Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 19

Bot or code to cross-post a text between several pages
Some discussions/arguments/wars cover more than one article. For example, the question could be "Should these two article be merged?". Another example would be a discussion about an image; ideally, it should be held simultaneously in the talk pages of the image and of all the articles that use it. It would be nice to have a bot or HTML command to cross-post a segment of text between several pages.

This code could also be useful in the articles themselves. For example, the summary of a main article could be its lead paragraph cross-posted at the appropriate place in the summary article. Another example would be a lexicon to clarify several closely-related concepts, cross-posted in all the corresponding articles.

Is there a bot or code to cross-post a segment of text between two pages? If not, could it be created? Emmanuelm (talk) 17:32, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Bot to create a list of pages
To aid in the dicussion here could a bot be used to make a list of all the pages whose titles are full dates (e.g. January 1, 2000)? Additionally, could it identify which are redirects? -- Mufka (u) (t) (c) 23:58, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Working on this, are non-redirects only OK, or, do you really need the redirects, too? SQL Query me!  10:58, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * (Output will be at User:SQL/Months) SQL Query me!  10:59, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * ✅ SQL Query me!  11:18, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * (Tweak)Also, I added redirects at the bottom, in case you needed them. That's a lot smaller of a list than I expected. SQL Query me!  11:36, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

bot to regularly update
Or, if not, then a new template? My idea is this: I use huggle and it, as well as various antivandal bots, are well aware of edits per minute and reverts per minute. Would it not be too difficult to create a bot that monitors recent changes, specifically vandalism warning templates issued to vandal's talk pages by users and Cluebot like bots?. This bot could update a template in real time from real statistics concerning the levels of vandalism (rather than the somewhat subjective updates made irregularly to .  It could also issue regular updates on various irc channels that focus on countervandalism.  Just a thought... If I am talking about something already in place, could you let me know?  κaτaʟ aveno  TC 13:37, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Assess stubs in WP:CANADA
Can someone please set up a bot to go through the 1190 pages in Category:Unassessed Canada-related articles and for any pages whose corresponding article has a stub template (most of them), add |stub=yes|autostub=yes to the WikiProject Canada or WPCANADA template. Note that many of them already have an importance assessment, so if you could leave that alone while making the change I would appreciate it. I wonder if it would also be possible to tag them as stubs based on their length; many of them are about electoral districts and have just one line followed by a small table, but are missing stub templates. Thanks a lot! --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 18:22, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I did the your first request for the 250 some pages that already had stub templates. Someone else will have to do the stub tagging based on length though.-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  00:12, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Dycedarg! For whoever is willing to do the ones without stub templates, those tables at the bottom of all these electoral districts articles take up a lot of space, so I would recommend a fairly high threshold for stub-labelling.  Many of them are over 5Kb without yet having enough content to be called Start-class.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:23, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Update wikilinks for HP Pavilion at San Jose
This arena and the article about it has had a few name changes. I would like to update the following links as follows:
 * San Jose Arena becomes San Jose Arena
 * Compaq Center at San Jose becomes Compaq Center at San Jose
 * Compaq Center becomes Compaq Center
 * HP Pavilion (sports arena) becomes HP Pavilion
 * HP Pavilion becomes HP Pavilion

--76.205.25.141 (talk) 22:54, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't see the logic of creating piped links. Why not just flat-out replace former links to San Jose Arena with new links to HP Pavilion at San Jose? It's not as though preserving the old name has any value for the future. EdJohnston (talk) 01:20, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The piped links preserve the history of the articles the links are contained within. For instance, when the arena of the Golden State Warriors was being renovated, they played temporarily at San Jose Arena (because that is what it was called at the time).  The Golden State Warriors never played at HP Pavilion at San Jose.  The same can be said of several other sports teams and  countless entertainment tours that have come through the arena at different points.  Piping these links will ensure that these articles remain accurate.  If the authors of these articles want to make reference to the current name of the arena, then they can do so (i.e.  "the Warriors played 20 "home games" each in the San Jose Arena (now HP Pavilion) in San Jose, California for the 1997-98 and 1998-99 NBA seasons")--76.205.25.141 (talk) 01:32, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Just redirect the old pages to the new ones, this should happen automatically when the page is moved. Performing the above changes is a waste of resources. -- maelgwn - talk 02:51, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

news.yahoo.com linkrot.
Yahoo! News links die after a week or two and are not archived by the Wayback Machine. Since cite templates are rarely used by people who use Yahho as a news source it's hard to find other versions of the sources. Can a bot please post a user_talk message to users who add news.yahoo.com links, asking them for a better source? Please put a prominent mention of wp:v in the message which states that unverifiable info may be remoevd by anyone. -- Jeandré, 2008-03-30t19:59z


 * Or, why not have a bot that specifically focuses on putting some sort of additional information (like extracting the article title and date) from those links? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:43, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Newsletter delivery Bot needed - WikiProject Novels
WikiProject Novels/Outreach/Newsletter April 2008 needs delivery now that User:KevinalewisBot by User:Kevinalewis (he's semi-retired from WP) is inactive. Please see also WikiProject Novels/Outreach for options on delivery.

Delivery to all user talk pages on WikiProject_Novels/Members, see WikiProject_Novels/Outreach. Please contact if something remains unclear. feydey (talk) 18:45, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I got this. βcommand 2 18:49, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quick response. feydey (talk) 19:02, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ βcommand 23:24, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

URGENT : Newsletter delivery BOT help needed -WikiProject Christianity
I am from WikiProject Christianity. We need automatic delivery of the newsletter to our members, every month with a BOT. Is this possible ? Kindly let me know on my talkpage at the earliest. To do: to all user talk pages on WikiProject Christianity/Members. Please contact me before delivery to avoid mutiple deliveries by different bots. Thanks in advance. - Tinucherian (talk) 06:02, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Ill take care of this. βcommand 2 17:46, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ βcommand 23:24, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks - Tinucherian (talk) 09:34, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Categorisation for WP:GEOLOGY
Hi,

I wonder whether it would be possible to tag the talk pages of all articles marked as paleo-stub, geol-stub and redirects to these with ? This would assist us greatly in working out where to focus our attention.

Many thanks, Verisimilus  T  09:04, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Sure! User:John Bot is waiting for work :).   CWii ( Talk  00:52, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 *   CWii ( Talk  00:59, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Splendid, thanks a bunch! Verisimilus  T  10:13, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * P.S. any chance they could all be rated as "stub-class"? Thanks. Verisimilus  T  12:17, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Will do this for the rest (I'm about 1/2 done)   CWii ( Talk  21:51, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

✅   CWii ( Talk  23:16, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Rugby league colours
Last year, Many rugby league free images of logos such as were made .svg files from the original .png files. Some of those .png files are still in use where they would be better used by the .svg version. Because this is a long and tedious task, I request that a bot to the task. To change all instances (of the images in the table below) from the .png version to the .svg version of the image.

I have noticed that Betacommand has done a few of these already. (proof) The images that Betacommand changes have been deleted (.png versions), so once there are no versions of the .png image left, it could be deleted.

There are many that need doing as the full list below examples.

 The Windler    talk  03:47, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Im not a bot but i have used AWB to replace some more of them. E.g.  ·Add§hore·  T alk /C ont  15:12, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Ive been meaning to take another swipe through Category:Images made obsolete by an SVG version. Its not that hard. βcommand 2 21:52, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * As I've suggested, can't you get a bot to do it. Even for all those.  The Windler    talk  03:09, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Anything else?  The Windler    talk  05:25, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * No replies, nothing can be done??  The Windler    talk  13:29, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I have / should now have replaced all of these .png's with the .svg's if the pages were in the lists on the image pages at the bottom. I hope this helps. This might not have got every page the images are on though!.  ·Add§hore·  T alk /C ont 13:35, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks.  The Windler    talk  06:59, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅  ·Add§hore·  T alk /C ont 08:46, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Tagging request
Request that any articles in the following categories not already so tagged be tagged with.

Category:2004 in the Dominican Republic; Category:2008 in the Dominican Republic; Category:Airlines of the Dominican Republic; Category:Airports in the Dominican Republic; Category:Bachata; Category:Banks of the Dominican Republic; Category:Baseball in the Dominican Republic; Category:Baseball teams in the Dominican Republic; Category:Baseball venues in the Dominican Republic; Category:Basketball in the Dominican Republic; Category:Bays of the Dominican Republic; Category:Beaches of the Dominican Republic; Category:Bridges in the Dominican Republic; Category:Buildings and structures in the Dominican Republic; Category:Cardinals of the Dominican Republic; Category:Caves of the Dominican Republic; Category:Christian missionaries in the Dominican Republic; Category:Christianity in the Dominican Republic; Category:Cinema of the Dominican Republic; Category:Cities and towns in the Dominican Republic; Category:Communications in the Dominican Republic; Category:Companies of the Dominican Republic; Category:Companies of the Dominican Republic by industry; Category:Conservation in the Dominican Republic; Category:Crime in the Dominican Republic; Category:Culture of the Dominican Republic; Category:Defunct airlines of the Dominican Republic; Category:Disasters in the Dominican Republic; Category:Dominican cuisine; Category:Dominican Republic; Category:Dominican Republic activists; Category:Dominican Republic actors; Category:Dominican Republic adoptive parents; Category:Dominican Republic anti-communists; Category:Dominican Republic architects; Category:Dominican Republic art; Category:Dominican Republic artists; Category:Dominican Republic at the Olympics; Category:Dominican Republic Baptists; Category:Dominican Republic baseball biography stubs; Category:Dominican Republic beauty queens; Category:Dominican Republic Christians; Category:Dominican Republic composers; Category:Dominican Republic death metal musical groups; Category:Dominican Republic diplomats; Category:Dominican Republic engineers; Category:Dominican Republic fashion models; Category:Dominican Republic female models; Category:Dominican Republic film actors; Category:Dominican Republic film directors; Category:Dominican Republic football competitions; Category:Dominican Republic geography stubs; Category:Dominican Republic golfers; Category:Dominican Republic heavy metal musical groups; Category:Dominican Republic Jehovah's Witnesses; Category:Dominican Republic journalists; Category:Dominican Republic literature; Category:Dominican Republic models; Category:Dominican Republic music arrangers; Category:Dominican Republic musical groups; Category:Dominican Republic musicians; Category:Dominican Republic people; Category:Dominican Republic people by occupation; Category:Dominican Republic people by religion; Category:Dominican Republic people stubs; Category:Dominican Republic pianists; Category:Dominican Republic players of American football; Category:Dominican Republic poets; Category:Dominican Republic politicians; Category:Dominican Republic Protestants; Category:Dominican Republic-related lists; Category:Dominican Republic Roman Catholics; Category:Dominican Republic singers; Category:Dominican Republic songwriters; Category:Dominican Republic sportscasters; Category:Dominican Republic sportspeople; Category:Dominican Republic sportspeople in doping cases; Category:Dominican Republic stage actors; Category:Dominican Republic stubs; Category:Dominican Republic television; Category:Dominican Republic television series; Category:Dominican Republic women; Category:Dominican Republic women by occupation; Category:Dominican Republic writers; Category:Economy of the Dominican Republic; Category:Education in the Dominican Republic; Category:Energy in the Dominican Republic; Category:Environment of the Dominican Republic; Category:First Ladies of Dominican Republic; Category:Football in the Dominican Republic; Category:Football venues in the Dominican Republic; Category:Foreign relations of the Dominican Republic; Category:Geography of the Dominican Republic; Category:Golf in the Dominican Republic; Category:Government of the Dominican Republic; Category:Health in the Dominican Republic; Category:History of the Dominican Republic; Category:Hurricanes in the Dominican Republic; Category:Indoor arenas in the Dominican Republic; Category:Islands of the Dominican Republic; Category:Lakes of the Dominican Republic; Category:Landforms of the Dominican Republic; Category:Languages of the Dominican Republic; Category:Law of the Dominican Republic; Category:Libraries in the Dominican Republic; Category:Maps of the Dominican Republic; Category:Mayors of places in the Dominican Republic; Category:Media of the Dominican Republic; Category:Mormon missionaries in the Dominican Republic; Category:Mountain ranges of the Dominican Republic; Category:Mountains of the Dominican Republic; Category:Municipalities of the Dominican Republic; Category:Music festivals in the Dominican Republic; Category:Music of the Dominican Republic; Category:Music venues in the Dominican Republic; Category:Natural history of the Dominican Republic; Category:National parks of the Dominican Republic; Category:National sports teams of the Dominican Republic; Category:National symbols of the Dominican Republic; Category:Natural disasters in the Dominican Republic; Category:Newspapers published in the Dominican Republic; Category:Old maps of the Dominican Republic; Category:Olympic athletes of the Dominican Republic; Category:Olympic boxers of the Dominican Republic; Category:Olympic bronze medalists for the Dominican Republic; Category:Olympic competitors for the Dominican Republic; Category:Olympic gold medalists for the Dominican Republic; Category:Olympic medalists for the Dominican Republic; Category:Olympic volleyball players of the Dominican Republic; Category:Opera houses in the Dominican Republic; Category:Orders, decorations, and medals of the Dominican Republic; Category:Parks in the Dominican Republic; Category:Planned airlines of the Dominican Republic; Category:Political office-holders in the Dominican Republic; Category:Politics of the Dominican Republic; Category:Presidents of the Dominican Republic; Category:Provinces of the Dominican Republic; Category:Radio stations in the Dominican Republic; Category:Religion in the Dominican Republic; Category:Rivers of the Dominican Republic; Category:Roman Catholic dioceses in the Dominican Republic; Category:Roman Catholic schools in the Dominican Republic; Category:Rugby union in the Dominican Republic; Category:Schools in the Dominican Republic; Category:Science and technology in the Dominican Republic; Category:Settlements in the Dominican Republic; Category:Society of the Dominican Republic; Category:Sport in the Dominican Republic; Category:Sports festivals hosted in the Dominican Republic; Category:Sports teams in the Dominican Republic; Category:Sports venues in the Dominican Republic; Category:Subdivisions of the Dominican Republic; Category:Television stations in the Dominican Republic; Category:Tennis in the Dominican Republic; Category:Theatre in the Dominican Republic; Category:Theatres in the Dominican Republic; Category:Tourism in the Dominican Republic; Category:Trade unions of the Dominican Republic; Category:Transportation in the Dominican Republic; Category:Universities and colleges in the Dominican Republic; Category:Urban planning in the Dominican Republic; Category:Vice Presidents of the Dominican Republic; Category:Visitor attractions in the Dominican Republic; Category:World Heritage Sites in the Dominican Republic; Category:Years in the Dominican Republic;

Also, if it would be possible to indicate which if any of these articles were ever main page DYK selections, as per the talk page, that would help a lot as well. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 22:10, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Misconceived links to date fragments such as Wednesday and April
Can we have a bot to address the misconceived links to date fragments such as Wednesday and April? There are tens of thousands of these and probably only a few hundred make any sense at all. It is relatively easy to identify the nonsense ones.

There are many other ridiculous ways in which people handle dates. Many are fairly easy to identify e.g. '[February 8|8 February]'. This is a known side-effect of autoformatting and must be one of the most common diseases on Wikipedia. They are difficult for human editors to identify and fix but they are ideal bot fodder. Lightmouse (talk) 20:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Could you give a few examples?  Mønobi 22:22, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I do not understand your question. The request contains examples. Do you want examples of links to '[Wednesday]' or examples of links to '[February 8|8 February]'? Lightmouse (talk) 09:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Could you explain It is relatively easy to identify the nonsense ones a bit more? How would a bot pick out, from among 10,000 or so links, the hundred or two that were in fact valid and should not be de-linked? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

We do not seem to be understanding each other. I hoped that the example of '[February 8|8 February]' would explain what I meant. Are you saying that example is not clear? Lightmouse (talk) 19:02, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * We want a in-article example.   CWii ( Talk  21:38, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Here are some in-article examples: Do you understand what I mean now?
 * |Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal ... has 2008-03-11
 * |Prince of Wales's feathers ... has 3rd March 2007
 * |Arizona Diamondbacks ... has November 8th
 * P.O.D.|P.O.D. ... has January 25, 2008

Lightmouse (talk) 11:01, 14 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Those are easy for a bot to identify but difficult for a human. Do others agree that these misconceived links should be corrected? Lightmouse (talk)

It would be easy for a bot to periodically clean out WhatLinksHere for the redirects like 1st January, 2nd February, etc. In fact, there are many MOS:DATE fixes that could probably be done reliably by bot. Maybe I'll try and cook something up. Happy‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 16:08, 21 March 2008 (UTC)


 * While the MOS is relatively clear, this topic does seem to stir up a bit on controversy. I would recommend a bot be conservative in what it changes (ex. fixing date formats) and leave the more problematic cases (ex. delinking) to human editors. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:04, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

True. What conversions would be uncontroversial? Feel free to add to the table to the right. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 15:33, 22 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I have added one from the list that I gave above. See also the list at Manual_of_Style_%28dates_and_numbers%29 e.g. date ranges, disambiguation page links, section headings etc. Furthermore, you may find useful regex for this at User:Lightmouse/javascript conversion. Lightmouse (talk) 11:14, 24 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Any news on this one? Lightmouse (talk) 09:46, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

User:Happy-melon says that he is involved in other things now. Would anyone else like to take it on? Lightmouse (talk) 08:27, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * if you can create a table of genfixes that you think need to be done Ill see what I can do. βcommand 2 20:19, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Here is what wp:mosnum says: ''Links to date elements that do not contain both a day number and a month are not required; for example, solitary months, solitary days of the week, solitary years, decades, centuries, and month and year combinations. Such links must not be used unless the reader needs to follow the link to understand the topic see WP:CONTEXT. Autoformatting must not be used for the following purposes: Regex to do some of that is at User:Lightmouse/javascript conversion but it will need modification and I can work with you on that. Lightmouse (talk) 21:43, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * ''piped links to date elements (several forms of piped links break the date formatting function);
 * links to date ranges in the same calendar month e.g. December 13–17 or the night of 30/31 May – the autoformatting mechanism will damage such dates (30/May 31'');
 * ''links to date elements on disambiguation pages;
 * ''links to date elements in article and section headings; and
 * ''links to date elements in quotations (unless the original text was wikilinked).


 * As an extension to the above request, is it possible for the same bot to automatically wikilink all bare dates as per guidelines in Manual_of_Style_%28dates_and_numbers%29? This would mean:


 * If I understand the MOS correctly, there is no need to insert a comma before the year, as it automatically appears based on user preferences. Thus, January 25, 2008 should instead be January 25 2008 ?--Huaiwei (talk) 13:51, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I think you have misunderstood. That section does not require the wikilinking of bare dates. As I understand it, the wording was written very carefully to avoid that requirement. Lightmouse (talk) 21:27, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I am doubtful I have misunderstood. The section is part of an MOS which applies equally to all relevant articles, with its emphasis in allowing personal user choice to prevail. The illustrated examples of when not to link dates cannot be conscrued to mean applying the brackets are optional, or even discouraged.--Huaiwei (talk) 06:55, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Whether MOS does or does not require a comma, I think it would be a good idea to insert a comma if the <tt> January 1 2008 </tt> format is used. User preferences are enabled only for those who are logged in, which many readers are not. For them, either <tt> January 1, 2008 </tt> or <tt> 1 January 2008 </tt> would probably be more visually appealing. Black Falcon (Talk) 07:06, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * If the wikitext says January 1 2008, it displays as January 1 2008 (with a comma) for *everyone*, including users without a date preference setting or not logged in. I have no problem with adding it if other changes are being made, but it's definitely a "trivial edit" on its own. Gimmetrow 07:17, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

The aim is to correct broken dates. I have no opinion on the comma issue but it sounds fine to me. I would be unhappy if the scope was increased to creating more links that add to the sea of blue and serve no purpose for me. Lightmouse (talk) 09:13, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * MOSNUM does not insist on the autoformatting of full dates; rather, it says merely that they "can" be autoformatted. In view of the list of significant disadvantages in the current autoformatting system—widely recognised and as yet unaddressed by by developers at MediaWiki, despite entreaties—it is just fine not to autoformat. However, the raw date formats within an article MUST be consistent whether autoformatted or not, since only a tiny fraction of readers have the autoformatted version displayed. TONY   (talk)  10:49, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. That is what I thought. I agree fully with your other comments. The bullet points in wp:mosnum (quoted above) need to be considered too. This issue is ideal bot fodder. If anyone wants to take it on and wants some regex examples, please see User:Lightmouse/javascript conversion. Lightmouse (talk) 11:07, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Unclosed ref tags
When an article includes inline citations and a ref tag is not closed properly, all the text after the reference "disappears" (though it is still visible in the edit screen). Is there a bot which can look for unclosed ref tags and close them, or, if there isn't, could one be made? Disappearing text is quite a common problem (judging from the number of threads I have seen about it at various noticeboards), and I think that such a bot would be very helpful to the Wikipedia. Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 13:32, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * A bot (or rather, toolserver script) could very easily go through and compile a list of mainspace pages where the number of regex matches for something like does not equal the number of matches for , and hence there are unclosed citations somewhere; but a bot to actually fix problems like this would be much, much harder.  Where does the bot place the   tag?  After the end of the citation template?  But what if extra notes have been added after the template proper? What about references which don't use citation templates?  There are far too many possibilities to be able to create a bot that could fix problems like this reliably in all but the simplest situations. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 13:46, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks - I see what you mean! DuncanHill (talk) 13:53, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I used to run this report (And, User:Smackbot ran the task), it cannot be run from toolserver (we don't have access to page text). The only way I found to do it, was to manually parse the monthly database dumps. I haven't had time to do so in quite a while (took days to run iirc). Also, there are several templates to look out for, outside of .... HTH SQL <sup style="font-size: 5pt;color:#999">Query me!  14:43, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Wow, how they grow! :) The present DB Dump is 3.2Gb (probably 30Gb or so uncompressed) compressed... I'll download it, and see what I can do about putting up further lists like the old User:SQL/Reflist. Will likely take up to a week... SQL <sup style="font-size: 5pt;color:#999">Query me!  14:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * As of the last DB dump, actually, I didn't find any, but, I just realized that my old project wasn't the same as this one (was ref tags with no corresponding reflist) SQL <sup style="font-size: 5pt;color:#999">Query me!  20:27, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Im sorry to say SQL that your method of checking for missing ref sections is broken, (Ive done several thousand edits adding them and Im less than half way done). βcommand 2 17:03, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Out of curiosity, what heuristics are you using to "fix" them (I assume you don't mean edits by hand!)? <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 17:37, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I have a tool that flags pages that need fixed, it looks for and then looks for ]] (talk) local time:, server time: 11:30, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I would be willing to take this on. If you could put up the common ways to write the values you're referring to, I'll see how easily they can translate to regular expressions. The only problem I can see at the moment is finding the pages needing to be changed; I'll probably have to search the most recent database dump for them. It's 11 days old at this point so the results will be somewhat dated, but I think it will give us somewhere to start anyway.-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  08:06, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Request for deletion page maintenance bot
We've recently had a request at Wikipedia talk:Miscellany for deletion for a bot which might be able to maintain the page, including archiving closed days and keeping the old business marker five days back. It is, as I'm sure you will gather, a truly enthralling task for any editor. Would there be any way to set up a bot to automate these tasks? And, if yes, how would we go about setting up the bot? John Carter (talk) 01:07, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll take this one, I already have a lot of the code needed. Before I start, please answer this:
 * Two tasks: Archiving the old transcluded dates from WP:MFD to the archive and moving the active discussions/old business marker
 * Is this for MfD only, or all deletion pages?
 * --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹoɟʇs (st47) 01:33, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I am very grateful for the quick response. I'm assuming that at least initially only MfD. I honestly hadn't thought about trying to set it up for any of the other XfDs. John Carter (talk) 01:40, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks ST47 (and to John for making this request here, I wasn't sure where to go), I think that many, if not all, of the other XfDs have bots doing one or both of these functions. TfD does and theirs seems to advance their old business marker the way we'd want it done (but they use 7 days MfD uses 5 - the only important thing here is that it only advances at midnight on the 6th day so that ALL discussions have gone through a full 5 day discussion period).  Unlike the other XfD's, MfD doesn't have multiple discussions on a single "log" page, each discussion is a separate subpage.  Once all discussions for a day have been moved to Miscellany_for_deletion the day is archived, which is a pretty simple process.  But often closed discussions are not moved by the closing admin to Closed discussions.  Is it possible for the bot to go through once a day (say, when advancing the marker) and also clean up any closed discussions by moving them to Miscellany_for_deletion?  This would involve changing  to *Miscellany for deletion/Example discussion and moving the link.  We currently add the result after the closed brackets but that could probably be omitted if it would be difficult for the bot.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 04:26, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Did You Know
A system which will undertake the process of archiving old Did you know hooks, refresh the relevant clock and the Next updates page, and post templates at the appropriate talk pages, leaving to the administrators only the task of updating the transcluded template.

1. On Template:Did you know/Next update/Clear there shall be an invisible time-stamp, which shall be copied to Template:Did you know/Next update every time that page needs to be cleared after an update (see #6).
 * Sequence

2. For an update, an administrator shall replace the old hooks with the new ones in Template:Did you know, copying the time-stamp as well; if the time-stamp is not copied, an error message shall be displayed.

3. The bot shall compare the time-stamps of T:DYK and T:DYK/N on each edit of the former; when these time-stamps are identical, that will signify an update, and the bot shall read the immediately previous version of the page, and copy the hooks.

4. The bot shall subsequently insert the copied hooks in the Recent additions page, exactly as they were before their substitution; the only edit that it will do to them shall be to make the time-stamp visible, in order to aid browsing of the archives.

5. Then, the bot shall read the credits, locate the new hooks' articles' talk pages and post the template on each. Then, it shall read the hook nominators' and article creators' names and post at their talk pages templates and  respectively; in order to distinguish nominators from creators, a standard way of writing credits will need to be enforced, possibly but not necessarily by means of a template.

6. Having finished with the credits, the bot shall clear T:DYK/N, copying the template's empty version from T:DYK/N/C along with the time-stamp, so that it shall no longer be the same as that of T:DYK.

7. Finally, it shall refresh the clock, showing that everything is in order; if the clock is not reset several minutes after an update, that shall be an indicator of a problem.

Previous discussion here

The Duke of Waltham (talk) and Art LaPella (talk) 05:50, 15 April 2008 (UTC)


 * A couple things jump to mind. Archiving to recent additions can be triggered by an edit summary, and it strikes me that admins would do that more reliably than a hidden timestamp. The notices to creator/nom take a long time and I'm surprised someone active at DYK did not write a script for that a long time ago. Gimmetrow 06:36, 15 April 2008 (UTC)


 * It sounds simple enough... The problems start when someone forgets to use the key-word in the summary. Many administrators updating the list are not as experienced as one might expect. Waltham, The Duke of 07:03, 15 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Well I guess nobody else is going to go for this. This is a big project, so it would take a while. Gimmetrow 08:09, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Much appreciated, Gimmetrow. Take your time... (leaves an envelope with £100 on the table) And here's a little something for your expenses. Call me if you need more. Waltham, The Duke of 10:57, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Warning history
Could a bot be made or configured to check a talk page's history for the last level of warning received and display it to opted-in users (somehow, maybe with something in their monobook.js). This was suggested at WP:VPP and it sounds like a great idea. I don't know if it's possible but it would be useful. Thanks in advance, <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:#008000">George D. Watson  (Dendodge). Talk Help 17:23, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * This could be done entirely with JavaScript without any kind of a bot, and far more efficiently too. Try making a request at the user scripts request page. My JavaScript skills are rather limited, but if no one gets to it by the weekend I might try doing it myself.-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  19:38, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Null edits to clean out Category:Unknown-importance album articles
Someone's going to love me for this one. There's almost 50000 articles in Category:Unknown-importance album articles. Could someone quickly conduct a null edit on the talk pages which would force the articles into Category:Unknown-importance Album articles? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:25, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Same for the 3k or so at Category:Low-importance album articles. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:25, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Instead of continuing to come back here, could someone just do a quick check at Special:WantedCategories? Someone changed some major templates and there's plenty of articles requiring null edits to clear categories. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm working on the first one, but can I ask why it's necessary to clear them immediately, rather than waiting for them to work through the job queue? <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Part of the issue was that the old categories were still in use in, so several thousand articles were actually correctly tagged into that category. Now that I've redirected those category links, the number of articles in the category is falling rapidly. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 16:35, 13 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Is it a job queue issue? I saw some that had been there for quite a while and was wondering about it.  If it's just a time thing, then might as well wait. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 17:15, 13 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I'll just say that it has been a few days and yet 41k articles are still in that directory (starting at B and going forward so it doesn't look like new ones). How long would it take to get through the job queue? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:34, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

OTRS templates
I do a lot of moving of free images to the Commons. Some of the best candidates for moving to Commons are images with OTRS permission on file, because the free license is confirmed by the copyright holder and is basically rock-solid. However, I found when moving these images via CommonsHelper that multiple templates have been used to tag this images with OTRS permission, and only one of them - PermissionOTRS - is recognized by Commons. So when an image is moved over with another OTRS template, a lot of hand-massaging is required to get the permission details straight on the Commons side. The redundant OTRS templates, PermissionOTRS-ID, ConfirmationOTRS, ConfirmationImageOTRS, and Confirmation (itself a redirect to ConfirmationOTRS) have now been deprecated in favor of PermissionOTRS. However, the deprecated templates are still transcluded on hundreds/thousands of pages, making manual replacement time-consuming and difficult. It would be great if a bot could replace the deprecated templates with PermissionOTRS.

Unfortunately it's not as simple as a simple replacement of the template name...the OTRS ticket number needs to be carried over, and the deprecated templates use a slightly different format. While PermissionOTRS uses the parameter "id=ticket number", PermissionOTRS-ID simply includes the bare ticket number after a pipe as its sole parameter, while the other three templates (Confirmation, ConfirmationOTRS, and ConfirmationImageOTRS) use the parameter "otrs=ticket number" to identify the ticket.

Can someone with a bot help out with this? Kelly hi! 22:11, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I've done, but , and  have extra information (source URL, usually, but also license for the last one) which can't be displayed on the  template.  I don't think this information should be lost. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 20:54, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The information isn't really "lost", it's in the OTRS ticket-referenced e-mail. The license is in the image's license tag, also. The information will be stripped off anyway when the image is transferred to the Commons. Kelly  hi! 23:26, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Christianity Banner addition.
Need a BOT help ! I am from WikiProject Christianity. There are other wikiprojects that are subsets of this project, but uses different independant banners. The idea is to add WikiProject Christianity banners to those project articles but doesnt have the ChristianityWikiProject banner

The work is to :-

Step 1) Identify article talk pages WITH banners Project Catholicism, Anglicanismproject , Orthodoxyproject ,CharismaticWikiProject , WikiProject Lutheranism , WP Adventist , WikiProject Oriental Orthodoxy JWProject and WITHOUT '' the Banner ChristianityWikiProject

Step 2) Add  to all the above talk pages.

Make sure you dont add the ChristianityWikiProject banner to already existing talkpages.

Who can take this up? Thanks in advance. - Tinucherian (talk) 17:04, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
 * It'd probably be simpler to just change all the extant banners in such a way as to also give assessments for the Christianity project. A few projects have already agreed to having their banners replaced by the main Christianity banner. The only one which has really objected to date is Messianic Judaism. It'd probably be easier to just wait a while until after the election and formally propose all the projects either alter their extant banners or start using the main Christianity banner. John Carter (talk) 17:43, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Hold : please hold the request - Tinucherian (talk) 17:59, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Template substitution
Can someone run a bot through this list and subst: the templates? Thanks! Vassyana (talk) 05:40, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Working it through AWB.  MBisanz  talk 06:08, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ I went through 70 and that cleared it.  §hep   •   ¡Talk to me!  22:16, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Bot to update category of US IB schools
I need a bot to find all items in Category:International Baccalaureate schools which are definitely in the United States and change the category to Category:International Baccalaureate schools in the United States. It's okay if you miss a few, I can pick up the stragglers by hand.

One possible technique is to see if any ancestor category is Category:Schools in the United States or better yet, Category:United States. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  23:52, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I've belated realized the category should be called Category:International Baccalaureate schools in the United States, with a lowercase "schools." davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  14:40, 19 April 2008 (UTC) new category created, articles already in category moved, old category marked speedy-c2, edited request above.  davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  15:00, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Fair use and living people
Could someone make a list of articles about Living people that contains a non-free image. There are still many NFCC#1 violations out there, and such a list will make it easier to find them. Rettetast (talk) 21:54, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Opera Project assessment process/1
The WP Opera Project is hoping to dip a toe in the assessment water. With the aid of SatyrTN's SatyrBot, we've already had a successful trial using a small subset of articles from an opera sub-project - Category:WikiProject Richard Wagner articles - and would now like to enable assessment for the rest. I contacted SatyrTN on 25 March, but he was busy. Subsequently, he's been absent from WP for 9 days, and I thought I'd try here. Here's what we would like a suitable Bot to do for us: We'd like a "Start" rating to be given automatically to those articles that are tagged with the Opera Project banner and are not already classified as Stub.

Exceptions: articles which have been promoted to Good Article, Featured Article or Featured List should show those ratings on the banner. Also, it would be good if any articles which currently show Stub on the banner but have been manually de-stubbed without the banner having been altered could be rated Start.

We'd also like the facility to comment when we start doing the assessments. For the Wagner project, SatyrTN organised it so that the banner carries a dormant link: if a comments page is present, there's a link, but if not, not. The link will nevertheless appear (and work) if a comments page is subsequently added.

I can give some examples of the various possibilities outlined above if that would help. Hoping for a helpful reply! --GuillaumeTell (talk) 16:36, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * You aren't anticipating using "B" class at all, apparently? John Carter (talk) 17:07, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think they're planning on starting all their articles as "start" and then upgrading them to "B" when they improve. Very good idea actually. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 17:18, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I can probably do this for you, although a few clarifications would help. Is this a fair summary of what you want done:
 * Assess all pages tagged with
 * If the article has a stub template on, put stubyes
 * If the article is FA or GA, put FA or GA
 * Else put start
 * Is that right? I'd also make a few suggestions: your article assessment subpage is at WikiProject Opera/Article ranking, when almost all other projects use Wikipedia:WikiProject Foo/Assessment. Moving the page at this early stage, before it starts attracting too many incoming links, would be much easier than at a later date, and would make it easier for people and automated processes to find your assessment page (for instance, when I was researching this task I typed WikiProject Opera/Assessment in directly and then had to search to find the page when I realised that it wasn't at the common title).  And, as a project developing the functionality of your banner, I'd recommend you use, a meta-template for project banners which makes it very easy to add or remove functionality from the banner with minimal fuss.  Check out the documentation to see some of the possibilities - it can get very complicated if you want it to, but it can also be very simple; if you're interested, I'd be happy to convert the banner for you (I created the meta-template, so I hope I know what I'm doing :D).  If you can confirm that the summary above is correct I can get to work. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 17:15, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much for the speedy and helpful reply. Yes, your summary is correct, though most opera stubs are already tagged .  As I mentioned above, there may, however, be some articles so tagged which aren't in a Stub category (because someone has destubbed the article but hasn't altered the tag).  We'd like the Stub assessment in the tag to be changed to Start for these, if that's possible.
 * Also, I've moved the assessment page as you suggested above. And please do convert the banner to improve its functionality.  I've had a look at the documentation, and (before my eyes glazed over) the only thing that struck me was that I couldn't see any provision in the Assessment section for a link or dormant link to a Comments page, as mentioned towards the end of my request up above.  Have I missed it somewhere?
 * (Oh, and in relation to John Carter's remark, you're correct that we do intend to use "B", but first we need to sift through all the Starts - when created - to see if any are currently worthy of "B". There were several in the Wagner subset.)
 * I hope I'm making myself clear - contact me via my Talk page if it isn't appropriate to go into the real nitty-gritty here. Thanks again. --GuillaumeTell (talk) 15:15, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay on this, I'm busy at the moment but I'll make time at the weekend. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 20:32, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * No problem. I'll be around if you have any questions. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Guillaume</b><i style="color:blue;">Tell</i> 21:16, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
 * So much for that. If anyone who's already got the script coded up wants to take this, go ahead - it's not fair me stringing you out like this just because I can't find the time to throw together a hundred lines of code.  I'll get round to this eventually if no one else does it before I find the time.  Sorry for screwing you around. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:02, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Bot to replace Werdnabot
There most likely is a bot that has already replaced this one but I haven't been able to find it. Does anyone have the information? Mkdw talk 06:02, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
 * ClueBot III does the same job, but with a different setup - see documentation for setup here. &mdash; E  talk aussie 07:01, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Category:Images on Wikimedia Commons
There is currently a sizable backlog at Category:Images on Wikimedia Commons. For those unfamiliar with the category: these are images that exist on Commons under a different name and that should be deleted once the occurrences of the Wikipedia image have been replaced by the Commons image. Naturally, this is a pain in the neck to do manually, especially since some of these images have a dozen occurrences. I suppose a simple tweak of Twinkle could automate the process, so could a bot. There's a similar category Category:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons for images that exist on Commons under the same name so a bot could easily go through images in Category:Images on Wikimedia Commons and This is probably a cinch to program but it would be a big big timesaver. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 14:24, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
 * verify that the corresponding Commons image is a bit-for-bit copy of the Wikipedia image (MetsBot already does this)
 * if the images are indeed identical, replace occurrences on en.wiki by the Commons image
 * move the image to Category:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons
 * Please see Bots/Requests for approval/BetacommandBot Task 9 βcommand 14:25, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Stats on long-term unreverted vandalism
I think this can be done with API or DB dump queries, which is why I am asking here as I don't have the technical skill for such things. I was wondering if there was a way to gets stats on long-term unreverted vandalism. It is unfortunate that rollbacks don't have edit summaries, but I'm sure someone could generate a list of edits that were either undos, rollbacks, or had "rvv", "rv", "revert", "revert vandalism", etc. in the edit summaries, but were made a month or more after the previous edit. Or maybe two weeks or more. Or a range of times to see what the distribution is. Hopefully most of the edits will be only a few minutes or hours after the previous one, but it is the volume of the long tail that I am interested in. How long does the really long-term unreverted vandalism stay there for, and (impossible to find out) how much is out there that hasn't been found yet? Example. Carcharoth (talk) 13:51, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * you might make a toolserver querty request. βcommand 2 23:53, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Where do I make that request? Carcharoth (talk) 12:28, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't there be a page for toolserver users? There's one for user-scripts and bot, but nothing for toolserver requests.  — Dispenser 02:07, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Query service SQL <sup style="font-size: 5pt;color:#999">Query me!  02:37, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. As my technical know-how is rather slim, and I only came back here because someone dropped these examples of 6-MONTH-OLD vandalism on my talk page, could someone else offer to take things from here? Carcharoth (talk) 22:10, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Template documentation
Resolved.

Replace "" with "" and some more work, on template pages.

For several reasons documentation for templates is put on /doc subpages. In the old days such documentation was made visible on the template page itself by putting between two   tags. Nowadays we instead use the template documentation that causes a nice green box with links to the /doc page and the /sandbox page etc. See shortcut for an example how it looks.

I still frequently find templates that use the old code. I do not know how many are still out there but it can be anything between some hundred to a couple of thousand.

The templates Template doc and Documentation, template have also been used but are now redirected to. They are together currently used on about 2600 pages.

Here is the detailed request:

Replace all the following exact strings on pages in the template namespace:

Replace them with this string: ""

Do NOT replace occurrences of the all upper case "".

Only replace them if they are between  tags. (Or if it is easier to detect, only if they are not on a page that ends with "/doc" like "Template:Something/doc" or "Template:Something/Something/doc". But I think this will be slightly less robust.)

Unfortunately some of the affected pages are fully protected. I could have good use of a list of the affected pages that the bot could not edit, so I can edit them manually.

--David Göthberg (talk) 06:01, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Lists of pages using  should be created, as should a list of all protected templates which do not currently transclude, but this task should not be automated, or should be automated only very, very slowly (I'm talking 1 edit/10 minutes).  The documentation system was created for a reason: so that templates wouldn't have to be edited as often! 2600 templates each transcluded on an average of what, 500 pages? Bang, that's 1.3 million recaches. It's probably closer to 2500 pages each, which would push five million. Don't hit the servers with that all at once - take it easy, do them one at a time.  Actually, come to think of it, perhaps a slow-running script (on an admin account so it can do the complete list) wouldn't be that bad an idea, but editing all these templates at 10epm would put an unnecessary load on the servers.  It's something that needs to be done, but we shouldn't put ourselves in too much of a rush to do it right now. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 20:31, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Also note that expanding the redirects is completely unnecessary now that they are simply hard-redirected. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 20:31, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Happy-melon: You are partially right. Editing the redirects is unnecessary. I have striked them out.
 * But I thought changing the strings is not supposed to put the pages that use those templates into the job queue anymore? Since  should exist in and only be changed if it is between   tags. And nowadays MediaWiki is smart about that. Right?
 * --David Göthberg (talk) 22:15, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * In the meantime, I've compiled a list of all pages transcluding as of the last database dump (with the ones fixed since removed and divided into lists of protected and unprotected pages) in my sandbox. There are only 157 of them. If it's decided that fixing them at high speed wouldn't destroy the site, I could do the unprotected ones in AWB; either way an admin will have to get the other ones.-- Dycedarg   &#x0436;  03:52, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Dycedarg: Oh, splendid! Thanks! Only 157? He, I was expecting a couple of thousand, that's why I did this bot request.
 * Since most of them probably need some other brushing up of how they use the /doc page I think I will work them through by hand. You or anyone else are of course welcome to help out with that. I copied your list from your sandbox to Template documentation/List to free up your sandbox, since it might take some time before we have worked through the list.
 * Could you also do a list of templates that transclude upper-case /DOC pages? That is, that use in their code? It would be very nice. (Those ones will need more work fixing since that involves moving the /DOC page to /doc.)
 * --David Göthberg (talk) 10:30, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I've finished all the admin ones - this isn't nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be. 150 templates is not going to crash the servers, even if there were a couple in the top-500 most-used in there (I got a time-out on the co-ordinates one). The unprotected ones shouldn't be any problem.  Once we get through these and the equivalents for /DOC, we (well, those who can :D) should finish the job and (slowly!) add  to everything in an intersection of "is fully-protected" and "in Template: namespace" and not "transcludes ". <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:49, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I can't find any pages with in them at all; I guess they've been fixed already.-- Dycedarg   &#x0436;  19:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, good to hear. Thanks for everything Dycedarg.
 * --David Göthberg (talk) 00:55, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I just found this - seems there are more possibilities still to sort out. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 14:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Every time I do template replacement I'm amazed by how many different ways people find to transclude the same template for the same purpose. Anyway, I've run a search for and put it on the page with the others. There were 76 of them. If you find still more variants post them here and I'll search again.-- Dycedarg   &#x0436;  22:49, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Opera Project assessment process/2
GuillaumeTell's explanatory message is above (see Opera Project assessment process/1). Our original bot driver (SatyrTN) is moving house. Happy Melon thought he could help us, but it didn't work out for technical reasons. I wonder whether anyone else could hep us with our assessments set-up? Best wishes from an obscure corner of WP facing the prospect of severe long-term bot-deprivation. --Kleinzach (talk) 02:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Replacement of Template:CommonsImageSummary
Request a bot replacement of CommonsImageSummary with Information for standardization. CommonsImageSummary was apparently used before the en Wikipedia version of Information was made compliant with the Commons version. So far as I can tell all parameters work the same, and the only thing that needs to be changed is the template name. Kelly hi! 03:37, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Also ImageSummary, please - it apparently uses the same parameters and was the old version in use before Information. Kelly  hi! 05:26, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Why not just redirect CommonsImageSummary to Information if the parameters are the same? It would save a lot of unnecessary editing. As for ImageSummary, that could be redirected too, but it has a parameter for the location of the image and the others do not, so that would need to be addressed somehow.-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  21:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I would ordinarily just redirect, but these templates don't transfer correctly when images are transferred to Commons. By changing them to Information, it ensures correct transfers. Also, the "location" problem was fixed so that it displays in Information so that info isn't lost, see these edits by MECU. Kelly  hi! 21:42, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, that makes sense. As there are only ~250 images needing to be fixed I can do this in AWB.-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  22:46, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  23:49, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Dycedarg! I have nominated the old templates for deletion. Kelly  hi! 23:57, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone know of a bot that fixes links to sections as the sections get archived?
I'm not just talking about auto-archived pages; I would love to able to run a bot on my userpage that would check to make sure section links still work, and if they don't, then make an intelligent guess what the name of the most recent archive is and look for the section link there, and update my userpage to reflect the change. Has anyone written a bot to do this yet?
 * And while I'm asking, does anyone know of a tool that helps in creating wikilinks? What I have in mind is something that would create the link Bot requests on this page, by reading the title of the editing box and the section title at the top of this edit screen, or better yet, simply copy it to my clipboard, so that I don't have to.  - Dan Dank55 (talk) 16:00, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
 * AnchorLinkBot used to do update section links but has stopped now. I have some source somewhere (in C) if anyone is interested. -- maelgwn - talk 11:13, 26 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I'll ask around. It seems to me it would be a huge help for everyone not to have to babysit links when they get archived.  Another question: Is there a bot that can do a "WhatLinksHere" for section headings?  We have a serious need for that on style guidelines pages. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:07, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
 * ClueBot III does this for sections it archives. It doesn't do it for things that it doesn't archive, though.  -- Cobi(t 22:33, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Milton Keynes renamed
Could someone quickly change everything in Template:WikiProject Milton Keynes to the one it is redirect to, Template:WikiProject Buckinghamshire? There's only about 100 articles to change. Thanks! -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:47, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * all you need is a template redirect. βcommand 01:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, I don't see that at WP:TFD. Would I be going to WP:RFD or WP:RM and have the redirect deleted or move made first, and then the articles transferred?  -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:38, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Just leave it as it is. βcommand 02:39, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ Templates updated.   CWii ( Talk  17:39, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Reguest under MoS(flags)
Before I knew there was an MoS guideline, I had inserted Image:Red Army flag (Fictitious).svg in all articles that are part of the. I am not experienced in writing bots, and have no desire to be, but I'm sure that someone has a written one that can be easily used to remove these images from the selected articles, and would appreciate this help.--mrg3105 (comms) ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ 04:11, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ hopefully i got them all -- maelgwn - talk 06:08, 26 April 2008 (UTC)


 * You got most, and some other editors pitched in before I had a chance to look in. The last one was deleted manually just a short time ago. Thank you. I really should learn how to write bots since I can see potential usefulness in some of the things I'm doing--mrg3105 (comms) ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ 13:29, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Category:Album articles without infoboxes cleanup
A decent-sized task. There are about 1900 articles in Category:Album articles without infoboxes. A bot would need to (1) Go to the article page for the talk page listed; (2) Check if the article uses Infobox Album and if it does, (3) go back to the article talk page and remove the "|needs-infobox=yes" parameter from album. I hope that's not too hard. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 10:10, 21 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Kinda, but not really. I can prepare a list.  Q  T C 15:07, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Meh, I'll leave this to somebody else, I hate having to deal with unicode/utf and not an easy way to SQL it afaik. Q  T C 15:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I tried using a query, but it seems to me that the templates don't work as expected. For example On My Own Two Feet uses an infobox and the corresponding talk page is in Album articles without infoboxes. However the parameter needs-infobox is set to no. So why is it in the category? I tested some articles from my query results and this is the case for all of 'm. --Erwin85 (talk) 21:04, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Probably my fault - I never guessed that anyone would specify no. I think I've fixed this at the source - just wait for the category to empty through the job queue. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:18, 21 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry I asked. Seem to be nothing but trouble for you Happy.  =( -- Ricky81682 (talk) 03:22, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Dont know if the queue has been work through long enough but here's the list as it stands now (using E85's SQL). Q  T C 09:18, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The job queue is still recovering from a server-clock-error which suspended all the maintenance scripts on wikimedia wikis, so it's currently standing at about eleven million (average is about 800,000!). It will get there eventually... <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 18:44, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Just ran the query again, output here. If anybody is still going to work through these. Q T C 01:15, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Bot to replace inactive NrhpBot
User:NrhpBot only ran for a while in July of 2007. I'm seeking someone to write a bot that can take all red links of List of Registered Historic Places in Ohio and create stubs for each place from the NRIS database and tag articles with: Ohio-NRHP-struct-stub, Fill out a Infobox nrhp, and Category:Registered Historic Places in Ohio and tag the talk pages with. Can this be done? Thanks! §hep  •   ¡Talk to me!  2008-04-10 6:29 pm (UTC-4)


 * I guess code wouldn't even have to written from scratch, just modified. See NrhpBot coding here: link.  §hep   •   ¡Talk to me!  22:54, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Need a bot to find corrupted REFLIST outputs.
When   tag is deleted by a later edit) the entire reflist output becomes corrupted. Editors do not always notice this because the problem is way at the bottom. This can however be easily fixed by simply restoring the missing data and tag. So far I have found and fixed two such cases here and here (scroll through the "References" section to see the problem). Additionally what is happening is that the article text you see inside the References section ought to be displaying in the article but instead it is being hidden at the point where the tag is missing until the next tag is encountered. Pretty ugly problem.

Can a bot be built to spot this problem and add a category tag {Category:Articles with damaged reflists to be repaired} ? If a bot can find affected pages I can try and fix the problem by reviewing what changes happened later and restoring the /ref without disrupting whatever edits followed. If a bot cannot do this what about the reflist software being modified to spot problems as it builds the output? -- Low Sea (talk) 21:39, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Bot requests/Archive 19 may be of interest to you. <font face="Harlow Solid Italic"><font size="2px" color="teal"> « Gonzo fan2007 (talk ♦ contribs) 01:03, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the information Gonzo fan, looks like I am not the only one seeing this. One possible algorithm would be to count the number of bytes between the tags. An abnormally large number of bytes would be a high probability of an error. Report could simply identify "Article=ExamplePage, Largest Refblock=1,234 bytes." and list them on a page in largest first order. -- Low Sea (talk) 06:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, please do something like this. Just don't fix with a bot, but a list of broken pages is urgently needed. I would say use a category, but I would prefer a list so that the size of the problem can be assessed as well. Ultimately, I hope there is a bugzilla report where broken ref tags automatically populate a category and also (politely) prompt the editor to fix before saving. Carcharoth (talk) 07:10, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Can a Category tag handle a parameter? As in {Category:Articles with large REF blocks|1234} so that this number would show up on the Category list page? -- Low Sea (talk) 13:27, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

The best way would be to wait for the patch from bug 12757 to be reviewed and committed. Max S em(Han shot first!) 13:49, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * That patch will be most welcome to prevent future problems, but we need something like a bot to track down existing pages that are in need of repair. -- Low Sea (talk) 00:19, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I would support a bot or something/anything that would help editors track these down - it does seem to crop up a lot at the help desk or VPT. DuncanHill (talk) 15:09, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Creating redirects
I'm requesting a bot that would go through a single page defined by me (page would be able to be changed) and create redirects to the main link (most pages based on a template). For example on this page, if the first link is blue it would redirect all links in that specific template to that blue link. I don't know of a bot that does this. Thanks. <font color="#CCCCCC">Di <font color="#A9A9A9">v <font color="#969696">i <font color="#808080">d <font color="#6E6E6E">i <font color="#595959">n <font color="#424242">g 17:06, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll Try this..   CWii ( Talk  17:44, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've created a bot that will do this automatically. The request for this is at Bots/Requests for approval/John Bot II 2.   CWii ( Talk  20:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ awhile ago :P   CWii ( Talk  19:37, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Purging subpages
I tagged Ecuador category talk pages with Template:WikiProject Ecuador to place the categories in Category:Category-Class Ecuador pages. This also placed the categories in Category:WikiProject Ecuador articles. Categories are not articles, so I modified Template:WikiProject Ecuador to fix this. The categories still appear in Template:WikiProject Ecuador. One way to fix this is to, for example, open each category page and save them to purge the page. That takes a lot of time. Is there a bot that can purge each page listed in Category:Category-Class Ecuador pages so that I don't have to open up each category page and save? Gimmetrow did purge the Category:Category-Class Ecuador pages pages, but this issue comes up every so often for me and I would like to know where to make such a purge request in the future. Thanks. GregManninLB (talk) 01:57, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * just wait the servers will update those pages in due time. βcommand 2 18:01, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * MelonBot does this occasionally, but only when it's urgently needed - if it's not vital for statistics or something, just wait for them to work through the job queue. More specifically for this instance though, if you look in Category:Category-Class articles (and note the name of the master category) you'll see that a good 90% of projects use the (admittedly slightly counterintuitive) convention of "Category-Class Foo articles, although some have adopted the "page" syntax.  You might want to consider using Category:Category-Class Ecuador articles rather than "...pages". You might also want to consult with WikiProject Ecuador about this change, as the Category:WikiProject Foo articles category is often used as a parent category for all pages (articles and not) in the scope of a project.  Again, the naming convention of "articles" is just that, convention (some projects just use Category:WikiProject Foo).  Just a few thoughts. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:18, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Delivery of a note
I'm working on letting possibly interested editors know about Meetup/DC 4. Does someone have a bot who would deliver a standard note to everyone on a list of editors - very similar to a WikiProject newsleter?

I've compiled a list of editors who posted on the page for the prior meetup, but haven't indicated whether or not they will attend this meetup. The list is at Wikipedia talk:Meetup/DC 4. The proposed note to go to each person on that list is at Wikipedia talk:Meetup/DC 4/Proposed reminder note - May 1.

Thanks in advance for any help on this! -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:39, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I can, just leave a note on my talkpage. βcommand 2 21:54, 30 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Done. Thanks. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:57, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Inactivity by users
There are two cases I can think of where inactivity by Wikipedians is a concern. The first is WikiProjects, where participant lists can often give the impression of activity when the members have actually mostly been gone for more than a year! Of course, we don't know if active members are active related to the project, but we can certainly say that people who haven't edited Wikipedia for a long time are inactive. I think all projects should strive to keep these lists up to date, moving inactive people to an inactive list and then deleting them. As for how long it takes to become 'inactive', that's a subjective matter, but a bot could surely be programmed to see how long it was since a user's last edit and take an action if it meets a certain minimum (perhaps specified by each project?).

Another is the somewhat controversial subject of article maintenance. Here it is vital that 'maintainers'/'stewards'/whatever-you-want-to-call-them are currently active. If you are maintaining and/or working on an article you must have made an edit within a certain amount of time, otherwise you should be removed as a maintainer (and template:maintained taken down if there is nobody else). It's a very bad look to present someone as a maintainer when they are no longer active, especially when they have been gone for more than a year.

Notifications to the talk page of the person removed would be a good idea too. This isn't a request for a bot as such, but more a question of whether it could be done and how it would work, and any general feedback on the idea. I'd probably have to take these issues to the WikiProject Council and perhaps the village pump for the maintained thing first before I can come up with a specific request. Richard001 (talk) 02:45, 26 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I also wish there was a better protocol for removing inactive people from projects. Has the community discussed this issue before? --Adoniscik(t, c) 02:21, 28 April 2008 (UTC)


 * No idea. What would be the best place - VP proposals? I wouldn't even mind having different colours for users based on how long they have been away, so you don't have to check their contribs all the time to see if you're talking to a ghost. Would probably require too much in terms of resources to keep it up to date though. Richard001 (talk) 09:39, 28 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I have brought it up at WP:VPPR, though it doesn't seem there will be any objection to such a bot's existence (it's more how it gets used for WikiProjects that is relevant). If someone thinks they could make something like this I'd like to hear from them. Richard001 (talk) 06:54, 30 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I do have a tool to filter a list of users by their last edit. βcommand 2 15:10, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Category:Ligue 1 seasons
Hi there guys. Any chance someone could do me a favour by creating a bot that will rename all of the articles in this category so that the years are in the format "YYYY-YY"? The reason for this is because that is the format used by the majority of other football-related articles, and therefore the remainder should be retitled to follow the same standard. Any help with this would be much appreciated. – PeeJay 23:11, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I could write a script to do this easily enough. To be clear: All you want is the date format changed. Thus Division 1 season 1993/1994 would be moved to Division 1 season 1993-94. Correct?-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  00:32, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is correct. Any further changes to the name of each article I could do myself, but considering there's nearly 100 articles there, I couldn't possibly do this task myself at this time. – PeeJay 00:37, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, I'm writing the script for this now. I should be able to actually do it within an hour or two (I'll be monitoring it for safety's sake, and running it through my standard account as opposed to my bot account).-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  01:14, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ Fixed the double redirects too.-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  03:55, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Just a note, I ended up doing it under my bot account after all due to my forgetting to log out and back in. Also, I fixed the links on the navigation template.-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  04:47, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much mate. Job well done. – PeeJay 09:03, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, I almost forgot. Could you also make it so that each article is sorted by its year in this category? So, for example, Division 1 season 1993-94 would be sorted by "1993-94" and Ligue 1 season 2003-04 would be sorted by "2003-04". – PeeJay 09:11, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  21:08, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Sweet, thanks. That will be all :D – PeeJay 23:17, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * If we're going to this trouble, we should use the en-dash rather than the hyphen, per WP:MOS. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:21, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * What for? The difference is purely visual, and no one has an endash button on their keyboard, so typing the hyphen is so much easier both in naming the articles and in linking to them. – PeeJay 09:29, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Because if we don't follow the MoS when it's easy to do so, we might as well not have it at all. The MOS mandates that we use the ndash in page titles, and create a redirect from the same title but using a hyphen.  It's no extra effort, and it makes us look that bit more professional.  <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 10:40, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Should we perhaps take this opportunity to convert all season articles to use the endash in the article title then? – PeeJay 13:07, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I couldn't agree more. Go the whole hog.  Or else why have a MOS in the first place?  The Rambling Man (talk) 16:23, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * And curiously, look at thread following this one....! The Rambling Man (talk) 16:24, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately I don't have the MOS naming conventions memorized, or I could have reduced the amount of editing necessary for the task below. Anyway, these will get taken care of when I do that regardless.-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  18:46, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

What ab0ut 1999-2000? Rich Farmbrough, 13:14 29 April 2008 (GMT).
 * For whatever reason, it seems to be the de facto standard to write that as 1999-00, even though that makes absolutely no sense, because it matches the rest. In any case, I don't make up these rules, I just propagate them willy-nilly throughout the encyclopedia. You should probably be arguing this with whoever came up with it in the first place. Preferably before I go editing some 6900 articles with date ranges in them pertaining to the request below. (The request is specifically to do with en dashes only, but I could work in some changing of this if you could gain consensus for it if only because it is so very stupid looking.)-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  15:54, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I usually change article titles that say "1999-00" to say "1999-2000". It bugs me the other way. – PeeJay 20:03, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Search request
Would someone be able to take the list found at WikiProject Green Bay Packers/Infobox needed and search through all the articles for Infobox gridiron football person and create a list of those articles that lack that template? Thanks, <font face="Harlow Solid Italic"><font size="2px" color="teal"> « Gonzo fan2007 (talk ♦ contribs) @  '' 02:35, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Template:NFL player redirects to Infobox Gridiron football person so I made a list of all pages linked from WikiProject Green Bay Packers/Infobox needed that don't use said template. I used the database do this and put the list at . --Erwin85 (talk) 14:58, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you! <font face="Harlow Solid Italic"><font size="2px" color="teal"> « Gonzo fan2007 (talk ♦ contribs) @  '' 18:26, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Requested redirect migration
Could someone with a handy bot please migrate all usages of the redirect Painting to its target, Infobox Painting? It looks there are somewhere around 800-900 usages. The reason is that I would like to use Painting for a local copy of Commons:Template:Painting. Thanks! Kelly hi! 13:05, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
 * <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 17:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 10:45, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

UN/LOCODE redirects - add values to infoboxes
There are redirects from UN/LOCODEs in the form UN/LOCODE:ABCDE (see Category:Redirects from UN/LOCODE ), if such a redirect goes to a page that has a Template:Infobox Settlement a new variable un_locode should be added after the variable area_code and the value should be the 5 chars, e.g. USNYC for UN/LOCODE:USNYC. The value is currently not displayed, as agreed by Template_talk:Infobox_Settlement. UnLoCode (talk) 15:05, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Redlink removal
Is there a bot that will clean out redlinks from particular articles? I would like the redlinks removed from User:Ricky81682/Missing descriptions and the page might load better once it shrinks from its current huge size. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:10, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Well im sure one of the cluebots does this at some point for one of its clerking tasks.  ·Add§hore·  <sup style="color:blue;">T alk /<sub style="color:blue;">C ont 06:29, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅, and if you want me to do it again, just leave a note on my talk page.-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  17:36, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
 * THANKS! -- Ricky81682 (talk) 18:05, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Your quite welcome.-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  02:01, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Tag Genetics stubs with poject template
WikiProject Genetics is a new WikiProject. Would you please have a bot tag the talk pages of all the articles in Category:Genetics stubs with. If the bot can determine that the article is unreferenced, please have the bot use |unref=yes as well. Thanks. GregManninLB (talk) 01:58, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Also, if this is allowed, can you have a bot post a notice on the talk pages of Wikipedians interested in genetics to let them know about the new WikiProject Genetics. Thanks. GregManninLB (talk) 02:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)


 * It is allowed, but you should specify the message so that a bot owner doesn't have to guess at it. -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 19:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The tagging with User:John Bot.   CWii ( Talk  21:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)


 * ✅ mostly.   CWii ( Talk  00:41, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Free image cleanup bot
I would like to propose a bot to help start to clean up the formatting of descriptions/source/authorship information on at least some of our free images. New uploads are now including Information with correct fields filled in based on choices made during upload, but our older images are lacking this in most cases. Many also lack descriptions...often the uploader relied on the context of the image's usage for a description, but as images are orphaned over time due to article changes, this context is lost...and as uploaders leave over time, we lose the chance to obtain this information.

I propose the bot do the following:
 * 1) Search for images with the license tags self, PD-self, and GFDL-self that have only a single uploader.
 * 2) Place the Information template on the page if it is not already present.
 * 3) Place the text "user-made" in the "Source" field.
 * 4) Place a link to uploader's userpage in the "Author" field.
 * 5) Place the license tag in the "Permission" field. Personally, I think it would be useful to convert PD-self to PD-user, GFDL-self to GFDL-user and self to add the optional "author" parameter to make the source of the license more clear in the event of image renaming, copying, or other image maintenance.
 * 6) Grab any remaining stray text on the page and place in the "Description" field. If there is no description (i.e. the page contains nothing but the license tag), notify the uploader with {{subst:add-desc}}.

This should correct a lot of the entries we have in Category:Images with unknown source, since the authorship claim is clear when a user places the "self" license tags. And even if they do not return to add a description, the image will at least be categorized into Category:Images lacking a description for human attention. Kelly hi! 17:52, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Sounds great. I'd like to thanks Kelly for coming up with this proposal. One thing that should be added is analysing the upload date would help, as I think January 2006 was when the PD tag was deprecated. A date for when the "information" template came into widespread use (on the upload form?) would be good as well. Carcharoth (talk) 18:14, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, the date shouldn't matter for the "self" licenses, as those have stayed stable over time. I haven't yet thought of a good way to bot-sort the PD images, as they are a mishmash of all types of sources, from self-made images to the Library of Congress. It would help for a bot to automatically notify the uploaders of those images, without the message being a deletion warning for an image that could be fixed. But that's probably a job for another bot. Kelly  hi! 18:24, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * It would be interesting to see what the most linked to external website and internal links on the image pages. Image:Chaffinch47.jpg is one of many that links to www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de.  Also, find the most commonly used word might provided other patterns.  — Dispenser 00:35, 30 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I wish the best of luck to anyone who writes a bot to do this. You'd be amazed at the sort of garbage you find on image description pages. --Carnildo (talk) 21:40, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Request for new Bot: "ANI-Bot"
I had a brainstorm this morning and came up with this question:

Wouldn't it be convenient if Wikipedia had a bot that could read the ANI board and automatically notify those parties who are involved in a thread?

Let's say I were to reach a situation with a specific editor where I felt that it was necessary to bring that person to ANI. As a courtesy, someone needs to notify that editor that they and/or their recent activity are being discussed at ANI. But, sometimes it seems like it does nothing but further escalate the situation if the user bringing that editor to ANI is the one that notifies them. If a bot existed that could automatically do that, however....

The problem is, I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to most scripts, so I don't think I would be the right person to create the bot. I'd be more than happy to help maintain it and monitor its activities once it's created and running, but as far as the creation goes... --InDeBiz1 (talk) 22:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * How would the bot know who the active parties are? This would require someone having to put some special template on the ANI thread stating who the active parties were, which is probably more hassle than just leaving a note on the users talk page.  Also, I would rather someone warned we about a thread on ANI, not a bot.  If you feel that by notifying a party will make things worse, than one could just ask someone else to notify the party.  Personally I don't see the use for such a bot. <font face="Harlow Solid Italic"><font size="2px" color="teal"> « Gonzo fan2007  (talk ♦ contribs) @  '' 23:04, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I can see your argument and I'm not convinced that it's wrong. As I said, the idea came to me in a random brainstorm, so I thought I'd put it out there and see what folks thought about it.  I'm not emotionally attached to it or anything like that.  :)    --InDeBiz1 (talk) 23:08, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Haha well I'm glad to see that your not going to get all emotional on me   Lol, its a good idea, I just don't think bots are that smart ;-)  But who knows, maybe someone with the no-how will figure something out.  Cheers, <font face="Harlow Solid Italic"><font size="2px" color="teal"> « Gonzo fan2007  (talk ♦ contribs) @  '' 00:11, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Assessment request for WikiProject Africa

 * (Original request)

Could a bot please do the following for all pages in Category:Unassessed Africa articles:
 * If a stub tag appears on the main article, specify "class=Stub" for AfricaProject on the talk page.
 * If the talk page contains the banner of another WikiProject that has a valid "class=" assessment, apply the same assessment to AfricaProject.

The project's discussion for this request can be found here. Thank you, Black Falcon (Talk) 18:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll see what I can do.   CWii ( Talk  01:13, 30 April 2008 (UTC)


 * . I'm coding this.   CWii ( Talk  19:54, 30 April 2008 (UTC)


 * (User:John Bot)   CWii ( Talk  21:00, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

more bugs   CWii ( Talk  18:15, 3 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Betacommand will do this.   CWii ( Talk  18:18, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Image deletion bot
I know this has been proposed before and I know it'll be hard to have the community agree on this but I still think it would be worthwhile for a group of experienced bot operators to design a simple image deletion bot. (I also suppose that there have been many discussions in the past about this, though I'm not sure where to find them.) From what I understand, there hasn't been much complaint about the work of so the community might be more open to this. Specifically, I'm thinking about two tasks. Let me quickly make the case for this and give my thoughts on why and how these bots should operate and on how to sell this as a plus for everyone rather than a dangerous slippery slope. These are not difficult tasks to automate and so it's possible to write a very transparent bot code, which would go a long way into providing the insurances that the community will want before giving the green light to a deletion bot. Furthermore both tasks are as uncontroversial as they come and having admins performing them by hand is just a stupid waste of admin clicks. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 15:49, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) Automatic deletion of unused unfree images.
 * 2) Automatic deletion of MetsBot-approved Commons dupes.
 * 1) Deletion of unused unfree images is usually done rather carelessly by admins to start with. By that I mean that there are routinely images that are in fact used but remain in the category. Admins that use the Bad Old Ones tool seem to be oblivious to the fact that this tool never reports properly the actual usage of images. This has in the past resulted in broken links to images when Twinkle batch deletion is used. Moreover, a bot could check that the image is never used over the 7-day grace period, which admins don't do. All in all, a bot would likely do a better job than any admin does.
 * 2) For those who don't know MetsBot's work on commons dupes, let me just say that it's a very very conservative bot. I've been checking its work for close to a year now and I've never seen it produce a false positive. If MetsBot concludes that the image meets all the requirements of Criteria for speedy deletion, then it is unquestionably right. Because of this, the fraction of dupes it tags as meeting these requirements is fairly small.
 * Be veryv very quite im hunting rabbit, those bots do exist and are running. βcommand 2 16:09, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * ? A combination of bad grammar and mysterious formulation makes that comment impossible to grasp. Isn't the redirect bot the only bot that ever was granted admin rights? If these bots exist and are running, it shouldn't be covert. And goodness gracious, I sure hope you're not thinking of doing this through BetaCommandBot which is probably the least transparent bot out there and the one most suspected of running unapproved tasks. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 16:54, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The community has a deathly fear of Skynet and getting one of these bots officially approved will be almost impossible. But these bots do exist and are operating behind the secenes. βcommand 2 16:59, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Jeez, and then you wonder why people are pissed about BAG and bot operators ignoring community input. For what it's worth, your response here is entirely unacceptable. You're essentially telling me that you know what's best for the community and so you don't need to take its will into account. The mistrust of the community is not the product of its stupidity. It's the product of the stupidity of bot operators who think they can do what they want because their bots are so flawless. When you're in a hole, stop digging. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 17:11, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * those people who operate these bots due so without BAG approval, I know of two users who do this and this information is public, usage of WP:IAR is not a bad thing. You and many many others agree that these bots are a good thing, but just try and get one to past RfA, Ill watch it crash and burn in failure. people have an exreame fear of Skynet. βcommand 2 18:00, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Well the redirect-deleting bot RfA is proof that it's very doable. The problem with previous RfAs for bots is that operators were proposing tasks where concerns of malfunction had a bit of merit. No chance this will happen in this case. Just like the redirect bot, this would be a trivial bot running a trivial, very much uncontroversial task. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 19:12, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid that making a safe image-deleting bot is impossible. There are two principal points of failure: BEANS!!!, but how can you be sure that a vandal cannot tag a free image as FU, or fake the MetsBot template? Max S em(Han shot first!) 18:06, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * tricking the deletion bot to delete what it shouldn't;
 * tricking the tagging bot (MetsBot, OrphanBot, BetacommandBot, whatever) to tag what it shouldn't;
 * It's actually just as easy to fool a well-intentioned admin, trust me. Moreover, the two cases I'm describing here are the last thing a vandal would be interested in attacking. Unused unfree images? What on earth might a vandal want to do with this? I'm going to take this free image and tag it as fair use, it'll stay in the category for 7 days, no one will notice and then it'll be deleted by an unsuspecting bot. This is beyond improbable. Same goes for deletion of Commons dupes. The deleting bot would verify on the fly that the Wikipedia and Commons images are the same (and even run the MetsBot code on the fly). You can't fool the bot to delete something it shouldn't. Seriously, if you can come up with a scenario, any scenario no matter how contorted, where an ill-intentioned user would take advantage of such a bot, I might take the objection more seriously. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 19:12, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Ever tried to write a bot? The core principle of internet security says that you shouldn't trust anything that comes from the net. The bot shouldn't trust ANYTHING AT ALL. For example, "it'll stay in the category for 7 days" you say. Why can't a vandal tag an image as 7-days old? Ok, let's parse the revision history. Bah, many validly tagged images are often edited after tagging, so the bot should parse whole history, trying to figure out from diffs when the image was tagged. And there are zillions of conditions like that the bot should check. Sriously ,give me the code and I'll show you potentially unsafe parts. Max S em(Han shot first!) 19:31, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * What you don't seem to understand is that if some vandal decides to tag an unused free image as unused-unfree and places it in today's deletion category, the image has 100% chance of getting deleted. Admins are just as dumb as bots and I certainly include myself in that category. I would actually argue that it's easier to fool an admin than a bot in such cases and, especially in the case of Commons dupes, it's very hard to imagine deletion ever being a problem since the copy is on Commons. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 19:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * (1) Do you have examples of incorrectly deletd images? (2) What about the scenario when attacker uploads a copy of image to Commons with obviously bogus description? As a BAG member experienced with bot development, I find approval of such bot very unlikely. Max S em(Han shot first!) 19:59, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Admins are just as dumb as bots. Easy there pal, not the thing to say :P   CWii ( Talk  20:02, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I find it highly unlikely that any image deletion bot would ever get approved. The Skynet/I, Robot/etc crazies aside, image deletion is controversial enough as it is. The only reason the redirect bot bot was approved was because it was maybe 15 lines of code, was impossible to fool by its very nature, and was doing something that no one could argue shouldn't be done. This bot would be, by your own admission, highly complicated and not impossible to fool. (As stupid as admins may be, people are unwilling to accept that they are less fool-proof than bots.)-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  20:14, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Image deletion is indeed controversial. But these image deletions are not. They're as uncontroversial as deleting broken redirects. And I don't know where you're reading that I think the code would be highly complicated. On the contrary, it's a pretty simple bot to write. As far as I understand this work is already being taken care of by an unapproved bot so I guess I'm just proposing to make that process more transparent. Yes, it will always be possible to fool but it's beyond unlikely for someone to take advantage of that given how uninteresting it is for a vandal to have an image deleted. Just to answer MaxSem's objections above: (1) Yes I have already had to undo a lot of deletions from Category:Images on Wikimedia Commons which had been deleted with the Twinkle batch mode. The problem was the broken bad old ones tool (which provides incorrect info on usage). I suspect this still happens since the categories are created from a template which encourages admins to use bad old ones. I'm one of the few admins who works the backlog of Commons dupes and I can assure you that no admin would have the patience to do this without the help of MetsBot. If anyone tries to abuse this by placing fake MetsBot tags, they'll succeed easily, bot or no bot. Sure BEANS, but, come on, this would be as much fun to a vandal as placing a "kick me" post-it on his own ass. As for (2), again this is beyond unlikely and it's also true that admins who delete these images rarely double check the description. There is no net gain by having admins do this by hand. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 21:08, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I never said my objections made sense. I said they are objections, that when presented by opposers at an RFA will spawn dozens of knee-jerk "per so and so" pile-on votes because that is the nature of RFA. Rationality is far from the ruling force in oppose sections for bot RFAs (or, for that matter, most RFAs in general.) The redirect bot is deleting redirects that redirect to nothing and have no page history; there is never a good reason to keep those, thus deleting them is beyond uncontroversial. And it still got 15 opposes. Give the denizens of RFA land something almost credible if you ignore objective reality to base their opposes on, and your bot RFA is doomed. But, by all means try anyway, I would love to be proved wrong.-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  00:03, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmmm... How many bot RfAs have there actually been? Everyone's acting as if this beyond impossible yet I don't see anybody actually giving it a serious go. Of course, the community will be unhappy if the first person that raises an objection is met by "oooooooooh you scawed of tha big Skynet, you moron!" Get a grip people. The only problem here is that bot operators are unwilling to address the community's concerns patiently. When WJBscribe did, it went pretty well. Sure, there are people who will never accept bots with the ability to delete. But there's also a very large portion of editors who can be persuaded if the case is made properly and if there's a willingness to listen to their concerns for checks and balances. Judging by some of the comments above, it sure seems like a few BAG-regulars feel they don't have to stoop as low as actually having to justify themselves to people who couldn't have a bot write "hello world" if their life depended on it. Sure, it's easier to just use deletion bots anyways but that's not the right way to do it and ultimately, this is exactly the attitude that fuels the growing resentment against bot operators. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually very much in favor of giving more leeway to bots but it should be obvious that the attitude against bots will only worsen if the sole principle for development is IAR. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 03:24, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * As someone who has ventured into the world of tagging images of questionable sourcing or copyright, I totally discount any possibility of reasonable reaction from the community when it comes to deletion of images. People who would not be at all disturbed by a request to source a questionable fact in an article turn completely hostile and unreasonable in response to a request to properly source, license, or justify use of an image. This task is best handled by people who are knowledgeable in copyright matters, behind the scenes, under WP:IAR. Otherwise we will end up inundated in stolen copyrighted images with bogus or no licenses, and the pillar of free content will crumble and collapse. Kelly  hi! 04:05, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Well I understand your point but clearly you haven't read what I've proposed. I'm talking about a bot to delete images only in two very very specific uncontroversial cases. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 04:12, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, I was only addressing the generic objections. Your bot is a good idea, go for it. Kelly  hi! 04:38, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

My memory for remembering exact instances of these things is rather terrible, but the only one I can remember rather clearly was the one that Dragons flight tried for a bot that was meant to protect all the templates that appear on the main page, as that was sorely needed at the time. That RFA was a posterchild for failed bot RFAs, and was eventually withdrawn due to the timely arrival of cascading protection, which rendered the issue moot. I don't remember the details particularly well (or for that matter the name of the bot so as to direct you to the RFA page), but I don't remember any particular lack of the operator being willing to address the community's concerns. In any case, you are correct that the redirect bot is a proof of concept. Perhaps future bot RFAs will be easier with a live example of one that hasn't destroyed Wikipedia. I still don't think that this bot will pass, due to the fiery combination of bot admin rights and image deletion. But I wish you luck regardless.-- Dycedarg  &#x0436;  06:17, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * If you're thinking about this RfA then you'll notice that (a) the RfA was sitting at over 80% support when it was withdrawn and that (b) the main issue against the bot was that it was closed-source. People opposing simply on the principle that admin bots are a no go were a marginal subgroup. I don't think it's an unreasonable request for admin bots to be open-source and if anything, the RfA for ProtectionBot shows that it's entirely possible to convince the bulk of the community of the soundness of admin bots. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 14:59, 3 May 2008 (UTC)