Wikipedia talk:Article alerts/Bugs/Archive/Old/Not a bug

Not removing all old content

 * I'd wait another day - most probably the items will be removed in the next run. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:00, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, Lego ran the bot several times today, and those runs removed the items. Probably the one exception was just "nominated" between 0:00 and 0:05 on Feb 8, so that it had already expired in the first bot run. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:06, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Seems I was too quick to jump the gun. Thanks, §hep  Talk  21:49, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Report missing info

 * Suggest waiting another day. --B. Wolterding (talk) 23:34, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Since these two are on the Chicago alert page, I suppose this is not a bug, but simply the one day delay caused by someone nominating the article immediately after the bot ran.Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 09:45, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

AABot misses a few things at WP:MATH

 * Upon further inspection, this isn't a bug. Jitse's bog looks for articles placed in math-related categories rather than in categories created by the math banner.Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 09:39, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, the Maths project applies their project banners very sparingly - I'm not quite sure why. --B. Wolterding (talk) 01:31, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Apparently it's too make sure that what gets tagged gets assessed, and that it gets assessed by humans. If that's the concern, I would simply tag them and simply not have the bot assess them. But hey, it's their project, so they can run it like they want.Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 01:38, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Date error
This is not a bug, this has to do with the way the alert works (based on categories). Removing the PROD tag doesn't instantly depopulate Category:Proposed deletion. You have to wait a few days (here one extra day) before Wikipedia registers that the category has been removed. It's retarded, but that's how it is. There would be ways to improve date-handling, but that would involve reading articles rather than reading categories, meaning that it would slow the bot down considerably (although perhaps not enough to make this non-viable). Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 13:35, 27 March 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, I was just enquiring and bringing to the attention of this here, just in case. Thanks for the explanation, I'll unwatch this page so if there is anymore please alert me on my talk page,   The Windler      talk   20:35, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * To add a bit to the explanation: This is not exactly a delay in the category system, but slightly different. Mediawiki keeps exact track of the date and time when an article is added to a category - in this case, nominated for deletion. However, it does not keep track of when an article is removed from a category; so the bot can only make the best guess possible as to when the article was dePRODded, i.e., "now" (at run time of the bot). In this case, the article was moved from PROD to AFD on March 23, but the next bot run was on March 24. --B. Wolterding (talk) 21:10, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Other news - Wikipedia Signpost

 * Yes, this is manually handled as this is rather different than the other alerts. I planned to keep things for a month's worth, but the other news section is much slower than I thought it would be. I didn't check out the centralized discussion so may that'll make it more active. Ideally there would not be two "The new signposts is out" next to each other, but I'm not too sure about removing the entries entirely.Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 19:12, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

TfD alert labelled wrong
This is in fact a known restriction in the bot - unfortunately I don't see a way around. It seems that your edit triggered the internal timestamp (in MediaWiki) that is set when an article is added to a category, in this case, the TfD category. The bot relies on these category entries. Since your edit was on the same day as the original nomination, with no bot run inbetween, there's unfortunately no way that the bot can tell your edit from the original nominator's. Thanks nevertheless for reporting this. --B. Wolterding (talk) 22:03, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Just anote, actually my edit was a day after. Simply south (talk) 01:06, 5 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually through a little checking i found it may not be a bug. Looking through, i readded the tfd template someone removed by overhauling the template midway through discussion. Because i readded the template, that is why the bot misinterpreted it. However the fact it cannot check the history and deletion logs may be another restriction. Simply south (talk) 01:16, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Lists a responder as the AFD nominator (6 May 2009)

 * Yes, the bot got that wrong; unfortunately this is one of the situations that is very hard to catch. You edited Wade Thompson shortly after the AfD tag was put on the article. The bot doesn't analyze the actual article history - this would be not efficient enough - but it relies on a certain timestamp that the MediaWiki software records when the the article is put into a category (here: ). Apparently the timestamp was updated when you edited. This shouldn't have happened, but apparently it did. Unfortunately I don't see a reasonable way of working around this; inaccuracies like this will always happen. I'll add it to the list of "known restrictions" above. --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:30, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Not quite a bug but...

 * Seems that this problem no longer exists - and there's not much to be analysed without the bot logs. (Sorry, I was too late here.) --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:03, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Using wrong banner
The subscription banner used twice. One of the two banners didn't have banner=film in it, so it caused a conflict. I've fixed it by removing the duplicate subscription. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 05:33, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK isn't dropped after a template is removed

 * This is expected behaviour - the DYK item is considered "closed" and thus never modified, regardless what happens with the actual article. It's an archive of past messages. --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:06, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

CFD not showing up at WP:PHILO

 * The bot currently only covers Categories for Deletion. It appears that those categories, at least, were considered for renaming rather than deletion. So, it's not a bug, but might be a Feature request. --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:12, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Rename work flow + overlooked page

 * That's in fact expected behaviour. The bot currently covers Categories for deletion only, i.e., everything listed in Category:Categories for deletion. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:52, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Signpost stopped at 15 June
That's a manually updated thing. If you notice it falls behind, feel free to edit Article alerts/News. I'll try to update it soon.Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 22:32, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Templates for deletion -> Templates for discussion
No, the renaming doesn't affect the bot. The bot evaluates Category:Templates for deletion which still has its old name. The wrong reports seem to be due to the fact that the actual templates were deleted only on Oct 18, while the discussion was closed (and, probably, the deletion template removed) on Oct 15. --B. Wolterding (talk) 15:59, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, it could be that there was a user sticking all the templates inside of  tags at around that point in time as well (in an effort to find unlisted stale tfds).  I will be sure to let you know if I notice that the Category has been moved. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk)  19:28, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

No report on TfD's for WP:Ships
AABot hasn't run in the last few days, so that may explain why. There's the above section that details a similar (same?) bug as well. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:01, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The templates were nominated on March 31; bot last ran on April 6. --Brad (talk) 01:58, 10 April 2010 (UTC)