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Are there any existing bots that convert manually typed data to use {{Convert}}, like distance, temperature, among others? -- DaxServer (talk) 11:46, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Don't think so, but what kinds of edits are you thinking (can you make a sample edit by hand for example)? It sounds like it would be a WP:CONTEXTBOT issue and could only be semi-automated (eg using an AWB Module) at best. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:31, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

I have a couple of regexes in AWB which I ran last week on maybe 10-20 pages, couldn't remember exactly. (Couple of examples: [1], [2], manual search). These are the regexes I used, albeit incomplete:

• Distance: (\d+(?:\.\d+)?)(?: |\s)?km(?!<sup>|2)(?:\s\(\d+(?:\.\d+)?\smi\))? would be replaced with {{convert|$1|km|abbr=on}}
• Temperature: (\d+(?:.\d+)?)(?: |\s)?°C(?:\s\(\d+(?:\.\d+)? °F\)) would be replaced with {{convert|$1|C}}
• Rainfall: (\d+(?:.\d+)?)(?: |\s)?millimetres(?:\s\(\d+(?:\.\d+)? in\))? would be replaced with {{convert|$1|mm|abbr=on}}

I chose the abbr=on because when I edit the articles [manually], I choose to go abbreviated. I ran only on Indian places and thus the regex is developed for km->mi and C->F and not the opposite. I don't know how to build AWB modules, but can develop a Pywikibot script and file for a supervised BRFA (already have two pending). -- DaxServer (talk) 16:43, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

DaxServer: I do have a solution that works with AWB and I am very happy to share it. My solution can perform minor miracles of convert template editing that includes dealing with ranges, worded numbers, fractions etc. but it is long and complicated and shows all the signs of a system that has slowly evolved. The solution is not just a one off search and replace but a long sequence. Although the current version is pretty reliable, things can go wrong and it does require each edit to be manually checked. What you will need is my copy of the XML file that defines all the AWB setup - I'm not sure how best to get it to you. Gaius Cornelius (talk) 05:09, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

@Gaius Cornelius Thanks. I am thinking of two ways to share, one being adding the contents of xml to a new/existing [sandboxy] page under your user page, and ping me. Or you can drop it here: User:DaxServer/test. Or if you don't want it in public record, you can email me. — DaxServer (talk to me) 09:22, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I have fixed Wikipedia:Articles for improvement/Schedule/Preload so that it does not incorrectly show the year 2019 again. Also, the image from Wikipedia:Articles for improvement/2014/8 and earlier subpages (which forgot to be included at Wikipedia:Articles for improvement/2014/9) is now back. Finally, I have used "titleparts" to allow for re-substitution onto past weekly subpages. So now, someone (perhaps, a bot) needs to fix all past weekly subpages of Wikipedia:Articles for improvement by re-substituting the "preload" template, i.e. replacing the entire text of the page with {{subst:Wikipedia:Articles for improvement/Schedule/Preload}}.

The bot MusikBot is the one who is currently creating the weekly subpages. So, if this needs to be done by a bot, then the best choice for the bot would be MusikBot.

This will fix the following problems:

• Incorrect year
• Missing image
• Redlink to week 17
• "Blended" link like the one at Wikipedia:Articles for improvement/2014/52

GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 02:12, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

AFI used to involve more than one article, such as Wikipedia:Articles for improvement/2013/22. The switch to using a single article appears to have started with Wikipedia:Articles for improvement/2013/48, but it may have gone back to multiple articles for some time later, I'm not sure. Anyway, I suppose the red links in the multi-article selections will have to be fixed manually, but frankly I think it's fine to leave them broken... they are only visible in very old archives.

I don't know that I will have time to work on this in the near future, but if you can compile a list of pages that can safely be replaced with {{subst:Wikipedia:Articles for improvement/Schedule/Preload}}, I suspect they could easily be fixed using AWB. — MusikAnimal ^talk 15:43, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

A fairly common phenomenon occurs where a page is deleted, then all the redirects to it are deleted per WP:G8, then the page is recreated but the redirects to it are lost. Could we get a bot that looks at recently recreated pages and restores the incoming redirects to them? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:12, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: WP:BOTREQ is over that way. I don't see any policy problems on something like this, though it may have a large technical hurdle (specifically that a page has no easy way to show "what used to link here"). — xaosflux ^Talk 11:12, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Oops, I thought I was posting at BOTREQ for some reason; thanks for doing the move, Xaosflux/Headbomb. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:21, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Off the top of my head... It would need to be an adminbot, of course. The bot would probably need to watch for G8 deletions of redirects to maintain a database of deleted redirect → former target to be able to identify needed undeletions in the first place. The bot should probably also be prepared to avoid undeleting revisions from a previous deletion (e.g. if the history was "attack page → delete → redirect → G8", or "redirect → attack page → selective delete to restore the redirect → G8"), and should make sure the undeleted redirect isn't still tagged with {{db-redirnone}} or the like. Maybe only undelete revisions that begin with #REDIRECT? That would lose legitimate pre-deletion content though, is that ok? Should there be a time limit, e.g. if the redirects were deleted 10 years ago should they still be undeleted? Is there any discussion elsewhere of the problem, particularly from admins who normally handle this sort of undeletion manually? Anomie⚔ 12:02, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

To answer your last question, I discussed the instance that prompted this proposal briefly with @Liz, who I know does a lot of work with deletion. I also just added invite notices to WT:Deletion policy, WT:Deletion process, and WT:REFUND; hopefully that'll draw over some editors who have relevant thoughts. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:06, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

A related point: I have seen articles overwritten by a redirect to an unrelated target at AfD, as a way to make the article disappear per G8 when the target gets deleted. I occasionally check manually for new cases. (Current results are all good-faith false positives.) The bot proposed above might end up collecting the information required to automate that check. Certes (talk) 12:26, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

• Is it not very context-dependent? Creating a page at the same name as a previously-deleted page is no guarantee that the topic is the same (for instance, biographies of homonyms) or that the redirects are still appropriate. That is probably a small proportion of cases, but that would be pretty bad, whereas the restoration of redirects is "only" a convenience, so even a low probability of failure can tip the risk/benefit ratio into the red. (It would be interesting to have numbers on this but I am not sure there is a practical way to obtain them.)

Adding in the concerns that Anomie raised about page history (I am not qualified to say if those are insurmountable or merely a pain to code around), I would suggest to make it semi-automated instead. The backend that generates the list of redirects to restore is the same, but actually restoring them requires human intervention. This could be either an additional popup in the undeletion process, which gives a "list of possible redirects" with a choice restore/do not restore/view history for each item and/or a "global restore" button (for a contested PROD, for instance), or simply a post to the talk page of the recreated article with "I am a bot, I found the following possible redirects". Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 17:46, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

@Tigraan, good points. We should distinguish between undeletions (where an admin restores a page with its past revisions) and recreations (where any user begins a page at the same title as a page that was deleted in the past). For recreations, there is indeed the homonym problem, so I like your suggestion of a semi-automated process of some sort, but we should be safe for undeletions to make it fully automatic. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:42, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

For anything automated (and maybe semi-automated?) it would be useful if the bot kept a log for humans to check. It would only need to list the target page and a link to whatlinkshere with links and transclusions hidden. Maybe also a number of redirects restored, so perhaps looking something like

16 July 2021

• Redirect undeletion bot automatically restored 4 redirects to Foo (show redirects)
• Thryduulf semi-automatically restored 2 redirects to Bar (show redirects)

I'll drop notes about this discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Redirect an Wikipedia talk:Redirects for discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 01:42, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

This will be so useful! If I'm not mistaken, redirects also get wiped out upon draftication, which happens quite often. I hope this is easy to code, but – as pointed out by Tigraan – the product will need to be at most a semi-automated process. – Uanfala (talk) 00:45, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

• This would be very useful... except in the cases where it isn't so useful (ie where the new article is not a re-creation of the previous one, but an article on a topic which shares the title, for which some redirects may still be valid but others not - suppose the deleted article was for singer "Jane Mary Xyz", and the new one is for politician "Jane Mary Xyz", then the rd from her short name "Jane Xyz" would still be useful but not the ones from her married name "Jane Abc" or "Jane Mary Abc"). That's to say, yes, very useful to rescue and display the list of previous redirects, but they would need to be checked by an editor before being re-created. So, create them commented out at foot of the new page, or list them on the talk page, so that the person creating the new article can see them and they or someone else can easily check and decide which ones are still useful. As someone who often creates a lot of redirects from variations of someone's name I hate to see all that work disappear if the article is deleted or, worse in some ways, if it's draftified and will eventually be reinstated. Even where the new article is on the same topic, some of the redirects may no longer be valid because a new article may have been created in the interim, or a new link made which is not intended for this article, or a dab page may have been created, etc. But, in principle, Yes, Please. PamD 16:14, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
• Checking back in on this, would anyone be interested in taking it on? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:26, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

This would be a difficult bot to code, but one that I think would have a big impact if it could be created.

It's regrettably common for editors to create a biography page, not realizing that it already exists at a different title (such as with a middle initial or middle name). Likewise, it's common as a reader to search for a person and end up at the results page because you used/didn't use a middle initial, whereas the page did the opposite. These issues could be remedied if we did a better job creating redirects. For a Robert Quincy Smith, all of the following are possibilities:

• Robert Quincy Smith
• Robert Q. Smith
• Robert Smith
• Smith, Robert Quincy
• Smith, Robert Q.
• Smith, Robert

If he goes by "Bob", that adds another whole set. It would be awesome to have a bot that could help create these redirects. However, there are two pitfalls I see: (1) Human names are quite complex and can sometimes be difficult to automatically parse. (2) When multiple people share a name, some terms may need to get pointed at a disambiguation page instead. To address these things, the bot could (at least initially) limit itself to clear instances, where pages have Wikidata name information, sort name data, and bolding that all lines up, and there are no other pages with similar names that might conflict.

Would anyone be interested in taking on this challenge, or is it just too difficult to be even partially feasible? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:43, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure this makes much sense as a bot. It might make sense as a script / preview template a bit like {{JAH}} however. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:54, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Definitely problematic as a bot; hell, we had to create an entire category of CSD for a user who did this sort of thing. Primefac (talk) 19:40, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I have been batch-creating sort name redirects manually for several years, only for human names consisting of a first name and last name with no middle initial or postnominal material or the like, and I run into quirks and oddities requiring human attention fairly frequently (such as two-name constructions that are actually a single name, common in Asia and the Middle East). I think this is doable if relatively small batches (a few thousand at a time) are eyeball-reviewed for common issues to be manually removed before setting a bot to do the task work. I also note that there is an occasional problem of redirects being made for articles on the brink of deletion, particularly where something else is slated to be moved to the original article title post-deletion. BD2412 T 19:50, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

At the idea lab a while back, I floated the idea of identifying inspiration articles for a given page, GAs or FAs on similar topics that could serve as inspiration for helping get that page to a higher level, and got some positive feedback. Following some additional discussion on Discord the other day, I've created {{Inspiration page}}. I'd like bot (or maybe tool) help for two things:

1. Maintenance, such that if an article is demoted, any pages using it have their banner removed.
2. Identifying new pages where it would be helpful to add the banner. This could possibly be done by searching for pages that share a substantial number of categories/wikiprojects, but where one is FA and the other is C-class or below.

Let me know if this sounds feasible! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:12, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Task 1 is fairly trivial, and can be done with even something like AWB. Task 2 is slightly more difficult. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk, FAQ, contribs)} 02:16, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: I just came across phab:T290447 and, if implemented, the remaining logic to finish your task #2 would be trivial. While there are some additional ideas mentioned there, I don't think I personally have the time to work on it, and it doesn't look like anyone in particular has claimed that task. Vahurzpu (talk) 02:01, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

I would like a bot that maintains the vital people here just like there is one for vital articles. I would like the bot's tasks to be the same as vital articles here and would like to make sure there are no duplicates in the vital people. Pinging Kanashimi, the bot operator for vital articles, if they could do the same thing for vital people. Interstellarity (talk) 20:29, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Comment: I am a bit busy these days. Please ping me if I miss something. Is the vital peoples using the same class mark listed in Category:Wikipedia vital articles by class? Kanashimi (talk) 22:44, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Kanashimi: Yes, that's correct. Interstellarity (talk) 23:28, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Interstellarity BRFA filed Kanashimi (talk) 05:54, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

@Interstellarity: Denied. GoingBatty (talk) 02:40, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I think it would be a good idea for a bot to add grooming of Wikipedia:Growth Team features/Mentor list to a periodic (perhaps hourly) job. That page is integrated with growth features and is fragile to specific wikitext layout. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:53, 21 September 2021 (UTC) Initial requirements:

• Ensure that the initial --------- identifier is in place
• Ensure there is only one --------- identifier on the page
• Ensure each line follows an exact format:
  • * [[User:Username]]|ddd
    • Where:
      • Username is a valid username with proper capitalization
      • A space is present between the * and the Username
      • No space is present between the Username link and the required pipe character
      • ddd is plain text from 0-239 characters in length, not containing any wikimarkup or external links
• Should an invalid line be discovered, the line should be removed (this will include removing usernames that are (no longer) valid

Optional features:

• Sort the list of usernames

Discuss

Open for comments. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:53, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: - it's a substantive request, one I'll be asking for on the Growth talk page shortly, but is there a standard bot capacity to check when an editor last edited and remove them from the list under certain conditions, or does it have to be done manually? As inactive mentors starts doing immediate harm (as opposed to, say, an inactive admin) it would be a good thing to be able to do frequent checks on, which we'd probably struggle to do manually. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:39, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

I believe User:Yapperbot/Pruner is what you're looking for. Primefac (talk) 10:47, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

(EC with User:Primefac) @Nosebagbear: I thought about that for at least a possibly "part 2" optional feature. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON clerking by Musikbot2 has this feature already (example) - so this could be a good task for User:MusikAnimal to pick up if they are so inclined. As far as actually removing "inactive" mentors - that part should probably get some more discussion - but it seems reasonable to at least removing someone from the list if they haven't edited in a long time. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:48, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm interested. Some of these things shouldn't matter though, and if they do, they should be fixed in mw:Extension:GrowthExperiments. For instance the spacing between *, the username, and the pipe, etc. It looks like the regex already ignores the spacing [3]. The horizontal rule --------- also shouldn't matter. The code simply looks for links to user pages in the parser output [4] to collect the list of mentors. Bearing that in mind, I think at minimum we'd only need the bot for validating the mentor intro text (length and absence of markup), the optional alphabetical sorting, and perhaps removal of inactive editors. I believe invalid usernames simply get ignored, so it might be better to leave them in place so maintainers of the mentor list page can fix them.

Alternatively, we could make this page sysop-protected and require non-admins request to be added on the talk page, similar to Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Participants and the AWB CheckPage. That system seems to work well as far as ensuring proper data entry, and also allows us to vet who is listed as a mentor. It would create yet another backlog, but I doubt it would be that burdensome. What do you think? — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:39, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

There are real negatives to the AfC method of doing things (eg the backlogs of 1600 pending submissions). I think premature optimisation is generally a bad idea, in this context that being premature sysop protection unless there's evidence that's actually necessary due to a systematic problem if it isn't a protected page. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:50, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

That's a little harsh, no? The backlog has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that people have to ask to be reviewers, so saying "AFC is shite, we shouldn't be following their model" is a pretty unfair. MusikAnimal is wondering if protection would be necessary to stop trolls and other troublemakers from adding themselves to the mentors list. Primefac (talk) 19:01, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah basically, and also that it being sysop-protected by itself could be enough to ensure the correct syntax is used. Not that non-admins don't know how to read and follow instructions, but the pink background seen when editing a sysop or template-protected page to most means "be careful". To my knowledge we haven't had many if any issues with breaking changes being made to the AfC participants page, AWB CheckPage, spam blackist, etc. -- all of these are also fragile wikitext pages that don't rely on a bot to enforce adherence to a specific format (there is User:MusikBot II/AWBListMan but it doesn't do anything as far as validating syntax).

I also wonder if trolls etc. would add themselves to the list, as well as just overzealous users who think they are qualified to be a mentor when they really aren't. Perhaps adding a barrier to becoming a mentor is too bureaucratic, but if it only introduced a minimal backlog for admins (as I would expect), then it might be worth it. Just an idea :) — MusikAnimal ^talk 20:04, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

There are probably lots of people that would do irregular reviews of AfC drafts, but won't be regular reviewers so don't request the permission (either 'hat collecting' reasons, or feeling a sense of commitment when asking for a perm, etc). There's a related discussion somewhere in my user talk archives. The same idea (in the opposite direction) is visible in the admin corps -- the position that the tools are part of a 'kit' and admins should be able to explore new areas, and indeed some admins do irregular work in other admin areas without having to request the permission. I do think the fact that most editors have to request permissions for AfC does probably contribute towards the backlogs. How significant that is, I don't know. Either way, I didn't say AfC is shite, just that its permission system is probably not ideal, and shouldn't be adopted as a rule.

A sysop protected page wouldn't just stop trolls and troublemakers. It means a sysop needs to take an affirmative action to add a user to a page. That would naturally result in de facto requirements beyond just "this edit is not vandalism" (see Pending Changes and the higher standard to approve edits, or indeed the fact that approving AfC has higher standards than AfD; requiring a 'vouch' of sorts has always resulted in higher requirements on here). If we just want to stop trolls and vandals, ECP protection should be sufficient. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:59, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Basically agree with ProcrastinatingReader. I think it's unnecessary to require an admin to act as a gatekeeper – they could just as well watchlist the page and fix any malformed entries. The page already has ext-conf protection which should stop the "trolls and other troublemakers". Better regulating the syntax can also be done by creating Template:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Growth Team features/Mentor list with a "STOP AND READ THE FOLLOWING!" kind of message. Hopefully, ext-conf users are capable of following the instructions when prominently visible. – SD0001 (talk) 12:07, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

The flag template for the afghan flag was changed a few days back to reflect one that is being currently used. Due to this change, all the previous pages (particularly the sports pages between 2013-21) are now also showing the current flag instead of the one which was being used at that point of time.

A bot which tracks content by date/year so as to replace with , since the latter is the one which was being used at that point in time. Please ping for a reply.--Anbans 585 (talk) 18:28, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@Anbans 585:  Doing... via AWB. GoingBatty (talk) 19:36, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@Anbans 585:  Done! I updated the instances of {{flagicon}}, {{flagcountry}}, {{flagdeco}}, and {{flagu}} containing the value "AFG" or "Afghanistan" where it was easy to tell that the article was about a specific period of time, such as having a year in the article title. If you want to compile a list of other articles that need updating (along with the appropriate year per Template:Country data Afghanistan), feel free to let me know. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 21:29, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: Great. Can you please do the same on {{fb}}, {{fbw}}, {{futsal}}, {{fsw}}, {{beachsoccer}}, {{fsu}}, {{fbu}}, {{fbwu}}, where a number would already be there after fbu, fsu and fbwu (example 17), and 2013 would have to be appended after that, for the same time period.--Anbans 585 (talk) 13:26, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@Anbans 585:  Doing... GoingBatty (talk) 14:04, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@Anbans 585:  Done! GoingBatty (talk) 15:20, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: Thanks again. Some more please, found this as I was reviewing the pages. {{fb-rt}}, in short '-rt' appended to all the ones I mentioned in the previous one. Another example {{fsu-rt}}.--Anbans 585 (talk) 16:03, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@Anbans 585:  Doing... GoingBatty (talk) 16:09, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@Anbans 585:  Done! GoingBatty (talk) 16:24, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@Anbans 585: I'm also adding years to {{flag|Afghanistan}}, and converting {{AFG}} to {{flag|Afghanistan|2013}} when needed. GoingBatty (talk) 14:03, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

I've noticed that sometimes some articles, categories, and templates have no related WikiProject banners for the subject of the related articles, categories, and templates talk pages. If possible, I would like a bot that can create essentially a database report of all articles, categories, and templates talk pages that don't have the project banners. As part of the report, it can list all uncreated talk pages to differentiate. This would save me and other editors a lot of time in helping organize relevant pages for their respective projects. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 19:47, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

One category that the bot could go ahead and tag are the disambiguation pages. Some of those pages don't even have the talk page created. — DaxServer (talk to me) 20:51, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

WikiProject Disambiguation has decided not to create talk pages simply to carry its banner. We only add the banner if the page already exists, whether to carry other projects' banners or for other reasons. Certes (talk) 21:03, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

That's interesting. I've been wondering why many of those pages lack the talk page, when there are bots and AWB gen fixes running. — DaxServer (talk to me) 21:10, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

The dab talk template is often used when the page would otherwise become blank. For example, perhaps Foo was moved to Foo (novel) because someone created Foo (album) and there is no longer a primary topic. The move leaves behind a redirect Foo → Foo (novel), which we edit into a dab called Foo listing both articles. The move also leaves behind an unwanted redirect Talk:Foo → Talk:Foo (novel), which we edit into a project banner placeholder. Certes (talk) 00:35, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@DaxServer:  Doing... - I haven't run BattyBot 34 to tag disambiguation existing pages since May, so I'll run it now for you. GoingBatty (talk) 01:31, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@DaxServer:  Done - added {{WikiProject Disambiguation}} to 432 existing talk pages. GoingBatty (talk) 05:03, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, Certes, and the run, GoingBatty! — DaxServer (talk to me) 08:36, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I forgot to add if the report also includes empty categories, then it should differentiate that by listing those categories as empty on a separate list or section. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 14:41, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

A related idea I have is that a bot like this can create suggestions for talk pages of articles, categories, and templates for certain project banners that may be missing from the talk page. I've noticed throughout Wikipedia where the relevant project banner isn't there until I add it. Can save a lot of time with a list to improve and help improve the WikiProjects objectives. It should also include taskforces of the overall project as it is hard to sometimes know what taskforces are part of the project. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 19:10, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@WikiCleanerMan: What criteria would the bot use to make suggestions? Could you please give some examples? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 20:36, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

GoingBatty, not sure of the criteria, but there are these WikiProject taggig bots that would add the banners on the talk page for the related projects. Most are inactive at this point. If a bot can add or in my request suggest projects and task forces in a database report, then I don't think it would be all that different. Although, they were designed for a specific project like WikiProject Germany, Film, etc... --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 21:10, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

There is a regular Empty Category list that gets issued daily until Bernstein Bot got hiccups recently. It's not a long list as Empty Categories are regularly tagged and deleted unless they fit one of the few exceptions (disambiguation categories, redirect categories, categories that are part of a CFD discussion, maintenance categories, etc.). I'm not sure of the connection you are making between WikiProject banners and empty categories. Unless there is a major category restructuring going on or a sockpuppet has gone on a category-creation rampage, categories typically become empty when the articles, templates and other categories that they contained are deleted which happens on an irregular basis, depending on AFD, TFD and CFD decisions.

A recent exception to this predictability is that over the summer UnitedStatesian and I went through defunct WikiProjects and had hundreds of empty assessment categories deleted but this action focused on categories that had been created and abandoned over the past 15 years...it's unlikely there will be a need for an action like this to happen again for a long, long time as WikiProject activity has declined since about 2012. I don't see other big projects like this on the horizon. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:28, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

The connection is that usually empty categories don't have project banners on their talk pages. Sometimes these categories are newer and yet to have any articles in them. The users who create such newer and empty categories are probably not aware of WikiProject banners and thus don't place them on the talk page. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 01:40, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

For a long time this task was handled by SineBot, which has been down for 2 months. Negative effects of this have been visible throughout discussion namespaces. The operator Slakr has not made any edits since last October. There is no indication that SineBot will be operational soon. Is someone else willing to take over this task? ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 15:27, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

That bot/function is awesome. -- GreenC 15:35, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

I thought I was having to do more unsigned edits than usual lately... seconding the desire to either get in touch with Slakr or take over the bot's functionality. Primefac (talk) 15:37, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Too bad that code for the task is not open source. At some point I think User:Ritchie333 was working on an open-source python implementation. – SD0001 (talk) 15:55, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the bot should be open source, otherwise this will happen. I have some work in progress code at User:Ritchie333/arcsinebot.py, however it's currently log only and has bugs. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:36, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

I'd be willing to write a task for this. I'll put together some code. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 00:10, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@Tol: That's great. Feel free to use whatever code in my prototype you think is helpful. I think we need something running ASAP and is well-tested and is open source. I'm not an rms fanboy, but I do think closed-source bots are entirely incompatible with a free encyclopaedia. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:29, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@Ritchie333: Thanks! I've got a basic implementation; I'm currently testing it and will file a BRFA shortly. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 21:15, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm now working on a better diff, and also bundling API calls when checking user pages for preferences. I should have a BRFA by the end of the week. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 20:40, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

SinBot's Changelog gives some idea of issues that came up during development. Looks like a lot of edge cases. -- GreenC 14:59, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Has anyone tried emailing Slakr to see if they'd be willing to open the source at this point if they've lost interest in maintaining the bot? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:57, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

I'll be happy to nudge them via email another time (I see you've already emailed Slackr). 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 23:29, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Slakr was editing today, I saw his name on the Deletion log and I noticed because he's not one of the regular admins who patrol CSDs and XfDs. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:59, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I have already run a sign bot on 6 wiki projects for years. I would be honored if I could transplant these codes to English Wikipedia as a backup of SineBot. Kanashimi (talk) 03:41, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

That might be another useful option. As mentioned in SineBot's BRFA(s), having more tools ready is always good in case something like this happens again. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 18:56, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

That would be easier (and more well tested) than making my own bot from scratch! I would certainly appreciate if you could do that. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 20:44, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Weird... it thought it was still running but wasn't editing, so it never notified me to restart it. I've restarted it. Sorry for the absence; life's been a bit more chaotic than usual. --slakr^\ talk / 21:19, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

No problem; thank you! Tol (talk | contribs) @ 22:07, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks slakr! It's good to hear from you. — The Earwig (talk) 00:51, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@Slakr: For continuity and redundancy, would you consider publishing the source code for this task? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:54, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

For when it's not working, I'd advise people to use User:Anomie/unsignedhelper, which is perhaps one of my most useful scripts. Sdrqaz (talk) 00:08, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Sdrqaz Tried it and have to say that is super cool, and fun. Look forward to finding unsigned comments (not yet caught by SineBot which is pretty fleet). -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by GreenC (talk • contribs) 18:22, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

This is probably going to be quite challenging, but putting out the idea nevertheless – it would be great to have a bot that corrects indent characters used in talk page discussions. For example,

Comment. – Editor A
::Comment. – Editor B

^this would make the bot comes along and remove the extra indent (:: --> :)

*Comment – Editor A
::Comment. – Editor B

^this would make the bot come along and replace :: with :**: to comply with MOS:INDENTMIX.

This should be restricted to comments being posted from now on and not be done for historical discussions. – SD0001 (talk) 16:13, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Two things. First, I think you mean *:. Second, I feel like this would have huge context issues; we would have to find pretty much all of the expected exceptions (such as multiple replies to a single comment with varying indents). That being said, I suppose it could work. Primefac (talk) 16:19, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

This seems too context-dependent. Sometimes, a block of text, like a reflist, or a block of code, or a template with div tags in it, will have to be zero-indented in order to avoid display or syntax problems. Those things should not be indented. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:41, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Sometimes things like this you can try it, see what breaks and add exceptions (skip if contains div tags) until it runs clean-enough. Maybe there are too many exceptions or maybe just a dozen or two. Hard to say without trying it. -- GreenC 15:40, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, when I wrote out my initial reply I tried to find exceptions for potentially accurate-but-would-trigger-the-bot syntax but actually ended up finding none (which is why it's not in my reply above), so "try it and see" might be a good way to proceed. Primefac (talk) 15:56, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

You mentioned the scenario of multiple replies to a single comment with varying indents. How would a bot handle that? The bot wouldn't be able to determine which comment is being replied to right? Winston (talk) 21:42, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Well...

:Comment 1
::Reply to line 1 (2)
:::Reply to line 2 (3)
::::Reply to line 3 (4)
::Reply to line 1 (5)
:::Reply to line 5 (6)

I think as long as the bot looks for increasing (and not decreasing) indents, it should be fine. That being said, if there was a reply to line 4 after line 6 (with the correct indents) along the lines of

:::::Reply to line 4 (7)

That would be a GIGO issue that mis-indents the replies and potentially causes problems. Can't fix that though. Primefac (talk) 22:12, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

• HERE is an example diff of a bot that removes gaps between indented lines, enforces consistent indentation style, and removes extra indentation, assuming indents consist only of colons and asterisks. A gap is a sequence of whitespace lines sandwiched between two indented lines. Each line's indent style is modified to match the previous line's indent style, going from beginning to end. If INDENT_LEVEL(line 2) > INDENT_LEVEL(line 1) + 1, the contiguous block of indented lines beginning with line 2 which have indent level >= INDENT_LEVEL(line 2) is shifted to the left by INDENT_LEVEL(line 2)-INDENT_LEVEL(line 1)+1. I think this is the best a naive bot can do. Note that some of the stuff in this diff is just for demonstration and is essentially garbage in, garbage out. Is this about right? Winston (talk) 02:02, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

  @Notsniwiast Yes that looks quite promising. At the top I'm not sure if we should change *Simple example 2 to :Simple example 2 (Doesn't seem required per MOS:INDENTMIX – though I could be mistaken here). In general, I think it would be better to have a conservative bot that fixes only what's necessary rather than re-format everything. – SD0001 (talk) 15:25, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

  The reason is that *Simple example 2 is considered to be part of the same list as ::Hello, since only blank lines separate the two lines. The bot first removes the blank lines, then enforces consistent indentation style which results in *Simple example 2 becoming :Simple example 2. Then ::Hello is changed to :Hello.

  Relevant links regarding gaps MOS/Lists#List styles, MOS:INDENTMIX, MOS:INDENTGAP, MOS:LISTGAP.

  But there are choices to be made regarding which intervening blank lines to remove. I see two behaviors here that can be configured:

  1. Whether to remove intervening blank lines if there is more than one intervening blank line.
  2. Whether to remove intervening blank lines preceding a line with INDENT_LEVEL 1. This is because a line with INDENT_LEVEL 1 with a preceding blank line is treated by MediaWiki as a new list, which may or may not be the intended behavior of the editor. If there is just a single blank line then it looks like part of the previous list. If there is more than one blank line then there is extra spacing and it looks separated from the previous list. Thus 1. and 2. are related.

  The diff I gave in my preceding comment uses a TRUE, TRUE configuration, i.e. both 1. and 2. are removed since it just naively removes intervening blank lines between any two indented lines. However, now that I think about it a FALSE, TRUE configuration might be better, i.e. only remove single blank line gaps, ignore multiline blank line gaps. Let me give example diffs for each configuration:

  TRUE TRUE, TRUE FALSE, FALSE TRUE, FALSE FALSE

  For each diff, it helps to open the original in one tab and the new version in a second tab and switch back and forth to see what changed visually.

  Winston (talk) 22:57, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

  Agreed that a FALSE, TRUE configuration would be better. Multiple blank lines suggest the user intentionally wanted whitespace to be visible (for whatever reason), so maybe we shouldn't remove that. Not sure about the 2nd though. – SD0001 (talk) 14:30, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

• As a developer of a tool that has to go through all kinds of complex markup to detect where comments start and end, I would eagerly support this. But knowing how widespread this incorrect markup (talking about the second example now) is, I'm not sure it would be acceptable. Open any huge talk page that has RfCs, like Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) or Talk:Donald Trump, — you will see a lot of markup like this:

  * Comment. [signature]
  :: Reply. [signature]

  I'm a afraid the bot would be overwhelmed with work, and this could be irritating for users. It's easier for most people who edit wikitext, not use a tool like CD or DT, to type a known number of : instead of repeating the previous indentation.
  Also note that this markup would break:

  *: {|
  | Text.
  |}

  While this would not:

  :: {|
  | Text.
  |}

  Jack who built the house (talk) 11:26, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

  That's an interesting edge case.
  For the busier talk page, maybe the bot could be set to make at most 1 edit per 12 hours (say). But I've seen enough instances of people manually making indentation fixes in others' posts – sometimes even complaining about it in the discussion itself – that I think it would help to have these done automatically. That being said, @Notsniwiast could you make a pass of your code on some of these big talk pages so that we can see the extent of changes it brings about? – SD0001 (talk) 14:31, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

  @SD0001 Here's a few. WP:BOTREQ, Village Pump Technical, Village Pump Policy, Help Desk, Teahouse, Village Pump Proposals Winston (talk) 23:35, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

  @Notsniwiast Thanks, there's a bug in the fixes around <pre> tags in this discussion (first diff). Pre tags are notorious (syntaxhighlight tag doesn't cause the same issue) for breaking the apparent layout (as seen from wikitext). – SD0001 (talk) 07:59, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  I'm not sure it's really a bug, since the list was broken by putting a new line character (the one before the pre tag) without starting a new indented line. If the newlines before the pre tag are deleted (which I will now do), the formatting looks more correct. However, if it's common to start pre tags on a new line in discussions, then I can build in this edge case. Winston (talk) 08:17, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  Just kidding... apparently deleting the newlines only looks right in the preview. Don't know much about html. Winston (talk) 08:22, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  @SD0001 I've fixed <pre> tag edge case by not treating a newline character which immediately precedes a <pre> tag as a line delimiter. Are there any other tags that should be treated similarly? If so, I can just do the same for all tags. Winston (talk) 08:49, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  No I think, but @Jack who built the house can confirm. – SD0001 (talk) 08:56, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  The problem here is not limited to <pre>...</pre> tags and even tags as such. There is a lot of markup in templates that doesn't stand being moved to a new line, like tables (navboxes, for example, or quotation templates). People can also use <syntaxhighlight>...</syntaxhighlight> like this, despite it is OK with newlines inside of it. <gallery>...</gallery> is sometimes used this way too. I believe doing the same for all tags and templates would be the safest solution here. Jack who built the house (talk) 09:38, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah I was thinking we might as well do the same for all tags and templates just to be safe, even though I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what exactly might break. I've modified the bot so that newline characters immediately preceding a tag or template are not used as line delimiters. Winston (talk) 10:18, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

• I have added '#' as an indentation character as well. Originally was only using checking asterisks and colons. Winston (talk) 11:00, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  From the 2nd diff (VPT), I think this shows a bug. Indentation of the final comment is changed from **: (which doesn't show a bullet) to :** (which shows a bullet). So shouldn't it have been :*: ? – SD0001 (talk) 11:47, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  Hmm, I think I will modify the algorithm a little. Note that some conversions from bullet points to non-bullet points and vice versa are inevitable (since we shouldn't be alternating back and forth), but I think I can make the algo a bit smarter. Winston (talk) 22:55, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

  @SD0001 New diffs: WP:BOTREQ, Village Pump Technical, Village Pump Policy, Village Pump Proposals, Teahouse, Talk:Donald Trump.

  Note that the specific comment you pointed out is still showing a bullet point. This is because Graham87's comment, which is the first comment in the reply chain to Jonesey95's comment, uses a bullet point. To have a consistent indentation style, Izno's comment about a scriptlet must also begin with a bullet point.

  More specifically, the indent style fixing algorithm is now as follows. We iterate over the lines from beginning to end. Let Line A and Line B be consecutive lines. If lvl(Line B) > lvl(Line A), then the first lvl(Line A) characters of Line B are replaced with the first lvl(Line A) characters of Line A. If lvl(Line B) <= lvl(Line A), then the indentation characters of Line B are replaced with the indentation characters of the closest previous line with the same indentation level.

  Ultimately, if we are to enforce consistent indentation style, some comments will inevitably be changed to use or not use a bullet point, e.g. in a comment chain with alternating : and *. Winston (talk) 00:50, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

  The Teahouse diff incorrectly 'fixed' a comment:

I just thought of a fourth case - you might want a list. Lists can be numbered, bulleted, or (in your case) unbulleted. This is done using colons, depending on the indentation you want, as (see code or there are details at WP:PLAINLIST):

::This is line 1.

:::::This is line 2.
:::::This is line 3.

If I didn't answer your question, please ask .... --Gronk Oz (talk) 06:17, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

 ― Qwerfjkltalk 19:51, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

(I've messed up the formatting but you get the idea.) ― Qwerfjkltalk 19:53, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

In this case there's not much we can do, since the bot cannot tell when an editor has intentionally over-indented. In this instance at least, the "fix" still looks ok. Winston (talk) 22:33, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

• @SD0001: What do ya think, should I file a BRFA? Winston (talk) 07:35, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

  I'm not SD, but I think the only way to find more of the border cases will be to get some trials in. Primefac (talk) 07:38, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

  Just filed a BRFA. Winston (talk) 03:36, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

I would like a bot to notify users listed at Wikipedia:Administrators without tools/Endorsers whenever a user talk page is published with {{subst:GetMop}} in place. This is to give an opportunity, to those who have signed the page, to endorse the original posting with their own encouragement. Past usage of this template has shown that secondary endorsements increase the likelihood of positive results. If the bot could run this task once a day, the objective can be afhieved (twice a day would be better). Thank you for considering this request. Best regards.--John Cline (talk) 00:47, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@John Cline: I could do this. That page looks like a redlink — is it going to be created later? Tol (talk | contribs) @ 02:01, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you Tol. Yes, in fact I was in the process of creating it now. And then I am going to post it to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Brainstorming#Discussion (An underused ready-resource) to invite others to sign the page. Let me know if you need anything from me to help get this up and running. Thanks again. --John Cline (talk) 02:23, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@John Cline: Alright; I should have a working implementation over the weekend. Just so you know, it will look for any links to userspace (not just in the list in the section). Tol (talk | contribs) @ 04:54, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. Quite often users allow this to be archived and at times they will add it to their user page in an barnstar Hall of Fame or some such. I wouldn't want this to promt the bot to post messages. That's why I hope it will know when the template has been substituted because that only happens durring the initial posting. --John Cline (talk) 05:10, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

I believe Tol means that any user talk page links on Wikipedia:Administrators without tools/Endorsers will get the notification. So don't create a second list of "Users who definitely don't want a notification"! I think that's a perfectly good solution, this is a definite opt-in method. Tol, do you need a notification template for the talk page notifications? Worm^TT(talk) 08:53, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure that you are correct. It makes sense to me now. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 09:37, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@Worm That Turned: Yes, you are correct. A notification template would be helpful. Thank you! Tol (talk | contribs) @ 17:56, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@John Cline: I've finished writing the code. Is there a template (like Worm That Turned mentioned) that the bot could use? Tol (talk | contribs) @ 00:58, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your diligence in this regard, I really appreciate it. I haven't written the message yet, I will ensure it's ready for your review, and approval, no later than Monday. I'd be happy if Worm That Turned was willing to write it, he writes particularly well (in my opinion). I do have 1 question for you Tol: Would it be best for you for the notification template to be a separate, stand alone template, like {{GetMop notification}}, for example (perhaps for reasons like page protection)? Or would you be ok using switched output from {{GetMop}}, for example, {{GetMop|notice}} could be used. Or I could create a sub template at {{GetMop/Notice}}. Let me know what you think is best. Thank you again. Sincerely.--John Cline (talk) 01:36, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

@John Cline: You're welcome! Personally, I think that a subpage would be best: it's related to Template:GetMop, but I think passing a parameter that would cause the template to do something completely different is suboptimal. Having an entirely separate template would also work. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 02:22, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Okay Tol, I've created {{GetMop/Notice}}, and worked up a message box and message that I am satisfied with. I tested the templat's substitution output and everything works fine It's ready for you to do what you do. I am looking forward to seeing it's working use. Best regards.--John Cline (talk) 13:57, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

@John Cline: Alright, BRFA filed. I've also tidied up that template (and added a parameter so that the user(s) who have had Template:GetMop on their talk page can be listed inside the box). Is there a reason the message itself is includeonly? I think it would be easier to just display the template on the template page. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 18:09, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks again. I'll remove the includeonly tags, there's no compelling reason for them and it's more habit than anything else. I've convinced myself that, in some small way, it discourages drive by vandalism under the concept: if they don't see it, they don't mess with it. It may be an imaginary precaution with no foundation, but it has affected my habit. I appreciate any copyedits you gave or ever give, it's how I learn better ways. Have a good one and be well.--John Cline (talk) 19:54, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

• Hello Tol. I looked at the BRFA filed, and I do have one concern. In Function details:, where It says: "It runs daily and checks if there have been any user talk pages added to Category:Administrators without tools since its last run. If there have been, it then sends notifications". My concern is that when the discussion archives, I wouldn't want the bot to recognize the archive as a new talk page being added. To be certain, it must only be "user talk pages where {{#ifeq: {{FULLPAGENAMEE}} | User_talk:{{ROOTPAGENAMEE}} |yes|no}} returns yes for the new user talk page being added. Another issue that may arise involves formating the user name and discussion links to append through parameter 1. Assuming the possibility of something standard, like: "John Cline (talk) at There is a mop reserved in your name", and because the section link will always be the same title, that format would be too long to keep the entry on one line for almost every username used. To preempt, I wanted to suggest possibly using the following format: "John Cline (talk) at this discussion" or something similar. Keeping the entry on one line is important because the centered text looks bad when only a few words fall off the end. See [[User:John Cline/sandbox|my sandbox for a visualization. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 03:28, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

  @John Cline: If you have concerns, it's better to raise them at the BRFA itself. I had set up a filter to blacklist any pages with "/Archive" in them, and this caught all current instances of archives in the category. The link itself would currently be formatted as the username, linking to the discussion (like John Cline, which links to User talk:John Cline#There is a mop reserved in your name). Tol (talk | contribs) @ 03:57, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Closure requests wants the requests in chronological order and the {{Initiated}} with full timestamp instead of just dmy ([5] [6]). Some miss the initiated template [7]. Could a bot takeover for these tasks? — DaxServer (talk to me) 13:41, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

How often are people misreading the guidelines and thus necessitating the page be edited to conform to standard practice? If it's less than once a day, I think manual cleanup is perfectly acceptable. Primefac (talk) 14:28, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

It looks like it's not as often as I thought — DaxServer (talk) 08:19, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

This is now my fourth time trying to get the necessary feedback. This is a request I made on the talk page of the Database reports page, and on Request a query, but it hasn't been answered anywhere. It is part of the overall proposal discussion I have started on the WikiProject Templates talk page to create an Unused Templates Task Force to deal with the backlog of unused templates.

I've requested four reports per the original discussion and I'm going to relist them here:

I would like the report to run for at least two months as the task force is currently in an idea stage. When the reports are going to expire, if possible I would like to be notified of when it will happen. I need four reports from the Unused Templates database:

1) All unused templates that are not stubs or redirects.

2) All stub templates listed as unused. According to one of the users on the talk page discussion, there are either exactly or about 1,000 stub templates.

3) All redirects listed as unused. According to one of the users on the talk page discussion, there are either exactly or about 69,000 redirects.

4) Templates that were created and/or edited in the last year and the present year. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 22:53, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@WikiCleanerMan: Is Wikipedia:Database reports/Unused templates what you're looking for? Tol (talk | contribs) @ 04:14, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

That report could be a starting point for working on the above requests, but it contains too much noise to be useful. See this discussion for details; it led to this request. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:32, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

User:Zackmann08 before he retired started doing some work at User:Zackmann08/unused templates and related sub-pages, removing various pages from the "unused" criteria. Maybe that can help. Gonnym (talk) 12:39, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Gonnym, the pages by Zackmann is a start, but it's not really speific to what I need, but I'll definitely use those pages. Tol, techinally yes, but my request is looking for separate individual reports that includes the templates I need, but outside the main unused templates database report(s). --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 14:25, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Another thing to point out is that Tim.landscheidt also has similar subpages of unused templates. MZMcBride, your bot, User:BernsteinBot, created those reports. Do you think the reports I'm looking for can be created? --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 15:57, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi WikiCleanerMan and Jonesey95. Thank you both for your efforts in cleaning out unused templates. I took a look at Wikipedia:Database reports/Unused templates/Configuration and I remembered that we basically already tried to accommodate all of these requests previously. We sort non-redirects first, then redirects, then stubs within the report. We also include metadata about each unused template, including last edit date and number of unique authors. I'm not really sure what else is needed here currently. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:45, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

MZMcBride, we want broken up reports from the main database report. Each individual one for unused templates, then redirects, then the stub templates. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 23:27, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm going to as the potentially dumb question, but if they're already sorted into those values, why do they need to explicitly be split into separate tables? Primefac (talk) 11:56, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

To navigate easier so we don't get confused with what is unused stub templates, redirects, and just regular templates. Since regular templates make up the first two and a part of third database reports. And regular unused templates are up to number 12205. Thus, what we are looking for could be on one database page or two. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 14:29, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

If you already know the first redirect (which to me looks green anyway), then you already know which values you're looking for (since they're "everything before that template"). If you know the first two pages (and a bit) of the dbase report are exactly what you're looking for, why does it need to be split? Primefac (talk) 20:08, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

So we don't have a database report that includes all unused, redirects, and stubs as part of the same report. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 22:17, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Jonesey has created a subpage dealing with just the non-stub and non-redirect templates. Really it now stands at 6,800 templates. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 03:15, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

This request can be closed thanks to Jonesey95 who was able to create the filtered report I was looking for. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 18:56, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Wondering if there is a grammar bot or a spelling bot for clear mistakes? I can't seem to find one. Also WP:List of bots doesn't seem to show what the bots do. Thanks much, Facts707 (talk) 09:16, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

@Facts707: Both these points, regarding grammar and spelling, have been discussed at Wikipedia:Bot requests/Frequently denied bots#Bots to automatically spell-check articles. Regarding the list of bots, I will soon get back to you :) —usernamekiran (talk) sign the (guestbook) 09:23, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Agree on the list of bots, there should be more documentation added on what this list is supposed to include (e.g. not all bots?), and what each bot does. Maybe operator talk page links would also be nice :) . 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 15:37, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

WP:AWB and WP:JWB also fix many spelling mistakes and a few grammatical errors as and when contributors edit a page for other reasons. They encourage a human to verify the change, to preserve genuine use such as foreign words, olde worlde spellinges and verbatim quotes of careless journalists. Certes (talk) 12:19, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

• dummy edit. I am not being shown as a bot-op editor like I used to be in the table of contents above. —usernamekiran (talk) sign the (guestbook) 16:38, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

  dummy edit after updating the signature. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 16:59, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

• @Facts707: Wikipedia:Bots/Status seems to be the one you are looking for, but it needs to be updated. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 05:48, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

  That page is manual so there's no way it can be updated without hours of effort (and it would be outdated soon after that). There's a bot-maintained WP:BAM but it's incomplete and needs listing of remaining bots. – SD0001 (talk) 07:16, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

• Thanks everyone for the info and support! WP:SPELLBOT is a shortcut to Wikipedia:Bot requests/Frequently denied bots#Bots to automatically spell-check articles that @Usernamekiran: mentioned that explains why fully-automated such bots aren't a great idea. I added a hatnote there to WP:Typo Team – lots of help there. Will look at bot lists some more a bit later. Cheers, Facts707 (talk) 09:55, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Update: my hatnote to WP:Typo Team was reverted with the comment "that's not what this section is about". I will try WP:SPELLING or somewhere else to add that. It can be hard sometimes to find things in WP space – I try to add a redirect or a hatnote sometimes to make it a little bit easier for the next editor... Facts707 (talk) 10:13, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

I think this would be helpful, as this is perennial. Thoughts? (Or is there a bot already?) — DaxServer (talk) 07:04, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

hi please creat a bot to creat species articles from gbif.org many species articles not in enwiki Amirh123 (talk) 14:35, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Amirh123! I'm already working an this idea, but there are some issues (for example, ensuring verifiability, and not having problems that someone has to clean up later). Mass stub creation is also on the list of frequently denied bots. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 15:56, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

GBIF aggregates data from many sources, not all of them reliable. GBIF has picked up misspellings that originated in Wikipedia. A bot generating articles with GBIF as the sole reference is not a good idea; multiple taxonomic databases should be consulted. Plantdrew (talk) 01:12, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

not just gbif irmng.org eol.org and many sources I think creat articles in wikidata items to Wikipedia has many source Amirh123 (talk) 17:53, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 184#Migrate archive URLs from WebCite to the Wayback Machine I would like to request the following bot/script task:

• Replace all archive links in citations/references that use WebCite with archive links using the Wayback Machine.

My understanding is that this essentially leads to the following presentation of the task:

Task to perform on WebCite links

Main citation link works	Wayback Machine archive exists	Task to perform
Yes	Yes	Replace WebCite archive link with Wayback Machine archive link
No	Yes	Replace WebCite link with Wayback Machine archive link
Yes	No	Submit original link to the Wayback Machine to create a new snapshot of it, replace WebCite archive link with Wayback Machine archive link
No	No	Submit WebCite link to the Wayback Machine to create a new snapshot of it, replace WebCite link with Wayback Machine link

One thing that needs to be taken into account in this task is the potential problem of content drift mentioned by User:GreenC at WP:VPR. I believe this may be an issue especially in the first two cases, i.e., Yes Yes and No Yes. I have to admit that I do not know if/how a bot/script could handle this. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 13:59, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

OK, I have a bot that can do this. And have done some in the past. And am approved for it. It's more complex and error prone than it seems. I would suggest waiting a little longer. There are discussions ongoing with the owners of WebCite. Ideally these captures will be copied over to another provider and redirects would make it seamless. It's all of Wikipedia 900+ projects and IABot database. In the mean time feel free to manually make changes but be careful about "No/No: Submit WebCite link to the Wayback Machine" this can create a snapshot completely different from what is expected. Also caution about "No/Yes: Replace WebCite link with Wayback Machine archive link" due to content drift. -- GreenC 15:31, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

There's a bug with Mobile Web + VisualEditor that causes certain formats of numbers in articles to erroneously have tel: links attached to it. See diffs [8][9] for examples. We have 1169 (hist · log) to log these, and there was a discussion to move it to warn at EFN, but the possibility of having a bot just fix them after the error is introduced seemed less bitey and less likely to cause good contributions to be abandoned -- see Wikipedia:Edit_filter_noticeboard#Moving_1169_to_warn. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:17, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 192#Pseudo-telephone numbers. I suspect an add-on to Safari but there may be multiple causes. Certes (talk) 16:28, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

And see also T116525. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:39, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Beware that another, subtly different effect may cause confusion here. MediaWiki renders the wikitext tel:123 (or even Tel:Aviv) as a hyperlink, even though I didn't add square brackets. Certes (talk) 23:40, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

What the heck? It looks like they are handled by mw:Manual:$wgUrlProtocols, possibly with no sanity checking, which is why the totally invalid http://foo and news:fornerds and mailto:foobar all generate links. Oof, who is running this circus? – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:24, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, $wgUrlProtocols is the sanity check. tel, http, news etc are being explicitly allowed. mw:Manual:$wgUrlProtocols#Advanced_modification notes The default protocols should all be safe to click on (no evil side effects), and removing a protocol from the list will cause URLs using those protocols to become unrecognized in many places throughout the software. In particular, removing 'http://' or other common protocols will probably break huge amounts of stuff. – SD0001 (talk) 08:57, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I ask if a bot can replace the old links "http://gutenberg.beic.it" with "https://gutenberg.beic.it" because "http" no longer works with that site. Thanks.--Spinoziano (BEIC) (talk) 10:12, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

@Spinoziano (BEIC):  Doing with AWB. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 15:56, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

 Done Tol (talk | contribs) @ 16:11, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Recently, only on two articles, there was a Notes section but no notes actually referenced within the article. It's really useless to have a notes section and not have any notes within the article. I've seen it on the Bombing of the Vatican and Mark Meadows articles. I removed the empty sections myself. A bot list can help reduce what articles have this issue. There's no point in having a notes section if there are no notes. Those two articles might have had notes prior to my edits, but became redundant as they were most likely removed or changed to an article or some other form of reference. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 16:13, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

@WikiCleanerMan: Agreed! I can submit a BRFA for this (and the {{empty section}} issue above) when my current BRFA is completed. GoingBatty (talk) 15:17, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

@WikiCleanerMan: BRFA filed GoingBatty (talk) 00:43, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

@WikiCleanerMan: I posted at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Removing some empty sections via bot to determine if there is consensus for this work do be done by bot. GoingBatty (talk) 16:18, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Please can someone add {{authority control}} to all articles in Category:All articles using infobox lighthouse. I think about half have already been done by User:Tom.Reding using AWB. We are planning to migrate the identifiers from the infobox to the authority control template. Thanks. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:53, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

@MSGJ:  Doing with AWB. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 16:11, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks. Little suggestion for improvement. Cheers — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:19, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

@MSGJ: I've made that change (only one newline before); thanks for letting me know! Tol (talk | contribs) @ 14:42, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

@Tol: are you still working on this because at the time of of writing there are still 400+ articles without the template. Thanks again — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:07, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I am. I'm busier than expected right now, but I should finish it today. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 15:08, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

 Done Tol (talk | contribs) @ 15:57, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I would like to request that CewBot should add template for inclusion at talk pages of articles included in Challenges other than WPEUR10k for Wikipedia:WikiProject Europe/The 10,000 Challenge, which is the only Challenge project with its own bot template today. For example today there is no template to add to the talk pages of articles included in Wikipedia:The 2500 Challenge (Nordic) which specifies this particular challenge project, I do think that if such a template was created and CewBot was given the task to add it to the talk pages of the articles included in the Nordic Challenge it would benefit the project.--BabbaQ (talk) 02:47, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

@BabbaQ: Hi there! Have you tried contacting Cewbot's operator, Kanashimi? Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 02:58, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, I will add 6 templates listed in User:Cewbot/log/20210902/configuration. All of them are in Category:Wikipedia article challenge templates. You may edit the configuration page to add more templates. Kanashimi (talk) 04:03, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Oh, do not bother on my account. I am not good at those kind of configurations. But thank you for showing me that list. Will take a look and see what I can do.BabbaQ (talk) 07:52, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Also refer to the report. Kanashimi (talk) 11:25, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

 Done Kanashimi (talk) 07:42, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

There is currently a bug of the Phabricator which breaks the references of an article when the user edited it with the Visual Editor, cf. Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#VisualEditor_duplicating_named_citations. I think a bot should be patroling to try to fix those broken references, as I think otherwise some of those references broken by this bug may continue to exist in many articles. Veverve (talk) 01:47, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

What a mess. I'll have a look :) firefly ( t · c ) 10:36, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

@Veverve BRFA filed :) firefly ( t · c ) 12:33, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Is there any bot that replace old wikitext to new wikitext (e.g. Infobox species to Speciesbox)? Also, i want this bot to add image parameters and automatically add images from Commons to the speciesbox. Leomk (Don't shout here, Shout here!) 03:02, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

We don't generally run bots just to bypass template redirects per WP:COSMETICBOT, and add[ing] image parameters and automatically add[ing] images from Commons does not seem automatable because a bot cannot decide what the most appropriate image is. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:03, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Y Done
{{Proud USA}} is a userbox that was created in the wrong place and was moved a year ago, leaving a malformed userbox on 200+ user pages. Each of its 245 transclusions needs to be replaced with its replacement, User:Folksong/Userboxes/Proud American. A friendly editor with AWB privileges should be able to take care of this one pretty easily. Thanks in advance! – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:10, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

The same task needs to be performed for {{Userbox/POC}}, which has 32 transclusions; and {{User browser:Mozilla Firefox}}, with 286 transclusions; and {{CountriesVisited}}, with 80 transclusions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:12, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Wouldn't WP:AWBREQ be a better place for this?
Anyway,  Doing. ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:48, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I'll finish this off tomorrow. (I've almost completely finished {{Proud USA}}, except for one edge case.) ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:23, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Some of the Mozilla ones are formatted like {{Babel |browser:Mozilla_Firefox| }}. ― Qwerfjkltalk 22:06, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

 Done (except for maybe one or two). ― Qwerfjkltalk 23:07, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, and good catch on the Babel one. It looks like that one only works if the name of the template is "Template:User xyx", so I have restored that one as a redirect instead of using the quirky German migration system. I appreciate your diligence. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:22, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: I think I fixed this by using {{Babel |:Mkdw/Mozilla Firefox| }} →

Wikipedia:Babel
This user contributes using Mozilla Firefox.
Search user languages

 ― Qwerfjkltalk 08:25, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

I've had an idea for a bot. IMvHO, there is a need for an "AFD notification bot". Such a bot would deliver a neutrally worded notification to all Wikiprojects associated with articles nominated for deletion. The intent of this proposed bot is to get more participation at AfD discussions. Mjroots (talk) 19:29, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

I think that's already a thing: Wikipedia:Article alerts. Rummskartoffel 20:48, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia:Link_rot/URL_change_requests#Fossilworks

(\[\[File:Stop x nuvola.svg\|40px\|left\|alt=\|link=\]\]Your account has been '''\[\[WP:Blocking policy#Indefinite blocks\|blocked indefinitely\]\]''' from editing because of the following problems: the account has been used for \[\[WP:Spam\|advertising or promotion\]\], which is \[\[WP:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion\|contrary\]\] to the \[\[WP:Five pillars\|purpose of Wikipedia\]\], and your username indicates that the account represents a business.*web site, which is against the \[\[WP:UN\|username policy\]\].) \<\/p\>

Replace that with $1. Tested in the wiki editor search and replace. Probably about 26000 pages affected, but a part may be variations not caught by the above. The closing P-tag's opening friend was abducted in 2018 by L235 and the closing tag befell the same fate just now. (thx!) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 02:57, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Silly me, another 15000+.

(\[\[File:Stop x nuvola\.svg\|40px\|left\|alt=\|link=\]\]There have been two problems with this account: the account has been used for \[\[WP:Spam\|advertising or promotion\]\], which is \[\[WP:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion\|contrary\]\] to the \[\[WP:Five pillars\|purpose of Wikipedia\]\], and your username indicates that the account represents a business or other organisation or group or a web site, which is also against.*Because of those problems, the account has been.*from editing\..*) \<\/p\>

Should do the trick. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 03:09, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I could do this. It's large enough that a manual AWB run would be tedious, so I can do a bot run. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 03:29, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Tol, much appreciated. A few thousand edits I could've handled myself but with ~40K+ it would get tedious indeed, so better if a bot could do it. Also as this is exclusively about user talk pages, doing it with a bot flag would be helpful to avoid massive watchlist spam. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 12:23, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

No problem, Alexis Jazz. Especially because they're user talk pages, the bot/minor combination (which won't trigger talk notifications) would be useful. This is a simple find & replace for search results, so I should have a BRFA within a few days. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 01:48, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

BRFA filed Tol (talk | contribs) @ 04:59, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Would anyone be able to replace the talkpage banners for Wikipedia:WikiProject Meteorology with Wikipedia:WikiProject Weather so the meteorology project can finish merging into weather? Noah^Talk 12:30, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Hurricane Noah: I might be able to do this. Can you give some example edits/more in-depth explanation? ― Qwerfjkltalk 12:46, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

{{WikiProject Meteorology|class=C|importance=Mid}} becomes {{WikiProject Weather|class=C|importance=Mid}}... it would basically involve changing the word meteorology in the TP banner to weather. There may be duplicate banners on some pages that would need to be merged. Noah^Talk 12:50, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Sure, that will be no problem. ― Qwerfjkltalk 12:55, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

If I merge banners, and the class/importance doesn't match, what do you think should happen? ― Qwerfjkltalk 12:56, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

The higher of the two class/importance parameters should be used for articles. For other ones such as template, redirect, etc.. just use the appropriate class parameter if they don't match and importance is usually not assessed for those. Noah^Talk 13:11, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I've generated a list of pages that only have WP METEOROLOGY. I'll file a BRFA soon. ― Qwerfjkltalk 13:58, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

BRFA filed ― Qwerfjkltalk 09:14, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

 Done @Hurricane Noah - see [10]. Note: you should probably merge any parameters from {{WikiProject Meteorology}} into {{WikiProject Weather}}. ― Qwerfjkltalk 15:06, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

I sometimes find {{empty section}} tags in sections that are not empty, such as this one. Is there a bot that can replace these tags with {{expand section}}? Jarble (talk) 22:04, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't know if this search is the best one to find such sections, but it found only 5 such articles. A couple of them probably need to be marked with {{citation needed}} tags or otherwise cleaned up instead of just removing the tag or replacing it with a different tag. This looks like a good item for a human editor to inspect periodically. Maybe it could be added to the reports that are part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Check Wikipedia. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:18, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: I see that Data hierarchy isn't in your search results. Even if I tweak your search to include quotation marks, I don't think the search string will find line breaks.

@Jarble: I checked the October 1 database dump and found 450 articles with {{empty section}} tags in sections that are not empty.

Hope this helps! GoingBatty (talk) 02:01, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Yep, newlines are difficult to search for. Here's a better search that currently gives 548 results, including some false positives. That number is similar to what GoingBatty ended up with. I still think the articles need to be processed by humans. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:06, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Looks better - thanks! It's not necessary to have {{empty section}} in "See also", "Notes", "References", and "External links" sections. I started on this, and can do more later. GoingBatty (talk) 04:59, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: I've knocked it down to 445 results.

@Jarble: I think a bot could remove true empty sections with headings of "Bibliography", "Further reading", "Notes", "See also", "External links". There are hundreds of such articles. GoingBatty (talk) 16:01, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

• gettina a feature in AWB would also be good for long term. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 01:22, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran: You can use the links at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser to make AWB feature requests in Phabricator (and first search to see if any such feature requests already exist). GoingBatty (talk) 02:25, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

I searched for existing requests, it is not in the list. I will do that now. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 14:45, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

• I've requested the feature for AWB. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 15:05, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

@Jarble, Jonesey95, and Usernamekiran: BRFA filed, and shared my suggestions at the AWB feature request. GoingBatty (talk) 00:43, 13 November 2021 (UTC) @Jarble, Jonesey95, and Usernamekiran: I posted at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Removing some empty sections via bot to determine if there is consensus for this work do be done by bot. GoingBatty (talk) 16:17, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

CleanupWorklistBot is a treasure, generating cleanup work lists based on WikiProject topic across all maintenance categories. This makes it easy for WikiProjects to run maintenance cleanup drives except for the fact that CleanupWorklistBot's stats have to be manually imported on-wiki to visualize/incentivize progress. That problem could be solved if there was a bot that converted CWB's CSV data to .tab format and uploaded to Commons after it runs each week. The result would be compatible with {{Graph:Lines}} for display on-wiki (see similar example to the right). I reached out to CWB's maintainer but he was only interested in generating graphs within his external tool, not importing the data for on-wiki manipulation. Would someone be able or interested in helping with this? czar 06:18, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I presume this has been requested previously, but is there any reason why a bot couldn't categorise redirects? I think at least {{R to diacritic}}/{{R from diacritic}} could be done, maybe {{R to section}} and {{R to anchor}}. Some more can also probably be used, but I can't think of them. ― Qwerfjkltalk 22:01, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Quite a few redirect templates could be added, preferably within {{Rcat shell}}. Others are tempting but probably best left to humans, e.g. deciding between {{R from other capitalisation}} and {{R from miscapitalisation}}. This does sound like a perennial request but I can't find previous discussions. WP:WikiProject Redirect may be more helpful. Certes (talk) 00:29, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: AWB's general fixes include a Redirect tagger which could be run as a bot. If you could point to a conversation where there in consensus to run it as a bot, I'd submit the BRFA. GoingBatty (talk) 15:27, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't recall such a conversation happening, but Paine Ellsworth is always my go-to person for institutional knowledge about redirect categorisation. Off the top of my head, I don't have any problem with a bot doing some categorisation - {{R to section}}, the diacritic ones and to/from ligature being examples of where human judgement is not really required. {{R from alternative language}} may be possible where the term is used inside an e.g. {{lang-de}} template at the target. {{R from unnecessary disambiguation}} could also be done where the redirect ends with a term in parenthesis and targets a page that is identically named other than that parenthetical (e.g. "Foo (bar)" → "Foo"). There may be others too, but that's the sort of thing that would be best left to a second discussion if there is consensus for the general principle here. Thryduulf (talk) 12:26, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, Thryduulf, for the ping. There is uncertainty regarding the use of bots to categorize redirects; however, I think it's a really grand idea! When I think of the enormity of the task to find and sort each and every redirect that already exists, as well as all the new redirects that are made everyday by editors who are unfamiliar with categorization and so leave it to someone else, the task really screams for bot involvement. Since I've never been involved with bot usage, and my experience only includes limited AWB usage, I really don't have the words to ask for a new bot or an existing bot to handle such a complicated task. Is there a bot that can sense diacritics? That could be either a "from" or "to" situation. Can a bot sense a redirect to a section? I honestly don't know the answer. I would hope the answer is "yes", because I don't know how much longer I'll be around to help with redirect categorization, which has been my pet project since even before I first registered. Yes, a bot would be a dream come true. I'm just not sure there's a bot that can do the job correctly. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 13:09, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

This seems like a good area for a bot. Howevever, there's one relevant issue that I can think of. A regular editor can move a page over a redirect only if that redirect has no more than a single edit in its history. This means that if all redirects out there got edited now (for rcats or for something else), then regular editors won't be able to perform moves over these redirects. This will incur some maintenance costs (more work for WP:RMT, more cleanup after cut-and-paste moves) and I really have no idea if they'll be outweighed by the benefits of having more thorough redirect categorisation. I imagine there should ultimately be a technical fix for the problem (like excluding bot edits from counting, and that's independently desirable because of the bots that fix double redirect). Regardless, that will obviously not be an issue for redirects that aren't suitable as article titles and so would never get moved over. – Uanfala (talk) 00:12, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Ideally, we should be allowed to move page A over page B with any number of revisions if all revisions of B are redirects to A, whether produced by bot or human, but that might require awkward software changes. Bonus points for allowing revisions of B which are redirects to C, where C also redirects to A, though that might be gamed. Certes (talk) 00:24, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I think we need a census bot for the US census, to allow for automated updates every 10 years, for all the census designated places in the US that are also in Wikipedia. I have no idea how to go about making any of that happen, but it is definitely something to consider doing, and while we're at it, we can figure out how to use reliable external sources for other population data that is periodically revised by the authoritative source that a bot can then go about and update the data in WP. Hires an editor (talk) 02:23, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

@Hires an editor: I suggest only approving a bot for each census, since a lot could change in the 10 years between censuses. GoingBatty (talk) 02:31, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

{{resolved}} Proposal: Create a bot that allows editors to request being reminded at a specific date on their talk page, possibly with a link to the diff of their request (to remind them what the request was about).

Possible users:

• Editors who would like to be reminded to participate in an election that will start at a fixed date in the future (example: meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2022).
• Uninvolved editors who would like to be reminded to close an RfC after 30 days have elapsed.
• Uninvolved editors who would like to be reminded to close a deletion discussion after 7 days have elapsed.
• Administrators who would like to be reminded to close an WP:AN discussion about a community sanction after 72 hours have elapsed.
• Administrators who would like to be reminded about a user's block expiration, or a page's protection expiration, to see if the disruption resumes.
• Administrators temporarily fully protecting a page who would like to be reminded to restore an underlying indefinite semi-protection.
• Administrators temporarily blocking a user site-wide who would like to be reminded to restore an underlying indefinite partial block.
• Bureaucrats who would like to be reminded about closing an RfA or a similar "minimum days required" usergroup assignment process.

Alternative/additional implementations:

• An admin bot performing re-protections or re-blocks of users at a specified date in the future, configurable using JSON (view details).
• A new MediaWiki feature that allows placing overlapping blocks and protections (unlikely to happen in the near future).

~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:33, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Ping: Tamzin, El C. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:36, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

ToBeFree, I like the all the Admin stuff, but I'm not sure about the Uninvolved editors items. The Bureaucrat item seems unnecessary. Having public reminders that go beyond self-action probably warrants a more in-depth discussion. So maybe just start the bot on the self-stuff first? What do you think? Thanks again for this effort, perennial problem solver! El_C 14:06, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

I'll slot the reminder half of this in third on my list of bot tasks to write. BRFA/'zinbot 2 is coming sometime soon for some more NPP edge cases, and then I've got this plan to finally make secondary watchlists a reality, but if no one's taken care of this once I've done those two, this'll be next. :) Of course, if this does catch someone's fancy now, please go ahead. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 14:14, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

• I could use some sort of reminder mechanism. For example, I might suggest a change, intending to boldly implement it next week if no one objects. Currently I note that off-wiki (or just in my head). I'm not sure the talk page is the best place; a watchlist entry or notification (like when I'm pinged) would be convenient but that might need a MediaWiki feature rather than a bot. Certes (talk) 14:12, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

  There's a user script for that User:SD0001/W-Ping. It creates virtual watchlist entries – they're private as no one else needs to what you're up to! – SD0001 (talk) 14:53, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

  Thank you, SD0001. That script meets my needs perfectly, so I wouldn't need the bot requested here, though of course others may. Certes (talk) 19:52, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

• A bot also exists already: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/DannyS712_bot_68 – SD0001 (talk) 14:54, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

  Ah, perfect. Thanks, SD0001 and DannyS712! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 16:42, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

There are around 1000 sub-modules of Module:Adjacent stations which aren't categorized and should be added to Category:Rail transport succession modules (inside the Sandbox other template so only the module itself will be in the category). Could someone help me with a bot? Gonnym (talk) 10:38, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Just to double-check, the category would go on the /doc of each sub-module, wrapped in <includeonly>...</includeonly> tags, yes? Primefac (talk) 10:46, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I thought /doc part was clear. And yes, they are surrounded by includeonly tags, but more specicially with the {{Sandbox other}} as well. See the result of the create doc at Module:Adjacent stations/Echigo. Gonnym (talk) 10:49, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry, I totally misread your initial statement, asked a really dumb question, then realised my mistake and re-worded my reply in a subsequent edit. I can put through a BRFA. Primefac (talk) 10:53, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Happens to all of us :) and thanks! Gonnym (talk) 10:54, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Hello. Is it possible for someone to run through Category:Copy to Wikimedia Commons (bot-assessed) and get all files with .svg extension and place the results at User:Minorax/MTC/Bot? --Minorax^«¦talk¦» 14:28, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I could probably do this one, but I'm busy for a couple days. Feel free to ping me next week if someone doesn't do it before then. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:54, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

@Minorax:  Done I found 2,224 files using CirrusSearch and JWB. Please let me know if you need any modifications, e.g. linking them. Cheers, 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 02:42, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

@EpicPupper: Linking them would be great. --Minorax^«¦talk¦» 02:43, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

@Minorax:  Done 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 02:54, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

@Minorax: I have updated the list with 100 more files from searching template redirects and sorted it alphabetically. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 10:46, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

 Requesting immediate archiving... Should be done! 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 04:41, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

This is a serious problem on Wikipedia. It was literally everywhere back in the infancy of Wikipedia, so it's not surprising that they are still there. We seriously need a bot to remove them. --2A01:36D:1200:4D41:D9E6:E7D4:9D38:6C3C (talk) 11:27, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

@2A01:36D:1200:4D41:D9E6:E7D4:9D38:6C3C has been blocked for disruptive editing. That notwithstanding, this should be done with human supervision. ― Qwerfjkltalk 17:36, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Not a good task for a bot. ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:16, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

 Requesting immediate archiving... 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 04:41, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi, Wikipedia:WikiProject Republika Srpska was deleted as a result of Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Republika Srpska (2nd nomination). However, its WikiProject banner {{WikiProject Republika Srpska}} needs to be removed from all talk pages so it can also be deleted. The template is transcluded nearly 1,200 times. ✗plicit 12:55, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

While I'm here, I also just found Wikipedia:WikiProject Republika Srpska/Invite. This invitation is trancluded on user talk pages, but should be substituted instead. ✗plicit 13:04, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

 Done. Primefac (talk) 14:32, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

 Requesting immediate archiving... 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 04:42, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I very often come across situations like the one I just did at Vanessa C. Tyson, where the middle name (Catherine) is given right in bold at the start of the article but the redirect from Vanessa Catherine Tyson has not been created. Sometimes there are other variations of this situation, such as if the redirect from Vanessa Tyson hadn't been created, or if the page was located at "Vanessa Tyson" but the redirect from "Vanessa C. Tyson" wasn't created. I don't expect a bot to be able to fix all of these, as in some cases there could be disambiguation concerns, but for many many situations, it should be possible for the bot to determine that only one notable person has a name and create redirects accordingly. Could we do that, and have it tag with {{r from short name}} and {{r from long name}} as needed? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:31, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm just wondering: Why isn't there a semi-auto, human-in-the-loop system for tasks that might be sensitive to context and false positives like this? Having the bot find all the needed changes and apply them with approval would still save a ton of work from having humans do all the changes manually. Intralexical (talk) 12:28, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

We have WP:AWB and WP:JWB. They can accept or create a page list and suggest methodical changes to each page on the list. For example, I recently used JWB to change links to the ambiguous term Qu'Appelle. For the 90% about Regina—Qu'Appelle I just clicked Save; for the few exceptions I typed a better link in manually. Certes (talk) 12:45, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I think data quality is a big concern here. It's well documented that middle names, birthdates, etc will often get added to biographies with no sourcing (or unacceptable sourcing) and persist for a very long time. A lot of them will turn out to be completely bogus, too! On the other hand, I think the idea of automatic name redirects for biographies with middle names has some potential. For example, if Vanessa C. Tyson didn't exist, there was no disambig at Vanessa Tyson, and no other articles were titled "Vanessa * Tyson", it would be helpful to make the redirect (or at least flag it for creation). jp×g 22:54, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

That is how the Order of the Companions of OR Tambo in Gold became awarded to Joseph Sepp Bellend Blatter.[11] Thincat (talk) 20:20, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Quasi-arbitrary break

So with some generous help from Cryptic at the query request page, we now have a list of articles of people located at titles with a middle initial, but for whom there is no redirect from the title without an initial and for whom no one else shares their first and last name. See sample of results at this list. I'm struggling to find a way to go through that list to create the redirects with AWB, though—I'd need to start from the list of redlinks without the initial to create them, and doing that loses the information on what the middle initial is. So I'm thinking this might have to be done some other way. Would anyone who can code be interested in taking this up? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:41, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: I think I could do this. Here's my understanding of what should happen while iterating over some list of pages:

• Do some sanity checks (possibly):
  • Check that the title can be parsed as "[first] [initial]. [last]"
  • Check that "[first] [last]" does not exist (especially if some time has passed since generation of the list)
  • Perhaps check the defaultsort:
    • If it's of the form "[last], [first] [initial]", proceed
    • If it's of the form "[last], [first] [initial].", remove the period and proceed
    • If it's different, log it and don't create the redirect
    • If there is none, either proceed or just log it (to be determined based on how many of these should have redirects)
• If everything is fine, create a new redirect to that page, preferably with pre-determined rcat(s)

Does this seem correct? Tol (talk | contribs) @ 01:52, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

@Tol, yes, that sounds good! For rcats, I think {{R from short name}} is presumably the one (or maybe {{R from alternative name}}). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:11, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Alright; I'll work on it! I don't know if the redirects should have defaultsorts — I know redirects should have them if they are from a person's name to a page that includes or is related to that person, but I don't know about redirects from a different name (in this case, without the initial). And if there was a defaultsort, would it include the initial? Tol (talk | contribs) @ 19:26, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not overly familiar with defaultsorts. My understanding is that it's best when they are complete as possible, e.g. "Smith, Jane Quincy" rather than just "Smith, Jane Q.". This would help in the rare circumstance that multiple articles have the same "Smith, Jane Q..." defaultsort. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:31, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Agreed, but that makes it even more complicated. I don't think defaultsorts would be needed, because they wouldn't be redirects to a related topic (person to related topic) but rather alternative names, and so probably shouldn't be categorised. I don't know if sort order is needed in rcat categories. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 19:50, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Yep, doing the basics for defaultsort should be plenty good enough. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:09, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: The BRFA is here. I haven't transcluded it yet, because I'm still calculating the number of pages. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 03:44, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I transcluded the BRFA a few days ago. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 04:02, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Template:Sports links fetches and displays external links from Wikidata, which is very useful. However, it is underutilized: there are many sportspeople who have external links attached to their Wikidata items, but not the sports links template on their article, so readers are missing out on these links. E.g., George Simond has numerous IDs attached to his Wikidata item that weren't shown on his article until I added the template [12]. Likewise, there are many articles that have one or more site-specific external link templates in their external links sections, but more external links attached to their Wikidata items that would be shown if Template:Sports links was used instead. E.g., Gavorielle Marcu had one external link via Template:ATP on his page [13], but now has 3 after I replaced it with the sports links template [14].

The request is thus to have a bot that generates a list of all articles whose Wikidata items have one or more external IDs fetched by Template:Sports links, and then a) adds an "External links" section (if nonexistent) + Template:Sports links to articles without it, and b) replaces all the site-specific external link templates with Template:Sports links once their data has been imported to Wikidata. Sod25k (talk) 14:39, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Please don't. There are enough issues with this template (see Template talk:Sports links#Questions for a sample of the current issues) that this shouldn't be mass-added or bot-added anywhere. Perhaps an RfC to decide which links to include (if any) should be held first? This template is now used on some 36,000 articles, this proposal would increase this to, what, 10 times as much perhaps? Fram (talk) 15:26, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Have responded to your concerns there, which can be easily resolved by removing the problematic IDs from the list the template fetches. Given it's already heavily used, we should be judicious about which IDs it fetches anyway. Sod25k (talk) 15:50, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

It can be "easily solved" when people actually check and discuss which links to add, and watch the template talk page to solve issues. I looked at some of the links, I have no idea if many of the others I didn't look at are any better. It looks as if the template is used on tens of thousands of pages, but hardly anyone actually cares about these links, as no one else noticed e.g. the ones not working. If so, why would we add it to many more articles? Fram (talk) 16:13, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

The properties you found with broken links - Mackolik.com player ID (P2458), ForaDeJogo player ID (archived) (P3046) & ForaDeJogo manager ID (archived) (P3661) - are used on a combined 6,052 items on Wikidata. However, of the 36,722 articles that transclude {{Sports links}}, only 19 have items with these properties and therefore have them shown with the template, with a median 1 pageview per day. The probability therefore that those specific links a) will be clicked b) by an editor that c) is competent enough to know where/how to ask for the issue to be looked at and d) cares enough to do it, is very low, and so that no one raised those broken links before you doesn't reflect on the overall utility of the template or interest in external sports links across Wikipedia. If the template was used on every sportsperson's article as proposed, I'm sure any new issues that cropped up would be found very quickly. I do agree that the list of properties, originally copied from the Norwegian Wikipedia, should be checked over again. Probably all those that are important enough to have a site-specific template made for them are fine as a start. Sod25k (talk) 17:45, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:LINKFARM is policy. Any bot that indiscriminately adds external links will be blocked. Johnuniq (talk) 22:46, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

The idea is little different to KasparBot 2 & KasparBot, which added {{Authority control}} to pages without it and replaced {{Authority control|id_1=X|id_2=Y|...}} with {{Authority control}} after migrating the IDs to Wikidata. Was that indiscriminately add[ing] external links in your book? Sod25k (talk) 23:35, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

That's known as an other stuff argument which is not persuasive at Wikipedia. Further, adding more external links because some other external links exist is the opposite of what is at WP:EL. Johnuniq (talk) 04:13, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:Otherstuff is for deletion of articles/article content and so not relevant to bots, which are all explicitly approved by the community prior to being run and thus each set a precedent for what the community finds acceptable, but yes, each bot task needs to be considered on its merits. Given 36k pages already use the template (presumably added semi-automatically), with very little feedback one way or the other, this idea appears in practice to be less controversial than it is being made out to be. Again, if there are specific IDs that are deemed not useful, they can be easily be removed from the template (or rather, module). Sod25k (talk) 05:51, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

We generally have sortname redirects such that, e.g., Lincoln, Abraham redirects to Abraham Lincoln. These are categorized with a template like {{R from sort name|L|A}}, which automatically shorts the redirects into categories for sort names starting with "L", and sort names for articles starting with "A".

There are two issues.

First, there is a set of categories for ambiguous sort names, such as Johnson, Bob, redirecting to the disambiguation page Bob Johnson, which would be categorized with the template {{R from ambiguous sort name|J|B}}. Sometimes editors leave out the "ambiguous", or the character of the target page changes so that it was once a specific person, but is now a disambiguation page (or vice versa). It would be useful to have a bot parse the set of sortname redirects to add or remove "ambiguous" as needed.

Second, sometimes the sortkeys get mixed up (i.e., if an editor were to accidentally put {{R from sort name|A|L}} on Lincoln, Abraham). It would be useful to have a bot fix these as well. BD2412 T 21:47, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Notified Wikipedia talk:Redirect and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Redirect. ― Qwerfjkltalk 22:03, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Why do we have separate categories for each letter of the alphabet? A sort name with a given letter of the alphabet is not a defining characteristic, and I cannot imagine why they would need to be diffused. It can't be for size issues, Category:Redirects from moves has 1.8 million redirects in it. I say upmerge each of those single letter categories and save the maintenance burden. A bot run can change the sort keys to the format {{R from sort name|Abraham Lincoln|Lincoln Abraham}} would allow for proper categorization in both the sort name and sort name by article title categories without having to have 26 child categories, allowing for easier navigation. -- Tavix ^(talk) 02:59, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

@Tavix: These are useful to editors who maintain sortname redirects, and require certain nuances that may not be apparent to editors not working in that area. Unlike redirects signifying a page move, which have no commonality other than the move itself (these are automatically generated and give no indication why a move was carried out), merging hundreds of thousands of sort name redirects into a single category would destroy their navigability as sets of names. Specifically, it would mean vastly more loading time to isolate a set of names under a single letter (because programs like AWB would have to load all of the hundreds of thousands of names each time before any parsing could be done). Also, sortnames by target article title can not be merged because we would end up with a category identical to the first—just a list of all the sortname redirects, with no actual parsing. Bear in mind that these are hidden maintenence categories, rather than content categories, per WP:PROJCATS, so "defining characteristic" is not really an applicable concept. BD2412 T 19:27, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Note, also that these are not DEFAULTSORT templates; changing the sort keys to the format {{R from sort name|Abraham Lincoln|Lincoln Abraham}}would make the template try to sort these into a nonexistent Category:Redirects from sort names, A‎braham Lincoln and Category:Redirects from sort names by article title, Lincoln Abraham. BD2412 T 20:14, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Maybe I'm confused why you would need a letter isolated in order to accomplish maintenance? I can only see benefits to maintenance on all sortnames or a single name. If the former, a single category offers much easier maintenance over 26 categories. An AWB run would only need to load one category over 26, which seems like less load time overall. For a single name, if I want to isolate it now, the URL can be hacked to show there are ten redirects with surname Lincoln and I can grab those names and go from there. Navigation is much easier as well: for example, Template:Large category TOC can be employed to easily jump to whichever name you want to isolate, and it wouldn't have to be a name beginning with the same letter. As far as the sort keys, I am suggesting that by updating the template to sort it like DEFAULTSORT (although I don't think it would be called that since there would be two "defaults", one for each parameter), the overall membership of each category would be the same, but they would obviously be sorted differently (one by surname, the other by given name). -- Tavix ^(talk) 21:32, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

You can still do a recursive search of the current category tree, which yields the full set without disturbing the subcategory structure. Suppose, however, that I want to isolate all sortname redirects for which the redirect target has the given named Martin, while excluding cases where Martin is present in the title as a surname or middle name? Being able to start with names sorted into the Category:Redirects from sort names by article title, M makes this much easier. A separate category structure that uses a DEFAULTSORT derived from the name itself could be implemented alongside the existing structure, but that can be done while leaving the existing structure in place. BD2412 T 22:37, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Huh, I had no idea {{R from sort name}} had parameters. For that matter, I didn't know about {{R from ambiguous sort name}}. Correcting one to the other sounds like a good task for a bot, and if the redirect targets a disambiguation page, easy enough. What if it targets a set-index article, though (usually an anthroponymy page)?

Regarding the second issue, how would the bot know if the sortkeys were mixed up? Easy enough for most Western-style names, though offhand I don't know how often we use these templates for other names. --BDD (talk) 15:35, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

@BDD: The sortkeys are fairly straightforward in that the first is supposed to match the first letter of the redirect, and the second is supposed to match the title of the target article. For example, the sortname for Xi Jinping is literally Xi, Jinping, and should be sorted into "X" for both parameters (I just fixed this one, because the "article title" parameter was set to J, which is obviously not the first letter of the article title). Unfortunately, the various peculiarites of human names make it so that we can't have bots create sortnames in the first place, but they can fix these rule-bound parameters. As far as I know, set indexes for full human names are rare enough that I don't worry about them. If there were enough, it might be worth making a rule to sort them into the ambiguous categories (which would not have the same external effect as tagging them as actual disambiguation pages), so that it is clear that these are not redirects to specific individuals. BD2412 T 19:48, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! Duh, now that I think about it, a set-index article about a full name would be quite rare. --BDD (talk) 20:24, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

We do have pages for people with names like Abdul Malik or Anne-Marie (given name), where the double-barrelled name could be mistaken for a given name and surname, but there is nothing to sort in those cases. I note that Mary Ann is a disambiguation page, and a bit of a mess. BD2412 T 20:30, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Putting aside philosophical questions of how sortname redirects should be categorized, I'd really rather not have to hand-fix the ambiguous ones, but I can do so if nothing is forthcoming from this request. BD2412 T 04:54, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412, would it be possible to code some of this function into the template itself? I think the Template:R from sort name categorisation could be easily done using a module. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 05:38, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

It is possible that the alphabetical issues could be done this way, since the page basically knows its own name and knows the name of the target at which it is pointed. My primary concern, actually, is making sure ambiguous target pages are categorized as ambiguous sortnames (and unambiguous target pages are categorized as regular sortnames). This gets complicated by the fact that sometimes the nature of the target gets changed over time. I don't know that the module can recognize that characteristic. BD2412 T 05:42, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412: Hmm. I agree — I don't know of a way to figure out if a page is a disambiguation page. I have an idea, but it's a little complicated. I'll test it now and get back to you. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 21:59, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

If a list can be generated of sortname redirects targeting disambiguation pages, that should be enough to go on for the project. BD2412 T 22:03, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@Tol: All disambiguation pages are in Category:All article disambiguation pages. People's names would be in Category:Human name disambiguation pages. Hope this helps! GoingBatty (talk) 22:20, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@GoingBatty, I know — however, I don't know of any easy way to check categorisation in a module. I'm using the presence of the __DISAMBIG__ magic word in the wikitext to determine if it's a disambiguation page. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 00:35, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Alright, @BD2412. Template:R from sort name/sandbox uses Module:R from sort name to automatically determine whether the redirect is to a disambiguation page, choose the correct template, and categorise the redirect. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 04:46, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@Tol: Is this automatic? In other words, the existing {{R from sort name}} operation is changed to this, and it will automagically sort out all of the existing disambiguation pages into the {{R from ambiguous sort name}} categories? Do the existing {{R from ambiguous sort name}} templates need to be switched out for {{R from sort name}}? That would not be a problem, mind you. BD2412 T 05:02, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412: Yes, this should sort all redirects to disambiguation pages into ambiguous sort name categories. I would prefer if Template:R from ambiguous sort name was moved over Template:R from sort name/ambiguous (because, were this to be implemented, it would be 'part of' Template:R from sort name) and then redirected to Template:R from sort name to let it do the automatic detection. This would probably need a TfD or some wider discussion, perhaps at WikiProject Redirect. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 15:53, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@Tol: I went ahead and swapped Template:R from ambiguous sort name with Template:R from sort name/ambiguous. I created it, I can pull it assunder. BD2412 T 16:08, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412: Alright then. (Just so you know, you didn't need to swap them — because Template:R from sort name/ambiguous was a single-revision redirect to Template:R from ambiguous sort name, the latter can be moved over the former, deleting the redirect, by any (autoconfirmed?) user.) I've been testing edge cases, and I just noticed that the module doesn't take care of non-standard letters (such as in Álvarez, Antonio, which it categorises in Category:Redirects from ambiguous sort names, Á). I don't know if this can be handled automatically, but I'll try. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 16:45, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

There are, fortunately, a finite number of those that come up. If there's a list, I can just redirect the category names. BD2412 T 16:49, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

It was no problem, @BD2412. I used Module:Latin to remove diacritics, and now it works as it should. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 17:16, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I confer upon you the rank of master. BD2412 T 18:05, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

BD2412: Haha, thanks. I don't see any other problems, and plan to update Template:R from sort name from the sandbox after I've done a check to make sure that all titles will be correctly categorised. Do you have any objections to updating the template? Tol (talk | contribs) @ 21:20, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

No objection, let's do it. To be clear, should existing instances of {{R from ambiguous sort name}} be replaced with {{R from sort name}}? BD2412 T 23:48, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412: I was thinking to redirect Template:R from ambiguous sort name to Template:R from sort name, so that all current and future transclusions are redirected and automatically taken care of. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 00:06, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

That would be the simpler solution, I imagine. BD2412 T 00:57, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

BD2412: My bot has just checked and found these problematic redirects:

They all are due to either quotation marks / apostrophes or numbers. I can check for quotation marks at the beginning and remove them, but how should numbers be dealt with? Tol (talk | contribs) @ 02:44, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

"The 4400" is technically fine because it is removing a preceding "The" (though most sortnames that I deal with are for human names, not works). Many of these—Richter, David → 2020 United States House of Representatives elections in New Jersey#District 3, Гольдфарб, Вениамин Иосифович → Veniamin Iosifovich Goldfarb, Mechtel, Matthew → 2006 United States House of Representatives election in North Dakota, Blenkinsop, Christopher → 17 Hippies, Burkhalter, John → 2014 Arkansas elections#Lieutenant Governor, Johnson, Angela → 1993 Iowa murders—are not sort names at all, and should not be categorized as sort names. It looks like these generally arise as artifacts of article deletions or page moves. Some, like "Angela Johnson" and "Christopher Reed", are problematic because there are other topics that could be primary topics of the term (there is an Angela Johnson (disambiguation) and a Christopher Reed (American football)). I suppose it is a good thing to catch these, because they are wrong and need fixing one way or another, so I think the thing to do is generate a complete list of issues like these, and I will go through them by hand. BD2412 T 03:02, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412, that was the complete list. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 22:07, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Good, I'll take care of these, then. BD2412 T 23:46, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Alright! Thanks for your help with this. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 00:32, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

A bot should null edit all monthly subpages of Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log so that their lists of transcluded pages under "Page properties" on the "action=info" page and "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page (help):" on the "action=edit" page are up-to-date and include other pages (including the daily subpages) besides Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/Header. This should be a one-time run. Once the one-time run is done, the same bot should then start null editing the previous month's deletion review subpage at the beginning of every new month. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 01:41, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@GeoffreyT2000: I'm sorry, but I don't see why this is needed. Could you explain? Thanks. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 02:25, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2021_December&action=edit and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2021_November&action=edit, and you will see why null editing is needed. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 02:33, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@GeoffreyT2000: So it's because the pages are generated beforehand using IFEXIST and so (by virtue of not being edited or purged) don't get their transcluded templates updated, right? I can do this. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 02:37, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Would a bot that purges pages instead of null editing them work here? –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:44, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: See mw:Manual:Purge#Null edits. A regular purge doesn't update link tables, but a null edit does. One can still purge a page and force it to update link tables via the API, though. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 02:49, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

 Done. I've purged all subpages of Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log, and will set up a bot task to purge each month's deletion review subpage on the first of the next month. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 03:43, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I've set up the bot task, TolBot Task 12. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 19:07, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

You can paste a long list of page names into User:ProcBot/PurgeList, and generate the list using copy+paste or whatever. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 02:43, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

A bot which reminds users about WP:NOTBATTLEGROUND on their talk page when the user uses the words "Battle", "Fight", or "War" in the WP namespace. It does not revert edits or have any administrative powers, as doing so with any edit containing "Battle", "Fight", or "War" would stop Wikipedia Namespace discussions about articles about actual battles or wars. A sample of a potential reminder can be found here.

This process can be opted out of by any user, as it could get annoying after a while. ☢️Plutonical☢️ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵘⁿᶦᶜᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿˢ 00:09, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Generally a bad idea, per WP:CONTEXTBOT. As an example, simply writing something like "Do you have sources for the War of 1812?" or " War of the Roses" would trigger a bot notice to not treat Wikipedia as a WP:BATTLEGROUND. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:25, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

More important than that—because some elaborate regex can remove a lot of false positives—I think all this would do is get the bot op some very angry comments on their talk page from whichever already-a-bit-ticked user they've just templated by bot, thereby potentially increasing the amount of tension in projectspace rather than decreasing it. WP:DTTR is sensitive enough for some people; auto-TTRing for something substantive (as opposed to the bot templates we're used to for impending deletions and such) would hugely backfire, even without false positives. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 00:44, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Strongly agree with this sentiment. Theknightwho (talk) 00:46, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

'Peace through strength' can easily enough look like 'peace through war.' (Andrew Bacevich) -- GreenC 18:10, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Not a good task for a bot. Per above. ― Qwerfjkltalk 15:46, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

 Requesting immediate archiving... 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 04:41, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

As autopatrol has been removed from +sysop, I'd like to propose a bot that automatically marks pages as patrolled when a sysop/CU/clerk marks a user as a sock. If feasible, patrol SPI cases, RfD, MfD, etc. after they're closed. --Minorax^«¦talk¦» 05:21, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

NPPs usually focus on mainspace. We don't usually patrol other namespaces. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:05, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I wish there was a robot that could take all redirect page contains #REDIRECT[[Wikipedia: or with similar code then add {{R to project namespace}} to these pages.--Q28 (talk) 06:44, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Q28. Looks like there are 199,154 pages that would need this change. If the goal is to do one bot run to fix everything, it'd be pretty easy to code some RegEx's in an AutoWikiBrowser bot to knock these out. It's a huge number of affected articles though. I'd be willing to file a BRFA for it if there's support. Any concerns about consensus? Have you run the idea by Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Redirect or similar? –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:17, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

You can also exclude members of Category:Redirects to project space, but that only takes out another 11,000. Certes (talk) 14:39, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I think there is a bot request that wanted to handle these automatically with {{Redirect category shell}}. Not sure what the status of that request is. Gonnym (talk) 12:58, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: I have no worries about consensus. Also, this job should only be run once because after running, it don't need to run it again for a long time.--Q28 (talk) 03:53, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Seems like ongoing maintenance task given there are so many, many more will constantly be added. -- GreenC 15:45, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

If a bot like this were run it should probably also add protection rcats as needed. Also, link to more accurate list (excluding another category): quarry:62277. Not much is removed, though. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 05:10, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

{{#switch: {{PROTECTIONLEVEL:edit}}

| autoconfirmed = {{R semi-protected}}

| extendedconfirmed = {{R extended-protected}}

| templateeditor = {{R template-protected}}

| sysop = {{R fully protected}}

| default result

}}

The above code can be used to subst in the appropiate template. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 05:39, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Is there any way to get these pages to just categorize automatically? Given that #REDIRECT is a software thing, it'd probably take developer help, but it'd be much kinder on folks' watchlists (which is the main consensus-related concern I have). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:55, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Could you wrap the {{R to project namespace}} in {{Redirect category shell}}, which (I think) auto-assesses redirects and tags them with the correct protection level. ― Qwerfjkltalk 07:19, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval#ElliBot. Gonnym (talk) 07:47, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Yep, my bad, it does. I was planning to wrap it too, but didn't know it did that automatically. Awesome! 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 18:06, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

This seems like something that would be better achieved through a change in {{Redirect category shell}} that converts the template to use Lua and auto-adds the rcat, similar to how the template currently auto-adds the protection rcats. A bot to run through these pages and make hundreds of thousands of edits is unfeasible and not a very nice thing for people's watchlists I've talked with a few people and they have some ideas on how to proceed with the Lua portion of this. If anyone wants to contribute further, Lua-fing the shell template is a good first task. In conclusion, this is Not a good task for a bot. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 00:12, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

There are a large number of items on Wikidata which aren't notable enough to have a Wikipedia article in their own right, but are notable enough to be given a redirect here. Normally, I'd just do this from the Wikidata side, but the Mediawiki software treats redirect pages on other Wikis as their target when doing sitelinks. However, if a page is made into a redirect page after being connected to a Wikidata item, the Wikidata item will retain the original sitelink. This means that the current approved method for linking pre-existing redirect pages is a 3-stage process of (1) editing out the redirect on the target Wiki, (2) adding the sitelink to the Wikidata item, then (3) restoring the redirect. This is obviously very tedious.

The testbed I had in mind for this was the currently existing 6,400 redirect pages for each private use character in the Unicode block "Private Use Area" (e.g. , ,  etc.). They all redirect to Private Use Areas, and I imagine see almost no use. I'd also update them with Template:Wikidata redirect. I can see this having future application in certain lists, for example. --Theknightwho (talk) 06:33, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Fixing phab:T54564 would be a better solution, but it's been open for five years. Certes (talk) 12:31, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Way beyond my skillset, I'm afraid. One of my suggestions on the Village Pump recently turned out to be an idea that's been open since 2006, so I think there may be a bit of a backlog. Theknightwho (talk) 17:07, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

At the risk of being controversial, there's a real need for the WMF to divert 0.1% of the cash raised by their advert calendar to technical fixes and enhancements. Certes (talk) 22:47, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree. In any event, am I okay to get approval for this in the meantime? There's no net change from the WP side of things. Theknightwho (talk) 14:58, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

• Task: Prevent (by denyingreverting the edit [or removing the offending links, though this might be more complex for little gain]) the addition of self-published and social media pages specifically to pages like Wikipedia:Requested articles/music/Performers, bands and songwriters (probably a good idea for every sub-page of Wikipedia:Requested articles). Examples of such sites include links to "bandcamp.com", instagram, facebook, any blog/wordpress/blogspot link, ...
• Reason: The criteria are very simple, in that, like every article on Wikipedia, requests for articles need to be accompanied with independent reliable sources. Social media/blogs/whatever are not independent reliable sources, and, while they might be useful for some stuff on the ultimate final article, they are simply useless fluff on the requests page.
• Diffs: Unnecessary, but here's an example of the kind of removal and waste of editor time that this creates.

• On another tangent, it might be simply a better idea to just get rid of the requested articles pages with more obvious potential for self-promotional attempts, but that's another issue, which I'm not willing to start exploring now. In the meantime, this would be a decent first step.

RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:12, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Filters run on every page so I don't think this is an appropriate use of the filter. Suggest using a bot to manage a single page. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:17, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: I don't know how efficient it is, but it is possible to specify page_title or page_prefixedtitle in a filter, i.e. pseudo-code:

if (page_prefixedtitle == "Requested articles") { //regex for links }

RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:27, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Yeah but it'll still run on every page. See top of page (Filters are applied to all edits. Problematic changes that apply to a single page are likely not suitable for an edit filter. Page protection may be more appropriate in such cases.). If we start doing requests for some pages we'll have no good reason to stop doing them for others, and it'll only get us closer to the limits. I think a bot to revert edits is more desirable for a use case like this. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:29, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: If you say so. My skills with bots are non-existent, so I assume there's also a noticeboard for bot requests somewhere, since I can't quite go to WP:BAG and ask them to create a bot, right? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:38, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Yup! WP:BOTREQ. It shouldn't be difficult to have a bot either listening to recent changes or checking the page at regular intervals. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:39, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:42, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

This didn't get any response here on this page before getting archived the first time around. Hopefully someone notices? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 04:08, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

@Beetstra: Is this something your bot could handle, presumably starting with logging? Johnuniq (talk) 04:26, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

XLinkBot reverts those: social media in external links, I think bandcamp is one of them (see user:XLinkBot/RevertList), and blogs and similar are in the list of links that XLinkBot tries to detect as references and revert them as such (see User:XLinkBot/RevertReferencesList). I do see that a lot of these still come through though, and see even regulars adding linkfarms of social networking and even trying to defend it. XLinkBot is a nice warning system on newbies, but the rest still requires constant cleanup. Maybe an edit filter with category checking: if this is in category:X AND in category:Y then warn/block? Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:23, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

If you only want this to run on requested article pages: This could be done easily with a user script that is manually run by the user every once in awhile. I wrote a similar one last year called User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/RequestedArticleSifter.js, which deletes any bullet in Wikipedia:Requested articles/Business and economics/Companies that has less than 2 sources. Adapting it to delete any bullet that contains a blacklisted URL would be simple. Would just need the blacklist. I would support shutting down some of these spammy, unmaintained areas of WP:RA. I've thrown the idea out on a talk page or two, but the talk pages are inactive, and I didn't want to put in the effort/drama of an RFC/MFD. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:00, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

We need some sort of bot to update the adopters list at WP:ADOPT. Theo's Little Bot used to do this but the bot operator has gone inactive and the bot itself has been deactivated. —GMX^{(on the go!)} 17:49, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Courtesy link to source code: here. I could probably have a go at running this on Toolforge. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 18:41, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

BRFA filed 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 22:43, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

{{done}} (see above) ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:15, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Requesting template value conversion from string to numeric. Cleanup is a little over 11k pages for Template:C-SPAN uses where the value is a string when it needs to use the numeric ID to prevent link rot.

1. The bot action would need to check each page listed in Category:Pages using non-numeric C-SPAN identifiers
2. For each use of Template:C-SPAN (usually 1 per page) extract the string value used.
3. Resolve the C-SPAN URL format generated by the template (https://www.c-span.org/person/?jonstewart).
4. Parse the response URL to extract the new value to be inserted as the numeric ID - ie 48924 from response url - https://www.c-span.org/person/?48924/JonStewart
   1. If the response is 404, remove the string value and save for a manual review. (Templates without a value for Wikidata P2190 will automatically be added to Category:C-SPAN template failing to display.
   2. Values in Category:C-SPAN template failing to display will be available for a manual lookup for a match.)

I made a similar request on the link rot bot request page, but I'm unsure this is applicable due to not being a link, but a template value.Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 19:11, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

@Wolfgang8741: I've just finished implementing this, here's the final product. Is there anything you want changed before I take it over to BRFA? Philroc (talk) 23:42, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

@Philroc Ha! I'll definitely be looking into pywikibot, didn't realize it would be that simple. My only comments are - it would have been easier to read with comments ;) and the only thing I'd probably add is a sleep timer to slow down the request lookup for niceness with the c-span web server (unless there is a throttle built in). I processed a little over 5k doing this for Wikidata already (though still need to deprecate the strings there), I just haven't had the time to read up on pywikibot to do this on Wikipedia. I found about 10% were broken on Wikidata, not sure what we'll find here. Thanks again. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 00:04, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

@Wolfgang8741: Done, BRFA filed. Philroc (talk) 02:06, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

I suppose this is more asking for help with a bot task over requesting a bot be written, but I've started a thread at WT:AWB/Tasks that could use some input from botops (if AWB module coding is your thing). Feel free to remove this if it's too far out-of-scope. Primefac (talk) 21:00, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

where discussion? —usernamekiran (talk) 03:43, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran it was archived. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks/Archive_14#Replacing_one_type_of_list_with_another 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 05:44, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

I have a JWB settings file with robust replace patterns to fix over-capitalization in nearly 17,000 tennis articles (tested on nearly 1000 already). See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tennis#Cleanup edits and User:Dicklyon/Tennis cleanup JWB JSON. Who has a bot that's good for such? Dicklyon (talk) 04:45, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

@Dicklyon I could have a go at this. Does the replace still have any remaining false positives? 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 18:03, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

(although I would need to go through a new BRFA for this, so if somebody has existing broad approval, go for it) 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 18:04, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm not finding any false positives; still adding a few extra clauses. Dicklyon (talk) 18:07, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

BRFA filed 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 22:33, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I would like to save time by editing trying to figure out what pages have Commons, Wikiquote, or other WikiProject categories/pages. And if they're not linked on the said articles, it would save time instead of trying to figure out manually, for instance, by going through which images are on Commons and if a category exists for the subject.

The same would go for article talk pages instead of trying to figure out by adding the annual readership template using the preview function of changes.

I'd prefer the bot to show these two requests in a list format. Thanks. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 20:12, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi @WikiCleanerMan, could you clarify your request a bit? For the first part regarding Commons or Wikiquote, you should be able to access those if you click "Wikidata item" on the sidebar for a page. Of course, not all pages have Commons categories or Wikiquote pages, and not all pages will have the "Wikidata item" item. This works for the pages that do have Commons cats or Wikiquote pages though. In terms of WikiProjects, all pages associated with WikiProjects would have tags on the talk pages, no?

For annual readership, are you suggesting a page with the annual readership of all articles, or something else? 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 22:41, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

🐶 EpicPupper, for the readership I should have added this, this is for articles that don't have that template on their talk page when they have a significant number of views. But for the Commons and sister projects, I don't see such a tag on the talk pages here on Wikipedia. But it's for pages that do have cats and pages for the respective Wikipedia articles but are not linked on said Wikipedia articles. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 22:50, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

@WikiCleanerMan

1. For the pageviews, are you suggesting a list of pageviews for all pages that don't have the template currently? A bot to automatically add the templates?
2. For Commons and Wiktionary, please re-read my comment above about Wikidata. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 22:54, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

For the pageviews, yes, I would like a list of pages that don't have it currently. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 22:58, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

🐶 EpicPupper, pinging in case you didn't see my response above. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 15:48, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

@WikiCleanerMan: Are you looking for something like this [15]? ― Qwerfjkltalk 15:54, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Qwerfjkl, pretty much. But that is a lot of pages without the readership. Over seven million pages. I thought it was a couple thousand. Perhaps a bot command should add the template to those article talk pages. It'll be too much for any one or group of editors to do it manually. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 16:02, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

@WikiCleanerMan, seven million talk pages is not appropriate for a bot to edit in order to just add the readership template. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 17:13, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I guess I could do it manually. That list provided Qwerfjkl is satisfactory for now. This request can be closed. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 17:21, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

{{Done}} over there, by the way. (This reply is just to get rid of the red box in the table at the top.) Enterprisey (talk!) 19:43, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Many months ago, we deprecated certain parameters in Template:Infobox lighthouse - a list is below. I am wondering whether a bot could go around and remove these parameters from the template call? It would clear out Category:Pages using infobox lighthouse with deprecated parameters and also stop encouraging editors to use these parameters. Thank you — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:44, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Are there any other fixes needed (i.e. replacement parameters, etc), or is it just removal of this list? Either way, can do, just want to make sure I'm as efficient as possible. Primefac (talk) 18:46, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Ping to MSGJ in case you missed my query. Primefac (talk) 08:27, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Primefac. The only other thing which occurs to me currently is to replace image_name with image, which is something I've wanted to do for a while. I find this parameter confusing and unintuitive. I don't think it should be controversial at all, but I have posted at the template talk page just in case. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:44, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

That's fine, I'll add it in as an additional replacement just for the pages in the tracking cat. Primefac (talk) 14:25, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

@Primefac: I see you've started. Could you remove admiralty as well? [16] Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:24, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Heh, I wondered why half the pages were still in the cat ;-) Primefac (talk) 20:28, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

 Done. Primefac (talk) 21:30, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Many thanks Primefac. For future information, there were a couple that I had to fix manually (example), probably because of irregular usage from other editors — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:14, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Ugh, I hate GIGO issues; every time I think I've got every possible way folks can screw things up coded into my module, someone does something new and more stupid. Thanks for cleaning up after me :-) Primefac (talk) 11:07, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Moved from AWB tasks. I'd like for someone to convert all U.S. county presidential election results from wikitable markup (such as at Rockland County, New York) into template form using {{PresHead}}, {{PresRow}}, and {{PresFoot}} (such as at Cook County, Illinois). There is currently a Reward Board entry for this task, and anyone who does it will be given an appropriate barnstar.

This doesn't seem too difficult prima facie, and might not even require a bot, just some regex and AWB; I've tried regex to the effect of replacing:

{{Hidden begin|titlestyle=background:#ccccff|title=Presidential election results}}
{| align="center" border="2" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="float:right; margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 95%;"
|+ '''Presidential election results'''X
|- bgcolor=lightgrey
! Year
! [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]]
! [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic]]
! [[Third Party (United States)|Third parties]]
|-

with

{{PresHead|place={{{subst:PAGENAME}}}|whig=y|source1=X}}
<!-- PresRow should be {{PresRow|Year|Winning party|GOP/Whig vote #|Dem vote #|3rd party vote #|State}} -->

Things might be tricky with varying numbers of sources, but the code of {{PresHead}} is probably such that multiple sources can be concatenated in the |source1= parameter even if that's not technically good practice. Ditto for replacing

| style="text-align:center;" {{Party shading/W}}|'''[[United States presidential election in S, Y|Y]]'''
| style="text-align:center;" {{Party shading/Republican}}|48.6% ''R''
| style="text-align:center;" {{Party shading/Democratic}}|'''50.3%''' ''D''
| style="text-align:center; background:honeyDew;"|1.1% ''T''
|-

with

{{PresRow|Y|W|R|D|T|S}}

And similar, with the table cap, for {{PresFoot}}. There are, of course, some snags that this could hit. Rockland County's example above includes an example of referencing a specific row, which is a big no-no for {{PresRow}} (all references need to be at the table head), as well whether the links are to 2020 United States presidential election in New York or United States presidential election in New York, 2020 (for example), and a human AWB operator would have to look out for such cases. The particularly coding-inclined could also write a method/function in AWB to deal with such things. In any event, I feel that this is certainly non-trivial but ultimately doable by my technical superiors. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 16:50, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I'll give this a go. ― Qwerfjkltalk 15:29, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

@John M Wolfson: Can you provide a list of pages needing fixing? ― Qwerfjkltalk 19:37, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

This is a diff of what the code does so far. Can you see any problems? ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:07, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

• @Qwerfjkl: the |whig= has to be "yes" written out in full, not "y", though this can easily be changed in the source code if that's against best template practices. Otherwise the test looks good. I think the vast majority of US county pages still need to be done, so sift through Category:Counties of the United States by state's categories. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 00:41, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

  On the Reward Board, you mention there is consensus for this task. Can you link to that? ― Qwerfjkltalk 08:17, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

  Courtesy ping @John M Wolfson. ― Qwerfjkltalk 08:17, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Qwerfjkl: Here and here. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 16:45, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

• I'll file a BRFA after my current one is finished. ― Qwerfjkltalk 17:09, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
• @John M Wolfson: BRFA filed. ― Qwerfjkltalk 19:19, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
• @John M Wolfson: I've started this task, but there are a few errors. Can you add an error-tracking category to the templates (possibly with {{#iferror}})? ― Qwerfjkltalk 16:53, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
  • I don't know of how any of that works, sorry. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 20:08, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
    • Qwerfjkl, if you link to some of these errors, I can try to work on a tracking category. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:27, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

      @Jonesey95: I believe most of the errors are from {{#expr}} being given non-number values (I don't have any examples because I can't easily find them myself). I've attempted to do it in the sandbox for PresRow. ― Qwerfjkltalk 06:04, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

      @Jonesey95: I think Category:Errors in Template:PresRow should work? It populated with 7 or so pages, all due to an error in my regex which I've now fixed. (I've got a list at User:Qwerfjkl/UScounties/check of pages on which the regex failed, so it skipped. I'm planning to go through and improve the regex so it matches these pages e.g. at Calhoun County, Alabama#Politics the regex won't match because there are missing cells in the middle of the row.) ― Qwerfjkltalk 17:48, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

      It looks like you have it sorted for now. Let me know if you need help. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:45, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Hello!

Some non-free files are used in multiple articles. Each use demands a seperate fair use rationale (FUR) on the file page. Sometimes a file is removed or replaced in an article, however the now redundant FUR is still there unless someone removes it, such as Special:Diff/1069179564. I propose that a bot remove all redundant FURs from file pages since they take up a lot of space on often quite small file pages. This request ought to be a continious such that when a FUR becomes redundant in the future, the bot will notice this and remove it. I don't have any data on it but I estimate that it probably will be 1-5 edits per month, except for in the beginning since there to my knowledge hasn't been a bot doing this before.Jonteemil (talk) 13:45, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Taking a shot at this. Gaelan 💬✏️ 22:26, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Alright, I'd appreciate some thoughts here from someone more experienced.

I'm not sure there's an efficient way to find these cases. There are about 700k non-free files on enwiki, so fetching the wikitext and backlinks of each of these pages is (I think) unfeasible. I tried an SQL-based approach, looking at pagelinks from the File: pages to mainspace that don't correspond to imagelinks back to the file, but that yields way too many false positives because file descriptions often include link to related articles in addition to the link to the article where the non-free media is in use. (For example, this album cover photo has one non-free media rationale, for the article on the album, but also links to the artist and label.)

Handling new cases as they appear might be a little easier - look for recent changes that remove File: links, check if they're non-free, and remove templates if so.

Any thoughts on cleaner ways to implement this? Gaelan 💬✏️ 14:24, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

One possibility is to enhance {{Non-free media rationale}} and similar to check that {{{Article}}} links to {{PAGENAME}}, and populate a maintenance error category if not. However, I don't know a simple way to perform that check, other than writing Lua to parse the article for a link, which is complicated as they can appear in galleries and various infobox parameters as well as File: wikilinks. That might be considered too expensive for such a widely used template. Category:Wikipedia non-free files lacking article backlink and similar aren't quite what we want: they're for when the |Article= parameter is missing or invalid. Certes (talk) 15:56, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

See WP:VPPR#Preserve at Wikidata?. As I said there, there doesn't have to be any bureaucracy for this one - just jump in and start coding. It's a nice self-contained task for beginner bot operators or anyone who wants to get into bots, as well. Enterprisey (talk!) 07:47, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Enterprisey! This caught my eye. To clarify, this is for a bot that generates a list in userspace/on Toolforge of the categories, not directly editing Wikidata, correct? 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 05:13, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

@EpicPupper, right. I suppose we'd have to ask the Wikidata people for permission for a bot there. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:38, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

{{archive now}} Done for the archive bot. —usernamekiran (talk) 13:28, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

A bot should convert all old "Portal:Current events/Year Month Day" pages to use the "Current events" template instead of the "Current events header" template. For example, here's what would be done to Portal:Current events/2016 March 9:

{{Current events header|2016|03|9}}

<!-- All news items below this line -->

would be replaced with

{{Current events|year=2016|month=03|day=9|content=

<!-- All news items below this line -->

and

<!-- All news items above this line -->|}

would be replaced with

<!-- All news items above this line -->}}

.

This is apparently being done by 203.128.83.115, but I told them to stop. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 14:56, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Two questions. First, why do the old pages need converting? Second, and more importantly, if someone is updating these, why did you tell them to stop doing so? Primefac (talk) 15:00, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Answers to questions 1 and 2:

1. Question 1: For consistency, which 203.128.83.115 might have thought.
2. Question 2: Because the task is better suited for a bot.

And yet, 203.128.83.115 is still doing this despite being told to stop.

GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 17:00, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

@GeoffreyT2000: Does the change violate Wikipedia:COSMETICBOT (i.e. does it have a visible change)? ― Qwerfjkltalk 17:50, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Consistency is sometimes a useful goal, but it is not typically an end in itself. Why do these pages need to be made consistent? What end does it serve? – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:45, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Qwerfjkl, if you look at the edits they are not cosmetic, as it appears the newer version of the page adds (what I would consider to be) useful navigation options (even if I believe they're formatted terribly). That is, however, the only major change, so I agree with Jonesey that it's probably not the most vital task in the world.

That being said, if this task is "replace Template A with Template B", it would be much easier to just turn Template A into a redirect/wrapper, or send it to TFD, than manually change all of the pages. Primefac (talk) 07:26, 11 March 2022 (UTC) Didn't see it was two templates, which makes the wrapper option problematic

Thank you for the answers. At the risk of repeating myself, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the IP editor making these changes. Hell, if they manage to convert all of the pages before we finish debating the issue, it becomes a moot point! Primefac (talk) 11:08, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@Primefac: I honestly think the bot idea should just be dropped entirely. Based on the IP's history, they're moving at a pretty fast pace and already converted more than half of the old current events pages. Philroc (talk) 03:35, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I have started a Draft:List of United States federal judges who died in office (roughly as a parallel to List of United States Congress members who died in office), but it has immediately become apparent to me that there is a substantial proportion of building such a list that could more easily be automated. Since every article on a federal judge should indicate both their date of death and the date of the end of their active service, I am hoping that a bot could pluck out those items of information, along with the other items with which I would like to populate the table (date and place of birth, appointing President, jurisdiction, date of initiation of service, place of death, and successor). BD2412 T 21:16, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

I can think of two ways to do this: Wikidata and Infoboxes. ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:20, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

The presence of infoboxes may be inconsistent. If it helps, by the way, we have a rather massive list at Wikipedia:WikiProject United States courts and judges/judgestats containing most of this information about almost all of the federal judges. BD2412 T 21:23, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

It looks like that contains all the information necessary, except birthdate, birthplace, and successor, which can be fetched from wikidata. Is there anything else I'm missing? ― Qwerfjkltalk 22:05, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

I think that's it. Note that the linked list is a little bit out of date (as these things will be), and I want to be careful to include only judges who died while in active service, not in senior status (i.e. any judge who has a "senior status" date should be out). BD2412 T 22:20, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

To confirm:
You want the information from Judge, Court, President, Commission date, End date, where End reason is death and Senior date is -. (Place of death will also have to be obtained from wikidata.) ― Qwerfjkltalk 22:31, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

The Wikidata properties could either be transcluded:
{{wikidata|property|edit|page=Page|P123}} (edit adds an edit link)
or substituted:
{{subst:wikidata|property|page=Page|P123}} ― Qwerfjkltalk 22:43, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes. I prefer substitution to transclusion. BD2412 T 23:05, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

I have worked up a list from the project page in the draft space, but I think something better can be made. Neither the names or the dates in the list I have made are properly sortable. BD2412 T 00:23, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

I've made a list at User:Qwerfjkl/judges. ― Qwerfjkltalk 08:18, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412: I've finished importing the information from wikidata. They are some issues when wikidata doesn't have the information (the successor especially), but most values are filled. I've left [[]] where wikidata didn't have a value (and the property was linkworthy). ― Qwerfjkltalk 14:52, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this! There are some obvious areas where manual fixes are needed (in addition the visible error messages, most of the place names link to disambiguation pages, and there are some duplicate lines for judges who had multiple appointments), but this is a much better place from which to start. I'll move your list over the draft. BD2412 T 18:00, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

No problem. Can you give.me a ping when it's finished, and I'll (try to) add any information you've added to Wikidata? Happy editing! ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:43, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

I removed a few of the less consequential columns; the rest is just going to be hunt-and-peck. I'll let you know! BD2412 T 21:07, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: Now moved to mainspace and split between List of United States federal judges who died in active service (1789–1919) and List of United States federal judges who died in active service (1920–present). I may split further, but there are only a few dozen problematic lines remaining, at the end of each page. BD2412 T 21:19, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412: if you ever need to do this again in the future, it might be worth taking a look at Wikidata:Tools/OpenRefine. ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:48, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: Well, it turns out that no good deed goes unpunished. BD2412 T 17:23, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Exported. (here's my attempt at using OpenRefine). ― Qwerfjkltalk 18:53, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate that, but as quickly as I moved the articles to mainspace, they have been nominated for deletion. If that continues to go poorly, perhaps this information can be retained in project space so that the hand-curated parts it can be used to fill in the missing elements in Wikidata. BD2412 T 19:00, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Slowly working through these. Another batch. ― Qwerfjkltalk 18:19, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

I've finished exporting the successor data with this batch. ― Qwerfjkltalk 18:43, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Hey @Qwerfjkl these batches will need to be reverted. They are not creating a statement consistent with positions on Wikidata. The "replaces" should be a qualifier to the statement of the position as part of the property "position held"(P93). Take a look at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q883246 for an example how replaces should be used for positions on Wikidata. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 08:13, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

@Wolfgang8741: I have been hand-sorting the data. Hopefully the ongoing deletion discussion will be resolved favorably, so this content can be preserved as is, but if not I will move the articles to WP:USCJ space so that the manually-generated information can continue to be reconciled with the Wikidata information. BD2412 T 17:17, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412 I wasn't questioning the quality of the judge data nor the collection process, but the format of the statements uploaded to Wikidata in the batched edits were incorrect to the practices for position and how replaces and replaced by are applied. I reverted the existing batches. The data is welcome on Wikidata, but it should follow the format as indicated in the example. Getting the data into Wikidata with the correct statement format would allow creating these lists through a query and current non mainspace lists generated by https://listeria.toolforge.org/ similar to uses by Wikiprojects and myself. Within a position checks for single position holder consistency errors with Template:PositionHolderHistory often applied to the Wikidata position Qid talk page like Talk:Q5589680. I'm neutral to the creation of the list on EN Wiki, but very much would like to support getting the data into correctly and fixing Wikidata as needed (with references). Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 17:51, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

@Wolfgang8741: I think I understand the issue. There are some complications with federal judges, given the historical tendency of judges to be appointed to one court, elevated to another, perhaps designated as chief judge for a stretch, perhaps taking senior status and continuing to work on the court while no longer officially an active judge, all with different start and end dates of service. Sometimes the courts themselves are split or merged, or the judge's seat is abolished. The good news is that the Federal Judicial Center rather scrupulously maintains all of this data, and most of our Wikipedia articles on federal judges started by scraping the data from this excellent public domain database. A typical case for a judge who retired in senior status after serving a term as Chief Judge would be Julian A. Cook; a typical case for a judge who died in active service would be Allen E. Barrow. Ideally, Wikidata should reflect these categories of information. BD2412 T 19:53, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Just a note that a related conversation is going on, on my talk page. ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:44, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

N Not done
WP:FAC periodically runs into post-expand include size problems (PEIS), where the expanded included templates exceed the limit. The biggest culprit is {{tq}}, which, if used to quote a 400 character sentence, costs 1600 bytes in a FAC because the FAC itself is transcluded into WP:FAC. The instructions at FAC have been changed to say "don't use tq" but of course some editors don't notice this and still use it.

I've created {{tq top}} and {{tq bottom}}, which have the same effect as {{tq}} used with just the text parameter, and go at the start and end of the text. That is, This is an example using tq and This is an example using tq top and tq bottom should look identically formatted. The latter is much cheaper in PEIS.

Would someone be able to create a bot that periodically looks for any page transcluded onto WP:FAC and substitutes {{tq top}} and {{tq bottom}} for any uses of Example text? If the use of {{tq}} has any of the other parameters (very rare) it could be skipped. The bot shouldn't run against any page not transcluded onto WP:FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:54, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

I could create a FACBot run to do that. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:45, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

That would be great. Once a day would be plenty. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:47, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm actually opposed to the creation these templates. The reasons {{tq}} costs more is because it has a valid check in place to make sure it isn't used on article pages and additional formatting options and correct usage of templatestyles. These newer templates have none of those. This will eventually lead to these templates being used on pages they aren't meant to. I've tested converting {{tq}} to Lua and while it still has a larger post expand size, it is much less than the non-Lua version.

• {{tq|This is an example using tq}} - 176
• {{tq top}} This is an example using tq {{tq bottom}} - 73
• {{#invoke:Sandbox/Gonnym/TQ|main|This is an example using tq}} - 107 Gonnym (talk) 13:21, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

  An alternative is fine with me if it can fix the problem. At FAC the issue has been literally hundreds of uses of tq, sometimes enclosing thousands of characters. Tq multiplied the content by four, as opposite to templates like {{green}} which multiplied by two. I just tested your version against tq and the proposed top and bottom; here's what I got for a quote of 1000 characters for the post-expand include size:

  • Original tq : 2123
  • Top and bottom : 73
  • New Lua version: 1079

  I would suggest substituting your version for the current version regardless of how this conversation goes, as it will certainly help, but it doesn't do as much to help as the top and bottom templates do. Could the namespace validations be added to the top and bottom templates? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:17, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

  I would support implementing the new Lua version as a first step. Note for clarity that this is not for tq top and tq bottom; only for the Lua version. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 18:21, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

The new templates are not ready to replace {{tq}}, for multiple reasons including those detailed above. See Template:Tq top/testcases. Bot requests should ideally be supported by a consensus discussion that leads to the request; this idea should have started at Template talk:Tq or at the FAC talk page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:28, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

There was an extensive discussion at WT:FAC recently about the problems caused by {{tq}}, which led to a decision to ban its use at FAC. I posted at WT:FAC yesterday to see if there were any objections to me posting this request, and the only two responders agreed it was worth a try. What else is needed to make this request acceptable? If some form of the top/bottom approach could be made to work, it would be very helpful to FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:45, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Honestly, the LUA-fication of the template seems the most productive and least disruptive methods. @Gonnym and Jonesey95: how long do you estimate it would take to iron out the kinks for the lua version to be mostly functional? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:13, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Fixed the issues but while the direct invocation is 103, calling it via {{talk quote inline/sandbox|This is an example using tq}} bumps it to 206, making it not viable at all and worse than the template version. Gonnym (talk) 06:03, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

The {{tq top}} and {{tq bottom}} proposed templates are in a sense nothing to do with {{tq}}; I might just as well have named them {{fac quote top}} and {{fac quote bottom}}, for example. Yes, fixing {{tq}} so it costs less would help, but the point here was to not use tq, but instead use something cheaper. There's no need for tq's parameters; in my note above I pointed out that any use of tq with parameters should not be substituted. If we can't fix tq, and the goal here is to use a different template such as the ones proposed, what is the objection to Hawkeye7 running his bot to make the substitution? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:31, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

If you have to run a bot to fix something about how the FAC page is (mal)functioning, maybe addressing the underlying issues that led to the malfunctioning would be a better approach ? Those options were well discussed at FAC talk ... FAC is not peer review, FAC was never intended to be peer review, and when line-by-line prose nitpicks are so bad that template limits are exceeded, FACs should be archived and sent to peer review. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:18, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

{{Wikidata redirect}} should be placed with correct Qid into all redirects which are linked to Wikidata elemenens. Also {{Wikidata redirect}} should be removed from all redirects which are now not linked to Wikidata elemenens. Also list of such redirects with Qids whould be usefull to check was redirect removed correctly or not. --Heanor (talk) 15:24, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@Heanor: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval#ElliBot ― Qwerfjkltalk 18:07, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

When {{Wikidata redirect}} is used something needs to be fixed. Sometimes it needs to be added on Wikidata, sometimes it's incorrect and we have to remove it, sometimes there is a bigger issue behind it. Just removing all the templates is not the right solution. Category:Unlinked Wikidata redirects currently has 2167 pages in it, most of which are asteroids that in fact have a Wikidata item that sould be connected. I added some of these links a while ago but there are still quite a lot of pages left and it's not a particularly exciting task. --PhiH (talk) 19:15, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I think that a bot that would update stats relating to social media type websites would be helpful. This has been requested before, but the other attempts have never come to fruition. I'd like to make this bot myself, but would like clarify what would be the best way to execute this idea.

Bots that have been requested in the past have changed the page directly, and others have had criticisms. One question is, where would this info be updated / changed? You could change values on all pages that the related infoboxes, but this would only be on the english wikipedia. You could use wikidata, but there aren't very standardized properties for different statistics based on different accounts. Someone commenting on request for approval for "YTStatsBot" suggested using tabular data at commons, but I don't know how common it is for this to be used with bots.

So, thoughts? Should I try doing something with wikidata, use tabular data, or just update the pages directly. Thanks for your consideration, ― Levi_OP^Talk 00:35, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

From reading those discussions, Wikidata is probably the best option. Enterprisey (talk!) 03:22, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

If I was using wikidata, what property would I update? And would if a user had multiple channels? Is there a property specifically for youtube subscriber counts as well as view counts that handles multiple channels, or would a new property need to be created. Thanks, ― Levi_OP^Talk 03:41, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Seems like wikidata:Q50825725#P8687 is what you're looking for. If multiple channels, I'd say all of them, assuming the bot makes updates infrequently enough; I'd strongly advocate for only updating the count when the most significant digit changes, or perhaps when the two most significant digits change. Enterprisey (talk!) 04:33, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

My thoughts were that the bot would "run" once every 24 hours, at whatever time wikipedia is the least active. While running, the bot would loop through every occurrence of the social media followers property, and if the property has a youtube channel id entry, it would query the youtube api for the current sub amount. If it has increased by more than 10,000 subscribers, it would update the amount. Then how would this data be accessed by pages? Would all youtube infoboxes need to be updated to use wikidata instead of just user input parameters? ― Levi_OP^Talk 14:12, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Would all youtube infoboxes need to be updated to use wikidata instead of just user input parameters? Yes. I think there's a pywikibot script for moving infobox parameters to wikidata. ― Qwerfjkltalk 17:46, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

You wouldn't need a script, just change the data values for |subscribers= and |views= in the infobox to call {{WikidataIB}} or whatever it is that calls up specific values.

For the record, if this were done on enWiki, I would suggest putting all of the values into a central module that could then be called on. I'm throwing it out there just since the question of "how" was asked, and it's a possibility. Primefac (talk) 17:50, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, but if the data is only on enwiki, then that getting data from wikidata won't work. ― Qwerfjkltalk 17:53, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Not sure which "that" you're referring to, but I'm referring to enWiki templates getting information from enWiki modules that are updated and maintained by an enWiki botop. Obviously if we store the data on enWiki then WikiData will not be able to use it. I was not advocating for or against either model, just putting it out there as an option. Primefac (talk) 18:00, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

@Primefac: You could just replace the actual value in the infobox to use the information from wikidata directly, but wouldn't this leave a lot of templates that have incorrect data/formatting? You'd still need a script to go through and remove all of the outdated information that used to be in the |subscribers= and |views= parameters. ― Levi_OP^Talk 18:48, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

No. If I edit {{Infobox YouTube personality}} and change |data30= (which is "Total views") to be equal to {{#invoke:WikidataIB |getValue....}}, pointing at whatever P value the YouTube Total Views counter is stored in, then it doesn't matter what the user puts into |views= on any given article, because the infobox isn't looking for user-generated "views" values. Primefac (talk) 19:07, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

I understand that it technically wouldn't be an issue, but we don't want populated parameters in templates that don't actually do anything all over wikipedia, right? Someone looking to edit the view count could try changing the value if it's still there and when nothing changes be very confused. ― Levi_OP^Talk 19:11, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

If that's an issue I have a bot that will fix that. Primefac (talk) 19:13, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Seems like wikidata:Q50825725#P8687 is what you're looking for. After looking at some of the other properties commonly used to represent youtube channels, wikidata:Q50825725#P2397 seems like a much better option than wikidata:Q50825725#P8687. While "Social media followers" has the subscribers for multiple channels, it doesn't include views, and also shows other accounts like twitter pages. "YouTube channel ID" seems like a much better option because it displays subscriber count as well as view count, and supports multiple channels. ― Levi_OP^Talk 19:25, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, thanks for finding that. Enterprisey (talk!) 08:19, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Since no one else seems to have anything to say about how the bot would be run, what's next? If we wanted this to work, it seems that updating the {{Infobox YouTube personality}} to use a wikidata entry instead of user input would be the next step. Should we leave a message on the talk page of the template, or maybe also on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject YouTube? ― Levi_OP^Talk 16:26, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

@Levi OP: The next step would be to convert the template to using wikidata/enwiki module. Consensus should be found in which to use (if a change is necessary), at the appropriate place. ― Qwerfjkltalk 22:17, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

While I was going through the requests for edits to (semi-)protected pages, and specifically looking at the request on Talk: C.S. Lewis, I noticed that there are a lot of pages that were protected a long time ago (in the case of C.S. Lewis, nearly 10 years) for edit warring or vandalism and then forgotten about. In many cases, this does more harm than good since--as most "anonymous" edits are constructive and the edit request process can create a backlog--pages should not be protected unless disruption would presently be a) very likely or b) very serious. However, because failure to protect a page can have serious consequences in these situations, editors are ordinarily expected to defer to the judgment of the original protecting admin. Therefore, to balance these interests, I propose that a bot be used to examine indef-protected pages periodically--say, once a year. The bot would:

• Notify the protecting admin, if they are still active (defined as editing, say, once a week or more) and still an administrator, on their talk page that there is a page they have indefinitely protected a long time ago. The bot would prompt the admin to re-examine whether the page still needs to be protected.
• Make a request for review at WP:RFPP for other admins to review if the protecting admin is not still an active administrator.

The bot would not be tasked with unprotecting any pages on its own. Nor should it necessarily prompt review of all indef-protected pages--there are some that definitely need to stay protected indefinitely, such as the site disclaimers, and so those could be marked in such a way to exclude the bot to avoid wasting everyone's time. But in other cases, the bot could prevent pages from being protected that really don't have to be. ChromaNebula (talk) 02:47, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Oh, yes! That's definitely needed. I've often come across pages that got indefinitely protected (or salted) because of isolated instances of vandalism 10 or 15 years ago – that goes against the basic principles of our project. I'm glad someone is finally doing something about it! But I'm wondering, how would the bot distinguish those pages that actually do need ongoing protection (like, controversial topics, or articles with profanities in their title)? – Uanfala (talk) 02:57, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

@ChromaNebula: Wikipedia:Database reports/Indefinitely semi-protected articles. ― Qwerfjkltalk 07:38, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl It's great that this database exists! Should it be used to preemptively notify admins of pages they've protected a long time ago, or only when someone requests an edit? ChromaNebula (talk) 16:47, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

The latter; if a page is stable and protected, we cannot prove that it is because of the protection or because the need has passed, but it does no harm to assume that protection is the reason. Primefac (talk) 14:01, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

This argument goes both ways though: just like you don't see if any bad edits would have been made if the protection weren't there, you also can't see the good edits that would have been done. It can equally well be argued that there'd be no harm in unprotecting all those pages: if there truly is a need for any given page, that need will then make itself apparent and the page will get protected again. – Uanfala (talk) 23:13, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Genuinely, good luck getting that through AN; I don't strictly disagree with your logic, I just find it unlikely that the admin corps will agree to reset the vandalism counter on all these pages. I'm not saying individual pages cannot or should not be unprotected, but unless someone is attempting to productively edit the page there is no indication that dropping the protection is required, and it is doing its job at dissuading drive-by vandalism. Primefac (talk) 09:34, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Do you think I should take this request somewhere else @Primefac? ChromaNebula (talk) 00:43, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

I think in order for a BRFA to be successful, a consensus that this is a "good idea" so to speak would be necessary; asking at WP:AN would give a fairly good indication of whether this consensus exists. Primefac (talk) 11:22, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Given the big scope, this should probably be discussed at the village pump (though of course with a notice of that discussion added to AN). – Uanfala (talk) 15:21, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

The idea may well have merit on a protection policy basis, but as a practical matter I'm not sure it's a good one. Regardless, I doubt this would have community consensus, particularly among admins. For fair reasons too, e.g. it would add a lot of workload, and the unprotection of more semi-protected pages will probably lead to even more driveby vandalism which is already getting past patrollers. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:48, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Alternately, we could have a bot that makes a list of those pages. (How many times have you seen someone say this?) – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 12:18, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Never mind. The database report is essentially only old articles. – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 12:22, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

For some reason a great amount of talk pages have been added the following code: Please select the <code><span style="color:#0645AD;">New section</span></code> tab above to post your comments below. ([17]) and seems to have been mostly done by one editor (haven't checked them all of course). Aside from the fact that it looks out of place with the other talk page banners, using a hardcoded name for the section (which can change at some point) and a color scheme that makes the "New section" text look like a link is bad. As I doubt there was consensus for this, as if there was it would have probably be done by a template, or even directly via one of the talk page banner templates and not manually spammed, this should be removed. Gonnym (talk) 12:01, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Would be easy to code this as an AutoWikiBrowser bot. Only challenge might be ensuring it has consensus. Appears to affect 7,000 talk pages. Want me to try filing a BRFA for it? Any thoughts on a talk page we could post to to get consensus for this? –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:35, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

That was also something I had trouble with. Since this is a generic message I had no idea what would be the correct the discussion venue. I have no problem with a discussion anywhere (though I'm pretty sure it never did have consensus originally). Gonnym (talk) 12:44, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Maybe WP:VPM? If you take the lead on getting consensus, I'll script up a bot and BRFA. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:56, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

The instances I've seen were placed by an active and very competent editor. Why not consult them first? Certes (talk) 13:11, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Buaidh — pinging for your opinion, as the user who added these messages. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 15:15, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

As requested, I've also started a discussion at WP:VPM. Gonnym (talk) 15:31, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

BRFA filed –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:03, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! Gonnym (talk) 21:06, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

 Done –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:47, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Hey, is there a bot that can clear Category:Metacritic ID same as Wikidata (16) please? It would involve changing {{metacritic film|run-this-town}} to {{metacritic film}} for example Indagate (talk) 16:47, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Is this task not cosmetic? * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:48, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Only cosmetic change is the edit button, think the purpose of category is to remove unnecessary part of template from article Indagate (talk) 17:29, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

@Pppery: Removing the manually entered ID adds a Module:EditAtWikidata pencil icon to edit it in Wikidata, so I don't think this counts as cosmetic. @Indagate: I could write a task for this. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 21:17, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you Indagate (talk) 07:17, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

My bot is approved for tasks like this. See User:JJMC89 bot/Wikidata external link template parameter removal. — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:17, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Ah; in that case, I won't bother writing something. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 00:27, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Ah thank you, didn't realise there was a bot already, will add it Indagate (talk) 07:00, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Added to talk pages so hopefully no objections. Having trouble with the Wikidata check for Template:IMDb title but will add this there if can get that working. Indagate (talk) 07:08, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

The template is {{Infobox artist discography}}. Deprecated parameters from the 2010 and 2015 template updates, which are no longer used:

Solidest (talk) 12:34, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Careful when deleting infobox parameters. There's an ANI about this where the situation ended up being pretty nuanced. The community wants some of these "fixed" rather than deleted, and took action against the editor doing the deleting. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:02, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Are these deprecated or unused? There's a rather large difference. Also, I'll note that with only 0 pages in the tracking category, it's not a "big enough" job for my bot. You might want to ask at WP:AWBTASKS. Primefac (talk) 13:25, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

These all are technical parameters which are not needed anymore. They can't be "fixed" anyhow, but only removed.

• coloring is not supported for this template anymore,
• "link parameters" + "References" were used to place a link icon to a sub-paragraph in the article - they have also been removed from the template.

I myself have the AWB rights, but the last time I made such fixes for ~150-200 pages - I was told not to do so many edits with AWB and rather go to the bots requests :} Solidest (talk) 13:51, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

BOTREQ is typically >500 pages. ― Qwerfjkltalk 15:54, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Also, can you point to consensus for this? If so, I can probably do it. ― Qwerfjkltalk 15:55, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

The consensus exists in the fact that the parameters were removed some 5+ years ago. No need to do it yourself, I've already got the infrastructure set up; will probably just bash through these manually later tonight. Primefac (talk) 16:13, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

 Done, though since I was dealing with a discrete list there's a good chance the remaining hundred or so either got skipped by my AWB rules or contained a different invalid param (like World Tour). Should be enough to start whittling it down slightly more manually. Primefac (talk) 19:28, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! Solidest (talk) 05:42, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

I'd like to summit a bot request for the removal of a stand alone (no context) WP:RSUW statement..."Before 1945 the area was part of Germany."...from around 3,000[18] Poland related stub articles covering small villages and rural communities (one example: [19]). I've raised the issue on the Wikipedia:Help desk to see what the best approach might be and after careful consideration, taking into account input from other editors, the short length of the articles in question (which appear only as stubs), and similar articles for other countries relating to rural communities, the simplest approach would be to remove this undue weight statement, while keeping another statement currently in place "For the history of the region, see History of Pomerania." this simple approach allows for the reader to access the history of the region presented in full context, and without placing undue weight on just one period of the region's long history (as the region changed hands between Duchy of Poland, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Denmark, Kingdom of Poland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Prussia, German Reich, Republic of Poland). --E-960 (talk) 09:33, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

There is no consensus in this action, as this facts are not wrong... --Jonny84 (talk) 19:06, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

The fact is not incorrect, however there is consensus that this blurb statement is not neutral and creates undue weight issues, several editors said this statement needs to be removed, or a reference to the entire history made (not just the German period). The area was not just German since forever, to highlight this one fact is bias. Also, given today's events in Ukraine it is rather hostile, as it implies that Germany has some special claim to all these locations in modern Poland. I'm actually taken aback by the fact that this was not picked up earlier and the original bot template like this was used. --E-960 (talk) 19:25, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

• Note: several editors do agree that this is a problematic stand alone (out of context) statement, including user Phil Bridger "...There are many thousands of villages in the world that are located in places that have been part of different countries over the last few centuries. Should we be repeating the history in every one of them, even when no source has been provided about the particular village in question, and admonishing people who remove such content? Of course not: that belongs in articles about the wider region that has changed hands, rather than in each one of the village articles." and user Black Kite "To be fair, the edit removed does suggest that the area had always been German before 1945, which is of course misleading..." and user Rsjaffe "This should be a brief article about a small village. Couldn't there be a statement that refers to the history of pomerania or western pomerania and just states that the village has been part of many different countries over its history?". I think my bot request addresses those suggestions, by removing the out of context statement and having the link to the history of the region. --E-960 (talk) 19:53, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

The idea of Pomerania being German "before 1945" can easily be interpreted as wrong. It is also vague and hard to discern what the authors' purpose was. Was it to talk about how it was the Third Reich's? Was it to mention how it was of the German Empire? I think that the "For the history of the region, see History of Pomerania" substitute is the best, or perhaps it should not even be mentioned at all. Most towns don't have anything talking about what previously owned it. Mebigrouxboy (talk) 22:38, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm up for this - only one editor has objected, and without a policy-based argument. (I'll file it in a week or so.) ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:16, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@E-960: BRFA filed ― Qwerfjkltalk 08:27, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

• I would support eliminating this content from individual village articles, unless there is a reliable source writing about that aspect of the particular village and inclusion does not fall foul of WP:DUE. The history of a region belongs in the article about the history of that region. I have one question about the proposed bot: does this statement exist only in articles about villages in Pomerania, or also about those in Silesia or other areas? Phil Bridger (talk) 15:35, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

There' discussion arose about what's to do while emptying "last" field while "first" field is filled, as such action pops up an template:cite error at page view mode and continue filling Category:CS1 errors: missing name (that already have ~500 pages now). In view of that problem for totally emptying above mentioned category I propose to fill corresponding "cite" template empty "last" field (where "first" field is filled), which is the reason of such error, with "-" sign, that clearly helps by not adding article to category of errorous articles while displaying all existing "first" field text at page view mode instead of popping up the error and, that way, clearing errorous articles itself. Who can make it? 85.238.106.27 (talk) 10:57, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

The above message is not entirely clear, but I'm pretty sure there is no possible bot task here. These citations need to be fixed manually. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:46, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Why not fix the problem rather than hide the problem? Keith D (talk) 18:55, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't know if the above response is to me or to the OP. I am not advocating hiding anything. Discussion about how citation templates work is held at Help Talk:CS1. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:34, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

@Jonesey95 and Keith D:If you will SHOW me that someone ever trying to fix it manually - I'll agree with you that "problem is not rather a problem", but for now I see category is just incresing time after time and that's all. Besides category have description of reason and some remote from reality recomendation of how to fix it ("To resolve this error, ensure that the numbering of the |<last>n= parameters increments properly."). In reality though reason is editors ignore the requirements for filling in both fields, filling in only one of them, however they STILL FILL FULL INFORMATION about author of citing source, which means, in fact, in such frequent/cоmmon cases there's NOTHING to fix, only really needed thing is to SHOW the "first" field content, that is clearly easily fixed by filling "last" field by some insignificant character (i.e. "-"), that, as a result, will finally show the "first" field value (that case it's "Jamie Lovegrove") at the citing instead of hiding it (that case it's "Debbie Clark") "first" field value with popping up an error.

Isn't that a solution of a problem category represents? Or you really think someone will be interested to MANUALLY dig in already filled with valuable information fields? If talking with language of math: "Rearranging the terms does not change the sum", so just fix category articles with a bot. Otherwise, on my POV, category will just raise indefinitely 85.238.102.237 (talk) 20:32, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Discussion about how citation templates work is held at Help Talk:CS1. This discussion shows that the category's predecessor (the category has been renamed) had more than 12,000 pages in it in 2014. Gnomes remove pages from this category all the time; you can enable the relevant category-watching preference to see it happening. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:41, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

@Keith D:Where can I enable the relevant category-watching preference? That would help me see it all on my own. 85.238.102.237 (talk) 21:15, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist: uncheck "Hide categorization of pages". Put the category page on your watchlist. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:54, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

@Jonesey95:ah, only for registered users. Anyway - thank you ) At least now I see anonymous access valuable limits. 85.238.102.237 (talk) 08:32, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

In the case of Debbie Clark then Clark should be moved from |first= and placed in |last= field. Keith D (talk) 20:59, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I understand that, however I doubt someone will manually move it. What I doing now does not imply "first" parameter analyzing as it will slow down whole process extremely. 85.238.102.237 (talk) 21:15, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

I do not insist on processing it exactly that way, I just offered a solution of "unhiding" "first" parameter value, anyway, when "-" added to the "last" parameter - it still falls into Category:CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list and still being processed later, but article that way already showing "first" field value and not hiding it (however sometimes it's being processed wrong way, that just returns article to category Category:CS1 errors: missing name, or even alternative way by... deleting both fields ;), that, in fact, really fixes both categories falling into issues). If you think that I have given insufficient arguments, close the bot request by denial. I have no any objections. 85.238.102.237 (talk) 21:15, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

This is, in general, a bad task for a bot, unless very specific patterns can be reliable identified. It is however, a much better task for WP:AWB-based semi-automated editing. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:29, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

There are fewer than 700 in the category, so I agree that AWB or JWB is the way to go. I took a look at one to see what a fix would look like, and found that the error was created by a bot, here. It even added the wrong author name, it appears, so an automated fix would leave that wrong. Dicklyon (talk) 21:42, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: It's not the same error as when "last" field stays empty while "first" field not, but, yes, it make article falling into the same category. Isn't it the issue for a citation bot to be fixed for to be "more careful", i.e. with numbering a fields it adds to "cite" template? 85.238.102.237 (talk) 08:23, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

@Headbomb:I still not clearly understand what is AWB, however have we move current topic (with all that text) to a page you pointed to? How to do it if it's really useful? 85.238.102.237 (talk) 08:23, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

As there's many misunderstandings, I propose to delete from "last" field of template "cite" within articles symbols By (287) and - (158), that obviously can be done automatically and will make happy user:Jonesey95, who make excessive and some way destructive actions to do the same. Who can do it? 195.138.94.101 (talk) 16:00, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Deleting "By" won't make those more correct. Why don't you work on some by hand; if you can find author names, fix them. If there's a good pattern for a more general fix, we can get you onto AWB or JWB, or you can post for an AWB user to take it on, at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks. Dicklyon (talk) 16:24, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Bot to be created replaceing Bangalore with Bengaluru please 2600:8805:AA06:9100:38AA:2FB9:1FFB:18E2 (talk) 10:32, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

That is obviously not going to happen, until a consensus arises at Talk:Bangalore to rename the main article. See the list of failed RMs on that page. – Fayenatic London 22:09, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi, would someone be able to run this? John of Reading helpfully directed me here. ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:02, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Courtesy link: [20]. Doesn't work if I just click it, worked when I copy pasted the URL into the URL bar though. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:26, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Strange - it worked when I clicked it (just downloaded the files). ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:27, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

This appears to be a whole PHP bot run locally through CLI. There's about 3000 lines of PHP code spread across 10 files. Plus some .sql and .sh files. Judging from this custom SQL table named never_link_to, it also appears to run its own local SQL database. The readme file isn't great, I think it'd take a decent amount of time to comprehend this. And based on one of the comments you linked, this program may also need updating to work with the modern MediaWiki database structure. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:41, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

What is the gist of the request? What kinds of redirects are sought to be made here? BD2412 T 15:40, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412: The main page is User:Nickj/Redirects. In short, the query should provide a list of redirects that could possibly created, taken from piped links. It shouldn't make the redirects themselves; these require human supervision. ― Qwerfjkltalk 16:19, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, I see what you mean. If someone generates the list, I'll be glad to work on it. BD2412 T 16:40, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Change all usage of File:Phliber rib.png to File:Phliber rib.svg. ~240 pages. --Minorax^«¦talk¦» 02:00, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

This task is simple and may not need a bot. Consider posting this at WP:AWBREQ. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:30, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Doing... task is small enough that it does not have to be done by a bot. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 06:24, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

@Minorax: Y Done ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 07:16, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Current discussion is here: Template talk:Album ratings#Module for checking for unknown parameters. Consensus is here.

In short, the Album of the Year site was disallowed to be used in {{Album ratings}} and was removed from the code. There are still ~670 parameters with ratings and links to this site. It's mostly the "AOTY" parameter, but somewhere it was converted into custom parameter of site aggregators. So here's a list of how it's currently filled:

1. Remove "AOTY" parameter
2. Remove parameters "aggregate1" + "aggregate2" if they include spellings of "Album of the Year" and "AOTY".
3. Remove parameters "aggregate1score" + "aggregate2score" if they include "albumoftheyear.org" link.

Solidest (talk) 07:31, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Apologies, I got the ping at the talk page and just haven't gotten around to replying yet. I am away for a fortnight starting this weekend, but I will try to get to this before then; if not, I'll pass it along. Primefac (talk) 08:38, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

 Done. Primefac (talk) 12:37, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

In this template, {{Infobox saint}}, there is a data line called attributes. How can I get a bot go to every instance where this template is used and pull this information? I'd to get a table made with the page name where the template is, and the attribute. Like this:

Saint	Attributes
John Bosco	cassock, biretta

Additionally, can I have the results placed here: Talk:Saint symbolism/Archive 2? Thanks. --evrik ^(talk) 19:06, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

@Evrik, You could something like for each article:

{{Template parameter value|PAGE|Infobox saint|1|attributes}}

which just requires a list of the articles. ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:30, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

@Evrik:  Done with this code; let me know if there's anything that could be improved. This isn't using Qwerfjkl's approach, mainly because {{Template parameter value}} suggests that it has issues with wikilinks. Vahurzpu (talk) 00:21, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

• Thank you both. --evrik ^(talk) 19:29, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I am Santali Wikipedia contributors. I saying that page protected access give me then I can save the any vandalism person on Santali Wikipedia and Article.ᱫᱚᱞᱚᱱ ᱯᱨᱳᱵᱟᱥ (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 13:06, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

@ᱫᱚᱞᱚᱱ ᱯᱨᱳᱵᱟᱥ: Sorry, but this is not the correct venue for problems on other wikis, especially non-bot problems. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 15:00, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

You need to ask on Santali Wikipedia itself, or at meta:Steward requests if there are no admins there, or there is no way to ask there for what you want. Nobody at the English Wikipedia has jurisdiction over Wikipedia in any other language. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:08, 3 June 2022 (UTC)