Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 18

Bots operated by Cyberpower678
might be on a little R&R break from Wikipedia, as they are not responding. Meanwhile, his bots seem to not be functioning as they should. I know the admin stats have not updated for a while. And apparently other tasks are stalled out. Please see User talk:cyberpower678 and its recent archives. Is there an alternate admin who can get things back up and running? If not, I guess we just wait it out. — Maile (talk) 01:16, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Inactive bots

 * (copied from moved-to header)The bot policy asks for this to be handled, with some notifications, over at WP:BOTN, so moved there. Once done if a crat doesn't handle it there, the removal request can be placed here. —  xaosflux  Talk 10:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Hello. Per Bot policy, we're supposed to be de-flagging bots that haven't been active in two years. xaosflux has this helpful query showing about 150 bots that meet the criteria currently. I dug up a query after noticing that LaraBot still has a bot flag even though that bot hasn't edited since 2014. Can someone please do the necessary notifications and de-flaggings for these inactive bots?

For LaraBot and BernsteinBot, you can just go ahead and remove the bot flags immediately. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:09, 20 January 2023 (UTC)


 * The criteria also needs that the listed operator has also had no logged actions or edits for two years. The query is based only on bot activity, not operator, so most of the 150 in the result do not meet the criteria for removal. I checked about 20 and all of them had active operators. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 08:02, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, that's stupid. Why would operator activity make a difference? I think account activity requirements are a bit daft in general, but keeping bot flags on inactive bots because their operators are still around is particularly puzzling. We should change the policy. --MZMcBride (talk) 09:09, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I keep a bot account that I use for one-offs and it's simply easier to flip the bit once and keep it flipped than request it possibly multiple times for arbitrary runs. Anyway, I'm starting a policy discussion shortly on the topic of inactivity that targets what I think are low-hanging fruit in the report. Izno (talk) 09:19, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Nobody is suggesting de-flagging your bot. There's a clear and substantial difference between a bot such as IznoBot that last edited in September 2021 and a bot such as Stwalkerbot that last edited in June 2010. We both know this. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 09:29, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Just a note for the record that Izno's discussion is at . Primefac (talk) 13:07, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Why would operator activity make a difference? If the operator is around, and there's an issue with the bot account, an active bot operator can take action.
 * This doesn't mean every other bot should keep its flag, it's just that by policy, automatic flag removal is unwarranted. Stwalkerbot is a bot that's both inactive and by the admission of its operator, unlikely to resume. That makes it a good candidate for a flag removal IMO. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:01, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 16 was the last go around. The report of interest is User:MajavahBot/Bot status report. Izno (talk) 08:24, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Below are the inactive ones by the definition (TAP bot is a couple days from now). Izno (talk) 08:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Moved from WP:BN. Will send the operator notices. — xaosflux  Talk 10:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Operator notices sent to the 5 operators listed above. — xaosflux  Talk 10:41, 20 January 2023 (UTC)


 * As there has been no response form the operators, these bots have been deauthorized and deflagged. Should the operator want to use them again, they will need to request it at WP:BRFA. — xaosflux  Talk 00:46, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I noticed that BG19bot and Makecat-bot are now showing up on List of Wikipedians by number of edits/1–1000 - see . Is there a way to resolve this?  Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 05:46, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @GoingBatty: I have added them to List of Wikipedians by number of edits/Unflagged bots, which will remove them from the list in the next edit. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 12:03, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ Thank you! I also added Lonjers french region rename bot to the list, as it's now in the top 10,000.  Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 14:09, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Feel free to remove User:Snotbot's bot flag. I haven't used it in 10 years, and I'm unlikely to use it anytime soon.  —&#8288;Scotty Wong &#8288;— 08:11, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Was there any bot that was compromised and went amok?
I thought that this kind of behaviour surely happened in the 2000’s. 85.98.16.196 (talk) 17:20, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Compromised? Not that I am aware of. Did something not within its remit (usually through either bad regex or otherwise bad programming)? Absolutely. It's been a few years since anything really major, but even in the last 5 years we've had bots get blocked (temporarily) for "going rogue". Primefac (talk) 19:13, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

What do you think was the most devastating damage they caused? (In terms of amount of time to fix it)--85.98.16.196 (talk) 12:14, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I'll be honest, I'm not entirely comfortable with this line of questioning. Is there a reason you are asking these sorts of questions instead of just looking through the BOTN archives? Primefac (talk) 12:21, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

User:MalnadachBot is running amok
The bot User:MalnadachBot is currently going crazy, making edits to thousands (?) of talk pages with completely useless edits to decades-old user signatures. The signatures are completely fine and do not need to be changed. The "font" tags they use work in every browser ever and will continue to work in every browser forever into the future. If font tags are causing someone's linter to complain, then either (a) the linter should not be run on talk pages, or (b) that should be considered a bug in the linter, and fixed.

This bot should be stopped to stop it from spamming everyone's watchlists, and should not be allowed to run again until it can be shown it won't make so many worthless no-op spam edits.

After hitting the E-stop on this one, one thing the bot author may want to do is configure the bot to only examine main namespace. –jacobolus (t) 00:37, 1 February 2023 (UTC)


 * @Jacobolus that bot appears to properly asserting the 'bot' flag on edits, you can avoid seeing bots on your watchlist by checking hide next to "bots" on the filter. — xaosflux  Talk 00:42, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * There are plenty of good reasons to keep an eye on bot edits. Telling people they should stop paying attention to meaningful edits if they don’t want to sift through the massive piles of no-op spam being created by a different bot is not an adequate response. The edits being done by User:MalnadachBot are literally 100% worthless. This is not some kind of important maintenance task. It’s pure distraction and make-work. We are talking people's signatures on talk page comments from 15 years ago. There is no reason whatsoever to care whether these pass someone's made up linter rules. –jacobolus (t) 00:45, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Jacobolus have you discussed your concerns with the bot operator already and are at an impasse? — xaosflux  Talk 00:52, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The only response is "this is an approved bot" and "you can hide [the edits from your watchlist]". Which is not the response I am looking for of: "I will shut the bot down and stop spamming everyone".
 * I’m bringing it here for hopefully more eyes, including maybe from someone with some better perspective or authority. Whatever process was involved in "approving" this might also be broken. I don't really know too much about Wikipedia bot policies. And I also would really rather not wade into a big fight about it more generally.
 * I just want the bot to stop. The current behavior is insane. –jacobolus (t) 00:55, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for reporting this. I have over 16,000 items in my watchlist, and this was annoying me too. I have checked the no-bots box, but I'd rather not have to do it for too long. So if this is all about something optional that doesn't need fixing in the first place, then I too would like to see that stopped ASAP. BilCat (talk) 04:13, 1 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Operator notified. This discussion appears to primarily be about Task 12. — xaosflux  Talk 01:24, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Unlike what the heading suggests, this section isn't based on any malfunction or policy issues, you are demanding that we stop working on replacing erroneous and obsolete markup because you don't like it. These are safe edits designed to replace all font tags in one go, the bot has replaced over half a million font tags in 4 days. There are multiple options to hide them in your watchlist, yet if you don't want to use them you will have to put up with it. The only thing that matters in regard to how mediawiki sofware works and its future plans is what the developers who maintain the software say. And they have clearly done so by marking them for replacement, random opinions not based on policy has no bearing on how mediawiki works. Mine is hardly the only bot working on Lint errors. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 05:22, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * replacing erroneous and obsolete markup There is literally no benefit whatsoever in doing this. These html tags have worked for the past 20+ years and are going to continue to work forever. No browser is ever going to drop support. If you linter is giving you a hard time about "deprecated" tags on historical talk pages, that's a linter bug that should be fixed (or better still, you should stop trying to run a linter on 15-year-old discussions).
 * If you want to go tell current users to stop using the font tag in their current signature, fine. If you want to fix linter errors in main namespace, it's probably unnecessary busywork for you, but fine.
 * But trying to force every bit of historical talk page markup to match new made-up standards based on some kind of pointless crusade with no technical merit is a huge waste of everyone's time and attention, and is grossly disrespectful of everyone else on the wiki.
 * how mediawiki sofware works this has nothing at all to do with “how mediawiki software works”. –jacobolus (t) 05:51, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * pointless crusade with no technical merit describes your comment perfectly. My bot (as well as others' Lint fixing bots) has sound technical merit. If you want to propose changes to how mediawiki software should work, do so at Phabricator instead of railing against users working on known issues. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 06:01, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * My complaint is a social one, not a technical one. You are spamming everyone for literally no benefit. I have the same complaint when a telemarketer calls me in the middle of dinner or when my email inbox fills up with viagra ads and Nigerian prince scammer solicitations. –jacobolus (t) 06:09, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Please tone down the rhetoric, it's entirely unnecessary. Legoktm (talk) 06:31, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * There has been no reason articulated for why these edits should happen at all, besides "it's a linter error". Why should anyone care if there's a linter error on old talk pages? Who is "linting" those pages and why? What problem does it cause if there are linter errors there? No attempt has been made to answer any of those questions.
 * There was as far as I can tell no community discussion or consensus that millions of old talk page comments needed to be modified. It was just unilaterally decided by a tiny number of people who went ahead and started making millions of no-op edits, polluting everyone's watchlist.
 * When asked to explain, they don't make any attempt at an answer, or even indicate that they understand the complaint, but instead hide behind bureucratic "this was already approved". Which again, does not answer any of the relevant questions. –jacobolus (t) 06:48, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Font tags are deprecated according to MDN docs. 0x Deadbeef →∞ (talk to me) 06:05, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, but "deprecated" here is a term of art that in the browser/html world means "has worked in every browser for decades (cf. browser compatibility table) and will continue to be supported until the end of time, but one spec editor one time wanted to discourage new uses". This is not something that anyone needs to bother "fixing" on ancient talk page discussion signatures. Imagine if even in the worst case, some new VR-based browser in 2050 drops support for the deprecated "font" tag. Suddenly archived Wikipedia talk page discussions from 2007 will have their signatures revert to default colors of Wikipedia-VR-skin-2045 instead of the originally-intended-in-2007 rainbow effect. Is this really a pressing problem anyone should care about? –jacobolus (t) 06:06, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * (As an aside, "deprecated" in browser specs also occasionally means "was a tricky new experimental feature that was never widely supported across browsers and has already been replaced by something better, so is likely to break in the future"; but that's an entirely different situation vs. tags like center, font, or tt, which are used on billions of web pages and can never be removed from implementations.) –jacobolus (t) 06:15, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, this was previously discussed this last June. Nothing has really changed since then, aside from the main complaint back then of making multiple edits per page being fixed AIUI (thank you). Legoktm (talk) 06:24, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It looks like the main complaint back then was the annoyance of sifting through spam from useless no-op edits. Which is exactly the same as the complaint today. –jacobolus (t) 06:26, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The main complaint was repeated visits, with each visit fixing just one or a couple of individual signatures. This complaint has been addressed by the bot operator. The bot now skips editing a page entirely if it is unable to fix all of the obsolete font tags in a single edit. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:34, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * This is a mischaracterization:
 * “I'd like to ask that the MalnadachBot be halted or its impacts on watchlists be removed... We don't allow cosmetic edits for a reason.”
 * “Are we certain the errors need to be fixed?”
 * “I'm really unclear on why fixing these lint errors in old discussions is worthwhile. Is there a pointer to a discussion on this?”
 * “Do we really need to fix Lint errors on pages from 10+ years ago that nobody reads?”
 * “If either browsers or MediaWiki dropped support, then we could go about updating the old HTML, right? There's no reason to think support will be dropped anytime soon?”
 * (none of these questions were ever addressed) –jacobolus (t) 07:01, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Jacobolus: See also WP:HIDEBOT to hide a specific bot from your watchlist. 0x Deadbeef →∞ (talk to me) 06:35, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. I've asked about that before (can't remember who or where) within the last couple of years, and was told it wasn't possible (at least then). I'll definitely try it out on several annoying note (and users too!) BilCat (talk) 06:52, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * has replaced over half a million font tags in 4 days I am curious whether people would complain less if it ran slower, as there really is no urgency here. Legoktm (talk) 06:36, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Last 4 days I was running it on pages with most errors. Previously when I ran slower, people complained that it has been going on for a long time, someone or the other will be unhappy regardless of pace. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 07:20, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * asks a reasonable question. The bot currently edits roughly 10,000 pages per day, which I think is a typical bot pace (about 10 edits per minute). There are currently 8 million Linter errors, reduced from 21 million thanks primarily to this bot. If we estimate that something like 6 million of those errors are fixable by bot, and each edit fixes one error (unlikely, but the worst-case scenario), we can have 10,000 edits per day for 60 days, or 1,000 edits per day for 600 days, or some other trade-off. For most bots, we put up with a fast pace because they are only doing a few thousand edits, or at most a few days of edits, at that pace. The scale of this cleanup is different, and it may be worth a community conversation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:33, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Style guidance for bot User pages?
As an unrelated aside, is there any kind of CSS style guidance for the about pages of active bots? I find this one has an almost entirely illegible (to me) page. It looks like this in my browser:



–jacobolus (t) 07:29, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * As I have said in my talkpage, Jacobolus was involved in a recent dispute with me, casting aspersions and editing disruptively following which they were briefly blocked, as seen here and here. They are bringing this up hoping something will stick, after reading the page and going through the links that has all the explanations they are demanding here. Everybody is allowed freedom with styling their userspace. However if any uninvolved editor has a problem with it, I will replace it with another font. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 08:01, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I was annoyed at you in October for pointlessly deleting a few templates that I had put a lot of effort into a decade ago without offering any reasonable justification for it, hiding behind bureaucratic legalese when called out, and refusing to explain yourself or engage in discussion. I had forgotten about that whole episode by now, because I decided it wasn't worth the considerable hassle and community organizing effort it would take to try to fix the currently broken and abusive "templates for deletion" process. But that is all entirely off topic here.
 * I am annoyed at your bot now in February because it is filling up my watchlist (and everyone else's) with huge numbers of no-op "fix linter error" edits to 15-year-old talk page discussions which do not need to be made.
 * I really couldn't care less what font you use on your user page. But if your bot is going to put a link to an explanatory page in every one of its millions of edit summaries, you might as well try to make the page legible to people who click through, no? (While you are at it you might expand the explanation on the page to answer common questions such as "why does this need to be done at all?" and "where is the community consensus supporting this change?") –jacobolus (t) 08:11, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ, this is indeed hard to read. — Qwerfjkl  talk  08:22, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Qwerfjkl: Thanks, I have removed Brush Script MT font. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 08:33, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Well, it's pretty rare for people to come to this noticeboard to talk about a bot when they're happy about something it did, but I am pretty glad that all those goddamn lint errors in subpages of WP:SIGNPOST have been fixed -- manually fixing that would have been a gigantic pain. jp×g 11:17, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Tagging edits that fix lint errors
If we created an edit tag like "Fixing lint errors" and bots used that tag, it would be straightforward for people to set their watchlist to exclude any edit with that tag, which would allow people to both see regular bot edits but hide just these. Legoktm (talk) 06:42, 3 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I think this is a reasonable path forward. not tagged filters have been enabled for a week or two. Izno (talk) 18:24, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I created a tag, . Legoktm (talk) 06:56, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Prioritizing lint error fixes by pageviews
Or, we could just stop wasting electrons on fixing linter errors on sub-sub-subpages of AfD talk pages from 2005 that literally no human will ever visit again between now and the heat death of the universe (and even if they did, it would probably render perfectly fine since browsers still support deprecated tags; and even if they didn't, the worst that is likely to happen is that some long-retired perma-banned sock troll's signature might look a little wonky *gasp* oh, the humanity). I still don't understand why anyone defends this useless and annoying bot task. Here's an idea: how about we allow bots to fix linter errors on any page in mainspace, and any other non-mainspace page that has received more than 50 pageviews in the last 12 month period. Without such restrictions, it's like a tree falling in a forest and no one is around to hear it. We're fixing lint errors for the exclusive benefit of webcrawler bots who index these pages periodically for search engines. Seriously, is there any other bot task that inspires so many random editors to independently come here to complain every month or two? Even for those of you that think Malnachadbot is doing the Lord's work, can't you at least admit that the unprecedentedly high frequency and volume of complaints about this bot task is at least cause for some concern? Closing these threads isn't going to make the problem go away...  —&#8288;Scotty Wong &#8288;— 08:03, 3 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Instead of counting pageviews, it would be better to just stop these edits from the talk namespace altogether. Even the edits on "recently viewed" talk pages are from stale discussions that ended more than a decade ago. If someone is bothered by seeing superfluous pages on their list of pages with linter errors, they can just stop looking at that specific linter error. That would affect far fewer people than telling every other editor to modify the filters on their watchlists. –jacobolus (t) 17:54, 4 February 2023 (UTC)


 * why anyone defends this useless and annoying bot task – But have you considered that this bot has spammed more people’s watchlists more times than any other bot in the history of Wikipedia? Is that not an accomplishment with celebrating? –jacobolus (t) 09:48, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * This is yet another entirely unnecessary comment. This does not add anything to the discussion and needs to stop. 0x Deadbeef →∞ (talk to me) 10:16, 3 February 2023 (UTC)


 * @Scottywong: In the previous thread in June, you said you would look forward to the day when MalnadachBot can replace all font tags in a single edit. Now that the day has come, you are back saying it should edit only most viewed pages. What's wrong with the bot editing both now that all font tags are being replaced? When a bot is working on an unprecedented scale, it is naturally going to bring more notice than other bot tasks. I have worked to handle any bugs reported, there is plenty of support as well and other bots are also working on this. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 11:19, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Making a dozen or two edits per page to fix this linter errors was indeed a huge problem, and I appreciate you fixing it. That fix will continue to come in handy when you fix linter errors on pages that actually matter. But, that doesn't mean that your bot task doesn't have multiple problems. You are fixing errors on millions of pages that are very unlikely to ever be read by a human again. Yet these pages persist on people's watchlists, from back before the time when a feature was added such that you could add pages to your watchlist for a temporary period of time. So, for these low-traffic and no-traffic pages, the only noticeable effect of your work is to clutter up people's watchlists, and there is no benefit to anyone. For instance, a page your bot just edited a few moments ago is Talk:The Year of the Sex Olympics/Archive 1. In the last 12 months, it received one pageview. Perhaps you can tell me what you see as the benefit of "fixing" user signatures on pages that no one will ever read? I can't see any possible motivation to do this work other than to be able to say, "I have a bot that made 10.7 million edits!"  —&#8288;Scotty Wong &#8288;— 16:35, 3 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Sigh, I regret re-opening this discussion. @Primefac if you don't mind re-closing it. Legoktm (talk) 15:44, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * No need to close the discussion prematurely; you can just remove this page from your watchlist if you're annoyed by this conversation.  —&#8288;Scotty Wong &#8288;— 16:37, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The discussion was already closed, I wanted to discuss a technical solution to make it simpler for users to hide these bots, but you and others just hijacked it to rehash the already-closed discussion, sigh. And no, unwatchlisting this page isn't an option because well, I'm a bot operator and expected to follow this noticeboard. Legoktm (talk) 17:13, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Ok, and I wanted to discuss a technical solution to make the bot focus only on pages where fixing linter errors are likely to provide a minimal benefit to humanity, and ignore the errors on pages that no human is likely to ever read again. Just because you disagree with my idea doesn't mean you can continue to sigh aggressively and just close the discussion.  —&#8288;Scotty Wong &#8288;— 17:23, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The section header is "Tagging edits that fix lint errors". Given that none of the comments after that even addressed my proposal, can I move all your unrelated comments into a new subsection? Legoktm (talk) 18:03, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Sure, fixed it for you. Now keep your sighs in your own subsection.  —&#8288;Scotty Wong &#8288;— 18:19, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

I have hatted a few off-topic (for this subthread) discussions. You are welcome to keep going with your back-and-forth, but please limit the un-hatted discussion to the original proposal/point being raised. Primefac (talk) 17:47, 4 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I moved them to a new subthread so they don’t distract from each topic. –jacobolus (t) 18:04, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Bot about page does not explain what the bot is doing, bot administrators do not answer basic questions
If you read the bot’s about page, there is very little description of what the bot is doing, why it is doing it, who made those decisions, or where those decisions were discussed. There is no attempt made to describe or answer common complaints and questions.

The most prominent feature of the page is a large banner bragging about how the bot has made the most edits of any user in history. The obvious conclusion is that making the most possible edits is a driving motivator for the bot's activity.

If we want to talk "necessary" vs. "unnecessary", here is what I think is a "necessary" prerequisite to keep operating something this disruptive: the people approving / operating this bot should sit down with each-other, have a frank discussion about what the bot's actual purpose is, what the pros and cons of running the bot are, whether there is community consensus supporting the bot's operation, and come up with some straight answers to questions from people who are annoyed by the bot.

What is "unnecessary" is a pattern of deflecting questions and blaming anyone who complains, hiding behind the authority of un-linked, un-described "decisions" by unnamed people at some past time which cannot be meaningfully questioned. –jacobolus (t) 10:43, 3 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Still continuing with casting aspertions I see... click on the link WP:LINT provided by the bot in every edit summary and it will take you to a page describing what is being done. Why, who, benefits and other questions are answered if you go down the rabbit hole from there. But then that is not what you asked in my talkpage, you demanded it stop, were told it is doing what it is approved for and given options to hide them, and you jumped straight here. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 11:16, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay. I clicked through WP:LINT and I arrived at this:
 * The obsolete-tag error is the result of deprecated HTML elements. Since it is unclear to us at this time how far we want to push this goal of HTML5 compliance, this category is marked low priority. Some wikis might choose to not address this right away. Other wikis might want to get ahead and want to be HTML5 compliant. It is possible that some wikis might write bots to address this. So, please use your judgement and wiki-specific policies to guide you in how much effort you want to spend on this. If, in the future, there is greater clarity about pursuing this more aggressively, we will reflect that by updating the severity of this linter issue appropriately.
 * [...] MediaWiki currently whitelists these elements, and they tend to be output the same way as input. This means that when browser vendors decide to remove these they will simply display as regular undecorated text. [...] It is likely that browser vendors will give us significant notice before making any breaking changes given how prevalent these deprecated elements are used across the internet.
 * (my emphasis; we might also add, browser vendors are never going to change these behaviors)
 * But the advice from this page was not followed. Nobody bothered "using their judgment", crafting "wiki-specific policies", or asking for community input. Instead some self-appointed Lint-fixer bot crew took the Linter’s list of rules as gospel and rushed ahead to replace every 15-year-old rainbow signature that nobody but wiki-historians is ever going to look at again with a new "spec compliant" version. Along the way, there was never any apparent consideration of the downsides or side effects of that rush to action. –jacobolus (t) 11:30, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

For reference, here are the volumes of thoughtful community discussion that took place on the pros and cons of this bot task prior to approving it. Even the bot operator was surprised that it was so easy to get such an enormous bot task approved, see their comment on the talk page of the BRFA.  —&#8288;Scotty Wong &#8288;— 16:50, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * This has already been discussed ad nauseam. — Qwerfjkl  talk  08:02, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Where is this discussion “ad nauseam”? Do you have a link? I have asked repeatedly for a link to such discussion, and nothing has been provided except past complaints similar to this one, all of which were arrogantly brushed aside.
 * Was this discussed someplace where there was broad community input? Was there some formal decision-making process involving a broad community consensus? Who made such decisions, under what criteria, what alternatives did they consider, and where was the thought process recorded/explained?
 * Why won’t (can’t?) the folks defending the bot behavior answer any of the several basic obvious questions that people are asking?
 * Why does it seem that the people defending the bot behavior cannot even comprehend (let alone care about) the negative side effects and resulting criticism? –jacobolus (t) 10:05, 4 February 2023 (UTC)


 * @Jacobolus, what are the negative side effects? That it annoys people who don't want to see the edits, but won't hide them on their watchlist? — Qwerfjkl  talk  12:36, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The negative side effect is that it spams every other editor on the site, filling their watchlists with dozens of spurious entries that turn out to be pure useless noise. Then when people complain, instead of trying to understand the complaint, the response is “this is your fault for not hiding bot edits”. Which is just blaming the victims here. –jacobolus (t) 16:32, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Jacobolus, but why don't you hide the edits? — Qwerfjkl  talk  17:01, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Because tracking bot edits in general is useful. Bots regularly screw things up, or do part of a job that needs manual human intervention to finish. There are many (many) wikipedia editors tracking bot edits for all sorts of valid reasons, but literally not a single one of them cares about whether a signature from 2006 on an archived talk page was made purple via a font tag or a span tag. It’s pure spam. –jacobolus (t) 17:22, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * If you don't care about MalnadachBot's edits, you can hide that bot from your watchlist. If you cared about the quality of its edits, you can still do a spot check every now and then. 0x Deadbeef →∞ (talk to me) 17:26, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

I wrote a short essay explaining why I find the Linter project and these edits valuable. It does not address every single critique leveled here, but I sincerely hope this allows us to move past exaggerated rhetoric like "literally not a single one of them cares", "edits being done ... are literally 100% worthless", "literally no human will ever visit again between now and the heat death of the universe", "fixing lint errors for the exclusive benefit of webcrawler bots", and "there is no benefit to anyone". Legoktm (talk) 07:34, 5 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Great, thanks! That’s significantly more helpful than the sum total of everything that has been said by bot operators/administrators in the entire past history of responses to these questions. If someone had made such a response months ago it would have saved considerable bother and facilitated a meaningful conversation. Now let’s dive in.
 * aligns us with HTML5 efforts in general
 * First, why do you think this is an important abstract principle? Second, why do you think it matters for 10+-year-old content? Third, why do you think using  is meaningfully "aligned with HTML5"?
 * Moving toward "semantic" HTML was a theme starting in the late 90s. CSS was introduced in ~1997, and HTML4 (1999) deprecated font and several other "presentational" elements. HTML5 removed any mention of them (while promoting some common tags like 'b' and 'i' to be "semantic" under retconned definitions). The HTML spec authors, browser vendors, and CSS advocates wanted web page authors to move away from baking presentation directions directly into their markup, because that approach is inflexible, adapts poorly to change, interacts poorly with alternative user agents (e.g., screen readers), doesn’t give meaningful information to machines examining the markup, and so on.
 * Instead, web page authors are supposed to use semantically meaningful elements where possible, and apply named classes to them for finer-grained control than the element names alone can provide. Then they are supposed to style the content of the page using CSS stylesheets, which can be swapped out for different purposes or easily changed site-wide.
 * We should notice here that using the "style" attribute to add presentation directions to markup is heavily discouraged, because it has essentially all of the downsides of the old deprecated presentational tags (it's just a slightly different markup syntax for accomplishing the same discouraged idea). It is kept around as part of the spec because there are some use cases – like sites where page authors can’t control the CSS readers will see, but still want to modify the presentation away from the defaults – where alternatives are not possible. But using a span with a "style" attribute as a replacement for "font" is not a meaningful improvement to the markup.
 * The WHATWG and HTML5 spec had a different goal, which was to describe browser implementations as they currently work / describe a standardized way of parsing html-in-the-wild that could be successfully implemented by every browser. It was pretty successful, insofar as it is now much easier to write cross-browser-compliant webpages because browser implementations are now more-or-less spec complaint.
 * None of these spec changes or advocacy movements ever had a goal of forcing web authors to rewrite old markup. There are billions of extant web pages with all sorts of funky html on them which browsers will inevitably have to deal with (i.e. do their best to parse and display) forever. (That includes the "font" and similar presentational elements which are very unlikely to ever be removed from browsers.) These projects were instead about standardizing browser behavior and encouraging web authors to write better pages in the future: more maintainable, more friendly to assistive technologies, etc.
 * People tend to copy and paste things they find in other wiki pages
 * Can you come up with a concrete example where someone copy/pasted a "font" tag they found in a signature from a discussion from 2004–2010 into the main article namespace anytime in the past 5 years? This seems like a vanishingly rare problem to worry about. (Luckily, we apparently have some kind of linter tool which we can use to check the main namespace and fix any such problems that arise quickly and easily!)
 * it's much simpler for people to develop tools if they don't need to implement support for all types of legacy behavior ¶ Imagine a tool that automatically checked pages use of colors for appropriate contrasts
 * This hypothetical tool sounds neat. By all means run such a tool against the main article namespace (or for that matter, against bot about pages in user space). But it is not ever going to be meaningful for old talk page signatures. Or new ones for that matter. Personally I think non-standard signature styles are stupid and editors should all get rid of them, but you can't unilaterally go change people's signature styles without starting a gigantic pointless fight, and it would be far too much hassle to get every user to go run your tool against their own past signatures.
 * Can you think of any other examples where you need an automated tool to change everyone’s old signatures? I honestly cannot think of this ever being plausibly necessary. Even if there’s some mild accessibility benefit or another, you’d be rewriting the talk history for the most marginal of conceivable benefits.
 * OK, but are those worth making edits to a bunch of pages that are just for archival and no one really cares about or will ever look at again? Sure. I don't see this as any different from updating deprecated template parameters or merging duplicate templates.
 * Yes of course this is different! (And you shouldn’t bother updating deprecated template parameters in old talk pages either.) One is about making Wikipedia articles – you know, the whole point of the site – more maintainable and removing friction for all editors. The other is about .... more or less nothing.
 * All of these brainstormed ideas are fine, but they are not serious (where by serious I mean something like “I plan to do X on Y schedule using Z formal process”); it’s just “what ifs” off the top of someone’s head. It’s not worth undertaking this huge disruptive project for the sake of a bunch of speculative future benefits that are marginal at best and realistically have almost no chance of ever coming about. Someone can easily restart this bot project if such ideas ever materialize as something concrete.
 * More importantly, there should be some kind of broad community support before undertaking such a large and disruptive edit campaign. The "tidy team" ("lint trappers?") shouldn't just unilaterally decide to do whatever they want, irrespective of criticism, with no formal process, no discussion, etc. –jacobolus (t) 08:45, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia would be a "what if" off the top of someone's head if it wasn't created. If Wikipedia never existed, creating a free online encyclopedia sounds exactly like a huge disruptive project for the sake of a bunch of speculative future benefits that are marginal at best and realistically have almost no chance of ever coming about. This is by no means a rebuttal, just noting the similarity here. 0x Deadbeef →∞ (talk to me) 09:26, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * No, Wikipedia was a random tiny website started, like any website, in its own tiny corner of the internet not initially affecting anyone outside itself. It was started by the company Bomis as an experimental spinoff of the also-experimental "written by pre-approved volunteer experts with peer review" Nupedia; both sites were originally intended as for-profit advertising platforms. (Bomis had been profitable running ads on a search engine for pornography.) Wikipedia was based on a new implementation of a few-years-old technology (the wiki, invented by Ward Cunningham, riffing on decades-old ideas from internet/computing pioneers). Wikipedia quickly grew despite various social/technical problems because it was overall a good idea and garnered lots of grassroots support from a wide variety of people who built up a community here. This comparison is bonkers. –jacobolus (t) 17:16, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I wasn't talking about the origin story of Wikipedia. I am not going to engage with this thread any further. <span style="font-family:Iosevka,monospace">0x Deadbeef →∞ (talk to me) 00:21, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It was a complete non sequitur. You might just as well say e.g. “You shouldn’t dismiss speculative future benefits. At some time in the past, the idea of abolishing chattel slavery was nothing but a dream.” But that would be just as irrelevant to whether or not we should programmatically modify the source of every historical talk page signature on Wikipedia to trivially switch from one kind of discouraged presentational markup to another. –jacobolus (t) 01:13, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I wasn't here to argue. <span style="font-family:Iosevka,monospace">0x Deadbeef →∞ (talk to me) 01:18, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I think we have vastly different priorities and perspectives on this matter (and that's okay!), you seem to be focused on just article space, while I see cleaning up other namespaced pages as valuable too (most of my bot tasks don't run in mainspace these days). I will point out that a bunch of speculative future benefits that are marginal at best and realistically have almost no chance of ever coming about is not really accurate, given that in addition to VisualEditor itself, there are a number of bots, gadgets and tools that are all actively using Parsoid already. Legoktm (talk) 06:41, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Is your claim that Parsoid does not work if there are obsolete HTML elements present on the page? Otherwise I don’t see the connection... –jacobolus (t) 08:03, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * P.S. if you really want to "align" wikipedia talk pages with HTML specs, you should try to get Wikipedians / Mediawiki to stop using definition lists to represent indentation in conversations. That would make a much more significant "semantic" difference than anything you could possibly ever change about font tags. Of course, it would also be extraordinarily disruptive to the point it’s pretty much completely impossible at this point. –jacobolus (t) 09:03, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It's clear that no action will result from discussion on this page, other than people rudely collapsing other people's civil comments for no apparent reason, and rehashing the same tired old suggestions of different ways to ignore the bot. There have probably been 5-10 mini-discussions here on on the bot operator's talk page, but they all end up fizzling out in the same way, because the few editors in a position of authority happen to disagree. the only real path forward would be to start an RfC (either here, or possibly at WP:VPT, not sure what the most appropriate venue is), so that we can finally have the wider community discussion on this topic that should have taken place before this bot task was ever rubber-stamped (y'know, that discussion that everyone implies already happened but no one can link to). I won't have time for a while to draft one, not sure if you're interested in taking something like that on. <span style="font:bold 15px 'Bradley Hand','Bradley Hand ITC';color:#044;text-shadow:0 0 4px #033,0 0 10px #077;"> —&#8288;Scotty Wong &#8288;—  23:15, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It’s not really worth it to me to lead a community organizing effort. I feel like writing articles is a much better use of my time. (And hint to the bot crew: writing articles would be a much better use of your time too.)
 * I guess the bot edits will continue to just be a pointless stick in everyone’s eye. –jacobolus (t) 23:26, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * That's T6521 I think. Legoktm (talk) 06:46, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

RfC
Note: I have created an RfC to encourage a wider community discussion on whether or not MalnadachBot's mass fixing of deprecated HTML tags is consistent with bot policy. You can find the RfC at Village_pump (policy). <span style="font:bold 15px 'Bradley Hand','Bradley Hand ITC';color:#044;text-shadow:0 0 4px #033,0 0 10px #077;"> —&#8288;Scotty Wong &#8288;— 08:37, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Can we have an AIV feed a bot posts on IRC?
I used to have one but then the toolserver changed and somehow an account isn't easy to come by, now.. ~ Lofty  abyss  18:10, 14 February 2023 (UTC)


 * @Lofty abyss try asking over at WP:BOTREQ. — xaosflux  Talk 19:05, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Of course... (section can be deleted if it's irrelevant on this page...) ~ Lofty  abyss  05:13, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Bot renaming?
Catching up on some housekeeping, when I created DYK-Tools-Bot, I used a naming convention that's out of character (for no good reason) with all the other DYK bots (,, etc). Are there any issues with me doing a rename to bring this in line (i.e. DYK-Tools-Bot -> DYKToolsBot)? -- RoySmith (talk) 18:25, 18 February 2023 (UTC)


 * There's no real issue beyond those already listed in WP:RENAME. Make sure an account redirect exists after the rename. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:30, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Just blocked
which looks like a BOT from TAWIKI. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 20:06, 18 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Aren't edits to one's own userspace WP:BOTEXEMPT? Might consider unblocking. – Novem Linguae (talk) 21:33, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * That's correct. OTOH, I see on the talk page the "bot" replied that they're fine with the block as it will stop them from accidentally editing enwiki with the bot account. Anomie⚔ 02:34, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * User:SelvasivagurunathanmBOT history says that it was deleted G5: "creation by a blocked or banned user". Is there some additional history? – Novem Linguae (talk) 21:34, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Nothing I see, the one revision was just an external link to ta:Special:Homepage (but in Tamil). Anomie⚔ 02:34, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Your wiki will be in read only soon
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Trizek (WMF) (m:User talk:Trizek (WMF)) 21:24, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Dams
Nirmaljoshi requested the create stubs on Japanese dams here on this noticeboard and it was suggested that they refrain from creating stubs but instead create a list article. As to my count, on the 1 March they created 19 articles within less than 3 hours. I believe all were on Japanese dams. Maybe someone could explain what the conclusion of the last discussion was? There was no formal closure at the time. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 20:19, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * - This issue was already discussed. Refer here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive_17#Dams_articles . Best regards! nirmal (talk) 01:31, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Nirmaljoshi, yes, Paradise referenced that discussion, which said you should create lists, not separate articles. Izno (talk) 01:46, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * No. As mentioned above, there was no conclusion. nirmal (talk) 02:15, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Nirmaljoshi, if that discussion did not reach a conclusion, then that means you don't create articles. Izno (talk) 02:16, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Izno From where are you concluding that? Any reference? nirmal (talk) 02:23, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * WP:MASSCREATION. Izno (talk) 02:25, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * In the linked discussion, several comments from experienced editors supported the creation of a list of dams and not a stub for each dam. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 14:37, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

archival of BOTREQ
Hello. I've been meaning to ask this since quite a few weeks. There are two bots set up to archive WP:BOTREQ, and currently the settings for these bots have different archive page number. Why are there two bots? WT:BOTREQ redirects here. —usernamekiran (talk) 18:27, 13 March 2023 (UTC)


 * While I'm not sure on any specific reason for 2 archiving bots, they don't actually have different archive page numbers set up - ClueBot III will figure out via some other means which index it should be archiving at, which is advised by numberstart, but it still functions fine. The bots appear to take turns archiving the page recently (LSB3 1 2, CB 1 2). In terms of history, it appears the order goes a little like this: +MiszaBot (2007), MiszaBot -> ClueBot (2008), +OCA (2015), OCA -> LSB3 (2016). I'd imagine its safe to remove either. Aidan9382 (talk) 18:50, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Bot that protects todays featured article
I was thinking that we need a bot to protect the featured article from new editors due to the vandalism that happens almost everyday. Much of the time we end up having to protect it anyways so I was thinking a bot would be a good idea for protection the article it would either semi or extended protect the article (bot owner can decide what protection is best) it would not fully protect the article or remove/change existing protections and a admin could opt a article out of auto protection if there is a reason it should not be auto protected Qwv (talk) 10:36, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * See Perennial proposals. Anomie⚔ 11:57, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Qwv, as you can see in that link, there was a trial for pending changes protection bot for FAs but a second trial has not occurred. You will have to hunt down why. Izno (talk) 20:49, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Feedback requested re procedure leaving sig for a different user than the one performing the edit
A training tool within the framework of Education creates discussions on Talk pages on behalf of student editors, and publishes a comment on the TP with a sig that is not the userid of the editor running the tool. I'm trying to determine if this is compliant with all relevant P&G, in particular WP:SIG, and perhaps, WP:Bot policy. This tool is an edit-assist tool that operates at human speed, so I'm not clear whether it is covered under bot policy, but my reading of the first sentence, especially the last part of it, implies that it may be. The most relevant section I can find there, is, and these tool-assisted edits are disclosure-compliant, because the user's id is inluded in the edit summary. The problem is that the talk-page sig clashes with the userid in the summary, and contains a different sig. I don't actually see anything in bot policy that prohibits this, so maybe this situation is bot-compliant. However, this is the first time I've run into such an issue, and I am not used to reading or interpreting bot policy, or even whether this situation is covered by it, as the training tool lacks many of the features of a bot. If it is relevant, your feedback would be appreciated at this discussion. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 23:49, 18 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Some bots do imitate other users' signatures for the purposes of leaving messages, like the DYK (example) and GAN notifications. As long as it's done with consent I don't really see an issue. Legoktm (talk) 16:37, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * "Sent on behalf of <User>" is always an option. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:14, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * AnomieBOT, for example, does it both ways in different tasks. When TemplateSubster is substing something like Welcomesmall it will inject a generic signature for the user it thinks added the template so it doesn't seem like the bot is welcoming people. When CHUUClerk is auto-closing requests handled by opted-in renamers, it will use the user's the signature from the opt-in page with an " (autosigned by AnomieBOT) " note appended. Anomie⚔ 12:34, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Mathglot Simply stated, the example in that other discussion isn't really a "bot issue", as it isn't being done by bots at all. There are certainly legitimate cases where a bot may place some sort of signature of another user, but it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone reviewing it and they wouldn't look like those ones. — xaosflux  Talk 14:15, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

HBC AIV helperbot5
Appears to have stopped after Toolforge was under scheduled downtime, however it doesn't appear to have resumed maintaining AIV and UAA. Its last edit prior to the downtime was here. Bot's creator doesn't seem to be around anymore as they haven't edited in 7 months and haven't responded to their most recent non-automated talk page post. ― <b style="background:#0d1125;color:#51aeff;padding:1q;border-radius:5q;">Blaze Wolf</b>Talk<sub title="Discord Username" style="margin-left:-22q;">Blaze Wolf#6545 19:51, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * The bot seems to have started up again. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 23:00, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Apologies for the downtime, I have restarted the process. While I am not currently editing, I am still watching the bots and available by email if required. &mdash; JamesR  ( talk ) 23:12, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah alright. Thanks for letting me know James! ― <b style="background:#0d1125;color:#51aeff;padding:1q;border-radius:5q;">Blaze Wolf</b>Talk<sub title="Discord Username" style="margin-left:-22q;">Blaze Wolf#6545 23:28, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Mathbot
It appears that Mathbot is not updating the AfD open discussion list since 3 April. I've left a note for the bot maintainer,, but it seems he's been inactive since 14 November last year. Would anyone know if responsibility for the bot was passed on to or shared with anyone who's currently active? Seraphimblade Talk to me 01:55, 7 April 2023 (UTC)


 * I went ahead and sent them an email, to help increase the chances of a response from the bot operator. Also I think Toolforge has been down for maintenance twice this week. I wonder if that is related. – Novem Linguae (talk) 02:00, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Some new setting on the toolserver had broken it. I made it work again. Thanks for letting me know. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:20, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, much appreciated! Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:25, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Yapperbot
is still running, but seems to have dropped some of its tasks. For instance, it hasn't sent out a WP:FRS message since the run of 00:30, 6 March 2023 (UTC) - it normally does this hourly. The botop,, hasn't eedited in almost a year. Does anybody know what's happening? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 07:21, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
 * No (although this is not the first time Yapperbot has broken without explanation), but I've sent Naypta an email alerting them of this thread. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 14:13, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I think Naypta responds to email even if they are not active here, like Tizio. —usernamekiran (talk) 16:56, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
 * And only the botop can do anything about that - we're not going to block the bot for not doing a task, and would only block it if there was an issue that needed the op and they were unresponsive. — xaosflux  Talk 17:14, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not asking for a block. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:30, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

FRS messages seem to be running normally again. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:12, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Your wiki will be in read-only soon
<section begin="server-switch"/>

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The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

All traffic will switch on . The test will start at .

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.


 * You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on.
 * If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

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 * Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
 * We expect the code deployments to happen as any other week. However, some case-by-case code freezes could punctually happen if the operation require them afterwards.
 * GitLab will be unavailable for about 90 minutes.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community. <section end="server-switch"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 01:21, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Trying not to be a meatbot
Hi, I was encouraged to post here on the grounds that I have been creating a lot of articles and might need to seek approval to continue in that vein. To be clear, I edit without any automation or assistance, and I'm not aware of any concerns about the actual quality of the articles; but on some interpretations of WP:MASSCREATE's vague 25–50 criterion, I am mass creating articles (though not systematically) – I've created 50 articles this week, for example. Of course I don't want the sheer volume of articles to become disruptive in any way. But I'm not entirely sure how I would go about getting approval to create more articles. The vast majority have been and would continue to be articles about South African legislators – would the best path be to check in with others at the WikiProject? Or to apply at WP:BRFA? If the latter, how? Jlalbion (talk) 10:51, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for coming here. To be clear, so long as the broader community is convinced that you are not using a large language model to assist in the creation of your articles I don't believe you are engaged in mass creation and won't need to seek approval beyond this, although talking to the South African wikiproject might be a good idea generally, as they might have some useful guidance.
 * Personally, I found your explanation convincing, but I also think that allowing the broader community to review will be useful, both in this case and to help the community work out how we can identify the use of large language models and dismiss false positives from tools such as ZeroGPT. BilledMammal (talk) 11:00, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
 * While WP:MASSCREATE is still part of bot policy, since the recent RFC it may be good to (also) seek input at one of the Village pumps. In particular, a proposal for BRFA to "approve" human actions that might appear bot-like was rejected there, so it's probably best to take questions like this to the wider community. Anomie⚔ 11:44, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
 * On that topic, I've just proposed moving MASSCREATE out of BOTPOL at WP:VPP. Anomie⚔ 12:21, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
 * My hesitation about posting in WP:PROPOSE was that I don't really have a "concrete, actionable proposal" – I just want to keep writing articles, probably about South African politicians, for an indefinite period and at a rate proportional to my free time and interest level! But I'm new to the sausage-making side of Wikipedia so maybe I'm just overthinking. Jlalbion (talk) 12:40, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I just want to keep writing articles, probably about South African politicians, for an indefinite period and at a rate proportional to my free time and interest level! It seems that everyone is convinced by your explanation about how you aren't using ChatGPT; given that, I would suggest you are free to continue writing articles like you are currently doing without further bureaucracy - they are high quality, so thank you for creating them. BilledMammal (talk) 13:53, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you, that's nice to hear! I'll try to keep an eye on policy developments but feel free to ping me if anything else comes to mind. I can understand how the rise of LLMs = need for caution. Jlalbion (talk) 14:26, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Example articles: Munyadziwa Netshimbupfe, Arrie van Rensburg
 * These are multiple paragraph, start class articles, well-cited, have infoboxes, and you have autopatrol. These look like quality articles to me. Assuming all your articles look like this, I'd be a bit surprised if folks objected to the creation of these. If they were 1-2 sentence stubs, then you might receive some pushback, but in my opinion, these should be OK. – Novem Linguae (talk) 12:06, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The irony is that I was just granted autopatrol last week after a reviewer suggested it would reduce the burden on the patrol queue – but I would be super happy to lose the autopatrol if others would feel reassured by an additional check on my page creations. Jlalbion (talk) 12:45, 23 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Your articles look fine to me. I think its quite impressive that one can write quality articles at the rate you do. We need more editors like you. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:25, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Jlalbion (talk) 08:28, 24 April 2023 (UTC)


 * @Jlalbion: Congratulations on your new articles! You may also wish to add talk pages to your articles, as I have done for Talk:Munyadziwa Netshimbupfe.  (I used the Rater tool to do this, but doing it manually or via copy/paste is fine too.)  Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 14:11, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I always put that off! Thanks for the reminder. I don't think I'm competent to use a script but I'll take some time now to do some copy-pasting. Jlalbion (talk) 16:48, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

sboverride userright
How would I get User:GreenC bot the new sboverride userright? c.f. recently closed resolved. -- Green  C  20:12, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Oh, that's a neat user right. User:AAlertBot could use it since it occasionally encounters urls users used that it cannot report and has to trim the report. I spent way too long fixing it when I first encountered this because I assumed bots would surely be exempt from this. I doubt there's any process yet for granting the right though. — HELL KNOWZ ∣ TALK 21:06, 29 August 2022 (UTC)


 * You'd probably need to lobby for the permission to be added to an existing user group such as "bot", or for the creation of a new user group such as "sboverride". Any preference? – Novem Linguae (talk) 21:18, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Probably should just get added to bot user group. Izno (talk) 21:27, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
 * The  user group is "trusted" enough to have   added to it imho — this is proposed at  — TheresNoTime (talk • she/her) 21:28, 29 August 2022 (UTC)


 * I guess the question is if there is a case when it would be desirable to block a bot's edit due to the blacklist? — HELL KNOWZ ∣ TALK 21:30, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
 * IIRC (and I may not), if I try to fix a typo in a section that contains a blacklisted URL, I can't save the edit, even if I am not editing near the URL. If that workflow still exists, it is frustrating. If bots can add blacklisted URLs but regular editors are then unable to edit the sections that contain those URLs, that would be undesirable IMO. If I am misdescribing or misremembering the workflow, or if I am misunderstanding this conversation, let me know in a nice way and I will strike this comment. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:43, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
 * So, it looks like you don't recall correctly. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 21:52, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that; that's twice today that you have set me straight. Maybe I'm thinking of trying to revert vandalism, section blanking, or other undesirable edits and being stopped because I would be restoring a blacklisted link. I can't think of a situation where a bot would put a human editor in such a situation, so we're probably OK. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:02, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I guess the question is if there is a case when it would be desirable to block a bot's edit due to the blacklist? AnomieBOT's rescuing of orphaned references. It would probably be better if the bot didn't reinsert blacklisted links, but continue to complain on its talk page for humans to do a proper removal. Anomie⚔ 01:27, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
 * You could probably theoretical construct such a bot. But in general, I think whatever bots are doing, if it's an approved task, overrides those concerns.
 * I wouldn't let an AWB user overide the blacklist, but an AWB bot should be able to plow through. IMO. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:19, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Why don't we just create a dedicated sboverride group instead of speculating about whether there is some bot that might be harmed by having the right? * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 15:24, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I could theoretically create a bot that has already existed for 14 years? Anomie⚔ 17:19, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Follow-up: bots were finally granted the sboverride right today in 923728 * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 02:52, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Bots/Requests for approval/CircularRedirectsBot
On March 2, I offered feedback on how to improve the proposed bot in this thread, but it has received no attention from anyone else since then. There are a few other WP:BRFA threads that have not been updated in a long time; for example, Bots/Requests for approval/WegweiserBot is marked as "in trial", but has not been updated since January 8. –<b style="color:#77b">Laundry</b><b style="color:#fb0">Pizza</b><b style="color:#b00">03</b> ( d c̄ ) 11:09, 26 May 2023 (UTC)


 * @LaundryPizza03: For requests that have been open for more than a month, would it be helpful to the BAG and/or the bot ops to add BotOnHold if we're waiting on the operator, or adding BAGAssistanceNeeded if we're waiting for the BAG? GoingBatty (talk) 14:13, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Perhaps in some cases, especially with a proposal awaiting approval for a second trial. In this case of CircularRedirectsBot, I seek to draw attention to the developer of the proposed bot to comment on and implement a proposed fix for a bug that happened during the last trial, and then a BAG to approve a new trial. –<b style="color:#77b">Laundry</b><b style="color:#fb0">Pizza</b><b style="color:#b00">03</b> ( d c̄ ) 01:43, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * It seems that the bot's owner,, hasn't been very active lately, with only 4 edits thus far this year. Now what? –<b style="color:#77b">Laundry</b><b style="color:#fb0">Pizza</b><b style="color:#b00">03</b> ( d c̄ ) 02:42, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @LaundryPizza03: Now we hope the bot op responds to your message. GoingBatty (talk) 03:27, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

MalnadachBot -- owner indeffed, what now?
I note that User:MalnadachBot's operator has been indefinitely blocked, as of today, and so too has the bot (apparently for some sort of checkuser business, with them having secretly been an LTA).

MalnadachBot has the highest editcount of any account on Wikipedia, and currently runs a good number of tasks, so what the heck are we going to do about that? Is there a fallback set up for this? jp×g 01:29, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty good with AWB and regex so I can recreate a couple of the tasks the bot was doing. I just started a new job so it might be a day or two until I can submit something.  Dr vulpes  (💬 • 📝) 03:07, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * There is a huge pile of Linter errors waiting to be fixed at User:MalnadachBot/Signature submissions. Some will be easier to fix than others. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:08, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm also willing to take over tasks as necessary.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1686133922634:WikipediaFTTCLNBots/Noticeboard" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  10:32, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * According to its page only two tasks were active, and even most of the past tasks were on the general topic of fixing linting errors. We already have other linter error fixing bots, such as Bots/Requests for approval/Legobot 41, created in part due to past concern over the way MalnadachBot was performing the task. The one other active task was for blanking IP talk pages of IPs not active in 5 years. Anomie⚔ 11:19, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Has anyone ever seriously considered having the linter skip pages whose title matches /\/Archive/? User:MalnadachBot has already rendered permanently unusable Wikipedia's functionality to search old discussions by date last modified, since they've all been modified within the past year, all by User:MalnadachBot, so I suppose the damage is already done, and I'm probably just being an old busted grouch who thinks that old webpages should look old and busted, but it seems like an awful lot of work for very little benefit apart from emptying maintenance categories that don't seem necessary in the first place. Folly Mox (talk) 15:35, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd support restrictions on pages that are eligible for lint error fixes. Pages in article space are the only pages that have a critical need for these errors to be fixed. Active (non-archived, non-historical) policy/guideline type pages in WP space are probably a high priority too. Beyond that, the benefit of fixing these lint errors by editing each page is outweighed by the annoyance and damage it causes to watchlists, page histories, automated notification systems, search functionality, and a host of other areas. The problem with filtering pages by /\/Archive/ is that it the filter would still allow a lot of inappropriate pages to be modified, like every XfD that has ever taken place in the history of WP (which are never "archived" in a way that changes their page title). I think that rather than trying to come up with a way to exclude pages that shouldn't be "de-linted" (if that's a term), we should come up with a way to generate the list of pages that should be de-linted. Fixing this problem by editing each page is an inefficient and unsustainable solution. Imagine 10 years from now, when WP has a 200 million pages, and the  tag gets deprecated. Are we going to make 200 million edits to address that problem? Or would we come up with a more rational way to solve the problem? <span style="font:bold 15px 'Bradley Hand','Bradley Hand ITC';color:#044;text-shadow:0 0 4px #033,0 0 10px #077;"> —&#8288;Scotty Wong &#8288;—  18:23, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @Scottywong, I feel this has been discussed ad nauseam. There has not been consensus to restrict the task despite the previous discussions on it.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1686166259833:WikipediaFTTCLNBots/Noticeboard" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  19:30, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Just expressing my opinion and support for Folly Mox's statement. <span style="font:bold 15px 'Bradley Hand','Bradley Hand ITC';color:#044;text-shadow:0 0 4px #033,0 0 10px #077;"> —&#8288;Scotty Wong &#8288;— 19:42, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Actually, I completely disagree. Most of the de-linting is preparing for a potential breakage in the far future. If that breakage ever happens, we'd like to have the number of pages that break as low as possible. The frequently edited pages will be relatively easy to fix, but we shouldn't let everything else break just because people rarely look at it. If something in the future causes many historical versions of talk pages to break (like the changes requiring closing tags like did to my RfA) then fixing the archives to be readable is a good thing to do, and should be done systematically (page by page, not signature by signature, but that's a different discussion). —Kusma (talk) 22:28, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * My experience with software and technology mleads me to disagree with ScottyWong on the need for and the scope of these fixes. I just spent several years fixing minor problems at work that had been allowed to become big problems. I also rebuilt stuff that was built with no expectation of future needs. When some obscure browser breaks on a page in the future (in 2 years? 10 years?) it'll be a big deal. Let's take care of stuff now, including all of our pages. Beyond that, I support whatever the technical people think is the best way. (And yes, that bot sure has been irritating but then so's road repair).
 * -- A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 23:16, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I am undecided on this issue, but I find your analogy about road repair being inconvenient but necessary, and your point about how uncommon browsers could be the first affected, to be thought-provoking. Thanks for this comment. – Novem Linguae (talk) 03:11, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I guess my perspective is "road repair is annoying, and so is driving on bumpy roads". One's not better than the other: they're just differently worse. I said in my first comment that the damage is already done, so fixing lint errors in signatures might as well continue apace, and may the devs someday bless us with a search that returns the most recent edit by a non-bot editor. Folly Mox (talk) 00:26, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Those of us who are opposed to the concept (like me) would say "so what?" or "let's cross this bridge when we get to it, not years in the future". And I am a technical person. The road repair analogy doesn't work because it requires that everyone agree the roads are broken - I don't, and consider the entire concept of lint errors to be busywork arbitrarily imposed on us by developer fiat. The fact that no one noticed that MalandachBot had stopped editing for over a month is telling. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun...  01:51, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Who is "no one"? A lot of us did notice. Also, this discussion about should we be fixing lint is a bit pointless, we just had an RfC and the consensus was to continue fixing lint errors. And it wasn't the first discussion either that ended like that. Gonnym (talk) 15:13, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @Pppery, The fact that no one noticed that MalandachBot had stopped editing for over a month is telling. - that the bot is unintrusive and its edits are at worst harmless?<span id="Qwerfjkl:1686497744551:WikipediaFTTCLNBots/Noticeboard" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  15:35, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I noticed that Malnadachbot and Legobot stopped editing on the day that each of them stopped editing. They did an excellent job of fixing millions of bot-fixable errors, making it so that human-fixable errors, or more complex bot-fixable patterns, were easier to pick out from the noise. Without their editing, it is a lot more challenging to find pages that need actual human judgment to fix. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:55, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

It is my understanding that Legobot went through every page with a Linter error and fixed all of the ones that met its strict criteria, primary among which is leaving zero remaining Linter errors after its edits. This left many pages with errors that bots can fix, but which also have errors that bots can't fix. As a result, this means that there are zero bots currently fixing Linter errors on en.WP (Legobot has not edited since March 2023). Any potential bot operators who are looking to work on Linter errors, including Scottywong, who offered to set up just such a bot (I'll volunteer to take over the tasks if no one else wants to.), are welcome at WT:Linter. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:28, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Damn... I felt sad when this news came. Since we lost MalnadachBot I might as well be taking over the two bots that fix lint - this and Legobot 41. Sorry for not working on task 1 of my bot but it's because I'm really busy IRL. Hopefully I should start up this task within the next day or so; I don't wanna mark task 1 as "completed", as it still has some use. Sheep  (talk • he/him) 02:47, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I'll spend some time reviving Legobot 41 later this month or next. I had some vague plans about enabling human assistance for the cases where it can fix like 90% of things but not all. I do think the overly strict criteria (only editing pages where it can leave it linter-clean) and tagging each edit with a distinct tag that editors can hide is the way to go in the future to make these changes as minimally disruptive as possible. Legoktm (talk) 23:01, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Just letting everyone know that I put in a BRFA for MalnadachBot's other active task blanking inactive talkpages of inactive IP addresses. Bots/Requests for approval/VulpesBot  Dr vulpes  (💬 • 📝) 02:30, 12 June 2023 (UTC)


 * If I understand this, outdated character codes recently caused problems on da.wikipedia for several hours:
 * phabricator:Exception: "Malformed UTF-8 characters" in Parser\MagicWordArray (via LqtVIew)
 * This would argue for keeping things tidied up
 * P.S., those who understand the technical aspects of this, feel free to jump in and correct me.
 * -- A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 03:47, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
 * T337700. I was following along with that on the wikitech-l mailing list. I think it was a bug in an old database conversion script, and not HTML linting in this particular case. Hope this helps. – Novem Linguae (talk) 03:57, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for setting me straight, November Linguae! -- A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 04:00, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @, please, please don't erased sharedIP tags when clearing old IP pages. Some of these pages are actually inactive because they're schools with long blocks; when those expire, all hell is going to break out until they're blocked again. The ShareIP tags help admins in making blocking decisions. I went to a lot of effort to add these to probably several thousand vandalism-prone IPs 10 years ago.
 * Also, any spam related information remains relevant since we track the long-term addition of spam links. These would be pages with spam warning templates, Template:LinkSummary and/or Template:LinkSummaryLive. Thousands of edits have been made by Wikiproject Spam editors to document this on IP pages.
 * Thanks, -- A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 03:56, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads up @A. B., I'll go back and make sure that's addressed before moving forward with the trial.  Dr vulpes  (💬 • 📝) 04:27, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Internet Archive bot cruft
I'm not exactly sure where to bring this up, but the Internet Archive bot recently made an edit to the article on the Roman Republic which did seemingly nothing but add archive URLs for live sites, expanding the size of the article by over six thousand characters. Is this actually okay? This cruft negatively affects editing (I use syntax highlighting regardless) and does not seem to offer any meaningful improvement to the articles given all the links are still live. Ifly6 (talk) 14:51, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
 * This is not a bot issue. It's an edit manually made by . Take it up with them. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 14:53, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Essentially, what said. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:53, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Would not that edit text be generated by the bot (responding to a human request)? Or am I misunderstanding how this IA bot management console works? Ifly6 (talk) 14:56, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
 * You are understanding how the tool works correctly. The current consensus is that that feature is only done when operated manually by a human on one page at a time, and that it's sometimes useful and sometimes not. You evidently think that it isn't in that case, which is a content dispute with the human who chose to operate it there, not the bot. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 15:20, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I went to the linked article, saw that someone had undone your reversion, which I agree with, although I usually don't bother unless a lot of cruft (>10k) has been added, and I restored your reversion. Dhtwiki (talk) 03:06, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. If you could copy your edit remarks onto Talk:Roman Republic I would appreciate it, since it would centralise any further discussion (if there really has to be any). Ifly6 (talk) 03:15, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * How aggressively archive links should be added to citation templates is an open question, I think. I've seen people edit war over it before and I get the impression that folks are divided on the issue. Strictly speaking, they are not necessary for live links, because Link rot says that Links added by editors to the English Wikipedia mainspace are automatically saved to Wayback Machine within about 24 hours. So the actual archiving is done automatically, and the archive links can be added at any time after. Pressing the button in the IA Bot Management Console doesn't actually do any new archiving. On the other hand, Visual Editor users can't even see the extra code generated by these archive links, probably leading some folks to think that adding these archive URLs is harmless. When in doubt, follow WP:BRD I guess. cc . – Novem Linguae (talk) 04:19, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Re the argument that sometimes the text changes underneath the link, it's not a wholly baseless argument. However, I think it laughably weak when it comes to Jstor, Google Books, and other like services: these are services that (almost certainly) aren't going anywhere and, even if archived, are of little value due to pages and paywalls. Ifly6 (talk) 04:28, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Jstor URLs in a cite journal should definitely not have archives added by semi-automatic tools: we usually cite an article, and archiving JSTOR's page about that article is pointless. —Kusma (talk) 07:18, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah I'd be in favour of guidance against adding archives to journal or book links. I think the larger issue here is actually that it's too common to define the entire citation in the running prose, rather than using list-defined references inside reflist or using short citations combined with refbegin and refend in a ==Sources== subheading. If the citations are defined in their own area, no amount of cruft makes editing the prose any more difficult. Folly Mox (talk) 20:12, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I also would be very much in favour of guidance trending against archival links added to Jstor and Google Books. The arguments for archival are largely non-existent: the chance of link rot is extremely small for these services, you cannot verify against any changes, there should be no changes anyway. At that point it is just cruft. Ifly6 (talk) 03:08, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Link rot on Google Books is significant. It's an unstable service, for Wikipedia purposes. Wayback links are not the answer either as they often don't correctly capture the pages. This is a really big problem that has been building for years, there are over a million GB links on Enwiki alone, and no maintaining them. Requires special code for GB peculiarities. -- Green  C  04:01, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I wasn't aware of that, but shouldn't the citation information be sufficient even if the gbooks link rots? Folly Mox (talk) 04:04, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes. URLs to books are entirely a convenience function and not generally necessary if we have a full citation. Izno (talk) 17:59, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I also wasn't aware of this. It doesn't seem to me on first glance as if there would be any way at all of solving this issue though. The material that we would want to use (ie material that does not fail WP:AGEMATTERS) is almost certainly in copyright so Google Books won't have too much of it anyway. What sort of special code are you discussing? Are the Google Books links changing in an unpredictable manner rather than just disappearing? Ifly6 (talk) 04:21, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Well a number of things can happen: it can simply vanish, change IDs with no redirect, the ID works but goes to a different book, the book still works but the page number link no longer works. There are some other things I forget. Scraping GB is hard because it's not always consistent, easy to make mistakes. Like you scrape one day and it does one thing, the next day it does something else. --  Green  C  04:35, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Hmm, those are some major problems. Is there any solution? Or is it just Snafu? Do you think URLs should just be removed from book citations if they are so susceptible to not working and regardless un-archivable? Ifly6 (talk) 04:39, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, there are two main scenarios: 1. a link to a book's default home page; or, 2) a link to a book page number/search result. In the first case if the links is "hard dead" ie. 404 or otherwise non-existent, something should be done. In case 2), if there is no usable content for verification purposes and the book has no ability to search inside then something should be done. What to do? Either delete the URL entirely, or replace it with a different service provider. -- Green  C  04:46, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Just to make it clear, I've replied on the talk page for the article, but I'm basically happy with where we've ended up. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 06:30, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Further steps?
I'm making this section to possibly discuss further steps? It feels like there are a number of different solutions etc put forward here:
 * 1) Stop putting in archive links for printed sources that shouldn't change under them or are otherwise paywalled (making the archives useless)
 * 2) Have some bot or something change the template for Jstor to extract the stable ID and put it in the cite journal  field
 * 3) Remove Google Books URLs because they are not stable

Do tell me if you think I've mischaracterised some positions so far. Do people here think some, any, or all of these ought to be done?

The first two seem like clear improvements that a bot could do (clean up and shorten templates with no loss of amenity); Ifly6 (talk) 17:07, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Notified: Help talk:Citation Style 1. – Novem Linguae (talk) 18:12, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Support 1 and 2, oppose 3. The convenience of usually being able to click on a Google Books URL and read the cited source outweighs, in my mind, the inconvenience of occasionally finding that it doesn't work. However, when those links no longer work, they should of course be tagged as dead links just like any other URL. I'm not sure if this is something a bot could do; I'd suspect probably not at this stage? UndercoverClassicist (talk) 17:13, 4 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Support 2, Oppose 1 and 3. I don't see the point of having the JSTOR link in the URL when |jstor= exists, I feel the same about Worldcat links when |oclc= exists. However if I remember the last thread about Worldcat links roughly sided with keeping them. Although archived links to paywalled sources might seem redundant they sometimes contain useful information on replacing the non-archived URL if it becomes dead. The fact that Google Book links sometimes change is a reason to replace them with a current URL rather than removing them. They can be far to helpful to consider removing them on mass. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:25, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Support 2, oppose 3 like Undercover Classicist, unsure about 1. (How do we identify the sources that should not have archive links?) —Kusma (talk) 18:34, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't think this is the right place to be having this discussion. It is not a critical issue to discuss the changes of interest. Either the talk page of IABot or VPM would be better. Izno (talk) 18:35, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Some suggestions: For #1 a Phab ticket request for IABot not to archive Google Books. I think it already has this feature but you can also request such links be removed from the IABot database. For #2 a feature request for Citation bot, is the right bot for cite journal - it might already do it. For #3 the situation is not so bad to remove them all.  --  Green  C  20:37, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure anything reliant on Citoid (which I think includes Citation bot) will produce a (or PMID, OCLC, SCID, DOI or whatever) if one is available. The trick is getting IABot to ignore archiving for any template containing one of those link rot resistant stable identifier parameters. Folly Mox (talk) 03:10, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm wrong. Citation bot calls Zotero translators directly without going through Citoid. It also starts with the stable identifier, but I haven't checked to see if it generates others if there are multiple for the same resource. Folly Mox (talk) 03:22, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Going down memory lane, I've found two cases where it seems Citation bot does and doesn't do Jstor URL to parameter exclusion. In this 2020 edit, Citation bot removed URLs and put in only links. But in this 2021 edit it kept both. It feels like the 2020 behaviour would be preferred. Ifly6 (talk) 04:11, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * You are looking for this RFC to explain the difference in behavior. Izno (talk) 04:37, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Confirmed that "keep the Jstor URL and add Jstor parameter" behaviour is current. Ifly6 (talk) 04:21, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * 1 & 2 sound good. I'll add to Undercover Classicist's objection to 3 with an example. I recently found an article citing multiple books without pages numbers. When I clicked the Google Books link, I found that the page numbers were preserved in the URL and was able to add the pages into the visible citation text. If a bot had scrubbed those links, it would have been implausible to verify from entire books. Rjjiii (talk) 02:11, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * This happens frighteningly often. Folly Mox (talk) 03:06, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * To expound, copypasting a direct page gbooks link into an automated reference generator (like the Visual Editor, ReFill, etc.) will in every case never produce a page number parameter, and editors seem to assume that the direct link suffices as substitute. Folly Mox (talk) 03:12, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * This seems like a rather reasonable reason to keep the Google Books links around. Edit re Folly Mox: it seems extremely dubious for editors to be using tiny snippets of a book they cannot see; it would make it very likely that something is taken wildly out of context while also making it difficult to verify. This isn't the forum for that topic but it seems a bad thing. Ifly6 (talk) 04:05, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * You should see the number of gbooks cites where the direct page link is followed by the exact search query the editor used to find the information. There are definitely cases of people not reading the full context before using a source to support a claim. Not best practice. Folly Mox (talk) 04:31, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Since the addition of archive links is not limited to a particular source and is performed by people making massive additions without evidence of their otherwise curating an article, I would be looking to do things such as changing the WP:LINKROT article, which is often used as justification by such editors, to discourage such massive additions or encouraging, even forcing, editors using bots to limit the addition of links to only those citations where the original links have died. Dhtwiki (talk) 05:36, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Would something like Do not use automated tools to populate archive links for live websites. Only add archive URLs for print or paywalled sources when a compelling need can be demonstrated. be worthwhile to add to that document? Ifly6 (talk) 06:35, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * You could change the docs, but this has proven so controversial that making this change without consensus will only lead to conflict at some future date. And getting IABot to change this feature will also prove extremely difficult, without the threat of removing the bot's permissions on Enwiki, which would probably take a Village Pump RfC, and every time this has come up in the past there are too many who want this feature. -- Green  C  14:28, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I would expect that an RfC would be necessary, and I wouldn't do much without one. I don't remember seeing one that expressly addresses this issue ever since I've had most of the Village Pump pages on my watchlist, only discussions here. Can you point to one in particular? Dhtwiki (talk) 22:42, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Tagging, who should be notified of this conversation. Ifly6 (talk) 06:29, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Depiping bot
Is there any bot that can be used to plug in and modify a given example of a piped internal link across pages, such as those that might have changed or need redirecting due to a page move, split or other change that affects page navigation? Iskandar323 (talk) 08:48, 8 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what exactly you have in mind, but such a bot seems like it would be relatively easy to code. That said, WP:NOTBROKEN also applies. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:35, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Some page/subject splits can result in many misdirected page links, but it might be a tool thing. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:35, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Do you have a specific example? &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:25, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Automatically tagging articles with Template:No significant coverage (sports)
There are 78,874 sports biographies, listed at User:BilledMammal/Sports articles probably lacking SIGCOV, that a Quarry query suggests lack significant coverage as required by WP:SPORTSCRIT #5. I want to use the add_text script to add the template Template:No significant coverage (sports) to these articles in line with, but given the scale of change I believed it best to seek approval here first.

I am also not certain if this would require approval through WP:BRFA? BilledMammal (talk) 17:48, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I would support the principle, but think it should go through BRFA. I also looked at the first entry on the list, A. F. S. Talyarkhan, and it seems like at least one of the three books cited should provide SIGCOV. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 17:56, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree that this task should go through BRFA due to the scale. Izno (talk) 18:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Same with A. J. Christoff - ref 6 looks like SIGCOV to me. The idea is valid but the listmaking process needs some improvement. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 18:01, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Because of the way that the refs at A. F. S. Talyarkhan are formatted the query I constructed won't be able to exclude them - although since I am parsing the text as part of placing the tag I should be able to identify and exclude them. I'll consider how to do that as I write the bot, before I apply at WP:BRFA.
 * A. J. Christoff should have been excluded; I see where my error was and I've fixed the query now. I should have an updated list in a couple of hours. BilledMammal (talk) 18:07, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Another thing to consider is whether the article has another tag that amounts to the same thing. For example Carlos Fumo has BLP sources reporting the exact same lack of SIGCOV sources so no significant coverage (sports) would be redundant. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 18:14, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Come to think of it, I didn't even check if it was already tagged with this template. I don't think there are many other templates beyond the BLP ones that this would be redundant with, because SPORTSCRIT creates an absolute requirement for sourcing that other templates don't address, but I'll keep that in mind. BilledMammal (talk) 18:17, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Making use of Multiple issues would probably be a good idea (placing the template inside Multiple issuewsw when it's already present, and adding the multiple issues template if there are x number of maintenance templates already present.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1688899307317:WikipediaFTTCLNBots/Noticeboard" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  10:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think a BRFA would be necessary for this scale of auto-tagging. I'd also want to see that the criteria for selecting articles (or the actual list) were vetted beforehand at WP:VPR, particularly given the errors already found above. Anomie⚔ 11:37, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

change AnomieBOT from enforcing WikiProject United States banner on Louisiana pages
There's a proposal at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States to restore previous Talk page banners, so as not to use WikiProject US's banner. Currently, if either banner WikiProject Louisiana or WikiProject New Orleans is put on an article Talk page, a bot (User:AnomieBOT) soon replaces it by the United States banner. The proposal is also to stop that bot. I opened the discussion there, and hope to achieve consensus there for the proposal. Will that suffice to get approval (here?) for the change to the bot? --Doncram (talk,contribs) 05:46, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * , those banners are simply subst-only wrappers of WikiProject United States, the bot only substs it because it is told to; all you need is consensus to update the template, which the bot operator will likely have no part in. Primefac (talk) 06:27, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! That answers my question fully. --Doncram (talk,contribs) 06:32, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * See also WP:BOTISSUE. When/if there's an issue with a bot, contact the bot op first. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:24, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Primefac is correct. Specifically, if the template is removed from Category:Wikipedia templates to be automatically substituted (i.e. is removed from its doc block), AnomieBOT's TemplateSubster task will no longer subst it. Anomie⚔ 11:40, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

nobots template
I came across this article Graham Barrow because my bot skipped editing it as there is nobots template in "playing career" section. I am not sure by who or why this template has been placed on the article in discussion. Any ideas? —usernamekiran (talk) 14:42, 7 July 2023 (UTC)


 * nobots is automatically placed by Copyvio, which appeared on the article in question in this edit and got substituted here. Aidan9382 (talk) 14:44, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * There's the massive copyvio notice... Not sure how you've missed that. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:55, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Was probably reading only the history and not the actual article. Sometimes I too forget to look at the actual article and only check the history. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:54, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that would make sense. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:36, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yup, thats what happened. —usernamekiran (talk) 12:01, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Request moves weirdness
A large chunk of the request moves page ended up in a 'notes and references collapses' see Requested_moves—blindlynx 14:38, 12 July 2023 (UTC)


 * @Blindlynx. Looks fixed now. Are you still seeing the issue? My guess is someone forgot a Collapse bottom or Abot somewhere on one of the transcluded pages, and that this is not bot related. Hope this helps. – Novem Linguae (talk) 17:09, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * looks like, thanks. What would be the appropriate noticeboard for this? it seemed like a bot issue because the rm on the talk page had the appropriate tag i thought it might be the bot cutting it off kinda thing? idk —blindlynx 21:31, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * WP:VPT is a good starting point for technical questions/help. – Novem Linguae (talk) 22:36, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * thanks —blindlynx 14:15, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Email alerts now supported for bot monitoring
Hello bot operators,

Bot activity monitor now supports notifying you by email of broken bot tasks. On the configurations page, you can use the email param in the invocation, to specify either your username or an email address. The page editnotice will show the detailed instructions.

As before, you can also choose to be notified via your talk page (via the notify option).

BRFA: Bots/Requests for approval/SDZeroBot 9.1 (in trial) – SD0001  (talk) 15:28, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Hazard-Bot violated 3RR
See Sandbox history, blatant 3RR violation. Keeps reverting my edits. There is no exception for bots breaking 3RR. 묰묰묰묰묰묰 (talk) 15:56, 1 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Well, you are forcing it to by constantly removing the header. I don't think there is a legitimate reason for edit warring the header out, either. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:15, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's also a little wild that someone who has had an account for twenty minutes is reporting a bot for edit warring. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:18, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I've block as a VOA. I was just going to remove this section until I saw JJE and B replied. No need to archive, right?  OK to remove? --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:19, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Works for me (the removal) Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:23, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Signpost and bots
Over the years, I've written about bots in the Signpost. I've usually covered bots I was involved with, since I know more about those than most other bots, but I'd be interested in either) a writing about other bots b) having other bot operators write about their bots. These could take place in the form of guides (here's how you can use my bot, or how my bot could help you), or a historical coverage. For example what this could look like, see


 * 2009-02-23/Article Alerts – Announcing the launch of WP:AALERTS
 * 2019-03-31/In focus – Announcing the launch of WP:CITEWATCH
 * 2022-08-01/Tips and tricks – How to make the most out of User:Citation bot
 * 2023-07-17/Tips and tricks – How to make the most out WP:AALERTS, WP:RECOG, and WP:CLEANUPLISTINGS
 * 2023-08-01/In focus – A historical retrospective about the WP:JCW compilation
 * 2023-08-01/Tips and tricks – An overview of various citation tools

Do you know of other bots that could get this sort of coverage? Or who'se bot operators/coders could write about them? Like a piece about User:ClueBot would be great I'm sure, but I can't write that one because I'm not familiar with its history. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:13, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

InternetArchiveBot strange edits
I noticed a couple of strange edits by, whereby it is overwriting redirects left by moves, as shown in the following diffs. I have logged a Phabricator task:. I have logged here as it looks to me as though an eye should be kept on the bot's edits. William Avery (talk) 12:47, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alcaligenes_cupidus&diff=1169936469&oldid=1169930410
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alcaligenes_aestus&diff=1169936412&oldid=1169930226

Global bot flag request for Lingua Libre Bot

 * Apologies for sending this message solely in English..

,

This is a notice pursuant the global bot policy, to inform you that Lingua Libre Bot is requesting approval to operate as a global bot.

The discussion can be found at Steward requests/Bot status in Meta-Wiki. All Wikimedia Community members can participate in the discussion if they so wish.

''You are receiving this message because this page is listed in the list of pages to notify about new global bot discussions. If you no longer wish to be notified, you may remove this page from that list at any time.''

--MA (talk) 11:04, 21 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Note that, per local policy, this bot would require local approval at WP:BRFA to operate here on enwiki. Anomie⚔ 11:31, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Incomplete FACs
Is there a bot to detect incomplete or untranscluded WP:FAC nominations? For example, Featured article candidates/List of Bath City F.C. seasons/archive1 and Featured article candidates/List of Bath City F.C. managers/archive1. I commented on these because their articles were on my watchlist, so I noticed the of the. Perhaps I should have checked that it had been set up properly. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 17:42, 9 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I believe does this. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:18, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
 * , I shall watch out for what it does overnight. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:24, 9 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:21, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

AIV bot is down again(?)
User:HBC AIV helperbot5 isn't removing blocked editors from WP:AIV, but it's still editing WP:UAA and WP:AIV/TB2. It just removed the backlog notice after EvergreenFir manually removed some entries. – dudhhr talkcontribssheher 16:19, 11 September 2023 (UTC)


 * It's working again. – dudhhr talkcontribssheher 16:57, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Your wiki will be in read-only soon
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Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 09:30, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Template:Uw-botublock
I just soft-blocked a user for a Bot username and noticed that uw-botublock offers account renaming as a potential resolution but does not offer the notion of BRFA approval. Before I go ahead and change the template for what seems imo an obvious change, I'm checking in here to ask if there's any reason not to? Cabayi (talk) 09:24, 8 October 2023 (UTC)


 * I think the main reason there's no mention of BRFA is that the softblock is usually for account usernames that look like bots but are not associated by a bot owner account. the bot account, however didn't need to be blocked, since it is clear that it is an account owned by . I don't think the block was justified, as that bot didn't start making automated edits yet. It is common to have a bot account created before BRFA, since limited testing is allowed before a BRFA page is created, testing may be required for the approval of the bot, and 'crats need to have a account to enable the bot flag after the BRFA is approved. <span style="font-family:Iosevka,monospace">0x Deadbeef →∞ (talk to me) 09:39, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I concur; this is a case of an unapproved bot, not a user with a bot name. The block template is for the latter, ideally the former should not be blocked until after at least one warning is given, which I believe is currently done via Unapproved bot account. Primefac (talk) 12:23, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, &  for that viewpoint. I have lifted the block. Back to the original question, could the template uw-botublock be improved? Cabayi (talk) 13:07, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Maybe? As I said in my reply above, I feel like that template is meant for accounts that are suffixed "-bot" without clearly being a bot account (or an attempt at one). A bot account that is simply unapproved shouldn't be blocked for having a bot-like name, but blocked for being unapproved ( edit: see clarification by Anomie further down-thread ). If anything, then, we should probably create that as a block template. Primefac (talk) 13:20, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
 * If someone really intended to make a bot account but created an account while logged out (assuming they do have an account) we can block them with the template, then they'd disclose account ownership and connect to their main account, where they'd probably either create a bot account the right way or get that block lifted by clearly disclosing the connection. Therefore, we might want to include "required to disclose bot account owner" as a bullet point.
 * If someone wants to make a bot account without having an existing account, then they'd need to make a new account or rename the bot account, which makes the template appropriate. <span style="font-family:Iosevka,monospace">0x Deadbeef →∞ (talk to me) 13:29, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Simply being unapproved is not sufficient reason for a bot being blocked. Some bots don't even need formal approval, and there's also a narrow exception from BRFA for certain global bots. We already have uw-botblock to cover cases where a bot is operating without needed approval (either no approval or outside of the terms of its existing approval). Anomie⚔ 13:38, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, that is a fair point, and a good clarification on my statement (which was meant to be more general). Primefac (talk) 14:16, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I think the template itself is ok for its intended purpose. Perhaps the documentation could be improved to explicitly point out that it's intended for human users with a bot-like name in contrast with uw-botblock which is for actual bots editing without approval. Also perhaps Twinkle's description of the template could be improved, although I don't know how exactly that shows up in Twinkle as I don't use that tool. Anomie⚔ 13:27, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Discussion started at Twinkle's talk. Primefac (talk) 14:19, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

BRFA
Hey, I'm making 10 edits per minute to fix or remove invalid parameters on pages in the Category:Infoboxes with unknown parameters and its subcategories using AWB. I would like to point out that I review every edit before saving. Do you think I need a BRFA for this? – <b style="color:black; font-family: Tahoma">DreamRimmer</b> (talk) 06:44, 2 November 2023 (UTC)


 * @Primefac, I apologize for bothering you with this ping. Could you please provide some suggestions? – <b style="color:black; font-family: Tahoma">DreamRimmer</b> (talk) 14:01, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * My very short answer is "probably not".10epm isn't that bad, and I have a feeling (based on experiences with my own bot) that a bot won't really do you much good; while there are ~50k pages that have invalid parameters, many of those infoboxes will only have a handful of invalid parameters, never mind the fact that they might not all be the same bad param (which is why my bot takes care of, incidentally). Bot runs are really only good if you're going to be editing hundreds of pages with very similar circumstances - for example, my bot would never catch something like Special:Diff/1183152060; that's something that would be better handled by a human user. Even a spelling/typo situation like Special:Diff/1183152431 would be difficult to predict unless there is a known case where someone did it a lot and you could just quickly go through and fix a bunch of them.In other words, I don't see anything wrong with your edit rate, and the types of problems you want to fix are probably best dealt with manually anyway. If there is a huge group of pages with the same issue, though, let me know and I'll run my bot on it and save you some hassle. Primefac (talk) 14:12, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your helpful response. If I ever need assistance, I'll be sure to reach out to you. Regards! – <b style="color:black; font-family: Tahoma">DreamRimmer</b> (talk) 14:33, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * "It depends" :D 10epm in a burst is no big deal, if you want to do it all day every day for weeks it is. What is the volume of pages you want to deal with? Keep in mind, that without a flag you are more likely to bother people who have watchlisted those pages or do recent changes patrolling. — xaosflux  Talk 14:55, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I plan to further reduce this epm rate. My goal is to process approximately 500-600 pages within a 24-hour period. – <b style="color:black; font-family: Tahoma">DreamRimmer</b> (talk) 15:06, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * And yet... there are those who do that anyway. Primefac (talk) 15:06, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * .....yea.....— xaosflux  Talk 18:56, 2 November 2023 (UTC)


 * epm, and watchlist cluttering are not the only things that needs consideration. If the number of affected pages is very large, then pressing "ctrl+S" is boring, and borderline waste of time (in case the operation is perfect). I don't know the total details of the task, but maybe Primefac's bot could do it? If not, and if the number of pages is large, then you should plan for all possibilities that might occur, and prepare the task for it. As you have already edited a lot of pages: if you are confident there would not be undesired edits, then I think you should file a BRfA. That would save the time, as well as cluttering of watchlists. —usernamekiran (talk) 16:04, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * , thanks for taking on these edits. I did a spot-check of your edits, and it looked like you were fixing just one parameter in each infobox, on multiple pages, and doing so correctly. I have done a bunch of this infobox cleanup, and the biggest concern if you want to do it well is deciding between removing a parameter entirely and converting the parameter name to something that is supported. To make this decision requires reading both the template's documentation and the template's code, since the documentation is not always complete. There are also rare occasions in which a parameter is actually supported by the template but the unknown parameter checking code is wrong. If in doubt, leave the page alone and come back to it after you have fixed all of the easy ones, or ask for help on the infobox's Template talk page. Also, periodically check to see if you have accidentally put an article or two in there. Feel free to ping me from a Template talk page or or drop a line on my User talk page if you have questions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:24, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * @Usernamekiran, sure, if there are any future tasks for me, I'll consider creating my own bot account. @Jonesey95, the removal of that one parameter was in response to a request at WP:AWB/T. Additionally, I've cleaned up these categories by removing unknown parameters and fixing some parameters that could have been changed. I also reviewed the template documentation before creating these regexes. If needed, I'll definitely contact you. I appreciate everyone who took the time to comment. – <b style="color:black; font-family: Tahoma">DreamRimmer</b> (talk) 14:40, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Bad edits by a double-redirect-fixing bot
My relevant contribution history

was speedily approved to resolve double redirects using redirect.py way back in December 2009.

I reported a problem to operator in April 2020, and again in June 2020 (and September 2020).

They responded by opening T254839 which is currently "Open, In Progress, High" – it's been over three years, and still not resolved. Though it seems there was progress in September?

I just cleaned up twenty bad Xqbot edits caused by this bug (somebody mass-moved a whole lot of redirects)
 * not articles – well, the SUBJECTSPACE pages were articles, but their talk were R from avoided double redirects to an R from remote talk page

I noticed that was also working these double-redirects, without having the same problem with them (e.g., DIFF)

EmausBot was approved in December 2010 – to use the standard script redirect.py !

What puzzles me is why I can't recall ever seeing EmausBot make this error? Is that bot just incredibly lucky, or is it configured differently, in a way that avoids making bad edits like that? wbm1058 (talk) 20:37, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Toolforge Grid Engine shutting down
Bot operators operating on the Toolforge Grid Engine may need to read this thread and the pages linked from it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:17, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Bogus fixes by User:AnomieBOT
This bot continues to place bogus referenences and call them "fixes". Is it really not possible to make it stop doing so? I've used this Noticeboard before to report about a dozen cases. Most recently, I found, where the bot resurrected a reference from four years ago (before the pandemic) to cite something about sentiment towards Chinese Canadians because of the pandemic. The bot just guesses about how to replace references that have gone missing, and guesses wrong often enough that it is disruptive and damaging. -- Mikeblas (talk) 04:40, 16 December 2023 (UTC)


 * @Mikeblas, you're trending into WP:IDHT behavior. You need to drop the stick. Izno (talk) 04:43, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I concur. Unless there is a solution, new issue, or other problem that has arisen since the previous discussion, this discussion is unlikely to produce a new outcome. Primefac (talk) 08:39, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Personally I'd say he's well past WP:IDHT by this point. I've said before and I'll say again, I'll consider useful feedback and suggestions but not continued complaints from this user that the bot is generically "disruptive and damaging". Regarding the specific edit raised here, it would make sense for the bot to not rescue VE's ":0"-style refs that are too old, which I'll arbitrarily define as "the reference was removed over a year ago". Anomie⚔ 15:02, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * What about the feedback isn't useful, precisely? Happy to help clarify, if you can tell me what you specifically need.
 * But for now, I'll try again: The bot is making edits that aren't helpful, like this one. It sometimes guesses well, and sometimes doesn't. When it doesn't, the result is an irrelevant and unverified reference. Solutions include: just don't do that anymore because it isn't reliable enough. Or, tighten up the criteria: don't take references from other articles at all; take references from other articles only when it's clear content has been copy-pasted and reused without the reference definition; don't take old deleted reference from the subject article ("over a year ago" might be good enough); don't restore references that aren't finely identified (":0" or "ReferenceA", for example) and likely to collide with other material. Or tag the "rescued" reference with verify-inline so that readers know the reference wasn't reviewed by a human and might not be useful. -- Mikeblas (talk) 20:31, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * As I am not the bot operator I will not necessarily comment on these proposals, but I will note that if you had started with this, we would be having an entirely different conversation right now. Something to think about for the future. Primefac (talk) 20:34, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * With the most sincerity possible, I don't understand what point I don't get. Why is this particular behaviour of this bot acceptable, and not worth remedy? Or are you just saying that I should go to the RFC process, as you previously suggested? -- Mikeblas (talk) 20:15, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The bot is not perfect because humans are not perfect; the example you gave here (and in the previous discussion) is a result of GIGO. You want the bot to be perfect; no bot is perfect. You want the bot to stop running because it is not perfect. The BAG who have opined here and in the previous discussion reject that assertion as being unrealistic. Anomie has indicated a possibility for reducing the failure rate, but it will not "fix" what you call the problem, just make it "less bad". Primefac (talk) 20:32, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation! Thing is, I think you're over-stating my position. Sure, the bot isn't perfect. But it could be better, and that's all I'm asking. I'm not asking for the bot to stop working; I'm asking for the bot to stop doing this specific task (until it can be improved), or to do this task more reliably.
 * I have offered several suggestions at incremental improvements (both here and in the previous discussion in this noticeboard) so it's surprising to hear the feedback that I'm looking for perfection. -- Mikeblas (talk) 23:59, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * See WP:BOTISSUE. Specifically raise issues with Anomie Bot at User talk:AnomieBOT. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:44, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The linked diff was to an edit made by, not by a bot. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:16, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Pretty clearly just a mislick given the subsequent diff, but yeah wrong venue . Folly Mox (talk) 05:25, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Not the wrong venue necessarily; while the bot operator is usually the first port of call, Mike has raised this concern before (see here) and is thus justified in posting here. Primefac (talk) 08:25, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I shouldn't have opined without knowing the full context, so struck. I also rescued the references. Not sure what the solution is here though. I see people who rely on this task to rescue named refs when they remove the defined one but leave the remainder, which is certainly bad practice. I'm also not certain what behaviour of the Visual Editor will just allow people to insert empty undefined named references, possibly artifacts of copypastes, and also thought the number one community tech wishlist proposal last year was to stop naming them these meaningless index numbers. Folly Mox (talk) 15:14, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry; this is the . Above, I used diff instead of diff2. -- Mikeblas (talk) 20:17, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not a bot operator but I have written a lot of code and understand how difficult it is to cater for the million quirks encountered in the wild. Your major problem is that AnomieBOT is one of the most useful bots here. Making a fuss about a miracle provided by a volunteer is counterproductive. If you want the bot to be shut down, start a proposal at WP:VPR. In principle, this is the right noticeboard but it is not right for something as well known as AnomieBOT which a lot of editors rely on. If you have some examples of problems, you might assemble them in a sandbox with a brief explanation for what the original problem was (why did the bot activate?), and what the bot got wrong, and what it conceivably might have done instead. Then you could post here in a manner that you think would encourage cooperation to find fixes. Otherwise, bear in mind that disruption is disruption and can lead to sanctions even for an admin. Johnuniq (talk) 01:56, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
 * If you've written a lot of code, then you also know that you might implement ten features and only ship nine because that tenth feature just didn't work right. Sometimes, a developer has to realize that a feature is too hard implement to an acceptable quality bar, not worth the effort, has too much risk, or simply isn't ready just yet. I'm not suggesting shutting down the bot completely, and never have; I'm saying that this prolonged behaviour needs attention and that either the bot's performance should be improved or that specific task should be turned off. I think the task could be improved (and enumerated some ideas above) but others have said the problem is unavoidable so maybe the task does need to be abandoned completely.
 * This pattern isn't caused by any quirks. It's caused by an over-ambitious attempt to replace missing references without any ability to semantically anaylse the context of the replacement reference. In this most recent case, a reference to an overview encyclopedia article written in 2019 was used to anachronistically support a specific situational claim about something occurring a couple years later.
 * About a dozen other examples are at the previous discussion. There are more listed at User:Mikeblas/Robots Behaving Badly, and even more at UserTalk:AnomieBot archives. (Note that the BBB page includes issues with other bots, and issues with edits AnomieBOT made outside of the pattern I've identified here.) -- Mikeblas (talk) 03:07, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Expanding PearBOT II 11 to include pywikibot
I have general approval for implementing TfD discussions through removal or simple replacements using AWB per Bots/Requests for approval/PearBOT II 11. The reason I phrased it that way is because I did not feel comfortable with all types of TfD implementation being done using a bot without oversight and felt like this was a reasonable limitation. In my work with the archive merger I've found a case that would be quite complex to do using AWB but simple to do with pywikibot which is combining several parameters from two templates into one. This is easy with pywikibots templatesWithParams function but would require many complex regexs to do in AWB. How should I go about getting approval for this? --Trialpears (talk) 15:03, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Trialpears, presumably if it's beyond the scope of the old BRFA, you would need to submit a new one.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1702969820479:WikipediaFTTCLNBots/Noticeboard" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  07:10, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Aren't BRFAs for approving tasks rather than the code and programming languages that power them? A BAG member would know best, but that's my impression. – Novem Linguae (talk) 07:20, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * You are correct; a task request is for a task. We ask for the language (and code) mainly so that it can be debugged during the trials, or if the bot is retired and someone else wants to use the same code to run a new bot. That being said, if the task is approved for AWB and the code is then changed for pywikibot (for example), something may break or cause unintended consequences and it might not be immediately obvious without formal review. I don't think any competent bot operator would fail to take the necessary precautions of small-scale and supervised trials before switching languages, but it would be "best practice" to at the very least discuss the matter on the BRFA itself to say something along the lines of this request, i.e. "I'm changing the language, is that okay?" (and if the request is made here, then have the BRFA updated to indicate a change of tool)
 * However, I would argue that a case that would be quite complex to do ... which is combining several parameters from two templates into one is not in the remit of Task 11, which is for General TfD implementation through removal or simple replacements, and I would encourage a specific BRFA for this task. Primefac (talk) 13:26, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:SPECTRUM" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:SPECTRUM&redirect=no Wikipedia:SPECTRUM] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:17, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

2 bots 1 BAG
If any BAG members could check out my comments at the bottom of this BRFA I would appreciate it. I tagged it with the usual template but something makes me think that it's not quite as effective as we like to think it is. Basically looking for a 2O on something. Thanks in advance. Primefac (talk) 13:39, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I could go either way on that one. It's such a big task that having multiple bots approved for it might be useful, but on the other hand Cewbot's BRFA seems to include some extra functions and is already approved. Personally I might ask the two botops what they think as far as whether having both approved would be good or not. Anomie⚔ 13:57, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Various bots creating User_talk:xxxx pages (for language wikipedias I have not registered to)?
e.g. I've got notifications, just an hour apart around "Wed, 06 Dec 2023 00:02:53 +0100" for following creation of user talk pages for username `Mnalis` that I use on (English and Croatian) wikipedia sites:


 * https://id.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pembicaraan_Pengguna:Mnalis&oldid=prev&diff=24941964
 * https://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discussioni_utente:Mnalis&oldid=prev&diff=136754188

I didn't ever create (to the best on my knowledge; I don't even speak the languages) accounts on it.wikipedia.org nor id.wikipedia.org; so I am quite puzzled why two different bots, in such a close temporal proximity, would create such user talk pages (with "welcome" messages if mechanical translator got it right?) and send me notification email to my e-mail address (which I use for English & Croatian wikipedias)? How would they even know my e-mail if I have not created account there?

Has anyone noticed that behaviour, and where should I inquire/report it if not here? (I'd like to avoid creating accounts on those it/id wikipedias just to comment on bot page). Thanks, Mnalis (talk) 02:03, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I think this happens when someone copies an article that you created (or maybe just contributed to) over to another language's Wikipedia. Your username is listed in the history, and somehow you are credited with a contribution, even though it doesn't show in your contributions list on that Wikipedia. Their "welcome all new contributors" bot then leaves you a note. Someone else may have more details, but I'm pretty sure it's harmless. If you don't get a response here, the editors at WP:VPT will know. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:14, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Nope, that's about it. Izno (talk) 02:14, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It looks like your premise above doesn't match the logs. For example, on idwiki, you have an account that was created the day before that message: w:id:special:redirect/logid/17332019. This can happen if you access any resource from that project (such as even following a link, getting some preview, etc) while you are logged in - your global account is automatically created. Then they have a welcomebot that goes off the new user log. — xaosflux  Talk 16:02, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * See all your SUL attachments here: Special:CentralAuth/Mnalis. — xaosflux  Talk 16:03, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I defer to 's explanation, since mine was just a guess, and I couldn't explain the lack of entries in Contributions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:31, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that seems indeed to be the case. Looking at my browser history, it seems I've opened one English wikipedia page, and then tried to see it in several random languages (too see if their names made more sense than English one). And that seems to have created half a dozen accounts on random language wikipedias, and triggered several bot-welcome messages. So, mystery solved (although, I do not see why an account should be auto-created if user is only doing read-only accesses? In fact, it seems like a privacy issue, that now anybody can see which language-wikipedia users visits, without any forewarning to the user [much less confirmation] that such read-only access is going to create account and publicly visible trail) Mnalis (talk) 02:07, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @Mnalis that behavior has been debated for over 10 years (see T21161). The CONS are sort of what you said, the PROS are that if you try to edit there you are less likely to accidently edit logged out and share your IP. This is especially useful for projects like wikidata and commonswiki. — xaosflux  Talk 02:14, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Your account was created after WP:SUL went live (May 2008). This means that you automatically have accounts at several WMF wikis, you don't need to create any of them manually. As noted above, they are listed at Special:CentralAuth/Mnalis; the "attached on" column shows when they were created, and from this you can see that fifteen were created within half an hour of you registering, others at various subsequent dates. If any WMF wiki is not listed there, the simple action of visiting any page on that wiki will normally attach your account, and in some cases, the attachment will trigger a welcome bot. There is an open task somewhere to discourage, even forbid, such welcome bots. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:11, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * As an example, I visited ary: for the first time as a result of somebody's post on another page, as a result of which I became registered there (specifically, at 23:55, 24 December 2023 (UTC) or 00:55, 25 December 2023 Wiki time) and even though I made no edits at all, I was sent this user talk message about eight hours later, which is completely unintelligible to me. This has happened elsewhere too. -- Red rose64 &#x1F98C; (talk) 01:03, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There's unfortunately nothing enwiki can do to stop this. There is a proposed policy at meta:Welcoming policy that would prohibit welcoming users who have never edited, but it never got off the ground. I'm not sure what the process is for a global policy RFC, but maybe it's time for one? This is an endless source of confusion. I've even seen people wonder if their account was hacked because of this. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:28, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Template:BAG assistance needed
So I was perusing the BRFAs today and realised that Template:BAG assistance needed doesn't really do anything. I mean, sure, it puts a nice orange "hey look at me" notice in BAG/Status, but unless you're already on the BRFA page I don't really see how it has much use. On the other hand, Operator assistance needed actually drops a talk page note for the operator. Should we modify the BAG version to do something similar, either with a note here or (I suspect less desirable) on each BAG's talk page? I'm not sure we could get it quite the same as @Bureaucrats or @ArbCom but I suppose if we could get it to drop a ping that would be a little less intrusive. Primefac (talk) 13:43, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * IIRC the idea is that BAGgers actively working on approvals should be looking at BAG/Status (or its transclusion) frequently enough to see that. But with most BAGgers not being all that active in working on approvals, 🤷. I don't see why we couldn't get it to work like @Bureaucrats or @ArbCom if we want, those templates seem very straightforward. The main thing would be remembering to update it when necessary. Anomie⚔ 14:02, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I think @BAG is probably the right version of that version of a template... Izno (talk) 17:35, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, but then we have two templates that are meant to say "hey BAG look at this"; the pings might as well be put in the original template since that's really what it was originally designed for (bringing notice to a post). Primefac (talk) 17:48, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Makes sense to include some hidden pings to consenting BAGgers in BAG assistance needed. Count me in. – SD0001  (talk) 15:31, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅., I left you off the list for the moment as I only wanted to add those listed as "Active" on the member list. If you're okay with being on the ping list, I can add you in. Primefac (talk) 16:56, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I can always add myself if I decide I want to be on there. Anomie⚔ 00:05, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Is BRFA backlogged ...
or is the normal state of things? I'm seeing requests standing for weeks on end without comment by a member of BAG. Is there a shortage of active BAG members? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:37, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh my. I've been taking a bit of a step back from Wikipedia duties recently due to real life getting in the way, and BRFA has been one of them. I think your assessment may be correct. Primefac (talk) 12:40, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * There is a very healthy-looking list at Bot Approvals Group but I suspect more than half of them are actually inactive now. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:44, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Note: in line with Bot Approvals Group I have removed a bunch of inactive editors from the list of active members. Do you need a recruitment drive or do you have enough active members? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:38, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I think the main thing we need are people to do day-to-day work at BRFA. A bunch of us seem to be around for pings and noticeboard/talk page stuff but aren't handling BRFAs otherwise. Anomie⚔ 16:16, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * If they were already inactive, it's not like you were changing the status quo. We've got a bus factor of about 2 right now, but when I and SD are unavailable the queue does tend to back up a bit. I think with Enterprisey being no longer an Arb their availability for BRFA might increase. Primefac (talk) 08:09, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Inactive bots
The following bots appear to be eligible to lose their rights due to inactivity per User:MajavahBot/Bot status report:

There's also, which hasn't edited since 2016 when mw:Extension:StructuredDiscussions was uninstalled, which IMO falls into the spirit of the inactivity policy and should be deflagged. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 18:49, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Once the operators have been notified we can start the one-week clock, but otherwise I do not see any issue with the above report. Primefac (talk) 19:09, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Possibly dumb question, but do we have a "your bot may be de-flagged" template message? Not seeing one in Category:Wikipedia bot-related templates. Primefac (talk) 13:29, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I always just hand crafted something when I've done this exercise before. — xaosflux  Talk 19:09, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Does the notification requirement serve any purpose? By definition the operator is long-gone and not likely to respond to notifications. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 19:12, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Courtesy, plus they may have email notifications and come back to editing. Primefac (talk) 19:14, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Notices have now been left for the operators indicated above. Primefac (talk) 13:29, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Special:Contribs/YiFeiBot seems active? Legoktm (talk) 19:14, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Huh, missed that. Agreed that they should be struck from the above list, the others seem to agree with the linked bot report. Primefac (talk) 19:19, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Oops. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 19:24, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * You guys are free to unflag User:Bot24. It's unlikely I'll return to it. -24Talk 20:13, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks for the update. Primefac (talk) 20:26, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * All bots listed above (other than YiFeiBot) have been de-flagged. Primefac (talk) 08:13, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You missed Flow talk page manager. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 00:02, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Wasn't in the table :-p Primefac (talk) 07:23, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Nonstandard cases
Some crat should probably deflag and  since their operators were sitebanned. There are five other bots that are indefinitely blocked and may warrant review. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 19:16, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Good shout. Done. Primefac (talk) 19:25, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Please add usernames to List of Wikipedians by number of edits/Unflagged bots after deflagging :) Thanks to Redrose64 for adding the latest set. Legoktm (talk) 16:24, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Good to know. Learn something new every day! Primefac (talk) 19:27, 4 January 2024 (UTC)