hyphenation of ISBNs depends on the set of publisher codes that are currently in use, to hyphenate an ISBN correctly requires either a very big set of regular expressions, such as the set used by SmackBot, or an official conversion site like the one at http://www.isbn.org/converterpub.asp. Since Rich Farmbrough's SmackBot has been making regular passes through Wikipedia to hyphenate newly-added ISBNs, I don't see the immediate need for another bot to do this. EdJohnston 00:39, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, fair enough. No new bot :-) —METS501 (talk) 05:21, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

A citation is supposed to refer to the copy of a source which is being used. The ISBN for that book should be used, whichever ISBN that particular copy happens to have. Conversion could be done by tools which help one find copies of books, but should the citation which was made by the person holding the book be changed? (SEWilco 04:31, 6 April 2007 (UTC))

I think there should be a program that finds Wikipedians by similarity, according to their userboxes. It doesn't even need to be a bot, some general script would probably be better. This should be quite easy to do using the "What links here" links of the userboxes etc. An ideal output would be a list of "10 most similar users with user NN" or something similar. A fancier way of displaying the results would be a 2d map similar to what the Kartoo search engine outputs! Coming to think of it, maybe User:SuggestBot could be modified to suggest other Wikipedians? --ZeroOne (talk | @) 22:34, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

That sounds like a fascinating project. If no one objects to it or thinks it unviable, I'll do a little research and get started. Madman bum and angel 01:49, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I personally don't think this is an encyclopaedic project (more like a social networking addition), but it does have some community value and in any case it'll be fun to code. I've thought of an approach and I'll file a request if you're still interested. Leave an answer on my user talk page, please. Madman bum and angel 17:01, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I am in the process of developing a bot that will take the name of the article and add the pronunciation to the article. I was wondering if there is a bot like that and if not is there somebody that can help me. I think it is a great idea and I would love to implement it. Jdchamp31 19:17, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Now that would really be one genius bot. I can't imagine one could be made with enough accuracy, but we'll see. —METS501 (talk) 18:23, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I assume that it will retrieve the proper pronunciation from http://www.m-w.com/ or a similar website? If so, I would check the Terms of Use for the website you use to make sure automated requests are not disallowed. I think you'll find they are, in most cases. Madman bum and angel 18:26, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I will look into it but this is a foreseeable option I think. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jdchamp31 (talk • contribs) 18:14, 8 April 2007 (UTC).

Does m-w use IPA? ^demon^{[omg plz]} 18:25, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I know that this is a long shot because of the bot needing admin status, but would it be possible to make a bot that goes through the Protected Deleted Pages Category and move those to the new cascading protection pages? The Placebo Effect 20:54, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

{{Extra tracklisting}} has recently been changed so it employs a Type field, so you can designate a background colour to the template, exactly like {{Infobox album}}. The problem is now this leaves many articles using the template without the type field there, and the background being in peachpuff colour. Now from what I've seen, this has shocked and confused editors, as they are unaware of the change to the template, and they dont know what to do. All of these templates are automatically put into Category:Non-standard Extra tracklisting templates. I need a bot to go through that category and just simply add the type field. An example from New Year's Day (song):
Before:

{{Extra tracklisting
|Album = [[War (album)|War]]
|prev_track     = "[[Seconds (song)|Seconds]]"
|prev_no        = 2
|this_track     = "'''New Year's Day'''"
|track_no       = 3
|next_track     = "[[Like a Song...]]"
|next_no        = 4
}}

After:

{{Extra tracklisting
|Album = [[War (album)|War]]
|Type           = <!-- Add appropriate Type and colour code here -->
|prev_track     = "[[Seconds (song)|Seconds]]"
|prev_no        = 2
|this_track     = "'''New Year's Day'''"
|track_no       = 3
|next_track     = "[[Like a Song...]]"
|next_no        = 4
}}

This would probably clear up much confusion with the numerous song articles with this problem. It would be greatly appreciated if someone could attend to this, I don't think it is a difficult task. Thank you. -- Reaper X 15:35, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I was wondering if it would be possible to create a bot that would automatically switch between three pre-determined user status templates based on a syntax of: Day of Week and UTC time templates should change, and which template should be used. Not sure if this is possible. Let me know if more info is needed. Thanks. Cascadia ^{TALK| HISTORY} 16:46, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I think what you're saying can be done with m:parserfunctions. You mean that, for example, between 3 PM and 9 PM every day except Sunday display one thing, the rest of the day display another thing, and on Sunday's all day display something else? —METS501 (talk) 18:30, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Basically yes, one day have {{User:Cascadia/Userboxes/day-week}} display on certain days between X AM and Y PM. {{User:Cascadia/Userboxes/sleep}} display every day between Y PM and X AM, and on my weekends, display {{User:Cascadia/Userboxes/day-weekend}} during normal day hours. If this can be done using parser functions without a bot, then I'm up for that. Lot less red tape. I'll read through the parser functions to see what combination would be best. Just a question though, would I then be able to combine the templates into one, or would they have to remain separate? Cascadia ^{TALK| HISTORY} 18:50, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

You could probably do it either way, separate or together. If you want, I can write the code for you; just leave me the hours that you want the different things to display and what you want to be displayed during those hours. —METS501 (talk) 19:27, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Great! I'm good at HTML and webdesign, but some of these other items I haven't had the time to sit down and learn yet. Thank you very much!
{{User:Cascadia/Userboxes/day-week}}; 6 AM - 7 PM Fri-Tues
{{User:Cascadia/Userboxes/day-weekend}}; 6 AM - 7 PM Wed - Thurs
{{User:Cascadia/Userboxes/sleep}}; 7 PM - 6 AM all days

Again thank you! Cascadia ^{TALK| HISTORY} 19:34, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Er, just realized that I am UTC -7, and I didn't provide that info. Cascadia ^{TALK| HISTORY} 18:57, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I was hoping someone here would be willing to work with the Vandalism studies project on our second study. We would basically need a bot to aid us collect data for our second study. Let me know if anyone would be interested in helping out. Remember 03:32, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I would be happy to assist. --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 14:32, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there is a bot out there that already does this, but it would be great if there was a bot that removes links to images that don't exist. This would come in handy when dealing with those pesky image backlogs that require orphanage of the image, so all admins have to do is delete the image and the bot comes in behind and cleans up the residual redlinks. I have no programming experience whatsoever, and I don't think AWB has the capacity to do things like this, so would be very thankful if somebody could answer this request. // PTO 20:58, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I checked Wikipedia:Registered bots. There does not seem to be any kind of redlink removing bot. Maybe if there was a bot designed to remove redlinks (not the text just the [[ ]] part) in general from the mainspace (article space). Image redlink removal would be included. The only kind of redlink to not be removed could be category links (user and user talk links would not be needed since it would only be for mainspace and I don't believe discussions take place in mainspace. How else can redlinks to non existing redlinks leading to the user and user talk name spaces appear in article namespace?). Maybe I can try to make it. Funpika 21:38, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be a bad idea to remove redlinks to other articles (as that was one of the original motivations that Wikipedia wanted to use to attract editors), but dead categories would be fine. // PTO 23:17, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I would like to request a bot that formats existing footnotes to the standards set in Wikipedia:Footnotes#Where_to_place_ref_tags.

Specifically, I see the following errors frequently and I would like to correct them:

• Footnotes are wonderful^[1]. --> Footnotes are wonderful.^[1] (ref tag before punctuation)
• Footnotes are wonderful. ^[1] --> Footnotes are wonderful.^[1] (unnecessary space between punctuation and ref tag)
• Footnotes are wonderful.^{[1] [2]} --> Footnotes are wonderful.^[1][2] (unnecessary spaces between successive ref tags)

Does a bot like this already exist?

WatchAndObserve 01:57, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

AWB's general fixes does this. —METS501 (talk) 02:23, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I already started to add banners for this project, but would it be possible for a bot to add {{WikiProject Foreign relations}} to all articles in Category:International relations? As I already said, a small percentage of these articles have the tag affixed to their talk page, so is there a way to check for them before placing the banner?--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 02:38, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah you want to tag sub categories also? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 02:39, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, please. That also includes subcategories of the subcategories, if you know what I mean. ;) Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 02:40, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Ill generate a list of categories for you to review. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 02:41, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

See User:Betacommand/To be fixed for a list of subcats. remove the ones that dont apply, let me know when your done. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 03:45, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm considering a slight username change and I was wondering if anyone had a bot that could exchange my old signature, to one with my name change in? SinceI started here, I've only had 2 different signatures so it's not like there's loads of different signatures togo through. My only concern is there's probably around 3,000 edits that the bot would needto make. I've considereda re-direct from myold userpage to my new one, but I'd prefer if it was set in stone. Cheers Ryanpostlethwaite contribs/talk 18:03, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

For what it's worth, you could do this easily in WP:AWB. That said, I think that the established precedent is to redirect (protected) your userpage and avoid clogging up recent changes with switching your signature. I've seen a few people doing that, but it's generally frowned upon. alphachimp 18:10, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I was considering AWB, would have been nice to have something automated to do it with though, oh well, I guess I'll settle for a protected redirect Ryanpostlethwaite contribs/talk 18:13, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

If you get the task approved on WP:BRFA (I'm sure they won't), I can have Alphachimpbot do it. It'd be extremely easy. alphachimp 18:13, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Could a bot add {{WikiProject GeorgiaUS}} to the talk pages of all the links in these articles: List of cities in Georgia, USA and List of towns and villages in Georgia (U.S. state) Akubhai 12:10, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

SatyrBot can do that for you. Please see User:SatyrBot/Current project for a couple questions. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 13:41, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Could someone please tag all articles, categories and templates that fall under Category:Cycling and it's child categories with {{cycling project}}, and automatically assess all stub articles with class=stub and all non-articles with class=NA? Thanks, Severo^TC 23:41, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Wasn't this done back in February? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 00:57, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but there are more pages now, and assessment has started and I'd appreciate the bots ability to automatically assess loads of articles based on stub templates. Regards, Severo^TC 07:50, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Is it just the "Cycling" category and one level deep? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 15:39, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

All articles and cats should fall under the Project's span :). Severo^TC 18:42, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

You would be surprised... If I start with the category Cycling->Utility cycling->Green Vehicles->Fuel cell vehicles... You can see it would get sticky if the bot tagged Type 212 submarine with the cycling banner :) I've created a list of categories from the category tree that starts with Category:Cycling - please review User:SatyrBot/Cycling and remove the categories that don't belong. Then I can run the bot to tag articles if they don't already have the tag. Thanks! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 19:23, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Could someone create a bot for automatically welcoming new users when they create a new account? ♠TomasBat (@)(Contribs)(Sign!) 02:01, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

That might have been suggested before...you'll have to check the archives. However, I think that such a bot would make the system even more impersonal.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 02:07, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

That's correct. A welcoming bot is be very easy to implement, but unnecessary. The whole point of welcoming somebody is to build connections between users. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:09, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, couldn´t it be like the official welcome or something of the sort? It would really help all new users get started... ♠TomasBat (@)(Contribs)(Sign!) 02:28, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Users are getting started by being welcome by other users. :) Sometimes that takes a while, but I bet that any user which has made say 20 edits will be noticed and welcomed by somebody. Also, I would doubt that people are going to be helped so much by the welcome template right away. Anyway, on the whole, I think a user would be better off waiting a bit and being welcomed by a real person, than being welcomed immediately by a bot. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:54, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, but couldn´t we instead use the Smiling bot mechanism (see section right below) but , intead of handing a smiley, make it hand a welcome to a random user which has got no posts on the talk page? ♠TomasBat (@)(Contribs)(Sign!) 19:30, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

No - A random user is easy to get, a random user who happens to have no messages is not. Use one of the fancy JS scripts that works on the newusers log? ST47Talk 19:34, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

OK. ♠TomasBat (@)(Contribs)(Sign!) 20:47, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I read an article where the masculine ordinal sign Âº (&ordm;) was used some places instead of the degree sign Â° (&deg;), and there was also some inconsistent usage of space between the degree sign and the scale denominator (C or F). I edited that article, but looking at a few related articles I realized that my contribution was just a drop in the ocean. Could a robot please change incorrect use of ordinal Âº to degree Â° and also remove inappropriate space between ° and C or F?

Change	To		Change	To
ºC	°C or °C		ºF	°F or °F
º C			º F
º C			º F
ºC			ºF
º C			º F
º C			º F
° C			° F
° C			° F
° C			° F
° C			° F

Unless the search can be constrained to solitary capital C's and F's, the change from ordinal Âº to degree Â° should be monitored while the robot is running. The removal of space between ° and C or F, however, is straightforward. On the other hand, space between numerals and degree sign is optional and, also considering geometric angles, should not be robot'ed. --Eddi (Talk) 01:39, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Send this over to WT:AWB they can take care of this. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 01:41, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Will do. --Eddi (Talk) 01:48, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Can someone please develop a bot for me. I would love to have a bot as this would allow me to help contribute to Wikipedia and as well as that the more bots we have, the more pages we can edit. The more the merrier! --pizza1512 09:05, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Could you specify what the bot would do? Funpika 22:02, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Could I have a bot which removes repetition of internal links, i.e. when a word comes up more than once, it would not be linked more than once. Um.. I'm not sure if this is clear. Let me give an example... take the first paragraph of...

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of music, and was the predominant figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music. His reputation and genius have inspired — and in many cases intimidated — ensuing generations of composers, musicians, and audiences. While primarily known today as a composer, he was also a celebrated pianist and conductor, and an accomplished violinist.

The word composer is linked more than once and would be removed by the bot to only link the first 'composer':

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of music, and was the predominant figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music. His reputation and genius have inspired — and in many cases intimidated — ensuing generations of composers, musicians, and audiences. While primarily known today as a composer, he was also a celebrated pianist and conductor, and an accomplished violinist.

I hope you understand what I mean. --pizza1512 10:24, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

The burden of proof is on the bot-maker to demonstrate that the bot:

1. is harmless
2. is useful
3. is not a server hog
4. has been approved
5. abides by all guidelines, policies and common practices
   — Wikipedia:Bot policy

I don't see how this is useful, and it may actually be counter-productive. ST47Talk 10:51, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, the reason why I asked for a bot with that requirement is that it only processes articles that requires cleanups. I just tried to clean up a whole article full of links, and it took a very long time. Having a bot that does that, would allow clean ups to be made more easily and so the articles can be rewritten more easily. I'm only trying to help. --pizza1512 19:18, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I think you need to specify exactly what types of clean ups you would like to do. WatchAndObserve 20:17, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

It would be the removal of repetitive links in a document then. I would like the bot to look through articles that require clean ups and it would remove those unnecessary addition links.

As well as that, could I have a bot that automatically create information boxes for biographies of people or would that be a bit ambitious? --pizza1512 21:38, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Is the problem that your first idea is hoping to correct really that big of a problem though? I agree that there are articles with entirely too many repeated links, but are there enough of them to justify the bot searching through the thousands of clean-up articles looking for them? As for the second bot: Could you elaborate a bit? What information would the bot use to generate these infoboxes?--Dycedarg ж 05:18, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I think it is a problem that needs to be solve. Many editors use up too much time, editing these 'clean up' articles. However, by creating a bot that removes these, it would allow articles to be rewritten and back up to the true quality of Wikipedia. I really do think that there are enough links to justify the bot searching through them. The other day I had to delete over 20 links in an clean up article - and boy it took me a lot of time...

As for the info boxes, the bot could I suppose detect a few key words that are related to them. As well as that, because most professions are marked as categories on Wikipedia, it could create a userbox using that knowledge also. --pizza1512 08:41, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello is there anyone there who can help? --pizza1512 ^{Talk Autograph} 18:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello, As I am a constant active member of the Birthday Committee, I would like to run and manage a bot that is run once each day to read the special calendar entries for the day and post a random template on the user's talk page. It has been discussed in the past with support from other members and I would like to take this further. If a kind Wikipedian out there would be willing to construct such a bot for me, I would be very grateful. Many thanks, Extranet ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 11:46, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll have a look. ST47Talk 11:55, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks like it works - if you run a linux machine, I can send you the source? ST47Talk 13:57, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Someone should make a bot that searches articles for IP addresses that made many major edits to closely related articles(in the same category, or linked) in a short period of time with out making many other major edits and add it to a watch list for someone else to check, because I noticed that people(2 out of 2 so far) who probably work for a company related to the subject tend to never make any other edits other than a couple huge edits to the article. The bot could also have a list of categories that have a conflict of interest often(e.g. List of United States companies, or Category:United States presidential candidates), and therefore check those more often. I could maybe make the bot because I have some programming skill but not with internet stuff. 80.109.79.136 13:51, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Talk to User:Beetstra, he has a similar bot at the moment. ST47Talk 13:57, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

What bot? 80.109.79.136 14:01, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

User:COIBot. ST47Talk 14:02, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) That sounds like a nice idea, but I am not sure on how to implement this.

First, I am running a COIBot. Primary tasks at the moment are to match username with links (domains) added or match username with page edited. Reports are, atm, going to m:User:COIBot/COIReports (per day). COIBot has black-/white- and monitor lists, which give it the capability to either link users/IPs to certain data, to whitelist certain users on certain pages/links (some usernames have accidental overlap with the edits) and to monitor link-additions (handy when spammers use many IPs or sock-accounts). COIBot is still under development, though it is working quite well. I am waiting for a toolserv account, and will then also do a BRFA on this wiki to make it report here.

A second tool we have is a link-watcher, which alerts us of users adding many links. That alerts us to have a look into these edits.

I don't see (yet) how to create an algorithm for your proposal. Catching COIs on basis of editing patterns is going to be difficult. E.g. in mainspace my main interest is chemistry, and I edit all through chemistry mainspace. If I would have a COI that would not be noticed because of the broadness of the edits. On the other hand, a Madonna fan who only edits the page Madonna and her albums would not have a COI, but a very select editing pattern, which might give a false positive. Also new editors tend to make a lot of small edits without using preview (heh, even I do that), which again would be diffcult to catch.

So the problem here is that almost every wikipedia-editor has a focus on a certain set of articles, and most will make edits within a certain set of categories relating to their favourite subject. That pattern is the same as a company/IP that wants to promote their own interest.

If you have any ideas on how to do this, and we could have a look how far that would lie within the scope of COIBots capabilities. For more information, you can reach us on IRC (where also the edit-feeds can be found), talk-channel irc://chat.freenode.net:8001/wikipedia-spam-t or via the normal wikipedia channels (talkpages, email). Hope this helps, have a nice day. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:35, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it's very simple to do, all it does is look at major edits per day, major edits being something like 3 words changed or more, and finds a spike e.g. 1, 0, 5, 0, 1 and 1, then it looks at the 5 articles and finds out how closely related they are and finds out how closely related those articles compared to the other edits i.e. 1, 0, 0, 1 and 1(that, I hope, gets rid of the article focus thing) and comes up with a score(based on how closely related the articles are, those articles compared to the other days edits(edit size, etc.), and the size of the edits, i.e. the bigger edit the more suspicious) and adds it to the list for someone else to check. 80.109.79.136 15:20, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

PS: It should at least add people who, as their very first edits, make 3+ major edits in related articles to a list. Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/83.132.128.252 80.109.79.136 15:25, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

PPS: I just got myself an account I'm now Jeffrey.Kleykamp 15:53, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I see. I think this lies outside the scope of COIBot, completely different algorithm (though this may be a plan for a COIBot2). I am still afraid of a relative large number of false-positives with this, but that remains to be seen, and maybe can be tweaked when the bot is running (IPs making major edits may also be experienced users who are not logged in at that moment, or who are on a different IP every time and hence have more edits than expected). I'll let this idea mature a bit first. Please inform us when you start programming it! See you around! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:01, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I thought about this idea a bit, and it seems like a bot would have to:

• Find a source of IPs
  • Load contribs for each
    • Sort by date
    • Calculate mean, standard deviation, and determine the days with are more than X standard deviations above mean
      • Compare article titles using COIBot's algorithm
      • Report to IRC
  • Load next IP

ST47Talk 16:49, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I just tried to create simple stuff code in C# to see my skills with web pages and bots and it was way to complicated and I failed. Is there a website with some sample bot code written in C# or Java or even a bot tutorial because I learn fast but I need help with a start. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 17:33, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so, but I can give you a sample of a framework written in Perl - perlwikipedia - or post a link to your code and someone can look over it. ST47Talk 17:45, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't like the idea of comparing article titles using COIBot's algorithm (I don't really no what it does), I think it would be better but more complicated and slower to find out how far one must travel in the categories to find the other article, and I don't understand what you mean by "Calculate mean, standard deviation, and determine the days with are more than X standard deviations above mean" Jeffrey.Kleykamp 18:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Would it be possible to create a bot which would be able to perform calculations and approve of calculus on recent changes/new pages?, and then further explain what the calculus is intending to get across. This might help people who are doing maths, and are unable to see why the calculation may be the solution to their question. Just a thought. Doesn't matter if it doesnt 'come alive'. Radio_Orange (talk • contribs) 18:30, 15 April 2007 (UTC).

I'm not sure exactly what you mean, can we have an example? ST47Talk 18:41, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking and I found out a very simple algorithm for finding conflicts of interest, all the bot has to do is search through the contributions of the current IP and look at each change(number characters different) to an article(counting multiple changes in a row as one) and compare it to the average change per article to all articles excluding the current selection, and depending how much different these two numbers are it adds it to a list of suspicion, i.e. the higher the difference the more suspicious and higher on the list, it also has to have a minimum change level so it doesn't catch people who just got into wikipedia and made their first edit(e.g. added a space). This wouldn't find people who make multiple changes to articles related to a subject and it might catch some people who didn't do anything wrong but it should only add those people to a list for someone else to look at so there isn't much damage to be done. Someone else has to make this bot because I can't. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 18:34, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that would work too well. What if someone is just interested in an article/subject, but doesn't necessarily have a COI with it? ^demon^{[omg plz]} 18:54, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

That's why it looks at the average change to all other articles edited because it is unlikely that a person will only make huge edits to a single article related to a subject that they just like on a website that they know little about(i.e. they must have made more edits) so if the changes are small or medium then they are probably just fans but I'm talking about catching people who make huge changes to a single article without ever making any other significant edits, but I do see your point. PS: did this make sense to you because I'm writing funny today and I'm too lazy to check my work. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 19:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Could somebody make me a bot that helps in handing out random smiley awards? Now, it would work in the following way:

1. You go to the bot´s userpage.
2. You click on an image of a button (say a green button).
3. The bot detects your username by detecting which user clicked the button and automatically enters a random user page and inserts a random smiley, with your detected signature.

Idea: Maby, once clicking the buttom and detecting your username, it could automatically enter special:random, go to the page history and send a smiley tothe first user on the list. Or it could, once the button is clicked and the username detected, travel to special:listusers and select a random user from there.

With this bot, handing out random smiley awards would be a lot less tediouse and users who wish to do so would lose a lot less time.

♠TomasBat (@)(Contribs)(Sign!) 19:07, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

The burden of proof is on the bot-maker to demonstrate that the bot:

1. is harmless
2. is useful
3. is not a server hog
4. has been approved
5. abides by all guidelines, policies and common practices

What's the point? We don't need a bot that picks random users, use Recent Changes and do it yourself. ST47Talk 19:15, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

It would be even faster with this bot; extremely fast... Which is somethig good... ♠TomasBat (@)(Contribs)(Sign!) 19:22, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

But we have the same problem as above - a bot smiling at people - yes, it can sign your name, but the history would still say it would be from the bot...also, it'd have to be on toolserv and involve a <form>, as you can't put CGI scripts on your userpage...by the way, your signature is disgustingly long, can you shorten it a bit? ST47Talk 19:32, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

How about if we add automatic/bot-styled code to the users who wish to hand in smileys in this fast way, instead of using a seperate bot? I think this would certainly fix the problem... ♠TomasBat (@)(Contribs)(Sign!) 20:50, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how this will help us write an encyclopedia. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 19:34, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Users hand in smiley awards through bots, the users who recieve those get cheered up and start contributing more. ♠TomasBat (@)(Contribs)(Sign!) 20:46, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

But it's a BOT! I'd say, look, a little metal box has been programmed to like me, big deal. ST47Talk 20:48, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

You don´t seem to understand. The bot is a semi-automatic one which aids users who wish to send random smileys by enabling them to hand them faster. The user orders the bot to make a task faster, but the bot does that because the users orders him to do so, not because he is programmed to like that user and be friendly. ♠TomasBat (@)(Contribs)(Sign!) 21:16, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

However, the bot is making the actual edit? 24.0.52.44 21:43, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

If not, then I think you just want some javascript that will select a random user, load their talk, and make a new section. 24.0.52.44 21:45, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmmmmmm... I suppose so... But, could that java-script also automatically define the section name as Random Smiley Award and the text as {{subst:User:Pedia-I/SmileyAward1}} ~~~~? ♠TomasBat (@)(Contribs)(Sign!) 21:58, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

You do realize that randomly selecting a user to give this award to is as likely to turn up vandals, spammers, banned users, and users that made three edits and left as it is to turn up good contributers? How is this helpful?--Dycedarg ж 22:44, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Since the Smileys are given out at random, it may sometimes happen that one is mistakenly given to an editor of bad reputation. This should not be seen as an endorsement of such a person, but merely a mistake. Besides, perhaps the sight of a Yellow Smiley on their page may inspire efforts at self-reform. Alternately, for a genuinely Evil Editor the sight of a Yellow Smiley spreading warmth and good cheer might serve as a just punishment, like well-wishers wishing a Merry Christmas to grumpy Ebenezer Scrooge. ♠TomasBat (@)(Contribs)(Sign!) 23:45, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't have any good knowledge of JS files, but your proposal might be able to be written on your monobook. A bot wouldn't be needed.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 01:08, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) If this gets approved (which I don't see happening), I would want a way to opt out...I don't want my name to be in the drawing for random talkpage spam. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 03:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• Ok, so this isn´t the right place to ask; so, where can I ask for such js files for my monobook? ♠TomasBat (@)(Contribs)(Sign!) 20:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I can give you one that will put a tab at the top of user talk pages that will post such a template and your signature with one click. You'd still have to manually navigate to a user talk page first though. If you want something that selects a user and posts the template all in one go, I think the place to ask is WP:US#Open requests, though I have absolutely no idea how expedient a response you would get.--Dycedarg ж 20:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I guess I'm in a bot creating mood because I have another idea, how about a bot that looks at the editing patterns of the edit that got people warned/banned and compares it to normal people to find people that are most likely to be vandalizing. The different patterns that it can look at is words/characters/phrases added, words/characters/phrases deleted, words/characters/phrases replaced, time between edits, size of edits, etc.

PS: In a sort of unrelated bot idea create a base bot that takes the commands of other programs written in any code as a sort of interface to Wikipedia so that people have to spend less time writing code for the bots. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 13:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

For the first one we have several such tools. for the second one we have several bot frameworks for that. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 17:58, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Could I have an example for each, please? Jeffrey.Kleykamp 19:02, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I was looking through AfD, and I noticed that there were quite a few deletion debates with Wikipedia:Articles+for+deletion instead of WIkipedia:Articles_for_deletion. This would surely be easy to sort out using a bot; if anyone is interested then I think it would be a good idea. -- Casmith_789 (talk) 15:55, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Does that even matter? I'm not entirely sure, but I think MediaWiki recognizes them both as one and the same. Jayden54 16:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

The misnamed debates (which are treated separately by MediaWiki) were caused by an error in {{subst:afd}}, which has now been fixed. Sorting them out would probably be a one-time run of an existing bot or AWB, rather than with a dedicated bot (if they haven't been fixed by dedicated editors by hand yet). --ais523 15:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Can I get an archiving bot called BOT1029? --B1029TALK

what needs archiving? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 19:52, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

There's a lot of unnecessary links to uncyclopedia found in the external links section of random articles (search for uncyclopedia.org/wiki) that need to be removed. The easiest solution that comes to mind would be to get a bot to remove them all, then revert the ones where the links were relevant (I'm assuming that this is the case) manually. -Obli (Talk)^? 23:22, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

That's not a great idea, I'd recommend using WP:AWB to do it manually, but a blind kill-all policy is not the way to do this. Talk to a few of the people on irc (irc.freenode.net, channel #wikipedia-spam-t) about getting some help and opinions. ST47Talk 00:44, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Could somebody make me a bot for fix typos and reverting vandalism? Because I'm still wasting my time and my Internet connection is too slow. Jigs41793 ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 23:53, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

We don't do typo bots because of the chance that they might "fix" something they shouldn't, but you can use WP:AWB to do it manually but faster. As for an antivandalism bot, we have one, but even that can't catch everything. ST47Talk 00:46, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Please see the discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Odd_.22script.22_edit. I'm requesting a bot runs checks for these type of script vandalism attempts... assuming none already does. --Dweller 10:37, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Anyone? --Dweller 09:05, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me a bit like using the army to beat a paper dragon - it's a one-time attack, it doesn't even work, I don't think it's worth it. ST47Talk 10:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree, it's not a true security threat. "<script" should probably be added to some of the anti-vandal bots' regex lists though. --Selket ^Talk 16:28, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Selket, how can you agree that "I don't think it's worth it", but then also agree that it "should probably be added to some of the anti-vandal bots' regex lists"? --Dweller 16:30, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it is not a security threat and not necessary to create a bot for this specific purpose. However, I think anything containting <script is likely to be vandalism and the bots that already scan recent changes for certain phrases likely to be vandalism should look for this one as well. This is because edits containing it are likely to be vandalism, not because it is a special case, different from normal vandalism. --Selket ^Talk 17:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Would it be possible to have a bot that organizes/sorts/counts GA candidates? This hasn't been discussed extensively at GA; it just came up as an idea and I thought I'd ask if it were feasible. It would read the GA candidates page and count the number of nominees in each category, figuring out if they were on hold or under review.

Possible outputs would include:

• A count of total GA noms outstanding, including those held or under review
• An exception list, showing GA holds over 7 days, GAs out of sequence in the lists, GAs under review more than 7 days, noms > 1 month
• A list showing nominator names and the number of noms, for anyone with > 1 nom
• A list of categories with totals for each category -- e.g. "Military History: 12 noms"
• A similar list showing untouched noms -- e.g. subtracting ones which were on hold or under review
• A list of suggested categories for the backlog template to mention

I guess a subpage of the candidates page would be the place to put it. Historical data could be saved; might be interesting to look at trends.

As I said, these are just ideas. I'll post a note at the GAC talk page and ask people to comment here. Mike Christie (talk) 15:40, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

This bot would be quite nice. Really helpful managing the backlog over there. IvoShandor 09:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind taking on this project. I have a bot running, currently, that updates the statistics for the Category:Cleanup by month page, and while the operation is a bit different, it is essentially the same concept. I can't vouch for how long it would take (of course I have to code it, and then get it approved at WP:B/RFA), but if you decide you would like such a bot, I'd be up for it. —Daniel Vandersluis^(talk) 18:52, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Daniel. I have created a subpage for this project at User:Mike Christie/GACbot; please add any additional comments there or at the talk page. Mike Christie (talk) 14:36, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I am wondering how long it might take to develop a bot to add {{ChicagoWikiProject}} to the talk pages of articles that have any Chicago related categories once I have a list of categories and whether the same bot could add class=stub for any article with a stub on the article page. This will help me to get WP:WPChi up and running. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 06:31, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

SatyrBot can do exactly that. Just did the same for Georgia (US state). Reply on the bot's current project talk page with where the category list is, and I can get started today. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 14:32, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

A bot could quickly fix this category. User consensus has shown that infoboxneeded does indeed go on the article and not the talk page. Could a bot be set up to move the offending template from TALK onto the article itself? (Only add the template to the article if the article does not have an infobox already.) Thank you Timneu22 01:32, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Sections regarding my wikiproject tagging have been moved to: User:Betacommand/Bot Tasks further discussion should be there. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 23:46, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

The following request was posted on my talk page. Unfortunately, I don't have the resources to accept bot requests at the moment (running on a laptop, and have jobs queued up). Please note that I've not read the request thoroughly, whether or not it's feasible or allowable is up to you folks to decide. --kingboyk 23:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Governors of California, New York, etc need a S-off after Start-box (where they have one) because they are political offices. However I have been going through British Colonial Governors of e.g. Nova Scotia, Hong Kong, Newfoundland, Victoria, Queensland, Bermuda and find a large number are shown as S-off although they should in fact be S-gov. If I and others add the appropriate categories here, I wonder if your bot could adjust them from s-off to s-gov ?? It will be tedious because many will be correct and many will be missing succession boxes altogether.

• Category:Governors-General of Australia all OK
• Category:Governors-General of the Bahamas
• Category:Governors-General of Barbados
• Category:Governors of Barbados
• Category:Governors of Bombay
• Category:Governors General of Canada
• Category:Governors of the Falkland Islands
• Category:Governors-General of Fiji
• Category:Governors of Hong Kong
• Category:Governors-General of India
• Category:Governors of Jamaica
• Category:Governors-General of Mauritius
• Category:Lieutenant Governors of New Brunswick
• Category:Colonial Governors of New Jersey
• Category:Governors of New South Wales
• Category:Governors-General of New Zealand
• Category:Lieutenant Governors of Ontario
• Category:Governors-General of Pakistan
• Category:Lieutenant Governors of Prince Edward Island
• Category:Governors of Queensland
• Category:Governors-General of Sierra Leone
• Category:Governors-General of South Africa
• Category:Governors of South Australia
• Category:Governors-General of Trinidad and Tobago
• Category:Governors of Victoria
• Category:Governors of Western Australia

- Kittybrewster (talk) 20:44, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Could you explain a little better and show a few diffs please? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 02:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Sure. By way of example - [2] But many governors were governors of several places and that leads on to additional lists I have not yet found which should be included above. - Kittybrewster (talk) 15:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

this is a very simple task ill get started on this PDQ. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 15:17, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I am requesting that there be a bot that updates the vandalism levels in {{Wikihermitalert}}, {{Wdefcon}}, and all administrative vandalism templates. On Wikihermit, I am requesting that the bot update the template every hour on the hour and periodically update Wdefcon. It would be extremely tedious to look through all of the vandalism factors manually, and that is why I am making this bot request. ~ Magnus animum _{(aka Steptrip)} 00:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I would recommend holding off on this until the WP:TFD is completed. Naconkantari 02:35, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

If this does go forward, what sorts of factors would you want included? (I can probably throw something together regarding average amount of AIV reports over the last 50 edits, but I'm at a loss for any other factors) ST47Talk 02:51, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I would do factors such as:

• number of AIV reports
• number of CSD requests
• number of edit summaries reading "revert, rv, or rvv"--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 02:53, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

True, didn't think of CSD. I can also have it use IRC to get the revert stats/total edits. ST47Talk 02:56, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

After spending a few hours reverting vandal edits this morning, I noticed that there many of the articles usually speedy deleted tend to be about the same. Alot of them tend to consist of nonsense about some non-notable person (occasionally in the form of a personal attack) or a non-notable band. There are also a few occasional cases of companies spamming with a page about themselves. Most of these pages tend to have no links anywhere. So I think there should be a bot to find new articles without any links or with only external links and stick or that don't make much sense and stick speedy deletes on them. I apologize if such a bot already exists (its so obvious that you'd think somebody would have thought of it before), but I just figured I'd suggest it because it could reduce the amount of nonsense articles created. Life, Liberty, Property 14:28, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

It is rather hard for a computer to read an article and determine if it doesn't "make much sense." How would you write the list of rules that the bot would follow when evaluating a new article? --Selket ^Talk 15:08, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Something along those lines has already been proposed to, and is being considered by, the Bot Approvals Group. Please see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Eskimospy Bot. --kingboyk 15:13, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

The template {{dead link}} need a bot that goes around monthly to add date parameter (similar to {{fact}}. —Dispenser 23:19, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

USer:SmackBot is doing this (as with Fact), but it has some technical difficulties ATM .Rich Farmbrough, 12:58 27 April 2007 (GMT).

WikiProject Biography would like to have our newsletter delivered, if a bot op would be so kind. Please note, it's not quite ready yet: I'm thinking tommorow, or later tonight after the all-clear has been given.

• The default message:

The WikiProject Biography Newsletter: Issue II - April 2007

The April 2007 issue of the WikiProject Biography newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you. <sign>

• Distribution: All people listed as active at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography/Members (> 300)

• Exceptions: Some folks listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Outreach#Delivery_options want the newsletter transcluded ({{Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Outreach/Newsletter/Issue 004}} and one person doesn't want delivery at all.

Thanks in advance. --kingboyk 20:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Me or ST47 can take care of that. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 22:12, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks mate, that would be much appreciated. :) --kingboyk 22:19, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Good to go, thank you. --kingboyk 22:28, 23 April 2007 (UTC)  Done --kingboyk 13:39, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Despite instructions asking them not to, new users often include categories in their submissions to Wikipedia:Articles for creation. Because all submissions from a single day are located on one page, it is the daily archives (e.g., Wikipedia:Articles for creation/2007-04-17) that end-up in categories alongside mainspace articles. It would be very nice to have a bot go the AfC archives and linkify every category. Something like:

[[Category:Living people|Smith, John]] → [[:Category:Living people]]

I did this manually from about Jan-June last year, and it wasn't much fun. What we have now is about 300 pages, plus one new one every day, that needs this treatment. ×Meegs 19:02, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

This could be done with AWB, though I can't think of any way to remove the sortkey like that. As these are all archived pages (except for the today's page) does it really matter that much how they look after the category is turned to a link (ie. would [[:Category:Living people|Smith, John]] which would look like Smith, John be fine)? Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 22:48, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, I agree that removing the sort key is not important at all. I am not a Windows user, and still an AWB user's help with this task. ×Meegs 00:04, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

At WT:UCFD there is an attempt to restructure all user categories and identify conventions, so it would be really helpful if there is a list of all subcategories of Category:Wikipedians. Indented bulleted list, or a series of lists, or any coherent format that shows the hierarchy is fine. I made this request to User:PockBot, but he is busy and yet he has offered to provide similar source code for anyone who would like to do this. –Pomte 08:52, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Running now, I have my own code :) Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 14:15, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I haven't forgotten I'm working on it. that category tree is a mess. (indefinite loops, and all the pages being categorized under the same title due to a userbox) Im attempting to straighten that out. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 00:16, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for dealing with this. There should be an overhaul to remove all userboxes from categories or make all userboxes provide a parameter for the transcluding page to not be categorized, but I don't think that's very important. At least there shouldn't be any cases of two categories under each other. This isn't urgent by any means; take your time. –Pomte 08:55, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind. I just found mw:Extension:CategoryTree, which does the job. –Pomte 08:10, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Is it possible to request a bot for {{ChicagoWikiProject}} that would

1. add template to the class parameter for {{ChicagoWikiProject}} items in template space
2. add cat to the class parameter for {{ChicagoWikiProject}} tems in category space
3. add dab to the class parameter for {{ChicagoWikiProject}} articles with {{disamb}} or {{hndis}} tags
4. add GA or FA to to the class parameter of {{ChicagoWikiProject}} articles if any other template has such a parameter value on the talk page.
5. add needs-photo= yes to the {{ChicagoWikiProject}} template if no image is on the article page. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 22:10, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Ill look into getting this done. Please copy it to User:Betacommand/Bot Tasks and remove it from here. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 00:13, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

1. I forgot to add stub to the class parameter if a stub tag is present on the article page. Is this also doable by the same bot? TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 21:38, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

This may be too narrow a category of bot, but I could not find an extant bot that deletes links based on the domain name. In particular there are a number of pages that link to Neal Stephenson's [[3]] Metaweb wiki which appears to be offline (and has been for some time now). Metaweb.com now points to freebase.com, an online database project (but not a wiki). I started deleting some of these, but thought that a bot might be a better resource. Thanks. Rapscallion 02:54, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I require a bot to change all wikilinks (in the article namespace) which currently link to Alfa Romeo (Formula One) to link to Alfa Romeo in Formula One instead. Note that I can't just make Alfa Romeo (Formula One) a redirect to Alfa Romeo in Formula One because that would create double-redirects. Thanks. DH85868993 08:29, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Why would it create double redirects? You have to just fix the redirects. We don't send out bots to fix working links unless there's a very good reason for it. --kingboyk 16:59, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

It would create double-redirects because Alfa Romeo in Formula One is itself a redirect. And I was loath to fix the potential double-redirects manually because there would be about 500 of them. However, since I made the bot request there has been a proposal to change Alfa Romeo in Formula One from a redirect to a proper article, so the problem may soon solve itself. -- DH85868993 23:09, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

No, you wouldn't have to change the 500 links, just change the other redirect too :) Redirects are editable, perhaps you didn't know that?

The proposal to make a new article was mine actually, I hope you like it! I think that an F1 team of Alfa's pedigree is important enough, and wide enough, to be in a seperate article. --kingboyk 23:11, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

The F1 information has now been transferred to Alfa Romeo in Formula One, and Alfa Romeo (Formula One) updated to point there. Thanks for your help. DH85868993 02:50, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

 Done --kingboyk 13:39, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I am asking for some help to make a grammer bot for wiki java or visual basic pefered thanks Staffwaterboy 16:54, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

A bot named DefconBot would be awesome. It could/would automatically update the defcon system according to the number of reports on WP:AIV. Direct questions to my talk page. Wǐkǐɧérṃǐť^{Talk to me} or _{learn something new!} 05:04, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Wasn't there another topic about this not too long ago? Can we have some specific criteria for different levels? ST47Talk 12:31, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

There's been discussion about the overall wisdom of the defcon template at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Feeding_Trolls_via_defcon_Template and continuing at Template talk:Vandalism information. --kingboyk 13:15, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi! I'm interesting in running a bot that would deliver the WP:MCR newsletter monthly, but I'm absolutely horrible at programming. If anyone would like to help, please leave a message on my talk page. Thanks! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mcr616 (talk • contribs) 22:50, 28 April 2007 (UTC).

For each image in Category:Logos, if image type is JPEG or GIF, add Template:BadJPEG or Template:BadGIF. There are 33400 total logos, many of them are JPEGs or GIFs. Surely none of them should be. Vagary 10:24, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

One thing I've noticed (and correct me if I'm wrong here) is that when looking up old topics in the Administrators Noticeboard, the Incidents noticeboard, and such, is that I have to go poking through a bunch of pages until I find the message I'm trying to reference. I think it would be helpful if we had an alphabetical list of topics created and maintained by a bot, as an index would help out when finding old topics. Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 19:32, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea. It probably shouldn't be limited just to those pages. Any archived page should be able to opt-in. --Selket ^Talk 20:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

What exactly is a "topic" - the title of a section [often uninformative, unfortunately]; keywords [who decides?]; an article or username? I'm not opposed to the idea, but I'd like to get a better sense of how a bot would be used to implement it. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:00, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

To me, it's the title of the section. And regarding other pages, I wasn't thinking about that at the time, but it sounds great, as well. Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 12:55, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Eagle 101 has a tool I think might be modifiable [4] which can be hosted on the Toolserv —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Betacommand (talk • contribs) 21:12, 24 April 2007 (UTC).

If you're looking for usernames for bots, I've had User:NwwaewBot and User:NicksBot registered, in case I ever did a bot, and if people want, I'll "donate" those usernames for the bot. Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 12:55, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

If someone will write (or convert the tool above) the bot out for me, I'll apply for toolserver access and run it there (or co-run it with the bot writer, if they wish). Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 21:36, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

eagle has one up, check is toolserv page. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 19:35, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Could someone make a bot that not only attaches Template:WPLISTS to the talk pages of all articles that start with List of or Timeline of, but also looks through new pages and tags any new pages that are created with those begginings? The Placebo Effect 19:04, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I could. I'll try to get something created for this when I get some time in a few days. --Android Mouse 20:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the template in more detail I find it says, "This template should not be placed on article talk pages.", when placed on a talk page. Is this a mistake? I don't understand. --Android Mouse 22:34, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Right now, after creating a deletion discussion page (for AfD and MfD), users have to add it manually to the log page, creating an extra step. Could a bot be made that watches for new pages with the Articles for deletion or Miscellany for deletion prefixes and automatically adds them to the current day's log page? Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 23:40, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I would like {{WikiProject Columbia University}} added to the tops of talkpages of all articles in Category:Columbia University, excepting those which already have the tag. I've done a couple hundred using AWB, but it is getting too tedious and I'm getting carpal tunnel. I will continue tagging these on my own but please let me know on my talk page if this is a possibility. Thanks, --Valley2city^₪‽ 00:07, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Could someone let a bot mass create redirects? From all pages that use Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Infobox_Language and have the value iso3 set to a single three letter code, a redirect would be nice to have as follows

• title: "ISO 639:-iso3 code-"
• content: #redirect[[-article name-]]{{R from ISO 639}}.

Examples:

• ISO 639:eng [5]
• ISO 639:spa [6]
• ISO 639:dan

The proposal was made at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Languages#R_from_ISO_639_.2F_missig_articles

Existing redirects can be seen at Category:Redirects from ISO 639.

This would help the WikiProject Languages in finding missing articles, i.e. languages that have an ISO 639-3 code but no article in Wikipedia. The redirects would also help code lookup and linking from outside. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 01:42, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

If anyone actually does this, I'd suggest adding a sort key so all 7589 redirects (we currently don't have that many language articles) aren't listed under "I" in the category. Even without actually adding the redirects it wouldn't be extraordinarily difficult to produce a list of missing articles. If no one takes you up on adding the redirects, let me know if you'd like a list. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:58, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Could sorting be done in the template? I.e. can the template read the part after "ISO 639:" ? Then we would be more flexible. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 21:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Templates can add category sort keys, but since the m:StringFunctions extension is not installed here I don't think there's a way to parse a string like "ISO 639:xxx" to get just the xxx part. It could be added as a parameter to the template. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:18, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

It can be added as a parameter to the template and then passed to the category call. --Selket ^Talk 15:14, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I have the category sorting working through the template now, feel free to help migrate them. #redirect [[English language]] {{R from ISO 639}} becomes #redirect [[English language]] {{R from ISO 639|ENG}} --Selket ^Talk 15:28, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Cool! Looks really better now. Could it be changed from uppercase to lowercase? AAA to aaa, ENG to eng? The spec says it must be lowercase, thus it would be nicer to use the official writing in the templates. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 22:10, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

It shouldn't matter much since the sort key is never actually shown anywhere, but to prevent 'ENG' and 'eng' from being sorted differently I added a forced lowercase to the category statement. The user can input the parameter as 'ENG', 'eng', or even 'eNg' and it'll always be sorted on 'eng' now. --CBD 11:21, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm working on a page that will look like List of ISO 639-3 codes with each code linked to the appropriate article (blue link if the article exists, red if not), with the code bolded if the template in the article specifies the code. The page should be up sometime tomorrow. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:30, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Articles by code. I'll bring this up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages as well. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:03, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

WP:EA was recently retargeted after an rfd discussion. Could someone with a bot change the current incoming links to point to Wikipedia:Esperanza? --- RockMFR 22:18, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I was under the impression that a bot was fired up and ready to go? I'm asking Martinp23 (BAG) now if he knows... --kingboyk 22:29, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

User:SatyrTN was, I think, interested in doing this task earlier, though I may be mistaken. I'm sure that there's a post on a bot talk page about it. Anyway, if SatyrTN is no longer able to do the run, feel free to note here, and I'll probably be able to take care of it with MartinBotIII. Martinp23 22:31, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

here it is :) Martinp23 22:34, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Due to RL interfering, and that I'd have to go through BAG to get approval to edit anything other than talk-space, please go ahead if you want to do the change. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 02:42, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

You'd have to get an approval, but that would be rubberstamped now that you have explicit community approval.

That said, if RL has intruded, fair enough :) --kingboyk 13:15, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The RfD proceeded on the basis that we had a bot standing by to do the work, therefore somebody ought to be doing this sharpish. I'll have a word with Martin to see if he would oblige. --kingboyk 16:16, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

 Done by me (and User:MartinBotIII :)) Martinp23 18:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

{{Navbox generic}}'s code currently carries a fair number of "legacy" parameter names in order to handle older templates' specifications, so, as {{Navbox generic}} is a heavily-used template, perhaps it might be worth sending a bot to update all those older templates...?  Specifically:

templateName → name titlebkg = X → titlestyle = background:X color = X → titlestyle = background:X title_style → titlestyle header → title top → above top-style → abovestyle above_style → abovestyle group-style → groupstyle

group_style → groupstyle odd-style → oddstyle list(odd#)style → oddstyle even-style → evenstyle list(even#)style → evenstyle bottom → below bottom-style → belowstyle below_style → belowstyle

Some of the other navigational metatemplates also carry legacy names, but not as many as {{Navbox generic}}. If the templates using {{Navbox generic}} with legacy names can be updated as above, I could add the other navigational templates and legacy names below...?  Thanks, David Kernow (talk) 12:58, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

can I get a few diffs of what you want done? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 14:49, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Can't recall the most recent examples I've passed by, but here's the beginning of a list of candidates:

Template:USPoliticalDivisions	group_style
Template:Nationalflags	group-style
Template:USStateFlags	group_style
Template:Province-level divisions of the People's Republic of China	bottom-style, bottom
Template:Spamming	group-style, even-style
Template:EMSpectrum	group-style, even-style, top-style, top
Template:Endocrine system	color, group-style
Template:Digestive tract	color, group-style
Template:Urinary system	color, group-style
Template:Integumentary system	color, group-style
etc...

Hope that gives you the idea – thanks for your interest!  David (talk) 01:28, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
PS Here's a recent example of the same but with a {{Navigation}} rather than a {{Navbox generic}}-based template: [7]

Are these parameter names going to be a bit more permanent? Maybe best to wait until you've settled all the little tweaks like top/bottom -> above/below. –Pomte 17:13, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Please address the Talk pages with misplaced main page templates category. The request is simple:

• Remove infoboxneeded from talk pages
• Add the infoboxneeded tag to the article (with the same parameter(s) as the tag before it was removed from the talk page), only if the article doesn't have an infobox

This is a repeated request. Timneu22 00:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

What would the bot do if the infoboxneeded tag is used incorrectly and doesn't state which infobox is missing? Simply remove it from the talk page or should it copy it as-is? I'd be willing to write a bot for this --Android Mouse 02:51, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

My guess is that it should add the infoboxneeded tag but without specifying which infobox. If you'd like, I can update the infoboxneeded template to show "no infobox specified" if the argument isn't present. If it is easier, you could probably just remove it from the talk page but not put it on the article. Timneu22 17:31, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I'll just have it copy it without any arguements. I went ahead and added a request for approval. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to create the bot first or not. The Create a bot page leads me to believe I am supposed to create the request before beginning development. --Android Mouse 18:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

In February 2007, Sefringle asked for a bot to flag articles as unreferenced. It wasn't clear how the bot would determine if an article is unreferenced. Many articles, particularly stubs and articles that should be marked as stubs, have zero references. A bot that ran once a month or so and flagged any article with zero external links that was more than a few days old with {{unreferenced|date=DATE|linkcount=0}} or something similar then alerted the original author would prove useful. This might require developing a special tag or template, perhaps {{noreferencesrequired}} to flag articles that by their very nature do not require references, such as deliberately empty biographical stubs like this one. Davidwr 23:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Replace all instances of Image:Crystal 128 ksmiletris.png with Image:Crystal Clear app ksmiletris.png (as shown here), the first one was deleted from the Commons for being a duplicate and I'm reasonably confident it was a duplicate of the latter one [8][9]. The image was commonly used in Welcome messages. I know it's not exactly high priority but it's better to not have red links everywhere. --WikiSlasher 10:16, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Internet Censorship has a problem with a DSL user adding a contentious link. The result is an edit war. This user keeps changing IP addresses. I'm sure this isn't the first time this has happened. I propose a generic bot that can block-by-reverting any range of IP addresses from anonymously editing any page that is on the bot's watch-list or that has this bot's "watch me" tag. A tag might look like {{blockanonymousedits|iprange=1.2/16|date=4 May 2007|expires=14 May 2007|text="http://"|comment=roaming user repeatedly posting controversial links resulting in edit war}}. The "text=" is if the block is intended to keep the user from posting particular text. In this case, the user is blocked from posting http:// web links. See Talk:Internet_censorship#Proposed bot to auto-revert anonymous edits that post the disputed link and the sections immediately above for a discussion of the problem in Internet Censorship. Davidwr 14:13, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

If the IPs are the problem semi-protection can word, if the link is the problem the the link blacklist may be an option. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 14:15, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

We do not want to block all anonymous users unless absolutely necessary. Semi-protection is specifically recommended against if the goal is to silence a particular anonymous user or anonymous users in general. In this case, that's exactly the goal: To keep him from posting a controversial link until the controversy is settled. I can't speak for other editors but I do not want to stop him from making edits that are actually useful. Blacklisting may be an option in this particular case, I'll discuss it on Talk:Internet_censorship. The generic problem remains. The [Wikimedia spam blacklist] is not what we want. The link in question may belong on other Wikipedia pages and may eventually belong on this page after the discussion and debate is over. Davidwr 14:21, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Such a bot is effectively and edit warring bot(reverting, as bots cannot block unless they pass WP:RfA, which is unlikely), so I think a rather large consensus that it is needed would have to be found before such a bot could be implemented. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 14:33, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Good point. As an alternative, Wikipedia should impliment a way to semi-protect pages against changes to links. This is probably better done in the main software rather than through a bot. Another alternative is to have the bot described above only monitor pages that have been added to the watch list by an administrator, much in the same way that semi-protection requires administrator action. Along those lines, if administrator approval will be required anyway, the page-edit software should prevent the edit in the first place. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Davidwr (talk • contribs) 14:40, 4 May 2007 (UTC).

User:Shadowbot might be what your looking for. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 20:33, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. The author of Shadowbot added the needed functionality for this one-off case. Davidwr 23:09, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Could a bot add the navbox {{Template:Tchaikovsky concertos}} and {{Template:Tchaikovsky symphonies}} to all the relevant pages each navbox links to.

Thanks Centy 11:43, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I just did this by hand. Took me five minutes. DavidRF 14:17, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

The wrestling website www.obessedwithwrestling.com (which is used in many articles, both for PPV results and wrestler profiles) has changed their name and URL to www.onlineworldofwrestling.com, is there a bot that could fix all the links to the site? There are hundreds of articles that reference the site and it could be pretty tedious for the editors at WP:PW to have to check for every article that might use it and correct it. TJ Spyke 01:01, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I'll go ahead and run this task. Let me write up a bot request. Its a simple find and replace correct? —— Eagle101 ^{Need help?} 02:00, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I've already been approved to run, this should be done shortly. —— Eagle101 ^{Need help?} 02:26, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

 Done task is finished :), check User:Gnome (Bot)'s contribs about 15 minutes before I posted this post to see what it did. —— Eagle101 ^{Need help?} 04:03, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I hope this is the right location for such a query. I am looking for a bot operator who can help me replace over 400 {{WikiProjectNotice|Palestine}} with the new {{WikiProject Palestine}}. It is a simple search and replace that is limited to the set of pages that link directly to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Palestine, for example this list of pages. Is this something that a bot operator can help me with? If anyone can help and has the time to help, please reply on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Palestine. Thanks for your time. --70.51.232.124 20:22, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm putting MetsBot to work :-) —METS501 (talk) 22:45, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Much thanks! I started to do it by hand, and then noticed the bot going at it.  :-) --70.51.232.124 23:15, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Wasteful run isn't it? Just redirect the template and let the names coexist? Or am I missing something? --kingboyk 22:56, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Could I have used a redirect? The problem is the original template was a generic one with a parameter, while the new one is specific to the Palestine project. I think that a redirect to the WikiProject Palestine would have negatively affected every other project that is still using the general WikiProjectNotice. I could be wrong though. --70.51.232.124 23:15, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think you could redirect it, because it was a generic template with parameter. --TeckWiz is now R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's go Yankees!) 23:31, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. Template:WikiProject Palestine is specific and customizable, while the other one was a general template with a parameter. The bot is done, by the way. —METS501 (talk) 00:40, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah I see. /me didn't look close enough. --kingboyk 00:48, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

The latest Shadowbot3 run had some problems. Big ones. Namely, the code that was designed to stop the bot from archiving if the talkpage is protected malfunctioned and caused the bot to delete the sections from the main talkpage, but not move them to the archive. I'm hoping that someone could write up a quick script to go through its contribs and revert the damage. I'm extremely pressed for time right now and can't write it myself. Shadow1 (talk) 01:13, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll do it with TW. --TeckWiz is now R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's go Yankees!) 01:18, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I just rolled back all its contributions with admin rollback, except for three that couldn't be rolled back. I hope those ones fix themselves... Grandmasterka 01:22, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

All...then what did I just rollback? :) --TeckWiz is now R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's go Yankees!) 01:38, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I just did the last 50, anyway. See its last 500 contributions. Grandmasterka 01:45, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! FYI, the latest run started at 00:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC), and lasted a mere 19 minutes until 00:44.   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 01:50, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Quick question, is it functioning correctly now? Ryan Postlethwaite 02:07, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm...I was just attacked by a user for for reverting his page for him. :) --TeckWiz is now R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's go Yankees!) 02:13, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is fixed now. I was making a lot of modifications to Perlwikipedia that day and forgot that Shadowbot3 uses the bleeding-edge version. I'm really, really grateful to you guys for cleaning up the damage. Shadow1 (talk) 18:37, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

The Government of Bangladesh has recently changed its web address from [www.bangladeshgov.org] to [www.bangladesh.gov.bd]. As a result maplinks to 300+ articles on Upazilas of Bangladesh have now become dead-links. Could someone please help to write a bot to find all pages that use "Infobox of upazilas" and replace www.bangladeshgov.org with www.bangladesh.gov.bd in the maplink section?-Arman Aziz 08:39, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm pending bot approval, and then I will get to this task. I'll also update the statistics to point to [10], as the new domain doesn't seem to have the data. —METS501 (talk) 23:17, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

All done. —METS501 (talk) 18:04, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! You are really fantastic!-Arman Aziz 00:49, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

There are many articles using the word Portugese instead of Portuguese. Portugese is wrong wording.Page Up 12:32, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I can only find a couple. Do you have a list? —METS501 (talk) 18:15, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind, I found quite a few. I'm doing this manually with WP:AWB now. —METS501 (talk) 18:22, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Y Done. 133 edits made. —METS501 (talk) 19:32, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:Requested moves, it would be helpful to have a bot add ==[[{{CURRENTDAY}} {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}]] [[{{CURRENTYEAR}}]]==, or however you want to format it, near the top of the Other proposals section, right under the {{notice}} box. If possible, the HTML comment <!-- Please place new requests at the TOP of the list --> should be moved up as well. This process has been done manually so far with no problems, but there has been concern about process, so it would mean one less instruction for the page. –Pomte 06:31, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll go program this bot now, thats very easy to do in a bot. I presume that you want this to run daily at 0:00 UTC? —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 05:06, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Bot is finished being programmed, and has successful trials in my sandbox, I'm just waiting on someone to show me where it was agreed upon that a bot is the best way. After that I'll post a quick BRFA. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 05:28, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

 Done bot is approved, see here. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 06:26, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

When a page is tagged with one of the speedy-delete templates (the db series) A bot could notify the creator of the article tha this has occurred. there are already templates for doing such notifications (such as {{nn-warn}}), and many editors add them manually, but many do not. Ideally the bot would add the proper template based on the version of db template used on the article, and would delay say 5-10 minutes to allow the editor to add a tag manually. I can go into more details on spacs and how to make this easy for a bot when and if anyone is interested in providing such a bot. i understand that a bot is now performing a similar function for AfD nominations. DES ^(talk) 15:04, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Let me think about the logistics of this and now best to get a working bot. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 19:33, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I have an idea how this could be done and would be interested in writing a bot unless Betacommand intends to. --Android Mouse 20:52, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Im thinking this out and thinking of bugs and other bad things to avoid and account for before programing but please share your ideas. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 04:48, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

My idea is to have the bot log which articles it has already created notifications for or which already have notifications, to save bandwidth. It would then periodically run a query to find all pages in the Canidates for Speedy deletion category and would filter out articles which aren't in the bots log. All the remaining articles not in the log, the bot would look up the earliest revision for and then load the raw text of the creator's talkpage. If it parses through and finds a notification about the article's status then it will log the article as completed and move on to the next article. If not, it would append the template to the talk page, log it and move on to the next article. Some sample queries are:

1. First loading the articles for speedy deletion: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/query.php?what=category&cptitle=Candidates%20for%20speedy%20deletion&cplimit=500&noprofile&cpnamespace=0
2. Second, finding a specific article's earliest revision, possibly making multiple requests to get to the earliest: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/query.php?what=revisions&titles=Pacific%20Northwest%20Portal&rvlimit=200&noprofile
3. Third, loading the lastest raw text of the creator's talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/query.php?what=revisions&titles=User_talk:168.99.197.188&rvlimit=1&rvcontent&noprofile

The bot's log could probably be purged every few days or so, since articles are usually deleted by this time or their speedy deletion templates removed. Any suggestions? I couldn't find a way to locate the creator of an article except to look up the revisions, and the MediaWiki Query Interface seems to list revisions from newest to oldest, forcing the bot to possibly request multiple pages to find the earliest. --Android Mouse 20:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Would it be possible for the bot to check if the user has already been notified? Unless this bot is very well publicized, most users who do issue notifications will still continue to do so; repeated warnings could be a bit of a problem. Warning templates generally include <!-- Template:warning name --> in the wikitext, possibly the bot could recognize that, plus the article name, and the date the warning was issued (in case of recreation). If it detects an other warnings for other pages, perhaps it could issue a {{uw-create}} warning instead of the basic speedy notifications. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 01:38, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, when it loads the latest raw text of the user talk page it would scan for any such warnings and perhaps it might scan for simply the username of the person that nominated it for speedy delition and the article name in close succession, incase a custom message was added instead of a template. --Android Mouse 06:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead and start developing this bot. If anyone has any other suggestions, I'm listening. --Android Mouse 05:09, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Bot finished, waiting for approval. --Android Mouse 20:32, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I have severe concerns regarding this bot. I question whether we should be using a bot for what editors and admins should be doing and I doubt that the bot can do it as well. I fear that people will get lazy and count on the bot which in many cases is going to be a bad thing. Specifically:

1. This is going to confuse new users. They are going to get a message from Android Mouse Bot 2 and assume that's who nominated it for deletion.
2. Sometimes, I will intentionally not use the page name in warning messages. This is usually the case with attack pages in which the title is part of the attack. In those case, I would use {{attackpg-warn}} without a page name. In obvious bad faith creations like this, the editor will know the name of the page and there is no reason to repeat the attack on the user's talk page.
3. Speedy deletion templates are frequently misapplied. An example is Railfan window. This article was tagged as db-nonsense on the talk page. An admin removed the template as not applicable and left a note[11] on the creator's talk page saying that the he removed the tag, but suggested the author improve it (it's not speediable, but it's questionable whether it would survive AFD in it's current state). The nominator than added the db-nonsense tag to the article and this bot dropped[12] a warning on the creator's talk page. I removed the speedy tag as non-applicable. There is no way this editor should have been given a patent nonsense warning.
4. Why in the world would it be notifying people of a db-author[13] request? They already know as they added the tag. And then, the message used gives the standard words about using hangon and not removing the speedy template. This is even more inappropriate. If they added the tag, they can remove it.
5. I also think using this for {{db|custom reason}} begs for confusions. In this message, the bot is talking about notability and the deletion reason has nothing to do with the subject matter. It is an incorrect speedy where someone thought the page should be deleted after a merge.

I don't believe this bot can do an adequate job of replacing the admin. The admin can handle cases that are not a simple drop a warning on the user's talk page; this bot cannot.

If people feel we need this bot, then it should not be using the standard warning templates. It should be using a more generic, non-biting message that includes who nominated the article and the reason. -- JLaTondre 18:04, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

For the time being I have shut the bot down. Also, this bot has now been approved.

1. The templates the bot uses can be modified to notify the user the bot didn't nominate it for speedy deletion.
2. For this template I can have the bot not use the article name.
3. I can change it to use another template which is less condescending and notify it is just a bot, and that the nomination may not be valid.
4. This can be easily fixed.
5. Can also be fixed.

--Android Mouse 18:21, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I know it's been approved. That doesn't mean issues weren't overlooked which need resolving. If you fix these it would make me much more comfortable. I'm still concerned about the potential for other cases beyond these five. That is why I made placed the message on WP:AN per my note to you. I hoping with more eyes than those paying attention to the bot pages, any other issues will be identified and resolved before they impact a user. It's possible no one will think of any, but more input doesn't hurt. -- JLaTondre 19:03, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree mentioning the article name with attack pages can be a really bad idea, unless the user's talk page is also going to be deleted. A quick look through my deletion log should give some examples. However not using the article's name may confuse a user as to which article has been deleted. It needs to be recognised that attack articles are often labelled as nonsense, vandalism, and even A7. Redirects, user pages, vandalism, talk pages, histmerges, and author requests also do not usually require notice. Copyvios should have a special notice, and sometimes with spam articles - we don't necessarily want to tell the author it's been deleted. Has the bot given any thought to checking for the validity of G4's? How will the bot work when someone tries to speedy delete France? -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 21:12, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

In order to avoid two discussions on this I think comments should now be posted on the administrator's noticeboard entry. --Android Mouse 21:18, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

• I believe the message should be clear on the point that such notifications are a matter of courtesy rather than mandatory. Some people are already confused on that point. >Radiant< 15:27, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Replace all instances of Image:Crystal 128 ksmiletris.png with Image:Crystal Clear app ksmiletris.png (as shown here), the first one was deleted from the Commons for being a duplicate and I'm reasonably confident it was a duplicate of the latter one [14][15]. The image was commonly used in Welcome messages. I know it's not exactly high priority but it's better to not have red links everywhere. --WikiSlasher 10:16, 4 May 2007 (UTC) (Copied from archive --WikiSlasher 07:53, 13 May 2007 (UTC))

Will do as soon as I get approval (which I'm about to request) Martinp23 10:51, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

 Done (almost) by MartinBotIII - feel free to make a request directly to me if it needs again doing in future. Martinp23 20:04, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Or me if Martin's not around :-) —METS501 (talk) 11:00, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Or, for that matter, anyone else with approval for the task :) Martinp23 17:28, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll be sure to, thanks --WikiSlasher 06:28, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:Persondata project is adding persondata to all biographical articles. However, 150k have already been added on the German Wikipedia (where persondata started), while only ~8k have been added to English Wikipedia articles. A bot which could grab the template from the German bio, and do a rough translation and place it on the English bio would be immensely helpful. (One script now used by humans that may be of help in designing this bot is located at User talk:Dr pda/persondata.js ) I believe that translating dates and locations should be easy,, while the name and brief description parts would be harder. So, in summary, I envision this bot making a list of bios without Wikipedia:Persondata, finding the corresponding German article via the interwiki link, and then doing a rough translation on some of the fields, then placing that Persondata into the English article. A list of articles which the bot has changed could be scanned by human editors for any errors (or to add names, short descriptions). If you have any questions, please leave a message on my talk page. Thanks! --Rajah 03:07, 17 May 2007 (UTC) Alternatively, Extracting/transforming/loading the persondata using these perl scripts could get the job done. --Rajah 04:14, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

This bot User:Jayden54/WPDead Source.js needs a new home, as apparently Jayden54 is taking a wikibreak. It needs to be run once or twice a week to clear redlinks from the dead-end pages project. Any takers? Salad Days 00:37, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I will (Cocoaguy ここがいい _contribs^talk) 21:18, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

if you still need someone to house it, i will--Iamzemasterraf 19:00, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

The first person to get it running will be the winner! Note that WP:DEAD was split apart recently, and I believe the line "$lists = array('Wikipedia:Dead-end_pages/A-K', 'Wikipedia:Dead-end_pages/L-Z',);" will need to be changed to reflect the new pages. Thanks for your offer to help! Salad Days 21:52, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

this bot would be used to help some of the wikiprojects im in, if it was approved (esp. WikiProject UK Trains) i'd use it to help me on my pages too.

i cant build it, which is why im asking you thanks ACBestMy ContributionsAutograph Book 18:51, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

What functions do you need for your WikiProjects? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 20:05, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, templates on talk pages mostly. The ones that say 'this is part of wikiproject ....' Thanks! ACBestMy ContributionsAutograph Book 05:58, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Leave me a message on User talk:SatyrBot and I'll be glad to help. Let me know what wikiproject template you want to use and what categories you want tagged. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 13:49, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Can I have a bot developed for me though, so i can do this and other stuff? ACBestMy ContributionsAutograph Book 15:25, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I would love some automatic way to change all uses of {{imdb}} to {{imdb name}}. The former currently redirects to the latter, but we would like to be able to create an {{imdb}} template that covers all the sub-templates (imdb name, title, company, and episode, learn more) but without having to make sure it's backwards compatible with {{imdb name}}. The first step is to replace {{imdb}} with {{imdb name}}, next, is to put a deprecated message on the {{imdb}} template for a few weeks/months, while working on a does-everything template to replace it.

Here are the list of pages that use it. I just did a cursory glance and found a few pages where films are using it incorrectly, those should be fixed soon —Fitch 18:53, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I can do this no problem with my bot, but has there been discussion as to whether this should be done? —METS501 (talk) 02:40, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

This is a massive bot job, so I'm not expecting this to happen too soon! Anyway, WP:CM finally have a project banner and hopefully if everything's been categorised correctly, all articles covered by our Wikiproject should be in Category:Compositions by composer. However, there's a lot there and also operas are included which WP:CM does not cover.

So could a bot add {{Template:Classical}} to the talk pages of all those articles in Category:Compositions by composer and its subcategories, except for the Category:Operas by composer category, or any opera subcategories that do not already have a project banner for any other WikiProject (ie. not already covered by another WikiProject).

Thanks.

Centy 21:57, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

If you can compile a full list of categories to be run, SatyrBot can do this. Please only include categories where most if not all the articles should be tagged, so as to minimize "over-tagging". Take a look at WikiProject Spain's list (scroll down - there are two sections) they put together for this same sort of project. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 22:14, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Happily, it appears SatyrBot has already produced a list of categories. Because of a recent reorganisation, everything in the first section needs tagging. As long as you just tag pages in the category (I've included all subcategories) we shouldn't get any duplication . The second section is a category I've already done by hand. The third are two anomalous categories, where every page in them is in some other category and so are not needed. For this section could the bot remove every page from these two categories and then I'll put the categories up for deletion. The fourth section are all those bot generated categories out of our WP's scope. Centy 01:59, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. Please see the bots project page for one more question and a couple comments. Thanks! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 03:29, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

the Firo bot must be created but only by me or other people who like fire dragons like Firo and will cheak wikipedia for any signs of anything that is bad on Wikipedia. By --Zardragon 23:02, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand, could you be more specific on what task you are requesting a bot to do? --Android Mouse 23:09, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

These need substing if the TfD closes that way (and it most likely will) - I'd apply for my bot to subst them all, but I feel two applications in a week for one bot is too eager. Will ^{(is it can be time for messages now plz?)} 03:22, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Let's wait until the week is up first :-) —METS501 (talk) 03:29, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I can do it, when it closes, provided it closes as delete. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 19:54, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Y Done ^demon^{[omg plz]} 17:15, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Could someone write a bot that would monitor the image deletion log and remove links to dead images in articles. Perhaps this could be an opt-in service for admins - if they put their name on a list then a bot will monitor their image deletions and remove the dead links that arise in articles (and the admin could use a stopword in the deletion summary if they didn't want the bot to work its magic, eg 'NOBOT'). The bot wouldn't need to montior the deletion log live, it could do daily checks maybe. Anyone up for this bot task?--Commander Keane 05:15, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Its possible, and can be done by connecting to IRC and watching the feed there. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 05:30, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I was trying to work on a way to implement just this very idea a few weeks back, but you can't sort Special:Log by namespace, so I was having issues trying to get a good feed of what to work on. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 19:52, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

You're right, the only way to do this would be to regex it out. If I have some spare time, I'll write (the regex) and post it here. The bot idea sounds pretty good, I've been thinking about writing something like this too. Tim.bounceback^{(review me! | talk | contribs | ubxen)} 21:43, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

As have I :) - AWB has some, if you want to take a look at it. It's important to take both galleries into account, and the fact that Wikilinks may appear in images call code, so the extra [[ and ]] will need to be accounted for in the regex. Martinp23 21:57, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, here's the regex I have so far... doesn't support wikilinks in the image call code, and it hasn't been tested as I haven't had access to a maching with Perl, but here it is:

s/(\[\[|<gallery>)\s*($image)\s*(\]\]|<\/gallery>)//g. Tim.bounceback^{(review me! | talk | contribs | ubxen)} 15:26, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

An interesting statistic would be which author is cited most in Wikipedia articles. This could be done offline, not increasing server load. It could analyse the following things:

• The fields 'last', 'first', 'author' and 'coauthor' in everything beginning with "{{cit" and ending with "}}". (Using cit instead of cite means all {{citation}} templates are counted as well.)
• Anything between "{{Har**|" and the next "|".This will analyse the plethora of Harvard citation templates starting with Har and all using the first field for the last name of the author.
• I am not familiar with {{Note}}, {{Ref}}, {{Note label}} and {{Ref label}}, but they are probably not that different.
• The first and second word after a <ref> tag that does not contain any of the above templates.
• The above covers most methods of citing sources in Wikipedia.

Analysis of external links would probably not be useful, as the US court cases website, ISBN lookup and sites like that would top the list. Besides, I remember that this has been done before, though I cannot remember where I read it.

I have a feeling that L. Ron Hubbard will end up on top.

--User:Krator (t c) 11:51, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

No one? :( --User:Krator (t c) 20:48, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Could somoene write a bot that created subcategories by date of many of the subcategories of Category:Images requiring maintenance? Sometimes, someone will not notice that today's category is missing, and therefore, no one gets around to taking care of them, especially for categories like Category:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons because they cannot be handled until after they age for a certain number of days. Jesse Viviano 14:45, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I've asked Tizio, whose bot already creates daily subcategories of Category:Proposed deletion. —METS501 (talk) 14:52, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok; so far I got the following:

Category:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons as of $D|Template:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons subcategory starter
Category:Images with unknown copyright status as of $D|Template:Images with unknown copyright status subcategory starter
Category:Images with unknown source as of $D|Template:Images with unknown sources subcategory starter

Please let me know which other cats need creation (and which template holds the starter text). Tizio 13:34, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Using the format given, you need to add the following:

Category:Images needing editor assistance at upload as of $D|Template:Images needing editor assistance at upload subcategory starter
Category:Images on Wikimedia Commons as of $D|Template:Images on Wikimedia Commons subcategory starter
Category:Images with no copyright tag as of $D|Template:Images with no copyright tag subcategory starter
Category:Images with no fair use rationale as of $D|Template:Images with no fair use rationale subcat starter
Category:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons as of $D|Template:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons subcategory starter
Category:Orphaned fairuse images as of $D|Template:Orphan fair use subcat starter

There is also Category:Replaceable fair use to be decided after $D, but you need to add 7 days to the date, and its starter is Template:Replaceable fair use Images subcategory starter. By the way, a good name for your bot might be WineBot because older wines are often considered better than newer wines in many cases, which is similar on how we are required to let the categories to age before handling them. You could make a joke for the emergency shutoff button, stating that administrators should block it if it is malfunctioning or acting drunk. Jesse Viviano 22:32, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Many articles have broken links to Supreme Court cases. For example, Presbyterian Church (USA) links to Jones v. Wolf. Many if not all US Supreme Court cases are listed on Category:Lists_of_United_States_Supreme_Court_cases. I would like to see bot create a stub article for all missing cases that includes a link to the appropriate List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume NNN page and a link to the FindLaw link that's included in that page. See User:Davidwr/sandbox_SupremeCourt for a more fleshed-out proposal. davidwr ^09f9(talk) 20:43, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Before anyone undertakes this task, are you sure there is a consensus to support this? An article that only states 'So and so is a supreme court case' I could very easily see being nominated for speedy deletion. This begs the question, are all of the supreme court cases notable enough for their own articles? --Android Mouse 05:20, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

The vast majority are not, however, there needs to be some way to link each mention of the case to its FindLaw text or some other equivalent. The ussc template provides this. Perhaps an alternative wold be to find each article that mentions a supreme court decision, flag it for human review, then use a human-assisted bot to insert the ussc template if one does not already exist. Human assistance is needed in case the article has a different way of citing the case. davidwr ^09f9(talk) 13:36, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

As someone who has worked on hundreds of U.S. Supreme Court cases, created the first 90 volumes of Supreme Court case lists, and actually created Template:SCOTUSCase and Template:SCOTUSCases, I have a few comments. First, this absolutely must involve the participants of WikiProject SCOTUS cases. Second, there are over 30,000 Supreme Court cases, and while I would love to see all of them on Wikipedia one day, they can't just suddenly flood Category:Lists of United States Supreme Court cases. Third, FindLaw only goes from volume 150 to present, and the most recent cases (in volumes 545, etc.) still aren't directly linkable under their proper volume number. This plan needs serious consideration and planning before it is implemented (if ever). Cheers. --MZMcBride 03:46, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Currently, if you link to, say, a discussion on the Village Pump, your link becomes a dead end when the Pump is archived. It would be infinitely better if, on every archive, a bot went around replacing such links with URL hardlinks to the latest version in the Village Pump's history.

This could even be done retroactively by determining when the link was first created, and then linking to the appropriate history page for that date. I could see this extended to any talk page that gets regularly archived, interwiki links, etc. — Omegatron 01:55, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

A few questions I have:

1. How would the bot determine dead links? Most people link to VP discussions in the format: [[Wikipedia:Village Pump (proposals/policies/etc..)#Discussion]]. After it is archived, the link still remains technically valid. How would the bot be able to tell the difference? If it scanned the current revision of the VP and searched for that heading it could turn up false positives as it is possible for a new section with that same title to be created after the old one has been archived.
2. How would it find all the links pointing to the VP? Is there a way to bring up a list of all the pages currently linking to it? I know this is possible for image usage but I'm not currently aware this can or can't be done for article links.

--Android Mouse 02:33, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I think with your second point you're looking for Special:Whatlinkshere/PAGENAME, which is available in the toolbox of each article. —METS501 (talk) 02:35, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, how did I not see that :-0 --Android Mouse 02:44, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

As for the first point, if it ran often enough, a false positive would be unlikely, I would be more worried about if the name of the heading was changed during the discussion. One other problem though, how would the bot know whether or not the discussion the user linked to is in progress or not? Discussions are archived based on the last edit date. Some are archived days after they are started, others may be debated for weeks. If an anchor (#) is used, it could check to see if that heading still exists, but if it isn't, the bot woud not know if the discussion the user was refering to still exists. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 03:58, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

1: The links would be detected based on the section anchor and the fact that the relevant section had become archived. You wouldn't redirect [[Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)]]; you'd only redirect things like [[Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Discussion]] when the Discussion section was archived.

For retroactive use, it would have to determine when the link to the pump was originally created by going through the page's history (or by guessing which nearby timestamp goes with the link?)

It's not trivial to implement the retroactive part, but not impossible, either. — Omegatron 14:51, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

So, say you made a link on your talk page on March 2 that pointed to an ongoing discussion at [[Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Discussion]]. The discussion died off in April, at which point the section was archived, and the link becomes a dead end (which makes it very difficult for future readers to follow what you were talking about).

In June, when the bot is implemented, it looks through the What links here for the Pump (probably maintains an internal index or something for efficiency), and finds your talk page. If your link contains a section anchor, it then scans backwards through your talk page history (probably a database dump to avoid loading down the servers?) until it finds a revision (from March 1) in which that link didn't exist.

It then looks at the March 2 history entry for the pump page that you linked to and sees if such a section existed at the time. If it did, it then navigates forward in time through the pump's history (or just the automated archival events) until it finds a revision in which that section no longer exists. It then edits the original link (keeping the section anchor) to point to the pump's history revision right before that section was archived. — Omegatron 14:55, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I could see that working out. But I'm not sure how practical using a database dump would be. You'd have to periodically download a multigigabyte file with every single revision for every namespace. You would only be using a small fraction of that data and would have to redownload it again once those links had been updated. I think it would ultimatly end up using more bandwidth using that method. --Android Mouse 16:47, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Just a hunch. I don't know the implementation details. Just explaining how the bot would mimic what we do by hand to fix an old link. — Omegatron 17:33, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah, ok. How often do you think such a bot would need to be run? Or more precisely how often does Werdnabot scan the page for old sections? I wouldn't mind writing the bot, based on the details you described above. Unless someone else would like to, or unless anyone has any other suggestions on how this might be done. --Android Mouse 21:37, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

That would be great. I think Werdnabot's dead, actually, and shadowbot has taken over, but the pump still says "This talk page is automatically archived by Werdnabot. Any sections older than 7 days are automatically archived to Wikipedia:Village pump (news)/Archive."

I don't know if we'd want to "run it" every few days, or just leave it on continuously watching the pump for archivals. I think this would make sense being expanded to other places besides the pump, so you might want to keep a more general application in mind while you write it? — Omegatron 13:57, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll try to keep it as general as possible, as I can see it helpful with other pages such as WP:AN. I'm going to wait about three days until I start writing incase anyone else has any more ideas/suggestions. --Android Mouse 18:38, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Implemented as User:Android Mouse Bot 4 — Omegatron 00:49, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Could a bot tag articles in Category:Idol television series and its subcategories with {{WikiProject Idol series}}? Thanks. Tennis DyNamiTe 20:58, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

On a side note, how does putting 5043278 wikiproject banners on a talk page make the articles better? — Omegatron 21:16, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Omegatron, that's been argued to death. Take a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject reform.

To your question, Tennis, SatyrBot can do this, if you don't mind waiting two days - I'm finishing up another project similar to yours. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 21:27, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Could a bot please add Template:State leaders 20th century to all the articles linked on it? Then also other similar templates could be created for all the other years listed at State leaders by year and added to those articles by bot too. Just because its nice being able to go straight to similar years with these articles, not just next and previous. --Astrokey44 11:24, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I have an idea for a bot that will help the with the deletion of images that have bin moved to commons and are in the category Category:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons and Category:Images on Wikimedia Commons (I8). There is a constant backlog in these categories and a bot that helped checking the images before deletion would save some time for the administrators. The bot should check the six criterias that has to be fulfilled to speedy delete the images and leave a note on the image description page saying which criterias that is fulfilled and which are not.

The criterias for speedy deletion when an image are moved to commons are:

• The entry on commons actually exists
  • This is rather easy for a bot to check
• The entry has proper source and copyright information on the commons page
  • May be harder but it will be possible, and if the bot cant confirm this it can just say so, and the deleting admin can check for himself.
• The file names are the same (if not remember to redirect all image links)
  • I am not sure that the bot should to this, but it could leave an note at the image description page if this has to be done.
• The file was properly uploaded (preserving GFDL required history of revisions)
  • This is possible and if the bot cant confirm this it could leave a note.
• The file was properly added to an article or category in commons
  • This is not hard for a bot to check, and it could also say which categories and articles it has bin added to. It has to avoid categories that is automatically included by the license templates, but I believe it would be possible .
• The files on Wikipedia and Commons are bit-for-bit copies.
  • Easier for a bot to do than a human.

I am no bot writer, but I hope there is someone who has an idea on how to do it. It would save a lot of time for the administrators working on these categories. Rettetast 15:02, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I was just thinking about this the other day. I have no clue to begin how to write all of this, but if someone wanted to write it, I would be more than willing to host it, as those categories are *very* commonly backlogged. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 15:06, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to request a bot that will scan files tagged as being under the auspices of a specific project generating a list of those which are currently undergoing Afd.

This is because many pages belonging to a project that I am a member are no longer being watched by active members and several have been deleted without active members receiving sufficient notice to review or improve these pages. Content tis being deleted rather than improved.

perfectblue 18:05, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

SatyrBot currently performs a function like this for WP:CARIBBEAN, WP:CM, and WP:LGBT. It produces two lists - examples are: Wikipedia:WikiProject Caribbean/To-do list and Wikipedia:WikiProject Caribbean/Small to-do list. Let me know if you want me to add your project to its scans. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 20:43, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

A traditional part of every introduction to a programming language is Hello World but many articles featured in this list are missing it. I think it would be a nice feature to add to each article. I propose the creation of a bot which lists all of the articles which are missing this as well as those which appear to have it in some form or another so that each can be updated with its own 'Hello World' code in a standardised way. Of course this sort of programme is unsuitable for some languages, but the section can simply be a standard 'this isn't appropriate' message instead of actual code. After the lists have been generated then I'll go through and find the nessacary code and edit the pages myself.

I'm all for writing this bot myself (in fact, I realy want to - please don't someone else!) I'm just trying to make sure this is something everyone agrees will be of benefit. PeteMarsh 16:39, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand, will the bot be making any edits to wikipedia or is it just going to print out a list of articles that don't have a hello world example? If it won't be making any edits then you don't need the community's approval, just make sure there is a reasonable delay between page requests. --Android Mouse 19:46, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I hadn't imagined it making any edits - but this sounds alright to go ahead with? PeteMarsh 20:19, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, you only need approval if it will be editing. --Android Mouse 20:24, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Looking into this futher it seems that not every programming language page has a 'Infobox programming language' I would request that my bot also be allowed to edit these pages to include these. Edits could be restricted to something like 1 a minute, maybe even two minutes; there would be little server stress. PeteMarsh 21:11, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

• Task: replace all instances of "Czechia" with "Czech Republic", except on pages "Czech Republic" and "Names of the Czech Republic".
• Reasoning: When Czechoslovakia split in 1993, the foreign ministry of the Czech Republic tried to spread their name in English as "Czechia". This is in line with current usage in most Germanic and Slavic languages, including German, where Tschechien is still being used. It is fairly common for non-native speakers to edit Wikipedia, and mention "Czechia", so the bot should run, maybe once a month or so. See Names of the Czech Republic for more info. samwaltz 03:03, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Have you made sure there is a consensus to support this? From what I read in the articles you linked to is that it isn't in common usage in English, but does this mean it should be corrected? --Android Mouse 03:17, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll toss up a RFC on Names. samwaltz 03:22, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

• In many wikipedia articles, there are external links after a sentence which is used in a number formating (so the external link has no extra info attached to it); example [16].

• Would it be possible for a bot to remove "[" replacing with "<ref>" and remove "]" replacing with "</ref>"?

• After that the bot would search if there is <references/> in the article.

• If it cannot find it, the bot would make a new sub-section "==References==" and place "<references/>" below that.

• The bot would have to make a list from the last dump of all the mainspace articles, and perform the operations (hopefully it will get over within one week).

• Example Nonvolatile_BIOS_memory

--Paracit 23:24, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

In my view, end of section references are preferable when there is a textual description of the reference. For a pure html link, the reference section just obscures matters, requiring an extra click-through. However, putting raw links into a reference section might encourage people to change them to proper citations. That's a testable proposition, and if it's true this would be a good idea. Derex 00:12, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Some editors might consider it controversial to change an inline link to a cite.php reference. Even if it encourages adding full citation info, some will view this as a short term detriment, by making the link one step removed. Gimmetrow 01:34, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

It is possible to create such a bot and not very complicated actually. But I share the concerns mentioned above. Maybe you should see if you can reach a consensus in a discussion on this question at WP:CITE and/or WP:EL. Perhaps this has already been decided on and you can provide a link to it? I'd be interested in helping with the bot / programming it, if there's such a common agreement. I suggest continuing to talk about a bot when we are sure your suggested changes are supported by the community. — Ocolon 08:33, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I've run across other articles where an editor has manually (I assume) converted embedded links to references/footnotes, without adding anything else. I suppose that encourages editors to work the references to improve them; I'm not sure (because I didn't systematically follow up over the months) that anyone actually did.

As far as starting a discussion, I also support that before a bot is written and approval for it requested. I note that WP:EL is the wrong place, however; that policy has to do with the "External links" section, which isn't an issue here (except that the bot should be programmed to stay out of that section). In addition to) WP:CITE, it's worth noting the proposed change at Wikipedia:Embedded citations (which isn't a policy or guideline) and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:33, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I would almost suggest to just be bold, and manually do a few articles and see the reactions. Do the links get improved? Do you end up just annoying people? etc. —— Eagle101 ^{Need help?} 04:03, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Check this out so many external links converted to inline citations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Clinical_depression&diff=118654983&oldid=118576074

--Parker007 21:14, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the Clinical depression article *did* benefit from converting the external links to inline citations. A problem that this conversion did not address is that the reference sections contain a lot of raw link text that ought to be replaced by useful 'metadata' in the form of authors, titles and complete names of publications. (Each raw link could be replaced by a citation template, and the link itself could be filled into the 'url' field, so the citation would be clickable). Someone could go through manually and fix that. Another more general problem is that this article seems to be overwhelmed by its excessive references. Wikipedia is not a directory or a bibliography. Not sure what your tool could do about that, but it might suggest to us that manual fixup can do things that a bot cannot. EdJohnston 16:43, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

• • Request

for consensus is filed --Paracit 06:45, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello, We need someone's great bot to go to each article/user page/template that uses the recently moved Image:CVU2.svg to change it to Image:CVU.svg as it was transferred to Commons for use there. Many thanks, Extranet ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 06:44, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Almost all of these were transcluded with the template {{User CVU1-en}}, which has been fixed. In fact, I only see a few archives that point to the CVU2 page. --Selket ^Talk 07:03, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

We're thinking of renaming a highly transcluded template at WP:COMICS and we wondered if that was something that a bot might be able to handle? Hiding Talk 23:46, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, a bot could rename uses of the template, but it would seem unnecessary when a redirect would work. Is there a serious problem with the name such that the old one must not remain? Gimmetrow 23:53, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I guess not. We've got an infobox, {{superherobox}}, that pretty much applies to any comic character now, so we wanted to rename it {{Comics character}}. I'm not sure that there are any issues, I'll raise it at the discussion. Thanks for the reply. Hiding Talk 13:16, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Just go ahead and rename it. Moving the page will leave a redirect from the old name and all existing transclusions of the template will work properly. (If any double redirects are created, just fix them) – Gurch 21:03, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I have never done anything about bots before, so I hope this is reasonable. Presently, a bot (or something) seems to add only one of the required commas in dates. I can't find it in the list of bots. For example, if someone adds the date: March 28 1948 a bot or something adds a comma after 28, but not after 1948. Yes, it did it right then! I didn't type that comma, and it's still not in the revision box where I am typing now. Unless 1948 ends the sentence, of course, another comma is needed after the year. The fix is needed even if there are no brackets, like this: March 28 1948 That time, no comma was automatically put in. So I see it only works for bracketed dates, so far. I have fixed hundreds of examples of that error by hand, but there are probably about 6 or 12 million more to be done in the English version of Wikipedia. I am sorry, but I don't have enough time. A very similar problem is about equally widespread in locations. For example: He was born in Pasadena, California on Easter Sunday. That needs another comma after California, of course. About 6 or 12 million of those errors, too. Another bot needed? Can I request that, too? Korky Day 12:58, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

That's not actually a bot. That's a part of the Wikimedia software. Whether you type [[March 28]] [[1948]] or [[28 March]] [[1948]] (or other date formats), the software will display the date in your preferred date format (which you can set under "preferences" -- click the "my preferences" link at the very top right on any Wikipedia page). The default preferred date format (for the U.S.) is Month xx, yyyy (with a comma).

So why not add the extra comma? Well that's actually a grammar issue, and some sentences shouldn't have that comma. For instance, in the sentence "June 7, 1999, is my birthday.", that second comma is needed. But in the sentence "I saw her on June 1, 1999." there shouldn't be a comma. Since almost nobody ever follows that grammar rule anyway, I guess the developers decided it wasn't too important to fix. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 15:28, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Quadell. There are also rare instances where no punctuation follows because it's not a full date. Consider "On March 28, 1948 people registered to vote." 1948 could be the number of people or it could be the year in which on that date an unspecified number of people registered. So it's not something a bot can be programmed to determine. But that example proves that having it correct is indeed important.

Your estimate of "almost nobody" does not match my viewing. About half the instances I see are correct. But maybe in the type of articles you read it's different.

I think a bot is justified because there are millions of errors and the exceptions few.

Solution? A bot that adds a comma whenever there is not another punctuation mark there. It would ignore instances within direct quotes. But also maybe tag it with something like "verification requested that a year precedes this comma". Then if no one changes it for a couple of weeks, the tag is automatically deleted. If someone says it is not a year, then the bot would ignore it from then on. Korky Day 01:00, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Is there a way to create a bot which will:

1. Monitor a list of articles and their sizes on a sub-page, and
2. Update the sizes of those articles on a semi-regular basis?

I ask because Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs/dinosaur articles by size was created to show users which articles need the most attention and expansion. It was originally updated manually using CatScan, but that tool stopped working April 11th of last year. Since that time, we've updated the page manually, but it's grown considerably and it's time-consuming to use pop-ups to hover over each link to get the article size. A bot, even if it was run just once a week, would save us hours of work. Firsfron of Ronchester 06:22, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I could create a bot for this. Although which articles would you like it to post sizes for? The ones that are already listed here or a specific category of articles? --Android Mouse 06:47, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, either way would be fine! Category:Dinosaurs would be fine to work off of, but that category includes Category:Fictional dinosaurs, which we don't want included in the results. If there was a way to tell the bot to ignore articles in a "fictional dinosaurs" category, that would work. Or we could just compile a list for the bot to work off of...? Thank you very much for your interest. Firsfron of Ronchester 06:53, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

That sounds good. I'll have it get articles from the Category:Dinosaurs, excluding the fictional dinosaurs subcategory, so no one will have to deal with maintaining and updating a list of what it would need to scan. I'll likely have time to write this bot sometime tomorrow, if not it should be finished within two to three days. --Android Mouse 07:05, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Very cool. Thank you, Android Mouse. I look forward to it! :) Firsfron of Ronchester 07:13, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The bot is now written and waiting for approval. I should note that there are many categories and articles that might not directly relate to the Dinosaur wikiproject. I found that Category:Birds is a nested subcategory of the Dinosaur category, along with Category:Jurassic Park. Excluding Category:Birds, Category:Jurassic Park, and Category:Fictional dinosaurs, there are just over 3,000 articles. There may be more unrelated categories that I didn't see. Tell me if you'd like any other categories ommited. --Android Mouse 21:43, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

At WikiProject Iceland, we’re looking for a way to automatically distribute our monthly newsletter to our growing membership base. We need the following:

1. To be able to add {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Iceland/Outreach/Newsletter {{{CURRENTMONTH}}} {{{CURRENTYEAR}}}}} Max Naylor 09:21, 27 May 2007 (UTC) (or whatever the correct ParserFunctions are for current month and year);
2. On the first of every month;
3. Only to users who have not unsubscribed to the newsletter;
4. On the provision that the newsletter has been created;
5. At the bottom of a user’s talk page.

Should something like this be possible and deployable over different WikiProjects? Max Naylor 09:21, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

If there is a list of the people that need to receive the newsletter, I could possibly do it using AWB. E ^talk 09:25, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Here is a list of members, and here is a list of those who do not wish to receive the newsletter. Max Naylor 10:11, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll request bot approval now and see if that goes through, then I can start the process. Also, where is the newsletter you want distributed? E ^talk 11:15, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Here is the current edition Wikipedia:WikiProject Iceland/Outreach/Newsletter June 2007, but as you can see, the month and the year will need to be variables in the bot. Hope this helps. Max Naylor 12:00, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I just updated a link in the article Poland. Obviously a URL changed ... can someone start a bot replacing something like https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/pl.html with https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/pl.html Thanks.

Also see: Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_8#Create_a_bot_to_update_CIA_World_Factbook_links

I'm currently in the process of doing this. E ^talk 10:14, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

It's just about to finish the process. All countries listed at list of countries has been changed to the new link. Alphachimpbot is currently editing every page that contains the old link. E ^talk 11:53, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I think it'd be a good idea to have a bot that tags ==Trivia==, ===Trivia===, and ====Trivia==== with the {{trivia}} template. There's so many articles that use a trivia section, and in particular, just about every episode of the Simpsons has one. They're also quite common on articles about bands / singers. Needless to say, it would take far too long to tag these articles by hand. I'd quite like to be able to operate this bot myself, but I understand if it's easier to just add it as a function to an existing bot. Cheers, -Panser Born- (talk) 18:50, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

The problem is, how would the bot find articles with a trivia section? The only way I can think of is to scan through the raw text of thousands of pages, which is obviously infeasable and impractical. If wikipedia had a decent search feature it would make the process much more easier. Anyone else have any ideas? --Android Mouse 00:52, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, to begin with, would it be possible for the bot to check all the pages in all the subcategories of this category? I'd say about 90% of the pages in there have an unmarked trivia section (apart from seasons 15 – 18, which I've already tagged manually). Outside of that, I'm not really sure. -Panser Born- (talk) 08:16, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Just addressing the specific question (I haven't considered whether this is a good idea or not) it would probably be best if it searched a copy of the database dump? Otherwise it would have to spider the site which isn't a good use of server resources. --kingboyk 12:12, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

So it's possible to do this without using server resources? Surely accessing the database dump would use resources as well? -Panser Born- (talk) 20:13, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

If it were restricted to the Simpsons category you posted above it would probably be ok to have it check each page individually for triia sections. If that is what you want done I wouldn't mind taking on the task. --Android Mouse 23:31, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

That'd be great, thanks for your help. =) -Panser Born- (talk) 12:48, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Bot written waiting for approval --Android Mouse 08:53, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Approved, all needed articles in this category have been tagged. I'm downloading the most recent database dump and will eventually modify the bot to scan untagged articles from that. --Android Mouse 23:21, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Awesome, you've been a great help. =) I look forward to seeing the database dump version when you get around to it. Thanks again, -Panser Born- (talk) 00:39, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

What about some articles that have maybe only a line or two of interesting trivia, versus some articles that have pop culture references that occupy more than half the page? How does the bot choose which page to tag? Blueshirts 19:16, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Interesting question. What I could have it do is check the size of each section. If the article has a trivia or pop culture section larger than so many bytes (and is also untagged) then it would add the tag, else it would move on without editing. The question is, what size should be the defining factor if a tag is added or not? I think if it is over 512 bytes it should get a tag. For reference, my current response is 431 bytes. --Android Mouse 16:58, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. Even though I think 512 byte is sorta small compared to the trivia section of articles like Progeria, it's best to add the tag "early" so users would think twice about adding more extraneous info to the section. Blueshirts

I've been doing some of this using AWB. I searched the database dump for ==Trivia==, and tagging articles that still have ==Trivia== and dont have the template. I wasn't sure if all articles should be tagged, or just those with large trivia sections. Lately I've been doing those with over 4 bullets (tested with regex). -- pb30<talk> 03:38, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if it clear if all trivia sections should be tagged or just the large ones. My bot has been tagging only the ones with sections larger than 512 bytes. I was going to have it decide on the number of bullets, but some trivia sections aren't in bullet format, rather a poorly thrown together paragraph. --Android Mouse 19:12, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah thats one downside of just looking at bullets, but it was the only way I thought of. And I think a trivia section in paragraphs looks nicer than bullets, but both should be tagged if they are too long, -- pb30<talk> 21:35, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

How about a bot that looks at words frequently used in Wikipedia's articles and suggests those words for the Wiktionary if they aren't there already? Jeffrey.Kleykamp 13:54, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

• Wiktionary editors have long since created to-do lists from Wikipedia article titles and worked through them. There have been at least two such projects, to my recollection. Wiktionary editors need no help from Wikipedia in this regard. I am also confident that should you raise the subject at the Beer Parlour, Wiktionary editors will inform you that they don't trust Wikipedia articles to be free from mis-spellings. ☺ Uncle G 15:45, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Mis-spelled words get used infrequently and therefore won't be on the top of the list, however, words like "and" and "the" get used very often and would therefore be on the top of the list, that is, if they weren't in Wiktionary already. Also, I didn't intend to use Wikipedia titles, instead I wish to use the actual words inside the articles (whether they are related to the article or not), and the words would be taken off the list as soon as they are in Wiktionary (or the word gets blacklisted as a true mis-spelling), so it still seems like a good idea. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 16:13, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Common misspellings may well satisfy the criteria for inclusion anyway. -- Coffee2theorems 18:18, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Are you planning on working from the XML dump of the 'pedia? An overall frequency list would be good (I think this has been done at some point?); then removing everything in the en.wikt using that XML dump, and producing the remaining list?

The results can be added to the wikt as sup-pages of wikt:Wiktionary:Frequency lists, as we have from the entire Project Gutenberg corpus. (And this isn't technically a bot on either project.) You will be surprised at how mis-spellings rise to the top of such lists, once the 150,000 or so most frequent words are taken out. Robert Ullmann 18:22, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

To be quite honest, I'm not planning on doing anything because I'm not at all good at doing programs that use the Internet (other programs are fine), it was a suggestion for someone else to do, and basically proving that I shouldn't do anything is that I don't know what the XML dump is.

And, with all due respect, your abbreviations where a bit complicated to decipher so I will, I think, repeat the exact basic algorithm:

1. Create a list of words from the Wikipedia articles
2. Check and delete words that are on the blacklist
3. Check and delete words that are already in Wiktionary
4. Sort the list based on frequency
5. Present list

It can even check for words on the list that get changed often to a more frequent word and count them as a misspelling, e.g. the sentence says "Cheese is a soild food made from the milk of cows, goats, sheep, and other mammals." (that's a direct quote, with one misspelling, from our article on cheese) then two days later it notices that solid is written "solid" and it's therefore likely that "soild" is a misspelling. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 18:45, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

In Wikipedia:Types_of_bots, it says that for database miner bots (like this one) it might be preferable to download a database dump and run the bot on it's own server, is that the XML dump? And where do I download the XML dump? But that all doesn't matter because I'm not doing the programming anyway, sorry, Jeffrey.Kleykamp 19:39, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

The XML dumps are at http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20070402/ (the most recent dump as of today). You say you don't know about doing programs "that use the internet" - well, that's no problem, as the XML file is a (in case of en:wiki: *huge*) text file with some extra markup which just looks like html tags - that is, a lot of <foo>bar</foo>. \Mike(z) 21:30, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Before spending too much time on this, is there any evidence that Wiktionary is

1. missing any words used in Wikipedia (to any significant extent).
2. that the words that are defined in Wiktionary actually include an adequate definition of the particular meaning requireed for the actual usage in Wikipedia.

--121.209.184.120 04:18, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

First thing's first, 4.1 GB is a lot to download for my internet connection, it would take 10+ hours (revised estimate: 5+ hours). Also, any words that get used often in Wikipedia are worthy of being in a dictionary (even a common misspelling), and point two of the paragraph above I don't really understand, I think however that the point is irrelevant because I just want a list of words as suggestions for Wiktionary and ordered from most common word that is not in the Wiktionary to least common. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 12:53, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Is anyone planning on making this bot or what, 'cause I ain't plannin' on doin' nothin'... Jeffrey.Kleykamp 17:49, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I thought about this bot and think it would be a good idea if someone made this bot and run it once a month, because it would also help with words in different languages (who's Wiktionaries aren't as near completion), especially rare or constructed languages (Klingon for example), also it would be good in the future as people from a specific language adopt new words, also about the fear of many incorrectly spelled words being on the list all you have to do is take two versions of Wikipedia and compare the two and delete any words that changed significantly in the amount of times used (so if the word "chese" went from 77 uses to 58, i.e. 25% less, then delete it, because, technically, the 77 original uses are mostly corrected by Wikipedians on the second version and the 58 uses are new misspellings, whereas the correctly spelled words are going to stay, unless someone saw it fit to delete them as they are unfit in that context or add new ones as part of an improvement to the article, and therefore the uses won't change either), please note however that the change in uses doesn't have to go down, it just needs to change by a high enough percentage.

I also think it would be nice if people would add there name to the following list if they think it would be a good idea to make this bot:

In favor

• Jeffrey.Kleykamp 17:46, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Not in favor

I am requesting, on behalf of WikiProject Succession Box Standardization, the substitution of all instances of Template:S-ptd in articles with Template:S-tul, in preparation to the former's eventual deletion. Their function is more or less identical and s-ptd has been superseded by s-tul in our project's succession box template system; the former's page now redirects to the latter. The substitution is a simple one: {{s-ptd|title=...}} is to be converted to {{s-tul|title=...}} in all succession boxes. See Template:S-start/doc for more information. Waltham, The Duke of 15:02, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

The task is simple, but why does it need to be done? What's wrong with the redirect? —METS501 (talk) 19:16, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

The redirect serves as a deterrent against the use of the template in new succession boxes. However, the old code is still part of many old boxes, something which we believe complicates our template system, especially since we do not give any instructions about it but some users (especially the newer ones) might fall on it. We just want to get rid of a piece of useless code, rid Wikipedia of a spare template, and remove any sources of confusion for Wikipedia's less experienced contributors. Waltham, The Duke of 09:28, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

All done. —METS501 (talk) 19:52, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much. We shall initiate the procedures for its deletion soon. Waltham, The Duke of 09:59, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

The pages 1802 in the United Kingdom to 1926 in the United Kingdom refer to the United Kingdom where they should refer to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The following changes need to be made to each page

1. Replace United Kingdom with United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in both first line and in nav box on right.
2. Change width of nav box to 450
3. Move to xxxx in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, keeping redirect.
4. Redirect xxxx in the UK (such as 1801 in the UK) to the new page (eliminating double redirect)

I have done all thse task manually on 1801 in the United Kingdom.

I have done tasks 1 and 2 manually on 1802 in the United Kingdom to 1806 in the United Kingdom.

LukeSurl ^{t c} 15:29, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Please reconsider all of Wikipedia-Wiktionary Co-op bot, I say this because people seem to only read what's on the bottom of the page. Thanks, Jeffrey.Kleykamp 21:33, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't have the specific diff here, but we recently had an incident where a comment remained in a BLP article for over 5 days accusing the subject of being a "paedophile". I think we can stop this from happening. This bot idea relatively simple, but I don't have the technical expertise to implement it (someone proposed it on the admin IRC channel).

• The bot would generate a list of articles in Category:Living people on a daily or twice daily basis.
• The bot would search these articles for specific terms (probably through a regular expression) that are unlikely to appear unless someone has libeled the subject. Examples include: pedophile, paedophile, rapist, etc. Basically, it'd look for any terms that probably should not be in a BLP article. I'd suggest creating an admin-only page to edit the expressions the bot looks for.
• The bot would generate a list of biographies containing these words. Obviously, some biographies, such as those of known sex offenders, would need to be placed on some sort of whitelist. I suspect, however, that the level of work involved in generating that list wouldn't be too high.

I imagine that there are technical hurdles I'm missing, but I really think a solution like this would be in order. Although I don't have the programming expertise to create such a bot, I'd be happy to assist in whatever way I could. alphachimp 07:36, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, Category:Living people contains several hundred thousand articles... so if you wanted to do it daily I have a feeling the bot would have to be requesting pages pretty much non-stop, and even that might not be enough; won't harm the servers, they get tens of thousands of requests a second, but it might harm the bandwidth of whoever tries to run the bot :) Also, there are thousands of biographies not in Category:Living people, and by definition they would tend to be the more obscure, less-watched ones to which libel could be introduced without detection – Gurch 16:27, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm 103 2/3% interested in this, as it's totally my bag. However, it seems more practical to simply index Category:Living people (LP) once a day, then sit the bot on RC with a high limit (500) and refresh every 'x' minutes, depending on edit influx/site volume, checking for any edits to LP pages, adding diff content to a priority queue (i.e. anon users get priority), and finally running the diffs against badword lists, which is made even more particularly easy given the fact that the diffs highlight the changes for you :P. I personally would see that as the best possible scenario, both with regard to WP's server resources and the bot maintainer's server resources. I would probably argue, though, that a dynamically-updatable mask list available to simply "all admins" would be a bad idea, especially considering the amount of mental effort that goes into designing *good* badword lists that don't conflict with pre-existing badwords or cause a slew of false positives (e.g., while it might make sense to most people to badword /.*ass.*hole.*/i, it's pretty easy to see that that could cause a whole bunch of false positives). Trial period should probably have the bot simply add suspect edits to its user page every hour or so, so that it's easy to verify the accuracy of the bot's detection. Once it's live, it might even make more sense to simply not force the bot to revert anything at all by default, and simply let vandalism patrol admins manually (or automagically) check the bot's "I think this might be bad" list, then let them decide to manually add auto-reverting of commonly-vandalized LP entries and/or category members. Thoughts? --koder 19:45, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Any there any bots that can sort things into alphabetical order? Possibly sort Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals. Simply south 13:21, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Looks alphabetical to me.. --ST47Talk 13:43, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

There is always inconsistency and problems in admins notifying editors they have blocked. Many (including me) have not issued notifications many a times, because generally-experienced editors have an idea why they are blocked (they know how to access their block log) and what they can do about it. However, to have complete consistency, proper courtesy and full information at a time when a block is issued, I request that a bot be commissioned to deliver a notification message to the blocked editor that:

1. Carries the reason for blocking (as given by the admin in the block summary)
2. Gives the exact block duration
3. Describes the option of using (and not abusing) the {{unblock}} request
4. Describes the option of e-mailing another administrator
5. Gives a general courtesy message asking them not to repeat behavior/editing that hurts Wikipedia and other contributors.

Such an automated bot can act on each blocking that is logged; a minor delay is obviously acceptable. We can also instruct the bot to give messages customized for the different blocking reasons that are given as pull-down options for the blocking admin. Rama's arrow (just a sexy boy) 16:08, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Are the comments on Special:Ipblocklist always in the same format of, (time length of block, what is blocked) (reason)? --Android Mouse 16:48, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

You would probably be better off using the block log (accessible through the API) as it won't have autoblocks. The API results are pretty straightforward to parse also. -- JLaTondre 17:26, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Some comments:

1. I do not recommend this for indefinite blocks. There are specifically cases (usually username block related) when WP:DENY makes sense.
2. Also, most of this information is already in the block message. Is there a specific reason to duplicate it on the talk page? Our block templates do not contain all those. I don't see a bot would need to leave anything more than the standard templates.
3. I'm worried this will cause more confusion. As can be seen at Android Mouse's talk page, despite the message his speedy delete notification bot leaves, people continue to believe he is the one who either nominated their article or deleted it. If this task is picked up by a bot, the message needs to very clear or people will make the same mistake.

Thanks. -- JLaTondre 17:19, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with JLaTondre about indefinite blocks (except those on offensive/inappropriate usernames). However, there is a specific need to have this special notification as all admins are obligated to properly inform blocked users of the reasons, durations and options. As for possible confusion as to who did the blocking, the bot could easily include the name of the blocking admin (if it can replicate the block summary, it can include the blocking admin) and a link to the list of administrators. Rama's arrow (just a sexy boy) 21:00, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

If the user doesn't know how to access their block log, it doesn't matter. They will see the blocking reason and the expiration date when they try to edit. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 21:12, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The blocking reason and expiration shows up when a blocked user tries to edit. The only real purpose to talk page block notices is to elaborate on the block reason (less important now that we have templated block notices) or to let other admins know that an account is blocked without looking at the block log (less important - to me - since we got the HBC AIV helperbots.) Some admins value this notification much more than others, and it would be the main purpose of this bot, in my opinion. I don't personally see it as important, since it just takes a second to look at the block log, but others do. Grandmasterka 21:29, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

There is a very large group of people who take every opportunity to wikilink dates. According to WP:CONTEXT, there is consensus among editors that dates should not be linked unless there is a specific reason that the link will help the reader to understand the article.

How often will a link to a date actually help someone understand the article? Maybe it's just me, but I see a wikilink as an offer for more information, and trying to read through a bunch of wikilinked dates is damned distracting.

I would like to see a bot simply remove all wikilinks to dates. In all articles with more than three such links. James S. 17:33, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

WP:CONTEXT#Dates says Dates when they contain a day, month, and year — 25 March 2004 — or day and month — February 10 — should be linked for date preference formatting.? --ST47Talk 17:47, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Also, a bot simply removing links indiscriminately would not be good. You even said: "unless there is a specific reason that the link will help the reader to understand the article." Bots are usually pretty dumb. If you tell it to remove links that don't have day, month, and year, it will remove all such links, relevant or not. For example, if a specific holiday occurs on the same date each year, (like christmas) the article should have the date wikilinked. Also, removing all wikilinks to dates will leave thousands of date, month, and year artices orphaned. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 18:00, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I predict many angry complaints on the bot operator's talk page, if this is ever implemented. --Android Mouse 18:16, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we can go about this a different way. Educate editors. The first time an editor wikilinks a date, the bot can put a note on his User page reminding him of precedent. It won't undo the past but it will help the future. davidwr ^09f9(talk) 21:40, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The "Usage" section of Template:Unsigned specifies that the template should be substed. However, in many cases it is not. At present:

Template:Unsigned has 35,000+ transclusions;

Template:Unsigned2 has ca. 5,000 transclusions;

Template:Unsigned3 has ca. 200 transclusions;

Template:UnsignedIP has ca. 1,500 transclusions; and

Template:Undated has ca. 75 transclusions. Note: This template may not need to be substed.

I think an existing bot could handle this, but I'm not certain which is the best one to ask – off the top of my head, I can think of Bluebot. Also, there's still the question of whether it should be done. Is it worth substing each one of those transclusions? Which is better performance-wise ... 40-45 thousand bot edits or an equal number of transclusions? Are there perhaps other factors that I've not considered? ... If this is a worthwhile task, I will place a request on an operator's talk page. For now, I'm just asking for some input. Thanks, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:40, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't see why it would be worth the hassle to make all the substitutions. Is there any specific reason why that template should be substed in the first place? --Android Mouse 00:59, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Not that I know of ... . I just saw that a template that was supposed to be substed often wasn't. Maybe it's supposed to be substed in order to prevent server stress? For instance, HagermanBot alone has about 100 thousand edits, most of which are substitutions of the above templates. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 02:36, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't think non-substituted templates would cause that much server stress since the servers have an advanced caching system set up. Although I wouldn't know for sure, since the little things can really add up. --Android Mouse 03:28, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I believe part of the reason for substing is so that the templates don't strain the server since not substing them means that each time you go to the page, you have to load at least 2 different pages. Also, my bot, which currently does substing, could do this task. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:13, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I can do this...do we have a consensus to do so? ^demon^{[omg plz]} 00:36, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Template namespace ("not masquerading as article content"), can someone subst {{wc}}, {{ec}}, {{ec2}} and {{fc}} in any article in which they appear? Thanks 81.104.175.145 00:51, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I can do it with my bot, but do we have consensus do to this? ^demon^{[omg plz]} 19:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes. "Per Wikipedia:Template namespace ("not masquerading as article content")", and the usage note on {{fc}} itself, if you'd bothered checking. 81.104.175.145 16:13, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Y Done. Made 225 edits total across all 4 templates. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 00:35, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Related templates: {{afc}} {{lfc}} {{efs}} {{fseason}}. 81.104.175.145 14:01, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Y Done, 41 edits. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 15:12, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Ta muchly. 81.104.175.145 16:06, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

We have a database that is full of more than 800 entries on gardens in the Czech Republic. We would like to post this information on wikipedia so that information can be viewed and also improved. In addition as we gather more information and add it to the database, we are hoping that this information will be transferred as well. From what I understand so far, the best way to transfer the information from the database to wikipedia is via a bot. However, I have no experience in this and am hoping we can get some help!

--Stromek 11:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Could you be more specific please? What type of information are you planning to transfer? --Android Mouse 19:42, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

What format is the database in? Lmc169 21:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I can write you a perl script that can save the data, but we need to know how it's stored. --ST47Talk 21:27, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Why wouldn't this go into the Czech Wikipedia rather than the English one?

Also, as I read the request, the plan would be for a subsequent updates to the database to result in updates to the Wikipedia article. The only way to accomplish that without overwriting the contributions of other editors is if the article is vary structured (think, for example, of infoboxes), which is pretty much antithetical to what Wikipedia is about. So I don't think updates via bot makes any sense at all.

(And did anyone mention notability - 800 gardens?) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:04, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Can someone with a bot or with AWB or some such tool, please go through Category:Playboy Playmates and its subcats to add a caption field to the {{Infobox Playboy Playmate}} template? It should go right below the "image-name" field. Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 22:56, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Can someone create a references bot that would tag articles without footnotes with {{unreferenced}}, and would replace external links listed as sources (for example [http:www.example.com] with ^[1]. It would also replace the <references/> with {{Reflist}}--Sefringle 04:59, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Couple problems with this. {{unreferenced}} is for articles with no sources, just because an article does not have inline cites does not mean it is unreferenced. {{citation style}} would be preferred. Also, unless the external link is already used like a footnote, how would the bot know where to put it? Also, I belive there has been discussions on replacing <references/> with {{Reflist}}. Many people are against it, usually advocating using {{Reflist}} only in articles with a lot of footnotes. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 16:58, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

This could also present an issue when dealing with stubs. If a stub is 2-3 sentences long and there's only one reference (or, more commonly, an external link), noting that the article lacks in-text citations seems unnecessary. Of course, the bot could be programmed to ignore articles below a certain length, or any articles tagged with a stub template. Also, though I prefer the use of {{reflist}}, I too remember some opposition to its use. See, for instance, the template's talk page; there may be discussion elsewhere that I'm not aware of. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:50, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I've noticed, on Joel Hayward, for instance, that protection expires on June 10th of this year, with a tag which states as much: {{pp-semi-protected|expiry=June 10, 2007|reason=of libel/[[WP:BLP|BLP]] concerns}}. Perhaps we could have a bot to remove protection tags when they no longer apply. The Evil Spartan 20:01, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't remember which, but a bot already does this. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 20:05, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I think its User:DomBot Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 20:06, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Any thoughts on a bot that detected new links to disambiguation pages, redirected pages, or links to pages with an otheruses template and put an "Are you sure you meant to do that?" notice on the user's talk page? This would educate users and cut down on links like Supreme Court, many of which should be Supreme Court of the United States.

Even better if the bot would look for a reply that contained some special content, like {{fixbadlink}} and fix it automatically.

The latter may not be worth the effort but the former is certainly worthwhile and very low-risk as it doesn't change any articles.

Of course any such bot would have to respect an "I know what I'm doing" notice on the User's main or talk page so as not to bother experienced editors. davidwr ^09f9(talk) 22:04, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

There is absolutely no reason to go around fixing redirects though. See this section of the redirect guideline, the dabs or links that go to the wrong target should be addressed but not the redirects. IvoShandor 15:35, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Could someone do the following replacements (per WP:MOSTM and WP:MOSCL) please?

• 'bmi' -> 'BMI'
• 'bmibaby' -> 'BMI Baby'
• 'bmi regional' -> 'BMI Regional'
• 'wagn' -> 'WAGN'

81.104.175.145 22:38, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

On what articles? --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:01, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Any that contain them. 81.104.175.145 23:17, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Anyone? 81.104.175.145 04:08, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Task: replace all instances of "postion" with "position" (retaining existing capitalisation). I can't imagine any circumstance where "postion" would be correct. Currently there are about 200 instances. (Well, I did a Search for "postion" and it said there were 765 results but it only displayed 200) and I don't fancy fixing them all manually. Also, please advise if there's a simple way I can/could have done this task myself, e.g. if there is some existing "general purpose word substitution bot" which I could have just configured and executed myself. Thanks. DH85868993

You can do this yourself with WP:AWB if you run windows :) --ST47Talk 10:07, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do. The problem with automatic spell checking though, even if it's just simple search and replace work as it is in this case, is that there are bound to be false positives. Even misspellings that look like nobody would possibly ever use them on purpose will invariably generate false positives and, usually, there will be a handful in a batch of 500 or so edits. That's why those edits should always be reviewed by a human. It's mundane work that will most likely go completely unnoticed but it's important. -- Seed 2.0 11:02, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh well, looks like you did it yourself. -- Seed 2.0 11:44, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Threads on WP:AN, WP:ANI, WP:CN and probably other similar boards are frequently linked to from other pages, e.g. block reviews on the relevant user talk pages. However, these links go stale rather fast as the board thread is archived. This is regrettable, as such threads often contain important procedural discussions.

I propose a (probably dedicated) bot that would periodically go through the most recent archives of these boards, search for links pointing to sections in them and update these. E.g., the bot would change WP:ANI#Foo or Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Foo to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive251#Foo. Sandstein 05:05, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm actually working on such a bot, as suggested here. I didn't expect it me to take as long, but I'm easily distracted :-$ --Android Mouse 05:14, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Bot approved and now running. --Android Mouse 02:48, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Sandstein 15:09, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

See User:Mecu/OrphanImages. I would like a bot to automate the task of gathering the data. Once a day (preferably in the low-usage hours) it would go to Special:Unusedimages perhaps by using the link at the bottom of the data page and figure out how many unused images there are. It can go up and down by 500, with probably starting with the number from yesterday. If there aren't that many images, (see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Unusedimages&limit=500&offset=200000 ) it will get a message saying so and it will know to decrease by 500. If there are more than 500 images, it will say 500 images and also have a "Next 500" link. When it's at the limit, it display "there are 234" images for which it could then add to the offset number to get the number of orphaned images. (this is how I've been doing it manually.)

I've been doing this manually (with another user stepping in when I was slacking), but would still much prefer an automated bot to do this. Updating the chart would be a bonus, but not required immediately. Getting the data recorded is more important to me for now, and generating the pretty chart could come later, perhaps by a separate bot if needed. MECU≈talk 16:40, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Accepted --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 18:18, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Good news, I wrote something that will work. Bad news: there's an "if" in that statement... if the bug I uncovered in the Special:Unusedimages page is fixed... --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 23:30, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

What bug? I might be able to get a dev to work on it. MECU≈talk 16:52, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Bug #10153. It's alright, though... I switched the method I was using from counting the images to reading the header at top (which will be another small bug report later... it reports the right number instead of the number selected as a limit, but the wording is wrong). So, in conclusion... it works. How often do you need it run and where do you want the results? --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 16:59, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Awesome! Once a day, preferably at the same time each day. You can just report the results and append them onto the end of the table that's going at User:Mecu/OrphanImages. Start ASAP. I don't care what time of day it runs, so in the off-peak hours is fine. Thanks again! MECU≈talk 17:03, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

 Done 16:59, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Following discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trivia Cleanup and Template talk:Trivia, {{trivia}} was modified to allow articles to be categorised by month (see diff) by adding a date paramter to the template. There are currently thousands of articles in Category:Articles with large trivia sections that contain a tag without a date parameter. The last count, on May 23, was 3122 articles; this has probably increased substantially due to recent tagging by a bot. So, would a bot please add a date parameter (|date=Month Year) to all transclusions of {{trivia}} and {{toomuchtrivia}}? It would be nice if the bot could add the month and year that the article was tagged (that way articles that have been tagged for many months could be fixed first) but, if that is not possible, noting the month and year of the bot's edit should work also. Thanks, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 21:45, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I've added a feature request for WP:AWB which auto-adds the date to other cleanup tags. Also User:SmackBot auto-dates other templates, could probably do {{trivia}} as well -- pb30<talk> 22:26, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the AWB feature request. Since this is a recurrent task, I'll notify Rich Farmbrough to see if this is something that SmackBot would take on. I didn't notify him initially as the bot was not operating the last time I checked, on May 29 ... but it seems to be up now. Cheers, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 22:49, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, SB took a four day break while I was visiting my father. It has now taken this on. Rich Farmbrough, 15:56 4 June 2007 (GMT).

This is just about that old thread back in this archive. I was going to post that regex for scraping the images (and removing them), but never got around to doing so. Anyway, here's a better version that can account for wiki-links in the image call code. Once again, it hasn't been tested, so if someone could fix it if I screwed up somewhere, that would be great :-): s/(\[\[|<gallery>)\s*($image)\s*(|.*(\[\[.*\]\].*)*)?(\]\]|<\/gallery>)//g. Tim^V.B._{{critic & speak}} 15:44, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Could someone deliver Wikipedia:Meetup/Philadelphia 4/invite to this list of people Wikipedia:WikiProject Philadelphia/Philadelphia meet-up invite list? Thanks! --evrik ^(talk) 13:38, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Any chance you can figure out the TBD info first? --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 15:33, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks to the bot operator that took care of this! --evrik ^(talk) 15:56, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

 Done manually by some other user... --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 17:45, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Hey, I have a reasonably simple bot request, I would write it myself (It is incredibly simple), but my bot framework I am using (jwbf for java, if anyone knows any better ones tell me) has some MAJOR bugs regarding categories, and it can't fetch subcategories.

The idea is to parse Category:Fair_use_images and its subcategories, and reading the list of pages the images are used on and seeing if they are used on any User namespace pages. If so, it removes them and warns the user in question. It's a task I know many users do, and it would probably free up a lot of time.

Note that I am new to images, and I believe that image policy agrees with this idea, however if not please correct me.

Thanks! Matt - TheFearow 08:10, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

It's my understanding that Eagle 101's Gnome bot already does this and I think BetacommandBot still processes ORFU'd images. --Seed 2.0 08:59, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Dear Bot People: Please replace "word&nbsp;word[&nbsp;word...]" with "{{nowrap|word word[ word...]}}" because editing wikitext with &nbsp;'s in between words is hard and discouraging to the newcomers. Thank you. 75.18.212.28 15:25, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Winbot is already doing unicodification work (and Curpsbot-unicodify used to). In addition to that, many users are unicodifying articles they're cleaning up or otherwise working on with AWB. Having said that, if you don't mind waiting a couple of weeks, I could grab the latest DD and make a list. After that, the next step would be to see if there's consensus to convert NBSPs and the like which, frankly, might be a problem. I suspect false positives might be a another issue, in which case those edits would have to be supervised. But, yeah, it might be worth looking into. I'm a bit busy right now but please feel free to remind me in a couple of weeks. As an aside, you might want to read WP:ACCOUNT to make it easier for others to contact you (see this). --Seed 2.0 16:51, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Is converting &nbsp; to {{nowrap}} related to unicodification? How is a "false positive" even possible with this? 75.35.110.164 12:48, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

To tell you the truth, I think I misread your request (sorry). I thought that was just an example of the work you wanted done. Yeah, the nowrap stuff is way more trivial than general unicodification. Hmm, tables might still be a problem since "&nbsp;" is often used as a placeholder. Tell you what, remind me in two weeks to look into it and I'll see what I can do (unless somebody else wants to take this on, of course). -- Seed 2.0 16:57, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Another case where &nbsp; can't be replaced with {{nowrap}} is wide spaces created using multiple consecutive &nbsp; and/or normal spaces (like     this). This is also probably most likely to occur in tables and such, or perhaps in inline program code where spaces should not be collapsed but <pre> cannot be used. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:04, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Good point. How about: (A: space or newline)(B: 1 or more nonspace)&nbsp;(C: 1 or more nonspace)(D: space or newline) -- is there any situation where that could not be converted to (A){{nowrap|(B) (C)}}(D)? 75.35.110.164 02:35, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I want fix Double redirects by my BOT. I do test , Plaese see. Thanks--OsamaK 09:58, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:BRFA --ST47Talk 10:07, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/OsamaKBOT. I am starting now--OsamaK 19:21, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I'm under the impression that your bot was only approved for interwiki work. If you want to fix double redirects, you need to get approval for that as well. --Seed 2.0 08:31, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

While there are already enough anti-vandal bots, there's one type of vandalism/tests that they don't really detect - pages such as 2007, 2006, 2005 ... 1990 are usually frequent targets of anonymous/new users that feel self-important enough to add their own birthday. Usually, this results in a redlink or no link within these pages.

Basically, my proposal is to have a bot that erases unlinked entries. It's something that I would like to write, though. --Sigma 7 00:06, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

In that case, please request approval here first. Before you do, I would suggest that you red WP:RED, if you haven't already done so. Frankly, I'm a bit skeptical if this is an appropriate task for a bot but this is probably a more appropriate place to go over that in detail. -- Seed 2.0 08:38, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

For the birth & death sections of calendar articles, red links are purposefully excluded. There are HTML comments stating do not add non-Wikipedia entries. For other sections, it is more problematic. -- JLaTondre 13:25, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

It shouldn't be to hard to get a a copy of MartinBot's Source Code and adjust it for this job, if you need any help I'll try and help I'm ok with perl and python and it won't be like your writing all the code, most of it's done all ready. --Lwarf ^Talk! 12:09, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I've recently requested approval of User:TSM Fairuse Bot and it was approved for fifty edits. Its task would be to remove fair user images from userpages, user talk pages and any user sub-pages, I am going to request approval for it to run using Auto-Wiki-Browser and possible written in Perl, I would like some help building its source code so it can run using AWB — I'm completely inexperienced with bot source code and would like some help to build it up. Thanks in advance! --The Sunshine Man 11:34, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

It is best to request the task here and let somebody else who can code the bot implement and run the idea. I would, though, be willing to setup an svn system for you and some partial collaborative work. --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 03:51, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

The article (which was formerly a featured article candidate) Apollo program was recently renamed from Project Apollo. Please could, if possible, a bot go through and replace all links that link to Project Apollo to Apollo program. This is the list of over 500 articles which link to Special:Whatlinkshere/Project Apollo. Basically, I want to make all pages link directly to Apollo program rather than a redirect. You may think this unnecessary, that's okay. Thanks anyway (I've been at it all morning). --J. Atkins (talk | contribs) 12:03, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Generally, changing a link to point directly at an article rather than at the redirect is something we don't approve bots to do. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 12:39, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Uh, what he said. ;) Please see WP:R. Thank you. -- Seed 2.0 12:41, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay. I should have looked at the redirect policy first, sorry. Thanks for clarifying it. --J. Atkins (talk | contribs) 16:12, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

 Declined

Yes! I know this is something that is frequently denied! But R has an idea:  :)

A bot is set to run on an account without the word "bot" in it. It will place a welcome template on new user's talk page (I like {{WelcomeMenu}}). Now, everyone always says "it's doesn't have the feeling to it if you're welcomed by a bot". This is why the name wouldn't include "bot" and the account could be shared (ahh...a violation of account policy :) ) by several trusted users/admins who would answer questions left on the bot's talk page (since it would be welcoming every user, it would probably receive a lot of messages.) Like I said... just a proposal. May sound a little crazy. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:07, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea of a welcoming bot, but I think the only way to get around the obvious impersonal problem is for the bot to sign the welcome from a user (the user could be changed with each welcome taken from a list of users that wish for the bot to sign their name). I think this could alleviate most of the problems that are associated with a WelcomeBot. Ryan Postlethwaite 23:17, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Wow Ryan...I never thought of that. That's a great idea! Maybe I'll find someone who's programmed a denied welcome bot before and ask them if they can do that. Then submit a BRFA. I think ST47 has written one. I've asked him if he could do something like you've suggested. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:20, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

That'd be interesting. perhaps users could 'sign up' and for every welcome, one of their signatures could be used at random? I'll pull the code out of where ever it is and try to hack something, we could do, say, if a user edits and has a blank User talk, they get welcomed, but it would need to be people who edited and have no warnings...someone should post to the VP. --ST47Talk 23:33, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Maybe the list should be kept offline? --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:35, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that's probably wise. Two processes would be the way to go, one to get the list of users and another to screen them, first for contribs, then for a user talk page.

So it would only welcome users who have made an edit? And I've linked to this at the pumps proposal's page. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:41, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, a blank talk, with contribs would be best, but maybe it should be kept to users that have registered within the past week/month (not sure how feesable that is)? VP might be a good idea for this one. Ryan Postlethwaite 23:44, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, it'd be accounts that had just registered. The IRC end would look for new accounts and make a list, and then once it hits 500, output the oldest 100. --ST47Talk 23:50, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Please, please, don't welcome vandals, trolls, impersonators, blockable usernames, spammers or sockpuppets, especially for their contributions. It really cheapens genuine welcomes. For this reason I think it is a bad idea, but whatever. Thanks. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 23:52, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, it wouldn't leave a message if the page exists, so if it has a vandalism warning, it won't be welcomed. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:57, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

It's also the vandals without warnings who shouldn't be welcomed. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 23:58, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

(2ec)Well, if this goes forward, it'd welcome users who had edited but had no warnings, and I added the delay to ensure that if they had vandalized, there would have been time to warn. --ST47Talk 23:59, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

If we wanted a name without "bot", User:Welcomer is available. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 00:01, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like an interesting idea... Tim^V.B._{{critic & speak}} 15:31, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

You really should not welcome people at random, but rather should look through their contributions and give advice as needed. A bot cannot do that. ^(H) 00:04, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Most people just place a welcome template, H. Which is what the bot would be doing. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 00:06, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

H: Noone does that, this bot would be no different. --ST47Talk 00:10, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 00:11, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Support, I like this idea of a special bot. As R said before, User:Welcomer is available and that would fit perfectly with the template chosen. Let me know about the progress of this :) Extranet is now E ^talk 00:42, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I do precisely that. I would hope many editors do. If you don't look through contributions you could be leaving an utterly inappropriate message. Why else would all the specialized welcome messages exist if not for people welcoming individually based upon context?

See also bugzilla:9213: New-messages bar not coming up and/or getting stuck up for anons. --Quiddity 01:47, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

If you used the signature of or maybe as second signature (i.e. User:welcomer & User:jeepday {<-- me}) where the second user was not only a volunteer on the welcome committee but was also actively editing currently. That way they are getting a welcome from someone who is actually currently online. I think I would also welcome IP's with message tailored to them talking about the benefits of signing up. There is nothing wrong with dropping a welcome message on the talk page of a new vandal, lets them know they are not working in the dark. (I sometimes drop a {{welcome}} instead of a "test tag" on IP's) Jeepday (talk) 13:57, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

How would we determine who is online? I could make an IRC channel where people - who already signed up with their sig and IRC name - could sign in and out? --ST47Talk 14:56, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Welcome them by hand thanks. This has been denied many many times, and the idea of having it deliver on behalf of people has been discussed as well. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 15:48, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

How about something like User:SuggestBot. Users opt-in, and then receive a small list of some new users with blank talk and some contribs. A user can then make sure the contribs are helpful and post whatever welcome message is best. -- pb30<talk> 16:08, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

• Given the huge amount of sockpuppets, test accounts, vandal accounts and other junk, I'm not at all sure it's worth the effort to "welcome" all those. >Radiant< 12:09, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
  • But there's plenty of new people that come here to write an encyclopedia. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 22:01, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Yes, but I think it's better, when you see some useful edits by an account with no talk page yet, to give them a manual and personal "hello", than to have this automated by some program. >Radiant< 09:01, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
      • Just like humans do, the bot will welcome with a premade template. I've seen very fwe new users who've actually received a custom message. Also, as said above, it will sign with a users signature. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 11:12, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
        • Support many users seem overwhelmed when they first join Wikipedia and a bot would be a great way to make sure anyone who joins knows where to go to for help. Blackjack48  ♠ â™£ 15:17, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
          • There's a convenient "Help" link in the left menu. If that can't provide resources as well the welcome message, then it should be improved. –Pomte 08:38, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

A welcome from a bot is no different that a custom account creation message. I oppose welcoming people without examining their contributions to see if they should be welcomed. ^(H) 15:20, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

As said above, if it's a vandal, it will probably have warnings. If it has warnings, the page exists. If the page exists, it won't welcome them. (There is an amount of time between the account creation and the welcome). --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 21:43, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I have done mass welcoming manually, using blank pages as a list, that is not the case. Many of the blank talk pages I was going to welcome did indeed have vandalism only histories. Other had made simple mistakes like not understanding our inclusion criteria. My point is that dropping a welcome and leaving was not enough, I had to examine the contributions and act accordingly. ^(H) 02:14, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

So how about this: A user signs up to receive a handful of users to welcome, delivered by a bot. The bot looks at new users who have been a member for X amount of time, have X amount of edits, and have a blank talk page. This way users can look at the contribs, pick the correct template, and post it. -- pb30<talk> 03:21, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Being welcomed by a bot (actually all the communication with WP automatons) could be quite a turnoff for people. Look at the bot informing people about their pictures proposed for delete - either people ignore it, get upset or take it as already made decision of some power controling the robots. I can't remeber if I ever saw the desired response for this message on IfD. Pavel Vozenilek 20:36, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree. And what about when they find out it was just some bot made to look like a person? "You deceived me!" Better for humans or other sentient beings (now no-one can accuse me of systemic bias :D) to give the welcome message. It's more personal and shows our wiki-community feel. In a nutshell, what it means is if welcomes are given out automatically, then the welcomes are useless, because there isn't actually anyone there that's welcoming them. --WikiSlasher 13:05, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

This maybe late, but Wikiquotes has a welcome bot. ~ Wikihermit _(HermesBot) 02:15, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I have hundreds of stubs, tagged with a few Manitoba related templates, in a couple categories, which are going to take me a REALLY REALLY long time to tag, if possible, could a Bot be created, (temporarily), to automatically add the Project banner, and assess as stub class on the article talk page? This would make my job a lot easier. The bot does not need to run for a very long time, and doesn't need to do it quickly, just faster than me, which is pretty slow. Thanks, GrooveDog 22:28, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

my bot can do this, can you expand on what you want though? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 22:29, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The WikiProject which I founded, "Wikipedia:WikiProject Manitoba", is in need of a bot that can go and tag all stub talk pages with the {{WPMAN}} template. The stub name is {{Manitoba-stub}}, and there are a couple types of Manitoba related stubs.

The fact is, all that tagging will take forever, and I was wondering if a bot could do it for me. :) GrooveDog 02:11, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

define and there are a couple types of Manitoba related stubs otherwise it sounds clear cut. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 03:20, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I would need your bot to tag the talk pages of all articles that include the {{Manitoba-stub}}, {{Manitoba-road-stub}}, {{Manitoba-geo-stub}}, and {{Manitoba-politician-stub}} templates. It would tag those talk pages with {{WPMAN|class=stub}} template, so that I don't have to, because there are many many many stubs in those categories. GrooveDog 12:08, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

ok give me a few days. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 15:22, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Currently running myself. --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 17:48, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

 Done Work will finish tonight.. (tagging one page per minute). --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 19:17, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Is there a some pywikipedia code to do this? :: maelgwn :: talk 02:24, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Could we have a bot go through the deletion log and remove deleted images from articles? There are hundreds of images that are deleted each day, and the admins don't have the capacity to remove them. The bot should probably mention the admin who deleted the image and the reason from the deletion log so that questions is directed correctly and not to the bot operator (ref.). Rettetast 17:23, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Instead of deleting or delinking the images, I would recommend replacing them. A simple placeholder image, like eg. Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg should do the trick. That way, the layout of the article's doesn't get screwed up (well, hopefully). --Seed 2.0 18:20, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Maybe, but it has to be a general image since there a number of reasons why images are deleted. I forgot one thing the bot should do. It should ignore images withe deletion summary that includes "I8" which means that the image has moved to commons, and it should also check if there is an image at commons with the same name and ignore it if it exists. Rettetast 18:32, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

You could do it with AWB, but it would take a while. --Wikihermit ^{(Talk • HermesBot)} 23:32, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I wanted to make this bot, but I never found a way to sort the logs by namespace. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 23:51, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

In AWB? Make List from: then add the log. It doesn't work for AWB because the image is already deleted. If you wanted to do this with AWB, you would have to manually add the deleted image under More. I don't think there is a simpler way with AWB. Maybe you could check with Betacommand, Rettetast. Wikihermit ^{(Talk • HermesBot)} 00:27, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I knew I couldn't do it with AWB, but IIRC, you can't sort the logs by namespace. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 13:54, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

AzaToth has just added a great feature to TW, that does just this for up to 500 images at a time. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!)

Don't User:CommonsDelinker and User:OrphanBot already do much of this? How big is the problem with images that aren't caught by either bot (yes, I know that there are some images that don't fit into the remit of either)? --ais523 17:23, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

How about a bot that finds all examples of "i.e." and "e.g." and lists them (and the sentence they're used in), I also mean any variations of the terms, e.g. "i.e", "ie". The reason is because most people don't know how to properly use them, i.e. they write "e.g." when they meant "i.e." and vice-versa, see e.g. vs. i.e..

Also note that I managed to use both terms in my sentence, isn't that nice ;-) Jeffrey.Kleykamp 23:33, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Type i.e. in the search box, but then press "search" not go, and voilà you have a list with the sentence they are used in. Jackaranga 08:03, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

But that doesn't really give you a list, e.g. for "e.g." it gives you "E G Martin", "E G Marshall", "E. G. Coffman", etc. which has nothing to do with exempli gratia, what I want is a list like this:

• "(e.g., choosing the anti-tank gunner to combat enemy armored vehicles)" article: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
• [Next quote here] article [Next article here]

A bot couldn't determine the difference between the two. :: maelgwn :: talk 00:12, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

A bot could tell the difference because there are spaces between the E and G, also the words are capitalized and the titles of articles, I only want the text inside the article and it would look for these exact spellings: "e.g.", "e.g", "eg", "eg.", and the exact same thing with E capitalized because it might be used in the beginning of the sentence. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 09:56, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Somebody should make a bot that changes [external links] to other Wikimedia sites into interwiki links. This fumbles external link counts, and misleads people into thinking they are going out somewhere else. This, that and the other 10:59, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I'll take this one on. I've already started thinking about handling similar cases for internal links (ex. Main Page vs Main Page). This would be similar. I've seen a number of variations in how people format these (ex. Main Page[17]) that will need to be taken into account. It will take me a couple of days to put it all together. I will submit a bot request in awhile unless someone sees a problem with this. -- JLaTondre 13:21, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Its almost possible with AWB. The only problem I'm having is adding the second ] to the end of the link. See [18]. --Wikihermit ^{(Talk • HermesBot)} 00:01, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

 Done HermesBot is now approved to do this. ~ Wikihermit _(HermesBot) 04:10, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. This, that and the other 08:10, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

External links in the references sections should be left alone though I think. --WikiSlasher 07:11, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't make much difference, does it [19]? It still links to the same page, and I can't find anything in the MOS, so I'll leave it unless someone shows a problem. ~ Wikihermit _(HermesBot) 15:03, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, the formatting of the link would be different. It would show as a Wikimedia-project link, rather than a fully external link. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 15:13, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

It's a minor issue, but if you're making a reference in an article to a Wikimedia project (like in the article Wikipedia) and you go "printable version" and print it, normally it would have the URL there in brackets next to it, e.g. "List of policies and guidelines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_policies_and_guidelines) . English Wikipedia. Retrieved on 2007-01-31." So someone could jump straight to the reference without going to Wikipedia, then typing it in the box. Also, this way you won't risk making a bad link in any number of our mirrors. It might not matter that much though. --WikiSlasher 11:02, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Within the articles in this category I would like all instances of the words "High Commission" and "Consulate General" to be spelt capitalised and without a hyphen separating the words. Kransky 10:35, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Probably not a good bot request. AWB... This, that and the other 10:43, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

:Note: The category was tagged as {{db-author}} so I guess we can consider this request withdrawn. -- Seed 2.0 10:46, 12 June 2007 (UTC) Link in the request has been changed. --Seed 2.0 10:48, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Can you provide a complete list of instances? :: maelgwn :: talk 07:58, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Biography Comment MovingIn a recent change of our template, we have removed a message asking you to leave comments on your assessment in a /Comments subpage. However, we would like the comments to still be found. We need a bot to go through Category:Biography_articles_with_comments and visit every articles /Comments subpage. Then the bot should add the comments to the respective article's talk page under a section called: WikiProject Biography Assessment Comments. Then the bot should blank the /Comments subpage and put the page in Category:Biography articles with a comments subpage that needs deletion

 Not done – MadmanBot did a trial run at 2 edits/minute and discovered a few things:

1. The number of talk pages in Category:Biography articles with comments is declining rapidly -- it seems transclusions of the new template no longer include that category, so talk pages are removed from it as soon as MediaWiki realizes there's no reason for them to be there anymore. The category is therefore now useless until the category is added back to the template and the bot waits about a day for it to be repopulated.
2. Those comments subpages are used by several entities such as the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team. The bot would have to check Whatlinkshere and subst: each reference to the comments. While this is possible, it may be more advantageous to keep things the way they are for now, as WP 1.0 is a very important project. Talk it over with your fellow editors and get back to me.

Thanks! — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 04:23, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I didn't expect this problem.

(moved from my talk page)

The only solution I can really see is that we have that line of code in there and have the category be: Category:Biography articles with comments. Then we would have to go through and move any of our comments to the main talk page, manually. If our comments are the only thing on the page then we can list it for deletion. Does this sound good to you? --Psychless 04:46, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

You can do that. A bot wouldn't be involved in any way, then? The bot can easily copy all comments to the talk page. It has no way of determining, however, if those comments are only those of WikiProject Biography. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 04:49, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

OK. You didn't expect this problem, which is fine. But please, before trying something else and coming up against another problem, please revert back to the status quo, and try a longer discussion, involving more people, before making changes like this. At the moment, this looks like a reaction against people asking for comments during the assessment drive, and that is a bad motivation to change things like this. Carcharoth 10:03, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Per responses here and on Template talk:WPBiography, this is clearly no longer an uncontroversial task. The Psychless doubtless had good intentions, but it would seem that the drawbacks of modifying the current Comments structure greatly outweigh any benefits that there might be. WPBiography cannot remove (or have removed) these subpages without verifying that the only comments on each page are theirs, and that the subpages are not transcluded by any other pages. As such, this is not a job for a bot.

 Declined — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 12:12, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:MOS#Section management indicates that those who link to sections should add an editor's note next to the linked-to section, as a notice to future editors (in case they, for instance, change the section heading). This is easy to forget to do and also seems that it would be very easy to automate. --Iknowyourider 16:20, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. I assume it would be easiest and most efficent for a bot to scan a database dump for this to find unnoted sections. Before I write this, are there any other suggestions on what the bot should avoid or look out for? I'll begin creating it in about 2 or so days if I this recieves no respones or input. --Android Mouse 17:12, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

This bot request page is interesting. Apologies if this sort of request is the wrong sort of request, but I wondered if the following data gathering processes are best done with a bot or other ways, or if the processes are even possible?

• (1) Scrape a transclusion list from "what links here" for {{WPBiography}} (warning: this is large list of nearly 400,000 articles). This will be a list of talk pages of biographical articles, with the talk pages to be examined, along with the associated articles, in the next step. If possible, exclude from this list the pages that have "non-bio=yes" in the WPBiography template.
• (2) Run down the list and examine the talk pages and associated articles to determine the following:
  • (a) Examine the talk page to see if the WPBiography template has a "listas=" parameter (excluding cases where 'listas' is there but blank). If it does, extract and list the listas parameter.
  • (b) Examine the talk page to see if it has a DEFAULTSORT magic word on the page. If it does, extract and list the sort value being used. If it doesn't, note this as well.
  • (c) Examine the article page to see if it has a DEFAULTSORT magic word on the page. If it does, extract and list the sort value being used. If it doesn't, note this as well.
  • (d) Examine the article page to see if category pipe-sorting is being used. (Should be anything after a "|" in the category tags). If so, extract and list the sort values being used (there may often be more than one sort being used). If no pipe-sorting is being used (sometimes the pipe-sort character is there with nothing after it), note this as well.

The aim of this is to try and get a handle on pipe-sorting, DEFAULTSORTing, listas, and sort them out, but for biographical articles only. These are the ones that most urgently need this to be sorted out, and the vast majority will simply be a switch from "NAMES SURNAME" to "SURNAME, NAMES". The next step would be getting humans to pore over this data and decide what to do next. The ultimate aim is to have categories involving people properly pipe-sorted so that they can be reliably browsed.

• • (e) As a bonus, could the bot-generated list also state whether the article contains Wikipedia:Persondata data, and extract that as well, as this often contains relevant information on how the article should be listed in a list or category?

Some relevant links: {{WPBiography}}, Wikipedia:Category#Category sorting, Wikipedia:Category#Setting a default sort key and Wikipedia:Persondata. Note also {{DEFAULTSORT}}, as many people use the template pipe character (|) instead of the magic word colon (:).

So, is a bot the best way to get this data, or do I need to persuade someone to do lots of datamining on a database dump (I wouldn't really know how to handle or process a database dump)? Carcharoth 16:25, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

---

Long discussion moved to User:Polbot/ideas/defaultsort

---

• Phew! I think moving this somewhere else to thrash out the details might be an idea! Carcharoth 13:41, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

• • I moved much of this to User:Polbot/ideas/defaultsort. I'll write up a request for bot approval today or tomorrow. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 13:53, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Thanks. Carcharoth 14:05, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Would it be possible for a bot to tag the talk pages of everything in Category:Volleyball and its subcats with {{WPVolleyball}}? A tedious task, but one which would aid the startup of this new project. Cheers --Pak21 21:09, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

ill start preping for this and should have some data for you to review. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 00:32, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

A request for the bot operator... for convenience's sake, could the bot please add the template to any existing {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}, if one exists? It's actually quite easy to do with a preg_replace. If one doesn't yet exist but should after the addition of {{WPVolleyball}}, the page will be automatically identified and a helper from the {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} cleanup task force will get to it. It's difficult to have a bot create the {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} correctly. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 00:48, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Please look these cats over and remove any that shouldn't be tagged. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 01:25, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

All pages in the Volleyball cat tree should be tagged. I'm unfamiliar with bots so I ask the question, Can pages that already included the template be ignored, or will there be duplicate templates on an articles talk space? BrianZ^(talk) 14:27, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

After struggling with encoding for a bit, I manager to generate this list. Betacommand probably has a "do stuff with all pages in this category" sort of program (which is possibly why he proposed the tagging by category), but if a simple list is needed, I made one. Gracenotes^T § 16:28, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Gr, I had written a recursive algorithm while offline that made a list of every single page in Category:Volleyball and all subcategories to a given depth (in this case, no limit). It works, but Betacommand made the list first, so use his; perhaps I shall made use of my function at a later date. Gracenotes^T § 01:37, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, you could apply that algorithm to Category:Earthquakes and update the list I've linked to there... :-) (by update, I mean generate the list, remove duplicates, alphabetize, dump the list on the category page, save, edit and remove, and then date and link to the new list by using a static link to the old page version). I call this flattening a category, so that you can access a list of all the items in a set of subcategories without using the CatTree (which doesn't alphabetize). One day, the software will do this for us. If it does already, someone tell me, please! Carcharoth 01:46, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

done Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 02:10, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Um, thanks, but that is the categories. I wanted a list of the articles in all those categories. See the example here. Carcharoth 02:44, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Yay, done! I had initially coded something in JavaScript, but that was too easy (and rather inefficient, given the latitude of laziness in the language), so I made a function in Java. The results are at User:Gracenotes/Sandbox (hopefully the formatting is okay), indiscriminate of namespace. Gracenotes^T § 03:24, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

It appears as though your list has 150 items; mine, 247. Gracenotes^T § 03:27, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! I think the category structure must have changed, with some big new categories getting tied into the pre-existing structure. Either that, or someone's been writing lots of articles! :-) Carcharoth 03:32, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

No problem! And I got to practice with the Java collections framework :) Gracenotes^T § 04:54, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I've noticed some articles getting vandalised quite a few times. This is an article that I have found to be vadalised:Inca Empire. I think we would need more bots to revert vandalism to the previous article prior to the vandalism. Its annoying how every now and then I find a article has been vandalised. I would make the bot myself, but I don't know how. ☺Efansay^(talk)/_{Contributions}☺ 10:35, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

If you had read the bold message at the top, you'd have seen "There are also quite a few "frequently denied requests", for various reasons, such as ... an anti-vandalism bot, as several already exist." There are a few antivandalism bots already running. ST47 10:45, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

If you're interested, you may also want to look into what you can do to help. There are various tools that, if used responsibly, can help make finding and reverting vandalism a lot easier. --Seed 2.0 10:52, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Well I've found some articles that have not been reverted by Anti-vandilism bots, so I end up fixing them myself. I just thought we could use more, or have each bot go through a section of all the articles in Wikipedia. ☺Efansay^(talk)/_{Contributions}☺ 10:54, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

There's a certain limit to what anti-vandalism bots can catch. We'll always require human RC patrollers to go through and inspect edits manually. Shadow1 (talk) 11:31, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

And when anti-vandalism bots catch vandalism, they usually catch them so messily, I wish they didn't try to catch any at all. Gracenotes^T § 16:06, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Now now :o -- Tawker 04:14, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

The "06-14" part of the date 2007-06-14 for example is linked correctly to the article June 14. But sometimes only year and month are relevant or known (like in Comparison of media players). At the moment the 2007-06 leads to nowhere, even if it obvious means June 2007. So I think we need a bot who leads this ISO 8601 date to it's corresponding article.--87.167.202.224 18:22, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

So you want a bot to replace 2007-06 with June 2007? ~ Wikihermit 23:12, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

No, a bot who links 2007-06 to June 2007, not replace --87.167.233.106 17:28, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

How many years back should it go? ST47 22:36, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

For the Comparison of media players at least till 1992, but i think more would be better.--87.167.249.160 15:47, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Task approval for creating redirects from all pages of format YYYY-MM to Month YYYY requested, where 1990 <= YYYY < 2008. ST47 15:52, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Is there anyway possible to make a temporary signing bot in absence of Hagermanbot? Miranda 22:19, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

If we can get the code that HagermanBot is running from Hagerman then I would be able to run it. E ^talk 22:25, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I would like a bot to replace this template {{RugbyleagueWikiproject}} with {{WikiProject Rugby league|class=|importance=}}. (Ignore the links, just replace the templates)

This is because are replacing an old template with a new one on talk pages. It is a tedious job and are about 500 articles with this template.

It needs to replace not add. There is a category in which the talk pages with those pages are added to which is Category:WikiProject Rugby league template replacements

Thanks ^Special_Windler 12:14, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I'll run my bot and do it. ~ Wikihermit 15:37, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

 Done ~ Wikihermit 16:17, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

As part of WikiProject Rugby league, we need to tag all rugby league related articles with {{WikiProject Rugby league|class=|importance=}}. So alot of talk pages need to be tagged with that template.

Bassically all articles in this category (below) and all of its sub categories, and then it sub categories (so on) their talk pages need to be added.

Category:Rugby league

Or as a drop down <categorytree>Rugby league</categorytree>

But I don't want talk pages which already have that tag to have it replaced, because they are assessed and don't need replacing. The category Category:WikiProject Rugby league template pages has all the articles that do not need a templete added to that page. SpecialWindler_TALK 23:51, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

please look over this list of categories and let me know if any need removed. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 01:54, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

none of the categories need to be removed, except Category:Rugby league needs to be added

but just a question, does he bot overide previous talk pages which already have the template?

If they do, there is a category that has the articles which already have the template on it.

SpecialWindler_TALK 02:06, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

 Done Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 05:45, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Automatic Stub placing

I don't know if you can do it (WikiProject Biography) can seem to do it. But can you get a bot to automattically assess an article as stub by it's category.

What I want is that a bot adds {{WikiProject Rugby league|class=stub|importance=|auto=yes}} to all the talk pages in the following categories.

Category:Rugby league stubs Category:Rugby league biography stubs Category:New Zealand rugby league biography stubs Category:Australian rugby league biography stubs Category:United Kingdom rugby league biography stubs

But I don't know if a bot can do that, but it seems to do it (as I said) for WPP:BIO. And I don't want the bot to override an article's tag if there is one already there. But alot of the articles in the categories (above) don't even have a tag.

SpecialWindler_TALK 22:14, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Ill look into this. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 01:50, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

 Done Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 05:45, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

My Mistake

I know it clearly says "please look over this list of categories and let me know if any need removed" but it seems there a couple of categories that I missed and were tagged.

• Category:New Zealand rugby union biography stubs
• Category:Australian rugby union biography stubs
• Category:Irish rugby union biography stubs
• Category:Rugby union biography stubs
• Category:United Kingdom rugby union biography stubs

If a bot can remove the {{WikiProject Rugby league|class=|importance=}} from those talk pages, it would be much appreciated. Otherwise I will have to start manually removing them as it is my mistake.

Sorry. SpecialWindler_TALK 03:01, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

/me stabs. (Joke for creating this mess) and goes to fix. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 03:04, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Don't follow (still sorry for trouble) SpecialWindler_TALK 03:10, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

and Category:Rugby biography stubs (very very very very sorry) and thanks for doing this, it must be frustrating. SpecialWindler_TALK 03:20, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

 Done Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 05:45, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps someone could create a bot to mark orphaned images. The idea is this: obviously, there are currently a lot of orphaned images: but if this bot could mark any new uploads which, after a few weeks, are still orphaned, it would greatly help in cleaning up the nonsense. On image patrol you'd be shocked how many high-res pd-self images are uploaded, and never used. The Evil Spartan 23:16, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

How would the bot find orphaned images? I can't think of any efficient way to do this that doesn't involve being a server hog. Anyone have any ideas? But isn't there already a bot or two that does this? --Android Mouse 00:54, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

What I was thinking was the bot would, at least for now, only look at the new contributions list, and a few weeks later, go and check the what links here button. That really shouldn't be a problem for server hogging. In any case, Betacommand's bot is somehow managing to pull off something similar, though that's even looking at the old images. The Evil Spartan 00:58, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I run the bot that checks for orphaned fair use images, and it is running now. I have several checking methods for detecting orphans. what images were you thinking about targeting and why? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 01:38, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Mostly I was going for the "picture of me and my bf (he's so cute!)" type of image, that just happens to be 11MB. I'm exaggerating, but the fact is that a lot of people upload an image of themselves that they intend to use for personal use (user page), but never get around to doing so - meanwhile these images are totally useless elsewhere. These images are server hogs, and could probably use to go through ifd. The Evil Spartan 02:12, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

At this point that shit storm isnt worth it. It will make a lot of users mad, and waste server resources, The server space isnt an issue they will stay on the servers either way, and the work the bot would do checking 3 million images... Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 05:51, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Is there a bot available that can re-generate Wikipedia:WikiProject Louisville/Watchall? There have been a good deal of article renames recently, and thus, they have fallen off the watchlist. Thanks. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 17:31, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Done, let me know if you need it updated again. ST47 19:04, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Wow, that was quick! Muchos gracias! Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 20:23, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Per my disscussion above in the section entitled "WikiProject Rugby league tagging", can the tagging be done with the same with Category:James Bond. SpecialWindler talk 06:41, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Tagging in progress by User:STBot. ST47 13:42, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

285 pages found, 48 tagged (8 new pages), 236 ignored (236 already tagged). See User:STBot/Logs. ST47 14:03, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I think we need a bot to find all links to sections of pages which are being archived (such as WP:AN), and fix the links once the section has been archived. This will make it easier to follow a talk which is related to such sections. Od Mishehu 07:40, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 12#Internal link rot bot for some previous discussion on this idea. -- JLaTondre 11:40, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I remember approving this a few weeks ago, are you sure it doesn't exist? ST47 13:30, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Android Mouse Bot 4 I believe this is it -- pb30<talk> 13:59, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's it. It stopped editing a few days ago [20], because I broke the code while I was working on it. Unfourtunately I won't have much spare time for the next few days so won't be able to fix it until around Thursday. --Android Mouse 18:29, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I would like to request automation for work I presently do manually. The various subpages of WP:RFC excluding the one about user conduct all basically follow the format "bullet point - description - link to some talk page - timestamp". The idea is to automatically remove all such paragraphs older than a month; running this once per week is plenty. This seems similar to talk page archival bots (except that there doesn't need to be an archive here). >Radiant< 15:28, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Seeing how HagermanBot hasn't edited for a month, does anyone else think that it is useful and a substitute should be created (much like MartinBot substituted AntiVandalBot)? I really don't know how to code a bot, which is why I bring it up here. Hanoi Girl 19:36, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

The source was never released? Also, has anyone attempted to contact Hagerman through email or other means? --Android Mouse 19:57, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I will try to contact him via email. E ^talk 20:39, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I know this is a bit premature as r23052 is not yet live on en.Wikipedia, but once it is live could someone make a bot that would check every page that transcludes any of the {{Protection templates}} to see if those articles are actually protected or was it just somebody who thought that putting a protection template is same as protecting a page. Few days ago I accidentally found an article tagged with {{pp-semi-template}} (wrong template type to boot!). It was of course never protected. Shinhan 15:14, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

There was a bot that did this (and maybe still does this), I just can't remember which one it was. —METS501 (talk) 15:15, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

DomBot Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 15:18, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Then, whats the significance of the r23052? Shinhan 15:50, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

It improves the API and makes bot op's jobs easier. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 15:52, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

DomBot isn't the only bot that does this; there's another that does more, whose name escapes me at the moment. I'll think of it. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 17:07, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah, yes. This is also a function of DumbBOT. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 21:01, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Most of the time project templates are not removed from the talk pages after an article is redirected. It leaves the project categories pretty bloated as it starts piling up, and it seems like too big of a hassle to go through the larger projects by hand. I would say that a bot going through the various project categories would be helpful. TTN 00:08, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I've recently proposed a wikiproject that deals with the tagging of wikiproject banners on talk pages. This project would greatly benefit from a list of articles needing them. Articles in the list would have: no talk page or the talk page is in no category. The bot should also make sure the page isn't a disambiguation page or a redirect. I think this should make it so there are no false positives, and should include most articles that need a banner. These articles would listed in various subpages of Wikipedia:WikiProject Project Banners/Articles (when the page and project actually exist that is) e.g. /1, /2, /3, etc. They would be listed in the format:

# (article) — (talk page)

Example:

1. Jimbo Wales — Talk:Jimbo Wales
2. Jesus — Talk:Jesus
3. Isaac Newton — Talk:Isaac Newton

Each page should not exceed 100kb (Is this a good number?), to be kind to people with dial up and slower computers. The bot would only have to do this job once a month. Leave comments and questions below... --Psychless 20:51, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, here are a couple things, off the top of my head.

1. As I understand it, the WikiProject Council coordinates WikiProjects' efforts; I don't see the need to create another WikiProject to do the same thing. Further, WikiProjects' members are "editors that [. . .] collaborate on encyclopedic work"; I feel that such a WikiProject would not be encyclopaedic.
2. There are already too many WikiProject banners on talk pages. Efforts should be directed towards communication between WikiProjects and perhaps centralization of similar taskforces and subprojects.

That being said, if your WikiProject proposal is approved, my bot can easily handle your request; it's well within its scope. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 20:59, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, but what this project will do is very different from what the WikiProject Council does. The Council mainly helps you organize and get involved in a wikiproject. This is different. A project that improves an article's chance of getting improved is unencylcopedic?

• We are only adding wikiproject banners to pages that have no banners at all. How "nice" the talk page looks is less important than how good the article is. Again, we're only putting the banner on pages that don't have one at all so the communication effort argument doesn't really make sense.

Please take my response in the most "un-rude" way as possible :). Thank you for offering to do this! --Psychless 01:02, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

No offense taken; I can see your points. However, again, I'd prefer to see some evidence of community consensus before I set up this task. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 01:06, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I know, I don't expect the task to be started until the wikiproject is past the proposal stage. --Psychless 04:41, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

There are several bots that could do this. The issue is, why? WP:WPBIO, which has the largest number of articles bannered, has 386,000 articles. If even double that have banners (which I doubt), that means less than half of Wikipedia's articles have banners. What good is a list of half of wikipedia going to do anyone? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 05:58, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

My point (#2) exactly. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 06:51, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

As said in my wikiproject proposal, which I probably shouldn't of assumed everyone would read, the list would be used to easily find the articles that need the banner. We would then tag those articles with the banner. Also, according to the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Statistics, 970,000 articles have a banner which also incorporates assessment. --Psychless 14:22, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

just ask here for what you want tagged and we will have a bot do that for you. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 14:25, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

He doesn't need articles tagged at this time; he needs a list of nonexistent, blank, or uncategorized talk pages. I can easily do this; I just want to see what the WikiProject Council thinks of his proposal. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 17:14, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) WP:1.0 Work via Wikiprojects discussed this 5 months ago, but nothing really came from it.

Essentially, this is why this list of articles is needed. "There is currently a great deal of work being done across projects to assess articles for the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, and that's great, but a great number of articles are not currently tagged by projects which assess for this, and may never be. Therefore, the purpose of this project would be to tag and assess articles not currently covered by an assessing project, for the purposes of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team." (copied from previous link). If articles don't have an associated wikiproject banner(s), then it will never be assessed and that hinders the entire WP:1.0 project.

Although this request is for a list of articles needing banner tagging, I think the use of bots could help us a lot in doing the actual tagging. Using a bot, all the Category:Poets could be quickly tagged with the {{WPPoetry}} banner. Mahanga^Talk 03:32, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I greatly dislike having articles tagged by bots, but I suppose it can't be helped, since the WikiProjects love it. In regards to Wikipedia 1.0, it makes sense to me. It can't hurt to make the list; I may wait another day or two to see if there's any opposition to it from the Council, then I'll have it generated. It'll take four hours or so, but it's an easy variant of a task my bot already does. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 05:17, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

For what it's worth, coming from the Council and the Work via WikiProject group, but speaking strictly for myself, I would love to see this happen. It would get at least one project which (hopefully) will notice that the article falls within their scope aware of the article. Those individuals might then be able to help see if there is another project which perhaps deals more centrally with the subject, and maybe add that banner, even if there is no extant category to indicate the relationship. I know many of them will be categorized for the Biography project, but that project also seems to have the most active assessment unit, at least right now, so that might not be a real problem there. Anyway, just my two cents. John Carter 19:03, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Could a bot please replace all instances of {{s-gov}} with {{s-gov|}}. The missing pipe is screwing up pages and making a proposed template merge not go through. Thank you!
–Whaleyland ( Talk • Contributions ) 06:03, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

No, please don't do this, either by bot or manually. The request above is based on the resut of a series of modifications by KuatofKDY to the s-gov template, which broke the template and which I have reverted. A template should not require an empty parameter in order to work; if the only parameter is optional, it should work properly without a parameter rather requiring a blank parameter.
There are several other related issues involved in KuatofKDY's changes to this template, all of which should have been discussed and tested before being applied to such a widely-used template. The template is now protected at the last version which works correctly without the stray pipe. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:27, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I would like a bot to replace all instances of {{s-herald}} with {{s-her}} to better fit WP:SBS standards. This request is to sync the template with s- box standards that require the template to be an s- followed by three characters. The current format is unacceptible and has been approved for change to the proposed alternative. This change would affect less than 100 pages.
–Whaleyland ( Talk • Contributions ) 17:00, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose. There is no evidence of any consensus for this change, which replaces a clear template name with an obscure one. Approved? Where and by who? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:47, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to replace all instances of {{s-rig}} with {{s-pre}} to better fit WP:SBS standards. The template is redundant in the series as "Right to Rule" is arbitrary and the concept is already present in "Titles of pretention". This change will affect less than 15 pages and a redirect is already in effect.
–Whaleyland ( Talk • Contributions ) 17:09, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• This could be done with a simple move. A bot is not needed. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 18:10, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to replace all instances of {{s-culture}} with {{s-edu}} to better fit WP:SBS standards. This request is to sync the template with s- box standards that require the template to be an s- followed by three characters. The current format is unacceptible and has been approved for change to the proposed alternative. The new template, s-edu, will henceforth act as a merge of Template:s-aca and Template:s-culture. This change will affect less than 25 pages.
–Whaleyland ( Talk • Contributions ) 17:09, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose. There is no evidence of any consensus for this change (which replaces a clear template name with an obscure one), or for the claimed "WP:SBS standards". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:50, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• This could be done with a simple move. A bot is not needed. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 18:10, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to replace all instances of {{s-record}} with {{s-ach|rec}} to better fit WP:SBS standards. The template does not follow the rule of three characters following the s-. This template has already been designed with a redirect following the same parameters as the previous model and is now only pending bot replacement before deletion. This change will affect less than 30 pages.
–Whaleyland ( Talk • Contributions ) 17:09, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose. Please bots, don't do this: there is no evidence of any consensus for this change (which replaces a clear template name with an obscure one), or for the claimed "WP:SBS standards". I am trying to start some discussion of these changes, many of which have unfortunately involved breaking existing templates. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:52, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

How about a bot that goes through all the articles that are linked to {{Cite needed}} and things like that, then checks if the articles are about living people and adds the occurrence to a list, because WP:LIVING says "Remove unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material" and the way it says that sounds like there isn't a bot doing this already. PS: I understand that it won't get everything, e.g. poorly sourced material, but the idea still sounds good to me, Jeffrey.Kleykamp 19:37, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

It sounds good in theory, but I suspect it'd just create another massive backlog that no one would deal with. If a few editors would express interest in working on the resulting report, I'd support this. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 20:00, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not a bot operator, but I think this is unnecessary. It's fairly easy to tell which pages are biographies by looking at their titles in Category:Articles with unsourced statements or the "whatlinkshere" link of {{cite needed}}. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:02, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

It might sound easy to look at the what links here, and judge the names, but there are 10,000+ uses and only a handful are living people because of the policy. Also, there won't be that much information to look through because there are usually between 1-5 sentences that you need to delete and it's usually easy to tell which, so if it takes an average of 10 seconds to delete them, then it would take less than 17 minutes to delete 100. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 20:19, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

A lot of the information that is in those articles is easily sourceable. I agree that any unsourced info should be subject to summary removal, but I honestly don't think an approach of mass-deleting sentences at the rate of a bot is productive. Such mass changes are inherently generally met with resistance and/or hostility (the incidents of mass tagging fair use images and trivia sections come to mind). I personally agree with the latter, but it still produced a lot of controversy for several weeks. This proposal goes even farther, as it applies to content and not just a maintenance tag. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:38, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Jimbo says delete aggressively, [21], but I'm not sure how much we can trust his judgement, see this. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 20:44, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Heh, that's a fun factoid. :) I agree that we should delete "aggressively", but I don't know think that should translate to "without due consideration". In more than a few cases, content tagged with {{cite needed}} is based on a source noted in the article; it's just not yet in-line cited. I think content decisions deserve case-by-case attention that is absent from an automated process set on a 10-second cycle. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 21:07, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it should take more than 10 seconds, but the policy exists, and it clearly states that any such information should be deleted, so creating a list seems logical, now, there are three possibilities:

1. if people want to keep information then in the edit summary of the deletion it'll state that it should find a reference
2. if the information is truly notable then it'll be re-added eventually with a reference
3. if the person deleting thinks they could find a reference, then they can search for it in- or outside of the article

Jeffrey.Kleykamp 21:25, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Hold on ... is your proposal: (1) to have a bot compile a list of BLPs that are in Category:Articles with unsourced statements, or (2) to have a bot automatically or semi-automatically remove all BLP sentences tagged with {{cite needed}}? So far it's the latter I've been arguing against, but your statement above (especially the part about "the person deleting") implies that it's the former. If it is the former, I have no problem with the idea. Could you please clarify? Thanks, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 22:54, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Number 1, I want a bot that lists all articles about living people that have an unsourced statement, so that a human can find and delete it. Hope that clears things up, Jeffrey.Kleykamp 23:15, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. In that case, I apologise for the misunderstanding. I have nothing against such a measure if someone is in fact willing to go through the list. I do hope, however, that the issue above regarding the mechanical removal of sourced (but not obviously so) or easily sourceable is kept in mind. Cheers, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:19, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's still a reasonable point to consider because having a bot-generated list does tend to take the human element out of the process, albeit only to a certain extent. I know this has been discussed numerous times but the fact of the matter remains that people usually tend to focus more on the issue as it presents itself when not given a huge laundry list of articles that supposedly need to be fixed. This is particularly true when that list stretches from the extensive into the unmanageable (see the bajillion image-related discussions we've had in various places in the past few months). Please also note that I'm not really opposed to the idea of using a bot-created list to get started, as long as there's human review; I'm merely stating the obvious. -- S ^up? 23:31, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

That's true. When doing any kind of backlog cleanup, I notice that my standards for tagging pages for deletion start declining after about 30 minutes. That is, I'm more likely to tag for deletion a page that I previously would have considered saveable. Emptying a backlog for its own sake can be unproductive. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:48, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

First thing's first, if you think about it, there should be no "human element" because these things shouldn't be happening in the first place. Plus, I don't think the list would be that big because it's only a small percentage of the 10,000+ {{Cite needed}} and because a lot of those things are in there for a bit of a long time, so after the first list it would get smaller, especially if the bot runs often, and it doesn't take that much time to delete something unreferenced. Also, the bot could be used for other proposes, basically any job that requires two+ templates being on the same page including it's talk page (i.e. the algorithm just finds common "what links here" links and counts talk pages as part of the article). Jeffrey.Kleykamp 00:03, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

An example of a secondary use would be articles that have {{advert}} and a second template, like {{POV}}, could be a sign that the article is beyond saving. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 14:19, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Another example would be Full site map, what I mean is that it could start at one article and look at what links here, then go through each article in that list and see what links there, etc. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 14:37, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I recently had a bot go through all articles in Category:Manitoba and tag all of their talkpages with the {{WPMAN}} template. Unfortunately, the bot tagged a few pages which had already been assessed for the project, so now there are two project banners on a few pages. Would it be possible for a bot to go through all talk pages and remove redundant banners from the ones that do actually have two {{WPMAN}} templates? Thanks tons, GrooveDog 14:14, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I can have my bot go through all the talkpages to make a list of pages that were tagged in error. -- S ^up? 16:08, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, some of these have three tags on them. I'll just go ahead and fix them. I'll post here when I'm done. --S ^up? 16:28, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, GrooveDog 16:29, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

 Done You're welcome. :) -- S ^up? 17:36, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks (as a WP:MB member)! Greeves ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:39, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Suggested bot: This would remind admins who protect an article and forget to put a protection template on it. If no protection template is present on an article after it has been protected for, say, 10 minutes. the bot would post a message on the talk page of the administrator who applied protection. Kla'quot (talk | contribs) 08:30, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

So, that bot would have to be run every 10 min to check newly protected pages for existence of protection template? — Shinhan < talk > 13:12, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, in reality, it would be more efficient to have it run continuously to make a list of all newly protected pages from the feed, which it would then have to check in $time+600 to determine if the template was added or not. The thing I'm more concerned about is that this would be a great way to annoy a lot of administrators within a short period of time without really gaining anything. It's rather easy to figure out if a page is protected, semi-protected or unprotected and, in my experience, few admins forget to add an appropriate protection template. The ten minute limit is also a bit arbitrary and, if memory serves (I might be wrong about this one though), we already have a bot that does this for protected talkpages (VoABot, possibly at one point also DumbBOT and I believe also another bot). --S ^up? 13:36, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. The problem happens often enough that I've caught about a dozen of these randomly. I know we have bots which remove templates from recently unprotected pages, but they don't do the reverse. Jon Savage was recently semi-protected for 13 days without a template. It is easy for experienced, logged-in users to find out the protection status of a page, however inexperienced users (i.e. nearly everyone) won't figure it out. "You can edit this page right now" is a mandate not to be taken lightly. Would it address concerns if we only bugged admins after an hour or 12 hours, for example? We could have the bot crawl through the list of protected pages a few times a day. Cheers, Kla'quot (talk | contribs) 16:18, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

We need a bot to further sub-divide sub-pages of List of United Kingdom locations, per discussion at Talk:List of United Kingdom locations#Lists too long. Thank you. Andy Mabbett 20:29, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Anyone? Andy Mabbett 14:21, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

How would a bot do that? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 14:23, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Something like

1. Read existing page.
2. Determine size
3. If over max size; determine logical break point(s); start new page; write page header; write table of places until logical breakpoint reached; write page footer; record scope of page.
4. Repeat until old page fully copied
5. Copy old page discussion s to first new page; append note saying this has been done
6. Delete old page
7. Update page header template with list of new pages, if any
8. Repeat for next old page

If that's to complex for bot writers, then at least a list of pages and the number of entries would be useful, to facilitate manual sub-division. Andy Mabbett 10:27, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Define "determine logical break points". I think thats the main thing that Betacommand was asking; you need to explain how is the bot supposed to know when to subdivide, or what is a logical break point.

Also, bots are not run under administrator accounts, so deleting pages cant be automated. (that probably includes marking pages for CSD) — Shinhan < talk > 13:22, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I think the former point is covered at at Talk:List of United Kingdom locations#Lists too long. As to your latter point, the pages concerned would be orphaned, so could be redirected; or AFDd, or speedied, manually. Andy Mabbett 13:29, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I'd say that at least a quarter of all articles have references or inline links which occur between a word and punctuation, instead of after the punctuation as is accepted typographical practice. This makes otherwise good articles look unprofessional, and seems to be exactly the kind of thing a bot could fix rapidly. I am suggesting the regexp substitution:

s/(<ref.*</ref>|\[http://.* .*])([.,])/\2\1/ig

Is that reasonable? Granted, I don't know what the current though on running a bot over all articles is, but I think this would be worth it. BenB4 00:49, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't know whether it'd be worth it or not, but I do know you need to make that expression ungreedy, either by changing the instances of .* to .*? or by adding modifier /U (PCRE_UNGREEDY). — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 00:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I think best place for this would be Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos#Markup. I dont think this problem is widespread enough or problematic enough to warrant a bot checking and then fixing 1.8 milion pages. — Shinhan < talk > 13:10, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

It would be a good thing to put into a bot that's already going around fixing similar things, though. — Omegatron 00:24, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi can some botuser please notify all members at Wikipedia:WikiProject Yu-Gi-Oh! for the new reform proposal by me, thanks user:andersmusician --190.42.191.129 06:20, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

No. That's what WikiProject talk pages are for; all WikiProject members should have them watchlisted, because that's where discussion relating to the WikiProject's administration goes. A bot doesn't need to deliver this message to 31 users' talk pages just in case they're not paying attention to the WikiProject of which they are a member. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 06:30, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

You might look at User:HermesBot and User:R Delivery Bot - these will deliver "newsletters" to WikiProject members. But in general, we don't use (or allow) bots here to replace watchlists and talk pages. Otherwise user pages would be deluged with bot postings.

The standard process is to post a reform proposal on a project talk page, then see what others think. If you get consensus, then you can make changes as proposed. If you get no response whatsoever, then you should make a small, initial change, to see how others react (or if anyone cares). If you get significant disagreement from those who are actively watching the talk page, then you should take it as a sign that your reform proposal either needs modification or to be dropped altogether. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:21, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry if it's in the archive, but as dedicated as I am, I can't see skimming 12 archives before posting this idea. I wonder if someone could create (or has created) a bot that would work like the "random article" function, but would serve up an article from a list that the user maintains. I have a watchlist, but there are many articles in it that are only there because I'd like to remember to read through them again and see if I could come up with improvements; therefore, if no one changes them, my watchlist isn't going to remind me of them. It'd be handy if there were a bot that simply served up, on demand, one of the articles I've marked so that I remembered to go back over it again and see what I could add or improve. Lawikitejana 05:56, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand. Why not just go to [22] and randomly pick one yourself? --Android Mouse 06:02, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

You mean Special:Watchlist/edit? — Shinhan < talk > 06:16, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

To Android mouse: (1) Just FYI, the redirect you provided is the version of the watchlist that shows changes; as I mentioned, that's not going to remind me of ones no one changed. (2) I don't want actually to watch all of the pages that I would have on the list I'd make for the bot; I watch pages where I want to catch vandalism, etc., and I can't watch them well if there are too many. I would want to be able to make a separate list for the articles that I want to revisit and improve, then have a way to make slogging through it a little easier. (3) Even if I created a separate list as raised in point #2, I'm not a machine and can't keep track easily of which pages, out of 963, I have or haven't revisited recently (that's the current length of my watchlist, WITHOUT all the pages I'd like to go back and add to). '(4) As I mentioned in point #2, my watchlist is distinct from this list; most of my watchlist wouldn't go on this list, because most of my watchlist is about eliminating vandalism or inaccuracies quickly, on articles to which I couldn't really make much improvement or addition to existing content.

To Shinhan: No, I know that I can edit the listing itself — that's how I got it back down under 1,000. I'm talking about something to help me cycle through editing the articles. Lawikitejana 08:50, 26 June 2007 (UTC) P.S. Nonetheless, thanks for responding constructively!

My suggestion was not to edit the watchlist but to use that list and a random number generator to find a random article from that page.

Ok, second suggestion. You would first have to make a page in your userspace that would list every article you wish to random-watch. Something like User:Lawikitejana/RandomWatchList. You would use # to make a numbered list from that. Next, you use some kind or random number generator (like [23]) to generate a number between 1 and <number_of_article_on_your_randomwatchlist_page>. The random number that is generated would mean you should edit the article on that line.

Example: Your RandomWatchList page has 127 articles on it and random number generator gives number 73. So, you go and edit the 73rd article on your RandomWatchList page. (Since its a numbered list shouldnt be hard to find it).

Thats easy version. If you want something more complicated you could also program your own bot...— Shinhan < talk > 13:11, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

are these lists category based? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 05:53, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Is there a bot available to add {{WikiProject Netherlands}} to all articles in the Category:Netherlands tree that don't yet have the WikiProject tag? The only category not included in specifically excluded from this request is Category:People of Dutch descent and its 13 subcategories, as they will be processed manually. Please let me know if this request is incomplete. Aecis^Brievenbus 19:48, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I have some concerns regarding this task. I just went through the category tree to get a feeling of how many articles we're talking about here. Long story short, I stopped somewhere around the 11,000 article mark (obviously including subcategories of subcategories and, since I don't have a dd available right now, not accounting for articles that are already tagged). I realize the scope of your project is broad and I know we have much bigger bot tasks but 11,000+ articles just seems too much for a banner tagging task. We already have a problem with overtagging and most of these articles are likely to be within the scope of one or even a few other projects. --S ^up? 22:44, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the bot could skip the page if it already has so many tags at the top? --Android Mouse 23:38, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps this is a silly question, but what if I were to split the request? Say I request that the articles in Category:Buildings and structures in the Netherlands be tagged this week, Category:Dutch people in two weeks time, etcetera, say 1,000 articles per request or per week. It doesn't address the issue of overtagging, but would it address the issue of size? Aecis^Brievenbus 23:53, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I'd probably be easier to request it all at once since once a bot is set to do it, there is little to no interaction needed for it to finish. As I said above, perhaps it could skip the page if there are already 2 or so tags at the top of the page? --Android Mouse 00:15, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if the code is set to allow the bot to do it, pardon my ignorance, but is it possible to list the untagged/skipped articles somewhere? That would allow us to check the articles manually, to determine whether adding {{Wikiproject Netherlands}} would indeed be overtagging. I did see such datadumps by BetacommandBot once or twice, iirc. Aecis^Brievenbus 00:32, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, it'd be possible to list which were skipped. --Android Mouse 00:43, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

In that case I have no objections to skipping articles that have already got n (2?) wikiproject templates. Aecis^Brievenbus 00:48, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I am generating lists of subcats and articles, now and will post links later. If you want a bot run i can exclude all talk pages with templates already on them, that is the most common method to avoid over tagging. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 01:38, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I only went 5 levels into that cat but here are my results: Categories and Articles (note the article is running now give it some time to finish) Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 02:31, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Please do, and if possible, as discussed above, please notify us (e.g. via a subpage of my userpage) which talk pages weren't tagged, so that we can add the WikiProject template manually if necessary. Aecis^Brievenbus 00:30, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Can a bot, tag all articles within Category:Rugby league players (and subcategories) a needs-infobox=yes and autotemplate=yes on the talk page {{WikiProject Rugby league}} as a parameter, if the infobox {{Infobox rugby league biography}} does not appear on the page.

That may be a bit confusing so simply

• If in Category:Rugby league players = Yes
• If {{Infobox rugby league biography}} = No
• On talk page tag needs-infobox=yes and autotemplate=yes to {{WikiProject Rugby league}} parameter.

SpecialWindler talk 21:04, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Will anyone reply? SpecialWindler talk 21:05, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I can do it. If the {{WikiProject Rugby league}} template isn't on the talk page, should the bot add it? --Android Mouse 23:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

All the pages should be tagged, unless they were created after 17 June, 07. which they might. Yes it would be alright if the bot did that. SpecialWindler talk 06:16, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok. I'll let this sit for one more day before I start, incase anyone else has comments/objections/anything else to add. --Android Mouse 06:32, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, but I don't know why there will be a big objection. SpecialWindler talk 07:29, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Android Mouse, if there are already Category:WikiProject banners in a {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}, will the bot nest the new banner within the shell? See my talk page for a PCRE regular expression replace that will do the job. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 17:36, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out, I wasn't even aware of the bannershell, I'll make sure it adds it to that, if it is there. Unfourtunetly I won't be able to use the regular expression you provided though since I use C. --Android Mouse 18:06, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, you can do the same thing in any language; just download the PCRE library. There's contributed source code, including C++ wrappers and sample Makefiles here, and everything else you might need is here. I've used the PCRE library successfully in plenty of C, C++, and C# applications.

Just a tip. I don't know how you can live without regular expressions; I can't.  ;) — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 18:29, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Neat, I'll check that out. Now all I have to do is figure out how regular expression work :) --Android Mouse 18:34, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

 Done --Android Mouse 19:40, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

If an article has inline <ref> tags, but no <references/> tag, a bot should add one. (Of course, a more fundamental change that completely changes the citation system would be better...) — Omegatron 00:25, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

A good idea (though I'm not sure if the problem is that common), but implementation is a bit tricker than looking for just one thing. Template:reflist is another way of displaying references/footnotes, and for all I know there may be others, so a bot needs to look for a variety of things. Also, I've seen the references tag with an extra space before the slash, so I suggest the bot look for the text string "<references". -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:13, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Is this the place where I can ask someone to create a antivandalism bot for another wiki? Because on the Wiki I edit on, we have no knowledge on how to make a bot. So if someone can help me, our Wiki would be grateful. :) Erebus 21:12, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

talk to User:Tawker & User:Martinp23 Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 21:14, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions, but both seem to be on a leave. Anyone here active to help me out? XD I would be appreciate it. :) Erebus 00:45, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Leaving a short, polite message and waiting for a reply is really your best option. If you need the source code for one of the bots, you really need to talk the coders themselves. --S ^up? 13:05, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

We need a bot to keep a check on the articles in certain video games subcategories to make sure that all these articles are in their respective immediate parent categories too as per WP:SUBCAT#Secondary categorization rule. I've done my best over the past week or two to try to get these standardised, but there's always going to be new articles that won't be. The relevant sub-cats are:

Category:Nintendo DS-only games Category:GameCube-only games Category:Wii-only games Category:PlayStation 2-only games Category:PlayStation 3-only games Category:ZX Spectrum-only games Category:Xbox 360-only games

(obviously, the relevant parents are Category:Nintendo DS games, Category:GameCube games, Category:Wii games, Category:PlayStation 2 games, Category:PlayStation 3 games, Category:ZX Spectrum games and Category:Xbox 360 games.

Cheers, Miremare 22:52, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable. How often would you need the articles to be checked? -- S ^up? 23:10, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't really know how often bots usually do their work, but I don't think it would need to be that often, just a check every now and then. It's not the most urgent of tasks after all. Cheers, Miremare 23:58, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Alright. I'll go through those articles tomorrow unless there are any concerns or objections and we'll go from there. -- S ^up? 00:14, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok, thanks S. Miremare 00:20, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Seeing that this had been announced on the relevant category talk pages about half a month ago with no objections raised and considering that it is in line with the guideline, I'm going ahead and adding the parent category to those articles that aren't already in it. -- S ^up? 15:13, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Okay,  Done I think checking again every month or so should be enough. If there's an unusually high number of games coming out at some point (like right before or after E3 or something), please don't hesistate to contact me. -- S ^up? 16:31, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that's great. Cheers! Miremare 17:18, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Can someone change instances of wagn to WAGN, 'one' and ‘one’ (strictly those including the single quotes) to One Railway wherever they appear? Articles have been moved, and the previous forms are counter to the MoS on two counts. I imagine uses of 'one' with the quotes not referring to the railway company to be few and far between. 81.104.175.145 20:38, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

need a bot to replace all articles that link this image http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Heinrich_Himmler%2C_Richard_Heydrich%2C_Karl_Wolf.JPG to the newer and better one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vlcsnap-5522132.png

Y Done —METS501 (talk) 04:23, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

We could use a bot to fix links to the following pages:

• National Football League (as opposed to NFL)
• National Football League playoffs, 2006-07 and all prior pages included in Category:National Football League playoffs (as opposed to NFL playoffs, 2006-07.
• 2007 National Football League season and all prior pages included in Category:National Football League seasons (as opposed to 2007 NFL season)
• 2007 National Football League Draft and all prior pages included in Category:National Football League Draft (as opposed to 2007 NFL Draft) Pats1 22:38, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Are you requesting that the redirects be replaced by the actual page? If so, you might wish to read WP:REDIRECT#Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken. -- JLaTondre 23:06, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

That would make sense, then. My bad. Pats1 23:10, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

What open-source text editors that run on both Windows and Linux support both Regex search-and-replace and UTF-8 encoding? This is the sort of question the tool I'm requesting (probably on the toolserver or offsite) could answer by reading the tables in Wikipedia comparison articles. The tool would load all the tables from each comparison article, find the common column and merge them into one database table per article internally, and then provide an interface for search queries to these tables. NeonMerlin 19:20, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean by "comparison articles", don't understand why you're posting on this page, and don't understand where the results of the table merges would be housed (or, if you will, how interested readers/users would find the tables). Wouldn't Wikipedia:WikiProject Database analysis or Wikipedia:Tools or Wikipedia:Toolserver be a better place to post this? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:33, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

This could be done, but quite frankly I don't believe its worth the time to configure a bot. We have comparison articles for a reason. --Draicone ^(talk) 22:20, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

A significant number of pages have links to, text (usually in links), and use templates with "CityTrain". I have replaced a lot of these instances with the correct capitalization of "Citytrain" (see my discussion of this here) – can I request a bot do the rest? This will include over a hundred pages of each train station in the network. I believe I have created correctly-titled templates to allow this to happen with no disruption; seems to work already now anyway, but best done thoroughly. Seo75 01:48, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Pages with links to old (replaced) CamelCase templates that need some bot action include Template:CityTrainQld/Navigation and Template:CityTrain Platforms (I wouldn't say that the links to these two replaced templates are definitive lists). Many thanks in advance... :) Seo75 01:56, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

So i gave this a trial and it kinda broke it. See [24]. Some of the templates have not been renamed. :: maelgwntalk 03:04, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for giving it a go. I have fixed the even-more templates so the page looks okay again, and perhaps ready for another trial? Seo75 03:48, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

That looks fine now. Sorry i dont have time at the moment to put in a bot request ... so hopefully someone else can do it or get back to me after my holiday (about 15th July) and I can do it then. :: maelgwntalk 04:06, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I might be able to arrange a bot to take care of it. First I'd just have to move everything to the correct capitalisation then rename it, that should avoid all conflicts (as the redirects would be created). --Draicone ^(talk) 22:48, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Looks like it has been mostly done – or is progressing – with no more obvious breakages (I thought I had move/redirected everything but then found there was more in the 4 July test-run. Thank you again for the work so far! Seo75 01:25, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Can we get one of the talk page archival bots to come to Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion? Thanks. >Radiant< 10:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Done. Next time the bot runs, it should archive the page. --ST47Talk 15:00, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I have an idea for a bot. When ArbCom rules that a certain editor cannot edit an article, the bot operator could input the user and article into the system, and when the banned user edits the article that is prohibited, it would automatically undo the edit, and place a notice at WP:ANI or some other noticeboard. Cool Blue^{talk to me} 16:22, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I can do this, if there's consensus to do so. Can you post the idea at WP:AN or WT:ARBCOM to see if it's needed? In the meantime, I'll start on a bot. Let me know if there's a discussion anywhere. :) --ST47Talk 18:31, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Bad idea. See my comments. Thatcher131 15:26, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Rejected - doesn't really fix the problem, as evasion is done by sockpuppets and as bans are often against Foo and related articles. Both of these problems could probably be fixed, but my solutions are not server-safe and probably would cause false positives. Maybe I'll work on a tool that would allow scanning of a RFCUed or SSPed sock's contribs to check for edits to articles that link to articles or are in a certain category, but I don't know if that's needed. --ST47Talk 17:36, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Are there any bots that archive (or could be set up to archive) page sections that contain a certain keyword rather than by date? sbandrews (t) 17:06, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

There might be one for WP:AN/I, I don't know how that works. If one doesn't exist, you could ask User:Shadow1 for the code of his archiving bot and he or I could adapt it for this use. --ST47Talk 18:32, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the helpful reply :) as far as I can see WP:AN/I is archived by date of last entry. I'll have a word with Shadow1, regards sbandrews (t) 18:48, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

There is a way to have shadowbot archive by tag <!--werdnabot archive--> does it and just set the date archive limit to say 365 days. ^∆ 21:00, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

A bot that italicizes and if necessary de-capitalizes foreign terms would be a really useful for using across the sumo wrestling articles that I edit. It would also be useful for any articles that use foreign terms as italicizing conforms with the Manual of Style. I looked around, but could find no such bot. I would like to request one (or kindly be directed to where I can request the use of an existing one). Do I have to make a request for a specific article? I, and others have already went through and fixed some of the bigger articles, such as sumo by hand, but there are many more related articles out there that need fixing. Thanks so much. Malnova 20:18, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

If you request approval for WP:AWB, you ca use find-and-replace to make it almost automatic. --ST47Talk 20:24, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply and suggestion! Malnova 20:36, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Having had no response to my previous request, it looks like I'm going to have to split the sub-pages of List of United Kingdom locations manually. Could a bot count the entries on each for me, please? Andy Mabbett 21:52, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Done: User:ST47/UKLC. --ST47Talk 22:39, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks. I think... Andy Mabbett 22:57, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I know very little about programming, but I thought I'd go ahead and make a request in the hopes that it is a feasible idea. I often add the conservation status for plants in North America, which involves using the same formula over and over again. It takes quite a bit of time to do myself, but I imagine its simple and mechanical enough for a bot to handle. It essentially works like this:

1)I insert a piece of copied text inside of an existing taxobox above the field for "| regnum =" like this:

| status = G5
| status_system = TNC
| status_ref = <ref name=natureserve>{{Cite web
  | publisher =NatureServe
  | title = Eurybia divaricata
  | work = NatureServe Explorer
  | url = http://www.natureserve.org/explorer/servlet/NatureServe?searchName=Eurybia+divaricata
  | accessdate = 2007-06-13}}</ref>

such that it looks like this with the new text:

{{Taxobox
| color = lightgreen
| name = White Wood Aster
| image = Aster divaricatus R0019871.JPG
| image_width = 250px
| status = G5
| status_system = TNC
| status_ref = <ref name=natureserve>{{Cite web
  | publisher =NatureServe
  | title = Eurybia divaricata
  | work = NatureServe Explorer
  | url = http://www.natureserve.org/explorer/servlet/NatureServe?searchName=Eurybia+divaricata+
  | accessdate = 2007-06-13}}</ref>
| regnum = [[Plant]]ae
| divisio = [[Flowering plant|Magnoliophyta]]
| classis = [[Magnoliopsida]]
| ordo = [[Asterales]]
| familia = [[Asteraceae]]
| tribus = [[Astereae]]
| genus = ''[[Eurybia (genus)|Eurybia]]''
| species = '''''E. divaricata'''''
| binomial = ''Eurybia divaricata''
| binomial_authority = ([[L.]]) G.L.Nesom
| synonyms = 
*''Aster divaricatus'' <small>L.</small>
*''Aster corymbosum'' <small>[[William Aiton|Aiton]]</small>
}}

2)I then change the text under "title" with the formula "| title =Genus species"

3)I change the part of the url such that "searchName=Genus+species"

4)I change the "accessdate" to today's

5)if there is no {{reflist}} tag, or a ==References== section, then I add one or both of those when needed

Problems might arise with the fact that some articles have taxoboxs and some don't. Also not all articles on a list of North American species would necessarily have articles. If anyone thinks this bot is a possibilty, it would save a lot of time and improve the Plants project significantly. If there are any more questions needed to be answered just let me know. Thanks! Djlayton4 | talk | contribs 21:56, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia needs a bot to correct spelling errors. As there is no spell check, spelling errors can occur. There should be a bot to correct these errors.--Sefringle^Talk 04:07, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Please read Wikipedia:Bots/Frequently denied bots before making requests like this. — Shinhan < talk > 09:08, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Okay. I figure it would be cool that all public domain images on Wikipedia could be tagged with {{Move to Commons}}. This would include images that transclude the following licence templates:

• {{PD}} - links
• {{PD-old}} - links
• {{PD-art}} - links
• {{PD-ineligible}} - links
• {{PD-USGov}} - links
• {{PD-US}} - links
• {{PD-self}} - links
• {{PD-user}} - links
• {{PD-because}} - links

My rationale is that Wikipedia is NOT "a repository of links, images, or media files". All public domain images could be moved to commons and that way, sister projects can use them too. One could point out that some images are falsely tagged. Well this process of just tagging it with {{Move to Commons}} makes it a candidate; it's not automatically moved. There are three people who go through these images that can catch a falsely tagged image:

• An editor performing the move
• An administrator that reviews the wikipedia image for deletion (it must satisfy these conditions)
• A reviewer at Commons (they're really good)

So what do you think? -- Reaper X 08:59, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

the thing is people are stupid. I have a bot that can move them to commons and tag them. the issue is that over 10 percent are miss-tagged as PD when they are copyrighted. Also the devs are working on a better method of transwikiing images so lets give them some time first. see User:Betacommand/Commons ^∆ 10:15, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, I have no experience with bots at all, and this probably isn't the right place, but could someone please run a check on my source code, here? It takes various tasks for the Chicago WikiProject and puts them all in once place on an automated noticeboard. Thanks, Cool Blue^{talk to me} 13:06, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

RefDeskBot seems to be down, is there any substitute for archival of WP:HD, WP:RD, etc? — E ^talk_bots 13:03, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

You mean a clone? I don't think that one exists. If I knew enough about bots to run a clone and had access to RefDeskBot's source code I would run a clone. FunPika 01:19, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if this sort of request would be at all practical. However, it is really time-consuming for any project to go through all the articles within its "scope" (or category/categories) and find all those which have been created since the last "go-through" and haven't yet had the project banner placed on them. Also, I can see how particularly new or undermanned projects (and they're all undermanned) would like to have a quick way to check on which of their articles have had DYK's, been selected for GA, FA, WP 1.0 releases, and whatever. Would there be any practical way to create a bot which could:

• (1) Check to see which articles in a given category do not have something (like a project banner), and
• (2) Check to see which articles in a given category, or with a given banner, do have something (for instance, GA, FA, or 1.0 tag), and the bot then make a list of only those articles which meet the specified criteria? Having such a bot available would keep the amount of time projects have to expend on "maintainance" activity down, and with any luck make it easier for them to keep track of articles which for whatever reason might be of more concern to them. Thank you for your consideration and any answers, positive or negative. John Carter 13:57, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, a bot to crawl through a category and report on what it sees is easy, post what you need and someone will do it. --ST47Talk 14:06, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

The specifics would be variable, because (with luck) the bot could be used by multiple groups. But, basically, a bot to check a category for those articles which do not have a particular piece of content on the talk page. The specific piece of content would vary, depending on particular use, so it might be best if it would be possible to type in the specific type of content to be cross-referenced for each use. Generally, though, it would be searching for some kind of template/banner on the talk page. I'm assuming if one were to type in the template name, like {{WikiProject Saints}}, a bot could search for its presence, and, with luck, issue a "report" listing only those articles in that category which don't yet have the template. Alternately, if it would be possible to set up a bot which were capable of one of a number of functions (only one at a time, of course) one that could check for the presence of a template, like a project banner, and the presence of another template, like the GA, FA or 1.0 tag, and list only those articles which have both. This would be particularly useful for projects which don't do assessments, A full list of all articles in a category would, I think understandably, make the relevant page regularly huge. John Carter 14:17, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Generally, to do this sort of thing, I run a bot without approval, since there's only one edit being made. If a project needs a specific task, they can list it here, and it's a 15 minute project for me. I can set up an interface on toolserver if that would help, where anyone can do something like this? --ST47Talk 14:27, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

That would probably be ideal. I think a lot of projects might potentially find this particular function useful, so letting several people potentially do it would probably be very welcome. John Carter 14:30, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, well, here's what you do. The script is at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~st47/cgi-bin/WikiProject.pl?category=PUTCATEGORYHERE&templateyes=TEMPLATEHERE

In order to use it, replace PUTCATEGORYHERE with the category, replace TEMPLATEHERE with whatever it is that you are looking for on the page - or change templateyes to templateno and it will look for pages without that thing. To get it to automatically convert to talk pages, add &talk=1 on to the end. It's still pretty much hackish, I'll improve it in the next few minutes. --ST47Talk 15:32, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Might it be useful if this were integrated with m:CatScan? -- TimNelson 02:06, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Could your bot clean up some articles I have edited on the English site? I would like ==Uses== changed to ==Applications== to make them more compliant. Idsnowdog 19:20, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Could you give us a list of these pages? We can't easily filter your contributions list and check every article as it creates too much load on the server. --Draicone ^(talk) 05:49, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if a bot can do it, and I don't think so. But can a bot tag every link on this page Queensland Maroons Players with Category:Queensland Rugby League State of Origin players.

I have removed any un-nessasary links from the page (temporarly) so that all links should be there. But it shouldn't repeat the task if a link is there twice, because there are alot there. It shouldn't also have any there that are red links, because there are quite a few, and you can't have an article with just a category. SpecialWindler talk 12:09, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

That's something a bot could definitely do. Is there a particular reason why you want to turn the list into a category and is there consensus that this should be done? --S ^up? 13:08, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I just noticed that you want to sort by state of origin. That makes it somewhat more error-prone and a bit less trivial to do automatically. Frankly, I also don't really see the need since most player's articles already are sorted by nationality (ie. Category:Australian rugby league players, etc). Is there a specific reason why you want to do this?-- S ^up? 13:18, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Because if you notice most players are by nationally of that 1/20th would actually be state of origin players. I want to do this so it is easy to understand from a players point of view wether they played state of origin or not, by looking at the categories. SpecialWindler talk 20:54, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Can someone reply please. SpecialWindler talk 21:05, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Stupid archiving, I'm re asking this as nobody replyed. I wouldn't have if someone said No but I think it should be done. SpecialWindler talk 10:43, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I did reply on your talkpage. The question still stands: does the Rugby league Wikiproject agree that this should be done or not?-- S ^up? 10:52, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I know you did, but this was archived when its was still active dissucussion. On Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rugby league under the "Bot request" section, I have posted a message to fellow Rugby league members. It was posted 5 days ago (on 28 June), but has been no reply. SpecialWindler talk 11:04, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Okay, let's give this another 24 hours. -- S ^up? 10:15, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

This is a fairly trivial request, so I don't see why the operation needs consensus, especially from a low-activity group. In any case, the operation can be reversed very quickly and easily, If needed, I've hacked together a simple script with error checking to do the tagging, in case anyone else hasn't configured a bot to do it yet, so if the bot is needed and the task gets approval let me know and I'll run the operation. (Of course, its practically an AWB job...) SpecialWindler: Bots can do practically anything these days =) --Draicone ^(talk) 13:12, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Trivial, yes but I'd rather not rehash the the old lists vs. categories duplication debate that we've had a bajillion times. Hence, I was asking if there were any objections. By the way, based on your message to the list, I thought you had left the project. Have you decided to stay? -- S ^up? 13:25, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, if we do a bot run but keep a record of the diff IDs of each edit it can all be reverted in about ten minutes later if needed, and judging by this the categorising is sorely needed. I've kind of left the project, turns out Mike42 couldn't think of anyone more obsessive than me when it came to clearing backlogs so I'm lightly helping out with AFC at the moment. (Lightly being a hundred edits a day.) I don't believe I'll resume active editing, and I certainly won't accept an RfA as many on IRC have suggested. --Draicone ^(talk) 22:19, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

 Done Sorry it took me so long to get this done. I was away for a few days after the holiday. I'm also sorry to see you go, Draicone. -- S ^up? 11:23, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I estimate that there are about 1700 articles in Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket which have the following line in its reference section :

• Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians - various publications

The use of this line was all well and good when numerous stub articles were being established but the project is now well into development of the articles to start class and above. The problems with this reference are that it is not specific and that other sources are more pertinent. In my view, this reference should be removed to allow specific publications to be applicable and indeed to force editors to identify a specific source, which will improve the article.

In virtually all the articles containing the reference, there is another more precise reference listed so the line is superfluous. If there are exceptions, they will be in small enough numbers to be handled comfortably on an individual basis. Clearly a bot would be of tremendous help in removing the reference from the hundreds of articles involved.

I could probably create the bot personally but I don't think I have the time so I would appreciate assistance. Basically the bot should search all articles that are in the category:cricket hierarchy (it has 28 level two categories and each of these has multiple sub-categories). Where it finds this character string, it should delete that entire line. I can guarantee that the string always has a line to itself so there is no danger of deleting other material in the same line, sentence or paragraph.

Hope you can help. Thanks very much in advance for any advice and guidance you can give me. --BlackJack | ^{talk page} 10:05, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Somewhat in the spirit of Ocobot I have created a bot/site that’ll check dead link still in the very early stages, and it’ll need to be reprogrammed if it is to go beyond test. —Dispenser 18:10, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

This idea just hit me about five seconds ago, a bot that adds a speedy deletion tag on an article if the creator of the article removes it(this happens a lot with article that should be speedyed and the articles tend to be forgotten until someone else runs into them(ie. me)), I have some idea of how to put it into code but at the moment I'm playing around with the code for a hanger man bot replacement, does anyone here want to take on the challenge? --Chris ^g 10:44, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

The bot would also have to be prepared to place {{subst:uw-speedy1}} and the other templates in that series (2-4). It may even have to be prepared to go as far as making a report on WP:AIV. FunPika 11:31, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a mix between Android Mouse Bot 2 and MartinBot. --Chris ^g 11:50, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to take this slightly offtopic, but Chris, are you working on a replacement for HagermanBot? If so what code are you working with, or have you started from scratch? --Android Mouse 18:13, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm (sort of) playing around with some perl code to see if I can get a replacement for HagermanBot working(I am starting from scratch, I did email Hangerman to see if I could run a clone but I've had no repsonce). --Chris ^g 01:37, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Good luck then. Although you might want to contact User:E since he said he was going to contact Haggerman about the bot, I'm not sure if he recieved a response or not though. --Android Mouse 18:59, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Lol, I just saw this in passing, and it's on my to-do list for the exact same reason. If you're interested, check out my whiteboard for it to get any ideas if you want to write your own or whatever. Interestingly, the same idea for the replacement HagermanBot is there too, except with the twist of retroactively adding sigs on demand. --slakr 10:10, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok I've created an account for the bot (see here) and I've started a request for aprroval here. Any feed back would be great! --Chris ^g 01:49, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Is it possible to get an archival bot to automatically archive the Did you know? archives? I don't know if it's an issue that there are no dates provided (like on talk pages), but the idea would be to move things to an archive each time there are 50-100 entries. (Best may be something like when it reaches 100, archive the oldest 75.) Rigadoun (talk) 20:41, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd talk to User:Shadow1 or User:Misza13. I'm not sure how much modification it would take though in order to get either of their bots to archive a page without dates. --Android Mouse 21:34, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I could probably write a new one fairly quickly. I'll see what I can do. Shadow1 (talk) 11:02, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Can someone make a bot on meta which tags pages on people who have recently died on other projects. For example, I noticed when Lady Bird Johnson died, other projects such as Japanese, Russian, Sweedish, etc. haven't updated their pages. In addition, when a notable person dies, baby Wikipedias have to take weeks or months to make a change. And, does anyone have any update on the signingbot? Thanks. Miranda 05:23, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Take a look here for info on the sig bot. --Chris ^g 10:03, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

There should be roving bots that alphabetize categories in the article space.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 00:01, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand. Categories are alphabetized.. --ST47Talk 00:12, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I think the idea is to alphabetically sort the category listing at the end of an article page. This wouldn't really work because many pages have categories that come from templates, and sometimes people can choose to sort the categories in a more logical way than alphabetically, so using a bot (a) won't completely solve the problem and (b) piss many people off. Kusma (talk) 10:59, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

As described at Talk:List of peaks in Norway over 2000 meters#Microformat (there are 300 entries). Thank you. Andy Mabbett 11:26, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Unlike other succession box templates that seem to have sparked a limited controversy over at WikiProject Succession Box Standardization, these two are relatively unambiguous and have on their side what is closest to consensus (given the current state of the project). I thus request:

1. That Template:S-cite should be replaced by Template:S-ref in all articles in the main namespace. The two templates have already been merged and the former redirects to the latter, which is in compliance with SBS's three-letter name rule (while still retaining the ability of the name to be easily interpreted) and was initially included in the s-ref anyway. The change is a simple one: change {{s-cite|...}} in all succession boxes to {{s-ref|...}}. No complications whatsoever should ensue, as both templates work in the exact same way.
2. That Template:S-pol should be replaced by Template:S-civ (parameter |pol) in all articles in the main namespace. The two templates are headers, which makes the change even easier: all that has to be done is change {{s-pol}} to {{s-civ|pol}} in all succession boxes; the resulting headers will be identical. The change has been decided because a whole template just for police appointments is considered superfluous, given the relatively low number of offices that are to use it, while a more general header like "Civic offices" (with parameters for police, fire, and medical appointments) will prove more efficient, helping us reach the desired balance between a low number of templates and specific, useful headers.

I believe this change cannot be achieved by any means other than by bot (unless a great deal of time and effort is spend on the task), and is justifiable enough to be approved. The two templates are to be deleted after the change is done, so any help with speeding this process up would be greatly appreciated. Waltham, The Duke of 23:24, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

2. So why dont you redirect Template:S-pol to S-civ|pol :: maelgwn :: talk 23:58, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Because that's impossible, maelgwn. As for #1, I see no need for a bot to perform this task. Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 05:00, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Aah sorry. Was getting my sections and my seperators all confuddled. It should be easy enough for a bit to do. :: maelgwn :: talk 06:19, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

But... Wouldn't it be better to get rid of a spare template than just hide it? I thought templates placed a burden on Wikipedia servers.

In any case, will you at least do number two, please? Waltham, The Duke of 18:29, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry about performance. I could create a task request, but I'd like to see some evidence of consensus. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 23:31, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

We are gathering consensus; it was not easy to discern previously. I will notify you when we gather sufficient support. Waltham, The Duke of 13:05, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

It is not easy to gather a consensus when so many people are away instead of commenting on the issues at hand. I have tried to gather opinions about the substitution at WT:SBS, and two people apart from myself have supported the motion so far, while none has opposed it. I know that other people are favourable as well, but this might not be easily proved. BrownHairedGirl was against the proposed action initially, but it seems that this is no longer the case; she too is away, however, and thus currently unavailable for a comment. I do not know what to do right now but to urge the members of SBS to comment and keep this section from being prematurely archived, but the circumstances do not allow me to do anything more. Still, if you add this rudimentary consensus to my previous arguments and the lack of alternatives, you shall see that the substitution is indeed the best solution to our problem. Waltham, The Duke of 17:27, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

No comment? Waltham, The Duke of 07:20, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Still no comment? Waltham, The Duke of 22:05, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I want to request a bot to generate a list of pages created by single-purpose accounts. Basically, the bot would go through pages and for each page perform the following steps:

(1) Select a page.

(2) Identify when the page was created.

(2a) If the page was created less than 7 days before {{CURRENTDATE}}, move on to another page (return to step 1).

(2b) If the page was created more than 7 days before {{CURRENTDATE}}, move to step 3.

(3) Identify the user who created the page.

(4) Check the user's contributions history to see if the user has preserved edits to any other page (mainspace or non-mainspace).

(4a) If the user has contributions to more than one page, move on to another page (return to step 1).

(4b) If the user has contributions to only that one page, add the page to a bot-generated list and only then move on to another page.

(Note: I don't know too much about bots, so I'm not certain that the method proposed above is actually feasible. Or, there may be an easier/more efficient way of generating the list.

I expect that many pages created by single-purpose accounts (defined narrowly as in step 4) will be tests, vanity pages, advertising for a product or company, and pages that otherwise do not meet Wikipedia's inclusion criteria. The bot-generated list may make it easier to identify and correct or delete such pages. The purpose of the 7-day lag introduced in step 2 is to avoid redundancy with new page patrol.

It will probably not be necessary to run the bot continuously or to force it to check all 9.5 million pages on Wikipedia. For instance, the bot could be programmed to terminate when the generated list reaches 500 entries.

A better option might be to restrict bot runs to specific groups of articles, such as:

• Pages in a specific namespace that start with a specific letter (or string of letters) (e.g., pages in the article namespace that start with "Ar", see Special:Prefixindex/Ar),
• Pages in a specific category (e.g., pages in Category:Companies of the United States),
• Uncategorized pages (see Category:Category needed),
• Pages with a cleanup tag (can be determined via whatlinkshere or cleanup/maintenance categories like Category:Category needed), or
• Pages whose talkpages are tagged with a certain WikiProject tag

What specific group is covered in each run should, I think, be determined by those who peruse the bot-generated list.

However, before getting into the specifics of what groups of pages the bot should target in its runs, it is important to know:

1. Could an existing bot perform this function?
2. If not, is the proposal technically possible?
3. If it is, is it a worthwhile endeavour?
4. If it is, is anyone willing to write this bot?

Thanks (and my apologies for the length of hte post), Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:57, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

This would definately be technically possible. But would it be worthwhile? Is there anyone willing to go through the list? Or is it just going to end up wasting bandwidth and creating a huge log that no one will check? --Android Mouse 21:13, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

If it's a list of 20000 pages about hundreds of topics ... probably not. However, there might be people (or WikiProjects) willing to look through shorter lists on specific topics. Since this was a concern from the start, it is probably best to take some steps to optimise the potential usefulness of the list by, for instance, contacting some WikiProjects to see if they're interested. Off the top of my head, I can think of WikiProject Spam and WikiProject Deletion, both of which have broad scopes. More specialised projects may be contacted as well depending on the specific group of pages covered (e.g., WikiProject Biography for subcategories of Category:Living people, WikiProject France for subcategories of Category:France, and so on). I am willing to go through such a list (regardless of the topic), but it's not worth it if I'm the only one. Before I request input from anyone, could you give an idea of how much time it might take to write such a bot? Thanks, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 21:51, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Assuming that it would patrol IRC recent changes, log new articles and go back 7 days later and check the conditions you listed above, I think I could write it within a week or so, depending on my schedule. Although, I'm not personally willing to go through any logs the bot would create or attempt to solicit others to. --Android Mouse 22:16, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

In that case, it's definitely important to see if anyone will care to work on the list before pursuing the idea much further. I will notify some WikiProjects shortly. A technical question: would it be possible to program the bot to look not just at new creations, but also to try to catch older ones (I suppose that the downside to that is that the bot will have a lower hit rate). If the bot only patrols Special:Newpages, any article created before the time the bot is put into operation will be missed, won't it? -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 00:19, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Correct. From a implementation point of view, I don't really see a reason why the bot can't get its data from a database dump but, in reality, that might just not be feasible: even if given relatively fresh dumps to parse, there's still the issue of having to query the servers for user's contribs. And if one were to slow the query rate down to avoid hogging server resources, there's the issue of that somewhat limited efficiency of that particular approach (ie. the regular articles vs. SPA plugs ratio might be a hard sell). I'm afraid checking every article may just really not be worth it. -- S ^up? 08:34, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I see your point, especially considering that older problem articles are likely to already have one or more cleanup tags on them. I've notified WikiProject Deletion and WikiProject Advertising to see if they are interested in the idea of the list. If they are, it may be worth working out the details. If not, then no problem. Thanks for your response, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 01:56, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

No problem. By the way, I think this is a good idea and I'd be happy to help out as well. -- S ^up? 09:15, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, I think I won't care about what category (list) of notability-suspicious articles do I hunt in. I sort as many articles as I'm comfortable at a time. So the idea makes sense. Just add links to new lists to WP:NN (elswhere) and make clear announcements on new feature. Here are some refining suggestions, not affecting my support:

• Should'nt we give more time to articles and authors (like returning pages older than month, not week) before counting edits?
• Category- and project-specific autosorting would be very helpful for recruiting users of the intended lists
• The bot could select accounts less throughly (like edits to only three pages instead of one). From my WPNN practice, creating an intended vanity or ad article may take changes to several pages. E.g., including new one in the lists, creating new categories, making it a redundant example in a general article. This is also a single-purpose editing. The bot wouldn't do any harm to either page or user anyway. -- Futurano 11:30, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the GFDL disclaimer issues wouldn't it be nice if there was a bot that would re-tag all the images the user uploaded once the user posted on their user page with a retroactive blanket license? —Dispenser 06:51, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, legally, you can't relicense PD to GFDL. What sorts of licenses can we change? --ST47Talk 11:30, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I was just thinking of something simple, like images uploaded with {{GFDL-self-with-disclaimers}} the bot would check the uploader page, if it has a notice that they license everything with {{GFDL-self-no-disclaimers}} then it changes the the license on the image to {{GFDL-self-no-disclaimers}}. Otherwise it leaves a message on their talk page asking if they could relicense their content with the -no-disclaimers. —Dispenser 12:07, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Interesting idea but I'm not quite sure #1 is even legally permissible. Even if someone uses a specific license for all his contributions (by default licensing), there's nothing to prevent that person from using a different license for just that one image. It is my understanding that, in a case like that, that particular license overrides the default license. In other words, even if 99,999999% of a user's contributions are licensed under license A, there's nothing to stop that user from releasing a contribution under license B. -- S ^up? 15:15, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Isn't that more of a linguistics issue? Surely we could resolve it with a special template with the right language? —Dispenser 16:11, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Creating a new template won't resolve the problem with previously created images. I see this idea causing more problems than it attempts to solve. --Android Mouse 19:28, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok. How about this: The bot posts a message to users who have upload X or more images with {{GFDL-self-with-disclaimers}}. And that they can post to a special subpage of the bot with an agreement to allow the bot to change all of their license tags for them? —Dispenser 07:42, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Legally, they cannot relicense to PD. They no longer have the rights to do that. GFDL is non-revocable. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 06:09, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

This bot will primarily deal with Wikisource. I apologize if this is the wrong place to ask for a bot dealing with another project. This bot will be helping WikiProject_1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica. It's basically just doing some cleanup after a template change. It will be working with all subpages of 1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica. It's tasks are this:

1. Check for the presence of the template {{EB1911}}. Compile a list of those on Wikisource:User:Psychless/Temp under the heading: Needs EB template. I will be dealing with those articles.
2. Remove the parameter |article=. Change the parameter |nonotes= to |wikipedia="none".
3. If the template on the article has any parameter except: previous, next, wikipedia, wikipedia2, other_projects, then add it to a list of articles with incorrect parameters. Post that list under the heading: Incorrect parameters, on Wikisource:User:Psychless/Temp.
4. Some articles use the code '''<big>J</big>OHN <big>S</big>mith'''. This outputs: JOHN SMITH. This could be simplified by using the (wikisource) template {{bbsc}}. The code would be {{bbsc|John Smith}}. Could the bot do this somehow?
5. Before the template change, people typed in the value for the |wikipedia= parameter as such: [[Wikipedia:John Smith|John Smith]]. Sometimes as: [[w:John Smith|John Smith]]. Replace this with the name of the page it links to; just: John Smith. Check to see if there are two links: [[w:John Smith|John Smith]] and [[w:George Washington|George Washington]]. If there are, do: |wikipedia=John Smith |wikipedia2=George Washington. Make sure you use the name on the left side of the divider (this symbol: | ), not the right, since for some there will be different text on the right side of the divider.
6. The bot needs to check where the link goes. If it redirects to a different page have the bot replace the |wikipedia= value with the name of the article it redirects to. If it redirects to an article that doesn't exist, add it to a list on Wikisource:User:Psychless/Temp under the heading: noarticle.
7. On the wikipedia article an entry links to add the template (if the template isn't already on there) {{Wikisource1911Enc|entryname}}.

I hope my directions were somewhat comprehensible. I would greatly appreciate it if someone would do this, as it means many, many, hours of boring work if I must do this manually. Thanks, Psychless 19:41, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I've found a similar place on Wikisource here, but anyone can still do it... I've reposted my request there. Psychless 22:38, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

user:Kf4bdy welcomed thousands of new users with a welcome template with broken HTML that effectively disables the user's talk page. See, for example, this version of user talk:Boracho74 which I've just fixed. The fix is to add a close font and close center before the first close div, as I've done in this edit. I've made a list of 2569 talk pages that are definitely broken (the addition of the welcome message is the latest edit), see User:Kf4bdy/broken talk pages, and another list of 1158 938 talk pages that may be broken (the welcome message is not the latest edit), see User:Kf4bdy/possibly broken talk pages. Any volunteers willing to help deal with this? -- Rick Block (talk) 17:04, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I can definately set this up, give me 15 minutes. --ST47Talk 18:39, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm running the "possibles" through a filter looking for mismatched HTML tags. I should have the results of this in a bit. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:49, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I've updated the list of "possibles" to those that seem to have html tag mismatches (not using a real parser or anything, so these are still only "possibles"). -- Rick Block (talk) 19:24, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I've posted a BRFA, but it isn't approved yet. I'll post when the bot is done. --ST47Talk 21:36, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

 Done --ST47Talk 19:04, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

We need a new bot to protect the Intro.

Wikipedia:Introduction was previously protected by User:AntiVandalBot until April, when User:MartinBotIV had taken over the duties (See this thread), but Martinp23 appears to be inactive now too (?)

It's action was to reset the intro page whenever the template/header text was altered, and every 30 minutes too. It stopped on June 26.

It was also handling the reset of Wikipedia:Sandbox, I'm not sure of precise details, but presummably the same.

Any help would be much appreciated. Please move/copy this thread to anywhere more appropriate too. Thanks. --Quiddity 21:26, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll set something up for you and post a BRFA for The sandbox, the template sandboxes, and the introduction pages unless someone chimes in here with an objection or further information in the next 24 hours or so. --ST47Talk 21:35, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Aha! After posting that, I noticed Martinp23 had just made a single edit, so I asked him, and he's going to fix martinbotIV, hopefully by tomorrow.

Thanks for the very quick offer of help though :)

I'll update with any progress. --Quiddity 01:34, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I've seen him on IRC. Great, post if you need anything, --ST47Talk 01:51, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I've added interwiki links to the geohack toy. The english version can be found at Template:GeoTemplate/Lang and I have put it up on all the other 7 translations. The problem is, additional languages will likely be added to just one of the 8 templates. I'm not sure how a bot can copy over the templates from one language to another when they are edited, but I've been told that it can be done. Here are the other templates that need to stay updated: ast:Plantilla:GeoTemplate/Lang, cs:Šablona:GeoTemplate/Lang, es:Plantilla:GeoTemplate/Lang, de:Vorlage:GeoTemplate/Lang, fr:Modèle:GeoTemplate/Lang, is:Snið:GeoTemplate/Lang, sk:Šablóna:GeoTemplate/Lang. Hopefully more languages will be added in the future, so they need to be put on the list when they get created. Sincerely Steinninn 21:27, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

A new template was made at pt:Predefinição:GeoTemplate/Lang. And as I expected, the link was only put on the english version. I updated the other 6 with the new link, but I'm not sure how long I'll be around to do that with new links. Dose anyone have a bot to handle this? --Steinninn 23:31, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I was directed here because I'd like a bot to fix a common typo. "Nassarawa State", "Nassarawa state", and "nassarawa state" to "Nasarawa State" are the changes I'd like made. Note the single "s" in the changed word, and also the capitalization of the "s" in state. Obviously, anything in quotation marks is an exception. I suppose the only namespaces this would need to be run in are article and template space. Best if this was just added to the list of tasks of one of the existing typo change bots. Thanks! Picaroon (Talk) 00:05, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Instead of typo change bots, we have WP:AWB/T. If you dont have expirience with regexp, ask for help on its talk page. — Shinhan < talk > 06:15, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I did a quick check on this using AWB - as far as I can see, that typo is not currently in wikipedia. So no work is needed for now. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 07:11, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

There are alot of articles, which fall under the scope of multiple WikiProjects. As WikiProject Biography is going through a assessment drive, I'd like to ask. As these articles have multiple WikiProject, one project is assessed, the other is not. I have seen this throughout my asssesing of these articles. For example, Page A is assessed by WikiProject B as B-class, but for WikiProject Z it isn't assessed. If a bot could go and enter the B in the class parameter, for WikiProject Z, thats one less article you'd have to be assessed.

I don't know how you'd do it, but someone did tell me that bots can do almost anything these days. I'd suppose you'd have to collect every WikiProject template over Wikipedia. There would be a problem if one template rates it B and the other rates it start, or something. SpecialWindler talk 11:41, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Why would there be a problem? Different WikiProjects have different criteria for their ratings. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 17:59, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so. Most WikiProjects have different ratings for importance, but the quality is the same based on {{Grading scheme}}. SpecialWindler talk 22:14, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Just saying, because, I don't know how bots operate and I'm just presuming that, that would be a problem, but I don't know. Is this a good idea? SpecialWindler talk 23:19, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, while most (all?) use the same scale, the criteria for a particular rating varies by project. What might be an interesting project for the WP:1.0 group, though, is to let each project know when their rating differs significantly from the other rating(s) on an article. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 02:45, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Whats WP:1.0, whats it got to do with WikiProjects. Its just some offline thingo according to the "General Background" section. But, could this idea work? When I said most, I meant all, while I haven't checked all WikiProjects, you'd have to think that if GA and FA are the same, then the rest around them (stub,start,B) should be basically the same. If we have bots assessing articles as "stub", because they use stub templates. Some articles have stub templates, but have since expanded to start, yet the templates have removed. So maybe if a bot does do this, then it needs to add auto=yes or something, though most WikiProject templates don't have this. So put it on a list. SpecialWindler talk 09:32, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

WP1.0 has a lot to do with WikiProjects. Take a look at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Work via Wikiprojects. Their bot-generated assessment lists are invaluable. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 13:41, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

User:PockBot can be used to see if any existing article in a category of unassessed articles have been assessed by anyone. Then, it's generally a simple matter to review the existing assessment and see if the article has changed for better or worse since the original assessment. John Carter 14:44, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

So what do you want me to do? SpecialWindler talk 20:47, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Couldn't you do something like

1. Check that no page in the subcategories Category:FA-Class articles, Category:A-Class articles, Category:GA-Class articles, Category:B-Class articles, Category:Start-Class articles, Category:Stub-Class articles, is in more than one of those (eg. If A is in both B and GA)
2. If so, ignore those.
3. Check if any of the rest are in Category:Unassessed-Class articles.
4. If they are in both change class= to class=WHATEVER.

Of course, you bot people are going to know alot more than me, and probably think that won't work, but as I said before, someone told me, bots can do practically anything these days. SpecialWindler talk 08:32, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Take Talk:Shane Perry as an example, It is assessed as start for one WikiProject, but unassessed for the other. Now it is placed in the category Category:Start-Class biography articles (a subcategory of Category:Start-Class articles) and is also placed in Category:Unassessed rugby league articles (a subcategory of Category:Unassessed-Class articles), now if a bot could go through and change that, then thats one less assessment, for those who do assessing, yet no harm. SpecialWindler talk 08:36, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

This discussion has moved to Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#bot

Would someone be willing to automate the process of removing syntax like the following:

<div style="height: 90px; overflow: auto; padding: 3px;text-align: left; border:solid 1px;" title="braglist:-/"; >{{reflist|1}}</div>

and other references to "overflow" from mainspace? I authored a template that did something similar to the above (Template:Scrollref), but it broke the printable layout and raised real concern that disabled users may not be able to easily access obscured sections of articles. Consensus Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2007_June_11#Template:Scrollref and at Template:Scrollbox seems to be that this layout should be avoided whenever possible in mainspace for the reasons stated above, but it's croped back up several times since then. No less than three times, syntax similar to the above cropped up after the deletion of scrollref on United States, and was swiftly removed. However, it seems to last considerably longer on other pages with lower traffic, like this edit: [25]. Lord only knows how many other editors might be using similar syntax on other pages: Is it feasible to automate the process of crawling through pages and removing reference to overflow within div tags in mainspace? Alternative solutions include suppressing it in the printable layout and advising disabled users that aren't able to access obscured content to access the printable version of the wiki. If the latter is implemented instead of a bot fix, please remove the warning at Template:Scrollbox and explain on its talk page for posterity's sake. MrZaius^talk 03:35, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

It is indeed possible to do so, but perhaps your second idea is the best. A developer can add the following to /skins-1.5/common/commonPrint.css, and the problem would be solved (in the printable version, at least):

* { overflow: visible !important; }

— Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 18:33, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Didn't realize it was quite that simple. Moved to MediaWiki_talk:Common.js#Disable_overflow_in_printable_version_of_page. MrZaius^talk 00:51, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

We would need a bot that updates progress templates (Like this one) At least once a day, the problem is that these templates almost never get updated, and therefore it is nearly impossible to know how many articles are left. Flubeca (t) 21:11, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Each progress template would have to be done separately, of course. If you specify where this data comes from, it would be easier to create the bot. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 16:20, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh, this is a count of articles in a category? (Hey gurus, how do you tell how many articles are in a category anyway?) – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 16:23, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Easiest way I know of is running AWB and getting a list from a category. It spits out the full number, regardless of paginating. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 18:35, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

write up exactly what needs updated and how you need to update it, the category counting is very simple it takes me ~15 seconds to write a bot for that. But how you want it with that template..... Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 19:15, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I have been doing this manually – about once a week – for {{Notability progress}} since April. I recently started also doing it for {{Copyedit progress}}, {{Merge progress}}, and {{Wikification progress}}. I have been doing it the low-tech way ... manually clicking "next 200" for each monthly category. I know it probably sounds awful ;), but each update takes only about 10 minutes. It would be nice to have the process automated.

On a separate note, the structures of the templates are slightly different. For instance, {{Merge progress}} and {{Notability progress}} are essentially identical, but both differ from {{Copyedit progress}}. Then there's a template like {{Wikification progress history}}. Which progress templates should this request cover? If the differing formats of the templates would present a challenge to having the bot automatically update them, I could standardise the format of all except {{Dead external links status}} (not organised by month) and {{Wikification progress history}} (graphic archive). Cheers, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:58, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

the template structure is not an issue, my question is how do I add data to them properly and keep the template from breaking. (I have no clue what im looking at) Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 01:12, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

That I can't say for certain as I have no knowledge of how to program bots. Maybe it would help to take a look at this diff. Essentially, this is the only information that should change from one update to another. Let's assume we have a template that covers three categories, starting with March 2007. The relevant lines for the bot (listed below) are those that include a '#...#' paramater. I don't know if surrounding a value with '#'s actually does anything ... I've just done it to highlight the fields for this example.

  bar:March2007
  from:0 till:#X# text: "[[:Category:Articles to be merged since March 2007|March 2007: #X# articles]]"
  bar:April2007
  from:#X+1# till:#X+Y# text: "[[:Category:Articles to be merged since April 2007|April 2007: #Y# articles]]"
  bar:May2007
  from:#X+Y+1# till:#X+Y+Z# text: "[[:Category:Articles to be merged since May 2007|May 2007: #Z# articles]]"

  bar:Total color:Total
  from:0 till:#X+Y+Z# text:"Total: #X+Y+Z# articles remaining"

The fields surrounded by '#' are the minimum that the bot would need to change (for purposes of simplicity, I have excluded mention of the "Unclassified" bar, which simply counts the number of pages in the main category – in this case, Category:Articles to be merged – and which can be dropped from the template altogether). So, conducting the update would require:

1. Counting the number of articles in each category;
2. Replacing the values X, Y, and Z with the updated numbers; and
3. Updating the rest of the figures using the new data by erforming a few computations (addition only) in order to modify the lengths of the bars.

It would be nice if the bot could also update the date and time of the last update ... a date stamp (~~~~~) should suffice. Ideally, the bot would also add a new bar for each new month as time passes. Such an update would include two steps in addition to the 3 listed above:

1. Adding a new bar to the "BarData = " field in the form ... bar:MonthYear just above bar:Total (see here)
2. Displaying the bar on the template and linking to the new category by adding the below text (which continues the example above) just above the line bar:Total color:Total

  bar:MonthYear
  from:#X+Y+Z+1# till:#X+Y+Z+α# text: "[[:Category:Wikipedia articles with topics of unclear importance from Month Year|Month Year: #α# articles]]"

Does that information help at all? Cheers, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 04:26, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

where X Y Z are what? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 04:34, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Oops, sorry ... X, Y, and Z are the number of articles in the respective categories. In the example above, X is the number of articles in Category:Articles to be merged since March 2007, Y is the number of articles in Category:Articles to be merged since April 2007, and so on. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 04:56, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok I have an Idea of what im doing so im going to go be evil program some ideas. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 22:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok code is 95% done I just have to kill a bug before Its runnable. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 05:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

First there was getting an inanimate entity to do things for you and now squashing bugs ... this smacks of sorcery. ;) A quick question, please: would it be easy to make the bot update progress templates (using the same structure as above) other than the ones that have been discussed so far? In particular, I'm thinking of creating progress templates for Category:Articles with large trivia sections, Category:Articles lacking sources, and Category:Articles with unsourced statements. The latter two each contain 70000+ articles, so I doubt I'll create them if I have to update them manually. Cheers, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

New templates will be very easy Im just fighting a error (computer bug) with Unicode text, Im hoping to correct that tonight. So once I get this fixed we can move on to other templates. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 19:30, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Great, thanks! Best of luck with the pesky little critter, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:59, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

If you get frustrated and want to hand this off, Betacommand, I offer to take over. (I was coming here to work on this, actually, before I saw you were on top of it.) Or if you've got it, that's cool. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 15:48, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok I need a list of stuff:

examples taken from: {{Notability progress}}

1. list of templates
2. for each template I need the

{{Tnavbar-header|'''Notability Progress'''|Notability progress|bgcolor=#cccff}} line

1. and the main category to check for each template. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 19:41, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I am listing below 5 of the 7 progress templates in Category:Wikipedia progress templates; the structure of the other two is substantially different (as noted above, one is not even organised by month).

Template:Categorization progress

{{Tnavbar-header|'''Categorization Progress'''|Categorization progress|bgcolor=#ccccff}}

Category:Category needed

Template:Copyedit progress

{{Tnavbar-header|'''Copyedit Progress'''|Copyedit progress|bgcolor=#ccccff}}

Category:Wikipedia articles needing copy edit

Template:Merge progress

{{Tnavbar-header|'''Merge Progress'''|Merge progress|bgcolor=#cccff}}

Category:Articles to be merged

Template:Notability progress

{{Tnavbar-header|'''Notability Progress'''|Notability progress|bgcolor=#cccff}}

Category:Wikipedia articles with topics of unclear importance

Template:Wikification progress

{{Tnavbar-header|'''Wikification Progress'''|Wikification progress|bgcolor=#ccccff}}

Category:Articles that need to be wikified

If there is a problem with the structure of any of the templates, I'd be happy to change its format to approximate {{Notability progress}}, which I assume is the one you worked off of. It'll probably be easier to change the template format (it shouldn't take more than 1-2 minutes per template) than change the code for the bot. Cheers, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:51, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Has the bug been resolved? Flubeca (t) 21:34, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

All the major bugs have been solved. ill work on getting it out within the next 36 hours. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 21:45, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Awesome! Thank you! Flubeca (t) 13:43, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Betacommand passed the source off to me, as he's kinda strapped for free time right now. I'm finishing up a few things, and I should be ready in the next day or so with it. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 00:22, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

It has been a few days now. Is the bot having any troubles? -Flubeca (t) 17:49, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Any news? I'm posting mostly so that this section won't be automatically archived (it's seen no activity for almost 5 days). -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:21, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

As you can see, I made a successful run on Template:Notability_progress today. I'll set the rest up tomorrow, hopefully. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 22:57, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Great! Thanks. By the way, the bot seems to have removed Template:Notability progress from Category:Wikipedia progress templates. Was that accidental or is that necessary for the bot to function? -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:40, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Accidental, sorry. I'll fix it when I get back to the code tomorrow (it's on a server at work). ^demon^{[omg plz]} 19:15, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok, it's running on Template:Notability progress, Template:Copyedit progress, and Template:Merge progress just fine. I'll plug the last 2 in after lunch. As I don't want to run this on my main bot account and I'm starting a second one, how often do we want to update these when I put a BRFA in? ^demon^{[omg plz]} 15:48, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

It's working fine on Template:Notability progress, but there are some issues with the other two. For Template:Copyedit progress, the bot also counted Category:All articles needing copy edit, which is redundant to all of the monthly ones. For Template:Merge progress, I think you may want to work off of Category:Merge by month to avoid problems. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:39, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

As for updating frequency ... once a day should probably be enough, but Flubeca may something different in mind. Thanks, by the way, for working on this. Cheers, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:40, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Once a day is good.-Flubeca^Talk 03:05, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh and when will the other 2 be implemented. -Flubeca^Talk 03:09, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

By the way, the Template:Categorization progress is also having a double counting problem similar to the copyedit progress chart. Thanks for implementing this. --Fisherjs 10:27, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Is the bot running?-Flubeca^Talk 19:54, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I ran it and it's mostly working. I still have a bit of clean up to to. Python isn't my strongest language. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 20:21, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

What is it called, and just to say, it still isn't running on Wikification Progress ;) -Flubeca^Talk 19:16, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Flubeca, see User:^demonBot2 and Special:Contributions/^demonBot2.--Fisherjs 16:19, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok Thanks -Flubeca^Talk 17:07, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I simply don't have the time to work on this right now. The code is available here if you guys can find someone else to finish this off. It's mostly done. Sorry ^demon^{[omg plz]} 01:51, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Per the previous discussion (on this page and now has been archived here)

Could a bot do the same thing but for this page New South Wales state rugby league team players for this category Category:New South Wales Rugby League State of Origin players.

Making sure that red links arn't done (because it would create a page with just a category) and that it doesn't link the templates down the bottom, or the two links in the lead. Just the big long table. SpecialWindler talk 08:03, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Just keeping this discussion alive. SpecialWindler talk 10:10, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Still keeping this alive. Can someone reply. SpecialWindler talk 22:29, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Considering that this is essentially the same task as before and that there were no objections last time even after waiting a while, I think I'll be able to get around to doing this today or tomorrow. -- S ^up? 14:29, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there were quite a few broken links so I ended up having to go through the list myself. Anyway, the task is Y Done and I also went ahead and fixed the links -- S ^up? 19:19, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Per this discussion, could we have a bot update Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/AfD inline with Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Australia? If anyone is willing to take this on, the best place to say yes would be the Australia noticeboard. Giggy _U^CP 04:32, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

So to explain a little more. Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/AfD is transcluded onto Australian Wikipedians' notice board and is a list containing current Australian related AfDs, MfDs, CfDs ... The Deletion sorting page is just like any other deletion sorting page with the discussions transcluded onto the page. Obviously we want them to contain the same articles. Currently these are maintained manually but it requires double handling to achieve this. So the bot, say every few hours would preferably be able to make sure the two lists are the same. If this was too hard then one list could be the one to update manually and the other follows automatically. I don't have a problem running this myself but my coding is not up to it. I see also that Canadian Wikipedians' notice_board has the same problem - chances are their are also others. :: maelgwntalk 06:39, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

So it just updates Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/AfD with the content in Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Australia, I could do that, but the bot would only run once a day. --Chris ^g 09:29, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Maelgwn summed it up nicely. Humans update Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Australia (we currently have semi-automatic processes for that as far as I know), and bot streamlines Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/AfD to ensure that it has the same AfDs, CfDs, etc. posted on it. If the bot runs once a day, that's fine, we just need them to be streamlined eventually (especially since XfDs run for at least 5 days, so we shouldn't miss any). Chris, if you could do this it would be great. Giggy _U^CP 21:56, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok I've started writing the source code in perl and I'm going to put in a Requests for approval. So far so good. --Chris ^g 01:31, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok looks good. You say on the bots page :

1. Start
2. Login
3. Get text from Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Australia
4. Sort through text to find articles for deletion and add them to a list
5. Sort through list and remove articles already on Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/AfD
6. Get the dates from the remaing articles on the list
7. Add these Articles to the top of Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/AfD
8. Shutdown

Will also remove articles from /AfD if they are no longer on the deletion sorting list? Maybe we should also add a note of /AfD saying do not edit this list it is automatically updated... :: maelgwntalk 03:08, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think it should also remove articles not on the deletion sorting list. I'll add a note about automatic updating. Giggy _U^CP 03:36, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Could the bot also remove from Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Australia those discussions that have closed? --Bduke 01:47, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Is there a bot that can adjust a template and set up the categories? It takes a human about half an hour to do it all, but a bot could do it easily I imagine. There are many projects that could do with them, and I often don't have any suitable template available to allow me to make an assessment, which I try to do each time I see an unassessed article. It's far too time consuming for me to go through creating them myself for projects I'm not even involved with. Richard001 10:42, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

It is up to members of a project to assess articles. They are the people that know what standard articles should be in a certain subject area. No two projects want their assessment templates the same and it is the decision of a project as to whether they want as assessment scheme. :: maelgwntalk 02:25, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

And if they do, they have to set it all up themselves, which is tedious. What I am requesting is a bot to do this for them, so that setting up an assessment scheme is no effort at all, and projects that don't have one can get one quickly without knowing much about templates etc. I've set a couple up myself and have helped other projects to set them up, but as I've said it takes about half an hour to do, so it's hardly good use of an editor's time when the task is basically a boring one that an automaton could do. Richard001 00:53, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Would it be easier to write out a set of instructions for someone on a project to follow, rather than code a bot for this specialized task that happens just once or twice (or less frequently?) each month? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:54, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

There are hundreds of WikiProjects - why waste hours of people's time doing something that can be automated? Richard001 01:39, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Please can somebody automate removal of inappropriate templates. There are lots of these that are either out of date "Under construction", "Inuse" etc or inappropriate in other ways. Lightmouse 15:16, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

So presumably all Templates in Category:Under-construction templates could be treated similarly. If we added date tags that then added the article to an appropriate category. Inuse for example could be removed after say 3 days and Under construction after a month. Is it possible to have wikicode that would put an article in a category Category:Inuse for one day but then automatically changes it to Category:Inuse for two days one day later.

Just thinking. Should under construction tags actually be removed by a bot. Like if the tag is not removed by an editor then the construction has not occured? :: maelgwntalk 09:11, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I have just deleted 32 by hand. They should be removed automatically after a few hours. Two hours should be enough and 24 hours is generous. No article should have such a template for more than one day. Lightmouse 18:50, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

It is totally inappropriate to remove these unless you contact the editor that installed them in the first place. Otherwise there is no way of knowing whether they are still working on the article or not. I have been working on the british film lists for several months and have several more to go before they will be complete. The under construction tags prevent other editors from coming in and removing all of the blank lines or altering the columns, among other things. Not everyone can be editing 10 hours a day here and even when they can not everything can be completed in just a few days. Please do not remove these without consulting the editors working on the pages. MarnetteD | Talk 19:48, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

These templates are not meant to be in place for a considerable period of time. If the article is not actively being edited, then they shouldn't be there. Look at Joseph Szigeti (one of the articles for which you restored the tag). It was tagged on 29 June and the last edit was on 2 July. It is inappropriate for that tag to be on that article. The tag even states "If this article has not been edited in several days please remove this template." Tagging an article as under construction discourages other editors from contributing to the article. They assume it is actively being edited. If a person can only edit an article infrequently, then they need to live with other editors also editing the article. -- JLaTondre 21:57, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Undid deletion of construction and citations tags in IDEA article (moved from talk page)

Just wanted to let you know why I undid this deletion. The tags are necessary to reflect the state of the article. It serves two purposes: to alert readers that the article is still in development and may be in significant flux, and to alert editors that there is work to be done in the tagged areas.

It would be great if you could help eliminate the deficiencies of the article. Rosmoran 23:09, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Every article on Wikipedia is still in development. Yes, even featured articles, thats why those that are featured on main page are usually not protected. And to tag sections for work, cleanup, NPOV, or similar, you should use more appropriate tags. Inuse tag's sole purpose is to lessen the chance of edit conflicts. Nothing else. — Shinhan < talk > 11:41, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

The template {{Infobox German Location}} is made to display geographic data for places in Germany. It contains variables for geographical co-ordinates - they are required to generate the location map. The co-ordinates are displayed both in the infobox itself and now also on the title bar. The placement of the co-ordinates in the title bar has been delayed due to earlier template bugs, so in the meantime many articles have both the infobox and an extra {{coord}} template. Those that use both now have a messy overlap of co-ordinates (example)

I have no idea which articles use both and so I would like a bot to help clean everything up. The bot would search for all articles that contain both Infobox German Location and one of these Coord templates, then remove the Coord template. Is that possible? Thanks. - 52 Pickup 20:20, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll have MadmanBot see how many articles would be affected, to see if the task is feasible. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 20:25, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

The problem is the Infobox transcludes the Coord template, so I can't just intersect transclusions. I have to step out for a bit, but I'll give a definitive answer when I come back. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 20:57, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Redundancy is only present in 26 pages. Want me to just give you the list on your talk page? — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 23:07, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

If it's only 26 pages, then just the list will be great. Thanks! - 52 Pickup 06:31, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

 Done — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 14:32, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! - 52 Pickup 17:45, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Part 2

I've just noticed that a lot of articles also use the {{coor title dm}} or {{coor title dms}} templates - and perhaps other versions too. Would it be possible to get lists for them too? Or for a bot to take care of those? Thanks a lot. - 52 Pickup 21:05, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

It's time to convert those to {{coord}}. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 12:46, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I can check them when I get back later, but yes, they should be converted to {{coord}}. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 17:53, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Per this thread on my talk page there are an indeterminate number of project banner templates including wikitext such as

Please participate by editing [[{{ARTICLESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|the article]], and help

which is intended to be a piped link to the article corresponding to a talk page, but for category talk pages results in a piped categorization. I've recently fixed this for Template:WikiProject United States. The same issue was found and fixed (a simpler way) in Template:PeruProjectBanner. Looking at Template:WikiProjectBannerShell/Compliant banner list and Category:WikiProject banners there are lots and lots of these templates. If anyone has a downloaded copy of the database and could create a list of templates that might have this issue, and/or can think of a reasonable way to just fix these with a bot, please speak up. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:15, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, so let me make sure I know what you want. You want a bot to do a quick scan through categories, expanding templates and finding out which templates cause a category to be added to itself? That sounds fairly easy. If it turns out it's just a few banners, we can add the : ourselves; if it's a large number of banners, I'd have MadmanBot do it. Does this sound good?

I think it'd be easier to iterate through all templates looking for the string [[{{ARTICLESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}. I think it's extremely unlikely that this is not meant to actually be [[:{{ARTICLESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}. If iterating through all categories is easier for some reason, the approach would be to find all categories that include their own talk page (and then figure out what template is causing this). -- Rick Block (talk) 19:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Using pywikipediabot, I think python replace.py -'cat:Wikiproject banners' '[[{{ARTICLESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}' '[[:{{ARTICLESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}' should catch all the ones in Category:WikiProject banners (but this crashes my copy of replace.py for some reason). -- Rick Block (talk) 19:42, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Results

Template:Csbir Template:Spirituality project Template:WP Africa Template:WPMoon Template:WPReligion Template:WPSD Template:WikiProject Cats Template:WikiProject Colombia Template:WikiProject Color Template:WikiProject DC Template:WikiProject Education Template:WikiProject Egyptian Religion Template:WikiProject Fictional series Template:WikiProject Messianic Judaism Template:WikiProject Nigeria Template:WikiProject Southeast Asia Template:WikiProject Sudan Template:WikiProject Taoism Template:WikiProject Veterinary medicine Template:WikiProject intelligent design Template:Wikiproject mythology  Done — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 22:20, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

All templates fixed manually. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 22:26, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

The entire Template namespace is now being scanned for the string; results will be posted when the scan is complete. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 00:04, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Template:Centrist Party Template:Logic task Template:Page Template:To do Template:ToDo:Norfolk Template:Todo-GA Template:Todo-buffy Template:Todo2 Template:Todo3 Template:Todo4 Template:Todobox Template:WNBP todo Template:WPAnthro Template:WPRed Dwarf Template:WP Cheeses Template:WikiProject Ghana Template:WikiProject Pterosaurs

 Done

All templates fixed manually. This was a Good Thing (tm), as it also identified some WikiProject banners that needed to be added to the category, on which many of my bot's tasks depend.  :) — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 03:49, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Can a bot redirect the seasons of the MLB teams (pro league, not minor league) to the major league team. For example, see this dif. An OTRS complaint was filed, e-mail ZScout for details. Can you please do this, except for 2007. Thanks. Miranda 09:40, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

This is disputed, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Baseball#Seasonal_articles. --Borgarde^talk 11:19, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

You can't do this. All of these articles are in the middle of a major revamping. They will all be improved into a way taht will please Jaranda... actually, I doubt we can please that boy. But these can't be re-directed because we are currently working on improving all of them. Ksy92003(talk) 13:20, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Since the RefDeskBot hasnt been working since June 27 and Martinp23 has been away since July 7, are there any chance of somebody cloning RefDeskBot or otherwise archiving Reference Desks? User:CesarB/Reference desk archiving notes has the description of the process itself. Doing it by hand is boring. — Shinhan < talk > 13:30, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

It seems, that right now, the days are moved off to the archives at random, what interval would be best for this to be done? Weekly? Daily? All in all, it doesen't look like that daunting of a task. I'll see what I can throw together. I'm pretty new at this, however, so, it might take a bit. --SXT4 04:06, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Wow, looking more into it, that's a bit more than I can bite off right now.... Hopefully, one of the more experienced guys can help you out... --SXT4 04:17, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Anyone? RefDeskBot is still not working and Martinp23 is on wikibreak... — Shinhan < talk > 08:01, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Looks like there already is one Q ^{T C} 18:53, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Update a page with the title of today's FA that could be used in Special:Recentchangeslinked type watchlists (such as mine). Should be simple enough:

• At 00:00 look at [[Wikipedia:Today's featured article/{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}]]
• Find the text inside the '''[[]]''' (or '''''[[]]''''')
• Replace Wikipedia:Today's featured article/Title with that text, linked

Λυδαcιτγ 21:17, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Seems fairly simple. Are we sure this can't be done any other way? — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 23:49, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Looked into it a bit, and it seems not. I can do this immediately, if there's no opposition. It's a harmless and uncontroversial task. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 00:27, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Not quite as precise, but doesn't adding WP:TFA to your watchlist accomplish pretty much the same thing? -- Rick Block (talk) 17:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

No, because that would show you changes to WP:TFA, not changes to today's featured article. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 17:52, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Related changes of WP:TFA shows changes to today's featured article, so the link Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:Today's featured article shows the desired changes (and others). You can translude Wikipedia:Today's featured article/{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}} onto a watchlist page (perhaps hidden in a div, see User:Rick Block/sandbox - NOTE: the TFA page has mismatched divs), but I think the watchlist page would need to be purged before asking for the changes. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:37, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I think the reason he doesn't want to do that is you get a lot of other links with it. I may be wrong, though, and this will fit his needs perfectly, so I'll wait for him to comment. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 17:52, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions, Rick, but watching related changes for the TFA page gives too many links. Thank you for the offer, Madman, and if Rick agrees that there's no better way to do this I'll take you up on it. Λυδαcιτγ 02:25, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

It's OK with me. I was just trying to think of other ways to accomplish the same thing. Note that relying on any user's bot is inherently unreliable (no offense meant by this, just that users and their bots come and go). I'm working on creating a generic hourly/daily/weekly bot framework, with published bot sources, to help with this. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:14, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

 Done — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 13:55, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Please will someone carry out the modifications (substituting templates for boilerplate text, and adding hCard microformat mark-up) to the 139 sub-pages of List of United Kingdom locations as proposed at Talk:List of United Kingdom locations/botreq. Thank you. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 11:42, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll look at getting AWB to do this. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 21:11, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Bot requested to change the line

{{F1 circuit|

to

{{Motorsport venue|

at all articles in the main namespace listed on the Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:F1_circuit page. Change requested as Template:Motorsport venue has been created to replace Template:F1 circuit and several other similar templates. AlexJ 10:57, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Sure. I'll run HermesBot. ~ Wikihermit 05:44, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Done ~ Wikihermit 06:24, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Symmons Plains International Raceway St.John's (Short Course) Barbagallo Raceway Autodromo Riccardo Paletti Autodrom Most ACI Vallelunga Circuit Autodromo di Pergusa Opatija Circuit Misano Circuit Bucharest Ring Birmingham Superprix Powerbuilt Raceway at Ruapuna Park Autodrom Moscow Taupo Motorsport Park Beijing International Streetcircuit Pukekohe Park Raceway Grand Prix de Pau User:AlexJ/Sandbox Snaefell mountain course Mugello Circuit Thomson Road Grand Prix circuit Phoenix street circuit Sentul International Circuit Mount Panorama Circuit Autódromo Internacional de Curitiba Eastern Creek Raceway Detroit street circuit Circuit de Valencia Mondello Park TT Circuit Assen Adelaide Street Circuit Circuito Permanente de Jerez Autódromo Oscar Alfredo Gálvez Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez Circuito Permanente Del Jarama Dijon-Prenois Charade Circuit Autódromo do Estoril Circuit Bremgarten Zolder Autódromo Internacional Nelson Piquet Istanbul Park Österreichring Masaryk Circuit Wikipedia:WikiProject Formula One Autódromo José Carlos Pace Shanghai International Circuit Autodromo Nazionale Monza Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours Circuit Gilles Villeneuve Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari Bahrain International Circuit Sepang International Circuit Wikipedia:Bot requests (Fixed) Suzuka Circuit Circuit de Monaco Hungaroring Circuit de Catalunya Fair Park Fuji Speedway Nürburgring Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit Circuit Park Zandvoort

On each Wikicalendar (Day of the Year) article, there is a link to the New York Times: On This Day. The URL for the link consists of YYYYMMDD.html. While it is no big deal if the link remains pointing to the last year's page, some get manually updated and some don't. It would be helpful to have a bot that could update the link. -- Mufka ^{(user) (talk) (contribs)} 03:10, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

One way to solve this would be to replace year number with {{CURRENTYEAR}}, like I did for July 21. Bot could then replace this link in all the "Day of the Year" pages... — Shinhan < talk > 12:00, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this is a good idea. The reason is that the page for a given date is not created until about a week before the date. For example take a look here at the link to the August 21 NYT page. The changes to the date need to take place not more than a week before the date. -- Mufka ^{(user) (talk) (contribs)} 12:20, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I just had my bot go over the articles in question. Seventeen links hadn't been updated (I've since had my bot do that), the rest are fine. Re-running the check every once in a while or upon request wouldn't be a problem, if that helps in any way. -- S ^up? 22:48, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

So it seems to me that this was a pretty easy solution. Keeping in mind that I'm totally ignorant about how bots work, would it be possible (and less work for you) to schedule the bot to change the pages 1 week before the given date? Thanks. -- Mufka ^{(user) (talk) (contribs)} 01:27, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

No problem. :) Generally speaking, it's easier to just run the task on-demand (that way, I don't have to write a separate bot and can just use the tools I have). It does sound like a neat little project though. Tell you what - I'll put it on my to-do list and when I get back from my vacation, I'll see if I can put some code together. Cheers S ^up? 20:04, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

That's great. Thanks. -- Mufka ^{(user) (talk) (contribs)} 20:38, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Please see my comments on Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Seedbot2. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 02:05, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Hello, I'm Vhaeos, one of the admins from the Oblivion Mod Wiki. We recently went through a category restructering. We had no idea how tedious, and the amount of time that it'd take to move categories. I'm not sure if wikis that aren't wikipedia are allowed to request bot actions here. If not, sorry. But yeah, if anyone can help, please leave a message here with whatever information you'd need. Thank you, -Vhaeos 00:21, 27 July 2007 (UTC).

This is for the English Wikipedia, not other wikis. ~ Wikihermit 01:48, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

However, you can try downloading Pywikipedia; properly configured, I believe you should be able to use it on any MediaWiki installation, and you can move categories with one simple command. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 02:00, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

AWB works too, and easier to use if you're not familiar with bots. ~ Wikihermit 03:39, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

There was a little talk at Talk:Intelligent design#Semi-protection about how it would be convenient if there were a bot that made sure any semi-protected pages got a template added. Template:Sprotected2 doesn't require a reason to be put on a page if it's already semi-protected, so this would be an appropriate task for a bot to perform. Users can, of course, later replace this with the larger template if they deem it necessary, and the bot shouldn't add this one to any page that already has another protection template. --Infophile ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 13:01, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

This would be a really easy task to do, and it doesn't seem any existing bot does this. I think RBot (talk · contribs) removes semi-protected and protected tags when they are no longer, but the converse does not seem true. Anyone have a problem with this task? — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 14:25, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Working on it. ~ Wikihermit 19:17, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Working on it (Wikihermit withdrew). — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 19:08, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Good luck! Also, please try to use {{pp-semi-protected}} and related, by the way, rather than {{sprotected}}. The naming system for the former set is a bit more sane. Gracenotes^T § 21:32, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

You know, I wrote an algorithm for a semiprotection tag adding-and-removal bot about a month ago, but I never got around to implementing it, besides structuring the main function. I lost it anyway (the algorithm, not the code). Gracenotes^T § 21:30, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

At WT:FAC I suggested a bot-maintained page for crediting FAC contributors, and there was support for the idea there. The idea is a recognition of service, by listing number of FACs contributed to. I'm thinking of a parallel to Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations, which is semi-automatically maintained. The tasks would be as follows:

• Scan WP:FAC history for all FAC nomination subpages.
• For each subpage:

• Assume the first contributor is the nominator, and the last contribution by Raul654 is the closing. Contributions after that don't count.
• Any contribution between nomination and closing adds 1 point to the count for the contributor. Multiple contributions from one contributor don't count; you can score one point per FAC, at most. Raul654 can get credit, since he can contribute too; the nominator does not get credit.

• Create a page listing all contributors to FAC, sorted in descending order of number of contributions.
• Periodically (weekly?) update the list. This would require either (a) don't count a FAC till it's closed, or (b) make the underlying data persistent in the bot, so the bot knew that e.g. Circeus had already been credited for the Shared universe FAC; or (c) manage the count by timestamp range to avoid looking at anything twice. Option (b) would be nice because it would also allow monthly or yearly reports to give credit to recently active Wikipedians.

The goal is to increase participation. I don't think gaming the system would be very likely, particularly with 1 point per sig counting, rather than 1 point per contribution. Mike Christie (talk) 18:43, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

My specifications are elaborate (but relatively easy to program), so I put them here. Feedback is at the associated talk page and here. The main objection was that none of the listed errors are currently on the Main Page, but that usual perfection (that sometimes breaks down) is accomplished by unaided manual editing every few hours indefinitely, mostly on pages whose data is bound for the Main Page. Rather than take all that manual editing for granted, some of that effort could be put to use elsewhere if a bot could handle this stuff. Art LaPella 01:47, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I know automated spell-checking bots are always denied, so I would think a grammar bot would be too. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 13:00, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I already coded most of the tests. Are you suggesting that the bot actually be able to fix the errors or that it simply report them to a user? --ST47Talk·Desk 14:03, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I think he wants it to report them to a user. Editing the Main Page would be a problem; it'd require a sysop flag for the bot. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 15:41, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I discussed reporting errors at "Reporting errors", without being too specific. If editing the Main Page is a biggie, I can compromise there - things like "... that" should have been eliminated at Template:Did you know/Next update. I wouldn't call it a grammar bot - there's nothing like subject-verb agreement or complete sentences. I think what I included is pretty mechanical, and I realize I will still have to do some things myself. Art LaPella 21:31, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

There are a number of articles that have <ref> tags but no <references/> or {{reflist}} tag (see [[Wikipedia:Footnotes]]). Can someone write a bot that will (or add a function to a bot so it will) add a <references/> tag to any page that lacks it but has <ref> tags?—msh210℠

The only difficulty with that would be automatically placing the tag and possibly adding a heading. I think such a bot would need to be manually assisted. —METS501 (talk) 18:31, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

What is the difficulty with placing the tag and possibly a header? Check the page to see whether the tag is there and whether a "References" or "Notes" or "Footnotes" header is there. If either is, do nothing. If neither is, but there's at least one "ref" tag in the page, then add a "Footnotes" (or "References"?) header and the "references" tag, both at the extreme bottom of the page, above only the interlingual links and categories (and any section labeled "External links" if it happens to be last). It doesn't seem too difficult to me; is it? (That's not a rhetorical question, as I have no idea how to write a bot.)—msh210℠ 23:34, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

You're right; it's not too difficult, because the bot doesn't have to catch every page. I can skip pages that it's not sure about. —METS501 (talk) 19:59, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Could someone program a bot (or tell me how to do it) to switch out the deprecated names of {{Infobox Settlement}}. I was thinking that it could be done using AWB, but not sure. I created a category to help with this: Category:Settlement articles requiring maintenance. There are 4,378 pages that need to have the names switched. —MJCdetroit 19:31, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

explain what you want done. ^∆ 19:33, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

If you click on the link above to infobox settlement you'll see a table with all the current parameter names in the left column. In some of the cells in the right hand column you'll see the deprecated names in red. I want to go through the category above and replace the deprecated names that are currently being used within those articles' infoboxes with the current parameter names. After that is done, I will remove the deprecated names from the template code at Infobox Settlement. I know it can be done semi-automatically with AWB, but if a bot could do it, that would be better. —MJCdetroit 01:02, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I think my bot can handle this. —METS501 (talk) 20:01, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Let me know if there is anything that you need of me. —MJCdetroit 20:27, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

 Done —MJCdetroit 12:16, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I recently moved Template:General CVG character to Template:General VG character because it seems to have been missed in the big move of WP:CVG to WP:VG. Unfortunately, the template is transcluded thousands of times and it would probably take forever to do by hand. Can I get a bot to help for this? (My first time at bot requests) Axem Titanium 14:28, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Why do it at all? When you move it, a redirect is created, which allows use of the old template name in addition to the new. Bots generally don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken, per Wikipedia guidelines. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 15:10, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

It's not that big a deal, I just don't like loose ends like this. Incidentally, this also applies to Template:CVG Navigation. Oh well, if this request goes through, great; if not, it's not the end of the world. Axem Titanium 20:51, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

summary

• needed to tag all articles in Category:Jewish law and rituals and its subcategories for WikiProject Judaism
• If the front of the article is tagged with Template:Stub or some other stub template on its front page and is tagged with WikiProject Judaism in its talk page it should automatically be rated for stub class for wikiproject judaism
• all articles which have a jewish related stub to be tagged in their talk pages for wikiproject judaism and be classified as stub
• for articles tagged for WP Judaism in their talk pages if their respective article pages are not tagged with a stub template it should inherit the class from any other wikiprojects if there is a class dispute then it shall be not be rated for clas
• name call it jewbot i guess

if someone creates this bot it would be greatly appreciated --Java7837 20:55, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

The tagging of the articles can easily be done using AWB, but I don't know understand the 4th point. Could you elaborate? --Boricuaeddie 16:47, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

original disscussion not summarized

There has been a push in the last week or so (largely by User:Java7837, User:Eliyak, and myself), to tag appropriate articles for this project, and rate them. (You can see our progress if you'd like). In many respects it is slow tedious work, which is why I was thinking of getting a bot to help with the tagging part (a bot obviously couldn't do the rating part). Unless someone knows of a reason why this is a bad idea, I was thinking of making a request at WP:BOT for a bot to tag all article in Category:Jewish law and rituals and all its subcategories (which include rabbis, synagogue, Hebrew Calendar, and others) for this wikiproject. Obviously we'd have to go through afterwards and rate all of the articles on the importance and article rating scale, but it would make at least part of our job easier. Are there any objections? --Bachrach44 13:38, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion if the front of the article is tagged with Template:Stub or some other stub template on its front page and is tagged with WikiProject Judaism in its talk page it should automatically be rated for stub class for wikiproject judaism--Java7837 20:32, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Also have it add articles to WikiProject Judaism if they use a jewish related stub and also rate for their class as stub--Java7837 20:35, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I think my suggestions would greatly speed up the process--Java7837 20:35, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

One more suggestion for article tagged for WP Judaism in their talk pages if their respective article pages are not tagged with a stub template it should inherit the class from any other wikiprojects if there is a class dispute then it shall be not be rated for class--Java7837 20:37, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, this is exactly the kind of project User:SatyrBot has been doing and is programmed for. If you would like, I can sic it on WP Judaism. All that I would need is a page that lists the categories you want the bot to run through - something like the list WP:ALA put together is ideal. For every category listed, at least 80% of the articles in those categories should "belong" to WP:Judaism - that's to prevent over-tagging.

Let me know if you have any questions, if I can help, and/or if you want SatyrBot to help. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 22:40, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Could somebody get an interwiki bot running that'll copy {{coor}} (and preferablity convert to {{coord}}) from other wikis to prevent duplication of work. —Dispenser 00:59, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Not if there could be any problem with licensing; furthermore, you'd have to specify which wiki. The bot can't just look all over the Internet. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 14:04, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I think he meant other languages. —METS501 (talk) 14:45, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Ah, from other Wikipedia wikis. (I should have figured from "interwiki" ;)) Perhaps; I'll have to see how they do it. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 15:01, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't User:The Anomebot2 already do that? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 14:21, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

It did it as a one time operation. I suggesting that mechanism that keeps interwiki links concurrent also keep the coordinates concurrent. I suppose I'll have better luck posting to the pywikipedia what-ever-they-have-list. —Dispenser 00:47, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I have just split List of tallest structures in the United States, moving a second, duplicate (but differently-ordered) list to List of tallest structures in the United States by height. Please can someone automate the copying of coordinates from the former to a new column on the latter page? At the same time, please add hCard microformat mark-up, such that:

(wrapped for clarity)

|- 
| 628.8 m 
|| [[KVLY-TV mast]] 
|| [[Blanchard, North Dakota|Blanchard]], [[North Dakota]] 
|| Guyed Mast 
|| 

becomes:

|- class="vcard"
| class="note" | 628.8 m 
||class="fn org" | [[KVLY-TV mast]] 
|| class="label" | [[Blanchard, North Dakota|Blanchard]], [[North Dakota]] 
|| {{coord|nnn|}}}
|| class="note" | Guyed Mast 
||

with the addition of classes "vcard", "note", "fn org", "label" & "note" (second use) and a {[tl|coord}}. Note that not every item on the second page appears on the first.

Thank you. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 20:37, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

• I could probably just whip up a local script to do this and make a single manual edit rather than running it through a bot. I'll take a look and see how tough it looks. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 21:33, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
• Note - I've put up an intermediate version to verify that this is waht you are looking for. If you wanted the coordinates in the same column as the location I can make that cahnge pretty easily. As for your microformatting stuff, the way you present it above is causing the table to become misformatted. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 22:46, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

• • Thank you. Looks good, so far. Can you put your attempt at adding hCard on a sandbox page, so I can see what's happening, please? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 23:03, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
    • DONE. Sorry to take all weekend to get back to you, I figured out the problem. Should be good now :) ɑʀкʏɑɴ 15:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. FYI, that wasn;t not working, as you had used:

|-<div class = "vcard">

where:

|- class = "vcard"

was needed. I've fixed that, though. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 15:22, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Whoops, I uploaded the wrong version! Glad it was easy to fix though. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 15:23, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I was slightly miffed to find that a category my user page was in was deleted, after a debate I was completely unaware of. I only found out when my userpage was changed to remove the redlink. I feel that users should be notified when user categories are thus debated, and that a bot is ideal for this kind of task. Totnesmartin 21:34, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

• I strongly disagree with this idea for a bot. In addition to being a non-essential task (user categories are probably among the least important of pages on Wikipedia), it implies a degree of ownership/control over userpages that is not afforded by WP:UP. It's not as if removing a redlinked category changes the layout or content of your userpage ... it's a minor, technical thing. Do we notify the contributor to articles in a category that is nominated for deletion? No, even though articles are infinitely more important than userpages and user categories. We don't even have required notification of article creators when their articles are nominated (I proposed the idea a few months ago and it was solidly rejected). -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 22:38, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
• I don't understand the need for this. Why not use your watchlist? --Kbdank71 01:19, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
• No, no, no. This bot would be spamming thousands of user talk pages regarding these discussions. There would be a flood of complaints regarding these messages. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 23:11, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
• Then the bot should emphasise that it's a discussion, not a vote - the CfD admin can easily weed out insubstantial nonarguments; after all, this happens at AfD's where Wikiprojects flag up relevant debates. Totnesmartin 10:12, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

• These are not parallel situations. Wikiprojects place a single notice on the project page. You are talking about sending out thousands of notices. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 13:48, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Will the bot be called VotestackingBot? --Gmaxwell 15:37, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking MySpaceBot myself...but meh, what do I know? ^demon^{[omg plz]} 01:30, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I would like someone, please, to add (additional) hCard microformat markup to each of:

• List of impact craters on Earth
• List of impact craters in Africa
• List of impact craters in Asia
• List of impact craters in Australasia and Antarctica
• List of impact craters in Europe
• List of impact craters in Canada
• List of impact craters in USA and Central America
• List of impact craters in South America

such that, for example:

|- 
|[[Vredefort crater|Vredefort]] 
|[[South Africa]]
|300 km
|2.02 billion
|align=right|{{coord|27|0|S|27|30|E|}}

or

|- class="vcard"
|class="fn org"|[[Vredefort crater|Vredefort]] 
|[[South Africa]]
|300 km
|2.02 billion
|align=right|{{coord|27|0|S|27|30|E|}}

becomes:

|- class="vcard"
|class="fn org"|[[Vredefort crater|Vredefort]] 
|class="label"|[[South Africa]]
|class="note"|300 km
|2.02 billion
|align=right|{{coord|27|0|S|27|30|E|}}

with the addition of classes "vcard", "fn org", "label" and "note", if not already present.

If someone can show me a tool to make such changes, and how to use it, I'll be happy to do so, and stop posting such requests here! Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 11:40, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't really need a bot, can be done manually with a bit of magic. Q ^{T C} 02:56, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

A comment like that does not help our contributors at all, OverlordQ. — madman bum and angel 02:58, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

 Done Oh, pardon me then. I didn't feel like I need to elaborate since I was doing the work. Q ^{T C} 03:41, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

My apologies, then, though that wasn't easily inferred from your comment. — madman bum and angel 16:02, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

The former Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games logo Image:Nuvola apps package games.png has been superseded by the updated image Image:Gamepad.svg. Would it be possible for a bot to replace all instances of the former with the latter? ~ JohnnyMrNinja 21:06, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. It can be done using AWB. --Boricuaeddie 23:15, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I have created a bot for this task. See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/EddieBot 2. --Boricuaeddie 00:02, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I just moved Characters in Bleach to List of Bleach characters per MOS and a request at WP:RM#Uncontroversial proposals. Normally I fix all the double redirects by hand, but in this case there are 111 of them, and many point to specific sections in the target, which makes my usual quick copy-paste method much less efficient.

I would be grateful if someone could put a bot on this task. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, we have a number of active bots and human editors working on double redirects; I'd leave it to them. All will be fixed, in time. — madman bum and angel 06:40, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, ok. I've fixed the ones that actually had mainspace links to them; there still remain over 80. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Would it be possible for a bot to generate a list of unused templates similar to Special:Unusedtemplates? The issue with the special page is that is does not extend beyond the first 1,000 entries. A full list would help tremendously in cleaning out the Template namespace. Any takers? --MZMcBride 18:32, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I can do this one by the end of the day. — madman bum and angel 23:34, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

is there any way a bot can be briefly/quickly made for me as to set all images uploaded for either a set of articles or all i upload(ik i can check the box, but i have about 80 of them), the reason i ask is because i basically manage a series of articles and i try to keep up with them all, message me on my talk page if you need any more info or what not... Ancientanubis, talk Editor Review 01:13, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

basically im looking for either a bot that can add images posted in a certain group of articles onto a watchlist OR a category so as to be able to better keep track of all images used or loaded onto the articles, Ancientanubis, talk Editor Review 01:31, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

A bot cannot edit your watchlist, or access it, unless it runs under your account. For watching them, its easier to just watchlist them yourselves, unless there is hundreds. Also, a category would be deleted, there is no real use for a "Images uploaded by user X" category. Easiest way is to link them all from a user subpage, and then use the Related Changes to show a watchlist-style changes list for them. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 01:48, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

well i've thought about includeing them into the category for the series of articles that is already created... Ancientanubis, talk Editor Review 01:55, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

but yes, i do see your point, thank you for the advice tho:)Ancientanubis, talk Editor Review 02:04, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

and ik this is not the place to discuss it, but is there any way to set up the watchlist(or make something) that only 'watches' a portion of the pages you have set to watch... Ancientanubis, talk Editor Review 02:08, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

No. Section-watching is not a feature (yet). --MZMcBride 02:32, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I responded on talk page per them asking on my talk page, you can create a user subpage with links to the articles you want to watch, then use related cahnges. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 04:03, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Would it be possible for a bot to fix redirects of incorrect name order for Chinese and Korean figure skaters into the Naming conventions way (family name, personal name). For example, change all instances of Xue Shen into Shen Xue. For the following articles:

(In other words, everyone in Category:Chinese figure skaters, Category:South Korean figure skaters, and Category:North Korean figure skaters, minus Chuen-Gun Lee, who is a special case.)

I've tried doing it by hand, but it's taking me absolutely forever. Kolindigo 22:28, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Per WP:REDIRECT if its not broken dont fix it. β^_command 22:32, 7 August 2007 (UTC)