This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Article alerts. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Known problems and restrictions
Nominators are sometimes reported incorrectly
For several workflow types, the bot reports who nominated the article (e.g. for deletion). This occasionally produces wrong results. Namely, for efficiency reasons, the bot does not analyze the full article history, but relies on timestamps that the MediaWiki software records when an article is added to a category. Unfortunately these are not 100% reliable, but are sometimes triggered by an "innocent" subsequent edit, so that the later editor is incorrectly reported as nominator. A similar effect may be seen if the nomination template is removed and then re-added, e.g., in cases of vandalism.
Was the article tagged by your project's banner? Also if the article got nominated/deleted before the bot ran, then I'm pretty sure it won't show up, as the bot never saw the article enter or exit AfD.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:57, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
It seems that the AfD was reported on nomination, but dropped from the list on closure. Probably a duplicate of the bug reported below. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:06, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
AfD discussion result not reported in the case of a redirect
Status
Verified
Description
Article was redirected, AABot simply removed the entry rather than report the result as "redirect"
If a requested move template exists while an article is moved to the suggested location the workflow then gets changed from "requested move A->B" to "requested move B->B" instead of marking it as done. If subsequently the template gets removed it marks the move as not done.
Yes, that's indeed the way the bot behaves. However, I'm a bit confused: Shouldn't the tag be removed when the proposed page move is actually done? --B. Wolterding (talk) 21:14, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
I would say - move first then remove the tag. Then the bug can still appear even if the mover does not forget if the bot runs between the two edits. I think though that a lot of movers do forget to remove the tag, which is something we can catch if source = target. Agathoclea (talk) 23:06, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
FPC discussion incorrectly reported
Status
Confirmed
Description
The bot reported that a featured picture candidate had not been promoted, when in fact it had.
Confirmed - this is a bug. I'm not sure about the technical reason at the moment. As FPC has been tested only very little (there are very few examples), it might be that this fails in all cases. Does anybody know of other FP candidates that have appeared on an article alerts list? --B. Wolterding (talk) 21:14, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Adds a alert, then almost immediately removes it
Status
Not bug
Description
It places a Requested move, and less than half an hour later removes it.
I was about to report the same (for a GAN though) ([4] and [5]) for WP:PHYS. I doubt it's a real bug (and if it is, a pretty mild one), especially since there was talk of bringing that article to GA, so it's possible that the bot simply ran twice and on the second run, the RM/GAN were withdrawn. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 03:22, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
This isn't exactly a bug, but one of the RfCs on this page won't render correctly. I tried fixing the heading of the RfC, but that didn't seem to work. Can someone take a look? Thanks! Katr67 (talk) 03:13, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, for looking into it. I thought the RfC was set up incorrectly and that's what had done it. Don't worry about the temp fix. It's kind of useless to fix it every time. Believe me, I tried. :) Katr67 (talk) 00:47, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Bot seems to be travelling backwards in time.
Status
Confirmed
Description
Bot reports the removal of a PROD /opening of a Peer Review [6], then follows up with the nomination [7] and removed the Peer Review.
Hm. It seems to me that the bot generated its usual report on 5 May (into its internal cache), but did not write it to the wiki due to some technical problem. (Maybe the wiki servers were down or too slow at that time.) The cached report was then written in the next run, together with that of 6 May, but unfortunately they were written in the wrong order. Did this happen more often, or only on May 6? --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:22, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Bot drops a bunch of alerts at WP:FLUID. Upon snooping around, I suspect that this is a taskforce-specific problems, as there were similar droppings of articles in all the physics taskforces, but none on the main project alerts.
Yes, indeed some strange behaviour. Some of these entries were re-added in the next bot run. Maybe something related to the toolserver database state on that particular date. Did someone notice any examples at other points of time? --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:15, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Incorrectly labeling AFD deleted articles as kept and giving wrong nominators
Status
New bug
Description
This bot has been labeling Xero (album) as kept per a deletion discussion when it was really deleted. Also, it is giving wrong nominator names for deletion discussions. Here's yet another error: * 30 Jun 2009 – Baxter (album) (talk) nominated for deletion by TenPoundHammer; see discussion. It links to the album page but the artist deletion discussion and labels TenPoundHammer as nominator when I nominated it for deletion.
Jesús Rosendo was reported as deleted, but the result of the discussion was keep (WikiProject Cycling)
Status
Confirmed
Description
In the WikiProject Cycling article alerts, on 17 August 2009, the Jesús Rosendo article was listed as having been deleted. The discussion on the page however had as conclusion keep, and the article still exists
Issue with cfd, bot not reporting when category listed
Status
New bug
Description
Category talk:2000 AD was tagged June 9 with {{comicsproj}}[14] (page has been moved hence different name in diff). However, when a CFD tag was added to the category on the 21st October [15], there was no mention by the bot in the alerts recorded on 22nd [16], or subsequently.
There still might be passerbys, and people could who watch them without editing the project page and so on. They would also serve as good archives of what went on during the period of inactivity if the project becomes active again. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 00:53, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
WP:USRD-related TfD's not listed properly in alert report
Status
New bug
Description
Multiple templates relating to California County routes (under WP:USRD) were nominated at Templates for Discussion on February 26 and February 27. ArticleAlertBot did not list these on the project report until March 4. The next report generated on March 5 erroneously stated that all these items were kept. All templates were actually deleted on March 6.
Type
Overlooked page; Other
Link to bug
Delayed report of items entering TfD workflow: [28]. Bot erroneously reporting items were kept: [29].
Verified
Confirmed
Not bug
New bug
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