Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive 16

Alphabetizing
I'm not sure if this is a bug or just something I can't figure out, so I'm asking here.

IIRC, when I was working on cleaning up the baseball all-time rosters a month or so ago, and I'd load all the links on the page in AWB, it would load them in the order it found them. Now it's loading them in alphabetical order. Is there a way to load them in the order found? It would make editing the original page (to correct bad links) much easier.--Kathy A. 15:24, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Can you clarify why it makes it easier to have them in the order found? Thanks. — M ETS 501 (talk) 19:18, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The All-Time Roster lists are alphabetical by last name and divided into sections by letter. So Joe Adams is in the A's, Bob Smith is in the S section, etc. AWB puts all the Bobs together, so as I find links that need to be fixed (because Bob Smith really goes to a TV evangelist, say, instead of the MLB player), I have to jump from letter to letter. If the links were in the order on the page, I could do several edits in the A's before moving on to the B's. Not a huge deal -- more annoying because I remember it working a different way, and I can't figure out the setting to get it to go back to that. (And yes, my memory could be completely wrong.)--Kathy A. 00:31, 2 March 2007 (UTC)


 * And to clarify my clarification -- I'm using AWB to find the errant links, but my edits are in the source page, open in another browser window.--Kathy A. 00:32, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Mac version/equivalent?
Are there any plans to make AWB available for Mac users? Or, if not, some sort of Mac equivalent -- something that performs medial tasks? --Fbv65 e del / ☑t / ☛c || 05:23, 28 February 2007 (UTC)


 * There is no version for anything other than a windows pc running V2 of the .NET Framework
 * However, i know a version is being explored for linux, that could be probably ported to Mac in the future. As it is written partly in python, so it is less of a OS specific language. All i can suggest is sitting tight and waiting =) Reedy Boy 09:41, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't mono be a better long term solution? --kingboyk 17:25, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Like Reedy Boy said: nothing yet. If you are looking to run a bot on a mac, though, you can try pywikipedia. — M ETS 501 (talk) 19:10, 1 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Wasnt meaning that. User:BookOfJude is doing a python 'version' Reedy Boy 20:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Why did this typo not get caught?
How come AWB did not catch "inagural" on the Barangay Ginebra Kings article? Or the Budapest-Bamako article? It worked on most of the articles, but a couple, like these, weren't caught. This is the regex in RETF: 

Request for SVN write access
I've identified why my plugin was not able to save it's settings, and it's because AWB doesn't tell the framework that the types we are using are serializable. Of course, it works if we use simple generic types like String, but we want at the very least to use key/value pairs and ideally to use a class. I can fix this either by having AWB add the types supplied by plugins to the serializable list at runtime, or by adding some generic settings classes.

Either way, I'd like to request SVN commit access. If you could email me a login it would be greatly appreciated and I'll try to nail this today. I will of course consult with Reedy Boy on MSN if he's around. --kingboyk 17:25, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Sure, I can grant you SVN write access. What's your SourceForge username?  You use that as your username and password once I add you as a developer. — M ETS 501 (talk) 19:07, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Didn't have one, but I do now and it's kingboyk :) --kingboyk 19:22, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, all set :-). You should be able to commit now. — M ETS 501 (talk) 19:46, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks man, much appreciated. --kingboyk 19:58, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Expect strange bugs
...as I just committed revision number 666. /Me shudders. --kingboyk 14:53, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Explanation need
How does the disambiguate section work? (Gnevin 18:52, 3 March 2007 (UTC))
 * Try the User Manual: AutoWikiBrowser/User_manual Reedy Boy 19:45, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd did i'm still non the wiser :) (Gnevin 19:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC))
 * Select 'What links here' and then put the page you want to disambiguate links from in the 'What links to' box (eg Olympic). Select the 'Disambiguation' tab and enable. Click in the 'Link to...' box which should then enter the page (Olympic), then click 'Load links' which will fill the variants box with the links from the page (the articles you want to disambiguate to - you can edit the list if you want). Then enter your summary and start, which should then bring up a separate disambiguation box. Select the article you want the link to point to (or unlink the link), select 'Unpipe' if you want to unpipe the link, and press done. You can then make any other changes you want and save and go the the next article. mattbr30 20:12, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I have added information about the disambiguation box to the user manual. Question for the developers: Does the 'Undo' button only undo the unpiping (rephrased: does it only repipe the link)? If so, could the button be changed to 'Repipe' and moved next to the 'Unpipe' button, or have a button change between unpipe and repipe depending on what could be done? If so, I'll fill out a feature request. Thanks, mattbr30 23:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No, it removes all changes to edit box. I've clarified this in the manual. Max S em 11:42, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks Max. I've updated the undo all bit as well. mattbr30 12:18, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

regular expressions
Is there any possibility to ignore certain parts of an article, like $$...$$, with the help of regular expressions? – 84.179.37.203 18:56, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Not simply. You could use makemodule, and hide all data between math tags with a unique code, then perform the replacements, then replace the content between math tags, but that would be much more work.  — M ETS 501 (talk) 05:55, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, makemodule wouldn't be easy for me, because I have no knowledge about programming with C. Is there another tool in AWB could make this task on a simpler way? – 217.235.9.183 12:07, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Not at the moment. Try the /Feature requests page :-) — M ETS 501 (talk) 23:33, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Tags on empty pages
The bot really shouldn't be adding tags to pages that do not exist, even though the "skip if doesn't exist" would fix this...it shouldn't happen... ST47 Talk 23:41, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Talk pages? Or other pages? Reedy Boy 00:04, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

"Also see" vs "See also"
I noticed the BOT is changing "Also see" to "See also".

To me "See also" isn't correct English, and I think the change should be made the other way.

Am I the only one to think that?

Regards,

JohnI 21:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * "See also" is the standard, per Guide to layout. --After Midnight 0001 01:25, 6 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Can we change the standard? ;-)    I don't agree with it... JohnI 07:44, 6 March 2007 (UTC)


 * No problem.... You can discuss that here :-) --After Midnight 0001 00:28, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Creating stubs
I am creating stubs for villages/towns in India using AWB. I do this by using the "append" option to insert the text and then correct the title using "replace" function. For e.g see this. I would like to speed up this process --(Sumanth|Talk) 04:28, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Can I do this in a single edit? How do i get the title in the first edit itself? I've tried using %%title%% in the appended text but it didn't work.
 * 2) Each state in India has thousands of villages/towns. Can I get bot approval to create such stubs?
 * This can be done in one step by using where you want the title to go. If you'd like, you can request bot approval at WP:BRFA. — M ETS 501 (talk) 05:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot Mets501. --(Sumanth|Talk) 05:10, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

HTML entities
AWB really must be altered to recognise HTML entities (e.g. &amp;nbsp;). I frequently see edits where the final semicolon is replaced by a full stop, upsetting the formatting. I suspect the problem only applies to &amp;nbsp;, because the other entities can be replaced by Unicode characters. --Stemonitis 06:44, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
 * That would appear to have been a consequence of a bug in the tidying of s which has now been remedied. The question must be asked: did the user involved not notice the sudden appearance of strange text in the middle of the paragraph? if not, were they really paying sufficient attention? HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 15:51, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Try an updated version and report back to us if the problem still exits!! Reedy Boy 16:01, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Could MediaWiki do some of what AWB does?
Could MediaWiki do AWB-like features automatically? It would be better if you replied at 9228 instead of on this page. Cheers, JasonSpiro 19:07, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

suggestion
maybe it is worth to add "skip option" if no more than XX bytes changed? --gregul
 * That's really hard to do with the current setup (I think). We're thinking of implementing local diffs sometime soon and then it would be much easier. — M ETS 501 (talk) 03:51, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Searching for pages with no less than two specific links
I'm trying to get a list of articles with both Template:Notability and video game in them, but it just brings up a list of articles with either of those links. Is there a way to have a list of articles with both those links in them? - A Link to the Past (talk) 05:21, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * You can use the list comparer. Save the list of Template:Notability transclusions, and the list of video game links, and then go to List -> Launch ListComparer.  From there you can load up both lists, press compare, and voilà! ;-) — M ETS 501 (talk) 05:53, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * When I do the whatlinkshere on the AWB, it's different from the whatlinkshere on Wikipedia. - A Link to the Past (talk) 08:19, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Are you sure? You're not using like transclusions or anything, are you? — M ETS 501 (talk) 12:10, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No, I'm pretty sure I'm using Whatlinkshere. Also, all usages of it according to AWB are not on the main pages. - A Link to the Past (talk) 14:17, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Something's wrong. Can you perhaps email me the list that AWB is producing along with a links to Wikipedia's whatlinkshere page so I can diagnose what the problem is?  Thanks. (Special:Emailuser/Mets501 should work) — M ETS 501 (talk) 20:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

AWB won't disambiguate
Hi, I'm probably doing something wrong. So, maybe someone can point out my blind spot. Here's my problem:
 * 1) I set-up AWB to correct disambiguation links to "Draft (nautical)". For that I
 * 2) Set: Make from to What links here
 * 3) Set: What links to to Draft (nautical)
 * 4) Press Make List button
 * 5) Goto the tab Disambiguation and Enable disambiguation
 * 6) The text box is automagically filled, so I press Load links button
 * 7) Goto tab (3) Start and click the button Start the Process
 * 8) AWB does some work and presents the proposed changes to me.

I'm expecting the Disambiguation dialog box to pop up at this moment but nothing happens. I can see the link in the article, but it doesn't get corrected automatically. Any suggestions are welcome ʍαμ$ʏ5043 09:56, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Fixed, until next version is released you can disambiguate by entering "Draft (nautical)|Draught (nautical)". Max S em 10:17, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks! That seems to do the trick. Love to understand what went wrong though. ʍαμ$ʏ5043 10:27, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * You'd like to understand? Single link didn't get escaped for regexes. Max S em 10:42, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I understand. So I also could have used Draft \(nautical\). ʍαμ$ʏ5043 11:05, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I know you're on top of it, but for the sake of completeness I've filed a bug-report. ʍαμ$ʏ5043 17:46, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Rename
I recently changed my user name to ZJH. Please update the checkpage to reflect this. :: ZJH (T C E) 03:26, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * ✅ Done — M ETS 501 (talk) 05:04, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Database Scanner
For the File-Open menu the manual says: Opens a dialog box for you to browse to the database dump which you want to search. It doesn't say which of these files I might be needing. Any suggestions? ʍαμ$ʏ5043 16:25, 12 March 2007 (UTC)


 * AutoWikiBrowser does though. You'll probably want pages_articles.xml.bz2 Reedy Boy 21:03, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Problems installing Net 2.0
I know this isn't really the best place to ask about problems with a product from another website, however, I'm probably more likely to get a response here than at Microsoft. I'm trying to install Net 2.0 so I can run AWB, but it keeps telling me I need to install "Microsoft Windows Installer 3.0". But, when I try to install that, it tells me it is already installed and I'm still unable to install Net 2.0. Can anyone help? Veesicle (Talk) (Contribs) 20:12, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, can't help you. Have you searched online for anyone else with this problem? — M ETS 501 (talk) 06:53, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I suggest dropping an email to Aaron Stebner (Contact Form). He's been very useful to me when ive had problems with .NET and such. He should have some ideas for trouble shooting it, and possibly a solution. If you give him some detail to work on, he's pretty good at getting back to people. Reedy Boy 10:27, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

RETF checking within wiki links
I posted on the Typos discussion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos#RETF_oddities page about how FAR searches within wiki tags, but RETF does not. I was told that this was intentional, but I can't understand why. I could see about preventing potential red links, but I don't get why AWB can't check the text after the pipe. Can someone explain, or is this really a bug? --Thiseye 02:07, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Images on page
How do I make a list of images that appear on a page? :: ZJH (T C E) 03:50, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a /Feature requests thing to me. — M ETS 501 (talk) 06:52, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Missing query.php (in-house wiki)
I feel like I'm missing something really dumb here, so sorry in advance... I'm trying to get AWB working on my in-house wiki to bulk-categorise a bunch of pages. I'm running MediaWiki 1.9.3 on Windows XP, and I have AWB 3.1.3.3. My user account on the Wiki is in Bots, Sysadmins and Bureaucrats.

When I try to make a list from what links here, and provide the name of a page, I get "The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found". (Make list from special page, or from user contribs, works.) What it's trying to do is access query.php in the wiki root.

I can't find query.php on my disk, in the AWB download, or in subversion for MediaWiki 1.9.3. Where do I get it?

Cheers, — Johan the Ghost seance 16:10, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * As far as installing it, I have no idea, but you can download it here. — M ETS 501 (talk) 16:52, 13 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, it worked (after a fashion)! The installation requires a symbolic link of query.php into the Wiki root, and since I'm using an inferior OS with no symbolic links, I had to fool it by creating a query.php in the Wiki root containing:


 * Also, I guess it would be nice if the BotQuery extension were mentioned in the install notes for AWB, and maybe in the Extensions category at www.mediawiki.org. Thanks again, — Johan the Ghost seance 17:26, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Compliment to the developers
Um... can the next version be 3.1.3.3.7? :) --Galaxiaad 02:54, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * :-) . — M ETS 501 (talk) 03:52, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Could do 3.1.3.37 . Thats about as close as we can get heh Reedy Boy 10:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Does AWB handle TM ?
I was just about to edit a page that was full of &#153;'s ( &#153 ). AWB converted this to a little blob. It may have been the resolution of the output. Does AWB handle this correctly? MortimerCat 20:31, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Can you show us the page where this was happening? I believe it should work fine. Reedy Boy 20:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The article is Procfs. I have just tested it in my Sandbox, and it does lose the TM. MortimerCat 23:28, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Just realised there is a bug reporting section so I have reported it there. MortimerCat 08:20, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Template:AWB bug
I've added a new field for the version of AWB used. I thought this might help you guys. Harryboyles 12:37, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Cheers, notifies us easily if we can just poke them to update =) Reedy Boy 13:46, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Automatically Adding to "Make List"
Is there a way to automatically add pages to the make list feature, or is there a way to put more than one page in the make list field at the same time, so that the list can just be saved in a document somewhere and copied and pasted once. I was interested in making a substing bot, and so far, the only thing it seems I would be able to do using AWB is typing each template in manually (or copy and paste) in the make list field and then clicking, "make list" when it's set to what transcludes here. --TeckWiz Parlate Contribs@ 13:35, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Load the list of templates, e.g. from a text file, select them all, then right click and choose "Add selected to list\From transclusions". I think that answers your question? --kingboyk 13:42, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Right click where? --TeckWiz Parlate Contribs@ 13:44, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * In the article list. Load the list of templates into the article list e.g. by importing from file. Move your mouse cursor to the top template in the list and click it. Hold down the SHIFT key, and click the bottom template in the list. You have now "selected" all the templates, and they'll appear blue. Now right click inside that blue area and you'll see a context menu. --kingboyk 14:02, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks! --TeckWiz Parlate Contribs@ 14:22, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Added a Ctrl+A Option to select all. Will be in next version Reedy Boy 14:42, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Could a Ctrl+C option be added also in the article list? The currect process I would use for the bot is currently a little long. --TeckWiz Parlate Contribs@ 14:45, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Also added. Reedy Boy 15:53, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * There is also now a Cut and Paste Option..... Reedy Boy 21:11, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Help
I don't know if this is the correct place to post this, but I have just downloaded AWB and am a 'checked-user' so all should be fine, except it keeps crashing for no reason. I'm running XP and although I use firefox, I've logged in through IE. Crashes are either immediate or at any time. I have made some edits with it which have worked fine, then while processing a list, it will 'need to close'. I don't think this is due to the settings as sometimes it won't get that far. Can anyone help? –MDCollins (talk) 15:34, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Bot stops when database locks
Can it be made so that if the database is locked, that bot will reattempt to save and keep going instead of stopping the run. --TeckWiz Parlate Contribs@ 19:59, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
 * It should do that anyway...? Reedy Boy 20:10, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
 * This is a bug. On bot mode it often just fails instead of continuing. — M ETS 501 (talk) 20:37, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

How to go back
After I click save after making many manual edits in addition to automated edits, I've found a message saying my session data was lost. Is there a way to go back to the last page, or reload the attempted save? :: ZJH (T C E) 19:48, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The only way to do this (i dont think that a method is currently implemented), is to have it save the text temporarily in the string, and if that particular error message comes up, reput this back into the text box. Its not an error ive seen with AWB though Reedy Boy 12:14, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

on the learning curve
Two things ...
 * 1) My current barrier seems to be when I go to download the file pages_articles.xml.bz2, what downloads is of insignificant size and the transmission does not display any errors of any kind. (I'm using a cable modem and haven't had trouble downloading other large files.) I've checked all the links for help I could find, and have not gotten anywhere, so I'd appreciate any suggestions.
 * Have you tried using a download manager? Reedy Boy 11:05, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Someone else has suggested Filezilla, which I've downloaded but not figured out yet. Keesiewonder talk 11:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I use flashget to get my dumps. Reedy Boy 12:12, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Excellent! With flashget, I've been able to do the download! Keesiewonder talk 13:22, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * 2) Also, even when not trying to explore the 'make list from database dump option,' AWB is frustrating in that 'saves' rarely take due to ... ??? ... servers being overloaded or something? ... --Keesiewonder talk 09:54, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thats a bit weird... Does it not display a message? Reedy Boy 11:05, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Correct, no message from AWB. I do believe it is a problem with server access/activity levels. Concurrent to this behavior in AWB, for instance, I also couldn't do an edit count check. Keesiewonder talk 11:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Its very infrequently that i have a problem with saving.... Reedy Boy 12:12, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, here's a third:
 * 3) Does the summary line lie? I rejected what was suggested by AWB as a typo correction; the change did not take, but, the summary line says I did it ... What's going on here? Here's the actual edit I made, so you can see I did not fix the "typo" it reports ... Keesiewonder talk 23:44, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thats a bug i suggest it should be adding added Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs(Gnevin 11:01, 23 March 2007 (UTC))
 * How did you 'reject it', did you just change it back manually? If so, of course it wouldnt make any difference to the edit summary. Reedy Boy 11:05, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I did not touch the edit summary when I rejected this. Rather, I edited the article content in the lower right window to be the way I wanted, confirmed with preview and 'show changes' that the surname was not getting changed, and then issued the save. The article content saved correctly; the part of the edit summary I have no control over "assumed" its "typo find" was a keeper, and said I did it ... I'll report the bug this evening ... unless you or someone else does it first. Thanks for getting back to me; I appreciate it! Keesiewonder talk 11:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, thats what i do. When you do the show changes and preview, this basically fires the event off in the web browser in the same was as if you were manually editing it, AWB isnt currently doing the work for it. Im not sure how to really fix it, i know Steve commented on one of my edits like that, the typo list was wrong (i corrected the problem), but also changed the word before i saved, which was at first, not apparent to what had happend, he thought something could eb up with AWB, ie it was saying it had changed a spelling, but it hadnt. Reedy Boy 12:12, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * If you don't want AWB to generate the summary for you then there is an option to turn that feature off. I think you can do it just for that edit. (IE, edits where the change was undone by the operator) but I haven't tested that. ---J.S  (T/C/WRE) 13:46, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I think removing custom summaries when user manually edited would be the best. Max S em 14:41, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think that option applies to RegExTypo fix. I had similar situations where I manually changed the fix back,and got a user telling me off for the change I hadn't made! Rich Farmbrough, 17:46 24 March 2007 (GMT).
 * Exactly. I feel that's what's happening to me too. I'll work on documenting the steps to reproduce this so perhaps it can get fixed. Keesiewonder talk 21:13, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Stops Loading Pages
It seems that every few pages, AWB stops loading the page, even when it's the front window, and then doesn't restart loading. I must click stop and then start to get it to restart, only to have it stop again in less than a minute. --TeckWiz Parlate Contribs@ 13:16, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Timer
Why does AWB have to reload every page after 30 seconds? This is not enough time for me to check the page so can I make the timer be a minute of more?--Natl1 (Talk Page) (Contribs) 15:58, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Im confused, it doesnt happen for me, nor have i ever seen it happen :/ Reedy Boy 18:23, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Cantonese wikipedia
Can I request adding support for Cantonese Wikipedia (zh-yue) here? Its namespace is the same as English. &mdash; HenryLi (Talk) 17:19, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
 * All wikis are already supported: just go to custom project and in the url field enter zh-yue.wikipedia.org/w/. As far as built-in support, it's difficult due to the dash in the name. — M ETS 501 (talk) 17:24, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot. Hopefully the wikipedia will change to the ISO code yue as soon as possible. &mdash; HenryLi (Talk) 17:45, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Soon as they do, give us a shout and we can get it implemented!! Reedy Boy 18:19, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Bug revert project
When AWB has a bug, it could affect many, many articles. Should we have a project to attempt to rectify any bug-created errors across all AWB users? Good PR as well. Rich Farmbrough, 17:57 24 March 2007 (GMT).
 * We could do, but the errors tend to generally be not major... Hmm, lets see what the general concensus is :) Reedy Boy 18:18, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Copy and Paste
First of all, I love the new features, including the deselect all button on the filter option, and the CTRL+A function. However, when attempting to copy and paste from the list, it will only paste the first page thats been selected to copy. --TeckWiz Parlate Contribs@ 00:19, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
 * /Bugs. Thanks. — M ETS 501 (talk) 05:07, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, no need to post anymore. — M ETS 501 (talk) 05:31, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Only Thing Mets,

copyToolStripMenuItem.Enabled = lbArticles.SelectedItems.Count == 1; cutToolStripMenuItem.Enabled = lbArticles.SelectedItems.Count == 1;
 * On the prior commit, i realised the above was the case, so i changed it so you could cut and copy if only one article selected. I'll change it back now Reedy Boy 09:36, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Bot Stops When Editing Protected Page
It seems my bot stops when attempting to change a protected page. Protected pages it skips are fine though. --TeckWiz Parlate Contribs@ 00:55, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Bot Working in AWB but not contributing
It seems my bot is working correctly in AWB, and the saving pages, but when I go to it's contibutions, the edits don't show up. It's editing in AWB, but AWB isn't making the changes in Wikipedia. --TeckWiz Parlate Contribs@ 11:20, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * What's your bot's username? Have you tried to disable bot mode and lokk at diffs? Max S em 11:29, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * --kingboyk 14:02, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Did you wait a little bit before looking at the edits? Surprisingly enough, at random times my bot's edits can take almost a minute to appear in the contribs list, on or off AWB. — M ETS 501 (talk) 18:31, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. I waited about 20 minutes, and it's still not appearing now. Yet in AWB, the edits made counter keeps going up. --TeckWiz Parlate Contribs@ 21:24, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I have no ideas. Are you still experiencing this problem?  Do you have a screen recorder?  How about uploading a video to youtube or something so we can see if anything looks fishy when saving the edits. — M ETS 501 (talk) 11:01, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No. I don't have a screen recorder. I'm also experiencing it skipping many user talk pages, though I don't see how, as all the user pages were listed as transcluded from a user warning in Category:User warning templates, and those same templates are the ones listed as templates to subst. --TeckWiz Parlate Contribs@ 22:37, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I just saved an edit that took 3 minutes to show up in contribs. — M ETS 501 (talk) 20:26, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

This is really weird (and probably connected with the occasional locking of the database over the last few hours for the slave servers to catch up), but an edit of kingbotk's didn't show in contribs, but I checked in recent changes and there it was! I don't recall offhand how Mediawiki builds recent changes. Strange, but possibly not connected to o.p. as he waited 20 mins. --kingboyk 20:29, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Are you sure AWB is ogged in as TecWizBot? Rich Farmbrough, 09:21 30 March 2007 (GMT).
 * It's not happening anymore. It was a one time thing. --TeckWiz Parlate Contribs@ 11:19, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Failed to lode
Hi, I hava a prpblem I can't login AutoWikiBrowser the msg error "check page failed to lode", Can you help me? --OsamaK 20:36, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Hopefully it said that it failed to "load", not "lode", but either way, I think this is related to a bug I fixed in the next release. If it's not fixed in the next release, then just keep trying, or tell us if you have any special settings.  You are on the English Wikipedia editing, right? — M ETS 501 (talk) 20:53, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you, and I am sorry becuse I can't write english very good, this prpblem has be fixed in Arabc wikipedia, now I don't have any prpblem --OsamaK 15:00, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Does bot stop if other bot does something?
If a bot makes a minor edit on another bot's talk page (i.e. if it's archiving the page), will AWB stop the bot? --TeckWiz Parlate Contribs@ 00:01, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Not if the edit is marked as minor. — M ETS 501 (talk) 03:44, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

List of substed templates
Can the list of templates substed by AWB be listed somewhere? --TeckWiz Parlate Contribs@ 23:01, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No, because it's a giant regex, not a list of templates. I just emailed you the regex if you can decipher it. — M ETS 501 (talk) 15:26, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It was pretty easy to get. I only need it for the reason stated in my reply. --TeckWiz Parlate Contribs@ 16:09, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Lists from special pages
The AWB manual says: "Special page — Enter "Lonelypages" to get a list from Special:Lonelypages, you can also enter "Lonelypages&limit=500&offset=500" to get more or from an offset. If no limit specified, the limit will be 1000."

However, i just tried Allpages&limit=500 and even Allpages, it says "list complete!", but the list has always 0 pages. Are there some special pages that don't work? (Note: "Lonelypages" and "Lonelypages&limit=500&offset=500" did work)

194.79.75.114 21:35, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, that was me :s --Waldir 21:37, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, i could make it work with "Allpages/namespace=8", getting all pages in mediawiki namespace, which was what i originally wanted. But I still dont get how to do that 500 limit yet. I tried "Allpages/limit=500" but that would give me a list of pages starting at "limit". Besides, it'd only give me 960 pages, which were the number of pages in mediawiki namespace i got before. "Allpages/!&limit=500" doesn't work also, "Allpages&from=!" does the same as "Allpages/!" but "Allpages&from=!&limit=500" gives me 960 pages. Even after restarting AWB i kept getting that 960 limit :s

Before that mediawiki search, it had yielded lists of 1000 elements, so i dont get what's going on... So now I have several problems:
 * 1) The parameters's syntax;
 * 2) Why Allpages doesn't work without parameters (and why it says list complete, it should give an error, or say "empty list");
 * 3) Besides, there are still some special pages that dont work, like Special:Specialpages and Allmessages.

Waldir 19:34, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Update: I was so dumb, 960 wasnt the number of pages in mediawiki namespace, but rather allpages started in 'n'! So to the list of problems i have to add:
 * How to get special pages bades lists with other paramethers than 'from'?
 * Waldir 21:53, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Autotagging with stub?
I have a distinct feeling I'm missing something obvious here, but please bear with me if that's indeed the case. Didn't AWB used to add stub to articles below some threshold size? (Under some selection of options or other.) Does it still do this, and it so, what criteria is it using? Alai 17:21, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, it still does, and automatically detects the article type. I'm not sure if it adds just the normal stub tag to short articles, but it does add tags such as Canada-actor-stub. --Razor ICE 08:14, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * On the basis of what... existing permanent categories?  Free text?  What threshold does it use for article size, for doing that?  Is this controlled by the "Auto tag" checkbox, or by something else?  (I realize I'm likely venturing into a-fool-can-ask-more-questions territory, but I'm having trouble reconstructing both what I have vague recollections of it doing before, and what I'm able to reproduce it doing currently (which isn't much, so far...).  Alai 01:55, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't know the answers to your other questions, but yes, this is controlled by the "Auto tag" checkbox: AutoWikiBrowser/User Manual. &mdash; DomBot / ChiDom  talk  18:43, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Request for someone with AWB?
There seem to be a number of pages which misspell the NHL team the Canadiens as Candiens. It would be a bit inconvenient to go through all the articles this typo came up with - is it something someone with AWB could do faster? TheHYPO 04:12, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * To run AWB against it there needs to be something to seed the list, Special:Whatlinkshere/Montreal_Candiens is empty, what would you hook on? — xaosflux  Talk  04:20, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * A Google search on "candien"? I'll do it this evening if no one else has. -- JHunterJ 12:39, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I tried to do a search in article space but only came up with 6-7 articles. They've been fixed now. Valentinian T / C 12:52, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * there's also about 200+ hits for "Candian", most if not all of which are typos for "Canadian" TheHYPO 15:13, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I've done this one via WikiSearch and by Google Search. A lot are on talk pages or user pages, so left them well alone. Reedy Boy 15:55, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Are you talking about the Canadien original one, or the Canadian second one? A wiki search of Candian for me still brings up 230 results, and the wikisearch by default does not include talk pages. I haven't gone through but every result on the first page except one (a result hit for Candiano) is a typo for Canadian... To edit my own comment, while the search claimed to result in 230 pages, there are only 2 pages of entries. Several of them still do have typos though - particularly the first page of results. Sorry to mislead TheHYPO 21:10, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Skip existing pages
Is it possible to skip existing pages? This will be helpful in creating missing articles. --(Sumanth|Talk) 08:54, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Suppose it would be possible. However, as a side point, a new logging feature is coming out in the next AWB, which will log none existant pages, and you would be able to filter by them. If this is not enough, make a request on the /Feature requests page. Reedy Boy 09:19, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It would be extremely easy to implement, I say just do it Reedy (make it an option, and make it saveable in the settings). Just reverse the logic for skip non-existing pages. (Or, how about making that option tri-state: skip non existing, skip existing, none). --kingboyk 11:27, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It would be helpful if a setting option can be provided as suggested by Kingboyk (rather than a filter option). --(Sumanth|Talk) 11:36, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

''Thread copied to Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Feature_requests. --kingboyk 16:25, 12 April 2007 (UTC)''

Paypal donations redirected offsite
Don't do that. Thanks.
 * -- That Guy, From That Show! 04:50, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Im confused.... SF Donations are directed to the WikiMedia Foundation.... Reedy Boy 07:04, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Order of dangly bits
SHould defaultsortorder go before or after persondata? I would say after, immediately before cats. Any reason to do otherwise (as AWB appears to now)? Rich Farmbrough, 09:11 15 April 2007 (GMT).
 * I believe that this was just changed, per Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs/Archive. I think it is in 3.9.0.0, but I haven't come across it yet.  --After Midnight 0001 14:46, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

User errors
Is there a noticeboard or appropriate area to report users who have made significant errant edits with AWB? Not to assume bad faith (I'm sure it's an honest mistake), but AWB has the potential to cause a lot of damage, and users who don't follow the first rule of WP:AWB (check every edit before saving) can unintentionally cause problems that is a major headache to correct. See this edit and this edit for examples. /Blaxthos 03:36, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I would suggest that the first time you see something you should post a message on the user's talk page. If that doesn't work, try a warning.  If they still don't stop, I usually find a DEV on their talk page or on IRC and they will take care of the situation. --After Midnight 0001 04:33, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Ya I did, and I want to reiterate that I'm not trying to get anyone in trouble (and I believe it's just a good faith mistake). My point is more that you guys might want to institute a place (or instructions) regarding how to handle such.  Thanks!  /Blaxthos 04:38, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Just to be very clear, I made the errors, I corrected the errors and I am doing my best to avoid them in the future. The errors occurred because I was adding a template to talk pages. I had AWB look for occurances of the template so that the page would be skipped. Unfortunately, I did not think to include those with additional parameters like "class=". Therefore AWB did not skip the page. I then failed to see the template and added it. I went back and corrected everyone of them so far as I know. I told Blaxthos that I had one sole intention and that was to make Wikipedia a better encyclopedia. I do look at every edit but I just missed these. Please don't assume the worse. I certainly apologize for any problems these edits caused.  Jody B 16:27, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think we need any more bureacracy. --kingboyk 16:37, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Agreed steve. The best and most direct way is to bring it up with the user. If they are making bad edits at that point, when a message is left, the user is notified and offered to view the message on the next page load. This will bring it to their attention quickly. As you said, its a case of WP:AGF and letting the user know, and the chance to correct things. Reedy Boy 17:20, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Sure, however it should be noted that when users are making upwards of six edits per minute, it's pretty clear that the user isn't reviewing his edits before saving them (even though it's part of the AWB usage agreement). Couple that with the same user making more edits with AWB that are specifically prohibited (just removing whitespaces, moving stub tags, etc) and it becomes prudent to examine that good faith more closely.  At what point does it become wanton disregard for the policies set forth instead of oh i just made a mistake?  /Blaxthos 00:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It becomes disregard for the policies when they do it again :) Mart inp23 00:47, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Masking foreign language words?
Is there a way to mask words (e.g. French on an otherwise English language wiki page) from AWB? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Scriveyn (talk • contribs) 12:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC).


 * Yes, wrap them in the appropriate template e.g. Y tu mamá también which renders as Y tu mamá también i.e. no visible difference, but allows browsers, spellcheckers and other scanners to react appropriately to the language. Colonies Chris 13:44, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

User Rename
Can an admin change User:TeckWiz to User:R and User:TeckWizBot to User:RBot on the checkpage? -- TeckWiz is now R Parlate Contribs@(Lets go Yankees!) 21:20, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Confirmed and done. Prodego  talk  22:46, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Phonetic representations mistaken for SI units
Any way to signal that digraphs (e.g. in alphabet tables) are not SI units, but in fact intended to be written as they are, all in lower case, such that AWB won't mistake them for SI units and capitalise them improperly? E.g. pf (a sound in Pennsylvania German, not pF picofarads), or kw (a sound in Proper Cantonese pronunciation, not kW kilowatts) ? Thanks. cab 08:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Crosspost from IRCM
IRCMonitor: Is there a way to reverse the RC feed? IE have new edits on the bottom of the list, it moves pretty fast to keep up with. if the RC table's feed could be reversed it would make using it faster. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 13:52, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * listViewEdit.Items.Insert(0, lvItem); is the code used. This inserts it to the top... The easiest way to add it to the bottom is using .Items.Add(lvItem), or i suppose, .Insert(listViewEdit.Items.Count - 1, lvItem)... Possibly on a userflag to select which to do? Reedy Boy 17:22, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * As a side thought, different code would be needed to remove it, but that isnt major... MaxSem may have a better idea seen as he wrote it!! Reedy Boy 17:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Why not leave clearing the RC table to manual reset or auto clear. I sometimes used VandalFighter for finding rouge bots, and other data analysis why not make that a user pref along with saving the current prefs before saving as a default. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 17:53, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Find and replace with something thats multiple lines
How do you use find and replace if you want to find and replace something that's on more than one line? -- TeckWiz is now R Parlate Contribs@(Lets go Yankees!) 21:19, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
 * There is advanced find and replace, with multiple line boxes.... Or use \r\n in FAR Reedy Boy 22:52, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Cross reference categories?
Can AWB be made to cross reference categories, i.e. to turn up all articles that fall in both Category A and Category B, or to list articles in Category A and then filter out those that are in (or not in) Category B? bd2412  T 05:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
 * AWB has a 'list comparer'. It consists of 2 list makers - the same as AWB has, which can be used to make lists, then can list duplicates and articles only in list 1, and articles only in list 2. Reedy Boy 11:14, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

AWB user application
I just removed from the checkpage. It was his second time using AWB for extremely minor edits, and he had already apologized and agreed to stop. See this diff for my comment to him. I've told him that he can reapply on this page for access. If the consensus of the AWB userbase is that he should have access again, I'll readd him. Thanks, alphachimp  15:19, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

But WTHell was that? Max S em 15:49, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, god knows how he got it to paste some of the typo list to the bottom. IMHO, this time, he shouldnt get them back. Once and getting told off for just doing 'cleanup' insignificant errors, is one thing... but getting the rights back, and still doing it is taking the mick. AWB does loads of typo fixes for gods sake, and can automatically skip pages for multiple reasons, so users only really have to click save!! Reedy Boy 15:54, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion
Any chance of implementing a "do not approve" list on the checkpage? It would be nice to be 100% sure that future admins don't approve users we've banned from the tool. alphachimp 16:09, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
 * sofixit :) Just add the list to the top of the page with appropriate message. Such things should be achieved by administrative measures, not technical. Max S em 16:16, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I was concerned about messing with the way AWB read the checkpage :). But, if you think it's OK... alphachimp  19:22, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
 * AWB just looks for its tags - ie and such =) Reedy Boy 19:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Version Number?
Hmmm...it says on the AWB page that 3.9.1.0 was released, but the updater says there is no update available, yet when I go to Help->about, it says 3.9.0.0. -- TeckWiz is now R Parlate Contribs@(Lets go Yankees!) 20:52, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, its not a compulsory update, so the updater wont update it. Its got a few minor fixes, plus a fix for people with larger monitors when the bottom boxes go all skewed... If you want to get it, until we update the updater, you'll just have to do it manually Reedy Boy 21:07, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Has been requested to allow the optional updates aswell... Reedy Boy 23:26, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Implemented for the next release Reedy Boy 00:09, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Spacing query from editor
I recieved the following comment:

Diff. This one isn't serious: There is no reason to remove spacing between nav tags and categories; it just makes the code harder to read. This one is serious: It really should not be removing spacing between stub tags and whatever preceded them (usually categories, sometimes interwikis or even regular content); stub tags have a known problem that they need two blank lines between them and whatever preceded them, or they butt up against the last content in the page that preceded them when the page is rendered in the browser. Looks like crap, but WP:WSS is unlikely to fix this any time soon, since it means changing the behavior of thousands of stub templates. Example - smackbot is changing:

to

and this is a Bad Thing. — SMcCandlish &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;   ‹(-¿-)› 14:29, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I am suggesting we can fix the stub templates, so that's not an issue, but the first point may be worth looking at? Rich Farmbrough, 21:13 21 April 2007 (GMT).

Also on the spacing issue, using the "fix all excess whitespace" option works well, but only puts one space before stubs, not two as indicated above. Onco_p53 10:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Plugin documentation
I'm trying to make a plugin in C# to make some automatic style correction for the italian wikipedia, but apparently AutoWikiBrowser/Plugins it's not updated to the last version of AWB.--Moroboshi 07:47, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi, the documentation is out of date for the current release of AWB, and it is being improved on yet again. Do you have any specific questions? Reedy Boy 09:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I tweaked the code from the example on the documentation page, it worked until two week ago, but now I get the error:
 * "'Format_it.Format_it' non implementa il membro di interfaccia 'WikiFunctions.Plugin.IAWBPlugin.Skip'. 'Format_it.Format_it.Skip' è di tipo statico, non pubblico o presenta il tipo restituito errato."
 * in english I think is
 * "'Format_it.Format_it' don't implement the interface member 'WikiFunctions.Plugin.IAWBPlugin.Skip'. 'Format_it.Format_it.Skip' is a static type, not public or return the wrong type."
 * If I comment out the row
 * public event PluginEventHandler Skip;
 * I get the error "'Format_it.Format_it' don't implement interface member 'WikiFunctions.Plugin.IAWBPlugin.Skip'

--Moroboshi 10:13, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately you picked a bad time to be trying to write a plugin, as I've made some major changes to the interface and the documents haven't been updated yet.
 * What I advise is downloading the latest AWB source code from SourceForge and compile it, because there are more changes which haven't been released yet. You'll need to reference the new wikifunctions.dll.
 * I've just had a play in Visual Studio C#, and observed the following to work:
 * public class Class1: WikiFunctions.Plugin.IAWBPlugin
 * Then hold the mouse over IAWBPlugin, right click, and select one of the 2 options under "Implement interface". This will build the required members for you.
 * The main changes are:
 * ProcessArticle receives a ProcessArticleEventArgs object instead of a variety of parameters
 * Initialise receives an IAutoWikiBrowser object
 * The interface events have been removed and replaced with calls to members in IAutoWikiBrowser
 * It's a lot easier to work with now. --kingboyk 14:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I've updated the docs. --kingboyk 14:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I will try.--Moroboshi 17:46, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Please let us know how you get on! Also, I should warn you that I reserve the right to tinker with the plugin interface further until version 4 of AWB is officially released, at which point I promise to allow it to stabilise again :) --kingboyk 20:03, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

this version is not enabled
what's that? I can't log on .pl and I get that messege, I can't even log on other as well, when I try to run updater then i get "error fething current version number", "nothing to update", I have 3.9.1.0 so it's the newest! I can't edit ... --84.234.42.68 17:37, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * solved, IE has proxy set, which was down --84.234.42.68 17:59, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Sometimes this comes like you found, when it cant get access to teh checkpage. Reedy Boy 18:22, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Yep, clicking on "Log In" once more tends to solve the problem. Max S em 19:08, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Limiting category lists
I would like to create a list of articles based upon a large category. Is there a way to limit the number of articles returned? For example, I want to compare Stub-Class biography articles against Unassessed Alabama articles. The biography category seems huge. Can I tell the program to grab only 500 articles instead of the whole list?  Jody B 21:22, 23 April 2007 (UTC)


 * exactly what categories are you waning to compare? in any case if you launch list comparer under List, how long does your final list look like? it should be closer to a manageable size. -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 17:33, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for responding. One of the categories (the largest) is Stub-Class biography articles. I just pulled it into the ListComparer and it shows 196,525 articles. That's really more than I can work with and I would assume it strains resources. I am comparing it to Unassessed Alabama articles which is only about 1,500 articles. By comparing the two I have a manageable list of articles I can assess for the WikiProject Alabama work. I thought there might be a simpler way to pull down the category listing which could be limited.  Jody B 18:54, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Probably not, especially as you need to compare the lists. That's an intersection, and it's something Wikipedia's Mediawiki software doesn't currently support. There's no alternative but to download the entire Bio category, as you can't cross-reference without having the entire list, right? --kingboyk 19:19, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Once you've grabbed the list, you can save it loally, to all intents and purposes it will be good for some number of days. Rich Farmbrough, 11:19 25 April 2007 (GMT).
 * Yeah. And if using my plugin, it will ignore talk pages of articles which got deleted since the list was made. The only embaressing experience I've had from using slightly stale lists is tagging as living somebody who died within the last couple of days ;) C'est la vie... or not, in that case, :P --kingboyk 12:10, 25 April 2007 (UTC)


 * i really don't beleive there is (someone correct me if i'm wrong), prolly because more often than not users want the entire list. for people wanting specific pages, that's what the comparer is for. I don't think it really strains resources any more than loading the page anyways. Using list comparer actually (in my mind) is less of a server strain than if you were to load 500 pages, perform your edits, and then load another 500 (plus it would get more complicated with coding because of course you don't want to have to list articles you already looked through, so it would have to fetch the list "starting from..."). -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 19:13, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Grabbing a sample might be quite useful in certain usages though... --kingboyk 19:19, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

How do i use Special pages?
I want to have AWB make a list of links from this page. How do i get it to work? -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 17:27, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Simply paste Prefixindex&from=Pok%C3%A9mon+Collaborative+Project&namespace=4 into the box and press "Make list". Max S em 17:42, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

ty! -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria

AWB Causing Errors
User:AVTN, has used AWB to changed 'Correspondance' to 'Correspondence' and called it a 'correction'. Yet on many articles 'Correspondance' appeared in French language (such as a title in French or quote in French). 'Correspondance' is correct spelling in French language; AWB is causing errors. User:AVTN has not answered my comment on his talk page and has not reported the error here as asked by another user. Please correct this error with AWB.-- Bryson { Talk } <sup style="color:#009900;">{ Edits } 15:14, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * User:AVTN has answered my comment on his talk page and promised not to use AWB anymore, but what about other users using it.-- Bryson <sup style="color:#009900;">{ Talk } <sup style="color:#009900;">{ Edits } 15:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Im pretty sure this came up before, and i thought it was removed from the typo page... If it wasnt, as it seems, it needs doing so that other users cant. Reedy Boy 17:17, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I didn't report it because I thought it was an error by me than by AWB itself. And I didn't promise not to use AWB anymore. I said I did not plan to fix typos using AWB in the future because of the problems that it caused. I only realised the problems caused by those fixes many hours after I had logged out when Nunh-huh had kindly taken a lot of time to revert those fixes. I found the problem came because I googled 'Correspondance' and used AWB to fix the pages with those typos as I seemed it was much quicker and had less strain on the server because nearly every page had that typo on it. But that was what caused the major problem, I did not realise that there was a french word called 'Correspondance'. You can see the conversation I had on my talk pages here and with Bryson here.


 * Since that conversation I have not corrected typos. I have only used AWB to make film articles for a majority of Rajinikanths films here and the method I used is described here where I was explaining to Universal Hero who is a major contributer to the Sivaji: The Boss article (which is how I met him).


 * Please can you review the situation and tell me what I should do. Should I go back to editing typos? Should I quit using AWB (because your going to remove me from the list)?
 *  AVTN  T  CVPS 11:16, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * You won't have your priveledges removed because of a good faith error, unless you seem to be incompetent to use the tool. Don't worry about that.
 * I'm not commenting on the "technical" question as I don't use this feature nor have I ever looked at the code. --kingboyk 11:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

All spell fixing should be manually checked as you go along. Foreign language context should always raise a flag. It is still possible to make mistakes, but that applies ot any editing activity. Rich Farmbrough, 10:31 26 April 2007 (GMT).

Removal of blank lines before categories and stub templates
AWB seems to be getting a bit zealous about removing blank lines: I've noticed it doing with the only blank line between the final section, and the categories (where I don't think it makes a difference to the rendered page, but certainly makes the wikimarkup less clear), and removing the double blank lines frequently added before stub tags -- these are generally deliberately added for the converse reason, avoiding the tags becoming "squished up" to the served text. Can these be taken account of when removing vspace? On a more general note, would it be possible to make the individual "general fixes" separately toggleable? Alai 04:57, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
 * that's probably fixed in next version, but don't know when this wersion will be out, I stopped editing for now anyway --84.234.42.68 10:45, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Cool. AWB versions seem to generally be often enough that between one spell of using it and the next, I find my current version's been disabled, so I'm content enough with that.  Alai 04:13, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Two or more blank lines (that is, three or more line breaks) in a row do create a noticeable and awkward increase in the space between paragraphs in the rendered page. It probably would be best to shorten all exaggerated whitespace areas to two carriage returns (one blank line in the wiki text), or maybe just one carriage return (no blank line) if it is part of a indented/bulleted/numbered list, but doing that for regular paragraphs make them run together. Sometimes unusually large gaps will also have other invisible stuff like spaces and tabs on the blank lines so you want to use something that will account for that too. It could be a sign that the text was copied and pasted into the edit box, rather than typed on the user's keyboard, so check for copyvio as usual. I haven't used AWB for a while so I don't remember how it behaved regarding this, but when I edit I generally try to leave about this much space at the end: ...happily ever after.

התיקון הרביעי לחוקת ארצות הברית Does that look like enough room, Alai? — CharlotteWebb 11:45, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Mostly, but there seems to be some thinking that an extra blank link before the first stub template is desirable. I won't claim to be rigorous in adding them myself, and in the longer run it will hopefully not be necessary at all, if the CSS for the stub templates can be tweaked appropriately, but for the time being it would save some to-ing anf fro-ing if AWB left that, if already present.  Alai 04:13, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

AWB Approval Sanity Check
I ran into a new situation with AWB approvals today. A user with less than 200 mainspace edits is asking that I be bold and add him to the AWB list so that he can increase his edit count to become an admin (this could be an oversimplification, but it's my read on the situation). When I responded by denying his request, he assured me that "When I come back I'm pretty sure that there will be another admin who will be too happy to allow me to use it". Ordinarily, this type of arrogance wouldn't be a significant issue, but I'd like to be 100% sure I'm making the right choice in declining OhanaUnited's AWB request.

Thanks, alphachimp  03:00, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yep, agree. Looks like this is where this came from. Prodego  <sup style="color:darkgreen;">talk  03:03, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I fully endorse this. The main and only reason for using AWB or other automatic tools should be desire to improve Wikipedia, not promotion to some status. In this particular case the candidate is not sure where he will use AWB, so how can we be sure that he will not use it for making controversial or useless edits? He doesn't have enough mainspace experience for us to judge. Max S em 18:13, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * If that's a future admin lord help us. And why is his "mentor" not pulling him up over this? Using AWB is a priveledge not a right, and it's certainly not there to help folks notch up an edit count! --kingboyk 18:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I like the reference there that WP:AGF is policy, while 500 edits is only a suggestion... Last I checked, AGF was a guideline, and again, last I checked, AWB was developed by a group of users outside Wikipedia, and it has its own rules - it is up to the developers as to who gets access, and this power has effectively been devolved to any admin (and huge thanks go to Alphachimp for taking the maintenance of this upon himself). This could go on WP:AWB/BJAODN (but kingboyk would kill block me if I did :)) Mart inp23  18:38, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * AGF means if you encounter an edit or editor which could be in good faith, or could be in bad faith, you assume the former unless there is strong evidence to the contrary. I'm quite sure it doesn't extend to the granting of priveledges, otherwise we'd make newbies admins too! --kingboyk 18:41, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The 500 edit rule seems like a reasonable demand. AGF sure, but AWB can cause a lot of damage in the wrong hands, so being a little careful seems appropriate. Otherwise we risk ending up with a giant mess. If people wish to increase their edit counts they can fix dabs, sort stubs, fix categories. Or to be old-fashioned: edit articles. All of this can be done without AWB. Valentinian T / C 19:29, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree - They shouldnt be given AWB access just to get their edit counts up. 500 edits are nothing, and as other people have said, edits can be easily accumulated fixing double redirects, disambiguating links, and general other fixes. We have the 500 edit rule for a reason, if one person gets access for this reasons, others want too, then its unfair if we dont give it to them. Unless the user can provide a valid specific reason they need AWB access (ie to do something that would be useful to wikipedia, but a long painful task to do manually), they shouldnt get it under the edit limit. And its also there so we have some sort of trust towards the user, ie we can presume to an extent they are going to use it to improve wikipedia. Reedy Boy 13:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Bypassing redirects?
Am I being too strict at User talk:SchuminWeb? --NE2 14:58, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Probably, imho. It sounds like he has a reason for making the change and knows that it's usually frowned upon. I'd let him get on with it personally. --kingboyk 15:13, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Questions about compatibility
Hi. I am looking into requesting AWB, but I need to confirm that my computer will run it. First off, Does AWB run on Microsoft Windows 98 (not SE)? Do I need to install any other programs, such as the .NET framework? Thanks for your time. Have a great day! <font face="Edwardian Script ITC" size="4">Ryan <font face="Comic Sans MS" size="2">Got something to say? 15:13, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, sorry. I can't use it on 98. I have a tendency to skip things by mistake, but thank you anyway. Who knows, maybe you could make it compatible with 98! <font face="Edwardian Script ITC" size="4">Ryan <font face="Comic Sans MS" size="2">Got something to say?  15:15, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, it is extremely unlikely to happen due to flawed Unicode support in W98. Max S em 15:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, It was an idea. I'll be getting a new computer relatively sonn, so I can use it then. <font face="Edwardian Script ITC" size="4">Ryan <font face="Comic Sans MS" size="2">Got something to say?  15:30, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Lovin' it
Just for the record, I've now been using AWB for a couple of weeks - I am having more fun than should be legal with it. So far I'm just fixing typos and making tiny little changes, but the gnomish part of me is totally groovin on this. ya'll did GREAT with this one. Philippe 05:35, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Excellent. The main guy to thank is no longer on wiki, so I guess the rest of us will accept the thanks on his behalf. Cheers. --kingboyk 12:37, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Red in Alpha Release
How come my bot's name now appears in red instead of green at the bottom right corner of the alpha version of AWB? -- TeckWiz is now R Parlate Contribs@ (Let's go Yankees!) 03:00, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
 * No idea. Mine appears in green. — M ETS 501 (talk) 03:29, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Try pressing the log out button in the file menu, and then logging in again, and see if that helps. — M ETS 501 (talk) 03:30, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm...logged out and back in. Now it's green. -- TeckWiz is now R Parlate Contribs@ (Let's go Yankees!) 03:30, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Strange problem FYI/feedback welcome
I have a file in my IE cache which won't delete (or rename), it has a very long name with %s in. If I attempt to delete it from dos i get (paraphrased)
 * delete *.*
 * delete are you sure? (Y/N): Y

File not found.

THis may be the root cause of the AWB/.Net  error I've been getting:

The system cannot find the file specified. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070002)

Any suggestions welcome. Will update.

Rich Farmbrough, 11:14 25 April 2007 (GMT).
 * I cleaned my IE cache out by using Cygwin (a Unix-like shell), finding all the cache files and hidden folders, and forceably deleting them (rm -frv *) (they're hidden/protected in the normal Windows command shell). A similar sledgehammer approach might work for you. An alternative would be try one of the various IE cache cleaning utils. --kingboyk 12:08, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I've reinstalled IE, updated AWB, and moved the cache onto another disc. I'm getting the above eror on almost (?) every load of a page. It doesn't seem to affect the functioning, but I have to click OK for each save (in effect). I'm pretty much out of ideas, but I can't use AWB in ernest until this is resolved. Rich Farmbrough, 10:25 26 April 2007 (GMT).
 * OK here is a possible clue, I've disabled images and it's (it sems to have) reduced the frequency of the error. Rich Farmbrough, 10:33 26 April 2007 (GMT).
 * I've been getting that message now too (already have images disabled). (Bah! Just got it as I typed). --kingboyk 10:42, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank goodness it's not just me! I'm seeing a lot of nudges as well... 1/8. Rich Farmbrough, 10:51 26 April 2007 (GMT).
 * I'm not getting many nudges, and I have a slow machine at the moment and not much of a connection. At one point the nudging was erroneously aggressive (I left a zero off the timer value, whoops ;)), if you don't have the very latest release please switch so we're singing off the same hymn sheet :) --kingboyk 11:13, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I manually updated to 3.9.1, hoping the problem might "go away". Rich Farmbrough, 11:54 26 April 2007 (GMT).
 * Probably symptomatic of another problem then, rather than timer breakage. --kingboyk 12:13, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Later on I'll try AWB in the debugger and see if I can catch anything. I think we both suspect this is an IE message box, though. --kingboyk 11:13, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * You might be able to narrow down the cause, nonetheless. Rich Farmbrough, 11:28 26 April 2007 (GMT).

public bool GetLogInStatus {           if (this.Document == null) return false;

Match m = LoginRegex.Match(this.DocumentText);

Seems to be happening in webcontrol.cs at the last line shown above. Just hit this; haven't looked into cause/solution yet. --kingboyk 13:50, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

System.IO.FileNotFoundException was caught Message="The system cannot find the file specified. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070002)" Source="System.Windows.Forms" StackTrace: at System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.IPersistStreamInit.Save(IStream pstm, Boolean fClearDirty) at System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser.get_DocumentStream at System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser.get_DocumentText at WikiFunctions.Browser.WebControl.GetLogInStatus in D:\Work\SVN\AWB\AWB\WikiFunctions\WebControl.cs:line 232

I'm not really sure how to deal with this. Trapping an error is easy enough; but what then? GetLogInStatus returns a boolean, that's true (logged in) or false (not logged in). When an error occurs it's really a status of "don't know".

It's being called from MainForm.loadSuccess. Perhaps the call there could be wrapped in a try block, and if it fails stop and restart AWB? --kingboyk 15:36, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
 * - first attempt at trapping and working around the error; will continue testing if my laptop doesn't die of exhaustion first! :( --kingboyk 16:00, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Works for me! The only concern I have is that it theoretically possible (but unlikely) now for AWB to get stuck in a loop: catch error, stop and restart, catch error ... --kingboyk 18:35, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Great! Curious siutation - I guess one should avoid "unsafe native methods" ... Rich Farmbrough, 12:47 4 May 2007 (GMT).
 * Unfortunately we don't have a lot of choice at the moment :) Hopefully one day we can switch from IE to the API; we might even be able to get a mono compile if that happens? --kingboyk 12:52, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Got this damn problem again and it was making AWB unusable (was occurring when AWB was trying to get my login details). Also, got into the infinite loop I was worried about above. Fixed the loop, hopefully, but underlying problem remains a bit of a mystery. Google isn't much help. I'll have another bash but I might have to file as a bug report. --kingboyk 14:20, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
 * This suggests that adware may be responsible for your problems. I suggest to check your system for malisious software, then attempting to track the error using Filemon and Handle. Max S em 14:47, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Could be. My dad uses this laptop and is the sort who would click yes to anything. Will run an AdWare check, cheers. --kingboyk 14:51, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Nothing malicious found. Filemon showed a problem reading an IE cache file, I'm now trying a "brute force" emptying of my cache folder. --kingboyk 18:34, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Problem with "Make list"
The "Make list" feature with the option "User contribs" doesn't work for me. The other options are working. This used to work earlier. My AWB version is 3.9.0.0. I've tried logging out and clearing the cache. --(Sumanth|Talk) 07:59, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I am able to get the list with the option "Special page" ("Contributions/username"). But "User contribs" doesn't work. --(Sumanth|Talk) 08:02, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * We know. I've fixed it, the version with the fix hasn't been released. Its been reported another time on the /Bugs page aswell. See Here Reedy Boy 08:39, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

AWB thinks page didn't load in "Show changes" mode?
I'm a long-time AWB user, but today, when I look at a page in "Show changes" mode, the page usually appears to load properly but AWB thinks it didn't and tries to reload it after some time passes. I don't run into this problem in "Show preview" mode. Has anyone run into anything like this? TomTheHand 15:58, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I ran into a similar problem, but the show changes just refused to load. I don't know if anyone else is going to have a suggestion, but if you stick it out a little while longer until the next release, there's a whole new diff mechanism built in, so you never have to load the "show changes" page again :-) — M ETS 501 (talk) 18:11, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Yup, changes are always done - And it creates no load for the wikimedia servers!! xD Reedy Boy 19:02, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Can't wait! Sounds awesome. TomTheHand 19:14, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Typo errors.
Apparently the word "useable" is a read word and is not a typo. I have recieved a notice from a user when I mass changed all useables to usable. The discussion is here: User_talk:AVTN. And dictionary.com says it is a word too.  AVTN  T  CV  A 16:07, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Fixed/removed . Removed from AWB Typo list. Reedy Boy 16:28, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. (The user in  question.) Cardamon 00:30, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

We're famous
AWB is getting famous :-). Check out this random screen shot of the recent changes feed: Image:Wikipedia IRC Feed.png.  Look how many of the contributions are being made with AWB!  It's amazing! — M ETS 501 (talk) 04:02, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Great going!! I think wikipedia needs an article about AWBholics :). --(Sumanth|Talk) 06:03, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Excellent. Here's hoping we get a billion dollar take over offer from Google some time soon! --kingboyk 16:27, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

User with bot account
Can a bot user run through this list and tag as part of WP:GAA by adding GaelicGamesProject. You'll need to skip articles that already contain GaelicGamesProject. Thanks (Gnevin 19:02, 18 May 2007 (UTC))
 * I can/will, Kingboyk's plugin does the skipping automatically. Reedy Boy 19:23, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, can you let me know when your finished (Gnevin 19:27, 18 May 2007 (UTC))
 * Sure - Special:Contributions/Reedy_Bot. 716 to go. About 30 minutes to go. Reedy Boy 19:59, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. Noticed on the latter ones there was a GaelicGamesProjectTemplate so i was double tagging. I re-ran over those to remove the duplication. Reedy Boy 20:44, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Syntax for subst:
Which syntax should be used for the "substitiute template" function? I've tried "licensfråga", " " and "Mall:licensfråga" (Mall is swedish for template) but none of them seem to work. Is this function limited to en.wiki? /Lokal_Profil 16:27, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * It's just the same thing. For example,  substituted sv:Mall:10 juni when I tried. — M ETS 501 (talk) 16:33, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * So you have to enter the "subst" bit into the "template to substitute box"? Thats very counterintuitive. I'm currently doing it by find and replace which works fine but since there was a specific subst tool I'd figure I'd try to use that. /Lokal_Profil 16:38, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see what you mean. I forgot that this is an AWB-specific question.  I'll see what I can do. — M ETS 501 (talk) 17:18, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't see anything that would make it not work. Did you try using and not using the ExpandTemplates functionality? (There's a checkbox to that effect in the subst interface. — M ETS 501 (talk) 17:43, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I tried turning that of as well with no luck. I've tried again with another template (and also one without swedish cahracters in the name) and the same result again. It did manage to substitute one occurence of it though, when it said (Please note Välkommen is not something I intend to actually subst). /Lokal_Profil 15:58, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Alphabetical listing
Hey guys (and gals) ;), I am a really new AWB user and my goal is to add WP 1.0 ratings to all important maths articles, however, when I loaded a list to edit AWB auto sorted the talk pages separate from the original pages, making evaluating the articles then adding the rating to the talk page rather difficult. I am just wondering if there is anyway to get AWB to list the articles in the order they appear on the page. Thanks for all your hard work! you make our lives as editors so much easier.--Cronholm144 00:06, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't know exactly what you're saying, but are you aware of the Kingbotk plugin? — M ETS 501 (talk) 00:09, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Just to clarify: the issue concerns the option to make a list from links on page. As far as I can see, these links are automatically sorted alphabetically, and there is no option to make the list from these links in the order in which they appear on the page. Geometry guy 00:23, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thats a fair point, but doest it really matter? Im expecting that at the end of the list making for links on page, it will just run auto-sort. If thats the case, i'll remove it for you when i get home. Reedy Boy 08:38, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

That would be be great! It does matter for certain aspects of the work because I need to see the article to give it a rating: start, B, stub, Bplus. --Cronholm144 08:49, 23 May 2007 (UTC)


 * It would also help me out (to have the list in the order that the links appear) when I'm working on the Baseball Roster pages.--Kathy A. 13:35, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but this is not AWB's problem. We use http://en.wikipedia.org/w/query.php to get the links on a page, and that automatically alphabetically sorts it.  Bugzilla would be a good place to report it if you would like it changed. :-) — M ETS 501 (talk) 17:54, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Ahh, thanks mets. I didnt realise it was a api thing. Saves me having to look. I'll do the bugzilla feature request, and ask for an extra option for no alphabetical sorting. Reedy Boy 18:16, 23 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Requested - Feel free to vote for it ;) Reedy Boy 18:28, 23 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately its not possible. Well, not without manually loading the page and taking each link of manually Reedy Boy 19:04, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

How unfortunate... Oh well, thanks so much for checking on our behalf. :) Geometry guy found a way, although very tedious, of listing the articles in the appropriate order. It is explained on my talk page under the heading "144 Cronholm, AWB, Esq." for those who are having a similar problem. --Cronholm144 21:00, 23 May 2007 (UTC)


 * My basic procedure is to copy the source to a text file (I click on edit, select all, paste it into WordPad, and save the file), then in AWB make a list from the text file. The list AWB makes will be in the order of the text file, not alphabetical. Does take a few extra seconds, but not extremely tedious.--Kathy A. 00:09, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Talk pages?
New user here, sorry if this is a common question, but cannot find the answer anywhere. I'm trying to tage Talk pages for a WikiProject; I can pull up a list of the pages by Category, but how do I then point AWB at the corresbonding Talk pages (many of which are nonexistent)? Or is there some way I'm supposed to be pulling up the Talk pages themselves on the list? TAnthony 17:52, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Select the whole list (ctrl-a), and then right-click on the list and press "Convert to talk pages" — M ETS 501 (talk) 17:54, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, you rock. TAnthony 18:00, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Custom wiki: 404 error when trying to get list from category
I'm using AWB with a private MediaWiki (v1.9.3) installed on a USB stick. It works fine as long as I get my page list from a file. If I try Category, Links on page, or What Links Here I get an Unexpected Error that says, "The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found." If I try Wiki Search and type in a term I know is all over my wiki I get no pages, but no error either.

Is there something I need to enable on my wiki to get this working? Perhaps a setting in the LocalSettings.php file I need to change? Everything I've tried so far works except making lists. --Merkuri 18:42, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Just noticed something. I saw in a conversation above that AWB uses the query.php page to get the list of links on a page.  For the heck of it, I tried to navigate to myserver/mediawiki/query.php (instead of index.php) and got a file not found error.  Should I have this page?  If so, is there something I can do to install it?  --Merkuri 18:50, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, we use both query.php and api.php (in the next version). See Query and API for more information.  When you install those, then you shouldn't get those errors. — M ETS 501 (talk) 19:52, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I installed query.php (or thought I did) and now I get a different Unexpected Error. It says, " 'blue' is an unexpected token.  The expected token is '"' or '''.  Line 8, position 13. "  Note that the page name I was trying to reference didn't have the name "blue" in it anywhere, and it gives the same exact message regardless of what list option I pick or what page I use. Could I have installed it wrong?  --Merkuri 23:30, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Nevermind, it's working now. I have no idea what I did, but it's working. :)  --Merkuri 01:18, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia page instead of edit box in panel
Hello, I am a new user of AWB. I mostly work with images and do not need to see the edit box or differences in both the edit box and the panel. I need to see whether it is a commons image, if anything links to the image, and the original uploader. I don't really care what it looks like in the preview because I am generally only adding nsd or nld to the page. I am doing this to a lot of pages in Special:Uncategorizedimages. Is there a way to have it show me the page as it is in the top panel? Otherwise I keep clicking back and forth between Firefox and AWB. Thanks! --Strangerer (Talk) 04:53, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Article tagging
Is there a way to use AWB to tag articles? Such as adding AfD notices to articles that were put up for mass AfD, Example, or adding other tags (fair-use rational missing, etc.). Didn't know if I could do that using AWB (since it's easier than doing it by hand) or if only a bot could do it. --Malevious Userpage •Talk Page• Contributions 18:09, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, although as of now I think you'll have to use a module. — M ETS 501 (talk) 03:23, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Yay for being vague! Any chance you wanna tell me how? --Malevious Userpage •Talk Page• Contributions 03:54, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Sure :-) Go to "Advanced" → "Make module" and paste the following code:

public string ProcessArticle(string ArticleText, string ArticleTitle, int wikiNamespace, out string Summary, out bool Skip) {            Skip = false; Summary = "EDIT_SUMMARY_HERE"; ArticleText = "TAG_TO_ADD_HERE\r\n" + ArticleText; return ArticleText; }
 * replacing EDIT_SUMMARY_HERE with the desired edit summary (keep the quotes around the summary; if you want actual quotes in the summary write them as <tt>\"</tt>) and TAG_TO_ADD_HERE with the tag you want to add to the top of the page (again keep the quotes around the summary and the <tt>\r\n</tt> after it). If you want the tag to be at the end of the page replace the line

ArticleText = "TAG_TO_ADD_HERE\r\n" + ArticleText;
 * with

ArticleText = ArticleText + "TAG_TO_ADD_HERE\r\n";
 * Then check the "Enabled" box, press "Make module", and then "Done". Keep the "edit summary" box in the main AWB form empty.  Hope this helps! — M ETS 501 (talk) 05:49, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I've added this as part of the AWB Pages - AutoWikiBrowser/Custom Modules May be useful for other people for future reference!! Reedy Boy 07:12, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I was just thinking... you think it could be worth having an option on the custom module box to load these in automatically - ie any that are made up and known to be correct...? Reedy Boy 07:58, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Ok I've made the module now how do I turn it on? --Malevious Userpage •Talk Page• Contributions 15:31, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Tick the enabled box, and make the module. Then just processing articles *should* as long as nothing has recently been broken, cause it to do whatever is in the module. Reedy Boy 15:58, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * That's what i did and all it did was yell at me for having a blank edit summary and then skip the page. --Malevious Userpage •Talk Page• Contributions 16:10, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmm, you dont need a blank edit summary - &


 * When you pressed 'make module' did it say next to enabled 'Module Compiled and Loaded'. All seems fine for me on the SVN version... But it could be broken in the release Reedy Boy 19:05, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Yep. I checked and it works for taging an article but it wont work for tagging an image. Im trying to tag images that are missing fair-use rationals and it's not working. --Malevious Userpage •Talk Page• Contributions 19:07, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * - Works on an image for me... Will try grabbing a copy of the release version, and check its not something broken in that. Reedy Boy 19:11, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * It's working now. Dunno what I did but it seems to have fixed itself. Thanx for the help though! --Malevious Userpage •Talk Page• Contributions 19:24, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Why does Autowikibrowser redirect here?
Isn't it a general rule to not have articles in the main namespace redirect to the wikipedia namespace? Couldn't we replace that redirect with an actual article on AWB? Or is this a problem with notability or some other issue? --Android Mouse 22:13, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Bah. Stupid Winblows centrality
Any plans to make AWB work on a Mac? Not all of us worship at the temple of Gates. Ten Pound Hammer • (((Broken clamshells • Otter chirps))) 03:01, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Nope. See . — M ETS 501 (talk) 03:22, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

AWB Issues - Save not working
Ok, so i'm scratching my head with an AWB problem and despite being on the phone to a frequent AWB user i've had no luck. I'm listed on the check page, it allows me to log in successfully (name comes up in green in the bottom right hand corner. I've loaded my list of changes and start the process off, however after the preview comes up and I go to press save, nothing happens. Status message remains as ready to save, and no network traffic passes my network cards lips, and the save button remains disabled despite any length time of waiting. I could not find anything in the FAQ's or user manual to help me, so if anyone knows how I can diagnose and sole the issue would be appreciated. Thewinchester (talk) 15:00, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I've had this problem twice before, both times when working with saved settings. Each time, if I quit out of AWB and used a different settings file, everything worked fine. My assumption was my settings file had somehow become corrupted. --Kathy A. 20:05, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

other wikis?
Is there anything one can do during the installation of mediawiki to actually ensure that AWB/MWB will be able to read the format of the site and be usable? or is it just not possible outside wikipedia and the othe wikipedia-brand sites right now? TheHYPO 19:57, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * It is possible. Use a new release (or even the SVN version) and make sure you have api.php and query.php installed. There are also a couple of other extension that are ideally needed, such as those that AWB uses to get its login hooks Reedy Boy 21:24, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Can someone with AWB that is willing to do me a favour contact me please
Need something done, that is far too repetitive for normal. Viridae Talk 00:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Done :) --Malevious Userpage •Talk Page• Contributions 03:47, 29 May 2007 (UTC)