Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 45

Featured article review/archive Bot?
I was wondering if it would be possible for a bot to create / populate the WP:FAR archive each month? The latest example is Featured article review/archive/December 2011. Since August 2010 there have been at most 10 FARs closed in a month, usually less. I assumed if a person made the archive each month, and the FAR delegates added a category (something like kept or demoted), that a bot could add the closed items to the archive. I am not sure the bot would even have to check every day - probably once a month would work.

I asked at 's talk page and he said that he thought it would be possible, but that he did not have time to do it himself, so I am asking here. Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 00:57, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I have since discovered that may be working on a bot to do this, and have asked Ucucha if I should withdraw this request. Ruhrfisch  &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 02:24, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd have no problem with someone else doing this task, if desired. Ucucha (talk) 02:25, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Need bot to add link to Wikiproject specific reliable sources Google search
When an article gets sent to AFD, a bot should check to see what Wikiproject it belongs to, and notify that Wikiproject automatically, as well as add in their special search to the top of the AFD. It already has a Google news archive search. Its useful to have the Google searches made for various Wikiprojects, which check only the sites listed as reliable sources. Example: for the Video game articles.  D r e a m Focus  07:33, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If the project is signed up for Article alerts they will be notified of an AFD if they opt for it. --Kumioko (talk) 14:10, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Just a transparency note: this is in response to a recent AfD and following WT:AFD thread. The issue is very specific as to AfD nominators being unable to find sources if they do not know of WikiProject custom searches or other venues/websites. The thing is, adding these searches after AfD is started is useful, but won't solve the fundamental issue. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:20, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

ID & list untagged museum articles?
we have more than enough to work from. I can always come back or Ping if we finish the lists. THANKS! StarM 04:24, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I've recently come across some museums (Fichtelgebirge Museum, for example) which are in one or more of the museum sub cats but are not tagged with the Museum WikiProject Banner. In order to avoid an issue like we had with mistagged articles I'd love for a bot to run a list of articles in one of the Museum subcats but without the project banner & place the list here for the project to review. Is that something a bot can do? Members of the project will then work through the list to remove articles that shouldn't be tagged & tag those that should (or generate a list for a bot to tag if there are many).

Caveat, I'm not 100% sure on how to identify all the subcats of CATEGORY:Museums. Is that something a BOT can do? It would be looking for articles that lack WikiProject Museums  on their talk. THanks! StarM 23:39, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * using AWB. GoingBatty (talk) 01:08, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks! please let me know if you need any additional info from me. StarM 02:34, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Well...don't thank me yet - this may be too many articles for AWB to handle. If someone else wants to tackle this in the meantime, go ahead.  GoingBatty (talk) 04:37, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know anything about AWB as I'm a Mac user. But if there's anyway I can simplify or anything I should do, please let me know. StarM 04:52, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Also tried getting a list of all the articles in Category:Museums using CatScan, but I got an error stating "Maximum potential result objects exceeded, aborting".
 * So I went back to AWB and started with just Category:Museums in Africa, and made a list for you at WikiProject Museums/Untagged. If that works for you, I'll try the other continents too.  Good luck!  GoingBatty (talk) 15:28, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks so much, that definitely works for us. If it's not too hard, I'd love for you to do the other continents. If it ends up to be a lot of work, please don't stress yourself. Thanks again StarM 17:56, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * - taking time to remove people from the lists before posting them. GoingBatty (talk) 04:10, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Added articles for Antarctica, Asia, and Europe, which should be enough to keep you busy until I can get to the rest. Enjoy! GoingBatty (talk) 04:31, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh absolutely. Thanks so much for all your help with this. Hope it hasn't been too much hassle. This is also serving dual purpose as a good to do list. Some of these museums are on wonderful topics but haven't been tagged for Musems or their country/region & have fallen through cracks so I'm having some fun figuring out how these can be expanded. Thanks again! StarM 04:38, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

One side Interwikis
I made some statics in fa.wiki that shows in en wiki it have many conflicts in interwikis this.most of them need to Merge or their interwiki has some problems (bots or users) and most of them have to correct with users in interwiki correction wikiprojects I developed some codes but I don't know how and where can I put these daily data.I'm appreciate that a user can localize and run these code. also I check en wiki interwiki relations and it shows it has many conflicts with de,fr,it,pl (other huge wikis)'s iterwiki that they should solve by user in wikiproject interwiki corrections.Reza1615 (talk) 15:55, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * p.s. if anyone is valentiar i will help him in localization my codes (also it is possible with Google translator because it is simple)Reza1615 (talk) 15:55, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Fix TV.com links for The Simpsons and possibly other shows
Hi there. tv.com has changed the layout of their links and as a result, many of them are now broken. Tv.com episode was changed from using to  (e.g.  is now ) but the transclusions with the old number-only parameter are broken now. As such, I would request someone who has already some search-and-replace-code written to adapt it to this: For now, I'd limit the task to episodes of The Simpsons to see if it works. If it does, it might be used to check all tranclusions of the template. Also, I'm unsure as to technically handle the case when the URL does not work as intended (although a Google search with the episode name, the number and "site:tv.com" seems to work). Any takers? Regards  So Why  18:02, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) Go through all The Simpsons episodes
 * 2) Check for a transclusion of Tv.com episode (or one of its redirects) using
 * 3) Check whether a link to http://www.tv.com/shows/the-simpsons/episode-title-number would work (and not result in a 404-error)
 * 4) If the link works, replace the template with
 * I don't know if it's possible to automatically get the title correctly, but it was easy to do it for The Simpsons. ~Feedintm Parley 15:18, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Project tagging bot
I would like to have a bot add the "arminianism=yes|arminianism-importance=" parameters to those articles which have already been tagged wit Template:WikiProject Christianity and either the "baptist-work-group=yes" parameter or "methodism-work-group=yes" parameters. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 21:18, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'll start on it. ~<font color="maroon" face="Tahoma">Feedintm <font color="blue" face="Tahoma">Parley 17:13, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia and Wikicommons bot for GLAM project
I would very much like a way of getting all the new images under the category Monmouth onto a page on Monmouthpedia, the project I started on en.Wikipedia, if anyone would like to make a bot to do this (or suggest another way of doing it) that would be super. I would like it to be able to show the title of the image below and to copy the images so that the oldest are at the bottom and the newest at the top. We are going to have hopefully lots of people taking images over a couple of months. --Mrjohncummings (talk) 13:39, 16 January 2012 (UTC)a


 * P.s another way of doing it would be to have a bot copy the images by category and sub category and have it create headings based on these categories. Mrjohncummings (talk) 14:14, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

redirect (nasal)
There are perhaps a thousand links to nasal consonant, when nearly all should go to nasal stop, which is the common and also more precise term. (Exact number unknown; I just rd'd the templates, and the number has not yet settled.) 'Nasal consonant' is currently a redirect with some potential to be expanded into an article. I would like to request a bot to rd. links in any article titled 'X language(s)' or 'X phonology'. (The few articles on languages with non-stop nasals I review periodically, and the bot edits will show up on my watch page.) The links that remain I can rd. manually. — kwami (talk) 01:53, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * There are actualy >1200, but <1300 as of now.  Hazard-SJ  ㋡   03:58, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ Let me know if I missed anything or can be of any more assistance. <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis  @ 06:31, 22 Tevet 5772 / 06:31, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * No, that's good. The few remaining links belong there. Thank you! — kwami (talk) 19:51, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Link fix
Hello, could some one please make some changes due to a moved article? I recently moved the article American Chinese cuisine to Chinese American cuisine and the related links and categories need to be fixed.


 * There are over 500 links to the old article and I would like to have them adjusted to the new naming structure.
 * The articles the in category American Chinese cuisine all need to be moved to the new category Chinese American cuisine.

Does anyone have a bot that can make these changes? --<span style="font-family:lucida sans, sans-serif;">Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 20:23, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Didn't it create a redirect to the new article? If so then they should be fine. --Kumioko (talk) 03:02, 18 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Besides, it looks like there are ongoing discussions regarding whether or not the moves from American Chinese to Chinese American were appropriate. Best to let those finish before making any widespread changes.  See also WP:NOTBROKEN.  <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#0a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#a00 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> squeal 16:47, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Broken links to Encyclopædia Iranica Online
The online version of Encyclopædia Iranica has changed domain from iranica.com to iranicaonline.org. (This happened in 2010, apparently.) The domain iranica.com is now inactive and displays only an error message. Is it possible to update all the links on Wikipedia to iranica.com? At least links of the type http://www.iranica.com/articles/title (which constitute the bulk of the broken links) can be safely changed to http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/title. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:57, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * - see Bots/Requests for approval/BattyBot 6 --GoingBatty (talk) 20:54, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * - Trial complete - see diffs. --GoingBatty (talk) 22:48, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * - Bot running now. GoingBatty (talk) 01:39, 18 January 2012 (UTC)
 * - Done. Should the remaining links to iranica.com be tagged with dead link?  GoingBatty (talk) 03:47, 18 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Yes, I think that is the best solution. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:52, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Way too many links remaining to tag manually, so I asked User:Dispenser for assistance. GoingBatty (talk) 00:20, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Bot to group talk page categories together
Just picking an article out of the hat, we can use Talk:Bill_Auberlen for example. He has two project tags on his Talk page currently. There should be a bot to wrap project tags into a WikiProjectBannerShell so that they are always grouped together. My only thoughts would perhaps having a minimum number of project tags on a talk page before the bot rolls in and groups them. For starters I think 2 or more would be fine. Or perhaps 3 as the minimum. --Sabre ball t c 18:24, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * 2 banners aren't grouped. Currently 3 is a recommended minimum. Also, unless the bot makes another change as well, I don't think this is a task pressing enough to do it alone. May be for when there are 5+ banners. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:39, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Just for general info. AWB will group them into the banner shell if there are 3 or more and they all start with WikiProject. There are just too many redirect possibilities to try and account for every redirect possibility. --Kumioko (talk) 19:33, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it could be fairly easily added to an existing bot? Its not as if Wikipedia has a lack of bots. --Sabre ball t c 19:37, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * My bot's been used for WikiProjectBannerShell-related tasks in the past, but I would tend to agree with H3llkn0wz that this isn't really a task pressing enough to do alone. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 19:40, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * (ec)Mine could also do this. Another consideration is that some people get rather annoyed when you "hide" their WikiProject banner so you could find that what seems to be a fairly easy and helpful change to group the banners could turn into a nasty discussion. --Kumioko (talk) 19:52, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * True. Story. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 00:27, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

URGENT - Bot to remove Copy to Wikimedia Commons from files uploaded by users currently at CCI
There are a couple of users whose uploads with false own work claims have landed them at CCI. An unforseen side effect of Fbot's tagging of freely licensed files is that many of these copyvios are tagged for transfer.

What is needed is a bot that looks at all files linked to at a page in the Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/ tree, such as Contributor copyright investigations/Arab League, removes the Copy to Wikimedia Commons tag if there is one, and adds a template specifiably warning against transferring the file.

This is an urgent task, as I'm already seeing copyvios getting transferred over in the ongoing transfer drive.  S ven M anguard  Wha?  17:01, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I can do this if it isn't done already. Give me a few minutes and I'll make another comment here. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 17:06, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * There are 621 images that meet the criteria. I'll work on editing them with VeblenBot. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 17:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I have just created File at CCI for this task.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  17:21, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The bot will make edits like this . Is that what you are looking for? &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 17:28, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Perfect!  S ven M anguard   Wha?  17:29, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, it will take a little bit to edit them all. You can watch VeblenBot's contribs. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 17:32, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I was. I added the template to the first three, which were done before the template appeared. I've also updated the Fbot blacklists so that these files won't get retagged so long as the template is present. Once the initial run is done, I'd like to explore how best to create a system in which the template is added as soon as a CCI is formally opened, and removed when a CCI is closed. That's not as urgent, however, as CCI is a slow process. Thanks for this.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  17:45, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

There were actually only 498 of them; I had double counted some. I had the bot scan them all to make sure they were tagged with the CCI tag. Glad to help, &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 18:09, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Backlog queue Category:Requested edits
Paid editing has been back in the news in the past month big time, and our process to prevent it is somewhat broken or at least not sufficiently smooth and well-known, and that encourages socking. How about a way for Category:Requested edits members (from Request edit) more than a few days old to show up in the feedback request service or similar? Selery (talk) 19:01, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * How about having a noticeboard, which lists edit requests/editprotected/editsemiprotected in an ordered by date manner similar to WP:PRODSUM ? -- Page, Date, Request type (ER/EP/ESP) . 70.24.249.190 (talk) 01:01, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Great idea! ✅ diff. I still think adding stale member announcements to the Feedback Request Service has merit, but this will certainly help a great deal. Selery (talk) 20:24, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

IMDb Template Use
I've on occasion "corrected" IMDb external links that don't utilize the template (usually just a simple URL of the page), but it's a tedious process that can never correct all of them, which could number in the thousands. Could there be a bot that would automatically correct every IMDb link so it uses the proper template, both in external links and references? Exceptions to this would be the links to pages such as full cast, box office, technical specs, trivia, goofs, etc., which the template cannot be directly linked to. A related bot could perhaps correct all of the many instances where the template incorrectly repeats the article title, instead of using the title or name as it appears on the IMDb. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.254.87.80 (talk) 21:55, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Bot to detect cut-and-paste page moves
Would it be possible to create a bot that would either notify a board or reverse the edits of a cut-and-paste page move? I've come across two in the last week (Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within and Serious Sam), which makes me think they are often unnoticed. Presumably, if one page goes blank and the text appears at a previous redirect or new page, it should be pretty obvious.▫  Johnny Mr Nin ja  06:08, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * CorenSearchBot often does detect them, but I'm likely to file a BRFA soon for a similar task and/or start semi-automated work on the list collected by WikiProject History Merge. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 13:01, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Extlinks request
This is not a bot request per se, so feel free to move it to a more appropriate page. StatsCan is about to release a flood of new data and we have started to talk about it. One way to tackle it is to look at all the articles linking to www12.statcan.ca/english/census06/*.

So can ayone produce a list of article with extlinks to that address prefix? It would need to be sorted or secondary-keyed by province (get article categories and look for unique use of "Ontario", "Alberta", etc.), not sure whether a wiki-formatted or tab-delimited output would be best, probably both so I could awk the raw text. If someone could do a raw list so I can look at it, that would be great. More refinement requests would likely follow, as we are just looking to update the base population (&c) data for this release. Thanks for any help! Franamax (talk) 02:33, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Sure, I can do that this afternoon or evening. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 22:04, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * already done at User:Δ/Sandbox 5 ΔT The only constant 22:06, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Never mind then. :P Cheers! &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 22:13, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

rem. unsupported parameters from info box
At Infobox language, we used to have a parameter that rather perversely needed to be set to "none" if another parameter was not to link to a WP article. Support for this "ll" parameter has now been removed, after I asked 6 wks ago and no-one objected. I hard-linked the articles and set the "ll" parameters to "none" before removing template support, and they no longer have a function.

There are about 400 articles with, where the ".." may be one or two digits. Could these be removed? Pls do not rm. line breaks, unless this would mean two in a row.

If there are any which are not set to 'none', they should be left for me to clean up manually. (Removing them would have no effect on the display, but they would mean I overlooked something.) — kwami (talk) 09:47, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

rem. unsupported parameters from info box
At Infobox language, we used to have a parameter that rather perversely needed to be set to "none" if another parameter was not to link to a WP article. Support for this "ll" parameter has now been removed, after I asked 6 wks ago and no-one objected. I hard-linked the articles and set the "ll" parameters to "none" before removing template support, and they no longer have a function.

There are about 400 articles with, where the ".." may be one or two digits. Could these be removed? Pls do not rm. line breaks, unless this would mean two in a row.

If there are any which are not set to 'none', they should be left for me to clean up manually. (Removing them would have no effect on the display, but they would mean I overlooked something.) — kwami (talk) 09:47, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Fix Computing banner assessment conflicts
If you review the last few days of Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Computing articles by quality log you'll see that a number of the "reassessed" entries repeat each day, even though the talk pages haven't been changed in months.

A number of templates such as, , , and automatically include the parent WikiProject Computing. When these templates are used in combination, but do not specify the same importance level, or one provides an importance level but the other does not, the articles end up in multiple assessment categories.

I reported this at Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Index/Archive_6 but was advised that I needed to fix the categories – that this wasn't a problem with the bot. Which makes sense – the articles are indeed in Unassessed-importance computing articles and High-importance computing articles.

These are examples of the fixes I'd like the bot to make:

Wintel:

to

Sun Microsystems:

to

A theoretical example, which would result from someone naively adding Computing/Databases to a previously categorized Windows article:

to

And finally a contrived theoretical example:

to

These spurious entries make the assessment report much less useful. In 2010 the list was so long that a single day's report spanned 2–3 pages, and I cleared hundreds of them. I used to keep up with the subsequent errors contributors introduce when they add tags without synchronizing the parent project assessments, but it was tedious work and it's a task better suited to automation.

Banner consolidation is a simpler solution, but requires consensus about how to handle the multiple projects. In some cases I think there would be consensus to consolidate (e.g. Software, Computer Security) but in others there would be consensus to keep separate (e.g. Computer Science). So it is necessary to fix the articles which are tagged with multiple projects – on its own banner consolidation will not solve the problem.

This would need to be a recurring bot run. If it's too difficult to identify all the articles which appear in conflicting assessment categories, it could use the results of the various WP 1.0 bot's "reassessed" lists to select which articles need examination. Would someone be willing to set this up? – Pnm (talk) 17:42, 26 January 2012 (UTC)


 * An easier way to deal with this is to remove Cat:WP Computing from templates which aren't directly about WP Computing... --Izno (talk) 20:01, 28 January 2012 (UTC)


 * That would make sense except that anything about Windows, Databases, Computer Science, or Computer Security is also in the scope of Computing. – Pnm (talk) 22:12, 28 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Granted, which either implies that Computing's scope is too broad or that every page which needs to have WP:Computing on it should have WP:Computing on it, and then remove the parameters from the other templates. I would personally say that Computing's scope is too broad if it's being used on pages where there are 3 or even 2 other WP templates already. But it's not up to me to decide the scope. --Izno (talk) 23:23, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

== Remove all use of

from Ashbocking&oldid=473854671

typical fix is it possible for somebody to mass fix this problem? Bulwersator (talk) 11:31, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

PS It may be good idea to scan entire wikipedia for more general problem - template used with two or more parameters with the same name Bulwersator (talk) 11:32, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think it would be pretty easy as long as both are the same or if one is empty and the other is populated. It might be a little tricky though if there are 2 different images. --Kumioko (talk) 12:26, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, bot should fix obvious (last of parameters is not empty, previous duplicates are empty) and report more complex Bulwersator (talk) 12:40, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I just did a little checking and noticed something else. The following fields in the template pertain to images: But then theres also I recommend if we are going to be there and deleting stuff anyway we should probably delete the extra parameters for static image 2 if blank also. --Kumioko (talk) 13:04, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) static_image
 * 2) static_image_name
 * 3) static_image_width
 * 4) static_image_caption
 * 5) static_image_alt
 * 1) static_image_2
 * 2) static_image_2_name
 * 3) static_image_2_width
 * 4) static_image_2_caption
 * 5) static_image_2_alt

Bots for clean up on WikiProject Texas
WikiProject Texas on its main page has a link for Clean Up listing by category. Therein, Orphaned Articles has a count of 377 articles. There are also almost 2,000 Texas articles that need coordinates. Can anyone run bots that can do either of these tasks? Maile66 (talk) 12:56, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I can't do much about these 2 tasks but I'll take a run through the texas article list with AWB and see what I can fix with that. That may fix some of the orphan article tags and some of the other problems. I can also add some of the short descriptions to the Persondata which I had planned to do for WPUS anyway. --Kumioko (talk) 15:55, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Any help you can provide is appreciated. The total cleanup list on the Texas project is 14,954 articles needing attention. Some are genuine issues, such as the Orphan and Coordinates issues. As mentioned elsewhere, one or more persons have been somewhat over zealous with bot tagging. Texas has almost 8.000 Stubs, and someone sent out a bot to tag the Stubs as having insufficient references - overkill.  Some of the tag multitudes are critiques of writing style (prose), spacing and paragraph breaks, which seems superficial to me.  A lot of work to be done on Texas just to find out what are the genuine problems.  So, thanks for whatever you can do. Maile66 (talk) 19:48, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree, to say a stub is unreferenced is one thing but to say it needs expanded, refimprove or a variety of others is inferred in the status of the article and needs not be duplicated in the article with an ugly tag again. --Kumioko (talk) 19:56, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily "unreferenced" in the case of the Stubs. Some had one or two references, and only a very brief paragraph of text. Those, too, were tagged as "insufficient references". And it's only going to get worse, because dove-tailing that, one or more editors and projects have been using bots to create those one-line Stubs for their particular projects. A Catch 22 of sorts, which will go on forever and ever, into the next century.Maile66 (talk) 20:05, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah using a bot to create a stub is fine but I agree we shouldn't be covering stubs with needless tags. --Kumioko (talk) 20:13, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I've run BattyBot against all articles in Category:Orphaned articles to remove orphan templates on non-orphaned articles. You may want to use Find link to try to de-orphan some of those articles.  Good luck!  GoingBatty (talk) 17:48, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, thanks for your help. Maile66 (talk) 18:03, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Going Batty, that Find Link tool is really cool. Thanks for showing it to me. Maile66 (talk) 01:20, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * My pleasure! GoingBatty (talk) 01:22, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Deprecated pron-en
Deprecated template pron-en is no longer used in mainspace. However, there are still ca. 350 transclusions in portal space. Could you convert these to IPA-en, which is still supported? The conversion is simple: if there is only one parameter, add 'pronounced' to the beginning and a pipe at the end:


 * → pronounced

(The pipe prevents the default behaviour of IPA-en.)

If there is a 2nd parameter, double the pipe between them:


 * → pronounced

If you could drop me a line if/when this is done, I'll clean up any remainders and mark the template as deprecated.

Thanks! — kwami (talk) 22:16, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Looks fairly easy and non-controversial. I'll probably do this in a semi-automated fashion very shortly. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 00:27, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Yeah, these were all converted in main space months ago. I've cleaned up everything else apart from user space, talk, and archives. — kwami (talk) 02:21, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * – My apologies for taking so long to find this out, but I actually don't have access to my bot account at the moment until my toolserver account is restored, and I'm not comfortable making semi-automated edits under my primary account. Can another bot operator pick this up? (If not, I should get the account restored within a couple days.) &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 03:01, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It seems pretty straightforward I can probably do it with mine if its ok with everyone. --Kumioko (talk) 03:04, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Ok I did a few edits and got a couple comments so I have a followup question.
 * Should I be changing these templates on Archived talk pages or should I skip those? --Kumioko (talk) 14:48, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I won't speak for the original requester, but generally changing archived talk pages is frowned upon unless it contributes to the archive's quality (e.g. changing WP:AN/I links to the relevant archive, &c.) I can't say without looking at context, but it appears the original request was only for the portal namespace and it'd probably be best to restrict it to that without more community input in a BRFA or the like. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 15:15, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Makes sense to me. I'll start with that and go from there. Just FYI for all there are a lot of transclusions on User and User talk pages as well. --Kumioko (talk) 16:44, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Incidentally, I now have access to my bot account, so if Kwamikagami needs anything more than that or if you need any help, I'm now available. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 13:04, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That would be great. I stopped his bot because it wasn't overriding the default behavior of the new template per the above. (I didn't revert the edits he did make, however. There were 43 of them.) — kwami (talk) 03:54, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

changing mid vowels in IPA-sh

 * Also, I received a request some time ago to convert our IPA key for Serbocroatian to use the letters e and o instead of ɛ and ɔ, which would match our phonology article (they are also more accessible to readers). The transclusions are inconsistent; maybe half follow the key, half the phonology article. We'd need to convert all instances of ɛ and ɔ in transclusions of the IPA-sh template to e and o, and also to get rid of the up & down tacks under any of those four letters (or any other letters). (The tacks are these: [̞̝] in case it's easier for you to clip & paste.)
 * AWB at least has a hard time with diacritics, so you may need to convert e and o plus circumflex or caron to hard-coded ê ô ě ǒ.
 * Getting rid of the tie bars [͡] would also be nice, since they're distracting and not used in the key (they're found on t and d: t͡ d͡ ), and a lot of the articles use v (or v̞) for ʋ. — kwami (talk) 07:15, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * There are some other inconsistencies, but they're not so numerous, so I can take care of them. — kwami (talk) 06:30, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I can fulfill the original request; it's non-controversial and an example of what's normally done when a template is deprecated. Can you link me to more consensus (the request, discussion, etc.) on changing the IPA within the template? Also, I'm not using AWB, so I don't anticipate problems with diacritics, though I will have to read up on normalization and such to run this if the changes have consensus. Thanks, &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 16:21, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Here,Wikipedia_talk:IPA_for_Serbo-Croatian but there's very little comment. A remark that e and o are more accessible, and what are used in our phonology article. — kwami (talk) 07:00, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Forgive me, I don't know much about IPA, but I don't think the proposed changes would only affect Serbo-Croatian articles and thus the scope of the discussion's a little narrow... if it's all right with you, I'd like to proceed by just processing the templates according to your initial request, just changing the name and how the parameters are passed. If you actually want content changes, I think that would be something we'd have to discuss in a BRFA or at the Village Pump, because I'm not completely sure they'd be non-controversial. I can give you a list of pron-en templates with whatever characters you'd like, though, so you or the appropriate WikiProjects could review them. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 22:03, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I should have opened a 2nd request. The Serbo-Croatian change has nothing to do with pron-en, and it does affect only Serbo-Croatian. — kwami (talk) 13:43, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, forgot about this briefly. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 02:04, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * –  &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 03:36, 4 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I've informed the last remaining user of that template. — kwami (talk) 08:51, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Scan My Book
Are there any bots that could scan my book for any errors? Allen (talk) 02:54, 2 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Just for clarification, what kind of errors? ~<font color="maroon" face="Tahoma">Feedintm <font color="blue" face="Tahoma">Parley 23:17, 2 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Any kind of formatting errors, spelling, link accuracy, etc.
 * Allen (talk) 23:44, 2 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't think there are any bots like that. What you list will have unavoidable false positives, so no approved bot is doing it. For your examples, most modern browsers support spell checking, you can install User:Anomie/linkclassifier to see common link issues, and User:Cacycle/wikEd could solve some formatting issues, or at least make them more obvious. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:01, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * - I'll run the articles through AWB's general fixes and typo checking. GoingBatty (talk) 01:48, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ --GoingBatty (talk) 22:05, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Bot to alphabetise WP:BADIMAGE
Would it be possible for a bot to keep the bad image list in alphabetical order of image title (ignoring the word "the")? It makes it easier to find image names if they are in alphabetical order, and this will stop human users having to worry about it. <font color="#006600">It Is Me Here  <font color="#CC6600">t / <font color="#CC6600">c 00:02, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That would be trivial to code, but it would require an adminbot. → Σ  τ  c . 02:18, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry, not an expert with these things – is that bad? <font color="#006600">It Is Me Here  <font color="#CC6600">t / <font color="#CC6600">c 12:56, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
 * User:AWBCPBot already keeps the AWB checkpage alphabetical, among other things. I suppose I could get a rename for it and have it cover this as well. - Kingpin13 (talk) 14:14, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
 * <font color="#006600">It Is Me Here  <font color="#CC6600">t / <font color="#CC6600">c 15:41, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Quick text replacment
I'm not sure if I'm requesting this at the right place -- if not just point me to the proper channels.

In short, I'd need to have all instances of " " be replaced by "  ", to produce the box seen to the right.

There should be between 100 and 150 articles with the template. Salvidrim!  03:10, 6 February 2012 (UTC)


 * <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis @ 08:31, 13 Shevat 5772 / 08:31, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis @ 09:18, 13 Shevat 5772 / 09:18, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Red link syntax removal
Google Translation Project added thousands of articles into several Indian language wikipedias (Example Translated page of article on Northern Ireland) by translating popular English wikipedia articles using Human assisted translation during 2009-2011. The project was closed by Google without addressing the feedback of impacted language Wikipedians. A major problem is the existence of too many red links on such pages. A bot to clean up such pages would at least make the articles presentable for subsequent manual editing.--Arjunaraoc 01:55, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Bot to create a list of NFCC#9 violations
Can someone make a bot that does the following:

1. scan all files in File: namespace not having a free license tag

2. for each file, check whether it is tagged with a template from Category:Wikipedia non-free file copyright tags


 * 2.1. if it is not, place a notice at Media copyright questions, then proceed with next file


 * 2.2. if it is, check whether the file is transcluded outside of article space


 * 2.2.1. if it is not, proceed with next file


 * 2.2.2. if it is, report the name of the file and the name of the page where the file is transcluded to a separate page (for example a subpage in the bots userspace), then proceed with next file

This bot should run periodically and update the report continuously. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 10:21, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Regarding 2.1, is there any consensus that WP:MCQ wants to be flooded with bot reports? Regarding 2.2.2, doesn't already remove those files from non-mainspace and report them at User:DASHBot/fairlog? Anomie⚔ 12:19, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Regarding 2.1, I don't think such a consensus exists, but I don't see what else could be done if a file without proof of having been released under a free license lacks such a template, other than possibly to let the bot tag it with the generic.
 * Regarding 2.2.2, first DASHBot seems to be relatively slow from what I saw and second Bots/Requests for approval/DASHBot 5 says the bot generates its list to work through from the report at and that report seems to be dead now. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 12:39, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Also note that this would be of great interest to a WikiProject I proposed here, although that proposal unfortunately hasn't generated any responses yet. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 12:10, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

add biographies into task forces
Recently I used a script to help create a reasonable large number of stubs based on the DNZB (see here for details) the stubs need to be sorted into appropriate task forces of WP:WikiProject New Zealand. The rules are: does that makes sense? Stuartyeates (talk) 02:58, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * every member of Category:New Zealand people, Category:New Zealand Māori people, Category:New Zealand musicians, or Category:New Zealand politicians should be in WikiProject New Zealand. (this should already be the case)
 * every member of Category:New Zealand Māori people should have 'maori=yes'
 * if not already present 'maori-importance=low' should be added
 * every member of Category:New Zealand musicians should have 'music=yes'
 * if not already present 'music-importance=low' should be added
 * every member of Category:New Zealand politicians should have 'politics=yes'
 * if not already present 'politics-importance=low' should be added
 * I should have said that all the details of the arguments are at Template:WikiProject New Zealand. Stuartyeates (talk) 03:02, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

"Abandoned articles"
Is there a way that a bot can be created to look for articles that have, say, less than 30 edits in the past 3 years? The data could be used to maybe bring some musty old articles into the limelight to be fixed up, or find something that slipped through the cracks and should be AFD'ed. (Idea suggested by another, semi-retired user.) Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 03:36, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think it sounds good in theory but thats going to cover tens of thousands of articles. --Kumioko (talk) 03:46, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * What if the edit number is changed? Like, say, 40 in 4? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 03:54, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think it would be better to look fro articles that haven't been edited in X amount of time. Maybe, start with 5 or 6 years and start working up. I have seen many many articles that haven't been touched in years. If we can factor out bots then there will be even more. I'm still not quite sure if its possible and definatly outside my skill level but I'm just trying to help provide input. --Kumioko (talk) 03:59, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Fewer than X edits in Y years might create a big list, but really, what's another backlog? The user who suggested this said, " this one isn't limited to a small band of users with the right bit[…]all it really requires is people to go through it all[…]pick out an article, work on it or if it's unsalvagable, go through the usual deletion channels". Also, "fewer than x edits in y years" would help weed out articles where the only edit in the past x years is by a bot. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 04:04, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think either way theres going to be quite a lot of articles. I worry though that this would be a pillar for the deletionists to start submitting large groups of articles for deletion on the grounds they are "abandoned".--Kumioko (talk) 04:13, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * And how do you know that just as many editors won't see it as an opportunity to fix the articles up? No need to pull out the "deletionist" card. "Abandoned" by itself is not a reason to delete, so I think it's absurd that you think that. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 04:25, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Double-edged sword, but I think TPH's rationale and the intended use of this information is of overall benefit to WP. It is also without doubt that there will be worthy deletion candidates in such a population, as with many others. Having this additional data dimension crossed with perhaps a hit counter may create an exploitable list that allays those concerns. Having said that, you may be overstating the risk of mass deletions because they would have to be suitably grouped and solidly argued before any such mass deletions are likely to be approved by the community. -- Ohconfucius  ¡digame! 04:30, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The user has also suggested that maybe there should be some way to weight the results. Maybe break it down into chunks for something. Maybe also do a test run to see exactly how big the results would be anyway. (Also, this would be recurring, not just a one-timer.) Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 04:50, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * As the editor TPH submitted this on behalf of, thought I might explain a little more about the request. A bot would run monthly to gather articles which could be considered abandoned and lists them so any editor can assess what to do with it such as expansion or deoprhan it to increase hitcounts and edits. Dependant on the sort of workload this exposes, there's always the consideration of article weighting so there can be priority based lists created instead of a singular list. The criteria is a loose one, around 20-40 edits for any article 3 years or older could count as abandoned and in need of editor attention but that can be tweaked if a basic sweep yields a high amount of articles (anywhere north of 50,000?) Now, I can see Kumioko figures it might be used nefariously for mass deletion which is a reasonable thought but unlikely as the articles still have to pass through AfD or PROD. It might also be an incentive for any found articles to be tagged with orphan so they can be categorised. I notice it could be a big undertaking but if it is, it's better we go find these articles and have them listed someplace where they can be easily found and worked on instead of languishing and making a big backlog bigger. I'm just spitballing here in terms of how big it might be as it's not really a simple one-shot task but yknow, a regular heavy lifting bot, not so sure if that sort of request gets picked up here or not. Any questions, throw them out there. baa!  <sub style="color:#D2CDC6;">radda  18:15, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Sounds like something best run on toolserver, this whole-of-database search isn't viable through the API. In fact, ask at Wikipedia talk:Database reports for this. Josh Parris 01:09, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure why this wasn't done earlier. Took me 5 minutes to write and 1 minute to run. The output (2.7 thousand results) is here. If you want me to run this regularly, or you want a different type of output message me. If I get hit by a bus or something, I included the code below. Hopefully thats what you wanted. :) Tim  1357  <sup style="font-family:Times new roman; font-size:small;">talk  03:01, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I think you want

Josh Parris 03:44, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I can't read code. Which intervals did you use? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 03:13, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I used 4 years. I re-ran the query to give a timestamp of last edit for each result. The results are here and the updated code is below. Tim 1357  <sup style="font-family:Times new roman; font-size:small;">talk  04:04, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * P.S. I got to the end and figured that out, Josh Paris. Thanks anyways though.  Tim  1357  <sup style="font-family:Times new roman; font-size:small;">talk  04:05, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Friends don't let friends use correlated subqueries. - TB (talk) 07:26, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Suggested tweaks for false positive
It may be an idea to code it to ignore dab pages or pages with any dab template, as appears in Aberdeen North, an article featuring on that list of User:Tim1357. In fact, there seem to be quite a few such dab pages on that list. -- Ohconfucius  ¡digame! 02:12, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, in the new query dab pages are ignored. Tim  1357  <sup style="font-family:Times new roman; font-size:small;">talk  02:02, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

collapsible option
I have noticed that the template has been added to many templates which do not actually support it. This is due to either (a) an editor adding it without adding the 'state' parameter, or (b) the 'state' parameter being removed after the template was added. it would be great if we could have a bot fix this problem. This will only require about 3000 template checks (and many fewer actual edits). since there are fewer than 3000, it seems like a simple thing to do with AWB. Frietjes (talk) 16:30, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) Load the list of templates which transclude collapsible option
 * 2) Check each transclusion to see if there is a  or  or.
 * 3) If there is already such a state parameter, do nothing.
 * 4) If there is no state parameter, then either (a) replace ' | state = foo ' with ' | state =  ' or (b) replace ' | state = ' with ' | state =  ' or (c) simply add ' | state =  ' near the top, just below the '| title = ...' or '| name = ...' (like this)

Add 'FideID' parameter to chess infobox
Hello all!

Due to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess there are some changes in how the FIDE rating is handeled in Template:Infobox chess biography now and thus it would be very useful if a bot could give some assist here. There are about 1000 pages out there using that template.

The task would be to look at all those pages (assuming they are chess player articles) and search the template:fide extract the value there, add it to the Template:Infobox chess biography as parameter 'FideID' and remove the ranking number from parameter 'rating'. So for example consider Anatoly Karpov:

We have there, so extract '4100026' and check the ranking (in chess infobox) |rating = 2617 (No. 177 on the July 2011 FIDE ratings list) to be >= 2400 then change it to |rating = (No. 177 on the July 2011 FIDE ratings list) and add |FideID = 4100026 to the infobox. In order to finish remove the template. If this template was not present or the ranking < 2400 do nothing to the article.

One question open is if in the end the template:fide has to be removed from the page also, but I will work on answering this. And there might be a minimal ranking (e.g. 2400) needed also.

If some bot operator is intressted in solving this task that would be very appreciated. Thanks in advance and greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 11:49, 30 January 2012 (UTC)


 * No-one liking this one? ;)) Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 16:38, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Text modified in order to be up-to-date. Is there a issue with this request in general, or just everybody beeing busy at the moment? Thanks and greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 13:33, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Would this be a continuous or one-time task? &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 01:59, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Just a one-time task in order to switch to the new system (which uses another bot - DrTrigonBot - to automatically update the data and so on - but this is implemented already). Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 10:15, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I may look at doing this this weekend. Why should the number in the ranking parameter be removed? (And the linebreak kept?) &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 19:57, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The number in the ranking parameter should be removed because of when using 'FideID' the ranking number from Template:Elo rating are used (for more info look at Template:Infobox chess biography). The linebreak is still there to give the final user full control over the appearance of the output, since I do not know if every infobox uses a linebreak at that point, thus remove the number only and keep the rest (and linebreak is no number... ;) Thanks a lot for your time and effort! Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 22:42, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to be conducting training for the next few days so I may not be able to code this for a bit, but be assured I haven't forgotten about it. :) &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 15:40, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the info - looking forward to hear from you... Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 11:13, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The massive switch in is extremely expensive to render.  It is in many ways better to update the individual articles. Rich Farmbrough, 01:56, 9 February 2012 (UTC).


 * &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 04:59, 9 February 2012 (UTC)


 * @madman: Thanks a lot!! I am curious on the result... So long... :)
 * @Farmbrough: This a very intresting point to consider - in fact I copied that 'big switch' from dewiki where some articles use templates like this already. The question is; how expensive it actually is since I assume the mw software to cache the result...? The other way around (instead of one big template to use a lot of small ones) seems tedious to maintain since then we would have hundreds of templates (or articles) to change when one URL source (or something other) changes. I am very intressted in finding better (or even the best) solution here - so if you have any alternative concepts please share your knowledge! Thanks for the hint and greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 09:47, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Tim Starling has recently commented on this, re: #switch basically being used to implement databases or key/value pairs. There's currently no upper limit on the number of switch cases you can have, but in the future an upper limit of 2000 may be set, so you should be aware of that. The issue when rendering is not the time it takes to parse (it's still very fast), but the amount of memory used, which can sometimes send the servers into swap on larger/more prevalent templates. For this particular template, I'd defer to Don't worry about performance for the moment. You are correct, DrTrigon, that the pages at least are cached (until they're edited, at which point they have to be re-rendered). In the future, Lua will be a better alternative for templates like this. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 14:43, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Here's a test edit, DrTrigon. Looks like the code works perfectly; if that looks right to you, I'll continue. Cheers! &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 19:59, 9 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Indeed - it looks like the code works perfectly... it looks right to me! This are very good news! In my opinion this job can be done - maybe it is worth to wait another day to give other the time to add their opinions too...?! Again: Thanks a lot madman!!!
 * Regarding the huge '#switch'; I was not aware that MW wants to switch to Lua for template programming... Thanks for that hint (since this will become important for me ;) - despite the fact that I do not know Lua it sounds promising to me! ;) Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 12:24, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

&mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 02:04, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Add short description
Can a bot add the short description parameter of the person data template to this list. The description can be based on the Category:Gaelic footballers by county in the Republic of Ireland and its sub categories. For exampleAaron Hoey would be SHORT DESCRIPTION =Louth Gaelic footballer Gnevin (talk) 09:35, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That project seems to cover multiple sports, not just footballers so I would ssuggest saying something like Gaelic athlete as the short description. If you want to specify just that Gaelic footballers category that could be done too. --Kumioko (talk) 14:25, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You can skip any hand ballers or rounders players if they even exist . Would it be possible to add X Gaelic footballer in the the football cat, x Hurler if in the hurling one and x Dual player if in both ? Gnevin (talk) 20:20, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Portal:Current events
As you well know, User:X! retired from Wikipedia a couple of days ago. User:SoxBot, among other things, created the current event page every day. Is it possible for a currently active bot to take over SoxBot's responsibility and automatically create sub pages for each day's current events? It's a very tedious task for a normal person, so it will be plausible for a bot to take over. --   Luke      (Talk)   03:43, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, it is possible. → Σ  τ  c . 05:59, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Requesting a search and replace
Good day. The IMDb part of Template:CongLinks has been changed to match the usage of the other IMDb templates. We now provide only the IMDb ID, without the "nm"-prefix. About 1700 pages have been affected (NB: some of these pages use the template correctly). We need to change to  (remove the prefix). Does anyone have a bot that might be up for this task? Ddnixx (talk) 20:11, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 20:41, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * unless I'm very much mistaken. 34 pages were updated . Of the remaining 1748 pages, 1649 have no imdb parameter, and 99 have an imdb parameter but no nm prefix. Let me know if you can find any page that might have been missed. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 04:20, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Looks very good! Thanks for responding to my request. I'll do some manual searching get back to you. Ddnixx (talk) 04:37, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject tagging
Due to my bot being stopped and the revocation of the previously approved task I need some help with a couple tasks.
 * 1) Please convert the last 6000 articles in WikiProject Texas to WikiProject United States/TX. Please carry over any additional parameters such as needs infobox or image, assessment. The discussion approving this action can be found here. --Kumioko (talk) 21:36, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Bot needed to make a list
Needed: A bot to make a list of articles on Category:Minor Planets that look like this one, 25001 Pacheco, in the following ways.

Here, “exactly like 25001 Pacheco” means that articles consist of: Basically, we need a bot to make a list of all these articles that are just like this example: 25001 Pacheco. We need this list in order to move on to the next step very carefully. Later, more bots may be needed, but we're taking this one careful doable step at a time. Chrisrus (talk) 06:07, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) No more than the following text: "(Article title) is a main belt asteroid discovered on (date) by (name(s)) at (place)." No more text than that.  It might have less.  For example, it might not include the date, name, or place, but it no more.
 * 2) The only section break will be “External links”.
 * 3) The only external link is “*http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov.....JPL Small-Body Database…...”
 * 4) It will also include this Template:Infobox planet, a planet infobox template.
 * 5) Next, it will have an empty reflist.
 * 6) There will probably be more, but nothing that would establish notablity and therefore matters. There may be a minor planets navigator and a minor planets footer; a “DEFAULTSORT”; several categories such as "Main Belt astroids", "Discoveries by (name)", and “Astronomical objects discovered in (Year); a "beltasteroid-stub" designation; and maybe a number of links to other language wikipedia articles, the same name in different alphabets.  None of this matters, again, as these things to not establish notablity.
 * Looking at this. Anomie⚔ 19:16, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Ok. I expanded the request slightly to include pages with "an inner-belt asteroid", "an outer-belt asteroid", "a main-belt asteroid", "a Jupiter Trojan", and so on, to include "Its provisional designation was whatever.", and also considered any other empty sections to be unindicative of notability. The final list is at User:Anomie/Asteroid list.
 * Many of the remaining articles just contain an additional sentence along the lines of "It was named after Joe Bloggs", which may or may not barely scrape the bottom of the "notability" barrel for some few of them. Or further variations of the text, e.g. "(Article title) is an asteroid. It was discovered on (date). It was discovered by (name) at (place).". I've placed a second list at User:Anomie/Asteroid list 2 of all the number-named asteroids sorted by the size of the wikitext after the templates and some of the other junk are removed. Anomie⚔ 00:18, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Excellent. I hope that didn't take too much time out of your day.  I'll start a new section to discuss the next step, but first: thank you for all your efforts thus far. I will now start a new section about the following step, below. 03:59, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Do you have a datasource to pull the information about minor planets? — Ganeshk  ( talk ) 19:26, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Right now, we're not looking for information about the minor planets from off Wikipedia. We are just looking for a reliable list of articles that for sure don't have enough information to establish notablity within them as they stand, and therefore cannot meet WP:NASTRO.  Chrisrus (talk) 20:01, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Got it. — Ganeshk  ( talk ) 20:05, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Bot needed to tag the list
Needed: A bot to tag each article on User:Anomie/Asteroid list thusly" ". Chrisrus (talk) 03:59, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I was going to file a BRFA for this, but it looks like User:Avicennasis has already started this. Since this is a dated template, it would be better to add  .  GoingBatty (talk) 21:50, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thought I had replied here, but I guess I just previewed and never saved. <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis  @ 02:22, 13 Shevat 5772 / 02:22, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis @ 03:56, 15 Shevat 5772 / 03:56, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You guys are awesome! My sincerest gratitude, and, if I may, please accept from me sincere gratitude on behalf of the Wikipedian standard of Notablity. Chrisrus (talk) 01:46, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Bot needed to perform "good faith effort to establish notablity"
Needed: A bot to automate the "good faith effort to establish notablity" referred to in WP:NASTRO. For example, if I copy and paste into the Google Scholar search box, in quotes, the name of the first article on User:Anomie/Asteroid list, (196297) 2003 FA, it returns "no hits" from any of the WP:RSes that it searches. Not one. It is my hope that this will fulfill NASTRO's "good faith effort", but we may need to find the proper database that Ganeshk seemed to be referring to above. If not, it's at least a good start. At this point, however, my question to you is this: Is it possible, practicable, very difficult, or problematic to create a bot that will find out which if any of these do not return exactly zero results on a Google Scholar search? Chrisrus (talk) 03:59, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Looking into this. Tim  1357  <sup style="font-family:Times new roman; font-size:small;">talk  02:08, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmm. At this point google scholar does not have an API (that I can find). Using screen scraping would probably be a violation of their TOS.  Tim  1357  <sup style="font-family:Times new roman; font-size:small;">talk  02:18, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Google also autodetects bots and offers them a simple turing test. I get this occassionally even when doing things manually. Stuartyeates (talk) 02:59, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry. Instead of Google Scholar, I noticed that NASTRO recommends the SAO/Harvard abstract service of the Astrophysics Data System and the SIMBAD database's "display -> reference summary" in the "reference" section. Hopefully, that will be easier than Google Scholar.  Actually, please have a look at that section of WP:NASTRO, which is a new document and so untried in the case of so many articles, so it may turn out that they while a good idea you may find don't turn out to be reasonable or doable or some such and still could be tweeked or an exemption could be requested.  It depend on what happens when you go to implement them for this a list of more than six thousand articles to be checked and redirected to the List of minor planets chart, so please let us know if it's just not doable or reasonable or whatever the case may be.  Chrisrus (talk) 03:26, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Don't be sorry :), I like doing this stuff. The Harvard and Simbad databases look good. What do you want me to do when the queries return data? For example: 1173 Anchises returns 5 results with the Harvard database. What should the bot do with this data? Just plop it in the Source section? Tim 1357  <sup style="font-family:Times new roman; font-size:small;">talk  02:29, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That's a good idea, but to answer your question, it should remove them from the list most importantly. Because in the end, what we want is a list of these articles which not only contain no sign of notablity but also which we tried but could not find any sign of notablity to put in them.  In the end, we'll have a list of articles to convert into redirects to the chart called List of minor planets.  Ones like 1173 Anchises you discover have some chance of notablity, so putting the hits you find into such articles or their discussion pages or something would help a person who wants to bring them up to WP:NASTRO, so it's nice as a secondary goal.  We could call them "possibly notable" asteroids or some such, and set them aside to work on later.  We could give that list to the astronomy project or some place later for them to work on.  But the important thing at this point is to separate out the ones that have some sign of notablity from the list of ones with no sign at all.  Chrisrus (talk) 22:28, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Well if that's all you want, I could bang out a script in 30 minutes. I'll post back. Tim  1357  <sup style="font-family:Times new roman; font-size:small;">talk  02:16, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Ok, its all written. I'm going to have it spit out a sortable wiki table of how many results the Harvard Database has for each asteroid. It should take about 5 hours, so I'll let it run while I'm sleeping. Tim  1357  <sup style="font-family:Times new roman; font-size:small;">talk  03:17, 16 February 2012 (UTC)


 * On second thought, I'll wait for you to reply. Below is a sample of what I was planning for the output. Do you want anything tweaked or added before I run it? By the way, I couldn't figure out how to use the Sinbad database, so as of now, the script does not check it. If you can give me some instruction on how to use it, I'd gladly include it in the script.  Tim  1357  <sup style="font-family:Times new roman; font-size:small;">talk  04:39, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Hey, that's fantastic. Will will be able to separate out make a list of "zero"s? The ones with zero results are the easiest ones to move ahead, to the "convert to List of minor planets chart redirects" step. I guess that won't be necessary if the bot only moves the zeros, but I had been looking forward to getting my hands on the list of zeros.

About the other website, there are some tips and places to go for questions discussed here at WP:NASTRO, but no I'm sorry I don't know how to use it. Chrisrus (talk) 05:07, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

linking
I would like a bot to add templates to the See also sections of all articles which have  banners where   or   or. Thanks, – Lionel (talk) 10:20, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
 * No bot is needed, I can do that easily with AWB. I will have to wait until tomorrow to start, but do you have any idea of the scale of how many pages I might need to do? Thanks,  Rcsprinter  (articulate)  22:10, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That's great! And thanks! Let me get the count and I'll contact you on your talk. I'll also double-check the proposed articles. Give me a day or so. – Lionel (talk) 23:05, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Any updates?  Rcsprinter  (warn)  11:27, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * And ✅.  Rcsprinter  (Gimme a message)  16:35, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Adding template to species articles
I would like to get a bot to add EOL to the top of the ext link of species articles if it does not already exist. Creating a set of articles may be a problem but using those that have taxobox may be the way to proceed. It would then be a simple matter of using the "binomial" value of the taxobox as the search string at eol.org. If it is feasible I will run it past WikiProject Animals and WikiProject Plants. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:25, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It is feasible, so starting the discussions to make sure everyone agrees would be good. Do you have an idea of how many articles would be affected? Also, I'm a little confused by the EOL documentation; it says that the full title for this article would be Nicrophorus americanus Olivier 1790, but it looks to me like it's american burying beetle (Nicrophorus americanus). Does it mean whatever's emphasized in the classifications list? &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 18:51, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Not sure of the umber of articles affected. It may be 1000s. I have rehashed the EOL documentation. The binomial authority (Olivier 1790 in this case) is not needed in the ext links. eol.org use just the binomial name as a page heading, as does WP. The binomial authority is in the body of the page for both EOL and WP. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 19:32, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Fair enough; what would be the label, then? Just so I have an idea of what the bot should be parsing out of the article. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 19:37, 16 February 2012 (UTC)


 * (ec)Some of the characteristics of the bot function would be:
 * "What links here" for taxobox can be used as a source list (it has 193532 transclusions)
 * The WP binomial article name or, if a common name is used, the binomial value in the taxobox is used for the EOL search string
 * Can be used for genus, species and subspecies (and maybe more?)
 * Articles already with EOL are ignored
 * The template is placed at the bottom of an existing Ext links list.
 * If there is no ==External links== section one is created for the template
 * There may be more but that is all I can think of at present. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:01, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That all sounds fine. Just want to confirm again: What should the first parameter be? If the bot places EOL on many articles with the incorrect label, people are going to be very unhappy with me. :P (Also, I'm going to wait until some people follow the links here and concur that this should be done before filing a BRFA.) Cheers! &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 21:19, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * By the first parameter do you mean the EOL number? That is obtained by entering the binomial name into the EOL search box. Can you write a script to do an automated query and create a list that matches the EOL number with the binomial name? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 21:55, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * No, sorry, I meant the second parameter, the label (herp derp). Title of the EOL article, full classification, or just the binomial name? &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 22:34, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The second parameter would be the binomial name only. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:11, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Gotcha; thanks! The specifications look clear enough for me to code something up in my free time while discussion continues here. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 23:13, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

It may be feasible, but I don't believe it's desirable to add EOL to pages robotically. Such links will generally fail the criteria WP:EL, and the decision to include them must be made manually. See WT:PLANTS for more detail. --Stemonitis (talk) 11:06, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 17:15, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Replacing WikiProject banners
WikiProject Adventure games was converted to a taskforce (at WikiProject Video games/Adventure games). The task requested on behalf of WP:VG is two-fold:
 * There may be easier ways to accomplish the same results, just lemme know if anything else is needed.


 * Part 1 - Remove all instances of,  and  . There are 671 pages with this banner, here's the list.


 * Part 2 - Add a |Adventure=yes parameter to the existent WP:VG banners in 655 of the pages affected above (here's the list). Note the capital A is intentional.  The other 16 pages (here's the list) simply do not have WP:VG banners. If it makes it easier they could be included in the list nonetheless and a  exclusion placed on them temporarily.

If some of that would be hard to do, or if there are easier ways, or if there's anything really, just lemme know!
 * Although this appears to be a trivial thing to do I would not recommend doing this as a bot action. There is a current community stir about bots and WikiProject tagging, partially due to my actions and it would probably just cause a lot of extra drama. It might be better just to do it manually even if it takes months. --Kumioko (talk) 15:47, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Care to link me to the discussion where consensus against bots editing WikiProject banners was established?  Salvidrim!   15:52, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Theres no consensus against it but there are multiple discussions ongoing about tagging with bots. I can't say that knowone will do this but, given that there has been a request pending for Chicago for months with no action and I got a brutal beatdown for it in the last couple days (resulting in the revocation of my bot authority) I would recommend against it. You might get it done with no trouble, you might also get sucked into a multi discussion pissing contest that makes you question why you even bothered with the place. Sorry for the verbiage I am still bitter about the process and my tongue is raw form licking my wounds for the last 2 days. :-)--Kumioko (talk) 15:55, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I believe this request should be judged on its own merits, not in comparison to the failures of others. This is pratically a simple text replacement task.  Salvidrim!   15:59, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. Like I said I can't/won't do it anymore but I certainly won't stand in someone elses way if they choose to take on this challenge. --Kumioko (talk) 16:09, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * This request is inline with WP:VG/IPC. Salvidrim, I believe it is Anomie which has a bot to perform this task, though my memory is fuzzy on the point. --Izno (talk) 16:28, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks -- I've dropped him a line.  Salvidrim!   16:30, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * So the deal is that the "16 other pages" are not in the scope of the task force? Anomie⚔ 17:02, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I guess it just hadn't been looked into yet. I went and added the WP:VG banner (in the next few mins), so there will be no need to handle them differently from the rest.  Salvidrim!   17:27, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅, all 671 needed articles have existing WP:VG banners (not all the same template (some use shortcut redirects)) with a varying amount of parameters. None of the 671 banners currently has a |Adventure=yes parameter so it is not needed to check whether one is already there before adding it.  Salvidrim!   17:32, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Nifty. I'll look at starting the run in a little bit; if I haven't posted here that I started it by about 22:30 UTC, post on my talk page to remind me. Anomie⚔ 19:26, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

(citation needed) instead of the template
There are a number of pages literally with "(citation needed)" rather than the template. I assume the existing bot(s) that date citation needed actually use the API equivalent of What links here to locate pages with templates, so to fix these plain text "templates" would require a search instead.

Once they've been found they can be simply replaced with the template and allow the dating bot(s) to do their thing, or the requested bot could aslo do the dating at the same time.

FYI To see the extent of the problem, |this search tries to find the relevant articles, though I have manually fixed the first three pages at the moment.

BTW see here for discussion of the general problem. Mark Hurd (talk) 15:28, 17 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Bots/Requests for approval/H3llBot 10. Although it was initially meant to cover more specific cases and syntax. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:52, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Stub placing bot
I think that Wikipedia needs a bot to fix the placement of stub templates. I've notice that many articles have stub templates placed before navboxes or somewhere else. Those templates are supposed to be placed after that content. -- JC  Talk to me My contributions 02:56, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It's part of the genfixes AWB does.  Salvidrim!   03:25, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * There are several of us that would love to do this however its considered a minor edit and to do so, without making a more significant edit at the same time, would result in at least a bot stop message or block. --Kumioko (talk) 03:37, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Would there be a difference between fixes that impact how the page is rendered (e.g. moving from the top of the article to the bottom) and fixes that wouldn't (e.g. moving from before categories to after)?  GoingBatty (talk) 04:50, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think so, not in this case. I can't provide an edit summery but CBM and someone else made a major issue out of doing this kinds of edit when Smackbot-gate was going on last year and they decided they weren't edits worth doing alone and used their clout to get the edits stopped. A short time later they forced AWB to change their rules of use after I made some changes that also provoked their wrath. With that said though if you get someone to pull a list of articles affected by this problem you could probably fix most of them by craftily engineering a script that changed other things (add Biography portals, categories, Infoboxes, persondata, AWB general fixes, etc.) so you can get the task done. Good luck --Kumioko (talk) 04:58, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * This is borderline WP:COSMETICBOT. Although it does change the display, the change is very minimal and more of an "OCD" layout issue. I'd argue moving from the very top of the page is a substantial change, moving around the navboxes isn't so much. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:32, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Missing images for higher taxa
In many cases, a species will have a photo in its infobox, but the higher taxa to which the species belongs will not have photos in their infoboxes. I'm not sure how involved coding this bot would be, but it would be great to identify articles for higher taxa missing images that should be filled in from the images in the articles for the lower taxa. E.g. Rufous-crowned Antpitta vs. Pittasoma (old revision because I added the image earlier today). Thanks! Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:14, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Formatting citations and punctuation
Could we have a bot to clean up the way that citations are placed in relation to punctuation? I often find commas, periods, and other punctuation placed immediately after a or tag, when instead they belong immediately before a or tag. I expect that it would be easy to move all punctuation that immediately follows a citation (without a space) so that it's immediately before the citation, and this type of formatting (unlike things such as stub template placement relative to navboxes) is a substantial type of edit that really should be corrected. The same thing could be used for the GR series of templates (note that they always have parameters; you'll see GR|6 or GR|2 all over the place, but I can't remember ever seeing GR by itself), since they automatically produce references. Nyttend (talk) 01:42, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * One of AWB's general fixes is to put references after punctuation. As for GR, I added it to my AWB feature request. - GoingBatty (talk) 02:53, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Welsh Mountain Peaks on cy
I've created around 700 articles on all the Welsh mountain peaks here. As you can see, only the OS has been included. Is there a bot which could add the corresponding geotag next to the OS, so that the peaks become visible on the top of the artricle using GeoGroupTemplate? Diolch, thanks. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 12:44, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not 100% sure what you mean; could you do one sample edit? Thanks, &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 18:50, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi madman! Done the first 3. Quite a job! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 04:05, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Too high a mountain? He. Don't worry; the problem was solved. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 01:38, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikinews Importer Bot
This bot appears to have died. It's been suggested the operator's account is closed due to inactivity.

Can someone help establish if this is the case? Ideally with a view to getting the bot up-and-running again. I'm happy to look after a new account for the bot if need be (but, with the proviso I'd need to add some Python knowledge to my coding toolset were changes required). --Brian McNeil /talk 14:24, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I just had a quick look at it but this (or something similar) should be possible to do with User:DrTrigonBot out of the box. Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 14:43, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay thanks very much, please keep us posted? &mdash; Cirt (talk) 15:01, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Do not have that much time at the moment - could you e.g. give me an example? May be a page that was updated/imported by the old bot and I'll convert it to DrTrigonBot. Then we can talk about the result... ;) Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 16:03, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Thoughts? &mdash; Cirt (talk) 16:07, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * n:Portal:Film/Wikipedia = sample source page
 * 1) Portal:Film/Film news/Wikinews = sample output page


 * Done. Will be updated daily. There are 2 minor differences; the date has another formatting and all links include the interwiki part 'wikinews:en:'. Both of them can be solved by template programming. Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 16:27, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Note the suggestion that the operator's account has been closed is incorrect; apparently, one of the toolserver machines is having issues. See WP:BON. Anomie⚔ 17:09, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * @DrTrigon, with the update from Anomie, will your changes still be needed, or do we instead need to bug somebody about fixing the tool server machines, or both? &mdash; Cirt (talk) 17:11, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, sorry I should have noticed this by myself. In your place I would do now:
 * revert changes of User:DrTrigon on Portal:Film/Film news/Wikinews
 * inform User talk:Misza13 about the problem and ask how to solve it
 * if no solution is found re-revert and use User:DrTrigonBot anyway (since it is there; and one central place for doing all kinds of substitutions in a general way ;)
 * ...one strange thing is User:DrTrigonBot runs on the toolserver too - and still works... ;) But do not know why... Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 17:37, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * If you set up SGE jobs on the submit server as recommended, that's because it's submitting all jobs to willow since nightshade is down. Convenient. :) &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 15:15, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah - meanwhile I got this by myself - but thanks a lot for the hint! I told Misza13 (by mail) to consider using SGE also, since that could improve it's bots stability... :) Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 15:34, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

And what about that Toolserver issue??? &mdash; Cirt (talk) 21:51, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Don't worry about it; it's not an issue in this case as DrTrigon says he's got it. And anyone it is a problem for can just run their jobs on the other server, which has been up all this time. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 23:54, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * And what about being inactive? &mdash; Cirt (talk) 00:00, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * According to Bot owners' noticeboard, Misza13 is running the bots manually on the server that's up for the time being (indeed it looks like Wikinews Importer Bot is currently running). &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 00:38, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, it does appear to be working again. So thanks to all above! ;) Cheers, &mdash; Cirt (talk) 02:05, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

"this revision": a template and a bot to help with it
I frequently have a need to refer to the current revision of the article (eg., in GA reviews or dispute resolution procedures like WP:3O or WP:RFC). To do that I have to go to the "page history", copy down the link to the revision and re-format it into oldid. Some other editors instead just use wikilinking, so to get the idea of how the article looked like back then one has to find the revision by hand.

My proposal is to create a template  which would display a normal wikilink  until gets rewritten by Bot into oldid. If introduced and made known, this will save some considerable amount of editors' effort.

The algorithm for bot seems to be pretty clear: Please leave me a talkback if you write to this thread. &mdash; Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 15:02, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) starts on timer
 * 2) gets the list of interclusions of this revision
 * 3) for each item on the list:
 * 4) parses the arguments
 * 5) looks for the closest previous revision of the linked page
 * 6) retrieves oldid
 * 7) rewrites this revision with oldid
 * 8) exists
 * You really should just watch this page, instead of demanding that everyone leave you a talkback if they reply. I'll leave you a talkback this once, but in the future watch the page for further replies.
 * This would be a simple enough task for a bot, but I wonder whether it's really so hard to just use the "Permanent link" link in the "toolbox" section at the right of the page. In most browsers you shouldn't even have to click the link just to find the oldid, hovering the mouse over it should show the target URL in the browser's status bar and/or you can right-click it and choose "Copy link location" or the like. Anomie⚔ 17:16, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I have the sidebar disabled (with a screen resolution 1280x720 it occupies too much space). I turned it off via Special:Preferences, and I believe that some other editors did so a well. Furthermore, linking to current revision is not always the task, this template would have quite a lot of possible use cases. &mdash; Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 17:39, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * One can easily get the oldid easily from the history, as well. And if you didn't want to fiddle with the oldid parameters, you could simply link it like this. If you are using it on a talk page, Freeze may be the easiest for you. <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis @ 08:45, 29 Shevat 5772 / 08:45, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, I wasn't aware of this one. For most cases it is just what I needed. &mdash; Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 09:42, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

ilike.com


Ilike.com is a redirect site, redirecting to myspace, and immediately 'like'-ing the subject linked to. Such links utterly fail our goals of Wikipedia - that can NEVER be a reference, and external links are supposed to link to more information about a subject. Could I have a bot going through the existing links to ilike.com, and having them disabled (as soon they will start to annoy people when they get re-inserted after a vandalism edit - the site is blacklisted like all redirect sites). --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:15, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Note, that for readers who are not logged in to myspace (like me), the links do not even link to the site of the subject, but go to the myspace homepage. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:18, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * We could add this to bot link blacklist and remove these manually meanwhile. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:36, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually, scrap that. Some are actual references that need archival from when they were valid. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:59, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Except when I tried to submit an archived copy, I obviously linked to the original url, so it triggered the filter... for example: http://web.archive.org/web/20100505171214/http://www.ilike.com/artist/Serius+Jones/track/Warrior — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:10, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * One could start with those which are not references, everything in external links can be eradicated. Then maybe some references are left over, which need manual work.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:12, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * How would I add those if I trigger the link blacklist filter because archived url contains the original url? — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:13, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Add? They need to be removed.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:14, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I meant add the archived url as in the example above, such as, http://web.archive.org/web/20100505171214/http://www.ilike.com/artist/Serius+Jones/track/Warrior . You can go to it to be taken to the original content. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:16, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Darn, missed that (sorry), and Darn, country firewall. How is the content of ilike.com/artist/Serius+Jones/track/Warrior different from http://web.archive.org/web/20100505171214/http://www.ilike.com/artist/Serius+Jones/track/Warrior ?  If they have the same content, also the archive.org link should go.  Otherwise, MAYBE the myspace page itself is an option, or as a final solution - replace with  - where ilike.com is bringing you, will not be a proper reference for the material.  That may leave statements unreferenced, but that is what they now are basically as well.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:20, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Eh, do you mean that ilike.com used to contain good, proper info, but that it changed over recently? --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:23, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:23, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Hmm .. that ***** .. sorry, can't help you here at the moment, the country firewall seems to disallow me to go into any of the archive.com archives. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:25, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Looking at the pages at ilike.com shows a poor hit rate at archive.org, and when I look at many of them they are dynamic in content, eg. tour dates, and they display very poorly. Nothing in the 30-40 pp that I look at seems particularly authoritative. Can we just nullify the urls by wrapping them in a comment and removing the  http component, that at least allows some people to dig further if they so wish. — billinghurst  sDrewth  14:44, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * We could just mark them all with dead links. But, as you say, looking through the list, even the entries that are supposed to have an interview don't have it, rather a very generic misparsed content. Perhaps, they could just be removed after all. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:52, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * OK, I removed all the plain external links. Remaining ones are basically references with syntax and many with proper citeweb template. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:45, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Marked the rest with . —  HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:26, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Attila Borhidi
Hi! There are a lot of links to Atilla Borhidi on enwiki, but the correct form of his name is Attila Borhidi (Hungarian botanist, see: hu:Borhidi Attila). It would be nice, if someone corrected it. There are a lot of links to the author abbreviation Borhidi too. Kontos (talk) 21:46, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * No need for a bot; I'll have this all sorted in a couple of minutes... Josh Parris
 * A couple of redirects (appropriately tagged) and a Google-translated stub later, problem solved. User:WildBot will eventually fix the misspellings; in the mean time, feel free to turn the stubbed bio into a proper article! Josh Parris 22:51, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Kontos (talk) 08:50, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Adding RSS Feeds to Wikipedia
Is there any way to either add an RSS feed from an external page to Wikipedia or have a bot update a Wikipedia page from the external page? Allen (talk) 11:34, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm sure its possible, yes. Is it desirable? I think you need to tell us more; for which articles / what content would this be useful? What sources are you thinking of? --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:24, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It's possible, but I don't think there are any bots doing this. Definitely not on a blanket basis, as each source's RSS content syntax is different. But, as above, this should be done on a case-by-case basis. — HELL KNOWZ  TALK 12:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * If there was consensus for this task, it looks like it would fall within DrTrigonBot's scope. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 17:17, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I would like to add updates from my user page/list pages on Listal.
 * Just ask again if you need more clarification.
 * Allen (talk) 23:32, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I suggest that this is done via a javascript widget, which loads the content directly into the users browser without the need for continuous wikipedia edits. Stuartyeates (talk) 00:57, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
 * If that is true, do you know what "javascript widget" it would be? Allen (talk) 01:14, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
 * As mentioned by madman (tks for that! ;) this would be possible with DrTrigonBot (and is already done on - at least - 2 pages). The full answer is given at User talk:DrTrigon. Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 14:36, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Despite the 2 open points "If there was consensus for this task" (from madman) and "I suggest that this is done via a javascript widget" (from Stuartyeates) this can be considered as done from my point of view. Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 21:29, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * But I think this 2 open point have to discussed here and now!
 * @Stuartyeates: Do you have such a javascript widget? Are you able to write one? (or do you know someone able)
 * Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 10:49, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, can we get this resolved ASAP? I would like to get this done really soon.  There is no deadline.  I just want to see this done soon.
 * Also, can the updates have images or "piped links" (either one linked to the items' pages)? Yes, I know there is copyright violations and such to consider, but some of the links aren't totally clear as to what they mean.
 * Allen (talk) 11:16, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

What is it exactly that you want to do? Which external pages do you use, what articles do you update, where do you place the info, what info do you copy and how do you attribute it? How many pages are affected and have the relevant WikiProjects been notified? I don't think editors will lean one way or another unless there are more details here. And given this is on a BOTREQ page, BAG certainly needs more to go on. — HELL KNOWZ  TALK 11:31, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Per comments on DrTrigon's talk page, . As Tbayer (WMF) pointed out, requested task is not appropriate for a bot (Wikipedia is not a social networking site, Amazon affiliate links are not appropriate, uploading copyrighted images is not acceptable). &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 15:00, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * First, I made some new pages to populate with the feeds. So far, I have made User:Morriswa/Listal, which will be used for my Listal user page; User:Morriswa/Listal/Lists, which will be used for my Listal list page; and User:Morriswa/Listal/Favorite CDs, which will be used for my Listal list:  "My Favorite CDs".
 * What else do you need to know?
 * I'm excited to get this started. THANKS!
 * Allen (talk) 01:48, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm finding User:Tbayer (WMF) arguments pretty persuasive, to be honest. Stuartyeates (talk) 02:03, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't see Tbayer (WMF)'s "arguments" above. Where they posted on another page?  Allen (talk) 02:16, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * They were posted on DrTrigon's talk page, and you responded to them. I think there's some sort of a communication problem here. This is not an appropriate task for a bot and it will not be done. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 02:19, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think this is getting too spread out; it should have been kept on one page.
 * I don't know why you say this "is not an appropriate task for a bot". DrTrigon actually started it before he was "forced" to stop it.
 * Is there any way that this can be done? Allen (talk) 02:31, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It comes down to the policies at WP:NOTSOCIALNETWORK and WP:NOTPROMOTION. These are policies which are unlikely to be changed in the foreseeable future. Stuartyeates (talk) 02:35, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Just to give you (Allen) a hint; from my point of view you have 3 options now:
 * switch from listal to another server/service that is open (like identi.ca or else) and provides what you want - if that exists
 * find a really good and persuasive way to assure you are the copyright owner of all the content you want to import and find an additional value for the whole wiki - I think this will be a hard one
 * just forget about this
 * Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 12:13, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Multiple Issues to Single Tag
There are a very large number of articles on the wiki that previously had the Multiple Issues template, but that have since had all but one of the issues resolved. I'm frequently responsible for them myself, since as I work through many outdated tags in a short time I often don't bother to reformat the template. The task of replacing it with the appropriate standalone tag is completely unambiguous and thus is ideally suited for a bot, but would be tedious and time-consuming for a human. -- LWG talk 14:56, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * BattyBot is doing a lot of work with Multiple Issues, and would be happy to investigate this tomorrow. GoingBatty (talk) 18:44, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * - Part of AWB's general fixes are to remove if it has no parameters and convert it to the original template if it has only one parameter.  I'm preparsing the list of 43,000+ articles that use Multiple issues now to see if there's a small number of articles that could be changed manually, or if a bot request should be filed.  Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 19:59, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * -GoingBatty (talk) 00:28, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * -GoingBatty (talk) 02:43, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * - removed from about 500 articles.  GoingBatty (talk) 15:03, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Notification bot
I was wondering if there were a bot that would automatically place a notification at WikiProject talk pages when a new section is added to a discussion page. We have a collection of articles that do not have a current WikiProject, but logically belong to any of three other WikiProjects. One of the solutions is to make a working group, and post automatic notifications to the three WikiProjects when a new section is added, but we don't know if there's a bot that can do that. Anybody have any ideas? VanIsaacWS<sup style="margin-left:-2.9ex">contribs 16:18, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Seriously, people. Is there a bot that will monitor a page and write a standard message to talk pages when a new section is added? It could also even be a simple bot that posts a message if there have been any edits during a 24 hour period. I'm looking for any help I can get here. Thanks. VanIsaacWS<sup style="margin-left:-2.9ex">contribs 07:11, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Any thoughts or suggestion? VanIsaacWS<sup style="margin-left:-2.9ex">contribs 09:15, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * What about a bot writing the most recent page history entry to your notification page once a day? Is not exaclty what you need, but...
 * If there is no reason to reject this task at all...?? Anybody? Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 21:33, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Village Pump
Village Pump needs a bot for one of the proposals. See the discussion for more. <span style="-moz-border-radius:1em;border:1px solid black;font-size:11px;background-color:red;color:white;padding:1px 4px 1px 5px">BCS  (Talk) 02:49, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Hm, well, actually this would be a semi-automated task. I suppose if consensus supports this proposal, a bot could take action as directed by contributors, but I wonder whether it wouldn't be better for the contributors to take the actions themselves, with assistance. Maybe via a user script. I'll think about this one and play a little in my sandbox while discussion is ongoing. :) &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;">madman 02:55, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I was thinking a bot because it would take less time. For example, a bot can edit twenty-four hours straight without because it doesn't need to sleep, unlike humans. Bots don't take wikibreaks or have lives besides editing. Also, concerns should be adressed at the Village Pump. <span style="-moz-border-radius:1em;border:1px solid black;font-size:11px;background-color:red;color:white;padding:1px 4px 1px 5px">BCS   (Talk) 03:45, 24 February 2012 (UTC)


 * at Bots/Requests for approval/RscprinterBot 3. <font color="#FFB911"> Rcsprinter  (warn)    (Contribs)  ( Not Rcs )  20:49, 26 February 2012 (UTC)