Wikipedia talk:Article alerts/Bugs/Archive/Old/Unresolved bugs

Known problems and restrictions

 * Nominators are sometimes reported incorrectly

For several workflow types, the bot reports who nominated the article (e.g. for deletion). This occasionally produces wrong results. Namely, for efficiency reasons, the bot does not analyze the full article history, but relies on timestamps that the MediaWiki software records when an article is added to a category. Unfortunately these are not 100% reliable, but are sometimes triggered by an "innocent" subsequent edit, so that the later editor is incorrectly reported as nominator. A similar effect may be seen if the nomination template is removed and then re-added, e.g., in cases of vandalism.


 * Good article nominations
 * In some cases, the link to the discussion page is no longer shown when a GAC is closed. This may be a temporary problem. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:59, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Unreported deletion

 * Was the article tagged by your project's banner? Also if the article got nominated/deleted before the bot ran, then I'm pretty sure it won't show up, as the bot never saw the article enter or exit AfD. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:57, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * According to today's diff it was formerly tagged by our project before AfD close and deletion.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 06:56, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * It seems that the AfD was reported on nomination, but dropped from the list on closure. Probably a duplicate of the bug reported below. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:06, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

AfD discussion result not reported in the case of a redirect

 * Confirmed - this seems to be a bug; but I haven't found he reason yet. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:01, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * No reason is present in script/code. This is odd.  Joe Gazz84 user•talk•contribs•Editor Review 18:40, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Requested Moves
Yes, that's indeed the way the bot behaves. However, I'm a bit confused: Shouldn't the tag be removed when the proposed page move is actually done? --B. Wolterding (talk) 21:14, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I would say - move first then remove the tag. Then the bug can still appear even if the mover does not forget if the bot runs between the two edits. I think though that a lot of movers do forget to remove the tag, which is something we can catch if source = target. Agathoclea (talk) 23:06, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

FPC discussion incorrectly reported

 * Confirmed - this is a bug. I'm not sure about the technical reason at the moment. As FPC has been tested only very little (there are very few examples), it might be that this fails in all cases. Does anybody know of other FP candidates that have appeared on an article alerts list? --B. Wolterding (talk) 21:14, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Adds a alert, then almost immediately removes it

 * I was about to report the same (for a GAN though) ( and ) for WP:PHYS. I doubt it's a real bug (and if it is, a pretty mild one), especially since there was talk of bringing that article to GA, so it's possible that the bot simply ran twice and on the second run, the RM/GAN were withdrawn. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 03:22, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It appears that the move either was denied or the move was made.  Joe Gazz84 user•talk•contribs•Editor Review 18:45, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Bad link for a RFC
Moved from another section
 * This isn't exactly a bug, but one of the RfCs on this page won't render correctly. I tried fixing the heading of the RfC, but that didn't seem to work. Can someone take a look? Thanks! Katr67 (talk) 03:13, 6 May 2009 (UTC)


 * No, it's a bug. It happened in the past and was fixed, so I wonder what caused it this time.Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 04:04, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I made a temporary fix. The entry is displayed correctly for now, but that'll be overturned by on the next run (unless the bot is fixed before).Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 04:07, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, for looking into it. I thought the RfC was set up incorrectly and that's what had done it. Don't worry about the temp fix. It's kind of useless to fix it every time. Believe me, I tried. :) Katr67 (talk) 00:47, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Bot seems to be travelling backwards in time.

 * I am experiencing the same problem at WP:CHICAGO.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 04:12, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm. It seems to me that the bot generated its usual report on 5 May (into its internal cache), but did not write it to the wiki due to some technical problem. (Maybe the wiki servers were down or too slow at that time.) The cached report was then written in the next run, together with that of 6 May, but unfortunately they were written in the wrong order. Did this happen more often, or only on May 6? --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:22, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Bot drops a bunch of alerts at WP:FLUID

 * Yes, indeed some strange behaviour. Some of these entries were re-added in the next bot run. Maybe something related to the toolserver database state on that particular date. Did someone notice any examples at other points of time? --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:15, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Incorrectly labeling AFD deleted articles as kept and giving wrong nominators
See known problems for the wrong nominator part. The bad report is indeed a bug.Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 18:27, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

On this day not reported
Probably due to some lag in the categories. Wait until the next update. If it's not there, then it's a bug.Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 04:08, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Jesús Rosendo was reported as deleted, but the result of the discussion was keep (WikiProject Cycling)

 * Yes, it's a bug - probably related to the diacritics in the article title. Haven't found the solution yet. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:08, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

University of Chicago WP:GAR review is being overlooked

 * Yes, seems to be a bug - reason yet unknown. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:14, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Second article never appeared at WP:CHIAA: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. Is it the Chicago template which has a few redirects? Is it possible that the redirects are not showing up?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 23:10, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
 * No, I don't think this has to do with redirects - so far, the bot has always worked fine with template redirects. --B. Wolterding (talk) 23:50, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that the problem is related to the behaviour of GAR/link. When the request is put "on hold" (like apparently the one for Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago was), it removes the article from . This is very unfortunate, since the bot can then no longer find the article. --B. Wolterding (talk) 23:56, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I have left a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Good articles. --B. Wolterding (talk) 00:04, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Inactive banners break the alerts
If the project is inactive, does it not follow that there is no-one watching the alerts? PC78 (talk) 11:28, 7 December 2009 (UTC)


 * There still might be passerbys, and people could who watch them without editing the project page and so on. They would also serve as good archives of what went on during the period of inactivity if the project becomes active again. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 00:53, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. What it would need is for the bot to check for banners in Category:Inactive WikiProject banners. I've made a short term fix by adding a category the bot does check to the inactive banner, but it should still be fixed at this end. PC78 (talk) 01:08, 8 December 2009 (UTC)