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What I was thinking of was a bot that might pick up the most extreme examples, say, articles of over 5 kb (or 10kb?) prose with leads of 1-2 sentences only. I was thinking this might be a good way to pick up large/important articles with crappy leads. I didn't want to go crazy with tagging 50,000 articles. Writing in a stream-of-consciousness type way and happy for input on this. Cas Liber (talk·contribs) 00:26, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
One thing to consider is lists. They tend to have rather laconic leads "This is a list of X" (in violation of WP:BEGIN and usually accompanied with a chronic shortage of words). Do you think mass tagging lists will raise awareness about the importance of writing good leads? Finnusertop (talk | guestbook | contribs) 09:05, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
The hardest part about this is to determine which articles to tag. I've done some work on this, and have gone and excluded disambiguations. As Finnusertop said, however, the lists are going to still be a large number of the remainder. I've gone ahead and gathered a list of potential candidates so far here (excludes disambiguation, but nothing else, so some may have already been tagged; I didn't limit the size of the pages either). As you can see, over half of that list contains, well, lists. Therefore, the question would be how do we treat these? HazardSJ00:50, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
@Hazard-SJ: thanks for doing that. Interesting quandary. Could go either way on lists. I am tempted to tag them. I think maybe asking some wikignomes to tag a few articles might be best. I don't really want to indiscriminately tag-bomb articles and yet would be good to point to a few broad/obvious fixes...hmmm.Cas Liber (talk·contribs) 04:59, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
@Casliber: without a doubt your view is in agreement with our policies and guidelines. I, too, agree. It's just that this is one of those things that has never been enforced much and the community has developed bad practices. Tagging instances of this would affect a majority of list articles, and I'm wondering if this has the desired effect of raising awareness, or will it simply upset people. Finnusertop (talk | guestbook | contribs) 19:32, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
If this is something that would affect the majority of list articles, it is obvious that the MOS does not reflect the consensus of the entire community, and enforcing the will of a few MOS editors over the majority of list-article writers runs contrary to our basic principles. Nyttend (talk) 14:41, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
I'm not attempting to say that the consensus of list writers is for something, but enforcing MOS, written by just a small group of people, over different practices of the majority of list-writers is wrong. Policies being written to reflect what we generally do already, there can be no real basis for demanding that we follow MOS here, because there's definitely not a consensus of list-writers in favor of doing anything that can be bot-enforced, at least among suggestions made here. Nyttend (talk) 13:09, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
Aah ok, I get you - that is a fair point and I concede that list-articles hadn't crossed my mind when initially thinking about this. The list of articles above that includes some lists is interesting, as it catches some articles that actually do have leads but that someone has slapped an Overview' section header at the top. Some definitely could do with decent leads however. In any case, I was just throwing this idea up for discussion and have already been tagging things manually anyway as the more I discuss it the more I am dubious of a bot's utility. Food for thought though....Cas Liber (talk·contribs) 13:29, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
We really need a bot that updates the lists at Wikipedia:WikiProject Fix common mistakes#Log. Right now they are being done manually, which is a very tedious process. Some of the entries have not been updated since November of 2014 and there are a bunch of errors that we haven't added because we can't keep up with the ones we list now.
The BRFA has been denied for reasons unrelated to the task itself. Another editor is welcome to take this on. @Jamesmcmahon0: Are you willing to reopen the old BRFA? — Earwigtalk23:15, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
Wanna just make a list of the pages and let someone else do the redirects by hand. A search of red-links on a page and creating those as redirects is simply enough for AWB to handle, even if it's a lot of pages. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:36, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
Texas Historical Commission atlas has changed information links
I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if this is possible to correct with a bot, but there are a considerable amount of articles that are affected by this. These atlas links have been used for NRHP citations, as well as other historical marker citations.
However, once you access information, those links have changed. Whatever is linked to THC as sources in articles are now dead links. I just made a recent change to an article. You can see by the diff how it's been changed. — Maile (talk) 22:25, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Special:LinkSearch finds 718 links to http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us. The count includes all namespaces and cases with multiple links on the same page. There are around 370 different articles. http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us currently says: "Welcome to the new Atlas! The original Atlas, now located at http://atlas1.thc.state.tx.us, will eventually be phased out in the coming weeks. Please begin transitioning your use to the new Atlas." The links I examined work if atlas is replaced by atlas1 but it sounds like this is temporary. It would be good to find and update to new atlas url's while the old content can be seen at atlas1 (not all url changes are of the same form). PrimeHunter (talk) 22:40, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
@Maile66: BattyBot is working on the Handbook of Texas links such as http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ - If you still need fixed for http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us, please let me know and I can submit an RFBA for that as well. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 21:30, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
findarticles.com
Mark all links to findarticles.com as dead. The links are being redirected to a another website. However, they are not marked as 404, or soft 404. That includes links to https://web.archive.org/web/$1/findarticles.com etc. which has been deleted retroactively from the archives.
Examples:
Josve05a so that I understand the request correctly (and to help guide the answer) what you're looking for is: For every occurrence where the pattern findarticles.com appears inside a ref block (i.e. regex 'ref>*?findarticles.com*?</ref') append a {{deadlink}} template (with appropriate year/month for categorization) just inside the close of the reference tag. Is this correct? Hasteur (talk) 18:36, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
Doesn't just has to be in refs, but in all external links, but if that's to complicated, then the refs are good enough. (t) Josve05a (c)19:13, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
I am here again, I would like to inquire if we could create a dead links bot that searches for and tags dead links in articles. I find dead links from years back every day. I think that the system needs to keep up with the high amount of dead links that are not tagged as such. So that the bot that is currently archiving the dead links doesnt just take for example one dead link that happens to have been tagged but leaves behind 5 others.BabbaQ (talk) 15:54, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
A bot isn't necessarily the best idea here. Human checking with one of the dab solver tools will be necessary to ensure that the links are actually intended to go to the graph theory article (instead of graph of a function or something). Also: the requested move was closed as "no consensus". I admit I'm not a huge fan of this new title as an improvement of the previous one, but it's difficult to come up with a better one (although I suggested "Graph (discrete structure)"). Either way, that's wandering off-topic. — Earwigtalk00:02, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Bot to find missing year of publication category for fungus species
I was wondering if it would be possible to make a bot that made a list of all fungus species that do not have the year of publication category (e.g. Category:Fungi described in 2015). I would use this list to go through the articles by hand and add the missing cats where appropriate. I'm not quite sure how many articles would be included, but guessing less than 2000. Sasata (talk) 21:33, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
While I didn't put much effort into the scan, and I'm running a dump thats at least three weeks old, these are the only results I got:
This article has been moved from TBS (TV channel) as a result of an RM that suggested the redirect should be retargeted to the main TBS page. I would have done it via AWB but there are around 2,000 incoming links. Cheers, Number5722:06, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
@Andy: #1 is Done - please let me know if I've missed any. Thinking about #3 - what would be the benefit in changing links to {{Twitter}}? (I have a guess, but I don't want to put words in your mouth). Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:52, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Two benefits: easier tracking; and we'd be able to pull the values from Wikidata. In fact, it might be worth converting the template, first, then replacing links and removing the Twitter handle (or moving it to Wikidata) in one go. Thoughts? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits19:52, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Category:Container categories, by the current definition of the notice box, only allow subcategories, no other pages. If possible, I think it would help the maintenance process if a bot could check container categories for pages, and if found, check if they are already categorized in a subcategory of the container category being checked. If they are, remove them from the container category, referencing the subcategory and WP:SUBCAT in the edit summary. --Slivicon (talk) 14:57, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
I would also like to see such a bot. Note: Ideally it would check not just immediate subcategories, but go down the category tree. Perhaps it could also generate a list of any that it can't fix. DexDor(talk)07:11, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
There's no effective need to do that, as my bot searches for User:MiszaBot/config. That said, it wouldn't be hard to replace the MiszaBot template with a different one on the bot's next run. →Σσς. (Sigma)04:00, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
Also, if they weren't replaced (just removed) all the pages that use the MB configurations (my talk page included) would cease to be archived. --kelapstick(bainuu) 04:02, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
This request has not been thought through, and the subsequently filed MFD is going down in flames for that very reason. Suggest this request be closed. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:38, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
Hmmmm I might start looking into this. I think this task is vastly to broad in scope to tackle all at once by a bot as Jonsey mentioned. But maybe there are some simpler sub problems that a bot could solve. Lonjers (talk) 02:47, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
You could start with a bot run to calculate the citation style of each article and add an appropriate hidden category to those articles where the citation style is consistent. Subsequent bot runs could identify articles where a cite has been added in a different style, they might even be able to change the citations to match the style set by the hidden category. Though this would mean we needed to carefully monitor changes to that hidden category. ϢereSpielChequers10:17, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Bot needed to reverse contributions
As far as I am aware there is not yet a bot which will:
undo contributions of another user/bot for a given date/time range
write a list of diffs where it was impossible to Undo because of subsequent edits
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)
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)
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.
Somehow, a couple were missed for the first request. I went through again with AWB and found the stragglers. They're fixed now. ~ RobTalk07:30, 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)
Idea is not well explained. Please re-read WP:igloo. You don't need a bot to use it. Also, automated counter-vandalism is an area that's already well-covered by existing bots. ~ RobTalk21:14, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
Replacing templates
Hello everybody, does someone knows how to replace an old template with the new?For example, I want to replace an template who includes sections level 3, 4, 5, 6 etc. with an single template. I want to split the sections, but without removing the text beneath them. Thank you, -- Denis Marinov (talk) 20:33, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
@Denis Marinov: Are you looking to make edits in the mainspace, or just edit the template itself? Could you link to the template you're interested in? ~ RobTalk21:20, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
I'm searching for a way to replace this template, which produce an table with nine sections. Beneath this sections are some other themplates by which you can add some text to the section itself. For example, you have on section 2 Прилагателно име (Adjective), which needs to be replaced by {{-adjec-}}. This {{{ЗНАЧЕНИЕ}}} (the meaning of the adjective) needs to be deleted and the text added beneath {{-adjec-}}. I do not know how to use the python bot, but if it's some explanation about it, it will be grateful. -- Denis Marinov (talk) 22:01, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
If you want to edit the template itself, that doesn't require a bot at all. If you wanted to make changes across many articles transcluding the template, you should start be seeking consensus for that. We're unable to help too much here, though, because the procedures on the Bulgarian (?) Wiktionary are likely very different from the English Wikipedia. I'd recommend asking at the help desk over there. ~ RobTalk22:52, 24 March 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.
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)
@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)
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)
Per the RfCs at [1] and [2], 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)
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. — Earwigtalk07:48, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
One day this may become part of AWB's "general fixes", see phab:T100316. But even then, the comment would only be removed when a bot/editor is making a different, non-trivial, improvement to a page. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:46, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
This has absolutely nothing to do with the WMF. Either way, it looks like a nice way to find new articles that are sorely in need of cleanup. — Earwigtalk14:31, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
Well, it kinda is a mess. A messy source page is hard to edit. It's also not a huge deal, and should simply be removed on sight. All the best: RichFarmbrough, 23:07, 31 March 2016 (UTC).
See the source for this bot I helped write that counts red links. Which I realized I completely forgot about until now...I should probably file that BRFA... Wugapodes (talk) 07:13, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
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)
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.
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)
@LT910001: I run an AWB-based bot. AWB is great at doing find-and-replace with regex, but it's not so great at combing through articles to find ones eligible for a find-and-replace. Is there a template that is placed on all peer review pages? If so, could you modify this template to add a tracking category to all stale peer reviews? If that is feasible, I could probably take on this task. ~ RobTalk18:20, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
I am not sure that this would be possible, BU Rob13. The main reason we need a bot is to close inactive reviews, which requires a determination that a page hasn't been edited in x amount of days (say 2 weeks). Changes then need to be made to the review page, and the talk page of the article. Would that be possible using AWB? --Tom (LT) (talk) 15:41, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
@LT910001: That's where the template comes in. It's possible, if a template is transcluded on all peer review pages to denote them as peer review pages, to use that template to generate a tracking category of all pages that transclude that template which haven't been edited in a certain amount of time. AWB can then use that category to pull a list of pages that need edits. Once you have the list of relevant review pages, then the edits on review and talk pages are fairly easy. I'm not familiar with the peer review process, so I don't know if such a template exists that is transcluded on all active review pages (and generally no other pages). If you linked me to an example active review and example inactive review, that would be helpful. ~ RobTalk18:29, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, I didn't know that was possible. The category may need some refining, because it currently contains some article talk pages and templates, too. --Tom (LT) (talk) 18:53, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
@LT910001: Check now. I changed the template a tad and only peer review pages should appear in the category now. The extra pages were a result of {{Peer review page}} being transcluded where it shouldn't be, but I changed things so the template will only place the new maintenance category on pages that are in Category:Current peer reviews or its subcategories. If the category looks good, I'll start working on a corresponding category for article talk pages and then I'll write the regex for this task. ~ RobTalk19:49, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
BRFA filed (or will be in like 5 minutes, anyway). After working on this for another hour, I'm confident the categories are working as expected. There will need to be some manual work to ensure all the peer reviews were properly opened prior to running the bot, but other than that, this task can run once every couple weeks and close things out. ~ RobTalk21:36, 2 April 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
I went a roundabout way, so I'll have to rewrite it. I think I could incorporate this into Dab solver. — Dispenser01:48, 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)
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 ☺☏¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 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)
I don't think we've ever bothered to systematically mark stuff as "done" on this board. Go ahead and do it if you really want, use your judgment. Anomie⚔18:28, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
It's more so I can archive the thread and make it easier to find threads that still need assistance. I've seen editors mark things as done and/or archive when done before on this board. Done ~ RobTalk18:43, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
Task force tagging (Hymenoptera)
I am making a request for user:Yobot or other available bot to do some tagging for Wikiproject Insects. I am a member of the project and have notified them here.
{{WikiProject Insects|class=x|importance=y|Hymenoptera=yes|Hymenoptera-importance=y}} (inheriting importance from parent project) to articles in the following subcategories
EXCEPT where talk page already has {{Hymenoptera=yes|Hymenoptera-importance=VALUE}} set.
Although the "all subcategories" is usually against yobot's rules, there shouldn't be any issues with forgetting to exclude categories, as the wasp and bee categories have been curated extensively by WikiProject Insects members and only contain pages for those groups (the non-ant Hymenoptera). I can manually list all the categories if you'd prefer, but there are a lot of them! M. A. Broussard (talk) 23:44, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Whoops! My apologies. I didn't look at the date. I've just been trying to clear away a bit of the clutter here so I can tell what still needs looking at. ~ RobTalk20:19, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
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:
@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)
I agree that consensus is needed from the projects. If you link to consensus discussions at both projects, one of us will get to this sooner or later (probably sooner, since the task is trivial). ~ RobTalk12:12, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
@Edgars2007: Looks good. BRFA filed to get the ball rolling. Ping me when the list is updated. Please don't worry about scanning for other WikiProject tags that are more specific - just provide me a list of them. The bot will ensure that any talk pages that include templates on the list you provide aren't also tagged for WP:WikiProject Women, and there's no sense wasting man hours to do what a bot can do! ~ RobTalk23:32, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
@BU Rob13:Sohere is the list. List contains all enwiki articles, that are in dewiki "Frau" ("Women") category. Sorry, didn't perform any check for existing banners (there are problems with saving the list onwiki or doing check via PetScan). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 20:14, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
Here is a list of 200 pages already in both WikiProject Women and WikiProject Feminism
Extended content
Talk:Emma Goldman
Talk:Woman
Talk:Madonna (entertainer)
Talk:Ani DiFranco
Talk:Christina Aguilera
Talk:Comfort women
Talk:Janeane Garofalo
Talk:Yoko Ono
Talk:Mormonism and women
Talk:Corazon Aquino
Talk:Jane Fonda
Talk:Annette Lu
Talk:Martha and the Vandellas
Talk:Beyoncé
Category talk:Women
Talk:Batgirl
Talk:Vera Brittain
Talk:Astrid Lindgren
Talk:Aretha Franklin
Talk:Nellie McKay
Talk:Bea Arthur
Talk:Lena Horne
Talk:Martha Reeves
Talk:Helen Reddy
Talk:Norma Shearer
Talk:Lana Turner
Talk:Anaïs Nin
Talk:Loretta Lynn
Talk:Smita Patil
Talk:Women and video games
Talk:Shabana Azmi
Talk:Vidya Balan
Talk:Kathy Najimy
Talk:Lily Tomlin
Talk:Lillian Russell
Talk:MC Lyte
Talk:Lauren Hutton
Talk:Barbara Gordon
Talk:Taylor Swift
Talk:Violence against women
Talk:Iris Marion Young
Talk:Carole Pateman
Talk:Chantal Akerman
Talk:Janet Radcliffe Richards
Talk:Lee Grant
Talk:Teresa Wright
Talk:Ethel Smyth
Talk:Lynn Davis (singer)
Category talk:Women by occupation
Talk:Saba Mahmood
Talk:Cheryl Araujo
Talk:List of tomboys in fiction
Talk:Lakshmi (actress)
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Feminism
Talk:Katy Perry
Talk:Janet Jackson
Talk:Susan Walker Fitzgerald
Category talk:Violence against women in Pakistan
Talk:Mary Foy
Talk:Catherine Hakim
Talk:Midge Costanza
Talk:Megan Rapinoe
Talk:Andrea Dworkin
Talk:Anahita Ratebzad
Talk:The Women's Conference
Talk:Queen Latifah
Talk:Bernadette Brooten
Talk:Women's Organization of Iran
Talk:Mary Louise Defender Wilson
Talk:Maureen Milgram Forrest
Category talk:Violence against Aboriginal women in Canada
Category talk:Violence against women in India
Category talk:Black feminist books
Talk:Fierce Pussy
Talk:Incarceration of women
Portal talk:Women's sport
Category talk:Judith Butler
Category talk:Womanist writers
Category talk:Violence against women
Talk:Honour killing of Sadia Sheikh
Category talk:Violence against women in China
Category talk:Violence against women in the United Arab Emirates
Category talk:Violence against women in Vietnam
Category talk:Emma Goldman
Talk:Arvonne Fraser
Category talk:Audre Lorde
Category talk:Women photographers
Talk:Eekwol
Category talk:Violence against women in England
Category talk:Womanist literature
Category talk:Violence against women in South Africa
Category talk:Violence against women in North America
Category talk:Violence against women in the United States
Category talk:Violence against women in Canada
Category talk:Violence against women in Asia
Talk:Ikumi Yoshimatsu
Talk:Jacquelyn Grant
Category talk:Violence against women in Africa
Category talk:Crimes against women
Category talk:Violence against women in France
Category talk:Violence against women in Europe
Category talk:Violence against women in the United Kingdom
Category talk:Violence against women in South America
Category talk:Violence against women in Mexico
Talk:Lauran Bethell
Talk:Tara Teng
Talk:Prabha Khaitan
Category talk:Women business executives
Talk:Valerie Bryson
Talk:Women in Sweden
Category talk:American women photographers
Talk:Incarceration of women in the United States
Category talk:American women printmakers
Category talk:Women experimental filmmakers
Category talk:Women film directors
Talk:Fatima Sadiqi
Category talk:Women company founders
Talk:Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring
Talk:Violence against women in India
Talk:Elizabeth Sackler
Talk:Nada al-Ahdal
Category talk:Women government ministers
Talk:Soraya Post
Talk:Kakan Hermansson
Talk:Agneta Stark
Talk:Amina Tyler
Talk:Social justice warrior
Talk:Godless Bitches
Category talk:Violence against women in Afghanistan
Category talk:Violence against women in Israel
Category talk:Violence against women in Turkey
Talk:Yoko Hayashi
Category talk:Violence against women in Scotland
Category talk:Violence against women in Wales
Category talk:Violence against women in Ethiopia
Talk:Women's Equality Party
Talk:Representation of black women in hip hop
Talk:Clara Sue Kidwell
Talk:Yara Sallam
Talk:Kat Blaque
Talk:How to Be a Woman
Talk:Dorothy Sue Cobble
Talk:List of women's studies journals
Talk:Margareth Øvrum
Talk:Pao effect
Talk:Daniela Bobeva
Talk:Corinne Vigreux
Talk:Women's empowerment
Talk:Begum Zafar Ali
Talk:Rose Mukantabana
Talk:Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality
Talk:Women of the World Festival
Category talk:Violence against women in Russia
Category talk:Violence against women in Saudi Arabia
Category talk:Violence against women in Spain
Talk:List of incidents of violence against women
Category talk:Violence against women in Greece
Category talk:Violence against women in Ireland
Category talk:Violence against women in Belgium
Category talk:Violence against women by continent
Talk:List of incidents of violence against women in Spain
Talk:Malathi
Talk:Esther Ayuso
Talk:Judith Edelman
Talk:Media Report to Women
Talk:Obioma Nnaemeka
Talk:Flying Broom
Talk:Feminism in Sweden
Talk:Anonymous birth
Talk:Confidential birth
Talk:Wei Tingting
Talk:Mia Matsumiya
Talk:Êzîdxan Women's Units
Talk:Susan Boyd
Talk:Wellington Rape Crisis
Category talk:Violence against women in Chile
Talk:Vicki Garvin
Talk:Evanthia Kairi
Talk:Women of color
Talk:Hidayet Şefkatli Tuksal
Talk:Yasmin Jiwani
Talk:Can't Take This Shit Anymore
Category talk:Women templates
Talk:Malouma
Wikipedia talk:Meetup/NYC/ArtAndFeminism 2016
Talk:Deolinda Rodríguez de Almeida
Talk:Fannie Pennington
Talk:Sisterhood Is Global Institute
Talk:Bohus Stickning
Talk:Lyn Mikel Brown
Talk:Charlene Carruthers
Talk:Meira Paibi
Talk:Double Union
Talk:National Women's Studies Association
Talk:Lois Galgay Reckitt
Talk:Fembot Collective
Talk:Ilse Fuskova
Talk:National Association of Women Judges
Talk:Delilah Montoya
Talk:Shehla Rashid Shora
Talk:Coloniality of gender
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with pages being tagged as both Women and Feminism. If human intervention determines that overlap is worthwhile, that's fine. It's just not desirable in a bot run. ~ RobTalk11:07, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
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)
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)
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.
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
@Ricky81682: Simpler idea -- How about transcluding every single template in that category that's still in use, then deleting everything? I did a lot of work like this (cough userboxes cough) back in the day. --Cyde Weys01:45, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
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)
BU Rob13, oops, I think I forgot about this task. My current progress is that I'm running a script to enumerate all 139 pages or so, and I have half of a script that takes a page title and fixes it. APerson (talk!) 02:59, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
I'll leave you to it. No pressing need for this to be finished soon. I've just been working through the backlog here and wasn't sure if you were still working on this. ~ RobTalk04:20, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
BU Rob13 and Graham, I've successfully tested this bot on a couple of talk pages, as you can see at this oldid. Graham, do you envision this bot task as a weekly or monthly run that goes through all of the pages with banners that could be merged, and then merges them? APerson (talk!) 03:09, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
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.
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 edits13:23, 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)
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)
Agreed with Andy Mabbett that this doesn't seem useful and may be interruptive of current discussion and work. The proper things to do with these pages is going to vary by context. The most commonly appropriate solution would be to merge the material into the talk page and/or its archives in chronological order, but that's a lot of work for no particular gain. Isn't it just easier to add them to an archive box (creating the archive box if needed? Example:
There's no compelling reason to hunt down and eliminate old /Comments pages. They're not in the way of anything. — SMcCandlish ☺☏¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 19:08, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
I see there's been passing mention of this before, but I've been working on a backlog in which categories such as Category:Wikipedia files with no copyright tag as of 3 April 2016 regularly appear. The only content is a template which was deleted three years ago following merger of the category. The category is created by User:DumbBOT, whose owner has had sporadic Wiki time for a few years and who has not edited at all since August. Is there something that can be done about this situation? It seems a waste of resources and admin time to create one of these categories and then have a human delete it every day, aside from the fact that it means this backlog can never be emptied. I guess the ideal solution for an unsupervised bot is for it to be taken over by someone else (I understand @Nyttend: has taken over most of the functions - is this sufficiently advanced that DumbBOT can be blocked?) Or at the very least, can we have a second bot to automatically delete these categories when DumbBOT creates them, to save a human having to do it? Le Deluge (talk) 15:30, 9 April 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)
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 ☺☏¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:42, 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.—cyberpowerChat:Online21:27, 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)
@Izno: I think he's saying the French wiki is adding archive links automatically at time of placing the reference, which is not that bad of an idea. Could you clarify, Midas02? ~ RobTalk18:26, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
I was talking about complementing dead links with archive links. Good to know there's a bot doing that now. French Wikipedia also adds an archive link by default to every external link placed (example). It has its pros and cons. --Midas02 (talk) 01:40, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
Not done The adding archive links by default is interesting, but not the original bot request, and it would need consensus gathering. Marking the original request as not done because we already have bots providing archive links for dead links. ~ RobTalk01:19, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
No-one's stepped forward here yet. It won't require a bot run, I expect, just regular old AWB. I might get around to it, but it's thesis submission time, so no guarantees. Anyone else who comes along and has the free time is welcome to handle it, including yourself, if you want to take a stab at using AWB. ~ RobTalk11:33, 8 May 2016 (UTC)