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Barnstar cat cleaning up

Hi,
I have an AWB job for some person. I need following changes:

Any questions? Who can do this? This job includes ~1000-1200 pages, so a BFRA might be required. mabdul 13:39, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

  1. the list is at User:Rich Farmbrough/Botreq temp. Rich Farmbrough, 04:46, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
    1. I don't see the advantage of the transform. Categories should only be set by template if there's some benefit, here I see none.
    2. The change is specified for the National Merit barnstars, but the DEFAULTSORT for others would need to be specified too. Rich Farmbrough, 04:52, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

I suppose you only want the National ones done, and that to avoid dual-listing? Rich Farmbrough, 04:53, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Doing.. Rich Farmbrough, 05:08, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Done. Something less than 200 templates. Rich Farmbrough, 05:24, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Help with CFD logjam

Resolved

The current workload at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working & Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working/Large includes several aime & manga categories that contain many huge articles that individually take far longer than average to edit and thus the categories take hours to rename. This in turn is creating a logjam for the regular bot.

Can extra bots please help to rename the following (all renamed per Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy):

Many thanks in advance. Timrollpickering (talk) 14:08, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Note: If you simply replace the from page with {{Category redirect|Shinigami anime and manga}} for example, a bot will come and take care of it. Rich Farmbrough, 18:02, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

utvi.com -> yourmoneysite.com

On the face of it this should be a simple substitution - Indian financial media company did a deal with Bloomberg under which their old website www.utvi.com mapped to www.yourmoneysite.com with pathnames intact. However old material seems to have been lost in the deal, eg you don't get a 404 or anything when you convert this utvi.com link to yourmoneysite.com it just doesn't give you the article. That one isn't on archive.org either. I'm swamped at the moment, would someone mind having a look around to see how widespread this problem is? FlagSteward (talk) 14:34, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

There are 4 links, including this page, and the one you copied it from (note the target page has comments, just no article).

Here is the special page to see the list. Rich Farmbrough, 01:42, 25 March 2012 (UTC).

Bot for reporting fungal taxon redlinks

One of my main projects on Wikipedia is to create articles for all fungal taxa down to the level of genus. Over the past few years, I've made some pretty good progress; of the estimated 9000+ taxa from Kingdom to genus, I estimate we're at about 70%–90% coverage. I was wondering if a bot could be made that would help me finish my task. Basically, it would scan all taxon pages associated with WP:FUNGI (i.e., those with a taxobox), and prepare a list of all redlinks it finds that are not species. Would this be relatively easy to do? Sasata (talk) 17:06, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Redlinks on those pages is a relatively easy list to construct (well, certainly doable anyway). Is it easy to narrow them down to the ones you want? - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 20:32, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
"Links in the taxobox that do not contain a space" should be fairly good approximation, I think. Ucucha (talk) 20:45, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure if that approach would include taxon authorities or not, but even if it did, that's ok as I plan to create articles for all notable authorities at some time anyway. If it's easy, it would be useful to specify how many times a redlink occurs; this would help me prioritize a work schedule for the redlink list, but it's not necessary if it's a hassle. Sasata (talk) 20:49, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
This can be done with AWB I guess. Let me take a look. Rich Farmbrough, 21:47, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
There's some 9200 Fungi pages, about 8800 in mainspace, and several hundred don't have taxoboxes (still running). I guess the redlink list will take about 30 mins, and then just a matter of filtering out those we want. Rich Farmbrough, 22:40, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
User:Rich Farmbrough/mainly taxa - a fairly small list, 270 items. Rich Farmbrough, 00:23, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
This will be helpful. Looks like there's some links in there that didn't originate from taxoboxes, but I can skip over those easy enough. Thanks for taking the time to do this! Sasata (talk) 02:11, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
My pleasure, would have been quicker but I was being trolled. Rich Farmbrough, 03:31, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Project tagging bot

The people who have tagged articles in WP:CHIBOTCATS with {{WikiProject Chicago}} have mostly gone inactive, except for one admin who no longer tags. Are there any bots that tag by category? If not we need a new one.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 05:47, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I just got approval for one. What are you trying to do? Do you just want to tag as WPChicago or was that just an Example? --Kumioko (talk) 14:58, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Yes we need all the new articles in the cats listed at WP:CHIBOTCATS (but not their subcats) tagged with {{WikiProject Chicago}}. Auto rating unrated pages would be good. I.e., if a majority of other tags have a class=x, then fill that class in for Chicago.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:06, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
I have a request sitting with DodoBot - User_talk:DodoBot/Requests#WP:UKROADS - if you'd like to steal that one away and do it, I'd be much obliged. All details there, but you could come back to me - if you feel like doing it - should you need to know more. thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:04, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Ok. I am currently going through some for WPUS and Oklahoma asked for a couple hundred too so after that I'll start working with these unless someone grabs them first. IN the Chicago one may I suggest also adding WikiProject Illinois if its not there already. --Kumioko (talk) 18:59, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for UKRoads. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:13, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Just so you know, my bot, Hazard-Bot, is approved for such tasks.  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  23:47, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
If you'd like to steal UK Roads, I'm sure no-one would object. I'd just be fascinated to see it done ;) --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:50, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Please do Hazard. Got another 65000 in the que before I can do it. --Kumioko (talk) 00:07, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
I started, but not sure if I will do them all at once. I'll finish at a later time if so.  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  00:41, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

So is Chicago in somebody's queue now?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 21:30, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Hazard-SJ (talk · contribs), can you handle this for me?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 05:17, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
Are you watching here? I will ping your page.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 04:08, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
I should be able to help with it in the next few days. Got a couple others in the hopper at the moment. --Kumioko (talk) 04:29, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
I'm sorry about the delay. I've started the UKROADS more than once and left it to run, but it seems an error prevented it from continuing. I believe I should make a page for these kinds of requests so it is easier to follow? I will continue working on UKROADS. If Chicago isn't done when I'm done, I'll attempt it too.  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  06:12, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
Any estimate on when you will be done with UKROADS?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:06, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
Hello.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:26, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply. I did some more, but I was having some problems, hence this. I'll get back to it ASAP, hopefully. As for Chicago, that would be a longer hold.  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  03:54, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I can probably do some on Chicago but I'm not sure my bot is authorized yet to do that type of task. I can do WikiProject Banner replacement but I think I need to request a separate one for tagging new articles to a project. Its a pretty straightforward request with plenty of precadent though so it should be pretty quick. --Kumioko (talk) 04:28, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Chicago tagging task

I submitted a BRFA to allow my bot to do this type of task but before I get started I got a couple questions about this one.

  1. Can I remove the red linked categories from the above page so it doesn't conflict?
  2. Does the project support all types of content classes (i.e. Category, template redirect, etc.)? If not which ones does it support.
  3. Are you just looking for me to add the Chicago banner or do you want me to do assessment as well? If you do want me to do some assessment what projects do you want me to inherit the class from? --Kumioko (talk) 17:46, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
    • In the past I believe we inherited by majority. Can you do that? Just make sure not to automatically do subcategories.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 17:39, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick reply. I have to admit I don't know how to inherit by majority. I'm afraid that programming is above my level. What do you mean by not to automatically do subcategories? --Kumioko (talk) 17:45, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
The list at WP:CHIBOTCATS includes the categories that are associated with WP:CHICAGO. Some of the subcategories of those categories include things that are far afield from the project. I will wait for Hazard-SJ (talk · contribs).--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 00:12, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
No problem. --Kumioko (talk) 04:04, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Me sees.  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  07:37, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
What is the latest?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 16:21, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
Any update?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 04:52, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
How about a Me dos?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 13:39, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
I could help eventually but my bot is still awaiting the authorization to tag an article and even then it will be a bit limited. It can easily add the chicago banner but doing the assessments is a bit of a different story. As I mentioned above it can inherit the class from another project but my programmer skillz aren't enough to look for what class is most used. I usually just pick another project (usually one I have some faith in the class being correct like MILHIST, USRoads, NRHP and a few others) run through that and then pick the next one. Once I have gone through the more trustworthy ones then I can use the less reliable ones (like Biography for example). --Kumioko (talk) 20:02, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
I am waiting for some reply from Hazard-SJ (talk · contribs). I am under the impression that he may be able to do more of what I want.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 04:35, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
This is one pain in the @$$ request.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 15:02, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I got approval to do tagging but as I mentioned before I am still working on logic that does the assessments reliably. --Kumioko (talk) 15:55, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
The assessment is a big part of it. I am hoping that you stumble across GAs, FLs, and FAs and want to maximize the possibility of finding them.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 01:29, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Sorry Im not going to be editing much anymore and the bot is shutdown. good luck. --Kumioko (talk) 01:32, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm waiting for someone who can run it with functionality.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 06:27, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
Good luck, thats why I created my own bot because I got tired of waiting. --Kumioko (talk) 14:09, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Are there any projects that are currently being tagged regularly.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 03:30, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Are bots categorized in a way that I could find ones that tag for projects?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 04:04, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
Yes - see Category:WikiProject tagging bots. GoingBatty (talk) 03:54, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. I will look at this cat.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 00:09, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
It seems that no bots are autotagging class anymore based on the feedback I have gotten. Was there a discussion somewhere that determined such bots are a bad thing?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 02:35, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
No but Kumioko go so much flak over his bot that he left the project (Wikipedia). I might look at this one day, but right now I'm getting flak for breathing. Which is a seasonal affliction. Rich Farmbrough, 23:22, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Adding authorlink to citations

I've just created an article about George T. Noszlopy. We have lots of other articles which cite his work does anyone have tool that will add |authorlink=George T. Noszlopy (and similar for other cases) to the relevant citation templates? To complicate matters, some cite him as George Thomas Noszlopy - it may be possible to use ISBNs to identify relevant instances. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:20, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

That would be a very bad job for a bot. Authorlinks are pretty annoying, and there's certainly no consensus to systematically add them. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:26, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Really? I've never seen complaints about them. Oh well, never mind. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:31, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Many people (myself included) think that if an author really is important enough to have a link, then he should be mentioned (and linked) in the main text rather than in citations. This is not the only viewpoint, but when there's many ways to do one thing, it's usually a bad idea to have a bot enforce one side over the other. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:59, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
There's a more fundamental problem that the authorlink parameter is clumsy at best. This is perhaps a better place to invoke the usefulness of {{Authority control}} or whatever title we wish to give it. Rich Farmbrough, 18:04, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
A fully automated bot is out of the question because, in general, there is no way for a bot to know if an author named in a citation is the same person who is the subject of a Wikipedia article. Obviously a mere name match between a Wikipedia biography article and the author name in a citation is no proof they are the same person. So the bot would have to parse the biography article to see if the work in question is listed in the biography. But there is no standard way of formatting the author's bibliography within the biography, so there is no way to do this parsing. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:01, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
Yes and no, that's why libraries have "authority control". If a library (say LoC) says that "Barnaby Sludge" is by "Marles Wickens" (342687683) and our article on Marles Wickens has {{Normdaten|342687683}} then it is a sound link target for thje author of that work. Rich Farmbrough, 01:27, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
OK, the bot would have to do a good deal more than most bots do. First, it would have to find the author's Wikipedia article, which is hit-or-miss because of the various ways of writing a name. Then it would have to find the citation for the work within the author's biography, which again could be hit-or-miss, because the citation in the two different Wikipedia articles might not share a common identifier; in the case of ISBN it might be that the biography cites a hardcover and the other article cites a paperback. And finally the citation in the biography would have to have the {{Normdaten|342687683}} template. So it would be quite a bit more involved than the usual bot.
It doesn't help that the documentation for {{Normdaten|342687683}} is bloody awful. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:57, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
Yes, you are basically right, except that the citation would need to be chased to a library database. This stuff is all bubbling at the back of my mind as part of a huge ontolgy bot, so nothing like this is imminent from my quarter, but... don't rule it out altogether. Rich Farmbrough, 23:27, 26 March 2012 (UTC).

Fixing broken translation requests

(Reviving an old request that was never coded...) I have created templates like {{Expand Spanish}} from the master templates {{Expand language}} and {{Expand language (non-Latin script)}}. These templates are used to mark articles needing translation from other Wikipedias. Right now the articlename parameter is optional, and I would like it to stay this way (makes it easier for editors to apply these tags). The bot I am after would find {{Expand XXX}} templates without an articlename, look for the interwiki link at the bottom of the article, and append this articlename to the template. For example, on the article The Colossus (painting), {{Expand Spanish|topic=culture|date=March 2009}} would be changed to {{Expand Spanish|El coloso|topic=culture|date=March 2009}}. Ideally, this bot would run regularly, so editors wouldn't have to worry about specifying the article title. If there is no interwiki link, or more than one, the bot could notify the person who tagged the article, so they could fix the problem. Note: right now the {{Expand language}} templates automatically create links to foreign-language articles based on the en.wiki article title. This is an imperfect solution to the problem, and I would like to discontinue this, making all the templates behave like {{Expand language (non-Latin script)}}. Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:44, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

BRFA filed Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 49. Excludes user notification. Rich Farmbrough, 01:33, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Great, thanks so much!! Once this gets going and all the target links are set and being maintained, I'll recode the template so that it isn't guessing the target based on the English-language title. Calliopejen1 (talk) 14:12, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
It is running merrily. It should be self maintaining once I make the category mainstream instead of one-off. Incidentally there will be some in the "needs fixing" cat at some time, since I found half a dozen stubs which all pointed to the same page on es:. Rich Farmbrough, 00:55, 28 March 2012 (UTC).

Asteroid Thingy

Hi Chrisrus, I remembered that I forgot to finish your request at WP:BOTREQ. The list of articles that returned no results from the Harvard Abstract Search is here (a revision of my userspace sandbox). The table of articles that returned at least one result from the Harvard Abstract Search is here (annother revision of my userspace sandbox). Leave me a message if you want anything else done! --Tim1357 talk 02:04, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Excellent! That's great. Thank you so much. Shall I talk about the next step, which looks like it might be to transform all the "zeroes" is you will, into section redirects to the correct place on List of minor planets, here, or start a new section on the WP:BOTREQ page? Chrisrus (talk) 04:01, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Hmm. I've got a lot on my plate right now, and I'm not sure I have enough time to do this. If you're fine waiting one or two months, then I'd be happy to do it. If you need it sooner, WP:BOTREQ might be a good idea. Tim1357 talk 21:57, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Bot Needed to Convert List to Redirects

OK! Now we have a list! On to the next step: Needed: a bot to convert all of the following to redirects to the List of minor planets as described in Wikipedia:NASTRO#Dealing_with_minor_planets:

List of redirection candidates moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomy/Candidates for redirection because it was making this page super slow to load. Calliopejen1 (talk) 15:55, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Wait: Check JPL SBDB first?

While this seems nice and all, wouldn't it be a good idea to cross check that list against the JPL Small Body Database too? Some data on the traffic stats of these minor planets might also reveal a few that are notable for reasons other than pure scientific research. Still looking forward to having a mini-purge on these useless stubs however. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:43, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

As I read WP:NASTRO, it seems to be one option. We went with the harvard one because botreq people found that easier to use. But please, look into doing that. It's not a bad idea. Is it doable or would you need some help or something? Chrisrus (talk) 20:12, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
We're talking about converting over 5,000 articles into redirects here. Doing this by bot makes sense, but care should be exercised, especially since databases are often incomplete. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:28, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Ok. How should we write the new botreq? How about "Bot needed to run the Harvard list through SINBAD/JPL"? Chrisrus (talk) 21:23, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Bot needed to give "articles failing NASTRO" through another "good faith effort" test

Needed: Bot to search the titles on this list through another "good faith effort to establish notablity" websearch, as per Wikipedia:NASTRO#Insufficient_sources, this time using the JPL Small Body Database (http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi) and to report number of hits, as was done here last time with this list using the Harvard site:[3], explained here.

This site is reportedly much less user-friendly than the Harvard. Please look into what it would take and let us know if it looks extremely difficult or impossible, or whatever the case may be. Chrisrus (talk) 05:40, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

With a little luck I will have some results for this shortly. Rich Farmbrough, 06:07, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
363 have references on JPL sbdb. The rest have will need greater efforts. Rich Farmbrough, 07:06, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
The rest are listed here Rich Farmbrough, 07:16, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
BRFA at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 50 - should we also make redirects form alternative names? Rich Farmbrough, 01:54, 28 March 2012 (UTC).

Thank you so much Mr. Farmbrough! You've done great work and it is much appreciated. I'll send you a Wikibeer or some such. A few points:

  1. Where is the list of 363?
  2. With regard to the matter of the possible alternative codings for each item before redirection may start, my understanding is that it'd be nice, if possible, but it's not clear whether it's completely necessary to fulfill WP:NASTRO's "Good Faith Effort" to establish notablity. But please do read it yourself and see if you agree with me. Wikipedia:NASTRO#Insufficient_sources, third sub-bullet speaks about alternative codings for each referent. But don't let that stop you from going ahead with alternaive codings searches if it's what you want to do. Thanks again!

Chrisrus (talk) 04:13, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

add ref section to language stubs

Could we add a ==References== section with {{reflist}} for all articles which have {{Infobox language}} and don't yet have one?

Nearly all of these articles are actually ref'd, but they're ref'd through a link in the info box and it doesn't show up in the text. What I'd like is for a bot to add a ref section, and also add some of the newer infobox parameters next to the old 'speakers' parameter, like so: 

|ethnicity = 
|speakers = 
|date = 
|ref =

(Assuming these don't already exist.)

If there is an 'extinct' parameter instead of 'speakers', then we'd want: 

|ethnicity = 
|extinct = 
|ref =

These parameters have all been around for a while, and any kinks have been worked out. The ethnicity parameter is to link to our article on the speakers of the language, if we have one. Date is for the census date of the number of speakers. Ref is for just that, and goes w the ref section. There's a code we can use to autogenenerate the ref we've already linked to; I hope to have the project get together, review the data to verify it's supported, and then add the code (e16) to the ref field if it is. But with 6,000 articles, it would be a lot easier if the parameters and ref section were already there. Also, since we tend to copy over the layout of old articles when we make a new one, once this is done, it should propagate through future articles.

— kwami (talk) 02:13, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

This seems like good sense. I have code to add references sections somewhere, I'll dig it out. Rich Farmbrough, 04:34, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
There's a bot that comes around and cleans up after me when I forget to add the ref section. But I don't know if it would handle the info box. — kwami (talk) 04:57, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
Yes SmackBot used to, and AnomineBOT does and another was recently BRFA'd. Rich Farmbrough, 05:25, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
Thanks! This will be a big help in verifying that our minor language articles are up to date. — kwami (talk) 09:00, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
BRFAs usbmitted. Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 48 Rich Farmbrough, 17:11, 24 March 2012 (UTC).

Could I request that, if any changes are made, the parameters be placed in that order? Ethnicity comes after speakers in quite a few articles, which becomes difficult to follow once other parameters intervene, but it's not important enough to change unless the article's being edited already. It also might be worth bypassing the caps rd while you're at it (Infobox Language → Infobox language). — kwami (talk) 20:00, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes new parameters will be in the order requested. I'll have a look at re-ordering existing cases. Certainly there are only 500 odd cases of IL left, this should make a significant step to eliminating them. Rich Farmbrough, 01:23, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
OK this is coded, and tested manually. Headbomb claims that adding the references section is ugly, so there's a minor problem there. I do have the BRFA for automatically fixing the references error so it while it would take twice the edits, and put big red errors on the screen, if that makes the bureaucracy work, we can fix the fields, add the refs, then fix the error . Or something. Rich Farmbrough, 04:33, 25 March 2012 (UTC).
Well, I can work around that. Yeah, twice the edits is kinda silly, but whatever.
Meanwhile, these are parameters we should have: we should have a ref and date for the population figure, or it's essentially worthless. We should have a cross-link to the ethnographic article, if one exists. Most of the other params are either optional or already in nearly all of the articles (I suppose I should check again). — kwami (talk) 09:07, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

While we're at it, we might as well add in states or region, if both are not present, as a minor change. While only one is required, it's convenient to have both available (it encourages better documentation than just listing the country), and it does no harm. — kwami (talk) 03:38, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Bot needed to convert links to a template

A website that is used on a number of articles relating to football/soccer has recently moved domains - from 'zerozerofootball.com' to 'footballzz.co.uk' but the rest of the URL remains the same i.e. from http://www.zerozerofootball.com/jogador.php?id=85 to http://www.footballzz.co.uk/jogador.php?id=85. I was intending to use AWB to change the domain, but after a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football#Bugger :( an editor has created {{Zerozero profile}}; so basically is it possible for a bot to convert all the old 'zerozerofootball.com' and the new 'footballzz.co.uk' to the template format? Thanks in advance, GiantSnowman 20:01, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

I can do this as a semi-automated task; looks like only 108 articles using the new domain and 156 articles using the old domain would be affected. Do you want the domain in non-profile links (other than jogador.php) changed too? That'd add about 1615 articles and at that point I'd file a BRFA (which is fine; I just don't want to approve that number of edits by hand). — madman 21:38, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
The template is just for players i.e. those that use 'jogador.php' - however it would still be good to get a bot to convert all instances of 'zerozerofootball.com' to 'footballzz.co.uk' as the old website does not redirect so there are obviously a lot of dead links there. Thanks, GiantSnowman 10:52, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
BRFA filed – Please feel free to contribute here as there are questions about the scope of the task. — madman 17:28, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks very much. GiantSnowman 17:53, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
Doing... — madman 21:21, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Bot to change a set of subpages to normal pages

The list of minor planets has some 1900 subpages (including subpaged redirects) in the mainspace, which isn't allowed. See [4]. These are subpages per 100 minor planets, used as a kind of templates inside larger (per 1,000) regular pages (and with the text "This page is not meant to be viewed directly", which shouldn't appear on any mainspace pages...). Some years ago, I merged a fair number of them, but the process was very tedious and repetitive. To get rid of the rest, and considering the repetitiveness, perhaps a bot could do the other ones?

The current situation is that List of minor planets: 118001–119000 is composed of ten subpages, like List of minor planets/118101–118200. The wanted situation is what you get in e.g. List of minor planets: 200001–201000. Is this feasible? Fram (talk) 07:26, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes an no. Here are the issues:
  1. Your laudable effort to retain history leads to diffs like this.
  2. Sub-pages are more than just a "/" separator in a page name. There is associated functionality which can be turned on or off namespace by namespace. What mere editors do does not affect this.
  3. A simple tweak would make these into acceptable pages, replacing the "/" with a ": " would improve the naming.
  4. Merging is trivial and would not need a bot (190 AWB edits). Hist merge, and deleting the subpages would need admin rights.
  5. This would need consensus, ideally from WP:ASTRO who, one would imagine, had a good reason for doing it this way.
Rich Farmbrough, 11:41, 29 March 2012 (UTC).
1. Better hist merge solutions are always welcome.
2. ? And the meaning of this is? What functionality is lost between the pages retaining subpages, and those ones that have been merged?
3. No, these would still be unacceptable pages (though less so). They would still be used as subpages, but wouldn't purely technically be subpages. But if someone creates pages that shouldn't be seen in the mainspace, then he or she is doing things wrong. Random pages, page searches and so on will still get to these. One solution may be to combine this with your point 1 though, i.e. moving them (without redirect) to pages with a ":", and then merging them with a history pointer to the ":" pages which would then become redirects.
4. Merging is not that trivial, I did this and it is a lot of work, adding the appropriate subheaders, table layout, removing everything but the footers from the subpage. No idea how to do a copy-paste from ten to one pages in AWB either.
5. There is general consensus that subpages are not allowed in the mainspace. WP:ASTRO needed consensus to override this, not the other way around. Oh, and I had discussed this at the time at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Space/Archive 1#Lists of minor planets. Fram (talk) 12:19, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
Sub-pages have breadcrumbs. You cannot have a sub-page of an article. You can have an article which has the name that a sub-page would have. There's no reason to think that the merge is desirable, the discussion you referred to has no consensus to merge - i.e. only you thinking it is a good idea. Rich Farmbrough, 18:15, 29 March 2012 (UTC).

Bot to date a template

I created Template:Stub redirect which places pages where the template is used on in a maintenance category, for example Category:Articles to be redirected from March 2012. It would be nice if a bot could date the template, so that the tagged page is placed in the correct category. Thus I have two questions:

1. Is there a bot that could perform the date tagging?

2. Could that bot also automatically create the corresponding maintenance category if it doesn't exist already?

Edit:
Perhaps the bot should also delete empty and obsolete categories. For example, if the bot had created Category:Articles to be redirected from January 2012 and that category would now be empty, the bot should delete the category in February. In other words, the bot would need to check the current number of articles in the category and and the current month. If the number of articles is zero and the current month is the month following the month of the category, the bot should automatically delete that category.

-- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 20:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

This fits into the standard schema, and both Helpful Pixie Bot and AnomieBOT will take care of these items. Femto Bot will create the categories, and they will self-nom under CSD. Rich Farmbrough, 23:25, 29 March 2012 (UTC).

BookBot? LitBot?

Hello, I would like to collaborate on a bot called "MiniotisBot" or "BookBot" or "litBot". Title to be determined by the programmer.

I don't know anything other than HMTL and am unsure of the issues at hand. This is merely an idea.

What BookBot would do is scan through books, particularily those already posted on Wikipedia, and fix any relevant quotes. It would be a keyword search bot intended to use literature and other reference material to make sure that:

a) there are no quotes from a book which are typos (particularily as pertains to literature) b) all references to authors are properly annotated

Source material operations: 1. Scan through literature and other books, particularly all those posted on all wikimedia associated webpages (source material). 2. If possible, scan through all http://www.gutenberg.org/ books (source material). --you can download all of these for free and insert them into the code

Basically, I think that a collaboration between gutenberg.org and wiki to create and promote a bot which fact checks and references would be an ideal situation. However, this bot can be done in another way; and kept only for wikimedia associated pages (eg. use only wikibooks and wiki associated materials).

I'd like a little credit for the idea. Slap me on a page or two. Thanks for working hard! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stephen M. Miniotis (talk • contribs) 14:00, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

For the name, it has to be called by either its function or operator. Can't think of anyone who could code such a task though. Rcsprinter (gas) 19:55, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

ndash --> spaced ndash

Hello. Pursuant to the outcome of Template talk:Spaced ndash#Requested move would it be possible for someone to use a bot or AWB to change all instances of {{ndash}} to {{spaced ndash}}? Jenks24 (talk) 03:33, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

BRFA filed – SD5 16:59, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
Doing... – SD5 02:35, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
Y Done – please see this. SD5 23:38, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Run an existing bot at Assamese Wikipedia

I am an administrator at the Assamese Wikipedia. Due to absent of the bot operator Chaipau, i want to run the bot , If it possible, please guide me. Bishnu Saikia (talk) 20:33, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Bot to tag previously-deleted articles that were recreated.

Sometimes, although not often, articles are recreated after deletion. It would be nice if a bot could fetch the various deletion history of such pages, and tag the talk pages with the appropriate templates. For example, Trademarkia was previously deleted (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Trademarkia). The talk page should thus be tagged with the relevant {{Old AfD multi}} et al. templates, and possibly a {{recreated on}} template too. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:20, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Funnily enough I've been thinking about this, wrt cats, where it seems to be much more of a problem (and unfortunately, the discussions do not sit on their own pages). I doubt I'll have time to look at this in the short term though. Rich Farmbrough, 04:37, 24 March 2012 (UTC).
This may not be entirely suitable for bots, especially where people are involved. It isn't unheard of for multiple people to have the same name, and in these cases how would a bot identify that they were different people if the deleted article and the new creation had the same name? ϢereSpielChequers 06:17, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
It wouldn't, nor should it. It is articles for deletion, not subjects - and the old-afd-multi will be potentially useful in any case. However adding a field (set) to Old-afd-multi (if there isn't one already ) to allow annotation by humans might be a good idea. Rich Farmbrough, 23:18, 26 March 2012 (UTC).
Coding... This sounds like it could be interesting. So basically, for newly-created articles see if Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/{{FULLPAGENAME}} exists, and if so fill out {{old AfD multi}} on the article's talk page? Anomie⚔ 16:13, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
A really good idea. I found one just a couple of days ago that needed that. Dougweller (talk) 11:41, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
BRFA filed Anomie⚔ 02:05, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

tag a large number of templates for tfd

I have nominated a large number of templates at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 March 30#Usprimary templates. could I get someone to have a bot (or AWB) tag them for me with {{tfd|{{subst:PAGENAME}}}} or {{tfd|Usprimary templates}}? the last TfD for these was rejected since the templates were not properly tagged (see here). they are all orphaned, so there shouldn't be a problem with having the tag transcluded onto other pages. Frietjes (talk) 21:42, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

I would suggest TTObot (talk · contribs) for this task. It has already an approval for mass tagging of templates being nominated for TFD. Armbrust, B.Ed. Let's talkabout my edits? 23:29, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
Ah, sorry I should have mentioned earlier, I created a BRFA for my bot, User:Thehelpfulbot to complete this request and it is currently using this bot request as its trial edits for this purpose. The Helpful One 00:27, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 Done The Helpful One 10:02, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Would somebody rerun this task and nominate all 130129 templates in Category:Periodic table infobox templates: All templates are only transcluded once and should simply 'SUBSTed. mabdul 20:37, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
(oh I missed the one sandbox in userspace which should be excluded mabdul 20:39, 3 April 2012 (UTC))

Looking into this one.. The Helpful One 20:39, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
There's 2 in user space that I'll exclude, can you please tell me what heading you're going to use on TfD so that I can put the right one in the template? Thanks, The Helpful One 20:44, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, I oversaw that also. Why not using Periodic table infobox templates as headline? mabdul 20:56, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
Works for me, I just thought it would best to give you a choice if you wanted one!  Doing... The Helpful One 21:07, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
Why is the TfD section/nomination currently nonexistent? Oughtn't that to have been a prerequisite to doing the tagging? --Cybercobra (talk) 21:31, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
I was under the impression that the TfD nomination was already made, yes that should have already been done. Hmm.. The Helpful One 21:53, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Before posting mass requests it should be normal to look at old discussions! Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Elements/Archive_10#Template:Infobox_.3Celement.3E_-_why_do_these_exist.3F --Stone (talk) 06:03, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Good point. Looks like these templates are best left as is. ϢereSpielChequers 08:28, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Christianity newsletter delivery request

Asking for a bot to deliver the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Outreach/April 2012 to the members listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Outreach#Subscriptions. John Carter (talk) 00:55, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

You might have some luck poking bot owners of these bots, if no one replies here. Avicennasis @ 05:20, 12 Nisan 5772 / 05:20, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

CFD help needed

More huge categories that overall take hours to process with a single bot. Any help in moving the articles is much appreciated:

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2012 March 3
List of categories
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Thanks in advance! Timrollpickering (talk) 12:54, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

They have all been done already.  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  21:37, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Bot to target a common vandalism at San Diego article

I have been wondering if there is any way, possibly a bot, to combat a years-long problem at the article San Diego. The article gets vandalized over and over by people adding some version of "The name 'San Diego' is German for 'a whale's vagina'." This is a joke based on the movie Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, in which the main character demonstrates his arrogant ignorance by telling someone that is what San Diego means. We who watch the article have to manually remove these edits, and warn the editor, multiple times a month for the past many years - except during periods when the article was semiprotected. It can't be semiprotected permanently, and in any case our problem is not with non-autoconfirmed users as such; it is with users who insert this particular vandalism edit. Would someone be willing to design a bot which would automatically remove any edit which contains the phrase "whale's vagina" or "whales vagina" (the people who make this joke are not particularly good at grammar) and post a bot-note on the user's talk page? San Diego is rated as a Good Article; we worked hard to get it to that status but it takes constant vigilance to keep it that way. Thanks for any information about this possibility. --MelanieN (talk) 15:19, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not particularly bot-savvy and don't know whether a bot like that would be feasible, but this might be something more suited for an edit filter. I'll ping someone who knows more about that (edit filters) than me. Jenks24 (talk) 15:32, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
I don't think having a bot for a single article would be needed, better just to semi-protect. Rcsprinter (articulate) 15:34, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
Agreed. Using an edit filter or bot for one article isn't really a good use of resources. I've just indefinitely semiprotected the article to stop the vandalism given the massive amount of vandalism and nearly equally massive protection log. Reaper Eternal (talk) 16:13, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks to all of you for the good input - and the protection! --MelanieN (talk) 16:58, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

List of all pages in main namespace I contributed to

Does anybody have a tool to create a list of all pages in main namespace I ever made contributions to? If that is possible, I would like that list to be created at User:Toshio Yamaguchi/Articles I contributed to. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 09:04, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Hopefully didn't mess anything up. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:18, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
Awesome, thanks. :) -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 09:26, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
How was this fulfilled? Maybe I can do the same for my pages. Is it automatic? Allen (talk) 14:12, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
Nope, I ran a query on my bot account and sorted the results. I'm sure there must be some tool somewhere, although I don't know of any off the top of my head. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:50, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

There is a tool that is mostly used for WP:CCI that does the same thing here. Calliopejen1 (talk) 15:21, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

WP:AWB might be able to get it from the "Special pages" option, with Contributions/YourName in the option. I haven't tested though. --Izno (talk) 16:02, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Stock AWB has a 25k list limit for non-bot accounts though. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:11, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
Just don't edit that much. Duh! --Izno (talk) 02:39, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

May be not exactly what you are looking for ... but User:DrTrigonBot could add the content of e.g. latest, say 5000 Special:Contributions or latest 1000 'Contribution survey' to the page you mentioned. Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 21:28, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Bot needed to add empty template parameters

A number of articles relating to railroads use {{Infobox SG rail}} (which is a wrapper for {{Infobox rail}}. A typical usage is at Morgantown and Kingwood Railroad. If you check the page source you'll note that the call to the Infobox includes only those parameters in use. I think this is a result from copy-and-paste behavior, but it doesn't matter. If you'll note from Infobox railroad there are many other parameters which could, in theory, be used but I think it's less likely they'll get filled if the empty parameters aren't present. I'd like to see a bot go through and add the missing parameters, merging in the existing content. I might be interested in trying this myself, though I've never written a bot before. Mackensen (talk) 22:45, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure such requests are generally accepted (I haven't checked, but I think it's unlikely).  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  00:00, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
Any particular reason why? It's repetitive, it's menial, and the edits themselves I think aren't open to objection. Has this come up before? Mackensen (talk) 00:04, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
WP:COSMETICBOT is the reason this is usually denied. However, if there is consensus at WP:TRAINS that a one-time run would be useful, WP:IAR could be applied. But before it's applied, the project should agree on what exactly is the bot's desired behaviour. Specifically related to a) parameter order b) which parameter should always be present even if empty c) which parameter should always be omitted if empty d) other cleanup could the bot make related to those templates to maximize the bot's run. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:12, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
<irrelevant view of user from different language edition>"substantial change" - for me regenerating infobox is significant change that helps in keeping article easy to edit. (COSMETICBOTs are denied on plwiki but regenerating infoboxes is a typical job for bots)</irrelevant view of user from different language edition> Bulwersator (talk) 08:24, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
I also don't think that adding empty parameters is a reasonable task. There is a documentation page for each template that lists all the possible parameters. We don't need to include them all, blank, in each page that happens to use the template. — Carl (CBM · talk) 09:49, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

imeem.com links now generic myspace.com links (treat as dead links?)

All the imeem.com links (Special:Linksearch/*.imeem.com) are pretty well dead as the specific links now are generically feeding to the root page at myspace.com. It would be my recommendation that we treat them as dead links. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:43, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Search for references/citations

Is there a bot that will automatically roam the Internet, search for appropriate links (for references/citations on Wikipedia pages), and insert the appropriate code on the pages? The bot may need to be told what page(s) to scan, and when to run. Allen (talk) 18:37, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

How would such bot know what links correspond to what citations? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 19:05, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
That's a good question. I don't know much about the inner workings of bots, or I'd know this already. Allen (talk) 19:25, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
I'd still suggest you know the inner workings of the task you're requesting. Rcsprinter (natter) 20:46, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
I'd like to, but how do I do it? I would like to learn how, though. What do I need to do to start? Allen (talk) 21:04, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
How about starting with one specifc example of an edit you would like the bot to make? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:37, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
Excuse me for sounding stupid, but isn't it obvious? The bot would scan a Wikipedia page (whether specifically requested by a user or as part of a group of pages to be scanned), find a spot where a citation is needed or should be at, then would "roam" the Internet, find such a reference, and finally, would place the appropriate citation code on the Wikipedia page, at the spot. What else do you need to know? Allen (talk) 02:45, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
"find such a reference" is the hard part. I'll give you a couple of examples:
Hij behield deze positie tot zijn overlijden in 2012 ten gevolge van kanker. Find a reference. Or
برای راحتی بیشتر، اغلب مردم یک بالش به زیر سر خود و در بالای تختخواب قرار می‌دهند. از پتو، روانداز یا ملحفه نیز برای گرم‌شدن استفاده می‌گردد. Find a reference.
See, computers don't understand anything, they follow rules. If you can explain the rules, then a computer can do the thing. Josh Parris 02:57, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
Even just limiting this to English, could you take any two articles in Category:Articles with unsourced statements from April 2012 where the {{citation needed}} template indicates where citations are needed, and then explain how you (as a human, not a bot) would have one process to "roam" the Internet to find the required references? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:05, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorry if I'll sound dismissive, but what you are proposing is essentially natural language processing. Even smartest algorithms today cannot do this well enough (think: translation), and this task would not only require to parse the language, but understand the context in order to find a citation that talks about the same facts -- i.e. strong AI. If someone creates this, they will probably get an equivalent of Nobel Prize. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:09, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, I'm still confused as to the whole references thing. I want to add references to articles, but I don't know where to find them (or how to code them in the articles). There are so many ways that they can be coded; I don't know which one(s) to choose.
My main focus is pages about roads in the United States (Interstates, U.S. Highways, and some state routes). I want to make the articles on those better, but I need references. If someone could help me, that would be great. Allen (talk) 11:11, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
"I don't know where to find them" so there is no chance that somebody will create this kind of bot based on this request, program may be faster than human but not smarter Bulwersator (talk) 15:55, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
I don't understand exactly what you are trying to say with that post. Can you clarify? Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 16:51, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
What he means is that if you don't know where to find sources, then a bot most certainly won't. There is no program in the world that has such generic cognitive abilities. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:59, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
I would think that there is a script, bot, browser add-on, program, or something that would "know" better (whether pre-programmed -- as a list of websites concerning state routes in Georgia -- or a scanning ability) what websites to use as sources for citations in certain Wikipedia pages.
Let me break down what I really want. I recently started the Georgia State Route 223 article. I want to be able to update and "spruce up" the Georgia and Florida (for starters) state route articles, but I don't know where to find sources for the articles. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 17:39, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
Well, there isn't such a tool/bot/script, and it would take extraordinary effort to make one. Beyond regular Internet search, you can ask at the reference desk or relevant WikiProjects for help finding sources. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 17:46, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Category removal after CfD

At Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_March_3#Category:Eponymous_categories a whole bunch of categories were deemed to be project rather than content and were moved by the addition of a "Wikipedia"" prefix. They now needed to have the content categories taken off the pages. A nice wee task for a bot? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:10, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

See #CFD help needed Josh Parris 02:12, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
I'm not quite clear of what your request is, except that it is to remove a set of categories, which I could do (and am willing to do).  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  02:22, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict)All the moved pages (see Special:PrefixIndex/Category:Wikipedia categories named after) need to have the "non-Wikipedia" categories removed from them. As an example Category:Wikipedia categories named after American people must have Category:American people removed. They also need setting as hidden categories. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:28, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
I'm a bit confused by your request as well... I was the closing admin, and I came here to request help adding {{Wikipedia category|hidden=yes}} added to each page. Why exactly do you think content categories must be removed? The categories in question should contain ONLY content categories! The point of the renaming was because the titles of categories should describe what they contain, and they all contain Wikipedia categories. "Category" isn't just a word used on Wikipedia, you know.-RunningOnBrains(talk) 05:49, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
Because project and content cats are generally kept separate. The CfD deemed them to be project cats so therefore the content cats should be removed. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 21:54, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
I think the bot operators want some certainty before they go ahead. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 08:08, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

PS, it would be nice if I could get some bot to do that {{Wikipedia category|hidden=yes}} addition please :) -RunningOnBrains(talk) 05:49, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

 Done. All of them should be tagged, please let me know if there were any mistakes or omissions. The Helpful One 23:31, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Replacing a template by a wikitable

Would it be possible to replace Template:Fb overall competition and Template:Fb overall2 competition by a normal wikitable? Consensus at WikiProject_Football#.22fb.22_template_system is to get rid of these fb-templates that require the creation of hundreds of competition templates. An example would be 2009–10_F.C._Porto_season#Overall or 2006–07_Aberdeen_F.C._season#Overall which shows missing templates now. -Koppapa (talk) 15:14, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Message for participation in the a for Assessments in WP:United States

WP:United States has a massive backlog of over 76,000 + unknown-importance articles and 28,000+ unassessed articles. In order to see that this numbers are brought down, an contest has started: Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2012

If this request is granted then please convey this message to members of WikiProject United States. Message is given below:

United States Tag & Assess 2012

Assessment means the addition of a WikiProject template to the talk page of an article, assessing it for quality and importance and adding a few extra parameters to it.

In WikiProject United States, we have a massive backlog of over 76,000 + unknown-importance articles and 28,000+ unassessed articles. So, a Tag & Assess 2012 contest has been proposed to run from 11 April 2012 to 11 December 2012. You can sign up on the Tag & Assess page itself. There are many Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2012#Rewards awards to be given and anyone can bag a lot of barnstars. Please join us in this exciting new venture. This will be beneficial for articles as well as editors as they will be able to interact with other editors in their country and will learn new things and can obtain a lot of knowledge about their country.

Yasht101 (Contest Organizer)

Thank you! Yasht101 08:28, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi! I can deliver this like I did for the other Tag & Assess request, I've make a couple of tweaks such as converting an external link to a wikilink, but please can you copy edit the message? This will be beneficial for articles as well as editors as they will be able to interact with other editors in their country and will learn new things and can obtain a lot of knowledge about their country. is a bit too wordy IMO. The Helpful One 14:04, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

add ref section to language stubs (2)

Since this was accepted but then got derailed, I'm requesting again, along with some of the developments during discussion.

Basic request

Could we add a ==References== section with {{reflist}} for all articles which have a {{Infobox language}} box that could auto-generate refs, and don't yet have a ref section?

Nearly all of these articles are actually ref'd, but they're ref'd through a link in the info box and it doesn't show up in the text. (People periodically tag these articles as unreferenced.) What I'd like is for a bot to add a ref section, and also add some of the newer infobox parameters next to the old 'speakers' parameter, like so: 

|speakers =     (or |signers =)
|date = 
|ref =

(Assuming these don't already exist.)

If there is an 'extinct' parameter instead of 'speakers', then we'd want: 

|extinct =      (or era =)
|ref =

Ideally, all of our articles would be properly ref'd, and this would make that easier to do. Entering ⟨e16⟩ in the ref field auto-generates a ref in combination with the values in the iso3 and lc1, lc2, lc3 fields. Once the bot is done, I plan to set up a Wikiproject task to verify that our 6,000 language-box articles are properly referenced and dated, which would be overwhelming without the bot laying the groundwork.

Secondary requests

While we're at it, we might as well make some 'cosmetic' changes. I'm only proposing this for articles the bot would already be modifying. I've wasted time, and wasted time at the help desk, when the params were out of order, were therefore not noticed, got duplicated, and then interfered with each other. (Nothing happens if you enter a value in a field, if there's an empty duplicate field further down in the template.) So, *if* we're already modifying the article, can we put the params in the expected order of the template documentation page? (It would be nice to do this across the board, but I suspect that would be objected to as a cosmetic change, even though it has real effects on editing.)

Lc# and ld# are normally on the same line for each number, rather than on separate lines as the documentation implies. This makes them easier to follow, and should not be changed. But lc# should be first, ld# second (as in the documentation), as that aligns better.

Also, *if* we're already modifying the page, it would be nice to add some useful but optional parameters which are currently under-utilized: 

|ethnicity =        (to link to our ethnography article, if there is one)
|altname =          (most of the entries under 'nativename' are not the nativename, and should go here, though that needs to be done manually; also, newbies don't know about this and add line breaks to |name, which cases display problems)
|states / region =  (currently we tend to have one or the other, but in most cases we would be better organized to have both)

No values, just the empty fields: infrastructure for further manual editing of the box.

Finally, any unsupported params (ones not listed in the documentation) should be tagged with an error category, to be cleaned up manually. (Or, if empty, simply deleted by the bot.) Also, any duplicate params should be tagged (best to clean this up manually as well, even if one is empty, because we don't want previously hidden material to appear without human review), as well as any fam# entry that does not have the preceding number, or for which the preceding number is empty (apart from fam2, which does not need a fam1, or a final empty param, which might be used for future expansion and does no harm). That is, if we have fam2, fam3, fam4, fam6, the box should be tagged for missing fam5 (same if fam5 is empty), as without it fam6 will not display.

There shouldn't be many of these, as I cleaned up a lot of them last year with AWB. Similar probs with unmatched lc#/ld# (listed below).

Move the closing }} to its own line. (Most boxes are already like this, and it makes them easier to scan visually during editing.)

Summary

So, the 1ary (!) and 2ary (m) requests:

  1. (!) Ensure that all articles have a |date and |ref field
    (The date field is not necessary with |extinct or |era, but would be minor (m) cleanup if already present.)

#(!) Add a reference section and/or template, if either doesn't exist

  1. (Limited to cases where there is an iso3 or lc# field, unless iso3 = none, as then no ref can be auto-generated)
  2. (!) Replace |date'=&nbsp;census with a space plus "census"
    (Merging with |date, per recent change in code: 280 tokens remain after AWB)
  3. (m) Add empty |altname, |ethnicity, |states, |region, if they do not exist
  4. (m) Put the parameters in their expected order, keeping lc# and ld# on a single line (one line for each lc#/ld# pair)
  5. (m) Delete unsupported params if empty, tag them as errors if they are not
    (delete any ll# series if set to 'none'; tag if set to anything else. This was an earlier bot request that was accepted and then never acted on.)
  6. (m) Tag duplicate params as errors (do not delete, even if empty)
    (this includes any article that has more than one of |speakers, |signers, |extinct, or |era, as no more than one of these can display)
  7. (m) Tag as an error if the fam# series is missing any intermediate # (missing or just empty, first exempted if missing, and last exempted if empty)
  8. (m) Tag as an error if an lc# series is missing either lc1 or lc2 (later gaps are not a problem), or if each ld# does not have a matching lc# and vice versa
  9. (m) Tag any dia# or stand# series that is missing dia1 or stand1 (later gaps are not a problem)
  10. (m) Tag as an error any lc1 not followed by lc2 (needs manual review)
  11. (m) Fix caps in template name (Infobox Language → Infobox language)
  12. (m) Move box-closing ⟨}}⟩ to its own line (line break before and after)
    (don't bother if this is difficult to implement due to interference from other templates embedded in the box)

For minor (m) requests, I'm only asking for when the bot is modifying the page anyway. Some of them are things I could scan for with AWB, if there are objections to including them in the bot request, but a bot would be *much* more efficient, and others simply not worth doing on their own.

For error tagging, I leave that up to you. You might want to add an |error parameter, and enter the names of the fields that triggered errors. We could have the template track it from there. — kwami (talk) 23:39, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Interested operators should note there are 6026 transclusions of this infobox. Josh Parris 01:35, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
At the very least, it would be extremely beneficial to work on the basic request to
--TheJJJunk (talk) 00:57, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

At the BRFA, the concern was raised about adding a references section for footnotes when there are no footnotes. What should be added to the infobox to make the footnote automatically appear? — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:34, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Filling the |ref field with ⟨e16⟩ will auto-generate a ref to the 16th edition of Ethnologue. — kwami (talk) 02:35, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
I tried that here [5] but it did not appear to work. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:39, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
In the meantime I did a rough count and I think there are around 2900 of these stubs without either {{reflist}} or <references/>. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:04, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, the angle brackets were meant to set off what to include. (They're the convention for indicating graphemes and orthography.) It should be: e16 as here.
— kwami (talk) 01:08, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. I am afraid that it will be the weekend before I can look into this, but I should be able to take care of adding the reference sections and the e16 parameter. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:22, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Just to make sure everything is in order. As I understand it the request is to add the "e16" value to the "ref" parameter in all these stubs, and also add a references section if none exists. Is there a discussion somewhere that establishes that all this has some consensus, at least at the wikiproject level? — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:18, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

No, the e16 should not be added, because the refs need to be verified first, and they fail verification maybe 10–15% of the time. That's not something a bot can do. But once the infrastructure is in place, I will start a verification project with language-project members: check the links manually (through the iso3 field, which links to the Ethnologue website), and if the numbers match, add the e16, as well as the date if that's not there yet. That's a real chore after a couple hundred articles if you have to add the fields and ref section each time.
I placed notice of the bot request on the talk page of the template, and also announced it at WP:Wikiproject languages.
There has been universal support for adding the fields. The only disagreement is on whether we should create the ref section so it's ready for the automated ref, or if we should add unsupported refs and letting a bot clean up after us. The former would leave temporarily blank ref sections, while the latter requires twice the server load, as well as leaving bright red warning notices on all the articles until the bot cleans them up. The people running bots who have given opinions think that a single pass without warning notices is better, but we've had one editor who objects to blank ref sections – though that doesn't seem to be a problem when the single ref of an article is removed after failing verification, leaving an empty ref section behind. At least, I've never seen anyone go around deleting the ref sections. — kwami (talk) 00:46, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
(Sorry for the delay responding). I don't have any real opinion between the options you are describing. But I think that the response from BAG when this was requested before was that they would not approve the bot task to add the reference sections unless references were put into the sections at the same time, and that makes me very hesitant to file a second request to do that. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:34, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
I couldn't tell what they would or would not approve of: nothing was clearly stated. But even if they don't approve of the ref section, I would still like to have the rest of the infrastructure added. With the date and ref fields in the infobox, we can quickly reference our articles. If the bot isn't approved for the ref section, then we just won't add a ref section, and a bot will clean up after us. Either way, we have thousands of articles that can and should be fully referenced. — kwami (talk) 00:56, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Okay, could we take out the ref section, and do the rest? — kwami (talk) 05:49, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Michael Johnson

Before invert redirect Michael Johnson (track and field) to Michael Johnson (athlete), like everybody others athletes with homonyms, I ask to a bot to correct all the redirect. Of course, if the bot befor make the inversion o the pages is better. ;-) --Kasper2006 (talk) 05:36, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

What was that last sentence?--v/r - TP 13:46, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
I think you would first have to reach consensus on the talk page that Michael Johnson (athlete) is the superior title. I don't see any evidence that this has happened. Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:57, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

A bot to move files to Wikimedia Commons

Editors have needlessly busied themselves moving files to the Commons. Wouldn't it be better to have a bot do this tedious task? ChromaNebula (talk) 22:43, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think this is a good idea. Many, many, many files here have sourcing/copyright problems that are better worked out before they are transferred. There are tools that make the technical parts of moving to commons easy (I have a button on my shortcuts bar that auto-fills the move-to-commons uploader page, then I just edit the title if needed, click okay, and then clean up the commons image page as necessary). Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:56, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Checking for Portal template parameters

During my work on category pages I occasionally come across {{Portal}} which does not have any parameters. It therefore shows up as a very little empty box. I have not seen the problem on article pages as yet. May hav been a change in the template coding? So can we get a bot to list the instances where there is no parameter added? It will need an actual human to add a parameter unless the bot can be programmed to add a valid portal that relates to the page in quaetion. {{Portal}} is used on over four million articles. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 00:25, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Could the template be changed so if there are no parameters it puts the page into a category, for example category:Wikipedia pages using portal template without any parameters? And how many articles does enWP have; I thought it was around 3.9m? Josh Parris 06:53, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, that is an idea. Note that WP has 3.9 million articles but 26 million pages. I also thought the 4 million figure for usage was too high. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 21:08, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

 Done Will ask for the template to be modified as suggested. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 21:08, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Link to a diff when clean-up tags are applied

Following a discussion regarding the {{Cleanup}} I was hoping it would be feasible to link to the diff that shows the edit that tagged an article. Something like This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: See talk page. Please help improve this article if you can. The talk page may contain suggestions. (April 2010) In short the advantages would be to easily show who added the tag, what condition the article was in when the tag was added and any clues in the edit summary as to what the issues were. Although it was only discussed at {{cleanup}} it would possibly be useful on all the tags in Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup. It would be good if one of the date tagging bots could incorporate this when they add the date and if it could be applied to old tags and tags with the date applied manually. AIRcorn (talk) 08:43, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

If a diff to the current revision was available, one could see if sufficient improvements had been made to remove the tag. Josh Parris 23:34, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
If the {{REVISIONID}} magic word worked as advertised, you'd be able to incorporate that behavior right into the template rather than having a bot add it later. Anyone know why that magic word doesn't work, or if it ever did? I've never tried it before, but it appears to return nothing. ‑Scottywong| babble _ 23:48, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
If it can be done through the template that would be ideal. A diff to the current version would work just as well, possibly better. AIRcorn (talk) 04:01, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Karl Eberhard Schöngarth

Hi, I'd like a bot to change all of the links to Eberhard Karl Schöngarth (which is a wrong name and a redirect) to Karl Eberhard Schöngarth (which is the right name). Hoops gza (talk) 18:57, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Bot request was not actually necessary; it could easily have been done manually by yourself. Rcsprinter (state) 19:25, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

wikiproject articles by size

Now saying bot-working is not my area of expertise is an understatement, but I am wondering if these articles can be updated by bot - Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds/bird articles by size], Wikipedia:WikiProject Fungi/fungus articles by size and Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs/dinosaur articles by size. There is a Wikipedia:WikiProject Mammals/mammal articles by size but it is currently being discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Mammals/mammal articles by size. Now the dino one was started early but all were updated at one point by Betacommandbot (talk · contribs) before later input from 718 Bot (talk · contribs) and ClueBot II (talk · contribs). Now I'd love these to be periodically updated again and wasn't sure whether to ask one of the bot operators or throw it up here...? All help appreciated while I fumble round with this....cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:38, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Fix coordinates display for USGS-derived articles

Articles in Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the USGS Geographic Names Information System need to have the coordinate templates set to |display=inline,title (if not already so), like this, please. this will casue them to appear in the mapping part of our mobile apps, and in Google Maps' and similar services' Wikipedia layers. If using the deprecated {{coor dm}}, it should be changed to {{coord}}, at the same time. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:49, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Do you have a community discussion regarding this you can point to? Josh Parris 01:25, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Regarding which aspect? We currently have many hundreds of thousands of articles geo-tagged with "title" coordinates; our mobile app has been coded especially to make use of them; our external partners are known to make use of them. {{coor dm}} has been deprecated for several years, and is now a redirect to {{coord}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:40, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
The part with the articles in the given cat needing a particular setting on a template. Josh Parris 14:35, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
There is no specific discussion. As noted above, it's the generic setting for articles on geo-locatable subjects. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:57, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#Geographical_coordinates points in this direction in the final line of the Quick how to box, where it says "Use |display=title (or |display=inline,title) once per article, for the subject of the article, where appropriate." The vast majority of the uses of coord follow the convention. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:25, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
I'd be interested in taking this one on.--v/r - TP 13:59, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
Thank you. What, if anything, do you need from me, in order to do so? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:42, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Conversion to date templates

A great many infoboxes already emit microformats, and have for months, or even years. However, in some articles, these are incomplete, because the dates which form part of them do not use an appropriate sub-template, in order to emit the date in the correct metadata format. A bot (or bots - this task could be subdivided) is required, to complete the task of converting opening-, release-, first shown-, incident- and such dates from plain text to use {{Start date}}, as seen in this example edit for a year, and this one for a full date and as described in the various infoboxes' documentation. Note that {{start date}} allows for YYYY, YYYY-MM, YYYY-MM-DD and in a few cases YYY-M-DD:HH:MM formats. Note also that Smackbot was approved to do this, and started, but failed to complete the task. A list of affected templates is available. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:25, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Snotbot 6 for the likely result should you attempt this task. ‑Scottywong| squeal _ 14:17, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
You're right; I'd forgotten that that request for review was still unresolved. Apologies for that. how do you suggest we resolve it? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:41, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
Start a well-publicized RfC on the subject and get a clear consensus for the changes. ‑Scottywong| verbalize _ 00:11, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
As note in that request for review, we had one: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Microformats. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:46, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Updating attribution for Dave's Garden photographs

Greetings, old friends. Back in 2006, I received permission from Dave Whitinger at Dave's Garden <http://davesgarden.com/> to release all his photos at that site under the GFDL. I uploaded several here, and many other people uploaded other photos here from that site. These have since been moved to Commons.

Dave is not with the Dave's Garden site anymore, and his "about" page has been removed from that site. He created a new site at <http://allthingsplants.com>, and all his photos have been moved there. He e-mailed me, asking if I could update the image description files to attribute him at his new site. (He also explicitly released the images under the GFDL and cc-by-sa on his new site, rather than relying on an e-mail confirmation.) Could someone run a script to update these?

Specifically, there are a couple hundred images on Commons that say:

This photo was taken by [http://davesgarden.com/members/dave/ Dave] at [http://davesgarden.com/ Dave's Garden]. Released under the GFDL, as documented [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Successful_requests_for_permission#Dave.27s_Garden here].

(There may be others with different wording, but all will link to <http://davesgarden.com/>.) They all need to change to say:

This photo was taken by [http://allthingsplants.com/users/profile/dave/ Dave Whitinger] at [http://allthingsplants.com/ All Things Plants]. Released under the GFDL and cc-by-sa-3.0 licenses, as documented [http://allthingsplants.com/plants/browse/user/images/dave/ here].

This will help to save several hundred great plant images on Commons, most of which are used in multiple wikis. Thanks for any help! – Quadell (talk) 18:23, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

If the images are on Commons, you'd probably do better to ask at commons:Commons:Bots/Requests. The only local files linking to any page under http://davesgarden.com are File:Pulsatilla alpina fruit edit2.JPG and File:Cherokee.purple.jpg, which can easily enough be fixed manually. Anomie⚔ 20:50, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
I can ask there too, it's just that... in my experience, things move a lot slower there, and there are fewer people with the tools needed. I was just wondering, if this is easy and non-controversial, if someone could knock it out without too much trouble. If not, that's fine, I'll see what traction I get there. – Quadell (talk) 23:21, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
commons:Commons:Bots/Requests is the parallel to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval here. It's where one might request permission to run a bot. It's not a forum where I might ask someone to develop and run an automated task; that doesn't seem to exist on Commons at all. – Quadell (talk) 17:54, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
D'oh, you're right. commons:Commons:Bots/Work requests is the equivalent to this page. Anomie⚔ 18:24, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
Ah, I'd missed that. I'll ask there. – Quadell (talk) 12:12, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Sandbox

ChzzBot II has stopped, and the sandbox is no longer being cleared automatically. Is anyone willing to take over the task? 124.149.84.97 (talk) 02:03, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I'll have a look. Seems straightforward enough: Replace the heading more-or-less immediately, and clear the sandbox after an hour of inactivity. Anomie⚔ 02:10, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
FYI: May be you want to have a look at clean_sandbox.py from pywikipedia. ;) Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 08:18, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
Of course, the heading-adding task has to be blazingly fast in order to avoid edit conflicts. 124.149.84.97 (talk) 08:21, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
Never mind, it looks like Σ jumped on it. Maybe I'll do the code anyway if I have time. Anomie⚔ 13:36, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

faulty names correction

I would like to request the fixing of names I systematically changed wrong when updating the systematics from families to superfamilies, about 500 in total. The names are (faulty --> correct):

  • Psittacoidae --> Psittacoidea
  • Cacatuoidae --> Cacatuoidea
  • Strigopoidae --> Strigopoidea

(Summary, the extention -dae should have been -dea. Names are capped.) Thanks -- Kim van der Linde at venus 02:47, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I've added these typos to WP:AWB/T so they can be cleaned up. GoingBatty (talk) 03:29, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
Oh - they're links, which RegExTypoFixer won't fix. Looking at the first pair in Google, I'm not sure which spelling (if either) is correct. Could you please provide a source for each correct spellings? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:05, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
 Doing... Rich Farmbrough, 02:23, 1 May 2012 (UTC).
Hmm...

We also have Psittacoidaee surely that's not right? Rich Farmbrough, 02:29, 1 May 2012 (UTC).
 Fixed

OK user has fixed some of the errors using AWB and notupdated here... Rich Farmbrough, 02:31, 1 May 2012 (UTC).

Partially  Done by requester, with help from GoingBatty. Rich Farmbrough, 02:31, 1 May 2012 (UTC).

Checking size of remaining task now. Rich Farmbrough, 02:34, 1 May 2012 (UTC).
Thanks for the credit, Rich, but I didn't actually make any article changes, and reverted my change to WP:AWB/T. GoingBatty (talk) 02:41, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
There's only 198 left. Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 52 will apply. Rich Farmbrough, 03:16, 1 May 2012 (UTC).
Working on it. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 11:34, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Kim completed this apart from 7 which I took care of just now. Bot request withdrawn. Rich Farmbrough, 12:12, 1 May 2012 (UTC).
All done. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 12:20, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

A bot to help me with a project

I am working on a collaboration with Translators Without Borders to improve and translate 80 articles into as many other languages as possible as per here. It would be useful to have a bot that could notify users when new articles are translated and ready for integration into their languages. Currently for example I have three people helping out with Bengali. The first Bengali article was translated today and I must than post to these three users pages to let them know it is ready. The article is here [6] and I will be added to this table as they come out [7]. Translation is being done off wiki. Is there anyone interested in helping with this? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:19, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Doc! This is a fantastic project that ties in with some stuff I am trying to do. I have a script to post newsletters, so there's no reason that FemotoBot can't undertake this task. Need to look at the specifics in a little more detail though, before submitting a BRFA. Rich Farmbrough, 02:44, 1 May 2012 (UTC).

Bot to tag several orphaned {{cite doi}} etc...

Category:Science citation templates is filled with orphaned templates due to deletions, article updates and rewrites, and so on. I think it's time for a good cleanup is done there. Specifically, when no page what-so-ever (redirects don't count as links) links to a template categorized in the following categories

They should be tagged with {{db-g6|rationale=Unused {{cite doi/hdl/jstor/pmc/pmid}} template.}}. This would remove the useless clutter from these categories, and let bots/humans focus on cleaning up the citations that are actually used, rather than spend time on useless ones. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:57, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Anyone? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:55, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
Why would we delete the DOI ones? It seems like we could keep all the unused DOI ones indefinitely in case we want to use them again. Otherwise we may end up creating and deleting the same template numerous times. As long as the content is correct, what is the deletion rationale apart from the fact that the template isn't in use? If we just need a list of templates that are actually used, I could immmediately generate that from a toolserver query. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
They serve zero purpose, needlessly increases the maintenance burden on editors, skew WP:JCW data, etc. If they ever need to be used again (which is very unlikely since most of those are due to deleted articles), the bot will re-create them as needed in the correct citation style. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:07, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
I think that there is some benefit to having a complete record - why delete and recreate a page with the same content? The JCW data could easily restrict itself to only things that are actually used in articles. I guess I don't view them as "clutter", I view them as the desired contents of the categories. They could also be useful for editors who want to browse through a list of sources, since a bot could make a report of all the papers that have templates in existence, and people could look through that to see if there are papers relevant to articles they are interested in. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:23, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
The templates are purposeless bot-generated content, and purposeless templates (created by bots or humans) are deleted. None of them would survive speedy deletion, nor would they survice TfD. Browsing cite doi/pmid/etc... templates looking for a specific citation is just about the most retarded way to find a relevant source for an article. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:47, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
Of course we would need to add some subject-specific sorting to help with browsing. For example, math articels would have a mathematics subject code (MSC) which would allow someone to search by area. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:55, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
Which is again, plain silly. Why in the world would you want to browse a tiny tiny tiny subset of mathematical papers on a subject in the hopes that you might find something relevant, rather than brownse an actual mathematical database? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:58, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
Indeed, although if we go down the more data-basey direction the content could be useful. I suspect though it may be better to regenerate from scratch. Rich Farmbrough, 02:18, 1 May 2012 (UTC).
And of course, paper for paper, you are far more likely to use a paper that has been used before, than a random paper. Rich Farmbrough, 03:25, 1 May 2012 (UTC).
This is fairly easy, is it wanted as an onging task or a one-off cleanup? Rich Farmbrough, 02:18, 1 May 2012 (UTC).
It'd be wanted as a a once-off task for now, but it could certainly be made into a monthly thing (or into an unused for 30 days = g6'd thing). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 22:25, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Check all external links on Wikipedia-cy (Welsh Wicipedia)

Hi. I'm an admin and bureaucrat at Wiki-cy. Can I request a bot to check all external links - on every page - on the Welsh Wikipedia. If that's possible then a template should be left on such pages with a name such as "Dolen wallus" (bad link). We will then manually amend. Many thanks. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 07:40, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm attempting to generate a list of dead links, but for the most accurate results, it would be best if it was rechecked about a week after, in case the site was only down temporarily. I believe the script I have would add a notice to the talk page after the recheck, if that is okay.  Hazard-SJ  ✈  02:24, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
The reportings will be like this, unless you could provide me with a local translation. In addition, my bot would need the bot flag when making the reports.  Hazard-SJ  ✈  01:48, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Clean up Infobox language

Could we add missing parameters that most templates should have by default? And, if a change is made, it would be nice if they were ordered per the template documentation so that they don't get duplicated, as sometimes happens now.

This request has gotten hung up on adding a reference section, so I've omitted that this time.

So, if these don't already exist: 

|speakers =         (basic info)
|date =             (date of that figure)
|ref =              (ref for that figure)

If there is an 'extinct' or 'era' parameter instead of 'speakers', then we'd want: 

|extinct =          (or era =)
|ref =

Now, *if* we make that change in an article, we should check that we have the following as well: 

|ethnicity =        (to link to our ethnography article, if there is one)
|altname =          (most of the entries under 'nativename' are not the nativename, and should go here, though that needs to be done manually; also, newbies don't know about this and add line breaks to |name, which cases display problems)
|states =            
|region =           (currently we tend to have 'states' or 'region', but in most cases we would be better organized to have both)

Also, *if* we're already changing an article, arrange the parameters to match the documentation.

But: lc# and ld# are normally on the same line for each number, rather than on separate lines as the documentation implies. This makes them easier to follow, and should not be changed. However, lc# should be first, ld# second (as in the documentation), as that aligns better.

Any unsupported params (ones not listed in the documentation) should be tagged with an error category, to be cleaned up manually. (Or, if empty, simply deleted by the bot.)

Any duplicate params should be tagged (best to clean this up manually as well, even if one is empty, because we don't want previously hidden material to appear without human review), as well as any fam# entry that does not have the preceding number, or for which the preceding number is empty (apart from fam2, which does not need a fam1, or a final empty param, which might be used for future expansion and does no harm). That is, if we have fam2, fam3, fam4, fam6, the box should be tagged for missing fam5 (same if fam5 is present but empty), as without it fam6 will not display.

There shouldn't be many of these, as I cleaned up a lot of them last year with AWB. Similar probs with unmatched lc#/ld# (listed below).

Replace |date'=&nbsp;census with a space plus "census" (Merging with |date, per recent change in code: 280 tokens remain after AWB)

Delete any ll# series if set to 'none'; tag if set to anything else. This was an earlier bot request that was accepted and then never acted on.

Tag as an error if an lc# series is missing either lc1 or lc2 (later gaps are not a problem), or if each ld# does not have a matching lc# and vice versa

Tag any dia# or stand# series that is missing dia1 or stand1 (later gaps are not a problem)

Tag as an error any lc1 not followed by lc2 (needs manual review)

  • Really minor:

Fix caps in template name (Infobox Language → Infobox language)

Move the closing }} to its own line. (Most boxes are already like this, and it makes them easier to scan visually during editing.)


For error tagging, we might want to add an |error parameter, and enter the names of the fields that triggered errors. We could have the template track it from there. — kwami (talk) 10:38, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Template replacement

Are any bots doing WP:UM? I did a recent move (my recent moves) and it has 97 transclusions that need updating. This is an uncontroversial task, so anyone can do it.--Otterathome (talk) 09:18, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I'll file a BRFA for this and future UM tasks.  Hazard-SJ  ✈  01:55, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
Doesn't seem necessary for this task per Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:User_Uncyclopedian. However, I'll make the BRFA and will be open to these requests.  Hazard-SJ  ✈  01:57, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Bot to convert bare URLs to valid refs

Hello, following this thread at VPT I learned that we used to have a bot that converted bare URLs to valid refs (User:DumZiBoT/refLinks), but this bot appears to have died a tragic bot death. Is it possible to get another bot to take over this duty, like User:Citation bot? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 19:56, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't believe there is consensus for this. WP:CITEVAR suggests that no one citation style is preferred, and "Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference." For that reason, a bot should probably not do this. Blevintron (talk) 20:08, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
That page says "It is therefore considered helpful... to improve existing citations by adding missing information (for example, replacing bare URLs with full bibliographic citations)". That seems pretty clearly in favor of this behavior, right? Preferably the bot would conform to the citation format already in place, but any citation formatting is better than bare URLs. Was this an issue for previous bots with this behavior? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 20:15, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
Simply adding the title to external links is fine, I think. I believe the only reason the task stopped is because the bot stopped. That said, making links into citations will become controversial fairly quick if the bot doesn't respect citation styles. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:25, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
Would it be possible to check the references and use the most common style? If there is a tie, it could prefer the style of the two more common across Wikipedia. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 20:31, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
It's easy to detect citation templates for those styles (CS1 {{cite web}}, CS2 {{citation}}, and Vanc {{vcite web}}), but pretty hard for anything manually entered. It's not impossible, but pretty hard for an automated and error-free process. If the bot finds only a templated style, it should be relatively easy to fill in the remaining stuff. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:39, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
It's perfectly fine for a bot to use citation templates replace bare URLs. A filled {{cite web}} beats a bare http://www.example.com. It will be MUCH easier for humans to convert a properly filled citation templates to a non templates (if the dominant style is to not use citation templates), than it would be to convert a non-template reference to a template reference (if the dominant style is to use citation templates). Citation bot is already approved to do so (with detailed rationale), and it never caused any fuss. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:37, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
FYI: As I can see on tools:~dispenser/cgi-bin/reflinks.py this bot just used to run the reflinks.py script from pywikipedia framework. This should be fairly easy to re-setup and run for any pywikipedia bot operator. Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 17:39, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
Depending on the URL the BOT may be able to do better, ie dx.doi.org URLs to {{cite doi}}, and similarly for any of the common external link URL templates PMID, PMC, JSTOR, ...
Some journals/newspapers provide article meta data on the page conforming to Dublin Core or PRISM standards, or tagged with a leading citation_ that can provide citation parameters. ie http://thorax.bmj.com/content/60/12/1059 provides citation_ and dc. meta tags.
my @cj_tags = ( # cite journal tag, meta tag list
[qw( author dc.creator dc.contributor citation_authors )],
[qw( title citation_title dc.title )],
[qw( issn citation_issn prism.issn )],
[qw( journal citation_journal_title prism.publicationname )],
[qw( volume citation_volume prism.volume )],
[qw( issue citation_issue prism.number )],
[qw( pages prism.endingpage citation_lastpage citation_firstpage prism.startingpage )],
[qw( date citation_date prism.publicationdate dc.date citation_year )],
[qw( pmid citation_pmid )],
[qw( url citation_fulltext_html_url citation_pdf_url citation_abstract_html_url )],
[qw( doi citation_doi dc.identifier )],
[qw( language dc.language )],
[qw( publisher dc.publisher dc.publisher.corporatename )]
);
RDBrown (talk) 22:32, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
I left a message on Smith609's talk page (Citation bot's handler), but there has been no response, possibly due to wikibreak. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 05:31, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
This is a longer term project I am interested in. There is a great deal to be done to do it effectively, but it has been achieved several times. So we know it can be done which is a great boost. Rich Farmbrough, 01:20, 7 May 2012 (UTC).(Using some automation)

Edit notice for WP:ARBPIA articles

All the WP:ARBPIA articles are under 1RR.Usually editors active in the area tag the talk page of the article {{ARBPIA}} tag(for example Talk:Israel) but they usually don't add edit notice(ex. of edit notice. Template:Editnotices/Page/Israel) so the article stays without edit notice(for ex. Israel Defense Forces) and new editor usually don't see talk page or don't pay attention so they may break the rules.I ask that bot will add edit notice as soon one of editors will add the tag to the talk page.--Shrike (talk) 09:18, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Editnotices are only editable by administrators and account creators. This is a reasonable idea, but I'm concerned that this would effectively allow pretty much everyone to add the 1RR notice to the editnotice, and it would be impossible for most editors to reverse the bot's edit should, say, a vandal add {{ARBPIA}} to an entirely unrelated page. It might be better to have a bot periodically generate a list of articles with an ARBPIA template on the talk page but no corresponding editnotice for review. T. Canens (talk) 06:25, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
OTOH, the bot could also remove its notice from pages without {{ARBPIA}}. So as soon as the vandal's talk page edit was reverted, the bot would take care of removing the editnotice to match. Anomie⚔ 16:07, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
This sounds like a good task for User:AnomieBOT II, but first I think you'll need to establish consensus that this should be done. WP:VPR would probably be a good place to start, and advertise the discussion on the appropriate ArbCom page(s) and on the discussion page(s) for wherever violations of these restrictions are reported. Anomie⚔ 16:07, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
I sat down to do a similar task (manually) for the Abortion case (as at that point admins were instructed to do), and quickly decided that it was a no-goer. I left a note at AN and emailed Arbcom to that effect, the matter was discussed and dropped. Not sure if the "remedy" was changed explicitly, but de facto it became "may put the notice on any" instead of "will put the notice on all". I guess we should do the same with this one. Rich Farmbrough, 01:28, 7 May 2012 (UTC).(Using some automation)

checking for improper use of Template:Commons_category

Many pages seem to use Template:Commons_category when they do not have a Commons category of the correct name (or indeed any relevant content on commons). The link doesn't show as red and so most people miss the broken link. Is this something that could be checked by a bot and commented out if broken? Stuartyeates (talk) 20:51, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Another reason for the link break is a page move here if there is no parameter in the {{Commons category}} giving the commons name. May be a bot could add the commons name so that if a page move takes place the link is not broken. Keith D (talk) 21:22, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
That's almost trivial to fix - good point. Rich Farmbrough, 01:32, 7 May 2012 (UTC).(Using some automation)
Proposed changes to template at Template talk:Commons category. Rich Farmbrough, 02:18, 7 May 2012 (UTC).(Using some automation)
Yes this is doable. I have May's data [[base dump un-archiving now, so I could perhaps take a quick look at this tomorrow. Rich Farmbrough, 01:31, 7 May 2012 (UTC).(Using some automation)
Femto bot preparing BRFA - will be HPB 53. Rich Farmbrough, 02:18, 7 May 2012 (UTC).(Using some automation)

Removal of {{unreferenced}}

I've seen this a bunch of times: an article has references added but someone forgets to remove the {{unreferenced}}. Is there some way that a bot can remove all instances of {{unreferenced}} from pages having a {{reflist}} and/or <references/> code? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 23:59, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

I don;t think that either {{reflist}} or <references/> yell loudly if there are no references to format. The test needs to be on <ref> or similar. Stuartyeates (talk) 02:58, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
 Doing... something similar - BattyBot is running now to change {{unreferenced}} to {{refimprove}} if the article has existing references. GoingBatty (talk) 23:49, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_47

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