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Rewrite citations to DNV Exchange

DNV GL, a large ship register, has changed the link scheme for their online ship register at https://exchange.dnv.com/Exchange/Redirect.aspx and moved it to http://vesselregister.dnvgl.com/vesselregister/vesselregister.html

I updated the {{DNV}} citation template to use the new link scheme, but there are still 120 pages that used bare URLs that are now dead links. I am requesting a bot to look for {{cite web}} templates that link to URLs containing "//exchange.dnv.com/exchange/main.aspx?" and replace them with {{DNV|vesselid=vesselid|title=title|accessdate=accessdate}}

--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 23:22, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Y Done I used a combination of a lua module and AWB to take care of the easy cases one at a time. The rest will have to be done manually. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 00:30, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

List the coordinates appearing in a category or list of articles

Hi, is there a tool (or could one be created) that would report, for all the articles in a category, what are the coordinates appearing in them? This would be useful for editors creating list-articles that will use the {{GeoGroup}} template, allowing readers to see all the locations in an OSM map, a Google map, or a Bing map. It would also be useful for updating list-articles, because it would allow for comparison to see if coordinates had been added or changed.

Map all coordinates using OpenStreetMap

Download coordinates as:

For example, there is Category:Dams in Maharashtra, which has multiple sub-categories, in which all or most articles include coordinates.

It would be great if the tool returned something like:

It should work if the coordinates were in either Degrees-Minutes-Seconds format or in decimal format, like the item

which is the one temple in Draft:List of Hindu temples in Cuttack not having DMS format coordinates.

If an article included more than one set of coordinates, I suppose it should return all of them.

This question came up at Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics#Getting coordinates and displaying maps for lists of places in India, asked by User:Dharmadhyaksha.

Thank you for your consideration! :) --doncram 19:19, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

{{GeoGroup}} can be placed in a category page to provide coords of articles in the cat page. It does not work (well) on Category:Dams in Maharashtra because that contains no articles, only other categories. It works splendidly on Category:Dams in Latur district, for instance. Not sure how much this helps, but thought I'd bring it to your attention. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:32, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
Thanks @Tagishsimon: I had tried it. Seems that it works well with OSM but not with Google. I had checked only Google then. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 19:46, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
I see reports on GeoGroup having problems in Google from time to time ... I don't think they always play nicely together. Good luck with adding coords. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:52, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
I asked about getting all the articles and coordinates in a category and its subcategories, in text format rather than displayed. This reminds me that I also wanted to ask if it could report the coordinates for all articles in a list, in addition or instead. If that would be easier to program, I'd be happy with that! :) --doncram 00:23, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
@Doncram: I think, petscan is all you need. Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 20:18, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
Ehh, pinging also Dharmadhyaksha. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 20:20, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

I need help replacing 343 external links. The webmaster of the IreAtlas Townland Database brought it to my attention that the url for his website changed from www.seanruad.com (now a spam site) to http://www.thecore.com/seanruad. Using the Internet Archive, I can confirm that the two web addresses formerly hosted the same website, compare current with archived site. According to Special:LinkSearch, there are 343 links currently pointing to the spam website that should be redirected to www.thecore.com/seanruad. For the record, I do not have AWB and don't know how to use it. Thanks for your assistance. Altamel (talk) 04:52, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

@Altamel: I'm willing to take this on if (and only if) you compile a list of pages with the link and manually check each one to ensure the new URL would be correct. Ping me when/if you do that, and I'll do an AWB run to replace these. ~ RobTalk 05:50, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
@Altamel: Is this still needed? ~ RobTalk 02:39, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
@BU Rob13:Sorry, I had a really busy week after filing this request and must have forgotten about it. Really appreciate you reminding me of this task. Could you clarify what you mean by "manually check each one to ensure the new URL would be correct?" The landing page for http://www.thecore.com/seanruad is a database search. All of the towns previously linked to that landing page. If you meant that you wanted me to verify that the cited information in each article was correct by querying that town in the database, that would take a really long time, and it might be faster for me to just replace the links myself right after performing each query. On the other hand, if that is not what you meant, I don't see what I can do besides give you the list generated by Special:LinkSearch. Thanks, Altamel (talk) 05:17, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
@Altamel: No, I just meant double-checking that the new URL pattern worked. i.e. If the URL was formerly www.example.com/abc and you think it should now be www.thecore.com/example/abc (due to the change in domain), just open up www.thecore.com/example/abc to verify that it isn't a 404 page. Sometimes, when webmasters change domains, they also swap some pages around. The general pattern of the change doesn't always hold. ~ RobTalk 05:19, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
@BU Rob13: Ah. Across all of Wikipedia, only three URLs under the original domain are being used. http://www.seanruad.com/ should go to http://www.thecore.com/seanruad, http://www.seanruad.com/Irish is linked from List_of_archaeological_sites_in_County_Cork, but the description there is "Townland Database", so I assume that link should also point to http://www.thecore.com/seanruad; the third link was http://www.seanruad.com/cgi-bin/iresrch, but since that was a CGI directory, they probably would have pointed to the database on the homepage as well. So I created a list of pages at User:Altamel/Sandbox. Perhaps the ones outside of the mainspace should be left alone, since talk pages generally are not modified after the discussion closes, and I've always been leery of tampering with userpages. But all the mainspace pages should be linked to http://www.thecore.com/seanruad. Altamel (talk) 05:36, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
@Altamel:  Done ~ RobTalk 15:01, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
@BU Rob13: Excellent! Thank you very much for your help. Altamel (talk) 15:18, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Edit number bot

I think it would be cool if we had a bot that would output the number of edits a user has, per request. So say that I want a subpage in my userspace to be automatically updated to show the most accurate edit count number, this bot would do that. And for the sake of uniformity, the subpage could be named "edits" or "editcount" or something along that line.

This would be useful for automatically updating templates in the user space that rely on the edit count of the user, such as the {{service awards}} template.

I think that this could be done by using a tool over at WMF labs, like the User Analysis Tool. --MorbidEntree - (Talk to me! (っ◕‿◕)っ♥) 06:34, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Bots/Frequently_denied_bots#Bots_to_update_edit_counts. →Σσς. (Sigma) 07:22, 6 June 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)
The discussion was later archived to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Archive 101#Template:Infobox national football team. Enterprisey (talk!) (formerly APerson) 04:06, 20 June 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)
@Edgars2007: Have you sought further consensus on this? ~ RobTalk 18:29, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
@BU Rob13: no, I haven't. But I'm not the requester on this :) So I'm pinging PeeJay2K3. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 21:21, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
@Edgars2007: Whoops! Missed the first signature. Sorry about that. ~ RobTalk 21:34, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
I don't see how the MOS allows the use of flags in this instance, and none of the points above seems pertinent at all. The infobox isn't a table that needs further clarification by the flags, and if anything, they just disrupt the infobox. See Togo national football team for an example, where the French Togoland, Gold Coast and Trans-Volta Togoland flags make the infobox look ridiculous. – PeeJay 21:47, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
@PeeJay2K3: I agree with you completely, but if I were to file a BRFA, they're going to ask me for clear evidence that the bot would be operating within consensus. We can argue that this is a non-controversial task or we can make a short discussion at WT:FOOTY that I can link to proving that consensus is to remove these. The latter takes a lot less time, so I'd prefer to go that route. If you create a discussion, ping me after around a week and I'll take a look. If there's no serious opposition to this, then I'll file a BRFA. This is a simple enough task. ~ RobTalk 01:54, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

@PeeJay2K3: Any progress on this? I seem to remember seeing you start a discussion on this, but I'm having trouble finding it. ~ RobTalk 14:19, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

None whatsoever. As per usual, the discussion tailed off from the original topic and we never got a consensus at WP:FOOTY. Personally, I'm of the opinion that Wikipedia guidelines regarding the usage of flag icons is enough to set the bot going, but I guess I'll just have to do it by hand myself. – PeeJay 14:52, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
@PeeJay2K3: I'd recommend starting an RfC on the subject at WP:FOOTY with clearly structured support/oppose sections. That's most likely to result in some progress. In the meantime, I'm marking this as Needs wider discussion. and it may be archived, but feel free to message me on my talk page if you get consensus for this and I'll swiftly implement it. ~ RobTalk 02:33, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
There isn't need for you to implement it. As already noted, AnomieBOT is already approved to do this, we're just waiting on consensus being established. Anomie⚔ 16:43, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
Whoops, thanks for the reminder. I didn't read the discussion again when I returned to it, and that's what I get for making assumptions. Sorry for stepping on toes! ~ RobTalk 22:47, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Help on bot

hi, i do not know programming and I want to control a bot. how can I do it? can someone else create a bot for me which can tell users that their added data needs citations? In fact a bot with any use would do. thanks --VarunFEB2003 (talk) 08:33, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

You may use {{Citation needed}} to attention the user when you find the edit needs citations. --Kanashimi (talk) 09:01, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Idea is not well explained. Unless I'm mistaken, this is a request for someone else to create an arbitrary bot and then give you control of its operation, but that's never done. The operator needs to have the ability to maintain the bot, so it's impossible to operate a bot when you have no programming knowledge (outside of an WP:AWB bot, but then you need to know WP:REGEX at least). ~ RobTalk 02:37, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

PatriotBot

Can someone make a bot focusing on fixing and de-spamming nation pages? Even better, can you tell me how to make one?--91.125.46.171 (talk) 22:20, 11 June 2016 (UTC)thanks!91.125.46.171 (talk) 22:20, 11 June 2016 (UTC)--

"fixing and de-spamming nation pages". I think we want for a slightly better specification than that. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:21, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
Idea is not well explained. Please show diffs of the changes you want such a bot to make. Keep in mind that bots can only make very specific repetitive changes as directed by the programmer. Bots can't think and evaluate neutrality/spam as humans can. ~ RobTalk 02:38, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Does a bot exist that can place a relevant navbox at the end of an article?

Because I could use that.

JohannSnow (talk) 23:13, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Can you explain how you would define and how a bot would determine the relevance of a navbox? KSFTC 23:17, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
For example, it would add a navbox to a page if it's in a particular category, or one could write a list and the bot could read that list. Maybe it could even read which articles are listed on the navbox, though I'm not sure if that's feasible. Also, it would be nice if it could also add the appropriate abbreviation for navboxes with collapsible groups. JohannSnow (talk) 23:34, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
That could work. I can try to do it; just give me a list of categories and which navbox should go on the pages in each category. KSFTC 23:37, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
Some of the pages already have the navbox added, though. JohannSnow (talk) 23:52, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
Should the template be added to all the pages in subcategories of those categories too? KSFTC 00:04, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
I just noticed that you included the subcategories too, except Category:Syma and Category:Pelargopsis. Should the pages in those categories have the navbox? KSFTC 00:09, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
Yes. JohannSnow (talk) 00:41, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Y Done I did this on my main account using AWB as it was pretty straightforward, with only around 80 pages to check in total. All the navboxes should be added now. Omni Flames (talk) 11:45, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Refill bot

I would like to make a request for a bot that refills unformatted references. I think that it could be really useful as a large number of articles have unformatted references that lies bare. BabbaQ (talk) 18:00, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

BabbaQ, are you talking about references that use some sort of standard citation style (e.g. Chicago, APA, or MLA) instead of, say, Citation Style 1, or references that are just bare links, or some other sort of reference? Enterprisey (talk!) (formerly APerson) 01:14, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
@APerson: I'm 99% sure that BabbaQ is talking about reFill, the semi-automated tool that can fill in bare references. Unfortunately, this tool has far too high an error rate to work here. For instance, if a link has gone dead, it would fill in the title as "404 Error Not Found" or whatever the website uses as their "error" title. This happens more often than it should – darn website operators breaking their own URLs. This wouldn't be a good idea for a bot. ~ RobTalk 04:42, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Declined Not a good task for a bot. per above. ~ RobTalk 02:36, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
I have no experience with Wikipedia bots or reFill and very little with references in general, but shouldn't it be easy for a bot to check whether the page is a 404 before running reFill? KSFTC 01:42, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
@KSFT: Beyond just 404s, there are plenty of pages where the titles just aren't helpful. Like where the default titles are just the site name or the URL itself. I've seen reFill fail in enough ways that it's a tool that really needs to be used in a semi-automated fashion. ~ RobTalk 12:36, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

I am a Wikipedian in Residence at the Harold B. Lee library at Brigham Young University. I would like a bot that changes our finding aid external links to HTTPS. So https://findingaid.lib.byu.edu/viewItem/MSS%201115 would become https://findingaid.lib.byu.edu/viewItem/MSS%201115. The reason I want to make this change is so that our analytics can see what Wikipedia subpage the link referral came from. As I understand it and have observed with our data, referrer data is not transmitted when going to an HTTP link (see also this stack exchange discussion).

I'm aware of the Cosmetic changes policy. I believe changing links to HTTPS is aligned with this WP:VPP. Admittedly for the user, changing the URL will not make much of a difference to them. But if I can get more specific referrer data, I can make a better case for how contributing to Wikipedia benefits my institution, which I believe is also beneficial to Wikipedia in general.

There are also only 290 of these links on Wikipedia--if making a bot for this would take longer than a few hours (I hope not, but I've never made a bot before), it might be more efficient to change by hand or with AWB. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:28, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

This is not controversial on the scale of 290 links. Is there a (more) general format for your links? @Bender235: --Izno (talk) 17:41, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
I usually put the link in the external links section with the title as the papers, followed by the MSS number, and then "at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University" after the link. If there's a more standard way to write finding aid links I'm open to changing it. See David Dalton (violist) for an example. Does that answer your question? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 18:08, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
@Izno: Rachel asked me about this earlier, whether AutoWikiBrowser would be a way to do this, and I suggested a bot request instead. --bender235 (talk) 19:34, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
I would support this change, and I agree it would be beneficial in multiple ways (as Rachel stated). Sadly, I know nothing about bot construction or operation. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 17:52, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
Amazing! Etiquette-wise, do I help with any concerns on the BRFA? Once you file it I'll try to watch the discussion to see if my input would be useful.Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 15:50, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
@Esquivalience: Given that other university libraries switched to HTTPS as well (e.g. MIT, Princeton, UChicago, UWisconsin, UMinnesota, UTexas, ...) we may want to consider generalizing this bot. --bender235 (talk) 22:39, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Daily record of admin backlogs

I would like to request a bot that will record, on a daily basis, the status of various areas requiring administrator attention, whether backlogged or not. It would update a page that will host the data. Each day would add a new line to a table.

Example: (this is not exhaustive for potential things to record)

Date WP:AIV WP:UAA WP:AN3RR CSD Active Admins
10 April 2016 9 87 29 171 559
11 April 2016 7 95 26 172 555

The last column above is derived from edit summary at [1].

There are plenty of potential areas to list. Initially, I would not want to get bound up in having too many, preferring to get this launched with some minimal set and add later as we can.

Rationale: There have been several discussions, seemingly unending, regarding how many administrators we need to keep the project running. We know the numbers passing RfA have declined. We know that things become backlogged from time to time. We do not have any data showing backlogs over time. This data would be useful to inform discussions on how to best benefit the project with perhaps administrator bots, unbundling of permissions, etc. Without this data, we're guessing. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:19, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

  • This would be very useful. But there is a problem only running this daily. A daily snapsho of what the backlogs were at one particular moment in time only tells you that. It doesn't tell you how long it took the average AIV report or G10 tag to be actioned. In particular AIV is a problem because we can't rely on a system that catches up once or twice a day. Vandalfighters need to have confidence that once a vandal is reported to AIV they will soon be blocked. Could the report look at blocks and deletions done each day and for each day report the longest gap between deletions and the longest gap between blocks? ϢereSpielChequers 14:31, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I have done some more testing, but now it should run every 20 minutes. I haven't programmed it to remove old entries yet, so it is not yes ready for collapse-less transclusion. Also added a footer. Esquivalience t 21:20, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Oh boy. Ok, what I'm wanting is something that can show patterns over months. Deleting old entries will destroy that. --Hammersoft (talk) 02:31, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
    • I'd agree with that. Probably better to have it go once a day and just add to the log. It won't be so terrible that way as it would just be a few hundred entries a year. I have no idea why anyone would want hourly or sub-hourly stats unless we're looking for daily trends and even then that would require hundreds of datapoints first. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:55, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
      • I would like to point out that, given most editors (and likely most admins) are anywhere from +8 hour from UTC to -1 hour UTC, that it's likely that backlogs will look different at e.g. 5:00 UTC than they will at later times of the day. I'm not sure hourly is necessary, but I don't think daily will show us the natural contour of the global nature of the project and may mislead otherwise. --Izno (talk) 21:29, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Ok then, how about we compromise on 1 hour between updates? Also, @Esquivalience: the bot stopped editing on April 22? --Hammersoft (talk) 20:21, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
  • @Hammersoft: I initially kept the bot running continually on the background, so it would stop every few days or so. It should work and continue to work now that I schedule for the bot to run every hour. Esquivalience t 00:12, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Yeah I'm kinda wondering about that. It's not overwriting right now (example). But, 24 lines per day * 365 and a year's data will have nearly 9000 entries in this table. That's huge. I'm content with it for now, but at some point I think it will be too large. We need a means to archive it. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:21, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

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 [2]? See [3] 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/Archive 53#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. [4]? – 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)
I have also undeleted decades, but not years, for all the first millennium BC, and added the same temporary note to Template:BirthdecadeBC. – Fayenatic London 20:18, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
I have added a test in {{birthyrBC}} and {{deathyrBC}} so that a parent category for the year itself, e.g. Category:586 BC, only appears for years in the range 1–699 BC. This is because year categories in the 8th century were upmerged by Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_16#8th_century_BC, and the RFC for biographies only requires re-creation of the year categories for births and deaths. For years before 699 BC, the latter are therefore parented only by decade categories for births/deaths. – Fayenatic London 08:48, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
Similarly, for dates before 1199 BC, the decade categories for births/deaths are parented only by century categories for births/deaths, not by general decade categories for events. I have documented this on the templates. I have also removed the temporary notes from the templates.
 Done This job has now been completed manually. – Fayenatic London 20:17, 16 July 2016 (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. [5] ? – Fayenatic London 22:52, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
@Francis Schonken: as you have not replied I have replaced the previous version of the category tree on the pages for 0s to 40s BC. Whether or not you have time to take a share of the work you have requested, it would be helpful if you would at least confirm your preferences on these matters. – Fayenatic London 18:24, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
I have now used AWB (first time in years, running OK on a Mac using Crossover) to implement this for all extant births and deaths decade categories in the 1st millennium BC. I think that means this part of the request is now
 Done – Fayenatic London 20:16, 19 April 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  Done 27/5/2016
Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 May 30#1st to 6th century BC deaths  Done 20/5/2016
Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_22#6th-century_BC_births and 7th (below that)  Done 6/6/16
Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_16#8th_century_BC (just the births and deaths)  Done 14/7/16
Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_15#9th_century_BC and 10th (below that)  Done 15/7/16
Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_13#11th_century_BC  Done 15/7/16
Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_8#12th_century_BC  Done 15/7/16
Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_April_24#13th_century_BC  Done 15/7/16
Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_April_23#14th_century_BC to 16th  Done 16/7/16
Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_April_20#17th_century_BC  Done 16/7/16
The last list of categories deleted (instruction to bot at CFDW) was [6] for deaths from 1 to 599 BC.
@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)

@Rhadamante: I noticed that you did some a few months ago – thanks. If you have time to do some more, that would be much appreciated. – Fayenatic London 19:25, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken: you said you'd be happy to help sort out manually when presented with a dump list of pages that can no longer be reverted. Given the passage of time, it is now over 90% of the remaining edits that have to be reverted manually. If you wish I would be happy to convert the list of bot contribs into a list of linked pages; or can you work straight from the contribs (as I have been doing)? – Fayenatic London 22:17, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

OK, that was an exaggeration. Only about 10% can be rolled back, but about half can be undone. – Fayenatic London 23:29, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
@Francis Schonken: having finished the deaths for 0–599 BC, I can report as follows. The categorisation needs to be reviewed rather than automatically reinstated, as many had been categorised in a specific year even though the dates are only "circa"; in these cases I only removed the year category e.g. 586 BC, leaving the deaths-by-decade category e.g. 580s BC deaths. This means that it is not a suitable task for a bot anyway (not that any was found).
My review was usually pretty quick, just based on whether the dates were written as "circa" or not; if some were and some weren't, e.g. in infobox and lede, I would look into it briefly and harmonise them according to what seemed right.
I started with the Deaths because they were the last set to be processed by the bot, so some could be rolled back. There were over 1,000 pages in that series of contribs. In many cases I also manually resolved the Births categories on those pages.
Please would you now assist in reviewing the Births? Using Popups to review the history of each listed page is often helpful. – Fayenatic London 20:08, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
@GoingBatty: @MER-C: might you also be willing to help with this task, as you nominated & closed the CFD discussion that is currently being reversed? – Fayenatic London 20:42, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Progress marker
My workflow was:
  1. Working down the list of the bot's contributions, open the next article in a new tab. If the dates are "circa", then edit the latest version and remove the year categories, leaving the decade births/deaths category. For the edit summary, paste a link to Wikipedia_talk:Categorization_of_people#RfC:_BC_births_and_deaths_categorization_scheme.
  2. If the birth/death dates are not stated to be "circa", review page history and try to Undo (or rollback) the edit by the bot.
  3. If Undo fails, manually edit the categories.
  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, or simply revert the CFD tagging, and
    3. undelete the talk page, giving the same edit summary.
After completing the bottom one of the page of the bot's contribs, click "older 50" and carry on from the top of the next page (until the CFD topic changes).
 Done This entire request has now been completed manually. For the record, I estimate that it required about 3,000 edits and log entries. – Fayenatic London 20:23, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Request for bot

Hello I am requesting a bot that can automatically patrol a new page. Please help me and create me this bot.NepaliKeto62Talk to me 02:59, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Declined Not a good task for a bot. Patrolling pages requires editorial review and must not be automated. Also, to be a bot operator, you must be able to maintain the bot. If you cannot create your own bot, you should not be running one. — JJMC89 (T·C) 03:13, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Please help me. Make a bot that automatically adds comment in requests by somebody. Bot same like {Musikbot} is good for me. So create such bot for me. NepaliKeto62Talk to me 07:48, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
I don't think you have sufficient experience editing on Wikipedia to run a bot. Based on your multiple requests for someone to make you a bot, you don't know how to create, maintain, or operate a bot; therefore, you are not qualified to be a bot operator. — JJMC89 (T·C) 10:07, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Yes I know how to run a bot please help me. Please make me a bot that gives auto comments in request for rights section. Make a bot once and check whether I can run it or not. Please NepaliKeto62Talk to me 12:31, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
If you aren't able to maintain the bot, then you shouldn't run it. Also, I don't see any evidence that you have the experience needed to run a bot. KSFTC 14:28, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
I don't want to turn you off to operating a bot, but I do want to inject a large dose of reality here, so apologies if this is a bit blunt. There is no chance of a bot operator entirely writing the code for a bot for you and then turning it over to you to operate. There's many, many reasons for that.
  1. Bot operators take a certain degree of pride in their work (or at least I do), and it's satisfying to watch your hard work pay off for the encyclopedia as you run your bot.
  2. Bot operators must be able to quickly respond to issues with their automated script. To do this, you need to know everything about how the bot runs and how to debug its code. If you didn't create the bot and have no programming skills, this is impossible to achieve.
  3. Even when a crucial bot is transferred from one operator to another when the former goes inactive, that bot is always transferred to a botop who has proven their ability to program by taking on independent projects and proven their knowledge of and dedication to the project through experience. Your 362 edits on enwiki would not fit the bill for taking over a crucial bot, not to mention the unproven programming abilities. (A non-crucial bot is, more often than not, just allowed to die when the botop leaves.)
Repeated requests for others to spend their time building a bot to accomplish an unspecified task and then turn it over to you are not going to go anywhere. Having said that, there's a lot you can accomplish without a bot. Take a look at WP:Twinkle and WP:Huggle, two semi-automated programs to help fight vandalism. Alternatively, you're welcome to create content or help out around the encyclopedia in any number of other ways. When you're eventually comfortable with how to edit Wikipedia and have a clear idea of uncontroversial repetitive changes you'd like to make, you're welcome to register for WP:AWB and try your hand at using WP:REGEX in a semi-automated fashion. After that, you could eventually progress to running an AWB bot if you encounter the need for one and have the technical ability to design and run it. Running a bot shouldn't really be a "goal", though. I only got into botwork because of a need for repetitive changes relating to accessibility on the site, something I had been working to correct for a while. Focus on improving the encyclopedia in whatever ways you can and then drop by WP:BRFA when you have both the skills and the need to run a bot. If you have any questions or want any suggestions on getting involved in Wikipedia, please do feel free to message me on my talk page. I'm always happy to refer editors to areas that could use their help. ~ Rob13Talk 21:30, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Okay then I was requesting bot because there was option ask someone to run a bot for you in bot/aproval page. NepaliKeto62Talk to me 00:25, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
That refers to this page, where you can ask a bot operator to design a bot to complete a specific task that you have in mind. The bot operator would create and run the bot; you'd just be supplying the idea. This is best done when you encounter something that requires automation around the project, not as a goal unto itself. ~ Rob13Talk 06:46, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Anti-non-commercial-file bot

There should be a bot that during the uploading process scans for the two word phrases "Creative Commons" and "Noncommercial", "Non-commercial", or "Non commercial" in the namespace (if I am right as to what it is called) of a file and warns the uploader that there is a licensing problem. I have accidentally uploaded such a file that violated copyrights, but I am innocent, and my warner was not precisely describing my problem.

I believe that, if we were to add this bot for use on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, we could save thousands of unwanted files from going in the wrong direction and keep many uploaders (such as me) non-upset. Gamingforfun365 (talk) 19:29, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Why would any of those phrases indicate a licensing problem? KSFTC 19:50, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
Hmmm. Who knows why? Gamingforfun365 (talk) 00:49, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
@KSFT: WP:NONCOM. That's why. Generally, a file shouldn't use a non-commercial license unless it also has a non-non-commercial license. The only exception to this is when the file is being uploaded under WP:FAIRUSE. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:53, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

 Not done This is a job for the upload wizard, not a user-operated bot. This, therefore, is the wrong forum. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:11, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Left-overs from persondata

Resolved

A bot should clean up these 5500 rests and left-overs from Template:Persondata. 88.67.113.78 (talk) 14:14, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Y Done please keep in mind that some of them contain only links to Wikipedia:Persondata and no template transclusions. -- T.seppelt (talk) 14:24, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
 Not done. The code rest <!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]] --> should be removed, you did absolutely nothing regarding this. This code rests can confuse readers and editors. 88.67.113.78 (talk) 18:21, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
TS: The IP wants the persondata's comments (such as provided above) removed, since they do not make sense without the context of the persondata template. (I happen to agree with the request on those grounds.) --Izno (talk) 18:38, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm sorry for misunderstanding you, 88.67.113.78. Do you have any ideas how to query the database efficiently? The text table is omitted on Quarry. I'm still looking for an option. -- T.seppelt (talk) 18:50, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
@T.seppelt: List. It contains a little bit lesser pages, but this should be a good start. Pastebin will be deleted after 30 days, but that doesn't matter in this case probably :D --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 19:21, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, Edgars2007. Now Doing... -- T.seppelt (talk) 19:34, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
This stuff should also be removed. 129.13.72.198 (talk) 07:31, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

 Doing... -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:01, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Done. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:34, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

replace URL

Original heading: "replace URL http://www.mapress.com/file/e/pt00261p217.pdf by URL http://biotaxa.org/Phytotaxa/article/view/phytotaxa.261.3.1/20598". Modified by Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 20:10, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi,

The first URL requires a password to get access to the source (and an irritating window hinders other actions) whereas the second one enables the access to the same source without the need of a password. Quite a lot of articles on plant families are concerned. Thanks Bu193 (talk) 13:45, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

http://biotaxa.org/Phytotaxa/article/download/phytotaxa.261.3.1/20598 would be better. On which pages is this URL present? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:17, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
Doing a database scan, there's a bunch of those indeed. I'll put User:CitationCleanerBot on it. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:19, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
@Bu193:  Done. Ping me in a month so I can catch any that were added after July 1st. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 21:11, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
You don't have to wait :) We have LinkSearch, which should be fine in this case. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 21:14, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
Nice, I didn't know this existed! All done now. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:32, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
OK thanks, an IP added this link en masse and changing all the links manually was a bit tedious. Bu193 (talk) 09:04, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

HotCat/categories for boxers' weight classes

In WP's articles for professional boxing weight classes, the ones with two words do not contain a hyphen. However, the following categories do:

  • Category:Light-flyweight boxers
  • Category:Super-flyweight boxers
  • Category:Super-bantamweight boxers
  • Category:Super-featherweight boxers
  • Category:Light-welterweight boxers
  • Category:Light-middleweight boxers
  • Category:Light-heavyweight boxers
  • Category:Super-heavyweight boxers

I would like to request for all articles linked to the above categories to have the hyphen removed, as I have already (albeit preemptively) moved the category pages to non-hyphenated ones.. without realising I would have to manually edit thousands of articles to remove the hyphens. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 19:58, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

@Mac Dreamstate: Category renaming should occur at WP:CfD. A bot can then carry out the result. — JJMC89 (T·C) 20:26, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
Cheers, will do that. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 20:33, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
N Not done There's an existing bot that can handle this once the CfD concludes (if moves are needed). See WP:CFD/W. In the future, please don't move categories without a CfD discussion. ~ Rob13Talk 04:22, 24 July 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://wiki.riteme.site/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).
Is there still interest in this? Personally, I don't think it's worth the coding time to have a bot handle this task because participant lists are hardly formal enough to need regular updates. What's the worst thing that happens when you don't know how many members of a project are active vs inactive? ~ RobTalk 01:46, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
@The Transhumanist: See above. ~ RobTalk 23:14, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
@BU Rob13: I was looking at it as an out-of-date contact list. Contact lists are only as useful as they are accurate. Let's say you need to contact someone (anyone) in a WikiProject about something pertaining to the editing of that subject. You've left a message on the project's talk page, but nobody has answered. So you go to the participants list to see who you can contact directly for some one-on-one, and the project lists 50 people. But unbeknown to you only 4 of them are active editors on Wikipedia these days. Knowing these lists are mostly out of date, you start with the first user listed and look at his contribs, only to find out his latest edit was 3 years ago. So you take him off the list so you don't wind up looking up his contribs again later. On to the next user, and the next, and so on... until you think, "it would be nice if these lists were updated automatically." The Transhumanist 19:13, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
The Transhumanist, would a user script that you could run while you were at a participants page work too? APerson (talk!) 14:51, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
I imagine so. WikEd is a user script, and it is a full-blown editor. The Transhumanist 20:43, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
Alright, I have a bunch of good ideas about how to parse the various sorts of participant lists, which I'm making into a script right now. Enterprisey (talk!) (formerly APerson) 20:49, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
BRFA filed. Enterprisey (talk!) (formerly APerson) 03:30, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
See also this VPPR thread started during the BRFA at a BAG member's request. Enterprisey (talk!) (formerly APerson) 03:27, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

PHP help please with deriving daily top-300,000 in low memory conditions

Can anyone unzip the https stream of a full day's snapshots[7][8][9] from https://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/analytics/ e.g. pageviews-20160601-[012[0-9]00000.gz] such as to produce the sorted list of the top 300,000 /^en / articles daily in the lowest amount of memory? EllenCT (talk) 22:21, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

You might be able to figure something out by implementing the count–min sketch. gzip(1) and pigz(1) both support writing to stdout, which you could pipe into a non-PHP program that reads from stdin one line at a time. →Σσς. (Sigma) 23:02, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
How about a linked list of the top N, from a preallocated array of N list elements and indices? Does PHP have a way to open a stream from an HTTPS RESTful API? EllenCT (talk) 05:30, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Bot to delete orphaned documentation subpages

An adminbot should delete the pages in Category:Documentation subpages without corresponding pages where the base template has no transclusions per criterion G8, with a few exceptions. If the base template was moved without redirect, the doc page should also be moved without redirect. An example of this is Template:User WPVG2/doc, where the base template was moved to User:Crash Underride/User WPVG2. This doc page should be moved to User:Crash Underride/User WPVG2/doc without redirect. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 22:31, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Why "where the base template has no transclusions"? Anomie⚔ 23:41, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
@Anomie: Can't speak for GeoffreyT2000, but it seems like a sensible safeguard against templates that were deleted but should have been redirected. I've seen this happen occasionally. As the relevant database report is actioned on, the bot would eventually get to the subpages or the template would be recreated as a redirect. ~ RobTalk 04:46, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Finding the most viewed Wikipedia articles on education

Hi all

I'm trying to use TreeViews to get information on what are the most viewed articles in Category:Education, unfortunately such large categories just crash my browser, it means I will have to split the query up into at least 50-100 smaller queries.

Would this be possible to do with a bot? Ideally the output would be spreadsheet of the article title and the number of page views of the article for a 30, 60 or 90 period in the recent past. I will use Treeviews if it is the only way but I'd really love to save myself from half a day of data entry. I imagine this would also be useful for people working with other organisations for other subjects if there was a repeatable process for muggles to follow.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 14:55, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

This should be possible via bot; the TreeViews tool, according to its source code, just hits the PagePile API, which should be accessible using, say, PHP. (I'd take this one myself, except for the fact that I'd have to learn PHP while coding it. Which, come to think of it, might not be such a bad idea.) Enterprisey (talk!) (formerly APerson) 04:17, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Diacritics in article titles: mass creation of redirects from unadorned ASCII?

People, including the literally hundreds of thousands of BLP subjects involved, often prefer diacritic accent marks on article title characters, but very few people know how to type them on standard keyboards, and in many cases they turn URLs into incomprehensible strings of hexadecimal-encoded Unicode.

Has the question of the mass creation of unadorned ASCII-only redirects to article titles with diacritics in them come up before? If so, what was the disposition?

If not, is it a reasonable project to create them? How can their existence be signaled to those who may want to use the more legible URLs? Can a bot be trusted to add the non-accented title name to infoboxes and first paragraph bolded names? EllenCT (talk) 13:21, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Creating ASCII-only redirects would be a fine and welcome thing to do. Adding names stripped of diacritics to infoboxes and the text of articles seems, by contrast, a heinous crime to be committed solely to advertise the fact that wikipedia can cope with incorrect formations of the names. I don't think there's much we can or should do to promote the redirects, should they be created. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:25, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
I agree with Tagishsimon that redirects would be a positive thing, but we 100% should not remove the proper name from articles themselves in favor of ASCII-only. I'm sure there's a guideline on names somewhere that supports using the diacritic as long as it's Latin script, but I can't be bothered to look it up. Off the top of my head, WP:TSC supports the use of diacritics in article titles and creating redirects to those titles. Consensus on this task wouldn't be hard to come by, but you'll need to post something at WP:VPR for sure, since this involves mass-creation of redirects. ~ RobTalk 13:59, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, replacing the name would be bad. Adding it would help, but can bots figure out where to add it? Maybe just the infobox and not the intro? EllenCT (talk) 12:20, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
@EllenCT: Adding what, exactly? ~ RobTalk 15:21, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
Adding the Romanization of the article title to the infobox under the fully diacritical name would be good, or would it be insulting to BLP subjects with e.g. ethnic pride in their diacritics, or whose name means something bad without diacritics? EllenCT (talk) 19:22, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
@EllenCT: Bots wouldn't be able to sort that out, most likely. At least not easily. Infoboxes often use different parameters to handle alternative names, and we'd need to go through all of them to make sure the bot can handle each infobox template correctly. Moreover, I don't think it's desirable to add them anywhere in the article. While redirects are useful to aid searching, it's undesirable to use an incorrect name anywhere in the article. I doubt any reader is confused by the diacritics once they see them; they can put two-and-two together. More to the point, I may be able to do this task if you can create a user page with a table or bulleted list that shows each possible diacritic and the ASCII-only version of the letter. One of those probably already exists on the web (or even an article!), and linking to that would work just as well. Mind doing that bit of searching for me? ~ RobTalk 04:39, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
I was thinking about proposing such task few days ago :) Such conversion "table" can be found below editing area (the "Latin" section), that probably is at least very solid start. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 09:33, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Alright, so AWB definitely can't do this, but it should be pretty easy in something like pywikibot. Any other botop is welcome to have a go at this; I'm not actively working on it. ~ RobTalk 01:46, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
I already have an approved bot task to create missing redirects for pages with diacritics in their titles. I was asked not to run it too quickly after an article creation, (if the page needs to be moved the redirects get in the way of that process), so I wait several weeks after a database dump before running it. However, I've not run it recently so will get round to doing so again soon. Rjwilmsi 07:33, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
Rjwilmsi yes, please. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:53, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
Rob, I'm not saying, that you should do this with AWB (as Rjwilmsi will as I understand take it), but the short answer is that you can do this with AWB (maybe not the most prettiest way, but still doable). Algorithm in big steps:

I could see cases where it might be appropriate to give a diacritic-free version of the name in article, especially where this changes spelling, e.g. Müller / Mueller, and cases where the letters with diacritics are not necessarily fully supported (ŵ - a Welsh letter (and possibly others) was in this state for a long time). We should do so carefully, though. Adam Cuerden (talk) 15:29, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, mw:Extension:TitleKey should be able to automatically handle searching "Muller" in the search bar and redirecting to "Müller", but it won't handle "Mueller". This may be worth looking into. →Σσς. (Sigma) 04:57, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Missing category identification

Would it be possible for a bot to go through articles on footballers and create a list of ones where they are listed as playing for a club in their infobox, but are not in the matching category? For example, Danny Green (footballer, born 1990) is listed as playing for Thurrock F.C. in the infobox, but Category:Thurrock F.C. players is missing from the article. This is a quite frequent occurrence as when a player is transferred, editors may forget to add the category despite updating other parts of the article. Cheers, Number 57 14:55, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Coding... I've never written a Wikipedia bot before, and I'm new to this whole process, but I'm going to attempt to do this! KSFTC 02:29, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
@Number 57: I think I have it mostly working, and I have requested approval, but the categories don't seem to exist for every team. KSFTC 19:27, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
@KSFT: Thanks, that's great. I am busy tonight but will look and give you a full reply tomorrow. In short, there will be some missing for semi-professional teams (which I will create) and there will be a few mismatches where clubs (and the categories) have been renamed since the player were there. Cheers, Number 57

Outline drafts bot

We need a bit that will search for all draft outlines in user and Draftspace and move them to the drafts page at the Outlines project. This is mandated by the consensus at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Outlines/Drafts/Outline of ancient history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.77.230.182 (talk) 05:32, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

That's not what that consensus means, at all. A conclusion for not A is not a conclusion for B--that is a fallacy. --Izno (talk) 11:47, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
N Not done. The consensus was "do not move", and it would have applied only to a list of articles. This request is invalid as written. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:38, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: The request here was to move the other pages to the format that the consensus was to keep. There was not, however, consensus to make all pages of that type follow the format. KSFTC 19:29, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Bot that reinstates removed deletion notices.

I request a bot that does the following, while preserving the original time as it was in the notice before it was removed:

  1. Reinstate any speedy deletion notice that is removed by the page creator
  2. Reinstate BLP PROD notices if no other edits than removal of the notice are done
  3. Reinstate any XfD notice if the discussion is not closed

--Laber□T 20:29, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

The second point is probably not feasible. How would we control for the addition of offline sources that aren't in ref tags (i.e. a citations section with bullet points)? The first and third points should be doable. (Note that I'm not taking the request, just commenting on it.) ~ RobTalk 21:24, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
An admin should of course check before deletion if such references are in the article. I talk about "clear" cases where there are no inline citations at all, i.e. if you would insert a reflist template it would be empty. --Laber□T 21:28, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
I understand, but I'm saying that such a case isn't clear when citations sections without ref tags are used. It would cause problems if a bot re-inserted a prod tag after it was removed and a nobots template had to be used to keep the bot off the page. ~ RobTalk 00:36, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
Okay, BLP PROD shall only be reinstated if the user removes it without the page being changed in any other way, i. e. if there are no changes to the article except removal of the tag. --Laber□T 15:32, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
But what if the tag was added in error? What if there were in fact already some references, and so someone decided to remove the tag? Or what if the article was created before March 18, 2010? Omni Flames let's talk about it 06:54, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
See User:SDPatrolBot for a bot that once did that with CSD tags. →Σσς. (Sigma) 05:10, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
What happened to that bot? Why isn't it running anymore? KSFTC 02:55, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
Its operator is inactive. After talking to him about it, BRFA filed →Σσς. (Sigma) 02:29, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Bot requested to help fix USC template invocations

See Template talk:UnitedStatesCode#Handling usc.7Cch.7Csec.281.29.28A.29.28i.29 type_invocations.2C or a bot to autocorrect.3B transferred codes.3B https for links Sai ¿?✍ 11:10, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Resolved

For the articles found using insource:/== *External Links *==/ please correct the following:

External Links → External links

--Leyo 19:13, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

I can do this with AWB if you like. I don't think a bot is all that necessary. Omni Flames (talk) 22:04, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Actually, there are more pages than I expected (around 1500). I think I'll file a BRFA. Omni Flames (talk) 00:57, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
BRFA filed Omni Flames (talk) 01:05, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
@Leyo: Y Done Omni Flames (talk) 07:24, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

I fixed insource:/== *External Link *==/ and started fixing insource:/== *External link *==/. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:00, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Y Done -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:04, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

I started fixing insource:/== *Source *==/. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:11, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

I started fixing insource:/== *Reference *==/. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:27, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

I started fixing insource:/== *Also see *==/. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:54, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

I started fixing insource:/== *Also See *==/. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:01, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Omni Flames check the extra things I did based on this botreq. I also left a message on my BRFA. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:02, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

@Omni Flames and Magioladitis: I removed {{Resolved}} as several of the above searches still need to be done. --Leyo 07:43, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

BRFA filed -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:48, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Funnily enough this was one of SmackBot's first tasks. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:22, 13 August 2016 (UTC).

I fixed everything in the database and I'll be running it regularly. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:05, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Some pages with insource:/== *External LInks *==/ found. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:09, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

I did a database scan. All fixed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:30, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

I was kindly redirected here by User:Madman,

consulting this thread that I left in his botpage (please see here https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/User_talk:Madman) and following the leads I provided therein, can anyone help out in "resurrecting" these WWW.FPF.PT links? Site has changed configuration it seems.

Attentively --Be Quiet AL (talk) 18:05, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

@Be Quiet AL: just to clarify, you want to replace all instances of http://www.zerozerofootball.com/jogador.php?id=XXX&search=1 with {{Zerozero profile|id=XXX}}? -- samtar talk or stalk 18:10, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

No, sorry, wrong diff, what I was trying to show with that one was that I messaged Madman! The Zerozero situation has already been dealt with totally, the situation I meant is this one (https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Football/Archive_103#Portuguese_Football_Federation), for example Anthony Lopes contains the already revived form, whereas Carlos Manuel Santos Fortes is still "dead". --Be Quiet AL (talk) 18:12, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

@Be Quiet AL: Do the links follow some sort-of pattern? Are there any similarities between the original links and the ones they need to be replaced with? Because from what I can tell going by your comments at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Football/Archive_103#Portuguese_Football_Federation, they don't, and if that's true, this wouldn't be possible with a bot. Omni Flames (talk) 10:54, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

As far as I know, in some cases (not sure if all) old URL has a different set of numbers attached to it than the new one (for example Simãozinho). So this is bad news, no? --Be Quiet AL (talk) 16:16, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Unless the site has some kind-of internal API, then this isn't going to be possible I don't think. A bot can't just conjure a number for the player out of nowhere. Omni Flames (talk) 06:44, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
N Not done because this task is Impossible to do with a bot. Omni Flames (talk) 06:04, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Israel population bot

There are up to 900+ localities in Israel that need a population update (A list can be seen here: User:Number 57/sandbox, these are also the names that should be used in the templates). There is a template for population: 

| popyear        = {{Israel populations|Year}}

| population     = {{Israel populations|}}

| population_footnotes={{Israel populations|reference}}

These should be placed in infoboxes of locality articles (except for localities located in the Judea and Samaria area which has a newer population figure).

In addition to that, it is also needed that the first paragraph will also have at the end: 

In {{Israel populations|Year}} it had a population of {{Israel populations|Ramat Hashofet}}.

When all the templates will be placed, there will be no need to update the population in every article, but insteed, the template it self will be updated when a new population figure will be published by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. I think there is such bot in the Hebrew Wikipedia and it will be good to have one here as well, because it will take a lot of time and efort to update every single locality.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 15:03, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

@Bolter21: Is there consensus that these changes should be made? I could probably do this, but I wouldn't feel comfortable running a bot unless I knew that the community agrees that these edits should be made. Omni Flames (talk) 07:47, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
Well, the template has the newest population figure and it is needed that articles on localities would have the latest population figure.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 08:55, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
@Bolter21: The addition of the population in the navbox parameters seems fine, I'm mostly worried about your second request. Is there consensus for it? Omni Flames (talk) 09:27, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
This figure already exist in many articles but is outdated. Only updating the infobox will be half of the job. I am calling Number 57 to see what he has to say about this.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 13:20, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
I think we need to do this manually for two reasons: Firstly, it's not as straightforward as a simple addition to articles – some infoboxes already have the population figures in, but not from the template, and these will need replacing. This is further complicated by the fact that sometimes the reference used in the infobox is also used in the article text, so if a bot removes the existing bit in the infobox, it will remove a reference from the text. Secondly, there are several slightly different configurations of how the population is stated in the intro (and referenced), and I don't believe a bot would be able to replace this properly. Number 57 13:29, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
N Not done per Number 57. Omni Flames (talk) 23:43, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Are there currently an active bot that can archive dead links in articles? Otherwise I would request that one is started. It seems that all the active ones are inactive.BabbaQ (talk) 11:55, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

See the above section on Gawker - Cyberpower678 said that his bot is still being tested and stuff, so it might be some time before that can start running. Enterprisey (talk!) (formerly APerson) 18:41, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Removal of orphan tags on linked articles

I'm sure we've been here before: would anyone be able to run through the 140K articles under Category:Orphaned articles and remove the {{orphan}} tag from any that have incoming links from other articles that are not redirects? Wikipedia:Orphan#Criteria specified zero incoming links; but a quick trawl through a few tens of articles in the category tree finds disturbingly many which have incoming links. Addbot, BattyBot and Yobot are reputed to work in this area, but the first seems inactive and t'other two are AWB, which might be somewhat overfaced. @GoingBatty:, @John of Reading:, @Kvng: may wish to weigh in, since they may know more than I about this area. thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:25, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Maybe consider trying to do it on a month-by-month basis. The first month is just a giant category with over 19k pages but smaller ones may be better to clear out. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:34, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
@Tagishsimon: Doing... by running this query and then running AWB over the results. I do this about once a month and remove the tag from a few hundred articles. Today there are 178 articles. GoingBatty (talk) 02:12, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. I was perhaps not discounting links incoming from disambiguation pages. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:20, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
@Tagishsimon: Y Done, although I don't know what you mean by "overfaced". GoingBatty (talk) 02:53, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. =that it was too large a task for an AWB approach. Clearly not. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:59, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Events by month

Click on "►" below to display subcategories:
Events by month

Update Wikimedia Project Statistics

WITHDRAWN
Work done without bots required.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Currently, the statistical data in http://wikistats.wmflabs.org/wikimedias_wiki.php automatically updates daily. However, users need to manually update, which is undesirable when no one updates it.

Therefore, I suggest updating the data with a bot. The bot needs to copy everything in the source page to the statistics page, while leaving a notice with the words "This page is updated automatically with a bot. Do not manually edit it. ". The bot needs to update the data daily at 00:15, 01:15, 02:15, 03:15, 04:15, 05:15, 06:15, 12:15, 18:15, which will fetch the latest data from the website. Then, the data will be up to date automatically. Wetitpig0 (talk) 06:17, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

You may ask why I don't create a bot by myself? Actually there are lots of inactive bots. When there are vacant bots, left with no work, why should I still create one? I can just ask those bot creators to edit their bot code! The list of inactive bots are here and here. Wetitpig0 (talk) 09:09, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Backing up spam blacklist and whitelist requests

Maybe this can be done by one of the currently existing archiving bots, but I'd like help with the following: On some discussion pages, discussions are 'grouped' in themes - WT:SBL and WT:SWL are two typical examples. Both mentioned pages (and some others) have two main sections, one for 'additions' and one for 'removals' (and some other discussion sections), and editors make subsections inside these sections depending on the nature of their request. These are currently manually backed up into archives with the same structure ('additions', 'removals', etc.) as I am not aware of a bot that is capable of handling this. I would like to see this done by bot, archiving sections ## days after last timestamp into archive pages following the same structure. Any ideas? --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:17, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

How does the bot that archives WP:RFPP work? It also has separate sections, for protection requests and unprotection requests. ~Amatulić (talk) 06:38, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
@Amatulic: the bot there takes the subsections from the different sections, but archives them all into the same section. I'd like here to keep them in the archives also archived by section (or we would have to overthrow the whole system further, which may also be an option). --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:55, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
Well, let's ask ourselves, what would be the use case for retaining major page sections in the archive?
I can only speak for myself... From my point of view, when I need something from an archive, I use the search form that appears conveniently in the page header on most pages that have an archive. In that case, I don't really care what section of the archive contains the information I'm seeking, all I care about is that I find the information I'm seeking. In the case of the spam-blacklist talkpage, the search results don't distinguish whether a result is in the 'requests for addition' or 'requests for removal' sections anyway. I guess it's possible that someone would actually browse through an archive page to find something, but I suspect it's unlikely if there's a search form available. ~Amatulić (talk) 06:30, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
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