This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser. 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.
Make list with intersection of multiple categories
How do I make a list of articles which has multiple categories? Say, Category:Telugu actors and Category:Living people. Do I need to make a list with the Telugu actors cat and do a Skip -> Text -> Doesn't contain -> [[Category:Living people]], or is there a better way? What if I'd like more than two cats? Use the same but with Doesn't contain -> regex of all other cats? -- DaxServer (talk) 16:07, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
@DaxServer: unfortunately, Category:Living people (1,104,615) contains many, many people (> 25k). If each category has <= 25,000 entries, then you can use AWB by going to Tools > List comparer, type Telugu actors in List 1, select 'Category (recursive)' from the 'Source:' dropdown, type Living people in List 2 & select 'Category (recursive)', click 'Make list' for each, then 'Compare', and voilà (see the 'Common:' list on the right hand side). Copy+paste the 'Common:' list into List 1 after clearing List 1, and a new category to List 2 after clearing List 2 to continue 'and-comparing' additional categories.
I am informed by admin Bearcat that in this change, the auto sequence was responsible for transposing the hat location, relocating the Short Description to second item. This is contrary to MOS:ORDER.
Recent discussions relating to screen readers have confirmed that order of elements can cause problems for users when elements are out of sequence.
The fix (6102) doesn't' recognize that I'm an authorized AWB user even though 6101 does. Is there a problem in the 6102 beta version? --Rsjaffe (talk) 21:10, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
John of Reading, does anyone know when the fix will be released? This issue has been reported probably a dozen times by now, and it's been lingering for months. It's a huge waste of editor energy to keep rehashing the problem. {{u|Sdkb}}talk21:23, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
Of the most recent 1,000 AWB edits (of which 419 had a short description), 32 moved the short description down from the top, and 53 left it in a non-top position. Just sayin'. David Brooks (talk) 22:49, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
@Sdkb: The fixed version is available here, but if AWB users don't watch this talk page, they won't know that it exists. I don't know a new "official" version will be released; the last was in September 2019. AWB's "Check for updates" feature only checks for official versions. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:58, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
Template:Empty section has new functionality for 'find sources'
Fyi, Template:Empty section now has the option of generating {{find sources}} output. Backwards-compatible, so no changes to current transclusions, and existing AWB implementation does not require any changes, unless you wish to take advantage of the new functionality. See doc page for details. Mathglot (talk) 19:18, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
is there a simple way to impose a time-delay in the execution of a c# module?
I have written a c# module that reads an en.wiki article, finds {{cite iucn}} templates, extracts a taxon ID from select forms of |url= values, fetches an up-to-date citation from the IUCN Redlist API, reformats that citation into a new {{cite iucn}} template which replaces the existing template and then saves the article. In most cases, there is only one malformed {{cite iucn}} template. But, there are articles like List of North American animals extinct in the Holocene which currently has 110 of these malformed templates. Banging on the API 110 times as fast as my computer can get through the loop will not make IUCN my friend. The maintainers of the API want users to limit access to a 2–3 second rate.
I expect to make this script into a bot and limiting the bot's repeat rate isn't a problem so long as every article it processes has only one {{cite iucn}} template. When there are more than one as in List of North American animals extinct in the Holocene, that's problematic. I can fetch the current time and compare it to another fetch of current time, wash-rinse-repeat until a set period has elapsed, but that seems clunky. It would seem that Thread.Sleep (<period>) would answer my needs but, the c# compiler doesn't like that.
Anyone know how to make a simple 2–3 second delay?
Hello, I currently have an error that I could not find a solution for. It happens that I update AWB to the most recent version that came out, everything is fine until I hit "Start", where AWB does not do any editing and I get "Restarting in ... seconds", and the more I try, the number of seconds increases more and more. Is there something wrong with my PC or is this a web problem?
When did the previous version last work for you? An editor assigned access to AWB would typically know to sign posts. Neils51 (talk) 21:27, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
Well, it is exactly one from fandom.wikia, where I am admin of 2 wikis. Comment before there but they did not give me an answer. That is why I comment here where I notice that there is more interactivity and could find the solution. 190.237.23.150 (talk) 01:22, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
When using customized diffs, long strings don't get broken up; they get truncated and the remainder disappears into the void. To test, copy the code at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/style.css#Current style into style.css in your AWB directory, start AWB, edit any page (without saving) to create a string longer than the diff column, and view the Diff. The situation is handled almost correctly when there is no style.css present, except that each wrapped line overwrites the bottom of the preceding line. Note that the CSS code produces correct results when copied to common.css on Wikipedia. [My info: AWB: 6.2.1.0, SVN: 12528, IE: 11.0.19041.1165, .NET: 4.0.30319.42000, Windows: 10 Home build 19043.1165 (although AWB says 6.2).]
I like my custom colors much, much more than the default ones, but I'd certainly like for it to be fully functional. How can one have customized diffs while still correctly displaying extralong strings? MANdARAX•XAЯAbИAM21:16, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
I've updated the current style shown on that page to match current AWB code. For diff wrapping behaviour I think you need the "word-wrap: break-word;" line within the "td.diff-context" section. Rjwilmsi11:41, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
Why is AWB treating an initial lowercase in transcluded template names as an error needing fixing? For instance changing {{main}} to {{Main}}. This is not an error to my mind and I'm tired of looking at screes of this stuff in my watchlist. SpinningSpark19:14, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
@Spinningspark: Thank you! I copied an old version of the Magnetic moment article to User:GoingBatty/sandbox, and confirmed that AWB's general fixes do not capitalize the templates. It appears that the editor's primary motivation is adding {{Authority control}}, so the edit would appear in your watchlist whether the templates were capitalized or not.
There are inconsistencies. For example, {{fact}}, {{cn}}, are expanded by AWB as {{citation needed}} when what is documented is {{Citation needed}}? The template Template:When #Usage is documented with both cap/non-cap. Which is preferred (native)? - Neils51 (talk) 05:00, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
@Neils51:Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Template redirects (the functionality that changes {{cn}} to {{citation needed}}) states that "The first-letter case of the redirect is kept in the new template name, except for acronym templates (first three letters in uppercase) where first letter uppercase is forced." and "The template name is first-letter case insensitive e.g. {{Citation needed}} and {{citation needed}} are the same." Some editors prefer upper case while some editors prefer lower case - and AWB doesn't change one to the other. GoingBatty (talk) 12:43, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
Large scale reference replacement
So, the State of Idaho change it's website...again... and I need to replace references on at least 200-300 pages. Would you use AWB or some other tool? It's going to be an interesting regex... - Mjquinn_id (talk) 01:54, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
Good for JWB users. I wonder how hard would it be for the AWB devs to implement same diff change behavior, either as an option or default feature. It's probably Pre-save transforms that was added to JWB 4.2.0 (maybe with this edit?) in last March that does it. JWB looks interesting, but I didn't find any "AWB vs. JWB" comparison list (e.g. what features AWB has that JWB doesn't have and vice versa). Also wondering how easy it is to import hundreds of AWB's search and replacement settings to JWB. 85.23.79.231 (talk) 15:50, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
AWB used for widespread removal of internal linking in citation templates
I (expectedly) came across a few pages on a recent bot run with {{nobots}}, which of course the bot skipped. However, when I switched over to my own account in order to clean up these pages, it still skips these pages as "restricted by {{bots}}/{{nobots}}". As AWB just considered a "bot" now for any account, or is there some sort of cache issue I'm dealing with between switching between my bot and user accounts? Primefac (talk) 23:59, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
Weird, I guess either I haven't come across {{bots}} pages or I've just never noticed. I did find the "ignore nobots" option so I'll be using that in the future should it be necessary. Primefac (talk) 09:52, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
As far as I've seen all mainspace uses are for disallowing Citation bot and IABot, but I do agree it could be problematic if there was a generic {{nobots}} use (which as near as I can tell is only used in combination with {{copyvio/core}}). Primefac (talk) 11:00, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
Yes, you probably got lucky previously.
It would probably be useful for someone to hunt through histories to see why stuff is getting ignored and fixing more appropriately if possible.
@Primefac: It would be interesting to easily see which articles are denying AWB, determining why the reason for each article, and removing the template as AWB bugs are fixed. For example, if someone denied AWB years ago because they didn't want AWB renumbering references, the template can now be removed since that AWB functionality has been removed. GoingBatty (talk) 15:58, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
The cat sorts by |deny= param, so anything with AWB as the primary reason is sorted under A. Without any sort of dating parameter in use I think the only way to see when things were added is to check each one manually. Hopefully they're all as nice as Bracket, where the edit summary explicitly mentions nobots (though not why it was added). Primefac (talk) 16:00, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
AnomieBOT's 'Main' page only has ~950 entries, yet the mainspace category has/had ~2000, so there is a discrepancy for whatever reason, so I suggest keeping the category for mainspace & using AnomieBOT's pages for everything else. ~Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)07:23, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
As discussed on the template's talk page, bots will only abide by the template if it is on the page itself; the extra 1k or so pages were the "list of minor planets" that were transcluding the header template which contained the nobots call), so none of them are technically excluding bots. I found this to be a convincing enough argument to use the hall of shame. Primefac (talk) 10:55, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
A four article random sample of the AWB section of the Hall of Shame above, brought the following results: Oldest addition was 8 years ago. Others were 4 years old. Two were added because of acknowledged AWB faults at the time. Two were added because of edits by other bots. One of those other edits was a perfectly good edit that adhered to guidelines, a user reverted it and added the bot blocker at the same time, blocking the bot and AWB. I think every AWB block needs to be re-checked given the passage of time since addition along with a re-evaluation of if the block is warranted. - X201 (talk) 08:01, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
@X201: You are correct! Some of the AWB blocks were created when AWB was reordering/renumbering references. That functionality has been removed from AWB by popular demand. I used AWB (with the Preferences box "Ignore {{bots}} and {{nobots}}" checked) to run general fixes and typo fixes against some of the articles in the category. If there was no damage caused by AWB, I removed the {{bots}} tag. I'll work on this more today. GoingBatty (talk) 13:23, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
If the inclusion of the bots template in {{MinorPlanetNameMeaningsDisclaimer}} does not prevent AWB from running in Meanings of minor planet names: 31001–32000, should it be inside <noinclude>...</noinclude> tags in order to clean up the "What links here" listing? Also, if true, it might be worth making this situation clear in the documentation, i.e. that bots look for the template in the wikitext of a page, so transcluding it via a template does not work. I don't have the ability to run AWB, else I would check all of this and make the changes myself. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:28, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
{{Use mdy dates}} and {{Use dmy dates}} are both listed in Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Dated templates, so AWB adds |date=September 2021 to them when GENFIXes are enabled. However, looking at their documentation, |date= signifies the month and year that an editor or bot last checked the article for inconsistent date formatting and fixed any found. I just checked, and it doesn't appear that there is an active GENFIX task that corrects e.g. instances of 7 April 2021 in articles tagged with Use MDY dates. Could we create such a task? Or, if not, should we continue to list the tags as dated templates? {{u|Sdkb}}talk20:37, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
AWB stopped working on one PC
For the last week or so every time I try to run WP:AWB it tells me:
Network access error The operation has timed out
I'm running AWB v6.2.1.0 on Windows 7 SP1 64-bit, and nothing has changed on my system, as far as I know. Checking my contributions I can see that the last time I used AWB successfully was 2021-09-30.
I initially suspected a problem with the server so I asked at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) § AWB network error, where it was suggested that it might be the lets encrypt problem. Perhaps it is, but I'm not having much luck - so I'll try here. Here's a summary of what I have so far:
My main Windows 7 PC reports the error every time. It did have an expired (2021-09-30) DST Root CA X3 in the certificate store, so I deleted that certificate and cleared all the caches per [1]. This did not fix the problem.
I check all the installed certificates, and no other certificate expires on or near 2021-09-30.
Deleting %LOCALAPPDATA%\AutoWikiBrowser, %USERPROFILE%\Documents\AWB and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AutoWikiBrowser does not fix the problem.
I started up a virtual machine with a clean installation of the same version of Windows (from the DVD) with no additional updates or software, to see if I could reproduce the problem. I installed .NET 4.5.2, copied AWB and ran it - and it works fine, allowing me to login. The certificate manager says that DST Root CA X3 (which expired 2021-09-30) is not present at all on the clean VM, and manually installing it does not cause AWB to fail.
Does anyone have any hints as to what else I can check on my PC to find out why it's not working? I'm not aware of having changed anything on the PC in the last week or so that could affect it (but obviously I could be wrong).
Is there somewhere on Phabricator that I can ask for tech support? (It doesn't appear to be a bug, because it works fine on the VM, and worked fine on my main PC up until a week ago.) Mitch Ames (talk) 12:50, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
@Mitch Ames: Do you have a replacement for the expired certificate? ISRG Root X1, valid until 2035, is best. Second choice is a version of X1 cross-signed by the expired X3, which should work until 2024. Certes (talk) 15:22, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
I did install the replacement ISRG Root X1, but it does not fix the problem. Note that when I run on AWB on a clean VM - with only Windows 7 SP1 (with no updates), .NET (same version as my main PC) - it works, and that VM does not have either DST Root CA X3 or ISRG Root X1. Does anyone know for sure that AWB (or .NET 4.5.1) uses the Lets Encrypt certificates? So far, other than the date, there's seems to be no direct evidence that the Lets Encrypt expiry is the cause. Note also that the error message is a timeout, not a security issue. Mitch Ames (talk) 23:37, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
Conveniently I had an image backup of my PC taken on 2021-09-27, when AWB was still working, so I restored the machine to that image - and I still get the problem. This does suggest that it is date based, rather than a change to something else on my PC that caused it to fail. I also tried rolling the clock on the PC back to 2021-09-27, but that doesn't fix the problem.
So I tried to replicate the problem again on the clean VM. I delete all the certificates on the VM, cleared the caches - and AWB still works!
@Mitch Ames: the 'Network Access Error' message appears to be a catch all. If there is a straight network issue then AWB complains that it can't resolve wiki.riteme.site. At what stage do you get the timeout error? Perhaps go back to basics when it fails. Check arp table (arp -a), try nslookup of wiki.riteme.site and check all is good with interface(s), (ipconfig /all). Do other apps work? I remember that there were fault scenarios with Windows 7 where there would be an attempt to connect thru a nonactive interface. Perhaps an invalid network mask? Any anti-virus installed? Usually if the environment works then breaks either something changed or something broke (hardware can break in both subtle and unsubtle ways). Maybe the change was external? Is the virtual machine on separate hardware? Installed a new router/switch or similar? Might need to move this discussion to say a page of yours. It's likely to get off-topic. - Neils51 (talk) 20:12, 9 October 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestions. I think I've fixed it now. The problem was apparently caused by ULA Prefix Advertisement being enabled in the router. I had updated the router firmware on 2021-09-25, but had assumed that was not the problem because AWB did not fail until a week later. It turns out that:
The problem occurred when AWB fetched a new ObjectCache.xml, which it apparently does only when the old one expires, after 5 days.
The file I retrieved from my image backup was dated 2021-09-26 (the day after I updated the router) and expired 2021-10-01.
AWB actually works exactly once after the router is rebooted (with ULA Prefix Advertisement enabled), then fails on subsequent attempts (5 days later, when the file expires).
Apparently the default setting in the router has changed with the new firmware. (I took screen shots of every setting before I updated the router firmware, just in case.)
Presumably the network configurations on the PC (with a physical network adaptor) and the VM (on the same hardware, but with a virtual network adaptor) are sufficiently different that the ULA causes a problem for one but not the other.
Per this thread, could the AWB devs consider changing the default regex edit summary from Typo(s) fixed to something like Replacement(s) made, or at least provide the option for users to change it? The WP:AWB/T master list contains a lot of things that are stylistic issues, not typos (when to capitalize "President", dash/hyphen usage, comma placement, potential redundancy like "end result"…). It seems that it's causing unnecessary bad feeling when good-faith editors (reasonably) feel the default edit summary is accusing them of sloppiness or a failure to proofread their work; changing the default summary to something less confrontational wouldn't lose any meaning, and might reduce some of the general animosity towards AWB that's still widespread across the project. ‑ Iridescent14:49, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
adding articles from inactive categories from a page
Hello. I created the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Organized crime/Bot tagging categories/bare categories for this very experiment purpose. The page contains list of recursive no recursive categories. I would like to add articles to the AWB list from these categories. Is it possible? I tried "links on page", but it adds only the categories to the list, and not the articles from the categories. The "categories on page" (hidden/non hidden) doesnt give any results as expected, as it looks for active/non-neutralised categories? Any ideas how I can get the articles from the categories listed on that page? Thanks a lot in advance. Regards, —usernamekiran (talk) sign the (guestbook)17:57, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
Hello, how can I enable Bots section, as I would like to enable automatically saving and proceeding to next page when I'm making changes. — SimplyFreddie (talk) 18:24, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
Hello! Help a newbie in need! I'm an admin in SqWiki. We have around 600 template subpages ending in /dok that need to be moved to /doc as per the module:Documentation needs. I was able to generate a list of these pages and I thought I could use AWB to move them. Everything is better than manually and we don't have any bots capable of doing that. (mw:Manual:Pywikibot/movepages.py didn't look like it could solve much.) The problem is that the process is extremely slow because I have to tick the three boxes over and over again (move talkpage, leave no redirect, add to watchlist) + click move on each page individually + click save on each page individually so I can go on the next page (+writing the new title on every page). No matter how hard I try, I can't do more than 4 pages per minute. Now I do understand that AWB wasn't made primarily for moving pages but maybe those 3 boxes could be left ticked somehow, same as the summary gets remembered? Or maybe there's a way I don't need to click on move+save on each page individually? Or maybe there's another better way altogether than using AWB? Any kind of help is appreciated. - Klein Muçi (talk) 01:41, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: I've never moved pages with AWB, but you could go to Options > Default Edit Summaries, and add something like "Moving documentation page from /dok to /doc". Then, on the Start tab, once you select it as your Default Summary, it should stay until you manually change it. Hope this helps! GoingBatty (talk) 04:40, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
@GoingBatty, thanks a lot for your answer! I've already have that part solved though. It was the only part that gets remembered through different moves. I was hoping to keep some other parts static through the process as well. - Klein Muçi (talk) 08:29, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
@আফতাবুজ্জামান, "MassMover" on the sidebar! Got it! I can't express enough how painful was moving everything manually these past days so I'll keep both for the moment. Mass moving is something I deal with often lately. Thanks for showing it to me! :))
@Ahecht, thanks a lot! It literally felt like a Neanderthal watching a computer working. It moved +400 pages in minutes, more than double of what I had moved in 2 weeks manually. Really grateful for both of your suggestions! Maybe this is not the right place to say it but can similar functions be implemented to AWB? Given that it already has the move function and in principle it is supposed to work with lots of pages fast. Even massprotection and massdeletion could be much needed features for the same reasons - Klein Muçi (talk) 19:32, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
@Ahecht, thank you very much! Those sure will come in handy in admin actions. Any chance we can have a gadget in the future that combines all three of those functions at 1 place? You choose what you want to do (move/protect/delete) and then proceed normally like you would from the specific userscripts. I mean, the same userscripts + 1 extra step in the beginning basically. - Klein Muçi (talk) 20:41, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
@MB: Hi there! Similar to the response above, I'd copy the rows and paste them into Excel, strip out everything that isn't the page name, copy the column containing the page names and paste it into the AWB list. Hope this helps, and happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 16:07, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
Hi all, been a while since I tried this - looking to load my AWB input list from a special page output and/or a wikisearch but I'm failing pretty miserably - any tips? I'd like to load my input with either of these sources:
I think the feature development is sort of stalled - otherwise things like "HTML scrapper" might have already worked :( — xaosfluxTalk00:10, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
AWB for Linux
Hey there! I've read the explanations about running AWB on Linux. I have a Linux Mint distro. Tried downloading Mono and Wine and opening it. I got some errors while loading up but it opened in a pretty basic state. I couldn't change the project though because every time I went to the preferences tab those errors resumed. I searched a bit around on Google and I saw that those errors were related to the .NET framework so I downloaded the latest version of that using Wine. Those errors stopped but so did the AWB program. Now it doesn't load at all anymore. I just get the initial disclaimer that "you may get errors" and then nothing happens.
I'm novice on Linux, most of the time following instructions blindly and hoping for the best. I'm already using JWB instead of AWB there and it works fine. But I was wondering if I could also make AWB work. Maybe it was my fault and I did something wrong along the way. Any kind of help would be appreciated. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:13, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: I use AWB on Linux (Ubuntu 16.04), and it mostly works. I documented some of the steps in User:Certes/AWB on Ubuntu. Like my OS, that is now outdated; you will need to increase the version numbers shown there, including terms like "xenial", to the latest versions which are stable on Mint. The main problem with my previous naive attempts was having an old version of Wine. Disclaimer: I am not a Linux expert, and it is easy to break your system by copy-pasting commands from a random internet user. In particular, ptrace can be a security hole. Good luck, and please let us know how you get on. Certes (talk) 13:27, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
@Certes, hey there! Thanks a lot for trying to help! Can you guide me step by step? I tried doing everything explained there multiple times but nothing happened (AWB can be opened now but errors won't let me use it - also I get error messages while following some of the steps).
With baby steps, this is what I did:
Copy-pasted in the terminal the first 2 steps; nothing unusual, the exportation worked normally I suppose, not sure if I should have changed the $USER part somehow or not - my username is "User".
Copy-pasted wine --version; apparently I have wine-4.0, is that good?
Copy-pasted sudo apt-add-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ xenial main'; Nothing shows, which is normal I suppose but I'm not sure if I should replace xenial with anything else. When I used lsb_release -a Description reads Linux Mint 19 Tara (I've tried it even with mint instead of xenial.)
Copy-pasted sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable; I get this - I believe this has to do with the large number of tries I've done. What should I do? After your advice, I'll go on with the next steps. - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:37, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
wine-4.0.2 certainly works with AWB. I haven't tried the slightly older version 4.0. I now use wine-5.0.3, and I suggest you upgrade to at least 4.0.2 and preferably version 5 if you can.
Mint 19 is based on Ubuntu 18.04. The codename for that is "bionic", so please try that instead of "xenial" (which is Ubuntu 16.04). You probably want to remove the xenial repository, as that doesn't match your OS version and may be what's causing the "configured multiple times" errors.
$USER is fine. If you echo $USER it should show "User" on your machine (or "fred" if you're logged in as fred, etc.) Certes (talk) 16:01, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
echo user shows user so I believe it is fine, no? How do I delete the added xenial repository? Don't wanna rm-rf any other files accidently. I'll continue with the next steps after the deletion. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:11, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
The command to remove the repository seems to be sudo add-apt-repository -r 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ xenial main' (That's the same as adding but with -r for remove.) I have never used this myself, and I suggest you check with someone who has a clue before attempting it. In particular, if you are using other packages from the xenial build, this command could prevent you from keeping those packages updated. Certes (talk) 16:27, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
Removed the repository and redid everything up to that point.
What appears in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list, on lines 2 and 9? One of the depositaries listed there may need to be removed. Certes (talk) 16:43, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
Lines 9 and 10 are duplicates of 2. After copying to a backup, I would edit the file with your favourite text editor to keep only lines 1-6. (7-8 are blank.) You may then need to run sudo apt-get update. Certes (talk) 22:03, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
No, it's not normal. You should be able to move to the end (G) and delete the last line (dd). However, blank lines shouldn't cause any problems and can safely be left in. Certes (talk) 12:36, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
@Certes, really strange that I couldn't remove the blank lines. I deleted the duplicates, run sudo apt-get update and then redid all the steps (minus the one that would create duplicate lines) up until sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable.
I've not encountered "Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages" but others have. [2][3] or [4] may be useful. "does not have a Release file" suggests that "mint" isn't an actual version and is being ignored. You could probably tidy up by removing that repository, but it isn't doing any harm. Certes (talk) 11:56, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
@Certes, thanks for the side-info. Really appreciated. Going on with the next step now, I used winetricks --version and I got: Command 'winetricks' not found, but can be installed with: sudo apt install winetricks. Should I continue with the installation according to that advice? Or should I go on with the next steps mentioned in your guide? Also, I don't quite get the which winetricks part. Is that a command you can copy-paste unchanged on the terminal and get a response out of it? - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:19, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
Yes, please install winetricks. which winetricks simply shows which directory the winetricks executable lives in; for me it displays /usr/bin/winetricks but anywhere in your PATH is fine. Then you can run winetricks, where you can install dotnet45. To do this in the winetricks GUI: select the default prefix; install a Windows DLL or component; select dotnet45; OK. Certes (talk) 12:33, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
@Certes, I ran sudo apt install winetricks and I believe it said that winetricks was already installed. After that I asked for the version again but again it said I needed to install it.
Very odd. apt thinks winetricks is installed; which thinks it isn't. You could try find / -name winetricks -ls 2> /dev/null to search your computer for all files called winetricks. After a minute, mine came up with /usr/bin/winetricks. That directory is in my $PATH, and the file is executable (permissions -rwxrwxr-x) so which finds it and, more importantly, typing winetricks runs it. If you find a file, perhaps it needs chmod +x /whatever/winetricks to make it executable, or the directory needs adding to your PATH. If not then you may need to sudo apt-get remove winetricks and install it again. Otherwise, I think we need a Linux expert. We might find one at WP:VPT or possibly the WP:Help desk. Certes (talk) 14:47, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
You don't seem to have a winetricks executable there. You do have a lintian override, which is part of debhelper, which I've never used and don't understand. You could remove and reinstall winetricks, or install it manually from GitHub (harder), or ask for help at VPT. Certes (talk) 16:13, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
@Certes, removed and installed it. The checking commands work fine now.
I think you need to ask a Mint expert. I have no idea why installing winetricks seems to work but does not put an executable script called winetricks in your path. It works for me, but I have a different version of Linux. I'm sure there's a simple solution, but my quick search doesn't find it. Certes (talk) 23:08, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
I'm not sure. If you now type winetricks, does it create a dialog box where you can do the required configuration, or does it reply "command not found"? Certes (talk) 23:16, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
Excellent! You want to select the default prefix; select "install a Windows DLL or component"; select "dotnet45"; click OK. Certes (talk) 23:24, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
dotnet45 works for me. (I think it automatically installs dotnet40 too, then upgrades.) I also see the dotnet62 option. It may work better, worse, or not at all; I haven't tried it. Certes (talk) 23:33, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
@Certes, tried dotnet62. It run into problems, auto-retried 3 times and then stopped.
Tried dotnet45. It auto-installed dotnet40 as well, like you said. Now I have an installation dialogue box from Microsoft.net open. I'm guessing I should go on with the installation, no? - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:40, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
Yes, it looks as if everything so far is finally working and you can carry on. Sorry it's taken so long, but this thread should be useful to others in future. Certes (talk) 23:42, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
I don't recall anything like that. Clearly you don't want those services on a Linux box, so I would blunder on regardless. Certes (talk) 23:51, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
@Certes, installation finished, I got a notification that Windows was set to use Windows 2003 for it to work and I got the dialogue box asking me what I want to do now, which I closed (the box I got in the first time). Now what do I do? :P - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:56, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
Install AWB if you don't have it already. (See Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser.) Then, once you've been approved for using it (that bit is important!), try running AWB and see what happens! I use a script:
#!/bin/bash
cd ~/bin/awb6200/
nohup wine AutoWikiBrowser.exe &
but for now you can just cd into the directory where you installed AWB, and type wine AutoWikiBrowser.exe Maybe start with a test edit like changing "EDIT" to "TYPE" in your sandbox. Certes (talk) 00:06, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
Oh my God, it works... Can't believe it! Thanks a lot, @Certes! Can't believe you had the time and nerves to work this out with me. Really grateful! I have only three last questions:
What about the following steps in your guide? I believe we already did the wget while installing winetricks but I don't know about chmod and the moves. Should I be doing anything about those?
Do I need to update anything? Wine/winetricks/dotnet?
In WP:AWB I see: AWB is written for Windows operating system versions Vista and newer. It also functions reasonably well under Wine on Mac and some versions of Linux (though not Linux Mint), but is not officially supported.. Isn't Linux Mint my version? Or am I mistaken and instead it's called Bionic? If it is, is that text part wrong/outdated? - Klein Muçi (talk) 00:23, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
Ah, if you only did the wget, then that explains why which couldn't find winetricks! It's sorted out now, so no need to continue with the other bits. You are using Linux Mint. (I didn't realise that when we started.) That may have been the cause of some of the difficulties, but I think we've overcome them. "bionic", also called "18.04", is the version of Ubuntu on which Mint 19 is based. Happy editing, but don't forget to get permission first. Certes (talk) 00:28, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
@Certes, yeah, no worries. I only use AWB for my homewiki (SqWiki) where I'm a bureaucrat. I've had permission there for both my bot and myself for quite some time now. The occasional edits I do on EnWiki are always manual. It's a good thing I had missed that line in the beginning or else it would have demotivated us both I believe. I only checked it out after you linked me to it even though I've read that page a lot of times these days, hoping to find a way to make it work. Haha! I'm thinking of removing it from the text now. Thank you again one more time! :)) - Klein Muçi (talk) 00:49, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
For the benefit of anyone reviewing this saga in later years: the problem was that Wine and/or Winetricks were installed from a distribution for a version of Linux which differed from the installed OS (Wine from focus; Ubuntu bionic installed). Removing the inappropriate apt source, then reinstalling Wine and Winetricks, solved the problem. Certes (talk) 13:40, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
any way to disable the 'stuck' timer in bot mode?
In bot mode, when auto-save is enabled, awb apparently has a two-minute stuck timer.
I'm currently running User:Monkbot/task 19: cite iucn update. Because this task fetches data from the IUCNAPI and because I want remain in IUCN's good graces, task 19 is deliberately throttled to make API calls no more quickly than once every three seconds. Because of the stuck timer, it is not possible to have auto-save enabled when processing articles like List of mammals of Florida where there are 96 {{cite iucn}} templates that are using the old-form url.
I can turn off auto-save and run the bot manually but that's boring. Is there any way to disable or even extend the stuck timer so that task 19 can do its thing without human involvement?
Qwerfjkl (bot) makes a number of edits to citation parameters. As relevant here, one such edit has been to Rupert Bruce-Mitford, where it twice (1; 2) changed the "sbn =" parameter in {{cite book}} to "isbn = ". But SBNs, while a precursor to ISBNs, are not the same thing. See International Standard Book Number#History. Among other things, they are 9-digit numbers (rather than 10 or 13); as a result, Qwerfjkl (bot)'s edits did not just introduce incorrect information, they also left template errors, such as those seen here ("Check |isbn= value: length"). Qwerfjkl, who manages the bot, suggested 1) preventing the bot from editing in the page in question, and 2) asking here. The first option, of course, just means that the incorrect edits will be made elsewhere. Does anyone know how to stop them from being made at all? Thanks, --Usernameunique (talk) 21:14, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
Indeed, this appears to be from Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Rename_template_parameters#Citation genfixes. That being said, this is the appropriate place to bring up this matter. Regarding the bot, it has been blocked for failing to meet some other unrelated expectations of a bot account, but that being said we should not be placing {{nobots}} on dozens of pages just because a bot is using genfixes. Primefac (talk) 21:21, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
@John of Reading: apparently my state of the art laptop meets all the requirements except the processor even though its i7. So I can confidently say this: I havent upgraded to 11 because it still under development, and not fully stable. 10 is million times better than 11. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk)22:17, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
Multiple find and replace entries simultaneously
Hello! Is there a way to add multiple find/replace entries simultaneously? I use AWB to deal with infobox updates at my local project and usually I need to replace 10 parameters from the old infobox with 10 parameters from the new infobox. I have the lists premade ready but I still have to add them one by one manually because I don't know of a way to add them automatically. Any way to do that? - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:29, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
@Primefac, hello! Thanks for the interest! Uhm, I certainly could but I don't know if it would be helpful. I'm not trying to do anything on EnWiki. I'm a crat at SqWiki and we're updating some of our old infoboxes there to the forms followed here in EnWiki. When that happens, we also need to "clean up" after it and change all articles that use the old infobox to the new one.
Usually the changes are like this:
Find
{{Old infobox name
|Old parameter 1
|Old parameter 2
|Old parameter 3
Replace
{{New infobox name
|New parameter 1
|New parameter 2
|New parameter 3
What I want is a way for me to allow me to copy the whole list of find entries in AWB in one move and then the whole list of replaces entries in one move again, assuming I've already compiled those 2 lists in a text editor. Currently I'm copy-pasting each entry individually by hand.
Ah, I see. If you're not using a module, then you could potentially edit the XML file directly; for example if I'm doing a straight parameter replace (using "Advanced settings") each entry looks like
@Primefac, I see... Unfortunately I've never worked with XML files in AWB before and I've only dealt with modules twice which were already premade, I just executed them. I was hoping for a kind of solution like "Press this extra key when pasting so the whole list gets pasted correctly and not as a single entry in the same cell".
Am I to understand a functionality like that doesn't yet exist? Just to make it more clear, I'm talking about using it as Microsoft Excel is usually used, if you've ever had to deal with it. You paste a list of entries on a page on Excel and they get automatically listed individually on different rows, vertically, like they should. If you try to do the same thing on AWB all the entries get listed on 1 single cell (on Normal settings). - Klein Muçi (talk) 19:03, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
In all these cases we already have the list of changes (the parameters) that should be replaced more or less ready by getting them from the old and new template's doc pages. I just wanted a way to immediately paste them in the "Normal settings" tables in only 2 moves, instead of each parameter individually. If that functionality doesn't yet exist, I can make a request for that feature to be added. You can also teach me more about utilizing other options beside "Normal settings", of course. I'd be really happy for that. As I said, I've only started using AWB actively lately and haven't dealt much with anything else beside "the normal way". - Klein Muçi (talk) 09:08, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
I think this is the closest to what you're asking. If you create a separate settings file you can edit the XML in that. I've done it before; prepare the replacement XML code in something that allows a formula like Excel and use that to generate the XML code based on your find and replace field names. The key part of the settings XML is this bit:
If you create a formula that generates one of the above blocks for each field you need to change, you can then just paste the code back into the XML. - X201 (talk) 10:08, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
Hi Klein Muçi. Start with a clear table in 'Normal Settings', using the 'Clear' button. Now create say a pair of 'Find/Replace with' sets such as 'AAA', 'BBB', 'CCC', 'DDD'. Now do; 'File', 'Save setting as' and save the output XML file say as 'MyTest', it should default to XML type. Now edit the XML output file using Notepad++. Look for the AAA, BBB, CCC, DDD, pairs. You will locate them within the <Replacement> </Replacement> metadata pairs, as follows;
I have stripped out a fair bit of the material that's reproduced further above as it's not required (AWB will default it). This is an example of what your spreadsheet needs to create. The spreadsheet output does not need to look pretty or be specifically aligned. A load and re-output (save) will clean it up. Suggest do that and check for any extraneous characters.
This should be all you need. Suggest 8 columns. You can export the sheet as a text file. The following is an example.
It would be quite feasible to have the complete XML file within the spreadsheet and source your find/replace tables from another sheet. You can do similar processing in 'Advanced Settings' if you need 'If Condition' processing. Get started and you will find it's not onerous. - Neils51 (talk) 11:40, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: Here are some instructions for using Excel to generate the XML code
I'm using Primefac's suggestion of the Parameter fields to make the XML simpler.
I'm assuming you're using Windows (Notepad and WordPad)
Step 1 - Make the XML file
Start a new settings file in AWB
Go to Find & Replace / Advanced Settings
Click New > Rule > Template Parameter
In Name put "This is a Temporary rule" or something to identify it by.
Put your name or something easily identifiable in the other two fields and then click 'Close'
Save the settings file with a distinctive name.
Close AWB
Step 2 - Excel
This will look a bit long-winded but I've broken it down into individual cells so that you can see what is going on. You can make it more compact when you understand it.
Copy the text to the right of the colon: into the cell indicated. Make sure to include the single apostrophe ' and the spaces.
@X201, I tried following the Microsoft Excel way but got confused along the way because the list is vertical but the cell names beside it indicate it to be laid horizontally. So I stopped that way and tried following your way. That went in smoothly. I opened the XML file and located my F&R entries. I'm assuming the logic now is to prepare my 2 lists in such a way that they fit the aforementioned model the XML file uses for them and add them there directly before loading up that file as my AWB settings. It seems a bit better but still requires me to prepare my lists to fit that model because they have other entries in the middle apart from the F&R entries, like
For anyone interested, I also created a phab task here requesting the functionality in the easier way which I hoped I could find. I tried to make the description as clear as possible but you can further edit it if you want. - Klein Muçi (talk) 08:40, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
I've had a thought; I think the subst trick could be used for this. You'd need to find a template editor who has done it before, but I think the basics of it are that, using the subst module on the template, you add the old and new field names into the template, which sets it up so that the only edit you need to make to the article is adding subst: in front of the template name. - X201 (talk) 09:03, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
@X201, but that would give us fresh new parameters without the corresponding old values, wouldn't it? That would be disastrous for the articles. - Klein Muçi (talk) 09:09, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: The alias feature allows you to change parameter names and keep the values. Infobox Album uses the feature, try this in your sandbox:
Paste the code below into your sandbox. Note the image parameter name.
{{Infobox album
| italic_title = no
| name = Nirvana
| type = greatest
| artist = [[Nirvana (band)|Nirvana]]
| image = Nirvana album cover.svg
}}
Save. Then click edit, add subst: before the template name , so that you have {{subst:Infobox album Save. Now edit and look at the image parameter. It's changed to cover, because that is an alias of image in the template code. It also adds and removes parameters that are missing or defunct.- X201 (talk) 10:41, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
@X201, @Qwerfjkl, hmm, very interesting... Just tried it. Can you give me an example how would I be able to use this feature while changing w:sq:Stampa:Kutia Politikan to {{Infobox officeholder}} in SqWiki? Like, the end results would be to delete the current Albanian template and create a new one like this: w:sq:Stampa:Infobox officeholder (which apparently currently exists but it is again outdated) with everything the same as in here just translating the rendered versions of the parameters. Then all the articles using the old Albanian template with Albanian parameters would need to be changed with AWB to the new English template with its English parameters. How would I act practically in this case? - Klein Muçi (talk) 10:52, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
@Trappist the monk, maaaybe you can provide some information here? You were the latest contributor in that module. Maybe you're contribution was overall trivial but unfortunately that module doesn't have a lot of contributions in general, especially in recent times so... - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:06, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
@Qwerfjkl, thanks a lot for taking the time to set that up! So, what would I need to do with it? I mean, how would that help me make the needed change with the new English parameters (+the name of the template itself)? I'm just new in the whole thing, sorry. - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:51, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: It wouldn't work; it's just an example. The $aliases=Emri_NEW,Figura>Figura_NEW bit should replace |Emri= with |Emri_NEW= (for example). I don't think this code works currently, but hopefully it will give you an idea of how to use Module:Unsubst. ― Qwerfjkltalk13:57, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
Ah, I understand now. So those were just placeholder terms for the new parameters. Would it be wise to do the needed changes in your sandbox (I mean, really put there the new parameters instead of those terms) and somehow try it together on an article at SqWiki to see what happens? Or you're sure that we can't try that at all because it doesn't work as it currently is? - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:01, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
@Qwerfjkl, oh silly me... Only now I understand the whole thing. It was supposed to make the conversion happen from the old template to the new one while preserving the values. But somehow it just produces the } thing. :P Hmm, maybe that's because that template, given that it is so old, it was designed to include it's doc page inside of it and the module can't handle that? - Klein Muçi (talk) 09:23, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
Unlike most talk pages and even most WT pages, this seems to be a talk page about the subject of the article, rather than a talk page about the article. Where can I go to discuss improvements to the WP:AWB page? QoopyQoopy (talk) 21:34, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
Correct. There used to be a bunch of talk pages but they've pretty much all been redirected here to avoid confusion and decentralised discussion. Primefac (talk) 14:50, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
AWB general fixes inside chem blocks
In this editUser:MinusBot bot applied some AWB general fixes. These had the side effect of changing code inside a <chem>, in particular it changed
turning a } into a }}. This broke the chem formula. <chem> should be treated the same as <math> and no changes made inside the block. <ce> is a synonym for <chem> and should also be skipped.
It appears that the maximum length of edit summaries allowed by AWB is shorter than what is allowed via manual editing. For example, I am currently adding {{Family name hatnote}}s to articles without them where appropriate, and in AWB the edit summary is truncated, whereas with manual editing I can input the full summary to indicate my syntax. Can this be fixed? feminist (talk)09:12, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
Yeah I've switched my edit summary for my later edits to include a link to the template. I'll report this to Phabricator sometime later. feminist (talk)03:57, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
Excel to Wiki Templates
Hi,
I have bulk election results with detailed. check below link. I want update Wiki Template format to add every Tamil Nadu Constitutions after Electin Results heading. - 11:05, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
Note: Excel to Wiki Election Template already converted.
How to blank pages, and or add something particular
Hello. On marathi Wikipedia, the categories are messed up, including the hierarchy. In simple words, is there a way to empty all the categories/contents/links to articles on a category's page, and then to add desired text/category? example of content in category page. In even simpler words, I want AWB to clear all the content of a given page, and add desired content. Note: I have AWB/BOT access on mrwiki. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk)17:48, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
clear all the content of a given page? (emphasis added) Really? That is simple. Make a regex rule to search for .* and replace with nothing. If instead, what you are asking is how to remove all category wikilinks and add a new category wikilink then perhaps a regex rule to search for \[\[[Cc]ategory:[^\]]+\]\] and replace that with nothing then under the More tab, enable Append/Prepend text, select Append and add your new categories to the Append/Prepend text box.
If you know the names of the existing 'bad' categories, it is probably safer to simply replace only those with the new categeories.
@Trappist the monk: thanks, I will try this tomorrow. Well, instead of checking the categories, I think cleaning the entire page, then adding all the good categories will be a good idea. The MO is still a work in progress, it will keep on changing/improving with time. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk)19:17, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
@Usernamekiran: not sure what you are trying to actually accomplish, but at least here on enwiki having a page that contains only a category would rarely be useful, especially in regards to articles. — xaosfluxTalk19:23, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Hi. I think you got me wrong. I'm not talking about editing articles, I'm talking about category space. To explain what I am trying to say is, imagine someone listed all the songs recorded by backstreet boys on the page category:Backstreet Boys songs, and then added a whole lot irrelevant categories. On mrwiki, the hierarchy of categories is messed up as well. I'm trying to fix that. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk)19:35, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
False positive "Alerts" for "Unbalanced brackets"
I often stumble upon Alert notice "Unbalanced brackets" when I have such type of sentence-structure and covers the years of 1) parliamentary democracy 2) the Great Depression and 3) the period of authoritarian rule
Is there any uncontroversial behaviour to overcome these kind of false positive alerts? One solution is eg double brackets, but it may be controversial. Example: and covers the years of (1) parliamentary democracy (2) the Great Depression and (3) the period of authoritarian rule
--Estopedist1 (talk) 22:46, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
Would it read better as and covers the years of: parliamentary democracy, the Great Depression, and the period of authoritarian rule ? I think you'd get more responses asking over at Wikipedia:Manual of Style -SCEhardT17:19, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
AWB doesn't start on new laptop
AWB isn't starting on my new windows laptop. When I try to start it, a prompt comes up saying I need to install another app to start the task, and then, regardless if I push "yes" or "no," not one but two error messages pop up saying "The application cannot be initiated." I've tried installing .NET 4.5, installing a previous version of AWB, uninstalling and reinstalling the current version of AWB, and downloading a .NET 'repair' program from Windows. None have worked nor changed anything that happens. I run Windows 10. I dream of horses(Contribs)(Talk)05:31, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
I've made a fix for T296611 on my local machine. I'm unclear on what the next steps are: How to commit the code, how the change is reviewed and incorporated into a build.
Anyone able to help on this? I'm new to open source; coming from a corporate software development background.
My understanding is that generally on Sourceforge I would: Fork the project, make the changes in the fork, and then make a Merge Request. However this project doesn't have the Fork link I see on other projects. -SCEhardT20:52, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
@SCEhardt: Hi. user:Magioladitis is one of the developers of the AWB. They might be able to help. But they are not much active on enwiki, I would suggest sending an email. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk)21:03, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
Is there a simple way to replace different instances of a matched string with different outputs? I need to replace a certain string with a template, which should have a certain parameter set differently between the first instance and further matches. There may be dozens of matches on a page, so trying to craft a single RegEx that captures every instance doesn't seem practical. --Paul_012 (talk) 18:36, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
To replace the first Foo by Bar but subsequent matches of Foo by Baz needs two replacements: Foo → Bar once, then Foo → Baz throughout. With JWB this is easy: put the g flag on the second regexp but not the first. AWB should also be able to do this with the repeat count in the advanced section set to 1 for the first and a big number for the second (perhaps 0 works). Take care if Bar contains Foo which might get replaced again: a more specific example might help. Certes (talk) 19:08, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
I think AWB's repeat count is for iterative replace-all repetitions, and doesn't seem to work for this. Thanks for the JWB suggestion, though. I should give it a try. --Paul_012 (talk) 19:54, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
If AWB lacks a replace-once option (surely there must be one hidden somewhere) then you could replace something like (?<!Foo.*)Foo, but that may be horrendously inefficient. Certes (talk) 20:26, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
I'm not sure if I understood your question. Do you want to replace one instance of foo with bar, and rest with baz; like Certes said above? —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk)20:52, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
Yes, replacing one instance of foo with bar and the rest with baz is more or less it, though it involves some capture group references. Specifically, I'm looking to replace [[Thai language|Thai]]: อักษรไทย (a common error new editors make) with {{lang-th|อักษรไทย}} on the first instance and {{lang|th|อักษรไทย}} on the later ones. The อักษรไทย could be anything, which so far I've been able to get working fairly well with \[\[Thai language\|Thai\]\]: ([ก-๛0-9.,;\-–/ ]+[ก-๛0-9.])( \([ก-๛0-9.,;\-–/ ]+\))?.
Anyway, another workaround that I've found seems to work is to specify multiple rules, first replacing every foo with baz, then replacing baz(.*) with bar$1 (with single-line mode enabled). Not sure how less inefficient this is, and it wouldn't work if there are existing instances of baz earlier in the text, but it actually fits my purposes. As Certes said, though, it would be a strange omission if this functionality indeed does not exist natively. --Paul_012 (talk) 06:55, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
maybe you can create two custom modules. First module for "first foo to bar", second module for "all foo to baz". —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk)08:39, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
Ah, of course that would be more straightforward. My convoluted description was due to me actually also attempting another related task at the same time. --Paul_012 (talk) 09:43, 14 December 2021 (UTC) (PS I meant this in response to the order of operations, not the use of modules; sorry for the unclearness.) --Paul_012 (talk) 11:06, 14 December 2021 (UTC))
You don't need custom modules. A regular expression like the one above will do the job. If AWB really has no way to replace once only (a glaring omission) then adding (.*) to the end of the first regexp and $n to the end of its replacement should capture the rest of the article (replacing it by itself) to ensure that it never matches again. In this case, n=3 as capture groups 1 and 2 are already used.
I'm guessing that you want both unbracketed and bracketed text in the template when you match something like "อักษ (รไทย)"; remove $1 or $2 if not. Certes (talk) 10:06, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
While I, (Djm-leighpark/Djm-mobile/Bigdelboy) understood users required permissions to use AWB, I notice these anon. edits tagged AWB, I observed many of the edits of an tagged AWB? [5]. I can think of at least one explanation, but does anyone have comments? Thankyou. Djm-mobile (talk) 09:35, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
Those aren't actual WP:Tags but just "using AWB" links in the edit summaries, which can easily be manually added. Before tags were introduced, AWB used to generate this kind of edit summaries. If it isn't being done deceptively, my guess would be that the IP user didn't understand the meaning/purpose of the link and just copied it from older edit summaries they saw. --Paul_012 (talk) 09:59, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
AWB not recognising abbreviated/redirected template {{Dis}}
Hallo, this edit seems to show that AWB does not recognised {{Dis}} as equivalent to {{Disambiguation}}, so it has suggested the incorrect addition of {{orphan}} and {{stub}} to a disambiguation page for which neither is appropriate. The redirect was created in Jan 2021 by @Lugnuts:. Sorry if this should have been reported on Phabricator, but attempting to "Check reported tasks" as instructed above by searching for the word "dis" got me nowhere, and I thought someone here might know whether it was an already-reported issue. PamD09:57, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
Is there a way to access information about a page that lets you use variables (outside of regular expressions) like %%PAGENAME%% in find and replace or append/prepend text? ~Eliz81(C)22:40, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
You can use Help:Magic words#Variables. If you want them to be substituted, add subst: after the opening braces. For example, inserting {{subst:PAGENAME}} in Foo will add the text "Foo" (which won't change even if the page is moved). Certes (talk) 22:51, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
substituting different for first than the later.
Let's say I have a Wikipedia file that has
ABC
Z
DEF
Z
GHI
Z
JKL
I want to substitute M1 for the first Z in the file and M2 for any later occurances of Z? Is this possible? (The user case is the use of [[The Ohio State University]]. I want to change first hits to [[Ohio State University]]<!--The "The" is considered an advertising gimmick--> or similar and later ones to simply [[Ohio State University]].Naraht (talk) 20:16, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
I didn't see a difference between your two replacement strings, so I have marked them as code above. In any case, you could probably iterate over the block of text using some flavor of Module:String#match and its |match= parameter, in some order. In your code, you could use logic like "replace instance 2, replace instance 3, replace instance 4, etc. up to some large number of instances, then replace instance 1 with the custom code". – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:07, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
Having an option to replace once (s/a/b/ rather than s/a/b/g) would be one of the most useful and (I expect) easily implemented enhancements to AWB. JWB has the feature, so that may be a better way to run this particular task. Certes (talk) 21:31, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
@Naraht: Hmmmm...I have an idea I'd like to try. Do you have an example of an article where the multiple links to the same article is not overlinking? GoingBatty (talk) 01:14, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
I can do this by using more than one find+replace rule. I copied your sample text to User:John of Reading/Sandbox to try it out. My first rule finds Z and replaces it with Z UNIQUEMARKER1, which of course changes all three. My second rule finds UNIQUEMARKER1(?<=UNIQUEMARKER1.*UNIQUEMARKER1) and replaces it with UNIQUEMARKER2, and this changes only the second and third instances. From there, further rules could make your desired changes to the first instance and the later instances. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:01, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Another approach is to replace Z((.|\n)*) by M1$1, with Regex and MultiLine flags set, then replace Z by M2. The first replace should match once, consuming the first Z and the rest of the article (which may include Zs) and replacing it by M1 and the rest of the article (with later Zs intact). The second replace should match all Zs except the first Z (which no longer exists, having already been replaced by M1). If pattern Z matches replacement string M1 then more cleverness is needed. This technique seems very inefficient, but hammers the client rather than the server. Certes (talk) 14:05, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Database scanner: multiple search criteria
In the database scanner, if I want to scan for multiple search terms using the "text not contains" feature, is there an easy way to do it? Specific example is I want all articles that contain the word "is a species of" and do not contain the words "{{Speciesbox" and "{{Taxonbar". Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:05, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Hi. In spanish, the AWB put a breakline after the "Control de autoridades" or "NF" templates, and there are not breakline there. Is it possible to change it? Thanks. --Vanbasten 23 (talk) 08:35, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
@Vanbasten 23: Hi there! I suggest you post a new bug report in Phabricator, and provide a link to the Spanish Wikipedia's Manual of Style pages that specifies that there should not be a breakline before the categories. Thanks for the report! GoingBatty (talk) 15:53, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
I created an AWB settings file where the Preferences > Site > Language = "simple". However, when I use AWB to sign in to the Simple Wikipedia, I get a message stating "GoingBatty is not enabled to use this." When I click on the OK button, I'm taken to simple:Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON.
Hello! Some time ago I spent quite some time utilizing Wine to be able to run AWB in Linux. Today I wanted to use Wine to download Notepad++ but I learned that I didn't need to do that. I "only" needed to download Snapd and that would take care of the rest basically. I was thinking if there was any chance someone would bother to adapt AWB in the same way. I mean, the best choice would be to actually make it work in Linux without needing any kind of emulators but in the lack of that, this could be an improvement over the many needed steps when using Wine. - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:00, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
AWB on privat or other wikipages as WP / MW?
Hi folks.
That is needed as configuration to use AWB on other / own wikipages?
I have read in WP is a register on a specialpage to protect vs spam or other crap. --Shadowslight (talk) 13:28, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
By default, AWB doesn't require registration. A project may require it by creating a registration configuration on-wiki. — xaosfluxTalk14:18, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
Category (recursive)
Hello, I am using the Category (recursive) option to create a list of articles to look at. I am now getting lots more articles than I would expect, many which appear to have no association with the selected category. I suspect that there is probably a wrongly placed category or a newly created category. Is there a way of showing the category route from the selected category to an article that it puts in the list? Keith D (talk) 23:21, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
@Keith D This isn't an AWB solution, but if you have <200 results you can try Special:CategoryTree on-wiki, specify the top most category and it will drill down. If you get too many results, you can set the output to only be the category namespace, then try again from a lower level. — xaosfluxTalk14:18, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: I was expecting something like 25,000 as at previous checks, but got over 53,000. Looking at some of the A articles showed many unexpected Welsh results. Keith D (talk) 14:26, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
@Keith D: This isn't an AWB solution either, but something like quarry:query/62809 should show you route(s) from the article to the category. That hack is limited to five levels but easy to extend. There ought to be, and probably is, a standard tool for this. Don't forget to replace spaces by underscores in article and category names. Certes (talk) 16:30, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
@Certes:. Thanks, I got no results for level 5 or 6, at level 7 it appears to hang and I stopped it. May be there is some loop at that point in the tree. I was going from category Yorkshire to article Addysgydd. Keith D (talk) 17:11, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
As I've been using my AWB bot to churn through the backlogs in its tasks, one restraint has been that AWB only runs when my computer is running. This reduces its efficiency and also isn't great for my privacy. Is there any way to run a virtual machine or PAWS or something so that my bot will keep running 24/7? If not, could development work enable that? I wonder why AWB isn't based in the cloud to start with (I have heard of WP:JWB, but it doesn't seem widely used, and that gives me updatedness concerns). Thanks for the help, {{u|Sdkb}}talk03:44, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
JWB is quite widely used and has support for bots and a semi active maintainer. I've tried it for minor bot runs and haven't encountered any issues, so I would consider that an option. --Trialpears (talk) 04:29, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
@Sdkb, not sure how much I'll be of help to you with this information but Pywikibot has scripts similar to AWB's functions that can be utilized to work on Toolforge (or PAWS). Those can be used continuously or periodically through cron jobs. - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:07, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
yes, pywikibot is good in that aspect, but only if it is run from toolforge with cronjob. Otherwise it is similar to AWB with command line interface, but I doubt if it has ready-to-use features like AWB has. Also, it lacks manpages. They are super vague, incomplete, and sometimes inaccurate as well. —usernamekiran (talk)17:53, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
@Usernamekiran, you're right on documentation (manpages). Replace.py is very similar to AWB functionalities. I already operate a robot with that script on the Pywikibot framework (which I was able to make it work only after titanic efforts and A LOT of trial and error, the documentation is only understandable to those who are already skilled on that) and I'd be willing to help if user Sdkb would be interested. - Klein Muçi (talk) 01:39, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: Would you help me with setting a cronjob? Or jsub? I'm not sure. Everything else is working fine except automatic runs. —usernamekiran (talk)01:55, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
Today it was brought to my attention that you can use AWB + {{Void}} appending to null-edit a set of pages in a specific category. I think this thing is utilized often. Wouldn't it be better if it was an AWB built-in feature? - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:02, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: If you were to make a null edit using AWB to add {{Void}}, would that edit be visible on the page's history and on people's watchlists? If so, it seems that would that violate the AWB Rules of use that state "Do not make insignificant or inconsequential edits". GoingBatty (talk) 20:45, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
Technically it would need to be a {{subst:void}} addition, because the result would be zero added text and thus no "saved" edit (i.e. no change to history or watchlists). Primefac (talk) 20:48, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
See my comment below; I will also note that your link specifically says without making any changes which means you don't have to add anything, even a void template. Primefac (talk) 08:44, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
When I update the whole of the cs1|2 module suite (eight modules and a template styles page), we invariably get a rash of articles that display the glaring red Lua script error... messages. This happens because the whole suite cannot be updated between server timerticks so for a handful of seconds, the live module suite is a mix of old and new. I've been using this {{subst:void}} trick to refresh all of the new pages that show up in Category:Pages with script errors. I don't know that this is something that needs to be a new feature because there is a perfectly workable solution and editors can save the settings file for quick recall when the need arises.
I'm going to say it again, because apparently it's been lost in the discussion above - this is not needed. You can use AWB with all options turned off - when you edit it a page, it says "no changes made", and you save the page and it becomes a null edit. Why anyone would want to screw around with potentially adding a bunch of garbage text that would just later on need to be removed (for example, if you mis-typed "susbt", which I have done before) is beyond me. Primefac (talk) 08:44, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
@Primefac, if that is so, can/should we still add a small notification in the AWB's interface explaining us how to do null edits and purges? Can you change the documentation page I brought above so more people know about this? I would do it myself but given that I've yet to try what you said (finished working with my batch of articles with the {{subst:void}} method) I'm a bit reluctant to write about it. - Klein Muçi (talk) 10:56, 5 March 2022 (UTC)
How is the localization of this program supported? Are there any common translations of this program, and if not, can I translate for myself (for ease of use)? And then I checked the program files, and did not find any localization files (usually sometimes localizations are contained in the files). DDPAT Knife Series (talk) 20:29, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
I have a similar question, how can we change the default edit summary for use on another wiki. Eg cleanup to something else like صَفٲیی for kswiki. دَستخَط، اِفلاق(کَتھ باتھ)07:32, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
Sorry for the long answer, but the subsequent conversation went a little in the wrong direction. I meant that... like translating the program completely, for example, into Ukrainian. If you still do not understand, let me know, I'll try to explain differently. DDPAT Knife Series (talk) 00:04, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
I use this browser called Brave and have for many years now. It is a great browser. Will I be able to use the AWB with that browser? Also, I already put my request in, but might not getting around to using this for some months. I see some editors in their requests for the 'permission' or add of the AWB that the Musik bot comes along and says "This user has been automatically revoked"... How does that happen? I don't want to apply for this only to be "automatically revoked" if I don't use it right away? Just wanted to make sure that I understand what is going on there. Thanks! ♥Th78blue (talk)♥15:56, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
There are two versions of AWB. The main one is a desktop version that works on Windows, and doesn't need another browser to run necessarily. Theere is also one based on Javascript, but I think it has less features. The Javascript one should work in Brave (which is based of Chrome i think)
I don't want to apply for this only to be "automatically revoked" if I don't use it right away? I think its only revoked if you dont edit Wikipedia for a long time, not necessarily revoked if you dont use AWB. Could be wrong though. Rlink2 (talk) 16:18, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
Interesting. Thanks for the info. Would love confirmation on that. I wonder why it would be "revoked" at all for those reasons. Does it hurt for someone to have that they are not using it or they are not editing? What harm would that cause for anyone else? Genuinely asking, doesn't seem to make sense to revoke for anyone short of obvious abuse (like other perms). ♥Th78blue (talk)♥16:21, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
@Th78blue @GoingBatty "Inactive" refers to editing in general, and not just AWB edits. The problem is that over the years, the CheckPage becomes polluted with editors who have long left the project. To make it easier to maintain, we regularly prune the list. The duration ("edit_offset") is defined the configuration; at the moment it's set to 1 year. So assuming you plan to make at least one edit in the next 365 days, there's no risk of you losing AWB access :) Thanks for asking! I have updated User:MusikBot II/AWBListMan to better clarify how the bot functions. — MusikAnimaltalk05:14, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
Thanks! Would you mind spelling out the definition on the bot just a tiny bit more on that page too (for other users, not just myself) to define inactivity as "no new edit in a 365 day consecutive period of time" or something similar? Thanks MusicAnimal for your great work. ♥Th78blue (talk)♥14:36, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
I can't write "365 days" because this is configurable, and there's no way to transclude what is set in the configuration. However I did make a copy edit that hopefully clears it up a bit more. — MusikAnimaltalk18:42, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
@NotReallySoroka: Question one: there's a configuration option on the main menu bar, "Options > Follow redirects". Question two: I don't think so. AWB can run extra logic, but I believe it has to be coded as a C++ module, not as Javascript. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:47, 30 April 2022 (UTC)
Missing button to remove section name in the edit summary
Hi,
Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/User_manual#Edit_summary states that « If auto-changes happen in only one section there is an option to show this section in the edit summary. This option can be suppressed by the appropriate button. » but where is the said button? (@Envlh: who raised the question but I find myself unable to answer... This is particulary important for Wikisources where almost all pages have only one section).
Hello! Example of the issue for Wikisource: edit. The section /* top */ is added to each generated edit summary, even though the page doesn't have any section. We tried several options in AWB, but were unable to find one that prevents the section to be added to the generated edit summary. Cheers, Envlh (talk) 14:16, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
Options/Do not use edit section summaries. To the programmer this is a button, but perhaps it would be better described as an option menu choice. And the description may be misleading about the default. David Brooks (talk) 14:19, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
Is creating Talk pages, Category talk pages, etc. still done with AWB? Are these pages still always created on articles and categories? It's been a while. Cheers, Rubbish computerPing me or leave a message on my talk page18:19, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
I'm not quite sure what you mean, but there is no strict requirement for pages to have an associated talk page, especially something somewhat-niche like a Category page. There are certain individuals who feel a need to rack up as many edits as possible to their count and have (usually unauthorised) automated programs that add WikiProject tags on new talk pages, but I honestly don't see a need to add another voice to that chatter. Primefac (talk) 07:55, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
Is it possible for me, as an AWB user, to increase the number of lines of diff context shown by AWB? I use AWB on Wiktionary, and 2 lines of context either side of the change is utterly inadequate on that site.
This, that and the other, you can click on the diff window and context will be provided in the edit box. This what you mean? Re History, etc, probably a good assumption, can use right mouse click and view in a browser window. Neils51 (talk) 10:04, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
What I mean is that in the diff presented to the user, one only sees the line that was changed, and the two lines above and the two lines below. This is insufficient when working on Wiktionary, which has very short lines of wikitext compared to Wikipedia. I would like to be able to set AWB to show, say, four lines above and below - but I haven't spotted a setting to change this. Yes, you can click on the diff and AWB will scroll you to the corresponding line in the edit box - but even then, AWB puts the line you clicked on at the top of the edit box rather than in the middle, so you can't easily see what's above it! This, that and the other (talk) 10:52, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
Had a quick look at Phabricator open/closed and didn't see any related reference. I supposed I'm used to clicking on the diff window and then using the mouse wheel in the edit box to review context. If making common edits (and probably not in Wiktionary!) then can add item to the 'Find', then with 'Highlight Find matches' enabled, not lose context position. But these are just workarounds. A normal expectation of an editor would be alignment of any change in the middle of the diff window with say 3-5 lines above/below as context. Might be worth putting something on Phabricator. Bound to be someone out there who knows if this discussion is wheel reinvention..... Neils51 (talk) 12:21, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
New feature in AWB replacing valid bold followed by "s" with 's template?
When I saw one of these AWB edits replacing a valid '''s with ''{{'s}}, I thought it was a one-off, but now I have found at least four of them by three different editors. If this is a new feature of AWB, please turn it off until it can avoid false positives. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:12, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. You can look in my recent contributions for about ten of these that I dealt with; I did not find any more with a basic search, but there may be some oddballs that didn't show up in my search. I linked to this talk page section in some of the edit summaries. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:42, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
AWB is playing hide-and-seek with me. It's done it before but previously, I won; this time AWB is winning. Basically, when I start it up, the software window opens up outside the visible screen area. I've always managed to "find it" and dragged it back onto the visible screen. Not this time. Any suggestions? I'm using Windows 10, a laptop and generally an external screen or two. Schwede6622:50, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
The following Windows shortcuts are good for moving windows around a screen: WindowsKey+UpArrow to maximize, WindowsKey+RightArrow and WindowsKey+LeftArrow to move to the right/left half of a screen. Should work as long as the AWB window has the focus (for example, right when you open the application). Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:27, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. No, that didn't sort it; I suspect it's not designed for those Windows shortcuts to work. However, I've won the game. For the benefit of others, here's what I did. Open two instances of AWB. Right-clicking on the icon in the task bar opens a window with three options; choose "X Close window". That brings up a third AWB window where you are supposed to confirm that you really want to exit; this does show up on one of the screens. When you now right-click on the icon in the task bar it shows three preview windows (two instances of AWB proper and the "confirm to exit" window). Right-clicking into one of the AWB instances now gives you the option to maximise the window and there it appears. What a palaver! I wish it wouldn't do that. Schwede6612:22, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
There's another way that I used to use a lot under older Windows versions, but it requires some dexterity. Also I just figured that Windows 10 has an extra step compared with the old way. 1. Hover over the icon in the taskbar. 2. When the ghost window appears, slide onto it and RIGHT click. 3. In the popup menu, LEFT click on Move. The cursor will turn into a cross and wander somewhere random on the screen. 4. LEFT click and hold; you are now moving the window so swipe back and forward until it appears. David Brooks (talk) 15:46, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
So, I have a monitor that will turn off completely when my computer sleeps (it's really a TV, but don't tell it that, you'd hurt its feelings). When I wake my computer, because that monitor is off, programs get trapped on that monitor. I don't know if this is your problem, but try ensuring that your monitors are turned on when your computer stops sleeping, and turn them off if they're not. Izno (talk) 13:59, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
The other thing that might be happening is that its minimizing to tray. You check there normally, right? Izno (talk) 14:13, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
How to force not skipping pages on auto-save
Is there a way to force AWB to not skip pages even if no changes were made? I have all options in "General skip options" toggled off, but when I use Auto-save and edit pages in a way that produces no changes, it will skip them anyways. Manually saving works, but when using auto-save, it will skip. There's a specific reason I need to do manual "null-edits" with the bot, so don't suggest clearing caches instead. V G5001 (talk) 17:11, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
If you are in that situation, there are usually many better ways to fix that problem - but if you really want to save "nothing" to a page just insert a subst in to something like {{void}}. — xaosfluxTalk19:39, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
When I recently installed AWB user @Itcouldbepossible: was kind enough to help me get set up, they recorded a brief video for me showing how to set up a configuration for typo fixes and general fixes, as well has how to navigate the display. While the existing manual contains good information, I think this video can be useful as a simple visual guide for a basic AWB set up, some people (including me) learn much quicker visually seeing how to do it rather than following steps through text. ICBP uploaded the video on commons here, could it perhaps be incorporated into the manual somehow? --TylerBurden (talk) 12:57, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
First of all I would like to thank Tyler for bringing this up. It feels great to help fellow editors in times of trouble. It was just great to here that my video helped him a lot. AWB is a really complex tool, and when handled incorrectly it can be disastrous. A video tutorial is vey helpful in this case. But I didn't imagine the video would be so useful to land up in the AWB manual written by so many experience users. It feels great to contribute to the project page. Stay well buddy. Yours, ItcouldbepossibleTalk12:47, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
Thanks a lotNovem. I didn't want to add it without a discussion, since I might not know but there might be issues in place. Placing it in the AWB manual directly without any prior discussion with experienced users would be a blunder. In the few days, I don't know what got into me, but I have done a quite few mistakes, and my talk page is boasting away with those issue related messages. I didn't want to go for a record, especially adding such a video to a page that is highly viewed by new comers with errors, could have been a troublesome thing for me. I don't think the administrators would be happy with it. So those were all the reasons behind starting a discussion. Thanks for your suggestion though. Regards, ItcouldbepossibleTalk12:47, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
@Itcouldbepossible: Nice video! Is there supposed to be any audio? I don't hear anything, even though I have the volume at 100%. Looks like it takes almost 30 seconds (1:25-1:55) to process the first article. I hope it doesn't usually take that long for you. Maybe you could crop out 20 seconds from the middle so new users watching the video won't think that's normal. I'm concerned that in your last two edits, you didn't scroll down to see all of the edits that AWB was suggesting before clicking "Save". Surely we'd want our editors to review everything, and make manual fixes for grammatical mistakes that AWB doesn't catch, before clicking "Save". Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 04:08, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
GoingBatty Oh it feels nice to here this. Actually, there is no audio. I had muted my microphone while recording to make the video clear and soundless. I didn't want to add my voice, because I don't think many would understand my 'Indian English', which is necessary since this video would be viewed by all people around the world. So I decided to keep quiet. Regarding the cropping, is there anything in-built in Wikipedia to do the same? Or should I set up a new project in Adobe Premiere Pro and do the needful? I can easily crop out the 20 seconds. And since the last two edits can be problematic for new users, I think it is best to cut the last part as well. The video can contain just one edit. What do you say? In the video, I saw that I had mis-clicked the "Regex Typo Fix" button instead of the checkbox and the webpage had opened up, but I closed it quickly. If it is ok for you then I can crop that one as well. Thanks and regards, ItcouldbepossibleTalk12:47, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
The above demonstrates a bit of the "problem" with videos (they are hard for others to edit) and why for the most part we don't put them in articles - but for internal help pages like this they can be very useful - even if they can be "better" (which can encourage someone to make a better one!). — xaosfluxTalk13:26, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae Thanks for the additional information. I always like to learn new things. But I like using Adobe Premiere Pro and I am quite adept in doing so. Its been many days since I have been using the software just to meet my video editing and rendering related curiosity. So its like that I have been using Adobe Premiere Pro and other softwares by Adobe. ItcouldbepossibleTalk12:59, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
I have finished making the Premiere Pro project fixing all the issues that had turned up. I rendered and exported the media file as well. But the fact is that my media file is in the .mp4 format. I used h.264 export settings to export the video in the highest quality, and that made the export as .mp4. When I am converting the file to .webm format, the video is again losing quality. Can anyone suggest me something? Why doesn't commons accept a .m4 format file? If I convert it to .webm, then file quality decreases. Is there any solution?ItcouldbepossibleTalk13:26, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
AWB isn't working in my PC
I'm a Bureaucrat in the Dhar Mann Wiki (Fandom) and for experimental/general purposes, I'm creating a Bot, with the help of AWB. But when I tried setting the site or logging into my Bot Acct, the browser shows an error, telling that I should connect to the internet. I use a PC that runs Windows 11, and I slightly suspect that this has something to do with Internet Explorer's absence in the OS, or with IE's retirement. But I'm not sure, and I'd be really happy if I could use some help.
🤞 Paghalavan (talk) 16:07, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
Hello, I use AWB to operate MalnadachBot. Everything was fine till yesterday when I am getting this message when I try to open AWB -
Network access error
The underlying connection was closed:An unexpected error occurred on a receive.
It also shows this -
description**:
workaround**:
Exception:
`NullReferenceException`
Message:
`Object reference not set to an instance of an object.`
Call stack:
at AutoWikiBrowser.MainForm.SetProject(String code, ProjectEnum project, String customProject, String protocol)
at AutoWikiBrowser.MainForm.LoadPrefs(UserPrefs p)
at AutoWikiBrowser.MainForm.LoadPrefs(String path)
I have restarted my PC, restarted my router, tried connecting from another network, deleted and clean installed AWB; none of these worked. Would appreciate any help with resolving this. Thanks. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 07:41, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
Non-breaking changes to Template:BLP primary sources add "find sources" capability with new params |find= and |find2=. No existing invocation will break, regardless of params used (valid or invalid) that didn't break previously. The new params are optional and you can safely ignore them; they do the same thing that they do at {{unreferenced}}, {{expand section}}, and other sourcing templates. Questions/comments about the function or usage of the template or new params ⟶ Template talk:BLP primary sources; comments about template/AWB interaction issues below. (please mention me on reply; thanks!) Mathglot (talk) 08:51, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
That list appears to contain 3 AutoWikiBrowser software engineers and 2 other folks I don't recognize. I don't think it'd make much sense to revoke software engineer's access from their own software. Probably not worth pursuing. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:38, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
Hi, is it possible to use AWB on non-Wikimedia wikis? Are the default configuration settings tailored towards Wikimedia projects or is it just impossible without the extensive modification of the source code? A diehard editor (talk | edits) 15:09, 21 August 2022 (UTC)
AWB won't remove pages from list after editing them
I tried to do simple find-and-replace edits with AWB for a list of pages. Ran into an unusual problem though, AWB wouldn't remove the page from the list after editing it (with auto-save on), it simply edited and saved the same page over and over again and wouldn't move on to the next one. I had to manually stop the bot because it wouldn't skip the page.
Then I tried again, but this time I made it so AWB would skip the page if it contained the new text that I was adding to the pages. This time, AWB still wouldn't move on to the next page after editing one, but after 1 edit, I would get an error saying "AWB failed to automatically remove the page from the list while skipping the page. Please remove it manually."
What sort of device are you using, what OS, OS version, AWB version, list source setting? Also which Wiki are you attempting to edit? Neils51 (talk) 15:16, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
^ This exactly. We need more information. If we know what pages you're editing and what other settings are involved, it will help us identify the issue. Primefac (talk) 15:17, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Win 11, AWB 6.2.1.0, Soure text file, hearthstone.fandom.com
Thing is, I've never had a problem like this before with simple find-and-replace edits, I even did some earlier this week and they worked just fine. I didn't even change any settings in AWB from the last time I did those edits, but this time it just isn't working properly for some reason. V G5001 (talk) 15:58, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Device? Does your device have a hard-drive or SSD? How long since you did a cold-boot? I have to go. Primefac may be around. Neils51 (talk) 16:24, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Does your device have a hard-drive or SSD that's not going to make one lick of difference, and seems actively unhelpful. I can't think of anything that would cause AWB to edit the page, but then not mark it as edited and remove it from the list. Primefac (talk) 16:34, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
What difference does any of this make? I have a problem in AWB, my PC is just fine. If you read my comment again, I said that it worked normally just a few days ago. So it’s more likely that something happened within the AWB app.
The issue isn’t on my device. If you could, bring your attention to the AWB app instead. In case you have any ideas on what I can do within the AWB app itself, do tell me. Let’s worry about my device specs later. V G5001 (talk) 20:27, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
My guess is some form of corruption in your textfile, settings file. However could be as perverse as write errors or DB corruption. Sorry, I can’t work with someone who has already decided where or where not the problem is (correct or otherwise). Good luck. Neils51 (talk) 22:34, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
Corruption sounds like an idea worth exploring. The best way to fix corruption is to factory reset stuff. Can probably reset your settings file with File -> "Reset to original default settings". Can reset your textfile by regenerating it. Hope that helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:37, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
Any interest in the ability to ignore whitespace in regex patterns?
I use some very complex patterns, and I'd love to be able to use whitespace to make them more readable. The .NET regex flavor used by AWB has a flag to do this, it would just need to be enabled in AWB like some other flags are. I made a Phab ticket back in December, but it hasn't seen any action. Seems like it would be a pretty simple patch, for a coder -- is anyone here up for it? —swpbT • go beyond • bad idea19:11, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
Sections and anchors
Hello. Although I agree with adding whitespace between sections I think it is unintended when the preceding line is a {{anchor}}. Example These are more understandable when they are as close together as possible. Invasive Spices (talk) 13 September 2022 (UTC)
@Invasive Spices: Hi there! If you're asking for the AWB developers to make a code change, please review the instructions at the #Before you post section above. If would also be helpful to provide a link to the diff instead of the oldid. Thanks, and happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 03:37, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
That helps. I don't know why I didn't see the Page notice. Invasive Spices (talk) 16 September 2022 (UTC)
Error 503
I've been getting "error 503" when using AWB. AWB then restarts, and when it does, it gets stuck in "loading," and I have to push "stop" and then "start" to get it started again. I dream of horses(Contribs)(Talk)05:02, 14 September 2022 (UTC) (fixed error number at 05:05, 14 September 2022 (UTC))
@I dream of horses: Sorry you're having problems with AWB. Are you using AWB with the English Wikipedia or another site? Does it have this problem with every article you try, or only specific articles? GoingBatty (talk) 03:33, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
@I dream of horses: Some of the Wiki servers seem to have had problems yesterday, however day before seemed ok. This may be an external issue, have you checked your system logs (eventvwr if Windows)? Neils51 (talk) 23:33, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
Think there were a few days of instability with software updates and perhaps serve issues. Seem to have been a number of error reports and I had a few issues as well. All good! Neils51 (talk) 10:20, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
AWB icon pulsating when it needs action
Hello! Is there a setting I can activate that could make the icon of the minimized form of AWB pulsate when it needs action from me like, for example, saving a specific edit?
Scenario: I'm doing a regex find and replace for +1k pages. Many of them may be fine like they are and be auto-skipped. Some of them will need me to confirm the change. I don't want to stare at the screen while +1k pages get auto-skipped, I want to do other work meanwhile and minimize AWB. I would enjoy getting notified by a pulsating icon if my attention is needed. - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:10, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: I don't think there is such a setting. But have you tried "pre-parse mode"? If you turn that on - it's in the main "Options" menu - the program will work through your list, removing those that can be auto-skipped, and leaving behind the smaller list of pages that you need to look at. That way, you can leave the program running unattended and go and do something else. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:42, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
John of Reading, no, I haven't. That looks interesting. I'll use that now. To your understanding, would it make sense to make such a request as a feature though? Considering that it doesn't exist... — Klein Muçi (talk) 15:25, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
Head to the options drop down menu then Preferences, Editing and Saving, then look for "When ready to save" Flash or Beep. Dawnseeker200015:32, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
Hi Klein. Sorry for a delayed response. Pre-parser mode is the best option for your scenario. In simple words, first it goes through the entire list, and removes the pages that dont need edits, or fulfil your "skip criteria". It is automated, and you can minimise AWB. So in the end only the pages that need to be edited are kept in the list. Then you have to turn off the pre parser mode to make the edit/save the page. —usernamekiran (talk)15:46, 19 September 2022 (UTC)
There is a category with several subcats. I want to write templates into them, but each category has a different argument. For example {{templ|this}}, {{templ|that}}. I can generate the pairs either in text file or on a wikipage, that's no problem. How would you solve this task? Bináris (talk) 17:44, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
Not really, because by this time I have created new categories or did multiple changes in one edit. But something like this – watch the 3rd line. Here {{csonksablon|csonk-Feröer}} had to be added. This is the task, to add such templates. But the other changes can be done together with this. Bináris (talk) 18:53, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
Someone might know more than me, but as far as I am aware you cannot automatically move more than one page at a time using AWB. If you have that many pages that require moving, I would suggest asking Tol (pinged here) since they have a mass-move bot and could put in a task request. Just make sure you have consensus to make the moves first. Primefac (talk) 09:21, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
Undoing lots of AWB edits.
I apparently jumped on removing an unused parameter from an infobox without full agreement on the infobox talk page. Is there a method to undo that many edits?Naraht (talk) 18:07, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
Naraht: Assuming the AWB edit is likely to be your only consecutive edit to the articles, mass rollback with an edit summary would probably be the easiest way to accomplish this. If you're not aware how to carry this out, let me know how to identify the set of edits and the edit summary you'd like me to use, and I can carry this out. –xenotalk22:50, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
How do I use AWB to add template tags to specific categories?
Please, if for example, I want to add this template to every movie in this category, how do I use AWB to achieve it? I actually have a couple of them that I just created and I would love to know how to add them to the stubs they belong automatically by just specifying which template should go to all the pages in a given category. Or is there a bot I would have to clone to do that? Danidamiobi (talk) 11:29, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
what I want is the following. I'm got a list of pages that start with QQQ. In the page, In any place where RRR occurs, I want what was after QQQ to be added. So if the first page that AWB hits is page "QQQ12E34" then I want to change all occurances of RRR on the page to RRR12E34.
(I'm trying to clear out the situations where a page "List of abc def" has a category at the bottom of "Lists of HHH" but *without* either a sortkey of defaultsortkey and should change the category:Lists of HHH to category:Lists of HHH|abc def.) Naraht (talk) 17:48, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
Is QQQ always going to be three letters long? Then if you replace RRR with RRR{{subst:str right|{{subst:PAGENAME}}|3}} then the right thing should happen when you save the page. Test: RRR > RRRoWikiBrowser on this page. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:15, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
It should be. The articles that I'm grabbings will start with List of
John of ReadingRan it in Find and Replace) advanced Settings. (Since I need to use regex to find the Lists of HHH.) Even when I moved it to normal settings, it still substituted the actual text that included subst:PAGENAME rather than evaluating it.)Naraht (talk) 18:47, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
@Naraht: Yes, AWB will put that horrible-looking text in, but the "subst" keywords tell MediaWiki to evaluate the PAGENAME and the "str right" whil saving the page, and the actual diff should look clean. Perhaps try it in a sandbox first if you can. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:52, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
The results look right after I checked one or two that don't have that much traffic. But I'm still concerned when I can't easily see the result before I save. I'm going to think about this.Naraht (talk) 18:59, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
@Naraht: Fair enough! Looking at your first few edits, I suggest you untick "Add replacements to edit summary" at the top of the Find & Replace dialog. This technique doesn't lead to clear edit summaries. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:28, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
John of Reading Will do. Thanx for everything! It probably won't move too fast, looks like for about 1 in 3, there is something better as a sort key than everything after list of, but better than trying to it all manually.Naraht (talk) 20:06, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
Double AWB screenshot
Hey @Novem Linguae, I'm sorry to take it here again, however, it just seems weird to me that an introduction page for newcomers would display such an odd photo. The surrounding section appears to be a setup guide.
Firstly, as mentioned before in the previous discussion, the arrangement is not supported officially. It's just an individual's fun setup they created. Furthermore, the actual feasibility of such a setup can be put into question; whether this helps viewing complex diffs or not is purely subjective.
For the above reasons, I retain the same opinion, that only standard screenshots, supported by default in the software, should be added to this info article, regardless of it being in the mainspace or not. This can be interpreted as the AWB landing page.
This type of screenshot is most likely to confuse users, and the screenshot directly above it does a perfect job of explaining AWB without being too boastful. Therefore, I see no need for the photo. Thanks, Silikonz (alt)💬00:53, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
Keep. I'm in favor of keeping it for the reasons stated in my edit summary. it's a picture of the software in an article that is lacking pictures. seems fine to stay. However I'm also not interested in spending a ton of bandwidth debating this like we did last time. So let's let others chime in and see if folks care/want it kept/want it deleted. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:14, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
Honestly I don't think the article should be too dense in images, the nature of the software means these screenshots get a bit repetitive, and the text explains it well. But yes, it would be wise to see if any other opinions show Silikonz (alt)💬01:20, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
Hi! Thanks for chiming in, maybe we can come to consensus as to whether the picture should be replaced. A good candidate in my opinion is [6], as it demonstrates running on Linux, accompanying a question some might have. Silikonz (alt)💬22:08, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
I've asked the uploader of that file, here [7]. They've confirmed that it is running under Linux, and either Wine or Mono. I think this would be a better fit - Linux partial support is at least mentioned, in contrast to the double-monitor one, which is completely disconnected from and irrelevant to the rest of the article. Thoughts? Silikonz (alt)💬16:19, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
Addendum: I have made thousands of AWB edits over the past few weeks, so I need to know when this started happening, and some way of checking AWB edits since then to see if this error has cropped up. BD2412T15:46, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
@BD2412: This is somehow triggered by the unclosed [[ pair further up the article. I've logged it as phab:T325445. I don't know when it started happening; it could be years ago.
The affected articles will contain [[File:....]] followed by some plain text and then ]], so the AWB Database Scanner could find them. I'll give it a try once I've downloaded the January dump. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:26, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
Having gone through part of the list, I have not yet seen any errors of this type, so although the issue needs to be fixed, it has not created widespread problems to this point. BD2412T18:38, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
The issue, at least, does not appear to be a frequently recurring one, as it requires an undiscovered prior unbalanced bracket error on the page. There are only a handful of those. BD2412T17:01, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
Delete entire lines
Hello Guys
sry for my bad english.
I am very new with this program and I try to find a way to delete entire lines if the specific line contains a word.
I can't see a good reason for this, but as an intellectual exercise (and recognising that I don't know all the tricks), I would go with \n[\S ].*?<word>[\S ].*?\n, with <word> being the word you want to search for. Primefac (talk) 12:16, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
The Reason is, that i have updated some Infobox-template on for the Articles (Fandom) and now there are some parameters, which are unused. But on each Article there other values after the parameter. So i want to find the Parameter and delete the entire row, because its unused.
Oh, if you're killing off a parameter, just use RemoveTemplateParameter in a custom module. Less chance of screwing something up; the code you've been given will find that word in any sentence, not just in the infobox. Primefac (talk) 09:57, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
Hah! Every time I have to go digging for my "param killer" module, I think about adding it to the list. I'll see about doing that soon! Primefac (talk) 16:08, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
How can we categorize this Phabricator task as a "BUG REPORT"? And then how can we get some attention from the developers to fix this? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 21:31, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
I've not used it, but I think that tool helps fix all links to one dab from many articles (e.g. fix all pages which link to Mercury to read Mercury (planet), etc.) DisamAssist can also do that job. However, it looks as if you want to fix links from one article to many dabs. We had a tool for that, but database changes a couple of years ago broke it and its coder is no longer active. A replacement has been requested but is not being developed; it might be worth asking for again on this year's tech wishlist. It would also be useful if it flagged links which are off-topic, e.g. to people who aren't tennis players but happen to share their names with one. Certes (talk) 16:37, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I figured out dab fix on my own with AWB, but it doesn't allow you to fix all links on a given page in a single save, like for example for diacritics/typo fixes; you have to save each corrected link into its own edit, which clutters a page's history with many dab links fixes. It's a shame Dispenser and their non-open source Dab Solver's been broken for some time now; the bot was de-authorized earlier today and no source code is available for it.
@Certes, the current version is clean, yes. But the old version had a few BLR dabs, that needed fixing. I have been experimenting in my sandbox with both AWB and WPCleaner, the latter being more effective fixing all errors in a single edit. Don't know what you meant by linked pages which aren't tennis players are credible targets such as countries. I only look up for dabs on pages, I've created recently or am a regular editor on; certainly won't be bothering with such searches on every article, no, thank you. Qwerty284651 (talk) 23:28, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
This could be a simple search if we had linksfrom:linksfrom:"1990 Virginia Slims of Chicago – Doubles" -deepcat:Female tennis players by nationality". Certes (talk) 23:54, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. I mainly use JWB, because AWB can be awkward under Linux, but I should make more use of AWB's list functionality. Certes (talk) 13:02, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
@Qwerty284651: Hi there! Configuring AWB to perform this via bot would be the same as configuring AWB to perform this manually - with some find and replace rule(s). Before performing this manually or via bot, I suggest you review WP:NOTBROKEN if you haven't done so already. If you're not fixing the visible text, then bypassing the redirects seems like it might not conform with WP:AWBRULES. GoingBatty (talk) 04:22, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Bypassing redirects is not something an AWB user (bot or meat) should be doing, unless it is not the primary task (i.e. if it is part of genfixes enabled on a larger task). Primefac (talk) 15:36, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
I get it. As long as the redirect bypass edit includes also substantive changes/fixes, such as removing WCAG issues or deprecated tags, lint errors, than it's a valid usage of AWB to conform with WP:AWBRULES, especially 4th rule, in this case. Qwerty284651 (talk) 15:43, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
Thanks! Sorry, you are right. But such fix is too logical as for me and it is pitty it is not implemented. A.sav (talk) 21:22, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
@A.sav: Could you please help me understand why you think it's part of general fixes? I don't see it listed on WP:AWB/GF. Do you have an example where AWB's general fixes would change something like [[foo|bar]]s to [[foo|bars]]? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:23, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
@A.sav: If you haven't done so already, you can follow the information at the top of the page to submit an AWB feature request in Phabricator. GoingBatty (talk) 13:46, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
@GoingBatty, I was going to do the same buuut on the dev's subpage it says This page is for AWB developers to discuss the development of AWB. Please do not post bugs, feature requests, and similar on here, unless it is extremely urgent, but in that case it would probably be better to use #AutoWikiBrowser connect on IRC if possible. So, do we make a feature request Asav and I, or not? Qwerty284651 (talk) 14:47, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
@Trialpears: I've poked around in my 2022 copy of the AWB sources. Yes, there is code in there that loads the page and tries to subst any of these templates that it finds on user talk pages. However, I bet it never happens in practice: few AWB users work on the user talk namespace, and the bots catch unsubstituted templates in minutes. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:30, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
Feature request
I was skimming through WP:AWB various subpages and stumbled upon this request albeit on the wrong subpage and I decided to make the same request here. In summary, I am requesting to speed up adding of find/replace entries to the list with a single copy and paste option (one foe each column: "find" and "replace") instead of having to tediously add every entry separately and avoid typos because of the lists small font size (which too should be increased, so AWB users don't break their eyesight) which can lead to pages being broken (unwanted, nerve-wrecking results) upon execution.
The request would be also beneficial if some keyboard shortcuts were added for overall faster execution. Like Ctrl+S to save the list, Del for deleting it, to significantly increase editing and add to the already implemented keyboard shortcuts. Qwerty284651 (talk) 14:41, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
@Qwerty284651: For single entries, make a paste into the field, tick the 'regex' box, save, re-edit, select the row and (right mouse-click) edit using 'Test regex...'. If you want to make a large number of sequential style changes then use a spreadsheet inserting XML appropriately into adjacent cells, export and insert into the AWB settings file. Doesn't have to look pretty, and basically a variation on what GoingBatty has mentioned above. Neils51 (talk) 08:34, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
scanning wikipedia dumps
I have a working code in python to scan for small chunk of wikipedia dump's larger file. How do you guys generally scan wikipedia dumps? —usernamekiran (talk)17:46, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
thanks for the response John, and apologies for my concise/vague question. I think I was having an issue because of GIGO. I will update full details here after 48ish hours. Thanks again. —usernamekiran (talk)19:41, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
I didn't use enough or the right words. I don't have the necessary skills to be able to extract the regex from the source code. My thought was that if you're considering creating a bot, you may be able to help me to specifically target those pages (with the stub tag where it's probably not necessary). I think you're probably a bit more advanced than I am and that is why I mentioned it. I wasn't suggesting that I needed to redesign the wheel. There's much more to say, of course. We could talk on the discord server if you like. Dawnseeker200004:20, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
Getting the list of affected articles could be a bit tricky. Maybe a WP:QUERY that checks page size and presence in Category:Stub or one of its children. Or maybe a WP:PETSCAN. Then that list might need further filtering, for example checking word count instead of pagesize. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:15, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
Well that is what I was asking GoingBatty about. If we have the regex that's built in to the genfixes, we could then scan the database. That's how I do most of what I do with AWB. Dawnseeker200005:46, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
This edit is an example of AWB failing to identify the page as a disambiguation by recommending that I add an orphan tag while I was using the REGEX typo fixer. (I later realized the issue and reverted the edit.) According to Wikipedia:Orphan#On disambiguation pages, most disambiguation pages should be orphaned. Can this issue please be resolved? — Nythar (💬-❄️) 06:56, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
GoingBatty, my edit was made without the "Apply general fixes" box checked. But I only unchecked the box because AWB automatically skips over multiple pages at a time, which is not something good because I'm usually applying other changes and I need to take a look at each separate page on the list. Even when I checked the box just now, it skips over the entire page without adding or removing anything. — Nythar (💬-❄️) 23:04, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
GoingBatty, "Only genfixes" is always checked. However, when I uncheck "Apply general fixes" from the Options tab, "Only genfixes" becomes unchecked. So when I made that edit, it was unchecked. — Nythar (💬-❄️) 02:01, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
@Nythar: You could try checking "Apply general fixes" and unchecking "Only genfixes", which should cause the general fixes to be applied without skipping any pages. GoingBatty (talk) 02:19, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
GoingBatty, that worked correctly. I do have a question, though: why is "Only genfixes" checked by default? It's really not constructive. — Nythar (💬-❄️) 02:23, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
This is just to let the AWB maintainers know that a change in Template:WikiProject banner shell and Template:WPBannerMeta was made yesterday that allows people to enter the class rating in the banner shell template, and this will then be inherited by all project banners on that page (unless they have opted out). I'm not sure if any of the AWB functions affect WikiProject banners, or if any changes to the code will be needed. For more details or to get answers to questions, please pop along to Template talk:WikiProject banner shell. Best wishes — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:51, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
Would that be addition of the class parameter to both templates? They don't yet appear in the docs. If so, then, yes, AWB does know about the first and in theory would need an update (Article.cs definition of WikiProjectBannerShellKnowns on line 679 or thereabouts). I couldn't find "WPBannerMeta" in my source copy. But I'm not a maintainer :-) David Brooks (talk) 16:46, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
I don't quite understand your question but the idea is that
Thanks for the explanation. I meant AWB currently doesn't recognize class as a parameter of WikiProject banner shell, so the first version will drop an error into the Alerts box. You can file a phab (or I can if you wish) but I expect it will be low priority for the actual maintainers. David Brooks (talk) 03:28, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
While editing articles through AWB, I was also logged into Wikipedia in my browser. Someone left a message on my talk page, which caused AWB to display a small popup window saying "You have new messages". I could find no way to remove/close this popup, and had to use the Windows Task Manager to kill AWB. Is this supposed to happen? Is there any way of avoiding this? Thanks, Kiwipete (talk) 08:39, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
No, it shouldn't have blocked you so thoroughly. If you visit your talk page so that the "new messages" notification goes away, you should be able to dismiss the popup. The idea is to stop you making any more AWB edits until you've read the message, just in case it's someone disagreeing with what you're doing with AWB. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:25, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
lot of duplicate authority control templates on te wiki
Today i have removed atleast 3 authority control duplicates. For example. Please refrain from suggesting or recommending addition of an existing templates. రుద్రుడు (talk) 07:14, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
Hi there! On wiki, searching incategory:"All articles needing additional references" incategory:"Living people" returns over 26,000 articles. How can I use AWB to make a similar list? When I try using "Wiki search (text)", AWB only returns the first 1,000 articles, and there's no "(NL, Admin & Bot)" alternative. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 14:20, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
@GoingBatty:PetScan can do this. Set up your category intersection on the "Categories" tab, and, I think, choose "Plain text" on the "Output tab". That returns a list of 26,000+ results, one per line, which you can copy and paste into the AWB list window. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:43, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
Hi. I don't use AWB but I'm following on a tip that AWB is recommending changes of {{cite newspaper}} to {{cite news}}. This is a terrible idea as old-fashioned newspapers are a very specific subset of news sources. In the future it's imaginable we may even wish to use different templates for them. AWB should not be encouraging users to make this change. Jason Quinn (talk) 08:38, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
The world spins either way. But I do think it is a terrible idea and it reminds me of some number of years ago, back when {{cite magazine}} was still a redirect to {{cite journal}}, when somebody foolishly went and ran a bot that converted a huge number of magazine cites to journal cites, including changing things like the |number= to |volume= under the rational that "number" was just a synonym for "volume" in the templates. That was very lamentable event because magazines are a very specific type of "journal" and many of them explicitly use "number" for the name of the issue. Now we have two different templates for them. There's a strong parallel here with {{newspaper}}: it's a distinct type of "journal" and having the cite template identify them explicitly is good. For example, it's very conceivable that some day a comprehensive newspaper archive will exist that might have an API with specific features and using a dedicated template for it might be beneficial. So we want to keep our true "paper" news cites separate from things like online news because this might prove important. Even if a person still thinks this argument is weak, there is no compelling justification for AWB suggesting this change so arguing to continue changing things for no good reason is the upside-down view. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:05, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
{{cite newspaper}} is not documented as valid citation usage so effectively it is a ‘typo’. ‘newspaper’ is, however, an alias (one of around seven) of the ‘work=’ parameter of {{cite news}} and can be used there to differentiate the information source type. Neils51 (talk) 21:44, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
@QuickQuokka Hello again. I'm not sure I fully understand your questions.
In 1) I think you're asking if you can use the section on the Commons image page that shows where an image has been used to follow a link to the relevant language page to make changes to those other language articles. If that's what you mean then, absolutely yes, that's a very good way of doing things.
2) I believe AWB can be used on a number of other Wikipedias. But I very much doubt it cannot make automated global changes across different platforms at once. The spell-check function, for example, would be a nightmare. However, if you make a change to one single image on Wikimedia Commons that is used in multiple language Wikipedia articles, then that single image change will be seen on all those different Wikipedias without you ever needing to visit them. If you needed to replace the use of one image file with another, then I think you would have to visit each one, following the links in 1), above.
If you do have a very specific, practical need to work across different languages that you could explain more precisely, then you could do worse than re-ask your question at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser. I'm afraid it's been a few years since I used AWB, and I only ever grasped a few of the basic functions! Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:06, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
"that's a very good way of doing things" didn't really answer my question. Like, is it possible or not?
Thanks for clarifying about editing multiple language wikis at the same time
I don't do something very specific, but every time I upload a vector version/new version of a file, I have to tediously replace it in every wiki the old file is used in.
1) I can't answer your first question any better than I did (and I explained what I thoguht you were doing) because I did not fully understand what you meant. You might need to reword it and explain what exactly it is that you want to achieve if you need a clearer answer. (My mind-reading skills have somewhat weakened with age, I'm afraid!)
2) You're welcome (it was my 'best guess', not a definitive answer)
3) Please give an example of what you are uploading, and what it is replacing. I did notice a slightly different shade of one logo you had edited. Personally, I would overwrite the old version by replacing it with a new version on that same file's page and not upload a completely new version for minor changes by giving it a different name and then having to replace every example. Is that what you had been doing? Nick Moyes (talk) 20:58, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Your mind-reading skills are apparently very sharp because you did describe exactly what I want to do. Make a list of all pages where this file is used, and then edit them to replace that file. I was also wondering if I could edit multiple language Wikipedias/multiple wiki projects at once.
I guess I'll have to find out if or when I get AWB rights.
You're right about that if the file is of the same file extension, even though I prefer not to, but for example when replacing a raster logo with a vector logo, it's not really that simple. EDIT: Now thinking about it, I'm actually not sure if you can just redirect a raster image to a vector image, but if that does work, then I want to die internally cus I may be a moron for not thinking about this earlier.
1. If you want to generate the list of pages where a file is used on a WMF project, yes, you can.
2. No, you cannot edit multiple wikis at once. One wiki at a time. Also note that for every wiki, there must be a Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON, and your name must be listed there in order for you to make an AWB edit in that wiki.
@QuickQuokka: Building on the reply from CX Zoom, you'll have to get permission to have your username added to the CheckPageJSON page for each wiki. Even if you get that, every time you want to use AWB to edit in a different wiki, you'll have to go into the AWB Options menu and select Preferences > Site, change the Language field, click OK, and then log in again. GoingBatty (talk) 03:35, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
dual monitor setup
Is it possible to set up AWB for dual monitor, similar to the setup in the photo? I looked in almost all the settings/menus, but didn't find any relevant options. I would have asked the uploader of the photo, but they are currently blocked, and haven't edited in more than a month. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Usernamekiran (talk • contribs) 18:49, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
@CX Zoom: thanks. Its also good to hear he is still around. In last few months, I've seen a few long term editors getting inactive, or blocked, both of which are disheartening. —usernamekiran (talk)20:05, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
@Usernamekiran: ISTR Rich described it somewhere, but it's pretty clear to me. The second monitor is an "extend" of the first and AWB is maximized across both. As the monitors are the same size and the two diff viewports of AWB are the same width, the border between them lines up with the seam between the screens. Because the control panel is a fixed width, the editing window stretches across most of the two screens, which strikes me as pretty awkward. David Brooks (talk) 03:14, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, there isn't anything special or unique about this setup, it's just dragging one window across two screens. Primefac (talk) 07:42, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
Is there a way to read a local text file via the C# custom module, perhaps similar to the way local files are written via Tools.WriteTextFileAbsolutePath(Message, FullPath, APPEND)? ~Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)13:39, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
A somewhat out-of-context (because I don't know how you plan to use it) answer is to insert before the ProcessArticle() definition:
assuming the automatic Encoding - e.g. UTF8 - stuff works correctly. You now have an array of strings that you can use in ProcessArticle(), if that's what you meant. Or you can read the whole thing into a single string, warts and all, with System.IO.File.ReadAllText(path). David Brooks (talk) 15:09, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
You're welcome. By "warts and all", I meant that depending on the file's source OS you may have to cope with one of three different line-end conventions, which ReadAllLines elides for you (it uses StreamReader internally to do it). I don't think there are any other traps. David Brooks (talk) 03:42, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
MOS:ORDER
Where can I get a description of how AutoWikiBrowser handles the reordering for MOS:ORDER. I'm looking to disable *one* piece of the reordering, specifically the piece that moves notes prior to references.Naraht (talk) 03:24, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
This is a similar problem to what I mentioned here. This time, I had just started AWB and was trying to login when I got the same "You have new messages" popup. I opened my browser, logged in to Wikipedia and visited my talk page. But I still can't close the popup. I can't do anything else in AWB, I have to kill it with Task Manager :( Kiwipete (talk) 08:58, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
@Kiwipete:, you can't just dismiss the message by going 'underneath' it via your browser. Once you have done that (used your browser) you still need to click through the message and its underlying calls. Though are you suggesting you can't click through? Not sure how you got the AWB popup when 'trying to login'? If you are online now happy to test with you (I don't have a spare account). Neils51 (talk) 03:13, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
@Kiwipete:, sorry had to get involved in something else. Please place an item in my talk page. I'm avail for 5 mins then back in an hour. Neils51 (talk) 03:54, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
@Kiwipete: OK, I saw the notification and remembered to start up AWB - loaded some settings, made a list, clicked "Start", filled in the login dialog, saw the blocking "You have new messages" popup. I clicked the "View" button on the popup, and that opened my talk page in a new browser tab. Returning to AWB, the popup was gone and I was able to interact with AWB normally. Next time, I'll try to see what happens if I visit my talk page manually, without clicking the "View" button, and then return to AWB. (AWB 6.2.1.0, Windows 10, Firefox 115.0.3) -- John of Reading (talk) 06:50, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
@Kiwipete:, yes got your message. Started an AWB session and received the popup, as expected, after logging in. It actually locks the login popup window in the process. Picked up the message via browser (Firefox) and then went back to AWB popup to click on 'View' and close the resulting 'cache flush' page, continued with AWB. All works as expected. So you click on 'View' and nothing happens? Is your AWB version 6.2.1.0? Neils51 (talk) 12:25, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
@Neils51, To answer you backwards - yes, I have version 6.2.1.0. Do I click on the View button? This confuses me. I believe that I actually get two popups - the one I mentioned, "You have new messages" appears on top of all open Windows applications. Regardless of which application I alt-tab to, this little popup remains visible. It has no buttons at all on it. When I try to go to AWB itself, this button prevents clicking on any other area of AWB. So if there is another popup behind, I cannot click on any button it may have. Could you please leave a message on my talk page so that I can verify this behaviour? I'll see if I can also get a screenshot. Many thanks, Kiwipete (talk) 09:13, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
Thanks a lot, @John of Reading. Here is a screenshot - https://snipboard.io/mdez6V.jpg. I was a bit mistaken - there is only one popup, with title "New messages" and text "You have new messages", but no "View" or any other button. This seems a bit of a mystery. I had been in Wikipedia, got the notification about a new message on my talk page, logged out, closed my browser (Pale Moon version 32.3.1), opened AWB, selected the settings file, clicked Start, got the Profiles popup, selected my account and clicked Login. That's when the "New messages" popup appeared. Again, I had to use Windows Task Manager to close AWB. Kiwipete (talk) 09:43, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
@Kiwipete: Yes, your popup is only half as deep as it should be. I found an ancient bug report here which looks similar to your issue. The suggestion is to click on the blocking popup, then press Tab ↹ to move the keyboard focus to the invisible button, then press ↵ Enter to push the button. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:35, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
Hi @John of Reading and @Neils51, thank you both for your help, and thanks for the explanation above, John. Would one of you please leave a message on my talk page (just whenever it's convenient), and I'll try to make sure that the popup behaves as indicated. Then I'll leave you both alone :) Regards, Kiwipete (talk) 08:01, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
Finally, success! I can tab onto the invisible button, hit Enter, and then close the "cache flush" page, return to AWB and continue working. Kiwipete (talk) 08:26, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
@Kiwipete: looking at your screenshot there are appear to be some areas that are not rendering correctly (characters missing off the ends of words). Have you made changes to your fonts/font size? Perhaps this is an AWB bug in the sense that the popup is configured as a specific size and with an increased font size the popup doesn’t autoresize and therefore draws incorrectly. Just a thought. Neils51 (talk) 10:31, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
Did earlier versions of AWB provide a way to go to text noted in the Alerts box? If you click on text in "Multiple wiki-links" it will go to text in the edit box. Correcting alerts is important to me but there doesn't seem to be any way of finding the alert in the article. I remember this worked in earlier versions of AWB. Phabricator is currently down for me so I can't check there. Mark Ironie (talk) 22:12, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
You can't fix stupid. I missed some settings on the Options menu. I had to reinstall AWB at some point and didn't notice I needed to go through and adjust settings. My bad and apologies. Mark Ironie (talk) 22:27, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
Translating categories
Hi, I'm wondering if there's a Custom Module anywhere for creating a list with articles from a category in another languages' Wikipedia that have a version in the language the bot's operating? Hermioneswift (talk) 08:38, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
Done There should probably be a transition I will start a separate section dealing with this. --Trialpears (talk) 08:26, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
Done for articles not related to "unnumbered minor planets". GoingBatty (talk) 14:07, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
Good job. It needed doing. - X201 (talk) 14:58, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
Resolved
Thank you for pointing that out. There were updates available. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 05:58, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
—usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 06:00, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/General fixes § Error: Moving a commented out category out of a comment. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:54, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
Template:More citations needed has been nominated for merging with Template:BLP sources. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 21:07, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
mention me on reply; thanks!) Mathglot (talk) 08:51, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
Thanks! Sorry, you are right. But such fix is too logical as for me and it is pitty it is not implemented. A.sav (talk) 21:22, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
Template:Empty section has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 12:21, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
Moved from Wikipedia:Teahouse § Question about AWB
![[6]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Autowikibrowser_CSVloader.png){kind=link}
