General fixes is a set of semi-automated edits that are enabled by default in AutoWikiBrowser. They are intended to be uncontroversial and require minimal human oversight; many are cosmetic and improve wikitext readability but do not affect display to readers.
This page lists the general fixes, although it may not be exhaustive. General fixes are optimised for en-wiki with some variation for other language wikis. Not all general fixes are suitable for all languages. Some general fixes are disabled on pages containing <includeonly>or<noinclude>.
Keeps first letter case of the redirect in the new template name, except for acronym templates (first three letters uppercase) where the template is forced to uppercase.
{{DEFAULTSORT: McDoe, John}} to {{DEFAULTSORT: Macdoe, John}} per WP:MCSTJR. (Check this. WP:MCSTJR contradicts: "Surnames beginning with Mac or Mc are sorted as they are spelled.")
"Person of Place" generates sort key of "Person Of Place"; also "Person II of Place" generates "Person 02 Of Place" per WP:PEERS and WP:COP.
Adds a DEFAULTSORT where the article title does not match the rules above.
DEFAULTSORTs are not added or changed when the only difference is letter casing.
NOTE: AWB does not meet all of the (various) rules on DEFAULTSORT on en-wiki; it may not meet all of the rules on other wikis either. It may never be possible to meet all of the rules. An option is provided under the Options menu to turn off all changes/insertion of DEFAULTSORT.
Adds [[Category:Living people]] if page has [[Category:XXXX births]] and no living people/deaths category, taking sortkey from births category if present
Skips if the person is dead, or thought to be dead.
Where an article uses named references (see WP:REFNAME), duplicate copies of the same reference are condensed to the abbreviated format of <ref name="Smith" />.
The change is subject to a minimum reference length.
References using the same name and same reference value are condensed (this does not change the appearance of the page to the reader).
Unnamed references with the same reference value are condensed.
Leading and trailing whitespace is ignored when deciding if two references are the same.
Named references are not condensed if the first declaration is in a template call, because we cannot be sure the template will display all of its parameters (and hence the reference) and do not want to create an undefined reference error
Note: This change is fully compatible with the Harvard referencing style.
Duplicate copies of the same reference are condensed by setting the references as named references (see WP:REFNAME), and condensing per Duplicate Named References logic.
The references must be identical except for any leading or trailing whitespace.
The change is subject to a minimum reference length.
The references cannot be of the ibid type.
The references cannot have a {{page needed}} template.
The article must already have at least one named reference (to avoid a 'change in citation style' in the article per WP:CITEVAR). This means at least one named ref in short format (<ref name=a/>) as a full named ref by itself does not cause any references to display as combined.
The reference name is derived by use of the author name, year & page where available, otherwise trans-title/title, otherwise publisher, otherwise website of URL, otherwise fields from the Harvard family of templates, otherwise full reference if short, otherwise a generic reference name of 'ReferenceA' etc.
Note: This change is fully compatible with the Harvard referencing style.
Performs various fixes in compliance with WP:DATE, but not on text in quotes, templates, wikilinks, etc.:
Removes ordinals from full dates per WP:DATESNO; does not alter on the 3rd November 2008 (i.e. the plus ordinal) to avoid introducing bad grammar.
Removes 'of' between a month and a year per WP:DATESNO.
Removes leading zeros from the day in full dates per WP:DATESNO.
Adds a comma if missing to full American-format dates per WP:DATEFORMAT.
Note: This function can be disabled by disabling WP:MOS fixes under the Options menu (Option designed for third-party wikis/other language wikis that are not en-wiki).
Inserts non-breaking spaces between amount and unit for common units, but not on text in quotes, templates, wikilinks, references, etc. per WP:NBSP.
The units supported include cd (candela), cm, km, miles, feet, inches (but not "in"), grammes, hp, Hz, GHz, kHz, MHz, kg, µg, mL, dB mol, °C, °F (see also WP:UNITS for these), and page abbreviations p. and pp. (see also MOS:NDASH for these)
Non-breaking spaces are added only before abbreviated units.
Unspaced mm are specifically excluded, as firearms use mm when it does not refer exactly to a dimension.
"m" is excluded due to its use as an abbreviation for million, except when it is immediately followed by a measurement in ft
Changes "invisible non-breaking spaces" given by Unicode characters with "visible non-breaking spaces" given by html entities per WP:NBSP.
Inserts a non-breaking space between 12-clock number and a.m. or p.m. per MOS:TIME.
Removes space and/or non-breaking space between number and percent symbol per WP:PERCENT.
Removes space and/or non-breaking space between nonalphabetic currency symbol and number per WP:CURRENCY.
Note: This function can be disabled by disabling WP:MOS fixes under the Options menu (Option designed for third-party wikis/other language wikis that are not en-wiki).
Text same as the title where title uses an endash.
Two consecutive hyphens within a sentence (excluding "xn--").
Replaces hyphen with Unicode minus in superscripted negative numbers.
Note: This function can be disabled by disabling WP:MOS fixes under the Options menu (Option designed for third-party wikis/other language wikis that are not en-wiki).
Removes HTML comments with no content other than whitespace. This feature is disactivated as a general fix at the moment but the function is still available for use.
Condenses very short named references to the <ref name="Smith" /> format (e.g. diff). It is designed to catch short reference with a trivial entry such as a number or alphabetical ordering reference that is unneeded, or simply whitespace. It operates subject to these conditions:
The reference is very short
The reference is named and another full reference is present with the same name.
The reference is not to a page number.
Corrects named references where the reference is the same but the reference name is different (e.g. diff)
Not applied if the reference is an 'ibid' reference or similar.
The longer reference name is used provided it is not in 'autogenerated1' or 'ReferenceA' format
References after punctuation (RefsAfterPunctuation)[edit]
Puts references after punctuation (comma, full stop, colon, semi-colon) per WP:CITEFOOT and WP:PAIC, subject to:
Applies to en-wiki and simple-wiki only
Requires >= 75% refs after punctuation to convert the rest.
Whitespace before ref is cleaned when punctuation moved.
Puts many inline templates (such as {{citation needed}}) after punctuation (comma, full stop, colon, semi-colon).
Puts categories after page body, followed by stub templates and interwiki links per WP:FOOTER. Recognizes the common cat and interwiki header comments.
Changes {{Template|section|...}} to {{Template section|...}} for the templates: "unreferenced", "wikify", "refimprove", "BLP sources", "expand", "BLP unsourced".
Removes deprecated parameter |auto=yes from {{Unreferenced}}.
Fix People life date ranges (FixLivingThingsRelatedDates)[edit]
Replaces "John Doe (b. 1978)" with "John Doe (born 1978)" and "John Doe (d. 1978)" with "John Doe (died 1978)" in the lead section of articles per MOS:DOB.
Replaces "John Doe (born: 1978)" with "John Doe (born 1978)" in the lead section of articles per MOS:DOB.
Replaces "John Doe (born on February 3, 1978)" with "John Doe (born February 3, 1978)" in the lead section of articles per MOS:DOB.
Replaces "John Doe (1978-)" with "John Doe (born 1978)" per MOS:DOB (not applied within infoboxes).
Sets endash in born/died date range per WP:ENDASH.
Delinks wikilinks in headings per WP:HEAD (where article has < 6 wikilinks in headings)
Corrects case of "References" section per WP:HEAD.
Fixes common naming errors of "See also" and "External links" sections. For instance it renames "External link" to "External links" per WP:ELCITE and "Also see" to "See also" per WP:SEEALSO.
Changes "Reference" to "References" and "Source" to "Sources" per WP:FNNR.
Removes colon from end of heading names
Removes <br/> from headings
If no level 2 heading in article, remove a level from all headings per WP:HEAD.
Doesn't consider the "References", "See also", or "External links" level 2 headings when counting level two headings.
Only apply if all level 3 headings and lower are before the first of "References"/"External links"/"See also".
Removes bold from headers per WP:HEAD as it makes a visible difference only in the article's table of contents.
Removes bad headings from start of article such as "About", "Description", "Overview", "Definition", "Profile", "Background", "Intro", "Introduction", "Summary" etc.
Removes heading at start of page if heading matches article title (heading not removed if not first heading)
Fixes unbalanced levels to "See also", "External links" and "References" sections (e.g. ==External links= becomes ==External links==)
Note: Does not alter optional spacing at start and end of heading (i.e. no conversion between == Heading == and ==Heading==)
Sets one blank line before each heading per MOS:HEAD, NOT for subheadings immediately after a heading
Removes {{stub}} if article has more than 500 words (comments, categories, defaultsort and persondata are excluded from word count).
Words in bulleted text are divided by 2 to avoid destubbing pages with big lists and little text.
Appends {{Orphan}} if article (or its redirects) has fewer than 3 incoming links (excluding redirects) and the article is not a disambiguation one or has a set index template. Read WP:ORPHAN for more details about orphan articles.
Orphan tagging can be limited to articles with 0 incoming links (excluding redirects) from the Options Menu. There is an option called "Restrict orphan tag addition to linkless pages".
Removes {{Orphan}} if article has more than 2 incoming links.
Appends {{Underlinked}} if article has 1–3 wikilinks or the number of wikilinks is smaller than 0.25% of article's size. Removes tag otherwise (comments, categories, defaultsort, Persondata, infoboxes, {{Chembox}} and {{Drugbox}} are excluded from wikilink and size count).
Appends {{stub}} if article has at most 300 characters (comments, categories, persondata, infoboxes and {{Drugbox}} are excluded from character count). Pages that start with "Lists of..." and "List of..." are not tagged as stubs per Wikipedia talk:Stub/Archive 14#Can lists be stubs?
Appends {{Uncategorized stub}} if article has no categories and is a stub.
Appends {{Uncategorised}} if article has no categories, has more than 6 words outside of templates/tables/comments, and is not a stub (or renames {{improve categories}}). It removes the tag in case article has at least 1 category.
Appends {{Dead end}} if article has no wikilinks (API call used to count mainspace links, blue and redlinks, so transcluded links are counted). Removes the tag otherwise.
Pages with {{Centuryinbox}} are excluded from tagging
Adds {{Ibid}} if article has references containing constructs such as ibid, op. cit.orloc. cit (per WP:IBID). (en-wiki only)
Tags empty level-2 sections with {{Empty section}}. (en-wiki only)
(Currently works only with WikiProject templates named "WikiProject foo" and not with their redirects, so using User:Magioladitis/WikiProjects as a custom module is helpful)
Fixes to WikiProjectBannerShell
If WikiProjectBannerShells or one of its redirects is found, it does the following:
Removes any duplicated parameters if they have the same value.
Removes |blp=no, |activepol=no, |collapsed=no
Bypasses redirects
Adds explicit call to first unnamed parameter |1= if missing.
Text hiding is a feature in AWB that allows syntax within articles to be hidden so that other changes are not applied to the text within that area e.g. typo fixing should not apply to image filenames, otherwise links to images could be broken.
AWB has two levels of text hiding: Hide and HideMore. These two functions exist in the WikiFunctions.Parse.HideText class.
Determines whether the article is a biography page (and for people with multiple pages on their career/history/publications etc., that the page is their main page)
Criteria that return false:
Page has category of Multiple people/Married couples/Fictional.../YYYY animal.../Fictional character/Military careers/Presidencies/...characters/... noble families
Inserts or updates Persondata only based on existing data in the article (e.g. diff)
The Persondata template is inserted for all mainspace people biography articles without existing persondata.
Existing persondata can be updated, but any existing field values are not overwritten.
DATE OF BIRTH and DATE OF DEATH
Uses birth/death fields (and aliases) from people infoboxes and/or birth/death date templates such as {{death date and age}} to derive birth & death dates.
Sets persondata dates using the predominant date locale used in the article.
NAME
Sets persondata name using the article's existing {{DEFAULTSORT}}.
PLACE OF BIRTH and PLACE OF DEATH
Sets persondata locations based on |placeofbirth= and |placeofdeath= fields (and aliases) from people infoboxes.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES and SHORT DESCRIPTION fields are not automatically populated.
