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About 20% of the 2200+ categories in Wikipedia:Database reports/Categories categorized in red-linked categories are year-related (sort by Member category to get an idea - the three pages have different biases, page1 has a lot of 1st millennium dates, page3 has the most in total). Some of these cats have been red links for 2+ years, but are potentially quite amenable to creation by bot and would allow human editors to concentrate on the more demanding categories. I'm thinking of pseudo-code along the lines of

• Scan the right column of Wikipedia:Database reports/Categories categorized in red-linked categories and reject everything that doesn't have a year (including BC years) - say between 1000BC and (CURRENTYEAR+10) - quite a lot of cats deal with the near future, upcoming Olympics, elections etc. Decades, centuries and millennia would be nice too.
• Check to see if category has been created - the report is normally created on Sunday morning, so a weekly run soon after this would be optimal
• Any non-existent categories named "(dis)establisments in" - check against a list of countries (eg the ones in Category:21st-century establishments by country ) and US states and if the place is on the list, create the category with the following templates - note how the decade ones require you to calculate the century :

• • 1970s establishments in Ruritania has {{estcatCountryDecade|19|7|20th|Ruritania}}
  • 1970s disestablishments in Ruritania has {{disestcatCountryDecade|19|7|20th|Ruritania}}
  • 1979 establishments in Ruritania has {{estcatCountry|197|9|Ruritania}}
  • 1979 disestablishments in Ruritania would have {{disestcatCountry|197|9|Ruritania}}<nowiki> **'''1970s establishments in New Jersey''' has <nowiki>{{estcatUSstateDecade|19|7|20th|New Jersey}}
  • 1970s disestablishments in New Jersey has {{disestcatUSstateDecade|19|7|20th|New Jersey}}
  • 1979 establishments in New Jersey has {{estcatUSstate|197|9|New Jersey}}
  • 1979 disestablishments in New Jersey has {{disestcatUSstate|197|9|New Jersey}}

There's also {{EstcatCountryCentury}}, {{EstcatCountry2ndMillennium}} and {{EstcatCountry3rdMillennium}} if you can be bothered.

• • Categories like 1979 in Ruritania have simply {{year in country category|1|9|7|9|Ruritania|Europe||}} {{Commons category|2012 in Ruritania}}
  • Categories like 1979 by country get filled in as per eg Category:2012 by country
  • Categories like Years of the 20th century in Ruritania get {{Portal|Ruritania}} and the categories Category:20th century in Ruritania, 20th, Ruritania and Ruritania
  • Categories like 1970s in Ruritania get filled in per eg Category:2010s in France
  • Categories like Years of the 20th century in Ruritania get filled in per eg Category:Years of the 20th century in France
• A common pair in the first century is eg Category:347_in_international_relations and Category:347_in_politics which want filling out per Category:2000 in international relations and Category:2000 in politics
• I think there's scope to apply some fuzzier logic on the cases of "nnnn in foo", "nnnn foo" or "nnnn–nn in foo" (sports leagues mainly). Since the 2012 equivalent will almost certainly exist, just grab the categories and templates from the (CURRENTYEAR - 1) version of the category, adjust the numbers accordingly, and use that content to create the category. It may not be quite perfect but I wouldn't let perfection be the enemy of the good, at least it gets it into the hierarchy where it is visible to the subject experts, any errors in the year hierarchies tend to be very visible - and to be honest duplicating the 2012 caetgory actually seems to work pretty well as a heuristic when doing it manually, the error rate should be acceptable. Maybe have a "handbrake", to base no more than three new categories on a 2012 category without asking a human to doublecheck that it's OK?
• Then check that there's no category red links on what you've just created - it'd be nice to create those in turn, although they could wait for the next run of the report.
• Could do the same for the similar report WP:Database reports/Red-linked categories with incoming links
• Something to watch for in the above is the sorting - BC dates are assigned negative numbers for sort purposes, so eg 270 BC will be given -30 in a 3rd-century BC category. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Le Deluge (talk • contribs) 18:50, February 18, 2013

Billboard has revamped its site, and we have tens of thousands of dead links. The old link looks like

http://www.billboard.com/artist/<artist name, urlencoded>/chart-history/<magic number>?f=<chart number>&g=Singles with "#" inserted at random locations.

for example

http://www.billboard.com/artist/Tim+McGraw/chart-history/32771?f=357&g=Singles (or g=Albums, if it's an album chart)

http://www.billboard.com/#/artist/lil-wayne/chart-history/352101?f=379&g=Singles <- notice the optional pound sign

http://www.billboard.com/artist/keith-urban/241828#/artist/keith-urban/chart-history/241828?f=357&g=Singles

These all now take the form of http://www.billboard.com/artist/<different magic number>/<artist name, with varying punctuation>/chart?f=<chart number>

http://www.billboard.com/artist/305660/keith-urban/chart?f=341

All the magic numbers for the artists changed. The artist's names stayed the same, even though the formatting has shifted. The chart numbers remain the same.

I've done the crawl of Billboard to find the new tokens. The results are now in templates. {{BillboardID}} will return the appropriate number for the artist. {{BillboardChartNum}} will return the chart number from a chart name (which should stay more stable). The new template {{BillboardURLbyName}} will take that data and return a correct URL. The purpose of the template is to keep from having to go through this again when Billboard revamps again. It seems to happen every few years.

For size considerations, {{BillboardID}} is actually broken into 40 separate templates, broken by first character. Take a peek at {{BillboardID/Q}} and {{BillboardID/R}} and it will be obvious.

So, what the bot needs to do:

For each URL of the form http://www.billboard.com/artist/<artist name, urlencoded>/chart-history/<magic number>?f=<chart number>&g=Singles or http://www.billboard.com/#/artist/<artist name, urlencoded>/chart-history/<magic number>?f=<chart number>&g=Singles

extract artist name and chart number

if (artist name not translated by BillboardID)

then log error and skip

else if (chart number not translated by BillboardChartNum)

then log error and skip

else replace URL with {{BillboardURLbyName|artist=<artist name>|chart=<chart name>}}

When the bot is done, it should provide a log of every time it found an artist that it couldn't handle or a chart that it couldn't handle. I'll take those errors and fix the templates to handle those cases, and we can rerun as necessary.

To see an example of a before and after rework, look at the Usher discography revamp or the Nicki Minaj discography revamp.—Kww(talk) 16:28, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

An excellent idea. Much easier than doing it all by hand. Doesn't seem like a very hard bot to code. If someone can do it, please! This is a big issue we are currently facing. Status 01:07, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I decided to dive in, and I'm at the 95% complete stage on this bot. I'll ask again if I need help crossing the finish line.—Kww(talk) 01:58, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi guys! I currently dont really have much time but it would be great if someone has or could write a bot that could archive or just remove sections from User:Addbot/log/wikidata that have {{done}} or {{notdone}} on them! ·Add§hore· ^{Talk To Me!} 23:21, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Won't User:ClueBot III do this? I'll be happy to configure it for you, if that's what you need. —Theopolisme (talk) 23:47, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

If the page is to work as intended It would need to be checked every 30 mins or so, which unfortunately cluebot does not do. Although adding the cluebot config the the page wouls still probably help the current state! ·Add§hore· ^{Talk To Me!} 03:51, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

 Done made something myself :) ·Add§hore· ^{Talk To Me!} 23:05, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

There are hundreds of articles, mostly about settlements in Brazil, that specify 'language=Portguese' as a citation template parameter. There are too many to correct to 'Portuguese' by hand, but it would be an easy job for a bot. Colonies Chris (talk) 22:09, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

It would be a simple find & replace exercise with AWB. However, I'm not sure I could argue how this would be an exception to Wikipedia:Bots/Frequently denied bots#Fully automatic spell-checking bots. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:09, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I am going to file a BRFA with an argument that I believe is good enough and will also run it semi-automatic if required. -- Cheers, Riley 02:22, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

• BRFA filed here. -- Cheers, Riley 02:40, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for taking this up. Colonies Chris (talk) 11:38, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

• Done. Thanks for filing this request! -- Cheers, Riley 07:45, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Cheers. That just leaves a couple of dozen occurrences of this typo, which I can fix by hand. Colonies Chris (talk) 11:24, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Over 200 articles that cite the Cancer Dictionary all need the same trivial change to the links to the original source to make them right, as the base URL, but not the article codes, for those entries has been changed on the cancer.gov website. Example: in Peritoneal mesothelioma, the link to

http://www.cancer.gov/Templates/db_alpha.aspx?CdrID=44992

should be replaced by

http://www.cancer.gov/dictionary?CdrID=44992

A full list of the articles that need changing can be found For this set of pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&limit=500&offset=0&target=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cancer.gov%2FTemplates%2Fdb_alpha.aspx%3FCdrID

I could easily fix this myself with my own bot in a few lines of code, but don't want to have to go through the process of obtaining permission to do so for such a small task: if someone with an already authorized search-replace bot is an a position to do this without putting themselves to any great effort, and would be kind enough to help, I'd be very grateful.

Alternatively, if this is such a small task that it would OK to just to this without going through the usual bot-task process, I'd be happy to do it myself.

Thanks, -- The Anome (talk) 18:45, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

• Filing BRFA -- Cheers, Riley 19:03, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

• BRFA filed here. -- Cheers, Riley 19:23, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

• Done. Thanks for filing this request! -- Cheers, Riley 07:04, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I've recently discovered that AnomieBOT will create conflicting references when there's a citation error in an article and there are references that are created by {{singlechart}}. Note this edit, for example, where AnomieBOT's response to a broken reference named "Hungary" was to treat the reference "Australia" as orphaned, even though the Australia reference was fine. Given the discussion at User talk:AnomieBOT/Archive 5#breaking references, I'm not expecting a fix from AnomieBOT any time soon. To control the damage it's causing, I need to get a list of articles that are in Category:Singlechart making named ref and have a colliding reference defined both through <ref name=xxxxx> and through {{singlechart|...|refname=xxxx}}. Hopefully one of the existing bots with a good search capability can do that for me. I'll do the fixes manually, but I don't want to try and trawl through 450 articles manually searching for something that doesn't even give an easily visible error message.—Kww(talk) 07:00, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Coding... Mutley1989 (talk) 08:12, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Y Done I think. Let me know if this is ok or if I've misunderstood your request. Code used here. Results (76 pages):

Mutley1989 (talk) 10:12, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

That looks like the list I need. Thanks. I'll take it from there, and Anomie did agree to insert code to keep the problem from spreading.—Kww(talk) 15:10, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

We on Sanskrit wiki want a bot to generate an html page to contain all our categories in form of html tree-view control, something like this. I know that there is a special page on wiki for category viewing,but the problem is that it doesn't work readily (loading time is required on each click); while if we can download a single html page, we can view the category structure easily by collapsing & expanding as needed, even offline, and i want to review the category structure using that method. We have manageable number of categories on sawiki. So please tell if that is feasible. -Hemant wikikosh (talk) 11:58, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

The proper way to do this would be with XML and XSLT.Smallman12q (talk) 00:33, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Featured pictures are (with one or two exceptions) stored on Commons but have a local page that links to their FP nomination page and indicates the date they were picture of the day, if applicable. Sometimes, however, the FP templates are replaced due to vandalism, and then the pages are deleted per WP:CSD#F2 (example 1; example 2). These bother me and I would like to fix them; those local templates are the primary advertisement the FP project gets. I find these at random, but it seems like it would be fairly straightforward to write a script that would list all FPs with no local page, just by going through the subpages of the directory (one way might be to compare images linked in the directory to Category:Featured pictures; if they're not in the category they're missing the local page or its templates). Piece of cake, right? Thanks. Chick Bowen 19:14, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

{{Ethnologue}} has been used as a shortcut to {{Ethnologue16}}. However, with the publication of the new edition of Ethnologue today, this is no longer appropriate. Please convert all transclusions of {{Ethnologue}} to {{Ethnologue16}}, then delete {{Ethnologue}}.

— kwami (talk) 21:23, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

WP:TfD is the third door on your left. Werieth (talk) 21:29, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Why does this need discussion? It's just a redirect. — kwami (talk) 21:42, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Bot operators do not make unilateral changes. Consensus needs reached prior to having a bot change things. Werieth (talk) 22:00, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Ok. — kwami (talk) 23:33, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

This is a nice easy task that might suit a bot beginner, or could be bolted onto something else.

• Every Wednesday night, scan WP:Database reports/Red-linked categories with incoming links for category names containing "sockpuppets_of"
• Check that they don't exist
• Create with the simple template "{{Sockpuppet category}}"

That should be good enough - if you read {{Sockpuppet category}} you can see that there's a bit of scope to get cute about encoding certain non-alphanumeric characters but the template is smart enough to sideline "problem" names into a maintenance category so it's not very necessary. It's a simple enough little task that could be done manually with AWB, but it might as well be automated, sockpuppet cats make up 20% of those red-link categories and anything that helps out the anti-sock guys is worth doing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Le Deluge (talk • contribs) 18:50, February 18, 2013

Coding.... GoingBatty (talk) 01:21, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

BRFA filed here. GoingBatty (talk) 01:37, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Line 83 of the report is just Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of - should that be ignored, or is there something that should be fixed? GoingBatty (talk) 01:43, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Ignore it, that was from someone using an old template in 2008 (!) Thanks for the speedy response.Le Deluge (talk) 11:28, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

The consensus here was for "a bot that blue-linked all redlinked categories that were named after an account and contained at least one other named account, and deleted tags from any IP account that was associated with a red-linked category after that creation was completed." Since this is beyond my technical skills, I have withdrawn my bot request. I hope another bot operator can pick up this request. GoingBatty (talk) 01:45, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

At Talk:Main Page#Today's article for improvement on the Main Page, there appears to be consensus (pending an uninvolved party's discussion closure) to proceed with the addition of a TAFI section to the main page, with the dynamic display of three article links from a pool of ten (example).
A concern is that the links, generated via {{random subpage}}, change only when the page's cache is purged. So I'm requesting that a bot purge Main Page's cache with whatever frequency is feasible and acceptable (once per minute, perhaps?). —David Levy 18:27, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

The server admins would have the operator's head on a pike before you could blink. The main page is cached for a reason, it is the most viewed page on wikipedia. Breaking the cache system that often for something that trivial would cause some backlash. Werieth (talk) 03:05, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Right. Just display 3 articles at a time, and then switch them out whenever DYK gets updated or something. Don't dynamically change them. Legoktm (talk) 03:14, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

For the reason noted below, the community approved the section's addition on the condition that the article links be randomly pulled from a large pool. (For the record, I wasn't involved in that discussion, but I would have expressed the same concern.) —David Levy 03:39, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I understand the importance of caching, particularly when a page is viewed millions of times per day, but I'm unclear on how the proposed setup constitutes "breaking the cache system" or poses a problem. In terms of overhead, how would it differ from any other cache purge (a common occurrence across the encyclopedia)? In the subsequent minute, whether a page is requested once or 7,000 times, isn't the same cached version being sent? (Please forgive me if I've misunderstood how this works.)

Note that we already include a purge link on the main page. The TAFI proposal previously called for an additional one to be included in the new section (with readers encouraged to use it repeatedly), which probably would have resulted in significantly more than one purge per minute.

Also note that the purpose of varying the links is to avoid sending too many editors to articles at the same time (thereby causing endless edit conflicts and potentially driving away new contributors), which isn't a trivial matter. —David Levy 03:39, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

What did we do for the 2008 election FA? That was two articles displayed together, with the order rotated randomly; presumably we hit the same problems then, but we may also have solved it :-). Andrew Gray (talk) 09:44, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

That relied on JavaScript code, which failed gracefully for users without JavaScript enabled (who saw the blurbs in a static order). I don't know whether something similar is feasible in this instance. —David Levy 11:57, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Does a cron job which requests http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=purge every hour, say, really require bot approval? If it's not editing, it doesn't require a bot, does it? Neo Poz (talk) 19:09, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Probably not, technically, but I did go through the process for User:Joe's Null Bot, which does roughly four times that many purges per day. *shrug* The original request was for one per minute, not once per hour, of course. --j⚛e decker^talk 19:54, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

How do you feel about adding the 1/hour to Joe's Null, and if so going though the approval for the addition or not? Neo Poz (talk) 20:08, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

"Once per minute" was merely a suggestion. I've requested "whatever frequency is feasible and acceptable", meaning that which can be programmed without inconveniencing the bot's operator or causing any server-side problems (though I suspect that only a ridiculous rate would have the latter effect).

The page needn't be purged once per minute, but I hope that it can occur more often than once per hour (as that seems long enough for the articles to be flooded). —David Levy 20:36, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Does anyone think once every 15 minutes is too much or too little? Neo Poz (talk) 03:44, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Let's try 15 minutes for starts and we can adjust it faster if needed. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 00:45, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

That seems reasonable. —David Levy 19:21, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Just as a question - does this HAVE to be done by something hard-coded that gets refreshed periodically? Since the aim is just to present 3 out of 10 links, could you not slice it by some other way than by a cache-purge? I'm thinking of using Javascript to do something like If CURRENTTIME-in-milliseconds ends in 1, show links 1,2,3; if CURRENTTIME-in-milliseconds ends in 2, show links 2,3,4 and so on. Doesn't have to be done on time either - it could be done on the ASCII value of their user name, sum of their IP address (with a bit of help server-side), whatever. It seems a better way of doing something that is fundamentally quite simple, rather than messing with the caching on such a heavy-traffic page.Le Deluge (talk) 19:46, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

My concern is that not all users have JavaScript enabled. Assuming that the code were to fail gracefully (as in the instance discussed above), perhaps the number of affected users would be acceptably small.

But unless I've misunderstood the caching system, the fact that Main Page is "a heavy-traffic page" is irrelevant. A cache purge causes the page to be rebuilt once, after which the same version is sent until the cache is purged again. Whether a page is requested zero times or 100,000 times in the following 15 minutes, it's been rebuilt only once. So the cost of purging Main Page's cache should be no greater than that of purging any other page's cache. A 15-minute interval would result in 96 cache purges per day, which is negligible. —David Levy 20:23, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Usual assumption is that about 1.5% of web users have no Javascript - in this case one might assume that the percentage of likely editors is less than that, but we'll go with it. If your NOSCRIPT page just presented people with links 1,2,3, that would mean that 11.35% of people see pages 1,2,3 and 9.85% see each of the other combinations. I don't think that's unreasonable. If you had 3 out of 100 links, then you might set aside one combination of links specifically for the NOSCRIPT people. As for the caching, you're need to think like a user - or rather like the cache nearest the user, rather than at the Wikipedia end. The fact that the en.wiki main page is so popular means that almost every cache on the planet will need a current copy. Let's assume one of their users requests it once every minute for the sake of this argument. If MP is purged once an hour, then 59 users can be supplied with the version on the cache, and only one has to wait for the cache to request the new version up through the hierarchy of other caches until a request gets made to Wikipedia. Purge it once a minute and all 60 users think "Gee, Wikipedia is slow today". OK, an extreme version. The real problem is the extra network traffic you're incurring, if this is a popular page it will be on 100,000's of servers throughout the internet. Compare that with say the main page of Welsh Wikipedia, where not only are the numbers much smaller, the likely users can all be "fed" by getting a new copy to a few servers in places like Cardiff (and one in Patagonia). A cache in Hong Kong or Romania isn't likely to need a new copy of the Welsh page every minute. Apologies to any network engineers out there, but you get a flavour of some of the argument.Le Deluge (talk) 21:42, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't recall the issue of third-party caching arising in this context before. I'd be interested in reading others' opinions on whether this is a major concern.

Either way, I'd like to see a working example of the JavaScript-based approach, which seems like it might be a better solution. —David Levy 23:00, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Well I have the one line cron job ready to go, and am thinking about being bold about it, but I would much rather Joe add the 15 minute interval to Joe's Null Bot. Joe? Neo Poz (talk) 22:13, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Hey, sorry I haven't seen this. I'll drop a request at BRFA in the next 12 hours. I could get hit by a bus too, but I'm happy to at least ask BAG what they think about a 15 minute purge. That sounds very impact to me, but let's ask the gurus. --j⚛e decker^talk 00:12, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm guessing that you meant to write "high-impact" or "low-impact", but I don't know which. —David Levy 00:40, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Wow, I meant "low-impact". What an embarrassing omission, my apologies. My intuition is that the cost of rerendering an uncached page every few minutes is quite minimal, but I'd be lying if I claimed any detailed operational experience with server-side Wikipedia. Sorry for the lack of clarity, I'm going to spend some time writing, then stepping back, then reading, then rewriting the BAG request, to avoid any similar lapses of clarity. --j⚛e decker^talk 01:08, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

No worries. It's just a minor typo.  :)

My intuition is the same, but I'm not a server expert either, and I certainly agree that it would be helpful to consult those more knowledgeable in that area. —David Levy 01:43, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Brfa#Joe.27s_Null_Bot_2 --j⚛e decker^talk 01:33, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I have just closed Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 February 4#Category:Wikipedia_requested_photographs_in_San_Francisco.2C_California as "merge" Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in San Francisco County, California to Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in San Francisco, California.

To implement this, all the pages currently in Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in San Francisco County, California need to be edited as follows:

replace {{Image requested|in=San Francisco County, California}} with {{Image requested|in=San Francisco, California}}

Please can some kind bot-owner do this?

Thanks! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:12, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I will file a task for this. -- Cheers, Riley 08:14, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

• Nevermind, I thought there was more pages. I can do this myself. -- Cheers, Riley 08:15, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
•  Done -- Cheers, Riley 08:41, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Riley! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:43, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

See the "Category:Wikipedia files with no copyright tag" section of the current revision of WP:AN. DumbBOT persists in creating something that was once useful but has now been made useless, and because the operator is AWOL, there's no way to stop the bot, as far as I can tell, except for the horribly unhelpful method of blocking it. Could someone please produce a replacement bot? Its functions are:

1. creates daily categories and subpages (see User:DumbBOT/CatCreate for details)
2. list incomplete AfD nominations at User:DumbBOT/IncompleteAfD
3. complete nominations when the AfD subpage exists but is not listed
4. creates a summary of the articles tagged WP:PROD at /ProdSummary
5. list articles that are tagged {{copyvio}} but not listed
6. maintain User:DumbBOT/RfArSummary and User:DumbBOT/UsernameChange
7. removes protection templates from non-protected pages

One problematic category isn't a big deal, but if we make broader changes in the future, this bot may start having serious issues; imagine if the AFD nomination process were have a fundamental change in its page structure, for example. Basically, the only reason I'm requesting this is so that we'll again have a bot doing this under the control of an operator who's active here at Wikipedia, so that changes could be made to its operation if necessary; if you create such a bot, we can softblock DumbBOT until the operator returns, which probably isn't going to happen. Nyttend (talk) 16:31, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

You could just add the category title to the title blacklist, and see if there is any negative fallout. Probably the easiest thing to do. Werieth (talk) 18:39, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

It should be noted that of the above tasks, it appears that only 1, 4, and 7 are currently running. — Train2104 (talk • contribs) 18:52, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I've done it. Did I do it right? If not, please fix my mistake. Nyttend (talk) 03:50, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

After IAAF web site reform, this is the situation:

• As {{iaaf name|id=2696}} don't works. Try Calvin Smith at World Athletics
• It works as {{iaaf name|id=2696|letter=s|name=Calvin Smith}} Try Calvin Smith at World Athletics
• And, of course, with new template {{IAAF profile|country=united-states|namelink=calvin-smith|Calvin Smith}} works.

It requires the work of a bot to fix the many templates of the first kind. --Kasper2006 (talk) 11:38, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Is it possible, I wonder, to fix this in the Template itself? --j⚛e decker^talk 15:56, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Nevermind, probably not -- title isn't required. --j⚛e decker^talk 15:58, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that, if not resolved, there are hundreds of athlete profiles that do not work. --Kasper2006 (talk) 06:40, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Recently I found two articles in the same category, which were sorted differently. After my question on WP:HD User:John of Reading fixed them [1], however there's still plenty of mis-sorted bigraphies in Category:Icelandic people and its subcategories. Possibly some bot, when supplied with a list of categories (or just searching them by regexp 'Iceland|Icelandic'), might correct such biographies sorting, just by picking the DEFAULTSORT key, swapping it, dropping a comma and adding it explicitely to appropriate categories' links. Of course it must also recognize biographies among other articles. --CiaPan (talk) 12:16, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

This sounds like something that may have been proposed before, but can we run a bot to add missing merge tags on all the articles in Category:Articles to be merged? I would say about half of the articles proposed to be merged do not have the accompanying tag on the target article. What I mean is that, if the article has {{mergeto}} or {{mergefrom}}, the bot would check that target article article has the reciprocal merge tag. My thinking here is that if there's an article missing one of them, and the merge is clearly not supported, someone would remove the tag from both articles.

Also, on a similar train of thought, a more permanent bot would be one that could check that these tags are in place until the merge is resolved. I think many proposed merges are inactive simply because 50% of the editors have no idea there has even been such a proposal. Usually the merge tag winds up on the crappier, less viewed article rahter than the highly viewed target. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 01:49, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

No takers? --NickPenguin_(contribs) 13:23, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

BRFA filed here. Mutley1989 (talk) 13:28, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Awesome, thank you. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 15:34, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Merge bot. I was already thinking that adding reciprocal merge tags would be the first enhancement to this bot, glad to see it's already been covered. -- Wbm1058 (talk) 16:14, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I need a bot to check certain pages which have had, for years now, IP addresses with no other edits, spam links to commercial sites. Microsoft Ants for example, if you check the history, you will find voobly.com has been spammed there many times over the years, and reverted by me or others. I filed a report on some cases of them spamming articles at [2]. I would like to be able to run a bot on any page I select to investigate, which would check every single edit in the page's history, scanning the text in each edit to determine when certain text was added, and then list that information. Be able to see the edit, date, and name of editor who put it there, clicking on a link to see their contributions. It makes it easier to show a constant pattern of abuse by commercial sites that do this across Wikipedia. If looking over that, one finds that dozens of different IP addresses have edited only to add the same spam link to an article or other articles, it proves the Wikipedia Spam filter needs to be updated to stop that, and those pages protected from IP address edits. When scanning for something, should be able to do multiple scans at the same time, typing in the names of various often spammed links, since sometimes they have the same owner, and they rotate which link they put in there, or more than one site is regularly doing this to the same place. Dream Focus 07:55, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

User:COIBot and User:XLinkBot. Legoktm (talk) 07:56, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Do we have a bot that can be used to empty a category? Category:French loanwords was taken to CFD, which ended with "listify and then delete". I've converted it into a list, but I don't feel like manually stripping it from 176 articles. Note that I've checked for things that should go into parent categories; for example, I put List of French words and phrases used by English speakers into Category:French language. Nyttend (talk) 01:37, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

You can use Cydebot through WP:CFD/W. Legoktm (talk) 01:42, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Tried that just now; let's see if I did it right. Thanks for the pointer! Nyttend (talk) 05:36, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Is there a bot that can automatically purge null edit all pages in a category after a specific period of time? -- Toshio Yamaguchi 08:03, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, my bot can do either purging or null editing on request. But why will a purge not work? Legoktm (talk) 08:21, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't know whether a purge is enough or not. The category in question is Category:Non-free files lacking a non-free use rationale for more than 7 days, where I noticed that even after more than 7 days files are not being shown without a null edit to all pages tagged with {{File page NFCC concerns tag}}. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 10:31, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

I think this whole tree needs to be deleted, and some related trees as well. I really do not feel like tagging the whole thing, so I was hoping it would be possible to have a bot assist.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:45, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

I can do it with AWB. However, it's been almost 5 days, so I'm not sure it's a good idea at the moment. (We need a category, AWB users willing to submit bulk nominations.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:28, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Actually, we don't need a category — just pop in at WP:AWB/TA.  Hazard-SJ  ✈  03:18, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I have nominated a lot of categories for speedy renaming (at WP:CFD/S), but can't run AWB at the moment, so they are too much work to tag.

Please can a kind bot-owner tag them by inserting {{subst:cfr-speedy}} at the top of each page? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:32, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

 Doing... using AWB Vacation9 23:53, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks :) --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

 Done after consulting if parameter was needed or not. Vacation9 02:42, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

That's wonderful. It saved me an hour's work. Thanks again! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

At Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#COI_Template there are 10 supports and zero opposes for the suggestion that we begin a trial deployment of Template:COI editnotice to Category:Companies based in Idaho. The idea is to eventually apply it to Category: organizations if the template results in a lift in Request Edit submissions. I think there is strong enough consensus to request a bot to begin tagging. If I'm not doing it right, let me know. CorporateM (Talk) 15:24, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Two opposes now; maybe I should wait until the commenting is done... CorporateM (Talk) 16:56, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Ok, the consensus still looks strong, two opposes and 12+ supports. Can we get a bot to apply Template:COI editnotice to Category:Companies based in Idaho? CorporateM (Talk) 13:03, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

A bunch of articles [3];[4] are using the deprecated {{Coor dm}} or {{Coor dms}} for their coordinates; they should use {{Coord}} instead, to which the former templates redirect. As we don't simply fix redirects, it would be good if this could be added to some routine cleanup bots'/ AWB's tasks (is there a better place to request this?) Here is an example edit. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:11, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

• WP:AWB/FR is the place. I just cleared up the current ones. Thine Antique Pen (talk) 21:33, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:49, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
• In general, we do not approve bots to go around simply replacing a redirect with its target, unless the redirect is about to be deleted. It is also against the AWB rules to use AWB to perform that sort of cosmetic change. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:07, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I acknowledged that "we don't simply fix redirects". By "some routine cleanup bots'/ AWB's tasks" I mean that the change should be applied at the same time AWB is being used to make other changes. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:49, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

The sub-categories of Category:Motorsport in Italy by year are parented in Category:YYYY in Italy, whereas they should be subcats of Category:YYYY in Italian sport. This needs to be fixed, and I have done Category:1996 in Italian motorsport an example in this edit.

The categories I have checked have made odd usage of {{Year by category}}, and not used the parent parameter, so it seems to me that the best thing to do is to replace the entire content of the category.

The search string only needs to select the whole page while matching the year, and split it into 4 parts: ^.*([12])([890])([0-9])([0-9]).*$

... the replace it with:

{{Cat main|Motorsport in Italy}}
{{Year by category
|m=$1
|c=$2
|d=$3
|y=$4
|cat     = in Italian motorsport
|subcat  = $1$2$3$4 in Italian sport
|sortkey = Motorsport
|parent  = Motorsport in Italy by year
}}

[[Category:$1$2$3$4 in motorsport|Italian]]

Any volunteers? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:40, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

 Doing... manually with AWB. GoingBatty (talk) 18:18, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

 Done. GoingBatty (talk) 18:24, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:43, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Would someone with some time please be able to go through and add {{dead link}} to Special:LinkSearch/*.george-orwell.org. One could argue that the links should be stripped altogether as the works are still under copyright in the US and the home nation. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:42, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

 Doing... with AWB - only 23 articles. GoingBatty (talk) 23:26, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

 Done - GoingBatty (talk) 23:53, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

A publisher is set to shut down three major RS sites for video games: 1UP, UGO, and Gamespy. (The sites effectively have stopped publishing but their content is still there, but we have no idea how long that will last). We want to try to webcite these links, a list is given at [5]. We had a previous situation where we knew a web site was going dark in a matter of days and had a bot run through and webcite the links and update the articles, but I'm having problems finding that request from before. Here we don't think we're in as big a rush to fix this but certainly have the issue that we have no idea of the timing here. Is there a bot set up to handle this or would a new one need to be made? --MASEM (t) 17:20, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I've been asked to post [6] for Δ. Dru of Id (talk) 19:40, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

...who is still working on it. :D Dru of Id (talk) 19:43, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Once he's done, I can activate AnomieBOT to add the webcite links to the articles. Anomie⚔ 00:24, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I have put in a nomination here to rename all of the by-year categories which currently are subcategories of Category:Events_in_the_Thirteen_Colonies to Category:Events in the British colonies of North America. I put a note on the CfD talk page (per the instructions) for help tagging all of the relevant categories, but someone suggested I try here instead. Can you help? In short, I need to add a CfD note for a rename to all of the 180+ subcategories of [:Category:Events in the Thirteen Colonies] -- Dis/establishment by Year/Decade/Century. There are one per year from 1607 to 1775, plus 18 decade ones, and two centuries. Thankfully, most of the "Disestablishment" categories haven't been created yet. Thank you!! JRP (talk) 07:07, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

At CFD 2013 March 17 I have nominated Category:Formula One race reports for renaming, along with its 64 subcategories.

The 64 sub-categories (listed below) are untagged, and I hope that a kind bot-owner could do the job.

It could be done in two ways:

The simple way

• Insert at the top of the page: {{subst:cfr|Formula One race reports}}

The resulting notice won't state the renaming target, and it would be better if the rename target was specified.

Specifying the rename target

• Insert at the top of the page: {{subst:cfr|$1 Formula One races|Formula One race reports}}
  The $1 value for the year can be picked up a regex which by matches the YYYY string at the start of the title of the parent category YYYY in Formula One (e.g. Category:1990 in Formula One).

However, the most important thing is that the categories are tagged today, before the date changes. So the simple tagging is better than no tagging! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:57, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

 Doing... semi-automated with AWB. GoingBatty (talk) 22:19, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

 Done - GoingBatty (talk)`

Thanks! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:59, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Template:CongLinks, used in External links, has a washpo parameter, for Washington Post. The broken links are all alphabetic (plus underlines and possibly commas) but the working ones are a mix of alpha and numbers in two versions. For example, Blanche Lincoln is broken, Dick Durbin works, and anything that looks like f9d0a3fa-4bbc-11e2-8758-b64a2997a921 works. I need a bot to go through and blank out only the broken (old version) instances. 184.78.81.245 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:10, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Could you please clarify? It appears that an all alphabetic parameter on Dan Coats works just fine. Do the broken links all contain underscores? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:12, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Should the |nndb= and |findagrave= parameters also be removed at the same time, since the template no longer supports them? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:20, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Why delete instead of repair? If the link used to be valid at some point, then the material is most likely still there just under a different url. For example, Blanche Lincoln is under /blanche-lincoln/gIQA5gxz9O_topic.html. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:36, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Deleting would remove the incorrect links that are currently on articles, and would still give the ability to repair later on. However, would you prefer to have a report of all of the parameters that need repairing? GoingBatty (talk) 16:52, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

GoingBatty, you are absolutely correct about Dan Coats. Would it work to delete washpo parameter values which include an underline? I wouldn't delete findagrave and nndb, as those were removed with no discussion, and Template:NNDB and Template:Find a Grave are widely used. There's often confusion between links acceptable for EL and links which are acceptable as reliable sources for references. Perhaps after the cleanup is done, a list of current Senators and Representatives who lack a washpo parameter would be a useful addition to the relevant Wikipedia Project, or perhaps post an example of the code needed to scan for a missing or valueless parameter in templates, starting from a list of articles such as the members of the 113th Congress. I've now remembered a related broken link problem with the votesmart parameter. I believe those which include alpha characters no longer work. 184.78.81.245 (talk) 17:23, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

BRFA filed here. GoingBatty (talk) 01:51, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

 Doing... GoingBatty (talk) 22:52, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

 Done -GoingBatty (talk) 00:25, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

The following categories were renamed to include a dash instead of a hyphen. Now category redirects are needed. Could someone create them? Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 22:30, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

BRFA filed  Hazard-SJ  ✈  02:53, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Y Done  Hazard-SJ  ✈  04:29, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 12:24, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I have a massive number of redirects for a bot to create. Bellow is a list (from Former counties, cities, and towns of Virginia) of former Virginia counties, now part of West Virginia and Kentucky. The list also includes some cities and towns that are now part of West Virginia. The list has been modified so that it links to X, Virginia instead of X, Kentucky/West Virginia

The vast majority of entries on this modified list are redlinks. I would like a bot to redirect these redlinks to the correct Kentucky/West Virginia article. Be aware that, as the article says "Many of these [Kentucky] names were later reused to name other new Virginia counties. Some of those were "lost" again when the state of West Virginia was formed in 1863." so in those cases where Kentucky and a West Virginia county have the same name , I would strongly recommended the bot create a disambig instead of a redirect to eater article. In the case where a current Virginia location has the same name as one of these old counties/cities/towns, I would like the bot to create a hatnote. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 01:53, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Update: I've taken care of the Kentucky counties manually, including the ones that needed a disambig for a West Virginia county having the same name. That just leaves the West Virginia ones for the bot to take care of. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 02:21, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Update:I've manually added the hatnotes, now the bot just needs to create the redirects. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 02:43, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

• I'm hoping I understood your request, as it stands with the current updates. You want the rest of the redlinked pages (<county>, Virginia) redirected to West Virginia pages (<county>, West Virginia), considering the such target exists? If so, I could do it. If not, please clarify.  Hazard-SJ  ✈  04:37, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, and all target should exist. If one doesn't let me know. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 05:28, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

• Okay, so where is the full list of pages?  Hazard-SJ  ✈  05:30, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

These redlinks are the full list of redirects I'll like created. This list is a modified copy of Former counties, cities, and towns of Virginia#West Virginia. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 07:51, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Kentucky

List of lost counties

The ten Virginia counties "lost" in the formation of the new Commonwealth of Kentucky were (alphabetically):

• Bourbon County
• Fayette County
• Jefferson County
• Lincoln County
• Madison County
• Mason County
• Mercer County
• Nelson County
• Woodford County

West Virginia

List of lost counties

Listed alphabetically, the 50 counties of Virginia lost to the formation of West Virginia were:

List of lost cities and towns

Also lost to Virginia with the formation of West Virginia were many cities and towns. A partial listing of these (there were many more) is:

A couple of months ago, Yobot fulfilled a request that I made on behalf of WP:JAZZ; the details are available in the archived discussion. It appears that at least some of the edits need some cleanup:

• The {{WikiProject Jazz}} banner did not inherit the class= rating from the existing WikiProject banners (or derive it from article's length, or presence of a stub template in the article)
• The 'bot always placed the banner at the top of the page, regardless of whether {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} or {{Talkpageheader}} was already present. (In at least one case it fixed a redirect link to {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} but didn't place the new banner inside the shell; in another it actually added the shell but didn't include the banner in it: [7].)
• For pages in the /Songs list, the parameter songs=yes was added; it should have been song=yes (I'm not sure if it affects all the song articles, but I've noticed it with those pages that were originally tagged with album=yes and then re-tagged a few minutes later).

I have spot-checked a few dozen edits from Jan. 4-5 and I'm consistently seeing these issues. For example, [8], [9]. Of course where there were no existing assessments, or no banner shell, this is a non-issue (other than not identifying stubs).

I apologize that I didn't spot this and bring it up any sooner. I'm not sure if Yobot (or another 'bot) can simply retrace its earlier steps, or whether it needs to go back through the categories again, but the category scheme remains largely the same (cat. list is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Jazz/Categories. I'm making a few edits to remove red links, add at least one known new category, etc.). If it does need to go through the categories again, maybe tag any new articles along the way, as per the previous request. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 20:20, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I am sorry my edits weren't perfect. I hope someone helps to fix these because I am busy in real life to deal with this task. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:17, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Doing... some manually - checking to see how many have |songs=yes before proceeding further. GoingBatty (talk) 20:58, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Magioladitis, my request for auto-assessment may not have been clear in the first place – I very briefly mentioned it in my request and then placed a link to the 2010 request, so it was very easy to miss. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 15:33, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

BRFA filed here. GoingBatty (talk) 02:04, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Based on a suggestion in the BRFA, |songs= is now also a valid parameter for {{WikiProject Jazz}}. GoingBatty (talk) 21:35, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! -- Gyrofrog (talk) 15:33, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

P.S. I did the same for albums=, just in case... -- Gyrofrog (talk) 13:58, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

 Doing... GoingBatty (talk) 02:23, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Auto-assessment

Can we get a 'bot to help with the auto-assessment?

• We wish to inherit class= from other WikiProjects (if any):

• Inherit class= if only a single rating is available
• Inherit class= if two or more ratings are available; in the event of auto-stub/inherit conflict, inherit the most frequent (or highest) class= rating
• Presumably these auto-assessments would be flagged as such, e.g. |auto=yes   |auto=inherit   |auto=length   |autoi=yes

• Otherwise, tag as class=stub based either of the following criteria:

• One or more stub templates in the article
• The text of the article is 2,500 bytes or less

• We do not wish to inherit importance= ratings.

Thank you! -- Gyrofrog (talk) 15:33, 18 March 2013 (UTC)