Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/General fixes

General fixes is a set of semi-automated edits that are enabled by default in AutoWikiBrowser. They are intended to be uncontroversial and require minimal human oversight; many are cosmetic and improve wikitext readability but do not affect display to readers.

This page lists the general fixes, although it may not be exhaustive. General fixes are optimised for en-wiki with some variation for other language wikis. Not all general fixes are suitable for all languages. Some general fixes are disabled on pages containing or.

Fix dates (FixDates)

 * Fixes date format errors per WP:DATE:
 * Removes comma between day and year for International-format dates.
 * Inserts missing comma between day and year for American-format dates.
 * Sets en-dashes for date, month or year ranges (from hyphen).
 * Replaces first occurrence of unlinked floruit with linked version (zeroth section only, not within templates) per WP:MOSBD.
 * Fixes some formatting errors
 * Replaces &lt;br&gt; and &lt;p&gt; HTML tags with ...>.

Template Redirects (TemplateRedirects)

 * Bypasses template redirects using those listed on Template redirects rule page, per WP:Redirect.
 * Keeps first letter case of the redirect in the new template name, except for acronym templates (first three letters uppercase) where the template is forced to uppercase.
 * Handles nested templates

Multiple issues (MultipleIssues)

 * Applies fixes to Multiple issues (formerly Article issues), en-wiki only
 * removes template if it has no parameters.
 * (old format templates) converts it to the original template if it has only one parameter (e.g. ).
 * (old format templates) removes invalid parameters such as date
 * merges other supported tags into it
 * (old format templates) Corrects casing of exiting parameters
 * Adds 2 or more single tags into new Multiple issues
 * Templates are added within Multiple issues on separate lines
 * When not in zeroth section, includes yes parameter
 * Removes blank lines
 * (new format templates) converts to original template if only one template in Multiple issues
 * Does not operate if an article level-2 section has more than one Multiple issues

Merge multiple DABLinks (Dablinks)

 * Cleans and merges multiple DABLinks per WP:DISAMBIG. Called by Conversions function.
 * Removes about as first word of the first parameter of About e.g. to
 * Merges multiple About
 * Merges multiple For into About
 * Merges multiple For
 * Merges multiple Distinguish
 * Merges multiple For into About
 * Merges multiple For
 * Merges multiple Distinguish
 * Merges multiple For
 * Merges multiple Distinguish
 * Merges multiple Distinguish
 * Merges multiple Distinguish

DEFAULTSORT insertion and fixes (SetDefaultSort)

 * Changes are not applied if the page has  or   or   in the page text
 * Trims whitespace, removes any pipe at start.
 * Fixes comma spacing
 * If article is about a person uses Surname, Name format per WP:SUR.
 * Exceptions on common Arabic names included to use Full Name format per WP:SUR.
 * Pages with a Surname Clarification Template from Category:Hatnote templates for names use Full Name format per WP:SUR.
 * to per WP:MCSTJR. (Check this. WP:MCSTJR contradicts: "Surnames beginning with Mac or Mc are sorted as they are spelled.")
 * "Person of Place" generates sort key of "Person Of Place"; also "Person II of Place" generates "Person 02 Of Place" per WP:PEERS and WP:COP.
 * Adds a DEFAULTSORT where the article title does not match the rules above.
 * DEFAULTSORTs are not added or changed when the only difference is letter casing.
 * NOTE: AWB does not meet all of the (various) rules on DEFAULTSORT on en-wiki; it may not meet all of the rules on other wikis either. It may never be possible to meet all of the rules. An option is provided under the Options menu to turn off all changes/insertion of DEFAULTSORT.

People Categories (FixPeopleCategories)

 * Adds, etc. to articles about people where available (English Wikipedia only)
 * Skips pages with 20 or more references and no births/deaths categories to avoid false positives.
 * Skips pages with 15,000 characters or more that do not already have Category:Living people or a birth or death year/century category.
 * Changes to  if categories added.
 * Removes Category:Year of birth missing or Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
 * Adds if page has  and no living people/deaths category, taking sortkey from births category if present
 * Skips if the person is dead, or thought to be dead.
 * Skips if person was born > 115 years ago per Category:Living people and WP:BDP.
 * If full DOB in birth date and age removes Category:Date of birth missing or Category:Date of birth missing (living people)

Fix syntax (FixSyntax)

 * Performs various syntax fixes:
 * Removes empty, , , or tags, including tags with properties
 * Fixes incorrect  tags.
 * Fixes incorrect closing tags for, , , etc. For example,.
 * Replaces HTML markup with wiki syntax (e.g. italics and bold).
 * Replaces old HTML markup with
 * Removes appearance of multiple line break.
 * Removes break line tags after maintenance tags.
 * Fixes double piped links e.g. |bar to bar.
 * Removes unnecessary namespace (e.g. Template:).
 * Removes  from lists.
 * Fixes most uneven bracketing on wikilinks/categories/templates/interwikis/external links/files (FixUnbalancedBrackets).
 * (Partially) fixes wikilinked/external linked URL in cite template.
 * Fixes incorrect  tags. For example, , <\br> and 
 * Replaces obsolete  tag attributes per HTML5.
 * Fixes incorrectly formatted ISBNs such as ISBN: ..., ISBN-10: ...
 * Removes "ISBN" from start of isbn parameter in infoboxes
 * Removes  tags from ordinal numbers per WP:ORDINAL.
 * Removes tags inside, , tags and image captions (per MOS:CAPTIONS) (not applied when article has unclosed tags).
 * Moves dead link inside references per its documentation.
 * Does various syntax fixes for external links/cited URLs.
 * Fixes external links starting with http://http://.
 * Fixes external links starting with http:://.
 * Fixes external links starting without double slash.
 * Removes unneeded pipes from simple external links.
 * Fixes spacing before and after external links.
 * Removes break from the end of Image/File descriptions.
 * Simple closing bracket fixing to templates

Simplify links (SimplifyLinks)

 * Simplifies links like Dog to Dog per Manual of Style (linking).
 * Simplifies links like Dogs to Dogs per Manual of Style (linking).
 * Simplifies links like Dog to Dog
 * Simplifies links like (dog) to (dog)

Citation templates (FixCitationTemplates)

 * Performs various fixes to citation templates (en only):
 * Renames invalid pg to page (e.g. ).
 * Removes empty fields where the field has already been specified elsewhere.
 * Corrects common typos in accessdate, format, language and publisher field names (e.g. ).
 * Removes excess pipes.
 * Removes the unneeded HTML field
 * Removes language when it is English per citation templates manuals
 * Removes format field with null value when URL is HTML page
 * Removes italics for work field for book/periodical, but not website (auto italicised by template)
 * Removes quotes around title field since they are automatically added by template markup
 * Converts curly quotes to straight quotes per MOS:PUNCT and MOS:QUOTE
 * Removes p. or pp. from page and pages fields when nopp not set
 * Renames year to date if the field contains an American, International or ISO date.
 * Changes cite web references to Google Books to use cite book
 * Removes duplicated fields.
 * Removes accessyear where accessdate is present and contains said year
 * Renames deprecated parameter names, per WP:AWB/RTP
 * Removes ordinals from dates per WP:MOSDATE
 * Adds http:// to start of www URL when missing.
 * Dead link moved from format field to after citation per Template:Dead link.
 * Converts newlines to spaces in citation titles when URL is present (otherwise display is incorrect).
 * Renames authors to author in cite web.
 * For cite journal only: extracts issue/number information from volume and moves to issue
 * Converts ISSN 1234-5678 or ISSN 1234-5678 to 1234-5678 provided ISSN and issn not already populated and id contains valid ISSN
 * Formats 12345678 or 1234 5678 to 1234-5678 provided ISSN is 8 digits (supported for issn as well)

Redirect tagger (RedirectTagger)

 * Tags redirects, where appropriate, with one of


 * R to project namespace
 * R to help namespace
 * R to portal namespace
 * R to template namespace
 * R to user namespace
 * R to talk namespace


 * R from modification
 * R from title without diacritics
 * R from other capitalisation
 * R to section


 * Note: The method is in compliance with WP:REDCAT

Fix syntax inside redirects (FixSyntaxRedirects)

 * Removes carriage returns inside redirects.
 * Removes unnecessary namespace (e.g. Template:).

Add missing Reflist (AddMissingReflist)

 * Checks for a to.

FixReferenceTags (FixReferenceTags)

 * Performs whitespace fixes to references per WP:REFPUNC and WP:CITEFOOT:
 * Remove any spaces between consecutive references.
 * Ensure a space between a reference and text (reference within a paragraph).
 * Remove spaces between punctuation and references ( tags) per WP:CITEFOOT.
 * Performs syntax fixes to named references:
 * Incomplete quotes, extra quotes, curly quotes, missing quotes.
 * Missing/Double equals in ref name syntax.
 * Named ref with no name given.

Mdashes (Mdashes)
This is a MOS fix (see WP:DASH)
 * Replaces hyphens with endashes:
 * Time/common unit ranges.
 * Dollar amount ranges.
 * Age ranges.
 * Text same as the title where title uses an endash.
 * Two consecutive hyphens within a sentence (excluding "xn--").
 * Replaces hyphen with Unicode minus in superscripted negative numbers.
 * Note: This function can be disabled by disabling WP:MOS fixes under the Options menu (Option designed for third-party wikis/other language wikis that are not en-wiki).

Remove empty comments (RemoveEmptyComments)

 * Removes HTML comments with no content other than whitespace. This feature is disactivated as a general fix at the moment but the function is still available for use.

ReorderReferences (ReorderReferences)

 * Reorders consecutive named references such that they appear in numerical order e.g. [1][2][3] instead of [2][1][3].
 * Applies only to consecutive references (i.e. does not affect multiple references spread out over clauses in a sentence).
 * Supports the Rp template.
 * Does not affect the use of reference groups.
 * Note: This change is fully compatible with the Harvard referencing style and "list-defined references".
 * Note: This function was removed from en.wiki in 2017

SameRefDifferentName (SameRefDifferentName)

 * Condenses very short named references to the format (e.g. ). It is designed to catch short reference with a trivial entry such as a number or alphabetical ordering reference that is unneeded, or simply whitespace. It operates subject to these conditions:
 * The reference is very short
 * The reference is named and another full reference is present with the same name.
 * The reference is not to a page number.
 * Corrects named references where the reference is the same but the reference name is different (e.g. )
 * Not applied if the reference is an 'ibid' reference or similar.
 * The longer reference name is used provided it is not in 'autogenerated1' or 'ReferenceA' format

References after punctuation (RefsAfterPunctuation)

 * Puts references after punctuation (comma, full stop, colon, semi-colon) per WP:CITEFOOT and WP:PAIC, subject to:
 * Applies to en-wiki and simple-wiki only
 * Requires >= 75% refs after punctuation to convert the rest.
 * Whitespace before ref is cleaned when punctuation moved.
 * Puts many inline templates (such as citation needed) after punctuation (comma, full stop, colon, semi-colon).

Sort meta data (MetaDataSorter)

 * Puts categories after page body, followed by stub templates and interwiki links per WP:FOOTER. Recognizes the common cat and interwiki header comments.
 * Puts stub templates above navboxes (ru-wiki only).
 * Moves Ibid to the references section (en-wiki only).
 * Moves Wikipedia books to See also section per WP:SEEALSO.
 * Removes commented out interwiki links (en-wiki only).
 * Puts two blank lines before stubs per IDEALSTUB (one blank line for ru and sl-wiki).
 * Puts a single blank line between headers per WP:BODY and WP:HEAD.
 * Moves the most common maintenance templates above infoboxes etc. (zeroth section only)
 * Keeps Short pages monitor at the very end of article if present per its documentation
 * Removes newlines inside unordered lists per WP:LISTGAP

Interwikis (Interwikis)

 * Removes duplicate interwikis.
 * Unicodifies interwiki links.
 * Sorts interwiki links alphabetically (individually selectable in menu) per Help:Interlanguage links.
 * Moves interwikis at the bottom of the page after stub templates per WP:FOOTER.
 * Removes self interwikis (does not remove current language links for monolingual projects such as Commons).
 * Removes double colon in interwikis. For example, it changes  to.
 * Supports multiple interwiki links to same language and comments beside interwiki links.

Categories (RemoveCats)

 * Removes duplicate categories.
 * Moves categories to correct position in article per WP:ORDER.
 * Moves any DEFAULTSORT to be just above categories per WP:ORDER.
 * On sl-wiki only, moves Lifetime to be just above categories.

Maintenance Tags (MoveMaintenanceTags)

 * Moves maintenance tags to appropriate place per WP:ORDER
 * Deduplicates tags, uses earliest date if multiple tags with different date values.

Deletion/Protection Tags

 * Moves deletion/protection tags to appropriate place, above maintenance tags, per WP:ORDER

Featured list/article tags

 * Moves / immediately above interwikis per template's documentation.

DABlinks (MoveDablinks)

 * Moves DABLinks at the very top of the page per WP:HNP. (en-only)
 * Only moves DABLinks in the zeroth section of the article.
 * Removes unneeded colon before dablink.

Portal templates (MovePortalTemplates)

 * Moves any Portal templates to the top of the "See also" section per WP:SEEALSO. (en-only)
 * Removes duplicate portals found outside of "See also" section. (en-only)

See also (MoveSeeAlso)

 * Moves the "See also" section to be above the "References" section, per WP:FOOTERS. (en-only)
 * Subject to the limitation that the "See also" section cannot be the last level-2 section

External links (MoveExternalLinks)

 * Ensures the "External links" section of an article is after the "References" section per WP:FOOTERS.
 * Operates subject to the limitation that there is another section following the "References" section.

Sister links (MoveSisterLinks)

 * Moves sister links such as wiktionary and Sister project links to the "External links" section, if there is such a section per WP:LAYOUT. (en-only)

Bullet external links (BulletExternalLinks)

 * Add bullet points to external links after "external links" header per External links.

Cite Template Dates (CiteTemplateDates)

 * Performs a number of fixes to date fields within citation templates. (en-wiki only)
 * Converts invalid date formats like DD-MM-YYYY, MM-DD-YYYY, YYYY-D-M, YYYY-DD-MM, YYYY_MM_DD etc. to ISO format of YYYY-MM-DD
 * Removes time from citation date fields.
 * Note: Not applied to cite podcast due to its non-standard use of date fields.

Bold titles (BoldTitle)

 * Emboldens the first occurrence of the article title, if not already bold per WP:BOLDTITLE.
 * Check for any self links and no bold title, if found just convert first link to bold.
 * Don't apply if bold in lead section already or some noinclude transclusion.
 * Ignore date articles (date in American or international format) and articles containing year article header
 * If title in bold already exists in article, or page starts with something in bold, do not change anything.
 * Ignore articles with some bold in first 5% of article.
 * Check that the bold added is the first bit in bold in the main body of the article.

FixLinks
Not applied if page has an imagemap on the page or noinclude transclusion
 * Performs fixes to wikilinks:
 * Removes piped self-links leaving pipe.
 * Delinks simple self-links per WP:OVERLINK.
 * Replaces unnecessary pipe template inside wikilinks with pipe.
 * Cleans up wikilinks: replace underscores, percentages and URL encoded accents/diacritics etc. (with underscore exceptions for mod_perl and size_t)
 * Reformats self interwikis to be standard links. Only applies to self interwikis before other interwikis (i.e. those in body of article).
 * Converts foo to foo for bold, italics or bold and italics.

Interwiki conversions (InterwikiConversions)

 * Performs some interwiki conversions fixing typos: "da" instead of "dk", "no" instead of "nb", "zh" instead of "zh-tw".

Template conversions (Conversions)

 * Replaces templates such as PAGENAME,PAGENAMEE, BASEPAGENAME, BASEPAGENAMEE, etc. with magic word
 * Adds dates (in 'Month YYYY' format) to undated tags/templates requiring such dates, such as Citation needed.
 * Changes No footnotes to More footnotes if article has at least 1 inline citation.
 * Changes Unreferenced to BLP unsourced if article has Category:Living people.
 * Changes Unreferenced section to BLP unsourced section if article has Category:Living people.
 * Changes Refimprove to BLP sources if article has Category:Living people.
 * Changes Refimprove section to BLP sources section if article has Category:Living people.
 * Changes Primary sources to BLP primary sources if article has Category:Living people.
 * Changes Self-published to BLP self-published if article has Category:Living people.
 * Cleans up underscores in infobox template names.
 * Changes to  for the templates: "unreferenced", "wikify", "refimprove", "BLP sources", "expand", "BLP unsourced".
 * Removes deprecated parameter yes from Unreferenced.

Fix People life date ranges (FixLivingThingsRelatedDates)

 * Replaces "John Doe (b. 1978)" with "John Doe (born 1978)" and "John Doe (d. 1978)" with "John Doe (died 1978)" in the lead section of articles per MOS:DOB.
 * Replaces "John Doe (born: 1978)" with "John Doe (born 1978)" in the lead section of articles per MOS:DOB.
 * Replaces "John Doe (born on February 3, 1978)" with "John Doe (born February 3, 1978)" in the lead section of articles per MOS:DOB.
 * Replaces "John Doe (1978-)" with "John Doe (born 1978)" per MOS:DOB (not applied within infoboxes).
 * Sets endash in born/died date range per WP:ENDASH.

Fix headings (FixHeadings)

 * Delinks wikilinks in headings per WP:HEAD (where article has < 6 wikilinks in headings)
 * Corrects case of "References" section per WP:HEAD.
 * Fixes common naming errors of "See also" and "External links" sections. For instance it renames "External link" to "External links" per WP:ELCITE and "Also see" to "See also" per WP:SEEALSO.
 * Changes "Reference" to "References" and "Source" to "Sources" per WP:FNNR.
 * Removes colon from end of heading names
 * Removes &lt;br/&gt; from headings
 * If no level 2 heading in article, remove a level from all headings per WP:HEAD.
 * Doesn't consider the "References", "See also", or "External links" level 2 headings when counting level two headings.
 * Only apply if all level 3 headings and lower are before the first of "References"/"External links"/"See also".
 * Removes bold from headers per WP:HEAD as it makes a visible difference only in the article's table of contents.
 * Removes bad headings from start of article such as "About", "Description", "Overview", "Definition", "Profile", "Background", "Intro", "Introduction", "Summary" etc.
 * Removes heading at start of page if heading matches article title (heading not removed if not first heading)
 * Fixes unbalanced levels to "See also", "External links" and "References" sections (e.g.  becomes  )
 * Note: Does not alter optional spacing at start and end of heading (i.e. no conversion between  and  )
 * Sets one blank line before each heading per MOS:HEAD, NOT for subheadings immediately after a heading

Merge See also (MergeSeeAlso)

 * Merges multiple see also templates into one.
 * Same for see also2.
 * En-wiki only. Called by Conversions.

Merge Portals (MergePortals)

 * Merges multiple portal templates into a single one. En-wiki only. Called by Conversions.
 * Does not merge portal templates with additional named arguments (see portal documentation).
 * Does not process any portal templates if portal template within stack template.
 * When merging removes duplicate portals.
 * The portal templates must be in the same section of the article, or the article must not have any headings.

=Mainspace tagger= Mainspace tagger skips redirects and soft redirects to wiktionary.

Tagger (Tagger)

 * Removes stub if article has more than 500 words (comments, categories, defaultsort and persondata are excluded from word count).
 * Words in bulleted text are divided by 2 to avoid destubbing pages with big lists and little text.
 * Appends Orphan if article (or its redirects) has fewer than 3 incoming links (excluding redirects) and the article is not a disambiguation one or has a set index template. Read WP:ORPHAN for more details about orphan articles.
 * Orphan tagging can be limited to articles with 0 incoming links (excluding redirects) from the Options Menu. There is an option called "Restrict orphan tag addition to linkless pages".
 * Removes Orphan if article has more than 2 incoming links.
 * Per this request, Orphan is not removed if few is set.
 * Appends Underlinked if article has 1–3 wikilinks or the number of wikilinks is smaller than 0.25% of article's size. Removes tag otherwise (comments, categories, defaultsort, Persondata, infoboxes, Chembox and Drugbox are excluded from wikilink and size count).
 * Appends stub if article has at most 300 characters (comments, categories, persondata, infoboxes and Drugbox are excluded from character count). Pages that start with "Lists of..." and "List of..." are not tagged as stubs per Wikipedia talk:Stub/Archive 14
 * Appends Uncategorized stub if article has no categories and is a stub.
 * Appends Uncategorised if article has no categories, has more than 6 words outside of templates/tables/comments, and is not a stub (or renames improve categories). It removes the tag in case article has at least 1 category.
 * Appends Dead end if article has no wikilinks (API call used to count mainspace links, blue and redlinks, so transcluded links are counted). Removes the tag otherwise.
 * Pages with Centuryinbox are excluded from tagging
 * Adds Ibid if article has references containing constructs such as ibid, op. cit. or loc. cit (per WP:IBID). (en-wiki only)
 * Tags empty level-2 sections with Empty section. (en-wiki only)
 * Changes Unreferenced to More citations needed if article has existing references.

Dated tags (TagUpdater)

 * Adds Month YYYY to some of the most common by-date cleanup or maintenance templates (see Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month)
 * Takes list from dated templates.
 * Converts first letter of date to uppercase e.g. may to May.
 * Corrects upper case month name e.g. MAY to May.
 * Corrects mixed case month name e.g. MAy to May. (e.g. )
 * Corrects Date, dates parameter typos.
 * Adds date when missing for Month YYYY argument.
 * Removes day in International date in date.
 * Removes comma between month and year. (e.g. )

=Talk page general fixes=
 * Note: When making fixes to talk pages, it is helpful to also use the custom module User:Magioladitis/WikiProjects for template redirects.

General

 * Moves skip to talk, talk header and GA nominee on the top per WP:TPL.
 * Moves warning, guidelines and article history banners, etc. to their place per WP:TPL.
 * Moves Image requested after WikiProjectBannerShell per WP:TPL.
 * Remove Template: from template calls (zeroth section only).

WikiProjectBannerShell fixes (WikiProjectBannerShell)

 * Adds WikiProject banner shell if 3 or more WikiProject templates are found
 * (Currently works only with WikiProject templates named "WikiProject foo" and not with their redirects, so using User:Magioladitis/WikiProjects as a custom module is helpful)


 * Fixes to WikiProjectBannerShell
 * If WikiProjectBannerShells or one of its redirects is found, it does the following:
 * Removes any duplicated parameters if they have the same value.
 * Removes no, no, no
 * Bypasses redirects
 * Adds explicit call to first unnamed parameter 1 if missing.
 * If WikiProject Biography exists inside the shell:
 * with no then removes yes if exists
 * with yes then adds yes
 * with yes then adds yes
 * with yes then adds yes
 * If blp found then removes it and adds yes


 * Moves any other WikiProjects into WikiProjectBannerShell
 * (Currently works only with WikiProject templates named "WikiProject foo" and not with their redirects)


 * Note: This function is applied to en.wiki only

Heading fixes

 * Adds ==Untitled== to the first comment if it has no section header per WP:TPL.
 * Fixes first comment's header level to 2 per WP:TPL.

WikiProject Biography fixes (WPBiography)

 * Remove diacritics from listas
 * Converts activepol to
 * Removes blp from talk page if
 * Moves WikiProject Biography above any WikiProject templates if it has yes per WP:TPL
 * (Currently works only with WikiProject templates named "WikiProject foo" and not with their redirects)


 * Note: This function is applied to en.wiki only

WikiProject Songs fixes (WPSongs)

 * Converts sir to
 * Removes unsupported importance from WikiProject Songs
 * Removes no
 * Note: This function is applied to en.wiki only

WikiProject Jazz fixes (WPJazz)

 * If WikiProject Songs (or any of its redirects) then add yes to WikiProject Jazz
 * If WikiProject Albums (or any of its redirects) then add yes to WikiProject Jazz
 * Removes no
 * Note: This function is applied to en.wiki only

DEFAULTSORT fixes

 * Replaces the DEFAULTSORT template with the same magic word.
 * Moves the magic word to the top.

=Helper functions= This section documents some of the AWB functions that are used by the general fixes, but do not form part of the general fixes themselves.

Text hiding
Text hiding is a feature in AWB that allows syntax within articles to be hidden so that other changes are not applied to the text within that area e.g. typo fixing should not apply to image filenames, otherwise links to images could be broken.

AWB has two levels of text hiding:  and. These two functions exist in the  class.

Hide
Items hidden are:
 * Templates, including nested templates.
 * , ) in the birth date family of templates.
 * If none of the above criteria allow a derivation, the date format is undetermined.
 * If none of the above criteria allow a derivation, the date format is undetermined.

Persondata completion (PersonData)
This is not called by general fixes
 * Note: Persondata is now removed.
 * Inserts or updates Persondata only based on existing data in the article (e.g. )
 * The Persondata template is inserted for all mainspace people biography articles without existing persondata.
 * Existing persondata can be updated, but any existing field values are not overwritten.
 * DATE OF BIRTH and DATE OF DEATH
 * Uses birth/death fields (and aliases) from people infoboxes and/or birth/death date templates such as death date and age to derive birth & death dates.
 * Sets persondata dates using the predominant date locale used in the article.
 * NAME
 * Sets persondata name using the article's existing DEFAULTSORT.
 * PLACE OF BIRTH and PLACE OF DEATH
 * Sets persondata locations based on placeofbirth and placeofdeath fields (and aliases) from people infoboxes.
 * ALTERNATIVE NAMES and SHORT DESCRIPTION fields are not automatically populated.