Wikipedia:Bot requests

For the policy on bot requirements, see WP:BOTREQUIRE.

This is a page for requesting tasks to be done by bots per the bot policy. This is an appropriate place to put ideas for uncontroversial bot tasks, to get early feedback on ideas for bot tasks (controversial or not), and to seek bot operators for bot tasks. Consensus-building discussions requiring large community input (such as request for comments) should normally be held at WP:VPPROP or other relevant pages (such as a WikiProject's talk page).

You can check the "Commonly Requested Bots" box above to see if a suitable bot already exists for the task you have in mind. If you have a question about a particular bot, contact the bot operator directly via their talk page or the bot's talk page. If a bot is acting improperly, follow the guidance outlined in WP:BOTISSUE. For broader issues and general discussion about bots, see the bot noticeboard.

Before making a request, please see the list of frequently denied bots, either because they are too complicated to program, or do not have consensus from the Wikipedia community. If you are requesting that a template (such as a WikiProject banner) is added to all pages in a particular category, please be careful to check the category tree for any unwanted subcategories. It is best to give a complete list of categories that should be worked through individually, rather than one category to be analyzed recursively (see example difference).

Alternatives to bot requests

• WP:AWBREQ, for simple tasks that involve a handful of articles and/or only needs to be done once (e.g. adding a category to a few articles).
• WP:URLREQ, for tasks involving changing or updating URLs to prevent link rot (specialized bots deal with this).
• WP:USURPREQ, for reporting a domain be usurped eg. |url-status=usurped
• WP:SQLREQ, for tasks which might be solved with an SQL query (e.g. compiling a list of articles according to certain criteria).
• WP:TEMPREQ, to request a new template written in wiki code or Lua.
• WP:SCRIPTREQ, to request a new user script. Many useful scripts already exist, see Wikipedia:User scripts/List.
• WP:CITEBOTREQ, to request a new feature for WP:Citation bot, a user-initiated bot that fixes citations.

Note to bot operators: The {{BOTREQ}} template can be used to give common responses, and make it easier to keep track of the task's current status. If you complete a request, note that you did with {{BOTREQ|done}}, and archive the request after a few days (WP:1CA is useful here).

---

Please add your bot requests to the bottom of this page.
Make a new request

#	Bot request	Status	💬	👥	🙋 Last editor	🕒 (UTC)	🤖 Last botop editor	🕒 (UTC)
1	Bot to remove template from articles it doesn't belong on?		4	4	Wikiwerner	2024-09-28 17:28	Primefac	2024-07-24 20:15
2	Removing redundant FURs on file pages		5	3	Wikiwerner	2024-09-28 17:28	Anomie	2024-08-09 14:15
3	QIDs in Infobox person/Wikidata	BRFA filed	11	4	Tom.Reding	2024-10-06 14:23	Tom.Reding	2024-10-06 14:23
4	"Was" in TV articles		6	4	Pigsonthewing	2024-11-11 12:30	Primefac	2024-09-29 19:34
5	Films by director	done	9	4	Usernamekiran	2024-10-03 13:30	Usernamekiran	2024-10-03 13:30
6	altering certain tags on protected pages?		10	5	Primefac	2024-10-20 14:47	Primefac	2024-10-20 14:47
7	Request for Bot to Remove ARWU_NU Parameter from Articles Using Infobox US University Ranking Template		4	2	Primefac	2024-10-13 12:50	Primefac	2024-10-13 12:50
8	Removal of two external link templates per TfD result		6	4	Primefac	2024-10-14 13:48	Primefac	2024-10-14 13:48
9	Replace merged WikiProject template with parent project + parameter	Done	7	3	Primefac	2024-10-21 10:04	Primefac	2024-10-21 10:04
10	Bot Request to Add Vezina Trophy Winners Navbox to Relevant Player Pages		3	3	Primefac	2024-10-19 12:23	Primefac	2024-10-19 12:23
11	Replace standalone BLP templates	Done	7	3	MSGJ	2024-10-30 19:37	Tom.Reding	2024-10-29 16:04
12	Assess set index and WikiProject Lists based on category as lists		19	5	Mrfoogles	2024-11-06 16:17	Tom.Reding	2024-11-02 15:53
13	Request for WP:SCRIPTREQ		1	1	StefanSurrealsSummon	2024-11-08 18:27
14	LLM summary for laypersons to talk pages of overly technical articles?		10	7	Legoktm	2024-11-12 17:50	Legoktm	2024-11-12 17:50
15	Redirects with curly apostrophes		6	5	Pppery	2024-11-11 17:30	Primefac	2024-11-11 16:52
16	Bot for replacing/archiving 13,000 dead citations for New Zealand charts		3	2	Muhandes	2024-11-14 22:49	Muhandes	2024-11-14 22:49
17	Basketball biography infobox request		7	2	Dissident93	2024-11-18 21:04	Primefac	2024-11-17 20:44
18	Meanings of minor-planet names		1	1	Absolutiva	2024-11-18 16:20
19	Reference examination bot		3	3	Usernamekiran	2024-11-20 13:02	Usernamekiran	2024-11-20 13:02
20	Replacing FastilyBot	BRFA filed	23	8	Primefac	2024-11-23 14:08	Primefac	2024-11-23 14:08
21	Deletion of navboxes at Category:Basketball Olympic squad navigational boxes by competition	Working	4	4	Geardona	2024-11-20 23:48	Qwerfjkl	2024-11-20 17:32
22	Tagging Category:Cinema of Belgium		14	4	Earthh	2024-11-24 22:35	Tom.Reding	2024-11-24 16:12

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BC births and deaths categorizations

RfC: BC births and deaths categorization scheme has just been closed on:

(option 5:) Return to earlier guideline-conforming scheme adding "rollup" categories by decade/century

Could we have bot-assistance on realising that? Pinging a few people that may be able to give some assistance:

• @Fayenatic london: may have some experience as to what can be handled (semi-)bot-wise at the end of categorisation discussions
• @Rick Block: seems to have some experience with the "roll-up" systems
• @Good Olfactory: commented in a prior discussion here

If I need to be more specific on possible tasks involved, please ask me. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:18, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

1. The "roll-up" on decade categories, as currently seen at Category:0s deaths, is simply done using <categorytree mode=pages>0s deaths</categorytree> on that page. The parameter in the middle of that string has to match the name of the page that it is on. There is a way to show an ordinary category tree using the PAGENAME parameter: {{#categorytree:{{PAGENAME}}}}. However, I do not know of a way to combine that with mode=pages. For more info see MW:Extension:CategoryTree. So AFAIK this "rollup" code will have to be added manually.
2. The old categories will have to be undeleted by admins; I don't know a way to automate that. After undeletion, we would then list them at WP:CFDWR so that Cydebot would remove the CFD templates from them.
3. I believe the member pages (biography articles) will also have to be reverted manually. The best that I can offer would be to provide links to the diffs made by Cydebot when emptying the old categories. – Fayenatic London 11:01, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

@Armbrust:: I manually undeleted Category:1 BC deaths to Category:9 BC deaths. Would you be able to automate reversals of your bot's edits starting from [1]? See [2] for the instruction at CFDW for deaths from 1 to 599 BC. – Fayenatic London 21:56, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

@Armbrust: I've manually reverted from the bottom of that page of contribs up to Curia (wife of Quintus Lucretius). Is it any trouble to you if we use rollback or undo on your bot's edits? – Fayenatic London 12:45, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't mind, although some articles were edited after the bot. Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 19:51, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I've now done up to Horace. – Fayenatic London 21:23, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

As the work cannot be processed by bot, I have listed the CFDs listing the births/deaths categories to be reinstated at WT:WikiProject Years#BC births and deaths categories. – Fayenatic London 13:50, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I subsequently moved the list and progress marker to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography#BC births and deaths categories. – Fayenatic London 21:36, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Re. "As the work cannot be processed by bot" – says who? I think part of the tasks can be processed by bot. I'd prefer to keep the discussion here (various bot operators may pick up on tasks for which they see a possibility to automate it), with a possible exception to logging tasks performed at WT:WikiProject Years#BC births and deaths categories. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:31, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

@Fayenatic london: again, please discuss these issues here. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:39, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Your confidence in bot-kind is touching. I agree that this task would be best handled by a bot, but I have never come across an existing bot written to do what is required here. Well, I suppose there is little harm in waiting longer; perhaps somebody may write a new bot for us. The main disadvantage of waiting is that subsequent edits to the biographies will mean that an increasing proportion of the bot edits cannot be reverted using Undo. – Fayenatic London 21:22, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Actually it could be done with AWB alone (replace year category with birthsyear cat and remove birthsdecade category), but compiling a list of affected articles is troublesome. Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 08:29, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

@Armbrust: I had thought about using Cat-a-lot to do that, but ruled that out, because a year category on a bio could be for births or for deaths. A human editor could tell which, by referring to the decade categories, but that would probably be too difficult to program into a bot. So yes, it could be done using AWB, but requiring manual intervention on each one before clicking Save. – Fayenatic London 13:45, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

If you use the bot's contributions list compile the articles, than this shouldn't be a problem. Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 19:12, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

@Armbrust: How would that help for those pages that have both, e.g. [3]? – Fayenatic London 09:04, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

@Armbrust: RSVP. Perhaps there is no way to automate this other than somebody writing a new bot. – Fayenatic London 21:43, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

User:Francis Schonken: How long do you want to wait? Perhaps this bot request might be reactivated by posting separate requests under separate headings for the three tasks: posting "rollup" category trees on decade category pages; undeleting year category pages for births and deaths; and reverting selected contribs by ArmbrustBot on biography articles. – Fayenatic London 21:43, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

"wait"? I didn't suggest to wait for anything. I'm only against splitting up the discussion, e.g. someone doing part of the reverts (bot-wise or not) and not logging them here, then someone else doing some reverts (bot-wise or not) and getting confused while not knowing what has been done etc... I'll make some subheaders to this thread (...opposing as I am separate threads not kept together). --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:36, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Subthread 1 – undeletion of BC births and deaths categories

I'm not sure but from some comments I deduce this task has been done partially or completely – can someone give an overview whether this is done?

Have any BC births or deaths categories been undeleted that weren't populated before these categories were deleted? (I'd advise against that but have no clue where we are with that). Can someone give an update? --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:36, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I had undeleted deaths categories back to Category:89 BC deaths, and have just undeleted a lot of them again. I only undeleted those that were deleted in 2015; there are a few gaps which were not in use at the time of the 2015 CFDs.

I have now added a temporary note to Template:DeathyrBC to discourage further re-deletions. The notice appears only on empty year-BC deaths categories.

As the last batch of merges were on deaths categories, I have not systematically undeleted births categories yet, but only those which were repopulated by reverting two of the bot edits (death and birth year). – Fayenatic London 09:58, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Subthread 2 – adding "rollup" to BC births and deaths categories

I've no clue where we are with this task? Have rollups been added to BC birth and death cats apart from the few examples that came up in the RfC? If not, to me this seems like an excellent job for a bot... any takers? --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:36, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

No-one had started this. I have now done it on a few, Category:0s BC deaths back to Category:40s BC deaths. – Fayenatic London 22:45, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken: I have just come across the template {{category tree all|mode=all}} which does a similar job, and does not need a parameter to be added manually. I used this on Category:50s BC deaths. How do you like it compared to the earlier method e.g. [4] ? – Fayenatic London 22:52, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Subthread 3 – repopulating BC births and deaths categories

(basicly reverting armbrustbot's dual upmerge edits)

• I've been doing three or four a long time ago;
• I understand Fayenatic london has been doing quite a few too, but am not clear how far this got?

I still think this is best handled by a bot: going through armbrustbots edits on these BC biography articles one by one (that is: reverting them one by one, from the most recent one to the oldest one), and (this is the important part) giving a dump of the articles where such reverts are no longer possible (because they have already been done or some other intermediate edits prevented a revert). Then sort out the items on this dump manually. I'd be happy to help sort out manually when presented with such dump list. --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:36, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Any editor can help with reverting the biography pages.

The CFDs listing the births/deaths categories to be reinstated are:

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 May 25#1st to 5th century BC births

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 May 30#1st to 6th century BC deaths

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_22#6th-century_BC_births and 7th (below that)

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_16#8th_century_BC (just the births and deaths)

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_15#9th_century_BC and 10th (below that)

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_13#11th_century_BC

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_8#12th_century_BC

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_April_24#13th_century_BC

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_April_23#14th_century_BC to 16th

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_April_20#17th_century_BC

The last list of categories deleted (instruction to bot at CFDW) was [5] for deaths from 1 to 599 BC.

The contribs for the last set of bot edits (on BC deaths) ended here. Working up from the bottom, I have completed that page so the current page to be worked on is here.

I have manually reverted from the bottom of that page of contribs up to: Boduognatus. After completing the top one click "newer 50" and carry on from the bottom again.

My workflow is:

1. Mouse over the page history for next diff up the list. Review history using WP:POPUPS to see whether there have been subsequent edits after the category changes by ArmbrustBot.
2. If no, use rollback.
3. If yes, open the history, and Undo the one or two contribs by ArmbrustBot. For an edit summary, link to Wikipedia_talk:Categorization_of_people#RfC:_BC_births_and_deaths_categorization_scheme.
4. If this creates a redlinked category,
   1. undelete it with the same edit summary,
   2. edit the category page to remove the old CFD template, giving the same edit summary, and
   3. undelete the talk page with the same edit summary.

@Nyttend: you also appear to have helped to diffuse Category:40s BC deaths back down to years; do you have any other recommendations? – Fayenatic London 10:06, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I discovered the situation because a few year categories were in CAT:CSD, and I figured that there surely would have been several notable Romans in each year; after moving several of them over, I just decided to move everything from the 40s into year categories, and I eventually discovered the bot's action. Are there a ton of edits that potentially need to be reverted? I'd just urge caution, because a lot of articles were wrongly categorised, so Armbrustbot's edit was helpful and shouldn't be reverted; for example, Antipater of Tyre died "shortly before 45 BC", so he shouldn't be in 45 BC deaths, and this edit was helpful, even though most of the bot's edits weren't. I did everything manually and would urge you to do likewise to avoid restoring overprecision like 45 BC for Antipater, although I'm not aware of how many articles are involved, so I understand that this might not be practical. PS, please don't have the bot do anything with the 40s BC deaths, since I've gone through them; none of them need work unless I messed up (e.g. I did Gaius Cassius Longinus just now, having overlooked him before), and the bot has no way to judge whether or not I messed up. Nyttend (talk) 13:39, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I've removed Antipater from the other new category 45 BC as it is not for biographies.

This flags up a couple of points:

1. Individuals like this, for whom we do not know the exact year of death, will appear in the categorytree ("rollup") listing below the sub-cats, if we leave them in the decade categories. See Category:40s BC deaths. The template ({{DeathyrBC}}) on Category:45 BC deaths does say "People who died c. 45 BC.", so it seems acceptable to me that he was categorised in 45 BC deaths, although 46 BC might have been a better choice. Alexander of Judaea is another case, "died 48 or 47 BC", categorised in 48 BC. I suggest that it is good enough to pick a date which might be one year out.
2.  Instead of working from ArmbrustBot's contribs, we could work from the decade/century categories as our starting point, diffusing the contents back down into the year categories where the date is stated. We could still do the actual edit by reverting ArmbrustBot's edits in most cases, but it would be a different method of working. However, it's probably quicker to work from the contribs.

– Fayenatic London 22:41, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

@Nyttend: @Francis Schonken: I left links to this discussion at WP Bio and WP Years, but nobody has commented. What do you think about using the approximate year of death in such cases? – Fayenatic London 23:16, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that it's good to include circa 45 deaths in the 45 deaths category; these categories ought to reflect people whose precise death year has confidently been identified, with the parent 40s BC deaths (and comparable ones for other decades) being given when we know in which decade a death occurred, but we can't be sure of the year. Nyttend (talk) 06:26, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough. – Fayenatic London 22:59, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken: The longer we wait for someone to create a bot to revert another bot's contribs, the greater the proportion that cannot be reverted using rollback or Undo. I've picked up the task again (see above), and gone back past the batch of deaths (40s BC) that Nyttend had fixed. Will you join in again? – Fayenatic London 23:05, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Progress marker

• Current page of contribs to be worked on is here
• Pages have been manually reverted from the bottom of that page of contribs up to: Xu Pingjun – Fayenatic London 12:48, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Idea: WikiProject stale participant member remover bot

Many WikiProjects have participant lists. Many of the editors on those lists haven't edited in months, or even years—rendering those lists out-of-date.

This bot would find and update participant lists. Once it found a list, it would remove users who haven't edited Wikipedia for more than three months. The Transhumanist 20:26, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I imagine that this bot would work on an opt-in basis. Each Wikiproject would determine if there is consensus to subscribe their participant list to this bot's service, in a manner similar to Cluebot's talk page archiving service. Are participant lists standardized enough to allow this to happen? – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:10, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&limit=500&offset=0&profile=default&search=Wikipedia%3AParticipants The Transhumanist 09:25, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

People take breaks, some return here after gaps of years. What is the benefit of removing them from such lists and does it outweigh the disadvantage of telling returnees that they are no longer members? ϢereSpielChequers 10:09, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Another way this bot could work is if it detected an "Inactive participants" list nearby, it would move the member instead. I know of quite a few WikiProjects that have a setup like this. APerson (talk!) 04:08, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Or to be more positive - use a "Participants list" and an "Active participants" list! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:28, 18 March 2016 (UTC).

Pinging when a "task" section is edited

First: sections of a page can't be added to a watchlist, and this whole subject has seen some pushback over the years; see for instance this Phabricator page, which I learned about yesterday at WP:VPT#Section-specific notifications. Wikipedia is hurt every day, significantly, when people check their watchlists less frequently because they're forced to check hundreds or thousands of edits just so they can monitor the particular sections that represent the task requests they're interested in. This happened to me just yesterday; I don't pull up my watchlist as frequently nowadays because I have to keep WP:ERRORS watchlisted in case anything shows up in the Today's Featured Article section, which represents a small fraction of the edits to that page. There are many editors who struggle with the same problem daily. I'm asking for a bot that runs frequently, takes a diff of WP:ERRORS if there have been any edits, discards everything from the diff above and below specific text markers, and notifies me in some way (a ping would be fine) if the relevant part of the diff has changed. (It would also be nice if it didn't keep pinging me with each edit ... once per 24 hours would be fine ... but that's optional.) If anyone is willing to code this simple bot to run at ERRORS and a few other high-traffic pages, a lot of people will love you for it. (A red herring sometimes gets thrown into these discussions that searching for sections is hard to do ... that's both dubious and irrelevant. All we need is a bot that can search for specific, perhaps hidden, text, and can discard the parts of a diff above and below that text.) - Dank (push to talk) 15:33, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Dank, simulating a watchlist via pings and other (ab)uses of Echo would be pretty kludgy. One of the solutions mentioned in that Phabricator task you linked to was breaking up the page in question into a bunch of transcluded subpages. In your WP:ERRORS example, all TFA errors would go into WP:ERRORS/TFA (or something), which would be transcluded onto WP:ERRORS and which you could watchlist directly. This would be a pretty good way to solve the problem you're talking about, and we'd only need consensus on WT:ERRORS. APerson (talk!) 23:33, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Wondering if it would be sufficient if you created a local tool that would email you or something like that editors could run themselves. You could do it as a bot that users could sign up to have this done automatically for them too. But seems more like something that should be added to the base wikipedia code. Lonjers (talk) 23:10, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Substitute all cite doi and cite pmid templates

Per the RfCs at [6] and [7], the use of {{cite doi}} and {{cite pmid}} templates has been deprecated. We need a bot to go through all the articles that currently transclude those templates and substitute them instead. Kaldari (talk) 21:33, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

It looks like Dexbot may have already done this. Kaldari (talk) 22:02, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

@Ladsgroup: What's the status of Dexbot's clean-up of these templates? Can they all be deleted now? Kaldari (talk) 22:03, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Hey, Yes. I did what I could. All removed now :)Ladsgroup^overleg 01:33, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't think the following is controversial: All instances of {{cite doi/*}} and {{cite pmid/*}} with no incoming links, transclusions, or incoming redirects can be deleted. It will take at least two passes to delete as many as possible, since some {{cite pmid/*}} templates are redirects to {{cite doi/*}} templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:29, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Note that this is nearly 100,000 deletions, no small feat. I would like to see a bit of clearer consensus first as a sanity check. At any rate, I hope we can keep discussion centralized on the village pump thread. — Earwig ^talk 07:48, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

The VPT thread has been archived. My sense of the discussion was that there were no technical problems with deleting this many unused templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:50, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

It would be good to move this data to Wikidata. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:32, 18 March 2016 (UTC).

Wikiproject Women tagging

Could some AWB bot (pinging Magioladitis) do a little tagging? The list A is available here, list B - here.

Articles from list A needs to be tagged with {{WikiProject Women's History}}, articles from list B needs to be tagged with {{WikiProject Women}}. Although I did the basic check, the lists should be checked once more. Maybe some articles already have any of these banners in talk page:

• {{WikiProject Feminism}}
• {{WikiProject Gender Studies}}
• {{WikiProject Jewish Women}}
• {{WikiProject LGBT studies}}
• {{WikiProject Women}}
• {{WikiProject Women artists}}
• {{WikiProject Women's Health}}
• {{WikiProject Women's History}}
• {{WikiProject Women scientists}}
• {{WikiProject Women's sport}}
• {{WikiProject Women writers}}

Bot can skip them.

The consensus to tag articles is here. This is phase 1 (tagging those articles, which are also in German Wikipedia), there will be more phases later. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 19:57, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Question about WikiProject templates

@Edgars2007: I have seen talk pages that contain more than one of the WikiProject templates above. Are there any guidelines that state if a talk page has one of these templates that it doesn't need another template? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 20:30, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: Don't think, there is such guidelines. But the article can have let's say {{WikiProject Women's sport}} and {{WikiProject Women's History}}, if sportsperson is born before 1950 (margin for inclusion at {{WikiProject Women's History}}). But it isn't important in this proposal. Articles should contain at least one of those banners. In the very original proposal there was only {{WikiProject Women}}, but as it is easy to distinguish women by birth year category, the tagging is splitted to two banners. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 20:53, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I can help with this. I 'll read the request carefully. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:49, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Edgars2007 if I just go and add the banners in the two lists it would be a problem? -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:40, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Magioladitis not a very big problem, but the list comparing is so easy in AWB. Or I didn't carefully explain, what I want you to do? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 11:54, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Edgars2007 I would prefer if someone else was generating the lists to reduce complains against my bot. If something goes wrong I can always blame you :) -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:07, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Magioladitis The lists are already here - in the first line, you just need to do a simple check. Yes, you can send complainers to me :) --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:17, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Edgars2007 OK then I ll start tagging later today :) -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:24, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Just noting that Magioladitis is currently blocked so the bot is not operating. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:55, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

@MSGJ: User:Yobot isn't blocked though, right? GoingBatty (talk) 05:41, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Yobot it's not blocked atm. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:45, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Bot to create and update lists of most requested articles within a WikiProject

Is there interest in a bot that, at the request of a wikiproject, looks through the articles in its scope and compiles a list of "most requested" articles based on red links? I imagine it similar to how User:AlexNewArtBot creates a list of articles that project members can look through and include on a list. I got the idea from working on WP:Linguistics so I'll use that as my example here, but the bot could be useful for any number of wikiprojects.

I would imagine a bot would periodically (once a day? once a week?) look through the WikiProject category (Category:WikiProject Linguistics articles) and count the number of times various redlinks appear in those articles. So for example it would see that both Linguistic Society of America and List of presidents of the Linguistic Society of America both have a redlink to George Melville Bolling and put down that the article has 2 incoming redlinks. It would then put that down on a page that project participants can look at and decide whether those requested articles are within the projects scope and add them to the "requested articles" section of the WikiProject.

If there's interest, and something similar doesn't already exist, I would be willing to work on it. Thoughts? Wugapodes (talk) 21:19, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't think there is one for all WikiProjects, but there are some similar lists, like this one. Certainly worth looking into. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:58, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Similar redlink bots have been built over the years. Most fell out of use, and most dedicated to a single Wikiproject but I certainly can see the interest in such a bot that could work for any project. I know I would make use of it for WP:PHYS and WP:JOURNALS (as a supplement to our existing WP:JCW which Hellknowz mentioned, but that one is fairly unique to the project.) Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:27, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

If no one else is working on this let me know and I will take a stab at it @Wugapodes: Lonjers (talk) 23:09, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

@Lonjers: I haven't begun working on it, as I wanted to make sure there was interest (which there seems to be), and because I'm still reading the API documentation. I'd be willing to work together on it if you want. Wugapodes (talk) 03:31, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

@Wugapodes: Created an empty git hub repo for it https://github.com/utilitarianexe/requested_wiki_articles. I would just use pywikibot to create it but let me know if you would prefer something else.

Coding... @Lonjers: I've created the user ProjectRequestedPagesBot which can be used for the task. I know python so pywikibot should be fine Wugapodes (talk) 23:40, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Removing bad merge requests

Over the years, I have come into situations where someone will slap a merge tag on an article, and then not follow through with adding a merge tag to the other article, if they even decide to mention why they want to merge the two pages at all. These tags can often remain up for years until they are removed, so I was wondering if there was a way to program a bot to remove these sorts of things, as I suspect a sizable chunk of merge request taggings are just that. This may be near impossible to do, but it would be worth looking into, if possible. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 17:33, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

@Kevin: I'm sure someone with better bot skills than I have could code this, but is there consensus to do this? You request does not seem to be in line with the instructions at Template:Merge#When to remove, and I don't see any discussion at Template talk:Merge. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 22:06, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

I'll go leave a note over there, but I suspect that it would not be all that uncontroversial. Either way, thanks for letting me know, and if anyone wants to start coding a bot just in case, feel free to do so. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:27, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Merge bot manages the merge tags. I might look into modifying that to add reciprocal tags, where only one of the articles is tagged. It may also be possible to mark those where there is no discussion. But the ongoing problems with this project area are an overabundance of drive-by merge-taggers who make low-priority WP:summary style merge requests, when there is nothing inherently wrong or broken about having separate detailed-subtopic articles, albeit stubs, drive-by managers who don't actually work on merges themselves but think they can fix the process, and a dearth of editors who actually work on merges. Bot requests come and go in this area; few are actually implemented. The last battle I was fighting was to stop editors from creating tags to request that section 5 of article "A" get merged into section 7 of article "B", and such silliness. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:14, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I've noticed those ones as well, especially as they make for some interesting discussions. I wonder if there would also be a way to auto-close ones like that that have not had a comment in a few months, which would lessen the burden even more. It does stink no matter what way you look at it, as we almost need a tag to tell people to stop abusing the template. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 17:47, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I would find it controversial to remove the tags. However, adding matching tags to the "other article" I would not find controversial. I've driveby-tagged an article here or there myself, and also worked on a merge request here or there myself. It's just another backlog. --Izno (talk) 19:02, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

What if we were to remove instances where there are tags on both articles, but no discussion? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 17:58, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

That only indicates that there is no discussion. You can't conclude from the lack of discussion what the consensus is regarding the merge request, and I see no reason why we should remove the backlog simply to remove the backlog. --Izno (talk) 18:16, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

How is a bot supposed to know that there's no discussion? What if a discussion is started with a heading like aren't these the same thing or do we really need two articles. A human can figure out that those are likely merge discussions, but a bot can't. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:42, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

It would be fairly easy to see if the word "merge" or other key words are on the talk page, but if you cue other words you could help fix that issue. However, there will be the element of human error, so that could be worked into the equation. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 00:03, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Oiyarbepsy, I've often noticed "orphaned" merge tags, and they're virtually always on low-traffic pages — on higher-traffic pages, they're much more likely to get discussion or undiscussed action. The bot could examine the talk page history and see if any edits have been made since the day when the merge tag was added to the article; if nobody's made a single edit to the talk page since the tag was placed, there's no discussion. Of course, this will miss a lot of pages where unrelated edits have been made to the talk page, but it's the only solid way I can imagine to avoid false negatives. Perhaps the bot could also have a vocabulary (e.g. "merge") that it looks for, and if none of the vocabulary words appear in edits made since the day the tag was placed, it could log the article for human review. If nobody's done anything or discussed anything, there's no consensus available for a human to evaluate. If you wait a long time, e.g. a year after the merge tag was placed, you're not going to risk detagging an article too soon. Nyttend (talk) 18:46, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Your suggestions seem reasonable, but I wouldn't want anything having to do with a bot understanding human language, but the history check seems good. Of course, you need some specifics before you ask someone to make a bot. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:59, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

What's wrong with having the bot attempt to understand human language? WP:CONTEXBOT talks about bots making consequential edits, stuff that (if the bot makes a mistake) will be a good bit of a problem. Nobody suffers if a userspace list has a few extra entries. I'm proposing that the vocabulary be used only for list-compilation; the history-check will be the only criterion that the bot uses when determining whether to edit the article. Nyttend (talk) 01:55, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Articles update

A multi-lingual edit-a-thon. 70+ editors are participating from 18 Wikipedias meta:User:Titodutta/GI_participants. Is it possible for a bot to report on a Meta subpage the articles created by these editors in every 4-6 hours for next 1 week? @MZMcBride: --Tito Dutta (talk) 00:22, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Request for bot to replace a string of code in applicable pages

I am requesting for a bot to perform a task that goes in line with my attempt to merge Template:Lc1 into Template:Lc. At this point, I have updated {{Lc}} to replicate the functionality of {{Lc1}} when a parameter by the name of cfd2 exists in {{Lc}}. So, I am requesting for a bot who can make the following edit on the pages that transclude Template:Lc1: Replace all instances of {{Lc1 with {{Lc|cfd2=y. Thanks! Steel1943 (talk) 07:36, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

BRFA filed — JJMC89 (T·C) 23:09, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Withdrawn by operator. Please file a new bot request if a solution is agreed upon. — JJMC89 (T·C) 23:11, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Orphaned Category:Cite doi templates

Template:cite doi has been deprecated but Category:Cite doi templates still contains over 58k pages at the moment. Could someone provide a table of the orphaned pages from that category (I'm aware that a number are not technically orphaned because, such as, Template:Cite doi/10.1029.2F2008GL034614 they show up in various orphaned template lists) and also probably the ones used the most. If possible, can there be a check if the creator was User:Citation bot? That way, I can list them in chunks at TFD and skip the notification part? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:50, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Doing... at least part of request. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 11:41, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Whatever you can. I'm making a request at WT:CSD to see if these could fall under G6. If so, I can basically mass delete these myself using AWB. Else, I'll be adding these to TFD depending on the number we're talking about. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 12:12, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Could another run be made for orphans over Category:Cite pmid templates as well? There's only about 8.7k there. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 12:19, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

By my current count (will check later, but it looks OK), there are 27908 cite doi templates, that are not linked and transcluded anywhere. After those are cleaned-up, we can move forward. Probably those templates, which are only linked somewhere, are also good to delete. About Citation bot - does Citation bot 1 and/or Citation bot 2 counts? For example, this was created by CB2.

I don't really care, but wasn't there some disscusion here or at WP:VPT about deleting so large number of pages and doing it in a better way? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:20, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Link to Google spreadsheets. There are 24816 templates (listed at 1st sheet), that were created by Citation bot, that don't have any links and transclusions to them. AFAIK, that also counts redirects. So those should be completely orphaned and safe to delete. If somebody wants to review SQL query, it's at 2nd sheet (Code). At 3rd sheet there are the most used templates. Nothing very much, only 1900 - I'm counting transclusions to all namespaces. Hope this helps. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 13:43, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Y Done also cite pmid scan. 7094 orphaned and only 4 transcluded cite pmid templates. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 13:56, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for taking this on. This deletion process will require at least two passes through both categories to get all of the actual unused templates. Some of the {{cite pmid}} templates are redirects to or from – I forget which – {{cite doi}} templates, so after all of the orphaned templates in both categories are deleted, you can go through both categories again and you should find another batch of newly orphaned templates to delete. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:16, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Right now, we just have a list right? We don't actually have a deletion plan here do we? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:45, 6 February 2016 (UTC)`

Well, I think the next step is to propose to delete those 24,8k cite doi + 7k cite pmid. And then go and delete them. We can think of next steps after this is done. BTW, finally found that disscusion I was talking about: Batch deletion. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 08:45, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

I think the consensus at Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Orphaned_Category:Cite_doi_templates is that deletion is proper. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 10:28, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Update to request

Can I request that a bot mass delete these orphaned templates? The consensus at TFD here was clearly in favor of a mass deletion. Thanks! -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:07, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Bumping this. Is there a bot operator who would be willing to take this on? We'll be happy to help by making lists or whatever else is required. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:48, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

An admin bot is required for this. Maybe Cydebot (task list ⁽¹⁾ · logs ^{(actions · block · flag)} · botop ^{(e · t · c)} · contribs · user rights) or AnomieBOT III (task list ⁽¹⁾ · logs ^{(actions · block · flag)} · botop ^{(e · t · c)} · contribs · user rights). — JJMC89 (T·C) 02:27, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Ok, asked at both. We'll see if there's a response. Is there another bot that could actually deal with the deprecation of the doi templates still in use? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:08, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Use of flags in transclusions of Template:Infobox national football team

I would like to request the use of a bot to remove all flags from any transclusions of Template:Infobox national football team. Per MOS:FLAG, flags should not be used for purely decorative purposes, and since the nations' names are included anyway, the flags do not aid identification of the nations in question. At the top of each national football team's infobox, a flag is often included next to the country's name; this should be removed, leaving only the country's name in plaintext (no link). At the bottom of each infobox, the team's first match is listed, usually using the {{fb}} or {{fb-rt}} templates; once the flags are removed, the opposition's name should remain linked, while the name of the team whose article it is should be in bolded plaintext. Please let me know if I haven't explained this properly; I can provide diffs for how the changes should appear once enacted. – PeeJay 10:48, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Note for others: consensus is here. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 11:37, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Edgars. I was going to note the sports exceptions for national teams, national team members, and other athletes in international competition per MOS:ICON, to wit:

• "They are useful in articles about international sporting events, to show the representative nationality of players (which may differ from their legal nationality)."

• "Flag icons may be relevant in some subject areas, where the subject actually represents that country, government, or nationality – such as military units, government officials, or national sports teams. In lists or tables, flag icons may be relevant when such representation of different subjects is pertinent to the purpose of the list or table itself."

• "As with other biographical articles, flags are discouraged in sportspeople's individual infoboxes even when there is a 'country', 'nationality', 'sport nationality' or equivalent field: they may give undue prominence to one field over others. However, the infobox may contain the national flag icon of an athlete who competes in competitions where national flags are commonly used as representations of sporting nationality in the particular sport."

• "Flags should never indicate the player's nationality in a non-sporting sense; flags should only indicate the sportsperson's national squad/team or representative nationality."

• "Where flags are used in a table, it should clearly indicate that they correspond to representative nationality, not legal nationality, if any confusion might arise."

If this has already been cleared with WP:FOOTY, I have no objections, but PeeJay should be aware that other sports projects routinely use flag icons for national team membership and for sporting nationality of other athletes in international competition, and such use is expressly permitted by MOS:ICON. Even if WP:FOOTY wants these flags gone, other sports projects use them in a similar manner and MOS:ICON permits such use. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 11:46, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

AnomieBOT is already approved to do this, but first you should advertise that discussion more widely (e.g. on the template's talk page) and give it some more time for people to comment. Anomie⚔ 17:07, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Tagg talk pages

Most of the Wiki pages do not have all of the WikiProjects tagged on their talk pages. On the basis of their categories this could be done. If a bot can tag the missing wikiprojects this saves a hell lot of time and makes it completer than it would ever become. Example: there are over about 4000 pages in the category category:Men's volleyball players and Category:Women's volleyball players that should all be tagged with {{WikiProject Volleyball}}. Is it possible to create a bot doing that? Sander.v.Ginkel ^(Talk) 17:13, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it is possible. You should follow procedure described User:Yobot#WikiProject tagging or User:AnomieBot. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 17:44, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Might as well tag them with {{WikiProject Biography|sports-work-group=yes|sports-priority=}} if it's not already there. GoingBatty (talk) 20:05, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for you rely Edgars2007. I made a list of all volleyball categories and made a bot request at User talk:Yobot. Sander.v.Ginkel ^(Talk) 16:40, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Bot request

Via this way, according to the rules of User:Yobot#WikiProject_tagging, I want to make a bot request to tagg pages with WP Volleyball. I'm a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Volleyball, and I posted the request on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Volleyball. I also posted the request on User talk:Yobot. I created a list of all volleyball categories. I checked and delete wrong and double categories. Sander.v.Ginkel ^(Talk) 18:21, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Bot to cleanup old article wizard comments

What would everyone think of a bot that auto-cleaned up the comments left behind by new articles created with the article wizard? For reference, I'm referring to these. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 04:25, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

@Nathan2055: Seems a bit like WP:COSMETICBOT, however, if it isn't, I'd be glad to do it. -- Cheers, Riley 06:06, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

@Nathan2055: I have find and replace rules set up in AWB to remove these when I'm making other visible changes to an article. GoingBatty (talk) 15:07, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

@Riley Huntley: Yeah, it shouldn't be too difficult. I was even considering coding it myself. I just figured that since it was borderline WP:COSMETICBOT I should ask here first. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 18:31, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Should go in AWB gen-fixes. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:22, 19 March 2016 (UTC).

History merge old category renames

An adminbot should check each category page created by Cydebot with "Moved from" and authors in the edit summary and history merge the category in the edit summary into the bot-created category. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 15:54, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

This is being done by Od Mishehu. [8]. 103.6.159.68 (talk) 17:18, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

ReminderBot

I request an on-Wiki bot (way) to remind tasks. "Remind me in N days about "A" etc. Talk page message reminder or anything is okay. --Tito Dutta (talk) 17:09, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

See previous discussions at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 143#Reminderbot? and Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 37#Reminder bot. It needs more definition as to how exactly it should work. Anomie⚔ 17:22, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

• This may work in the following way:

a) a user will add tasks in their subpage User:Titodutta/Reminder in this format {{Remind me|3 days}}. The bot will remind on the user talk page.

b) Anomie in an discussion, one may tag something like this {{Ping|RemindBot|3 days}}.

Please tell me your views and opinion. --Tito Dutta (talk) 18:31, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Outside of a user subpage, how will the bot know who to remind - i.e. how can it be done so that other editors aren't given reminders, either accidentally or maliciously? - Evad37 [talk] 22:40, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't know if a bot can do it. {{ping}} manages to do this right. When you get a ping, the notification tells you who it is from, so we can see that it keeps track somehow (signature?). I realize that ping is deeper into MW than a bot, but personally, I wouldn't use a reminder system that requires me to maintain a separate page. {{ping}} is useful exactly because you can do it in context and inline. Before ping, you could just manually leave a note at someone's page but the benefits of ping are clear to everyone. I draw the same parallels between a manual reminder system and the proposed {{remind}}. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 22:49, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, being able to leave reminders on any page will make it more useful – but how can it be done in a way that isn't open for abuse? - Evad37 [talk] 23:23, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Maybe this is a better way to think about it: A reminder could be little more than a ping to oneself after a delayed period of time. Ping doesn't suffer from forgery issues (you can't fake a ping from someone else) and reminders could be restricted to ping only oneself (so that you can't spam a bunch of people with reminders). But as I allude to above, ping is part of mediawiki so I imagine that it has special ways of accomplishing this that a bot can't. I think that this discussion is becoming unfortunately fragmented because this is a bot-focused board. I think I was asked to join the discussion here because I previously proposed this on WP:VP/T and was eventually pointed to meta. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 03:09, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Agree; this is a potentially useful idea (although outside reminder software can always suffice), and might make sense as a MediaWiki extension, but if we did it by bot it would end up being a strange hack that would probably have other issues. — Earwig ^talk 03:12, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

• It would be great if we have this. User:Anomie, any comment/question? --Tito Dutta (talk) 23:48, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

How would a bot go about finding new reminder requests in the most efficient way? The Transhumanist 01:11, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

• Agree this would be badass. I sometimes forget in-progress article or template work for years, after getting distracted by something else.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:02, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

WikiProjectBanners

A nice easy job if anyone is interested. Pursuant to this TfD can all calls to {{WikiProjectBanners}} be replaced with {{WikiProject banner shell|collapsed=yes}}, which will allow the former template to be deleted or redirected to the latter. Thank you. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:58, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

BRFA filed — JJMC89 (T·C) 20:57, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

@Rjwilmsi: AWB needs to be updated accordingly. -- Yobot (talk) 00:37, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T126838
Resolved

@Magioladitis: AWB has been updated, and I added {{AWB standard installation}} to Template:WikiProject banner shell/doc. Is there anything else? GoingBatty (talk) 03:29, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Warms my heart. This was TfDed years ago, but kept on weak WP:HARMLESS grounds.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:07, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Merge talk page banners

I have noticed a significant number of article talk pages that use both {{article history}} and one or more of {{on this day}}, {{DYK talk}}, {{ITN talk}}, and other templates that could be combined into {{article history}}. Given the ever-increasing length of the pile-up of banners at the top of talk pages, I want to suggest that a bot could combine redundant talk page banners (like this, for example). Graham (talk) 21:56, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Graham, I did a quick estimate, and found that only 139 pages with {{article history}} have one or more of the other templates you mentioned. However, I wasn't counting other pages with two of the templates you mentioned that could be combined into a single {{article history}} conclusion. I've started to write some code to process pages like this. APerson (talk!) 04:43, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikinews Importer Bot

Can someone take over for User:Wikinews Importer Bot since Misza13 seems to have disappeared about a year ago? It would be greatly appreciated. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 01:27, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Note: It stopped working in June 2015, several months after Misza13 stopped editing. I'm guessing the bot was hosted on the tool server (or whatever replaced it), but not sure. No idea what the code is. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:19, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Looks like someone with a wikitech account can login and manage the bot here if you're in the NovaServiceGroup. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:36, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

How does one join that group? I've been meaning to step up and start doing some bot and other tool work, but just as I was familiarizing myself with the ToolServer, they dumped it and switched The New Way. I'm still working out its processes. There were lots of MiszaBot things many of us would like back.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:00, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Not sure. Perhaps this page will help. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:16, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

It looks like it may be under the purview of the admins and crats on meta. Perhaps ask there? It seems to be part of Wikimedia Labs. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:20, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Just pinging to keep this in mind (and see if there is any new info on it). SMcCandlish ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:32, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

I haven't looked into it. Swamped with other stuff.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:29, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the update. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 01:15, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Anyone else interested in looking into this? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:16, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Replacing the <tt> element

The <tt>...</tt> element no longer even exists in HTML. Like <font>, it was a separation of style and content problem. While MediaWiki doesn't choke on it, we need to stop using it like it's valid, and replace it with something more appropriate.

• In most namespaces, it should be replaced by default with <span style="font-family: monospace;">...</span>. We can't be certain that code examples were the intended use, and in many cases they were not. For the cases that are, the span markup isn't the most perfect possible markup for such examples, but using the span tag isn't "wrong", where the code tag often would be, and if anyone wants to, they can replace the span later.
• In the template namespace, it should be replaced with <code>...</code>, as the tt dead-element is frequently used incorrectly to mark up code examples in template documentation. In the odd case that the actual output of a template uses the tt tag and is not for code (is there a template for representing telegram output? I doubt it, but it's possible), the special appearance of the code output compared to the span output will make it obvious that the template needs to be tweaked to use a monospaced span.

In special namespaces like Module and MediaWiki, uses of it should simply be identified and listed, not altered. It can safely be replaced in mainspace, Wikipedia, Portal, all talk namespaces, etc. (except where it's in nowiki or source xtags).

The bot could generate a list of templates that do not have names ending in /doc in which this substitution was performed, so they can be checked manually to ensure they don't need their ouput changed to use <span> (or <samp> or <kbd>). Or just listed and not changed, and slated for manual cleanup. I'll volunteer to do that part of the cleanup, either way.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  18:58, 19 February 2016 (UTC) Clarified.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:26, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

PS: I have no objection to it being added to AWB General Fixes instead, if people think that having humans do it incrementally would be better. As long as the cleanup begins one way or another.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:08, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

About 2.5k uses in mainspace and 99k everywhere else. Non-article non-talkspace is 24k uses. --Izno (talk) 19:10, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Keeping in mind WP:COSMETICBOT, I think a one time blast of corrections and a monthly schedule of correcting future insertions. I would also suggest that consensus for this be secured at one of the Village Pumps (Technical possibly). Hasteur (talk) 20:23, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

It's not cosmetic. Valid and conformant code is a cross-browser compatibility, accessibility, and WP:REUSE issue. But the proposed schedule sounds fine to me, and would be an improvement over the current mess. The same or a similar bot/script should also fix <ref name=foo/> (with or without quotes around the value of name=) and <br/> and <br> (and the worse error "</br>") to use proper ... /> (i.e., space, then slash, then close-angle-bracket) syntax. Preferably it would quote the value of name= (MediaWiki doesn't choke on it, but any number of external XML parsing tools will). Another obvious fix of this sort is putting quotes around any [X|H]TML attribute values that are non-numeric, e.g. fixing class=classname to class="classname" (it's actually safest to quote all of them, since a numeric one could be changed to non-numeric at any time, just like any name=Johnson1999 could be changed to name=Johson 1999 by a later editor (and even MW will barf on that). The same sort of cleanup script could also perform dead-code cleanup in the form of converting any empty <element [attribute=value [...]]></element> to <element [attribute=value [...]] />. That last one would be arguably cosmetic and thus better done as an AWB general fix. A different kind of tool might also build up a list of pages with the same HTML id= value used two or more times on same page, for manual fixing. I've long wondered if whatever trick is used by navboxes to detect if another navbox is present and auto-collapse could also be used to catch this error, in templates that generate ids. Would also be nice to track down uses of <font>...</font> (which can be auto-converted to <span>...</span>, with some work) and <center>...</center> (which would require manual fixing). Oh, and <acronym>...</acronym> should in every case be changed to <abbr>...</abbr>; the former has been invalid for years, and they support the same attributes with the same output.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:26, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

On breaks: <br /> is actually only a work around for some legacy HTML parsers and is not strictly correct, though an XML parser won't choke on it (for those authors who want to serve XHTML). I doubt anything in this day and age which we support requires it. More generally, <br> is fine in Html 5, which we've been serving for years at this point. (See StackOverflow.) So I would not approve of any change but </br> -> <br(|/| /)>. This should probably be a general fix or a CHECKWIKI fix if it isn't already.

I would support a bot to add quotation marks to any attributes, per this recent change, soon-live onwiki.

The general <element></element> -> <element/> has some issues on some legacy browsers for some attributes, related mostly to the "/" (and especially in block elements e.g. divs and paragraphs). I think these are the same legacy browsers as with the break problem.

I think the Javascript looks for the collapsible class, so you'd need to check whether "getElementByID" returns a list or a single element. Probably the latter, since an ID is supposed to be unique.

I would support replacement of font, center, and acronym, though it may be better just to template-ize them for legitimate uses and remove them for illegitimate. Probably a better task for AWB, if not AWB general fixes. --Izno (talk) 21:56, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Except <br /> is strictly correct; XML (including XHTML) requires the /. HTML5 does not require it, but it works fine in HTML5, and people reuse our code in more ways that we think they do, so it is best to give them the most portable code. The <br/> (no space) format, which is also valid XML, is what certain old browsers have a problem with. It is the exact same problem as <hr/> or any <element/> markup, without the space, in the same browsers. The <element></element> → <element /> conversion does not present any problems, only <element></element> → <element/> conversion.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:42, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

@Bgwhite: I had this already in mind as CHECKWIKI task bu I think we first have to see how many are these are if they reoccur. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:17, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

CheckWiki already checks for

<font> Between a bot and alot of *$(#& manual fixes, there are currently no <font> tags in article space.

<big> But, it is not currently switched on for enwiki.

</br> There are currently no </br> tags in articles, but alot are added everyday. Checkwiki also checks for other cases of bad <br> tags.

I can add <tt> to Checkwiki. I can also give a listing of articles using it via a dump file or any other tags. At one point, I was changing <tt> to {{mono}} or <code>, but was getting alot of complaints, so I dropped it. Bgwhite (talk) 22:53, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, <big>...</big> and <small>...</small> would be nice to get rid of. They're convenient for entry, like <font>...</font>, but we should not be using these things in mainspace or any equivalent, including template, book, portal, etc. It would be nice if all this stuff were purged from Wikipedia namespace, too. Really, everywhere, though I guess we care least of all if they remain in the talk spaces. People can complain all they want, but <tt>...</tt> in particular is just dead and they have to move on with their lives. That whole "acceptance" stage of grieving. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:42, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

SMcCandlish A list of <tt> tags from the March dump can be found at User:Bgwhite/Sandbox1. There are sports articles at the beginning of the list in which the tt tag should be removed and not converted to <code>. Not all tt tags should be converted to code, so a bot couldn't run on the list. Manual editing should be done. Bgwhite (talk) 18:51, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Bgwhite Then replace them with the span in mainspace, portals, etc. While the markup will still be MoS-wrong, it will not be W3C-wrong, so it will still be an improvement. The bot could even use an edit summary that said something like "Converting invalid HTML to valid span. Please consider removing it entirely if extraneous, or converting to <code>, <samp> or <kbd>, as appropriate."  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:46, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Peer review archive bot

We over at wikipedia peer review would be very grateful if a bot could be created to archive old peer reviews.

A bot (VeblenBot) did this once upon a time but is now inactive. A user Relentlessly volunteered to in November 2015 but must have time commitments that preclude this.

We'd be very grateful if a bot could be created that closes inactive peer reviews. Thank you wise bot coders!! --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:04, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Sadly VeblenBot isn't open source, so I can't look to see how he was configured. What determines a peer review as old? Is Wikipedia:Peer review/guidelines#Step 4: Closing a review the procedure it'd be using? -- Cheers, Riley 23:43, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

• Thanks Riley! Something like a review that has been open at least a month with no responses in the last 2 weeks could be considered "old". Yep, it'd be using that procedure. --Tom (LT) (talk) 00:32, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Bump. How's this been going? --Tom (LT) (talk) 00:25, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
    • Bump. --Tom (LT) (talk) 00:28, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

No response bot request

More than a week ago I placed my #Bot request above, but nobody responses. What's going wrong? Sander.v.Ginkel ^(Talk) 09:38, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

My experience is that many requests don't get responded to. Number 57 10:00, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

From the looks of it, you got a response at User talk:Yobot. -- Cheers, Riley 10:02, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

I can start the tagging after the weekend. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:13, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

I've suggested before that instead of simply archiving this page, requests should be archived in one of two ways: "done/won't do/not valid" vs. "awaiting action". That way, valid requests that are not recent will be more readily found by someone who might want to work on them. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:08, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

That system honestly doesn't work. A similar system at Module talk:Citation/CS1/Feature requests has basically gone unanswered. Either someone does it ("done") or not ("not done"), and distinguishing them further doesn't make any sense. --Izno (talk) 14:25, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

I believe that archiving on a page like this can be set up such that only sections with specific tags are archived. I think User talk:Citation bot is set up that way. It makes it so that some decision needs to be made about each request, and requests won't be archived simply because they age out.

Such a system is feasible, but it requires active management of the page. The CS1 feature requests page is a lonely backwater compared to this one, and that page is not archived by a bot, so I don't think the situations are comparable. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:56, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

List of URL redirects

Resolved

 – Everything is fine now --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 20:08, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi! Could some bot check all these URLs and tell me, to what URL are they redirecting? And putting them in some table with old and new URL. Yes, that's all what I need. Doing that manually will be very tedious. URLs are here. So, for example, this redirects to this. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 17:31, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Trying to recover an old bot called BryanBot

Article	Links
CEO	534 links
Honiton	415 links
Twitchen	408 links
Loweswater	289 links
Asahan	137 links

Hello, some helpful souls directed me to this page. On behalf of the people over on Dutch Wikipedia, I'm trying to find out if an old bot which has gone missing can be recovered. The bot is called BryanBot, and it used to take care of their monthly disambiguation list. It has packed in over a year ago (when the Toolserver stopped operating), which means that WP.NL is now in a bit of a pickle. I'm currently doing manual refreshes for them, now and again, but got tired of it, and would like to find a more permanent solution, ideally trying to get that bot recovered.

Now, I'm out of my realm with bots, so I'll have to rely on your help. Is there anyone who can find out if that bot can still be recovered and/or reactivated. If the answer is a firm negative, we'll have to consider alternatives. Thanks! --Midas02 (talk) 21:49, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

commons:User:BryanBot/source? What did it do? Might be able to just write some SQL to replace it. — Dispenser 22:43, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

It generated this list. On a monthly basis, I believe. --Midas02 (talk) 23:01, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

I went a roundabout way, so I'll have to rewrite it. I think I could incorporate this into Dab solver. — Dispenser 01:48, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

That's very kind of you. But are you suggesting you're going to write something from scratch (adapting the WP.EN version I'm assuming), without access to the original source code? In that case you'll need to be aware that they used some kind of filtering on the results. Remember the convention we have on WP.EN not to include links that carry the qualifier (disambiguation)? Well, they... em, did it their way. They were maintaining some kind of list, a filter, that holds the page titles which should not be included in the results. It's not the best solution... maybe they'll change their mind at some point in time. Anyway, if you're going to do what I'm thinking you will be doing, let me know so I can query them regarding that list and see if you're able to work with it one way or the other. --Midas02 (talk) 04:38, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Dispenser, maybe you could share with your SQL query? I assume you have a better than mine (yes, I know, that I should be using page_props for disambigs, i just haven't included it), and you count also links to redirects etc. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:48, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

/* nlwiki most linked dabs */
SELECT CONCAT("* [[", REPLACE(page_title, "_", " "), "]] [http://dispenser.homenet.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dablinks.py?lang=nl&limit=50&namespaces=0&ref=", page_title, " ", a.blc_count + SUM(IFNULL(b.blc_count,0)), " links]") AS text
FROM page AS dab
JOIN page_props ON pp_page=page_id AND pp_propname="disambiguation"
JOIN u2815__p.backlinkcount_nlwiki_p AS a ON a.blc_from=page_id
LEFT JOIN redirect   ON rd_namespace=dab.page_namespace AND rd_title=dab.page_title
LEFT JOIN u2815__p.backlinkcount_nlwiki_p AS b ON b.blc_from=rd_from
WHERE page_namespace=0
GROUP BY page_id
ORDER BY a.blc_count DESC
LIMIT 100;

backlinkcount_nlwiki_p is a table I use for categorder tool. — Dispenser 17:00, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Bot for dashes

Hello. Loads of articles (particularly sports, but also TV seasons etc) contain a longer dash (I'm not sure what it's called, or if it even has a name!). Example University Challenge 2015–16. It looks nicer than a smaller hypen but I'm not sure this sort of dash is even on my keyboard and I'm sure loads of users will type in an article with the smaller hyphen (found next to the 0 on my keyboard, other makes may differ) and will end up on a search page. I was thinking a good bot would be one that searches for articles with the longer dash in the title and automatically created a redirect from a page with the same title except with a shorter hyphen. So for the above article, this page would be created: University Challenge 2015-16 (I've actually just done it myself). I'm not really familiar with bot process and whether this is suitable, but what do people think? Thanks, HornetMike (talk) 18:54, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

The en dash is used for date ranges and a few other things, per MOS:DASH. Yes, it would be very helpful if a bot created redirs at the hyphen version. There are zero cases in which we want no redir from a hyphen version to a title with an en dash in it (the opposite is not true). We should probably also have one that identified and made a list of articles (not redirs) at titles with two sets of numbers separated by hyphens, but maybe there's a way to wrangle that out of the regular search engine (I doubt it; ours is very limited). Many of those hits would turn out to be dates, e.g. in album titles and stuff (Live: 02-03-15 or whatever) and left alone, but a lot of them would probably also be date ranges that need to be moved to en-dash names. We could also have one that fixed page number ranges in citations, which are frequently given with hyphens (and frequently with "|page=" instead of "|pages=" for a range, with " p. " instead of " pp. " for a range (in non-templated citations), and/or with no space between the " p." or " pp." and the number(s). The only catch with the latter fix is that it shouldn't be done in quotations; might be better as an AWB general fix.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:54, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

That sounds great! I'm not really sure what the next part of the process is - just wait for someone with the necessary skills to pick this up (provided others don't object...)? The only thing I was wondering about - if University Challenge 2015–16 is the main article and 2015–16 University Challenge is an existing redirect, and the bot creates versions with hypens for both, will the hyphen version of the latter direct to the page it originated from or University Challenge 2015–16? Thanks, HornetMike (talk) 13:38, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Interesting suggestion, and seems useful. BRFA filed Anomie⚔ 22:58, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Bot to make sure external links are still working.

Redundant I've come across many links on wikipedia in the past that lead to sites that no longer operate or work, are we able to implement a Bot to seek out these links and delete them if they don't work or are obsolete? (I'm kind of a Noob at this, BTW) Minecraftpsyco (talk) 19:48, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Definitely not. 'Dead links' can still be looked up on internet archives, like the Internet wayback machine. French Wikipedia even has a bot which replaces dead links by a number of links to internet archives. I'm wondering why that has never been implemented on English Wikipedia. --Midas02 (talk) 20:36, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

I think it has at least once, since I see bot-added archive-url, archive-date, and dead-link tags in citations. It would be nice if this checking were more robust. I encounter links in articles all the time here that have been dead for years (either do not resolve, or go to error pages). I don't think any bot can do anything about pages that redir to something that doesn't generate an error code, though. We have to manually fix those.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:42, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678: Your bot is working this, right? --Izno (talk) 20:49, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes it is, and quite diligently too. There's just a lot to work on, and this is still a project in development, and supported by IA and the WMF.—^cyberpower_Chat:Online 21:27, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Unless I'm mistaken, any reason why the French practice of adding links to archives was never implemented on this Wikipedia? By the way, I believe they are adding links to archives by default, so it overcomes the problem of dead links not returning fault codes. --Midas02 (talk) 05:47, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Automatically or manually? It has always been a best practice here to add an archive link manually. CP's bot is now doing it automatically. --Izno (talk) 19:23, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Tagging specific unreferenced articles

There are hundreds and hundreds (probably thousands) of articles about sport teams (expecially football) which are completely unreferenced, and, as most of articles about sport teams contains infos like establishment/disestablishment year, honours, staff people names etc., it's very important to have references in such type of articles. So, I propose to scan WP dump for articles about sport teams, without any external link in them, without <ref> tags, and probably without {{Reflist}} tag and/or "References"/"Notes" section - thus list of pages to go through is formed - and then to go through them and to tag with {{unreferenced}}. When running to do the job also it's necessary to parse source code and visual output of articles to ensure that there are no refs before tagging page. --XXN, 18:15, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

@XXN: Since you're requesting visual inspection before saving, you may want to post this request on Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks. GoingBatty (talk) 23:52, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

A significant amount of the "Unreferenced BLP" articles are actually American sportspeople who actually have a reference in the infobox. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 03:43, 4 March 2016 (UTC).

Isn't that already covered by "When running to do the job also it's necessary to parse source code and visual output of articles to ensure that there are no refs before tagging page"?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:48, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

TED links

I write in my capacity as one of two Wikipedians in Residence at TED.

Firstly, I would appreciate some help, please, in counting links to TED talks (URLs including /talks/), topics (URLs including /topics/) and speaker profiles (URLs including /speakers/) in this and the other top ten largest Wikipedias. There is some prior discussion of the issue at WP:VPT#‎External links by page type. [Now resolved.]

Secondly, it would be a good idea to clean up TED links. We have both external links and links in citations, to pages like:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robert_lang_folds_way_new_origami.html

and:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/siegfried_woldhek.html

In such links, the index.php/ and .html parts are redundant; and http:// would be better replaced by https://

Links may have one, two, or all three of these issues.

Thirdly, external links for TED speakers should be replaced using {{TED speaker}} - though that might be better done once Wikidata is populated with TED IDs, and values can be called from there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:57, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Fourthly, links like https://ted.com/daphne_koller_what_we_re_learning_from_online_education should have the "www" prefix added. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:54, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

{{TED talk}} is now available, also. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:04, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

I've now determined that there are 148 links whose URL includes ted.com/index.php/, and 883 links whose URL ends with .html. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:26, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: Not agreeing to this yet (but interested in working it). Have some questions:

1. Because these are somewhat non-printing changes (potentially infringing on WP:COSMETICBOT), could you please establish consensus to make these changes?
2. Here's what I think your requests are Please feel free to help me clarify your request:

   R1: Standardize Ted.com external links so that

   R1A: We do not select a connection identifier (https/http) but let the user's browser choose

   R1B: The subdomain www is immediately before the ted.com domain and top level domain

   R1C: index.php is not included in the external link

   R1D: a trailing html is not included

   R2: We replace any speaker links (in an external links section) with the {{TED speaker}} template

   R3: We replace any Talk links (in an external links section with the {{TED talk}} template

Please let me know if I've parsed your requests correctly. Hasteur (talk) 12:58, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

@Hasteur: Thank you. Yes, except:

• R1A - My understanding is that https:// is preferred.
• R3 - I've found some instances of talk links which include a speaker name/ link; I may need to tweak the template.
• I don't believe that COSMETICBOT is intended to stop us fixing outdated links, which may at any time stop working (and I'm pretty sure there is also consensus to do so); and applying templates will often change (standardise) the link wording, so does not fall foul of that policy.

-- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:03, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: In that discussion there was a good case for not forcing the https only standard. I strongly suggest you code for the //www.ted.com domain in the templates (as I would code the bot task to do the same standard) and let how the user accessed us make the decision about how to move forward. Even if we've deprecated non-HTTPS access here, there might be a case for not passing on a bunch of HTTPS connections on to TED.com. While I understand your finessing of the cosmeticbot rules, I could see certain editors who have an axe to gring argue that these are cosmitc changes and violate the policy. I prefer to be exceedingly conservative with bot changes after I was nearly crucified for something that was completely reasonable. Hasteur (talk) 14:23, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

@Hasteur: I feel your pain. If it becomes an issue, where or how (if not here) do you think that consensus would best be demonstrated? Regarding protocols, please see my latest comment at VPT. I'm confident that TED can handle the traffic. Meanwhile {{TED talk}} now has parameters for a speaker name and link. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:25, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Update: Links in the form http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/thandie_newton_embracing_otherness_embracing_myself.html should also drop the lang/en/ component (for all langauge codes; 93 instances). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:36, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Bot to convert publisher parameter in reference templates

Section title was Bot for converting |publisher=''[insert here]'' into |work=[insert here] (without italics), changed so anchor works — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:29, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Hello. I have already created this bot, but it first needs to be approved, and I do not quite know where to start, so I may need to give up my ownership of the bot.

Anyway, the purpose of this bot is to scan reference templates in articles for the |publisher= parameter whose value is in italics so that it would be changed into the |work= whose value is no longer in italics, and the reason why I am requesting this is because there is a common tendency to use the |publisher= parameter (with italics) over the |work= parameter (without italics) incorrectly, so, with this bot, we could guide editors into correctly using parameters. Gamingforfun³⁶⁵ (talk) 19:18, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Please link to the discussion that shows consensus for a bot changing citations in this way. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:16, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

I am not requesting that it be made; rather, I am looking for thoughts. Gamingforfun³⁶⁵ (talk) 00:11, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

At the top of this page, there is a link to the Bot policy. On that page, you will find a list of Bot requirements. That section contains the following instructions: "In order for a bot to be approved, its operator should demonstrate that it: ... performs only tasks for which there is consensus". Your suggestion is for a bot that would perform a task that may be controversial, so I was asking you to link to a discussion that obtained consensus for that task.

It sounds like you are looking for a place to discuss the idea behind this bot. The best place I can think of is Help talk:Citation Style 1, which is the centralized location for discussion about a set of widely used templates whose names begin with "cite", like {{cite web}} and {{cite news}}. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:30, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

What can I do there? I do not see what your instructions are, my honestly speaking. Gamingforfun³⁶⁵ (talk) 02:43, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm trying to assume good faith here, but it's getting more difficult. What you would do at that page is open a discussion about whether the mass changes you are proposing are supported by the editing community. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:00, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

I am sorry, but it was hard for me to understand for whatever reason, and I admit that that may just be my fault. Anyway, "There is no standard practice, so there is nothing to standardize." said Czar on my talk page, so what is the point? Gamingforfun³⁶⁵ (talk) 06:36, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Czar is wrong. There is WP:FACR. See my reply in your talk page. Fleet Command (talk) 08:41, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I am only quoting Fleet Command's two statements:

“ As a matter of fact, there is a standard: WP:FACR. It has only one simple requirement: Citation style must be consistent. So, either the entire article must forgo publisher, or the entire article must use it wrongly, or the best option: the entire article must use it correctly.

And then there is the time when the editor writes |publisher=''Website Name'', whereas |work= (or |website= – both are aliases for the same thing) are both shorter and do the italicization. Fleet Command (talk) 08:31, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

User:Codename Lisa has informed that she has put together a small page to help editors write the correct parameters. Here: User:Codename Lisa/Websites and their publishers. It might prove helpful for your bot idea. Fleet Command (talk) 08:39, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

”

Gamingforfun³⁶⁵ (talk) 18:30, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Seems like a sensible change, but please point to a couple of examples where the problem has been encountered. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:24, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

My talk page. :\ Gamingforfun³⁶⁵ (talk) 00:11, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

This seems like a bad idea for a bot, because it is very context sensitive and citations have a notorious GIGO problem. An AWB run would be much more appropriate. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:34, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

First, define AWB, and, secondly, would it be a good idea otherwise? Gamingforfun³⁶⁵ (talk) 00:11, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

AWB is AutoWikiBrowser. It is an app that does a lot of automatic editing with editor oversight. HeadBomb is proposing a plug-in for it... well, "proposing" is bit extreme here. He seems to think doing such a thing in an environment where there is editor oversight is favorable. Fleet Command (talk) 08:45, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Agreed with Headbomb (and would have stated it earlier if I knew the words to state). It might be something add to the WP:CHECKWIKI process. --Izno (talk) 15:49, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

What good would that do? Besides, on my talk page, an editor on my talk page said to me:

There isn't a standard practice so there's nothing to standardize. You don't ever have to include the publisher if it isn't helpful. No one really cares as long as each article is consistent. We wouldn't switch to just italicizing the Publisher field because the fields have different metadata purposes. czar 5:56 pm, 15 March 2016, last Tuesday (2 days ago) (UTC−5)

Gamingforfun³⁶⁵ (talk) 00:11, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

For some reason, I feel as though I had just vandalized Wikipedia by giving in this anti-Wikipedia bot idea. I am sorry for destroying that part of Wikipedia. Gamingforfun³⁶⁵ (talk) 00:19, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Substitute and redirect /Comments subpages

Following many discussions in the past, the use of "/Comments" subpages of article talk pages was deprecated (see WP:DCS for details). But the process to completely stop using them has never been carried out. I would like to ask if a bot could be employed to do the following tasks:

• Visit each /Comments subpage. (It is estimated that 25,000 exist.)
• If it is a redirect or blank, then skip it.
• Substitute the contents onto the articles talk page (possibly using Template:Substituted comment which I have just written).
• Redirect the subpage to the talk page, citing WP:DCS in the edit summary.

Thank you — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:46, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

That may mean putting a lot of very old comments below current discussion. Might it not be better to hat the /Comments pages, perhaps with a purpose-made template, and a soft redirect, plus a short note on the current talk page? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:23, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Instead of a short note with a link, why not a short note with the actual comment? If you are worried about the length of the comment (e.g. >500 characters), we can put it into a collapsible box. Ultimately it would preferable to get rid of these separate pages. When an article moves, the link that you have proposed will break unless care is taken to move the subpage with it. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:29, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Poke @Pigsonthewing: — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:22, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

As I already said (emphasis added): "That may mean putting a lot of very old comments below current discussion". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:52, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I understood what you wrote. Does that mean you are okay with the idea of putting them in a collapsible box? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:28, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Wrong links in pages that include a template

Hello,

Certain (maybe all) pages listed by {{Bassar Prefecture}} contain two erroneous links to Bassar instead of Bassar Prefecture. Could you please fix this for all the pages (blue links of the template)? Also, you could remove obsolete parameters "dot_x", "dot_y", "dot_map_caption", "dot_mapsize" and "image_dot_map" when empty: they are obsolete. Here is an example of edit—keep the text "Bassar" in the infobox and change just the link is preferable.

Thank you by advance, Automatik (talk) 14:15, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

@Automatik: I've done your first request — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:10, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Somehow, a couple were missed for the first request. I went through again with AWB and found the stragglers. They're fixed now. ~ Rob^Talk 07:30, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

@MSGJ and BU Rob13: thank you both (actually this was the same request, since unnecessary parameters are present in the pages where there are links to fix; but this is not a very important change to make). Automatik (talk) 00:38, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Bot-related idea on Meta

I've started a new bot-related idea in the IdeaLabs on meta, m:Grants:IdeaLab/Tool_support_for_worklists. If you have thoughts or comments, please leave them there. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:15, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Database reports - Long pages

Do we have a bot that could update Wikipedia:Database reports/Long pages, say, monthly? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:36, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: manually updated list for now. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 07:27, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

@Edgars2007: Useful thank you - though I'd still like regular, automated updates, if someone can kindly oblige. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:57, 21 March 2016 (UTC)