Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive 28

Hotkey insertion available
As I just mentioned on the Feature Requests page, I've implemented a feature to allow you to define text (with parameters) to insert with a single keystroke. For simplicity I have a fixed list of hotkeys: tab (for your most commonly used insertion) and ctrl/numpad/0-9 - sorry, you'll have to remember what you defined for which key. I have a patch file that I can make available to the developers; I'm not familiar enough with SVN to upload a shelf/changelist/whatever. Interested? David Brooks (talk) 01:58, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
 * If anyone has the ability to inspect and maybe add to the project, the patch file for the entire feature against a 10479 base is at http://1drv.ms/1sbaQ6w. David Brooks (talk) 03:50, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
 * We already have a "Paste more" feature available from the right click menu in the edit box. Is your feature much different? Thanks Rjwilmsi  07:34, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I had completely missed the existence of that feature. I put it under the Options menu, and modeled it after Find and Replace, with substitutions (%%pagename%%), the option to insert at the beginning of current line, Enabled and Comment. Also Tab as a hotkey is useful as a single stroke for really common insertions. But as it clashes so closely with Paste More (although with a different choice of keystrokes) and doesn't add so very much functionality, I'll just keep it as a private exercise - unless of course I change it to use ctrl-digit and just make it an extended alternate UI. Incidentally, the Paste More configuration dialog's buttons are clipped on my box. David Brooks (talk) 21:37, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Regex/Scripting help
Hello, I would gladly appreciate any advice you can give me. I am Superdadsuper, currently the sole (working on finding another one) Administrator of Biblicalapedia, an online biblical-history wiki that runs on a MediaWiki installation hosted by Wikia.I have extensively searched through various help on Wikia and Wikimedia channels. I am need some assistance in creating a script or regex for AWB. I use AutoWikiBrowser for my bot client in order to run my maintenance bot on the wiki (as I currently do not have programming knowledge outside of html and css to run other bot clients). One maintenance task I am working on assigning my bot is to find all Bible Verses listed in articles, and then replace them with a citation to the Bible Verse. I will elaborate here in just a moment. Here I have linked a lengthy regex string that was developed for me by a kind user in the Regex IRC Channel on Freenode (I spent the time to collect the necessary data for it). To elaborate what the script does:

Listed in the regex script is each book of the bible, as well as capabilities for chapters and verses. The regex is able to find listings of Bible books with chapters and with verses (standalone chapters can be detected without a verse required, but can be detected if needed). It can also detect book names with abbreviations and verse as well as chapter ranges (for example Gen 1-1, Gen 1:7-9, not Gen 1-8:78-90). You may look at the regex script to have a more in-depth of understanding of what it can and cannot detect.

Taking into all of these variables the overall purpose is to detect bible verses listed in parentheses or plainly for the "Find" variable. I am needing help creating the replace value, or what to replace it with. I need a regex code or script usable for AWB that can detect the verse it just found, and then be able to figure out what the verse address is, regardless of the format (that is within the conditions defined within the regex script), and put it in tags. So for example, it would be able to detect Gen 1:1-19 and then replace it with. I was wondering if somebody could create a script here for me to use in AWB that can accomplish this purpose. If you would like more information please message me or send an email to the wiki's email: biblicalapedia at gmail.com. Edit:Can I use the advanced settings in find and replace to just have an if statement for the regex, and then have different regex replacement values, and then just add onto the ref tag pointer? Thanks, Superdadsuper, Biblicalapedia Administrator and Bureaucrat --Superdadsuper (talk) 22:18, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Defining regex expressions for for multiple reuse à la #define in C
Recently I've found myself yearning for some mechanism that would allow me to define things that get reused multiple times throughout an AWB script. I think of this as a tool much like  in C.  For example, this bit of regex:

could be much easier to maintain and understand if I could do something akin to this:



Is there anything like this? Should there, could there be?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:59, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd use this a lot if it were available. I'd also like an equivalent to #include, as I'm often editing a 5-10K regular expression in Notepad++ and copying it again and again into the proper place in the Find+Replace dialog. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:34, 9 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Custom module is the way to go for this. Rjwilmsi  07:08, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

AWB-based bots, the bots template, and task ids
The template provides a method that editors can use to disallow edits by certain bots. Is there a way to be more selective? A lot of bots these days have a username, Monkbot, BattyBot, etc. They often are combined with a task identifier, Monkbot 1, BattyBot 25, and the like. Is there a way that AWB can know the identity of the task it is performing so that editors might specify so that Monkbot tasks 1–5 are allowed but task 6 is not. Right now, setting doesn't prevent Monkbot from editing the article.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:06, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Trappist the monk I do not think this is possible. I think the correct way is that the bot blacklists certain pages when running certain tasks. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:50, 11 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Isn't that backwards? As it is now, any editor may add  to any page and it is the bot's responsibility to obey that prohibition.  Doesn't the blacklist idea place the burden of discovering which pages must not be edited on the bot operator?


 * What is the mechanism that AWB uses to determine if a page should not be edited by a particular bot?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:49, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Trappist the monk, AWB can't have control of which tasks are approved and which task is ran by any account at any given moment. When I ran Yobot in the past to tag pages, I had a list of false positives and I always excluded them from the list of pages the bot would edit. Then I edited these pages manually. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:52, 11 October 2014 (UTC)


 * My brain must be half switched off because I don't think that I'm communicating to you or am not understanding what it is that you are writing.


 * When AWB is running a bot task, it is logged in using the bot's username. AWB must look through each page that it loads to see if that page contains a  template that includes the bot's username.  So, if I log in as Monkbot, each time AWB loads a page, it looks for .  I know that it somehow does this because Monkbot skips pages that contain that template.


 * My question is, can't we modify whatever it is that matches the bots username to the content of the template so that a task identifier, if defined in the settings, is also part of the comparison?  Certainly a new xml tag would be required, perhaps  where the content is only digits; this in keeping with the task id that is required when a new bot task is submitted to WP:BRFA.  If present,   and the bots username are compared to the content of .  If a match, skip; if no match, fall back to a username comparison as is done now.


 * Am I up in the night? Is there something here that I don't understand (yes, probably ...  What is it?)  This I think was the essence of my question above.  Not knowing any better, I'd guess that AWB uses some sort of regex to compare username to  content.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 21:59, 11 October 2014 (UTC)


 * OK, there are various things that can be done. For example if I am running an AWB task, say User:My Naughty Bot, task 10 I can put in the skip field something like "{[Bb]ots\|[^}]*\bMy Naughty Bot\s*10\b" and it will skip the sort of thing you are talking about.
 * However it would also be possible to change AWB to have this functionality (it already has the "skip " option), it is though, the user's responsibility to enable and in this case configure the settings.
 * Be aware, though, that some AWB bots will perform several tasks in one hit, to reduce the number of edits. In these cases a "skip by task number" setting would not be likely to work well.
 * And it's also worth remembering that the mechanism is supposed to be a temporary measure, especially in article space.  The anomalous circumstances should be dealt with by appropriate stop lists, improvement of bot code, careful meta-data mark-up (e.g. ) and so forth. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:29, 11 October 2014 (UTC).
 * And it's also worth remembering that the mechanism is supposed to be a temporary measure, especially in article space.  The anomalous circumstances should be dealt with by appropriate stop lists, improvement of bot code, careful meta-data mark-up (e.g. ) and so forth. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:29, 11 October 2014 (UTC).
 * And it's also worth remembering that the mechanism is supposed to be a temporary measure, especially in article space.  The anomalous circumstances should be dealt with by appropriate stop lists, improvement of bot code, careful meta-data mark-up (e.g. ) and so forth. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:29, 11 October 2014 (UTC).


 * Another option might be to register a bot account for each task - e.g. User:Monk Bot 6.All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:30, 11 October 2014 (UTC).

ApiErrorException
The ApiErrorException, a reported bug, is preventing me from running AWB usefully. Any suggestions?--DThomsen8 (talk) 16:33, 11 October 2014 (UTC)


 * This is hitting everyone. A temporary workaround is unchecking the Auto tagging feature.  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 16:39, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Bug was on mediawiki's side. Now fixed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:09, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Unable to Search wikipedia for list.
I'm trying to fix instances of "John Hopkins University" (should be "Johns Hopkins University"), but I'm running into a problem trying to get a list on the es.wikipedia.org. I have the site set to es.wikipedia (it says so at the bottom) but over in the make list, with source = "Wikisearch (text)" and the Wiki Search set to "John Hopkins University" clicking on "Make list" generates nothing. A search from the search page of es.wikipedia.org gives 1082 hits (https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Especial%3ABuscar&profile=default&search=%22john+hopkins+university%22&fulltext=Search). How can I get that list of 1082 entries into AWB?Naraht (talk) 16:45, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
 * 1-2 weeks ago i encountered the same problem. Probably "Wikisearch (text)" does not work anymore. --XXN (talk) 16:51, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Problem is not AWB's side. It's expected to be fixed by the end of this month. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:10, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Avoiding removal of stub tags
I can use Not a typo around words to avoid them being corrected by AWB and other processes. Is there something similar that can be used around stubs so that they won't be removed? There are some articles which are stubs in terms of the amount/quality of prose in them but AWB decides they're not stubs because of the number of words (prose & non-prose) in them. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 18:30, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

I guess I could also write a module that prevents stub removal, but that only affects my use of AWB. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 18:32, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Stevie is the man!  Where is the page in question? WP:STUB applies to pages with very few words. Consider using expand section. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:41, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * After considering your thinking/workaround, I'm not sure I have a good example at this point. I suppose I could reorient how I deal with the few articles my question applies to, by using tags other than stubs.  But I'm still wondering: Are non-prose words (lists, tables) counted toward determining stub status?  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 18:55, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Stevie is the man! in fact 2 words in a list are counted as 1 prose word. I think this is fair. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:02, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Per our instructions, AWB "removes stub if article has more than 500 words (comments, categories and persondata are excluded from word count). Words in bulleted text are divided by 2 to avoid destubbing pages with big lists and little text." Any ideas for improvements are welcome. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:04, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * (Responding to first comment) By what standard is that considered fair? I'm curious. On an article set as a "list article", I can see how counting words 1 for 1 makes sense, but on a standard article, I can see how text in lists/tables wouldn't be counted at all in favor of prose.  I think this is fair because, after all, prose is the expectation, not lists.  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 19:08, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * My ideas for improvement are 1) counting words 1-for-1 in list articles, and 2) not counting any words in lists/tables in non-list articles. Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 19:14, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

The new text search (CirrusSearch) – you may want to get ready before it gets here
Right now (on EN, ZH, FR and DE Wikipedias) AWB is able to use either the existing text search (LuceneSearch) or the new text search (CirrusSearch). Probably in the next month or so, it will only be able to use the new text search (Cirrus), which will be made the default text search method. Once this happens, for many months you will still be able to use the old text search from your browser, but not from AWB. In your browser, go to Preferences – Beta features and check the box for "New search" to use Cirrus. There is sometimes a lag of several minutes before AWB will notice that your choice has changed. You can use new features of Cirrus with AWB at that point. If you launch AWB and do a text search before logging on or loading a settings file, it will still use Lucene. Once you log on or load a settings file, it will use the search method that you specified in your Beta preferences.

There are some good features in Cirrus, and a few drawbacks.
 * The index for Cirrus usually updated within seconds, unlike Lucene's daily update. If you fix all occurrences of "nucklehead", you can catch new misspellings a minute later.
 * You can find a phrase that has intervening words: "short-lived airline" will find just that phrase, but append "~" and a number to cast a wider net: "short-lived airline"~1 will also find "short-lived British airline", while "short-lived airline"~2 will find all of those plus "short-lived South African airline".
 * (bad and good) Cirrus does not pay any attention to hyphens, whereas Lucene does; Lucene can find "well-known for". With Cirrus you will have to do a normal search that has a RegEx-style "insource" search appended to it;  "well-known for" insource:/[Ww]ell-known for /   (the first half of that search provides a rough cut that includes "well-known for" and "well known for"; the second part fine-tunes those results with a RegEx-style search of the source itself). The real bad part: only one of these RegEx-style searches can run on Wikipedia at a time. A few can be queued up, but if too many are queued up, the search will be rejected. Try some of these from your browser to get a feel for them. If the queue is full, AWB will just return no results, with no explanation. How fast it comes back without results may give you some indication. Using a RegEx-style search this way also allows you to perform case-sensitive searches and searches for blanks where there should be hyphens.

To jump quickly from one search method to another in your browser, add
 * &srbackend=LuceneSearch

or
 * &srbackend=CirrusSearch

to the URL.

Once Cirrus is made the default method, adding &srbackend=LuceneSearch to the URL from your browser will be the only way to use that search method. AWB will be unable to use Lucene for searching text.

I will now entertain questions. Chris the speller yack  21:20, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Others using AWB are identifying typos my AWB installation doesn't find
I seem to keep running into situations where I have run AWB on an article, with no typos being fixed, then someone else drops in with AWB and fixes a typo. Are there additional typo lists available to some users that aren't available to those using the built-in RegEx typo lists? Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 17:31, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * On the Options tab, check the "Find and replace" box, then click the "Normal Settings" box and add your own Find & replace rules. You can even copy rules from the Typo list into your normal "settings" rules, where you can choose to apply them (if you're good and careful) in sections of an article that are off-limits to the normal Typo fixing (for example, in image captions and the "Short-summary" parameters of a list of TV episodes – that's where you can find lots of errors that most AWB users skim right over). It is also possible to maintain your own full list of Typo rules to use instead of the ones at WP:AWB/T, though I have never tried that. If the other editor's edit summary does not contain "typo(s) fixed:", they are probably running their own F&R rules. Chris the speller yack  18:17, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Their summaries contain "typo(s) fixed", so that's why I thought there were more typos I could check beyond the built-in list. I'm already aware of F&R, but I'd rather have the extra typos list these others are using, as I don't know in advance which typos to look for.  Does anyone share such lists?  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 18:22, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Some of my typo-fixing settings files are linked from the top of the section User:John of Reading/Typo fixing with AutoWikiBrowser. Disclaimers: some of these settings files are years old, some contain rules that have significant numbers of false positives, and so on. Use them with care! -- John of Reading (talk) 08:23, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I ran the B and C settings against 5,500+ articles in a project and two legitimate typos were found.  This is better than zero, of course, but it made me realize that I'm probably not missing too much from just sticking to the conservative list of AWB typos.  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 14:24, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Ref bot
I think a separate bot for duplicate references being combined would be a great and important bot for many users. Just a thought.--BabbaQ (talk) 15:13, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * You may want to post this on WP:Bot requests. How do you propose the bot could generate a list of articles to edit?  GoingBatty (talk) 15:18, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I have made a post about this on the Requests. Thanks.--BabbaQ (talk) 15:27, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

bug in template redirects
Some how refimprove is being changed to BLP sources. Reported to me because of this edit and confirmed with User:Bgwhite/Sandbox. I can't see what is causing this on the template redirect page. Bgwhite (talk) 21:33, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I believe BLP sources is what goes on BLP's rather than refimprove (likely this is recommended somewhere and thus AWB replaces it). The bug appears to be a duplication and then putting the tags in Multiple issues.  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 21:40, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, the problem is the duplication. Someone needs to check all these refimprove tags. There are many cases to be checked. I pin Rjwilmsi for this one. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:08, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
 * This seems to be an undocumented general fix. Maybe done in Template conversions?  Using AWB's List compare, I found 348 articles with both refimprove and BLP sources.  There are potentially multiple ways that this could be resolved:
 * Change AWB behavior to remove refimprove if BLP sources already exists.
 * Change AWB behavior to remove duplicate maintenance templates within Multiple issues (after conversions but before checking if Multiple issues should be removed)
 * Leave AWB behavior as is, and I could create a bot to do #1.
 * Thoughts? GoingBatty (talk) 01:06, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * It's documented at Conversions. In AWB we could do remove refimprove if BLP sources already exists. Rjwilmsi  09:35, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but I don't see refimprove or BLP sources in Conversions. GoingBatty (talk) 04:03, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

GoingBatty what about now? Lol. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:27, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, I see it now. Thanks for adding it - I didn't add it myself because I wasn't 100% sure it was part of the Conversions code.  GoingBatty (talk) 20:34, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * How was this resolved to ensure that AWB doesn't leave duplicate BLP sources templates on an article? Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 14:32, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

GoingBatty -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:25, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

AWB and custom modules
Because settings files are xml files, AWB treats text inside  as just more xml. Is this a correct thing to be doing? File -> Open settings... chokes and dies if it finds what it thinks might be the start of an xml tag:. I had thought to put a custom module in a settings file so that all I would need to do after loading the settings file would be to Make module instead of the copy/paste then Make module.

I had thought that I could do this:

But that method gives this error message:
 * System.Xml.XmlException: Unexpected node type Comment. ReadElementString method can only be called on elements with simple or empty content.

Is there a way to get AWB to treat the content of  as literal text that should just be handled in just the same manner as that text that I paste into the Make module text area?

Even better, is there or can there be a filename field at Make module so that when AWB loads a settings file, it will automatically fetch (and build?) the custom module source file?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:05, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Is there a way to protect a page or section from AWB?
The section Sacred Harp contains a list with complex formatting (multiple paragraphs and images within a list item) that can't be accomplished with standard wiki markup, so it uses html list markup instead. An to convert this to wiki markup but failed to preserve the formatting and left a vestigial HTML tag. I have two questions: Thanks. Ibadibam (talk) 20:27, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) Was this mistake an AWB bug or a user error?
 * 2) Is there a magic word or some other tag that can be applied to this passage so that AWB excludes it and doesn't attempt to alter it in the future? Ibadibam (talk) 20:27, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * , I made the edit. It was a completely manual edit and not AWB.  You should always contact the editor first instead of doing a run-around.  Leave a message at the article's talk page and ping me.  Bgwhite (talk) 20:49, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, . I'm not an AWB user so I don't have any understanding of the process, or why a manual edit would include an AWB clause. Ibadibam (talk) 20:54, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I think Bgwhite meant that he used AWB to manually edit the article, and that the problem was not one of AWB's general fixes. GoingBatty (talk) 21:28, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks
I've been using AWB for just over a month and I want to thank the developers and the maintainers of this tool. I've been able to do at least an order of magnitude more than I would have without it. Also it's been more fun. Thanks! SchreiberBike talk 02:29, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Persondata has been deprecated
Just noticed that Persondata has been deprecated, with the intent that the information gets moved to Wikidata. Should AWB continue adding Persondata until we begin to see bots moving the info to Wikidata and deleting Persondata? GoingBatty (talk) 00:40, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

AWB stuck in hide mode
Starting yesterday, AWB loads and then stays hidden on my task bar. It won't show as a window. I am running Windows 7. Any advice on how to make the window show again? Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 19:49, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Nevermind. I realized that the window got placed offscreen somehow and I had to keyboard-move it back.  Yipes!  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 20:02, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

AWB is comming to Linux and Mac (maybe, could be)
Microsoft has announced they are open sourcing .Net. They are also doing an official release for Mac and Linux. They are also offering Visual Studio for free. No timetable was mentioned, but hopefully this means AWB will run on Mac and Linux in the not so distant future. Bgwhite (talk) 18:57, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Does anyone monitor the request for access page?
No one's been approved since 4th november — BranStark (talk) 11:02, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

wikivoyage
hi, plz add the wikivoyage to AutoWikiBrowser, i,m not can login to wikivoyage with AutoWikiBrowser , thanks فلورانس (talk) 12:26, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Why does AWB change cite document to cite journal?
The former redirects to the latter, but this is not a reason to change, especially when the former may be a better description of what is being cited (example). --NE2 01:38, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * An even better example is Arkansas Delta (I noticed this and undid the change). --NE2 01:50, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * AWB does this because of [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Template_redirects&diff=prev&oldid=552809187 this edit] to the AWB configuration by . -- John of Reading (talk) 07:33, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Interesting - that page is only semiprotected, meaning I've removed it pending a fuller explanation. --NE2 08:06, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Trying to remember something from a year and a half ago is challenging. In general, I would only add something to WP:AWB/TR if doing so would improve AWB's functionality.  When I made this edit, I was in the middle of testing a bot task.  Immediately afterwards, I made .  However, the bot's current code would make the change whether it was cite document to cite journal, so I won't be readding this redirect unless something else comes along.  GoingBatty (talk) 01:55, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

I have a bot account...
...so for the first time I am seeing the "bot" tab within AWB and saving edits automatically. But the edits by are not flagged as bot edits, which was half the point of getting bot approval for the task in the first place. What have I missed? -- John of Reading (talk) 08:25, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The bot flag appears to be showing up fine. Remember it only shows in recent changes and watchlist, not history. – xeno talk 12:21, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, I hadn't noticed that. Thanks. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:25, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Search and replace carriage returns
Please excuse my ignorance, but is it possible for AWB to do its search and replace tricks on carriage returns? For instance on a line like the one below, could it replace the second  with   but not the first?

Carriage return may be the wrong word in wiki markup/HTML, but I mean the end of a line. Thank you. SchreiberBike talk 21:44, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * In a regular expression,  matches the end of a string. With AWB's multiline option, it matches the end of a line.   therefore does what you want if "Regex" and "Multiline" are checked. An alternative regex that does not require multiline is   (  matches a line break; a lookahead is used to ensure the line break itself is not replaced). SiBr4 (talk) 22:06, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Alternately,  &rarr;  . No need for the more complicated "lookahead". (PS: don't forget to check the regex box.) --NE2 00:38, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks a million. I'm flying now, where I used to be pasting again and again. SchreiberBike talk 00:59, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I remember seeing  return a literal "\n" if used in the "Replace" field and using   instead for a line break. Since   does appear to work in AWB, I think it's just the on-wiki find/replace tool in which it doesn't. SiBr4 (talk) 08:40, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Note that there may be issues with some of these if it's the last line of the page. But if you're editing articles, that should be a category or stub template, so no worries. --NE2 08:43, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * A simple test confirms  does not work at the end of a page. The dollar-sign regex does work in such cases. SiBr4 (talk) 08:48, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module weekend of 29–30 November 2014
Over the weekend of 29–30 November 2014 I propose to update the live versions of:
 * Module:Citation/CS1 from Module:Citation/CS1/sandbox:
 * restore |work= and its aliases format when used in ; see discussion
 * make |interviewer= and |interviewers= aliases of |others=; adapt cite interview accordingly; |day= no longer supported;
 * add language codes for script-title categorization ('bs', 'dv', 'el', 'fa', 'hy', 'ku', 'ps', 'ru', 'sd', 'sr', 'th', 'uk', 'ug', 'yi');
 * added asin length and composition test; see discussion
 * separate presentation tagging from static text insertion; Bug fix; see discussion
 * fixed COinS chapter/title keyword swapped error; see discussion
 * migrate cite newsgroup; see discussion
 * retire |display-authors error message; shift categorization to ; see discussion
 * revised |chapter=, |trans-chapter=, and |chapter-url= handling; see discussion
 * Add unrecognized language categorization when |language= is not ISO 639-1;
 * Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration from Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration/sandbox:
 * change trans-title and trans-chapter error messages to use hyphens instead of underscores;
 * these deprecated parameters are no longer supported: albumlink, artist, cointerviewers, day, director, notestitle, publisherid, titleyear;
 * interviewer and interviewers are now aliases of others;
 * added asin error message; see discussion
 * create ; move most presentation  tagging there;
 * retire display-authors error message; shift categorization to ; see discussion
 * Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist from Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist/sandbox:
 * these deprecated parameters are no longer supported: albumlink, albumtype, artist, cointerviewers, day, director, notestitle, publisherid, titleyear;
 * added interviewers;
 * deprecated chapterlink and chapter-link;
 * Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation from Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation/sandbox:
 * closed a small hole through which 2nd could wriggle; see discussion

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:41, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Need help with a regex
Hi, this may not be the best way to request specific help, but I'm not too slick with regular expressions and I'm trying to figure out a way to add a space after a period and a comma, unless it's followed by a reference. For example, in these edits the kid submits a ton of content, but doesn't use any spaces after punctuation. Rather than manually go through it all and add the spacing, or reverting all of his edits and making him do it, I figured AWB could do it. Got any tips? And if this isn't a good place to ask, lemme know and I'll go elsewhere. Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 16:21, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It's a great place to ask for this kind of help. Try these:
 * Don't include the tildes, just what's between them. These found more unspaced punctuation in the example article. You may want to tweak them to avoid other false positives, such as parts of URLs and filenames. These won't catch every missing space, but it's a starting point. Chris the speller yack  19:03, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much,, I'll check 'em out! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:14, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Don't include the tildes, just what's between them. These found more unspaced punctuation in the example article. You may want to tweak them to avoid other false positives, such as parts of URLs and filenames. These won't catch every missing space, but it's a starting point. <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  19:03, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much,, I'll check 'em out! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:14, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Don't include the tildes, just what's between them. These found more unspaced punctuation in the example article. You may want to tweak them to avoid other false positives, such as parts of URLs and filenames. These won't catch every missing space, but it's a starting point. <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  19:03, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much,, I'll check 'em out! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:14, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm done using AWB if this isn't fixed
Pardon the alarmist headline, but it does reflect my feelings, so I'm going with that. I'm continuing to experience "Skip cosmetic changes" not skipping cosmetic changes. And when running AWB today, it's worse than ever with this. I went ahead and saved a number of changes to articles for example purposes, even though normally I wouldn't have. Check out my contributions today starting with 11th Regiment Kentucky Volunteer Cavalry and ending with Beargrass Creek State Nature Preserve and explain to me why skipping cosmetic changes didn't skip most of these articles. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 20:44, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * AutoWikiBrowser/User manual states that this option will skip the page if the initial page and the page after the changes have the same HTML output. I believe that one of the AWB developers explained to me once that redirected templates don't have the same HTML output.  In those cases in the future, I hope you would please click the Skip button instead of the Save button.  GoingBatty (talk) 00:54, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * That is not a tenable workaround and makes project cleanup really painful. I shouldn't have to keep skipping and skipping and skipping with each run.  It makes cleanup a totally awful task.  Also, this isn't happening consistently.  It's driving me a bit crazy and away from using this tool.  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 00:56, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It might be helpful for the developers (and documentation editors) if you could provide examples where "this isn't happening consistently". Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 01:30, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * That will be impossible for me to do. That's the meaning of inconsistent.  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 01:34, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, let me ask a different way: Besides the redirected template issue I mentioned above (which I hope one of the AWB developers will comment on), could you please provide an example of an article that was not skipped that you think should have been skipped? Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 01:53, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Another option could be to start trimming AutoWikiBrowser/Template redirects. GoingBatty (talk) 02:32, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

One example I've seen (all skip if "only x is changed" are checked): Florida State Road 692: adds an orphan tag, changes fact to citation needed --NE2 02:46, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Another: U.S. Route 60 in Texas: changes unreferenced to refimprove and adds blank space --NE2 02:48, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Same thing: U.S. Route 191 --NE2 02:50, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * My guess is that Tagger is not considered by Skip in Only genfixes. If the developers will confirm, I will update the user manual. GoingBatty (talk) 03:24, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The "Only genfixes" option does not consider the tagger, that skip check is applied before the tagger runs. There is a separate skip option for the tagger. The original query here was around the "only cosmetic changes are made" option: this compares the HTML output of the page, it can be that changes some editors consider cosmetic cause HTML changes, so the skip check doesn't work as desired, sounds like this is the case in the original query. I don't see that there is a bullet proof way to always correctly determine if there are really only cosmetic changes: for example adding a space in one place could be cosmetic, but in another such as fixing a typo it's not. What we could do is rename the "only cosmetic changes are made" option to "No changes to rendered HTML", at least it would be clearer what that option is, and isn't, doing. Rjwilmsi  10:46, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I support your proposal to rename the "only cosmetic changes are made" option to "No changes to rendered HTML". Is there a "Skip if only tagger" option?  GoingBatty (talk) 14:03, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

What most people, myself included, are probably looking for is a "skip if edit is insignificant or inconsequential". You'd think you could always do this by skipping if nothing is replaced, etc., but it's not so: I sometimes do disambiguation like U.S. Route 1 to U.S. Route 1 in Florida. I'll first filter to keep only articles with Florida in the name, then set a replace to change U.S. Route 1 to U.S. Route 1, and let the disambiguation tab pick up any already-piped links. If I check the box to skip if no replacement is made, I miss any that use the disambiguation tab only. If I check the box to skip if no disambiguation is made, I miss any that use the replacement only. --NE2 15:12, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Question about Wiki search (text)
When I make a list using "Wiki search (text)", I just discovered I get more results if I search for  or   than I do if I search for. Is there some restriction on searching with pipes that should be documented at AutoWikiBrowser/User manual? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:53, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I was surprised to see that  works; there is no mention of it at Cirrus's help page. I didn't get anything with  ; did you mean to run it with "insource:" of the RegEex style? If so, I never do that unless I can use a normal search first to narrow the field down to a few thousand articles. There seems to be no way to do that with what you are trying. Did the search with pipe characters work up until November 19, when CirrusSearch replaced LuceneSearch? If so, there's a new sheriff in town, and you'll have to stop doing that. Is there a reason not to go with  ? <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller  <font color="#900">yack  23:20, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I haven't checked, but I'd bet that AutoWikiBrowser/User manual was written pre-Cirrus, and that's where I learned about using "OR". I get 14 mainspace articles when I search for   in AWB, but only 2 namespace articles when I search for  .  I don't know what was working pre-November 19, as I have been fixing the articles as I found them, so it's hard to compare results.  I didn't mean to run it with "insource:" as I only want to find those typos that are visible to the readers (e.g. not typos in image filenames).  GoingBatty (talk) 05:44, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Looks like we got to the bottom of it. Cirrus was written from scratch and from a new direction than Lucene, but then they also reverse-engineered some of the features of Lucene, such as the use of "OR", but they never picked up the ability to differentiate hyphens from spaces, for example, or to use the pipe character instead of "OR". The handling of "OR" came later, and never got added to the Cirrus help page. If you agree, we can mark this "Resolved". Happy editing! <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  14:37, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd rather not mark this as "Resolved", because I still don't understand how searching using pipes works in AWB. Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 14:46, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure it doesn't work, but you could bring it up on the talk page for Help:CirrusSearch. The pipe character is not mentioned as a substitute for "OR" on H:S (the old help page for search). <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  15:01, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It does work in AWB, per my posts above. Have you tried duplicating my results above in AWB?  I hope to get some insight from one of the AWB developers.  Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 15:08, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Forgive my stupidity. I thought that the pipe characters were supported by LuceneSearch, but now it appears they are converted by AWB to " OR " or something similar. There is no longer any way for AWB to use LuceneSearch. Yes, you'll have to wait for some insight from one of the AWB developers.
 * Also see the AWB bug I reported – "Wiki search (text) at en.wikipedia returns too few/erratic results". You may be seeing another aspect of this bug. <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  18:18, 30 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Can't you just do a regular expression search for  that is case insensitive to find them all (and maybe a few more you didn't expect)? — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 15:38, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Could you please specify how you would use that regex search to make the list of articles? Using Source: "Wiki search (text)" with that code didn't seem to work.  Also, I don't want to find articles with valid spellings of "November" - just misspellings.  Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 16:02, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Here's a quick tutorial on "insource". Using "Wiki search (text)" to search for  [with the quotes] finds 28 articles. If I search instead for , I get just one, because the search engine then checked each of the 28 articles against the regular expression. BUT I can't see how this will help you find misspellings of "November". (1) The allowed regexp syntax is a restricted subset and does not allow lookahead/lookbehind; (2) A search for just   immediately returns no results, I expect because it would otherwise hog the servers for hours. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:29, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I second John's warning about running a standalone RegEx-type insource search; it will run for ages and also lock out other users. Cirrus's RegEx has other restrictions: I have been unable to make use of "\s" and "\b". <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  18:15, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Any thoughts on this? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 13:16, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

search behaves weird as expected. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:31, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, so there are a couple of things going on here: I'm making one assumption, which is that you have "List->Remove non-main space" ticked. So what AWB does is perform the search, the mediawiki API limits us to 50 results across all namespaces, we then query again and again with an offset (like you pressing next 50 at bottom of page) until we go over 1000. We then return the search results and apply the mainspace filter. For the   query we run a single search and then repeat it with different offsets. You get all the mainspace results in the first 1000 or so across all namespaces. For the   search AWB splits this into separate searches. We run the searches separately, but we stop when we reach 1000 or so results across all namespaces, in this particular case the searches for "Nobember" and "Nocember" don't actually get run as we're over the limit by then.
 * So one immediate change I can see that we should try to put in place is to include the  parameter in the query, so that if "List->Remove non-main space" is enabled we only ask for a search of mainspace. That should then ensure we get the same results for these two examples, and more results if there are lots of matches in other namespaces.  Rjwilmsi  11:19, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * That explanation is very helpful; it also explains why some searches take much longer via AWB than those using a regular web browser. Using the "srnamespace" parameter would be a welcome time saver. I think it might also take care of the reported bug I mentioned above. <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  16:01, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * When using the pipes, I seem to get the same results whether I have "List->Remove non-main space" ticked as when it's unticked and then I filter afterwards. In both cases, it's not picking up the searches for "Nobember" and "Nocember".  GoingBatty (talk) 16:31, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, because in either case you have exceeded 1000 results before those searches have been run. How many results are later filtered out isn't considered. Rjwilmsi  16:50, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Provide mainspace only versions of "wiki search text" and "wiki search title" List providers. Repurpose existing ones to be mainspace only, add new ones for "all NS" option. Rjwilmsi 15:09, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * That did the trick - thanks so much! GoingBatty (talk) 03:01, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Reordering cites
I occasionally see AWB reordering a series of cites, apparently to put them into citation number order. Sometimes this disturbs a logical sequence determined by the editors, as in this example. I can simply revert such edits when I see them, but I won't see many of them. Is there anything that can be done about this? &#8209;&#8209; Mandruss  &#9742;  23:46, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * This pops up from time to time. Just curious: what is the logical sequence that you refer to in that example, and how does the reader divine it?  Mr Stephen (talk) 23:59, 9 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I wasn't the editor involved, but I saw them add the STLToday.Map citation after the others were already in place. They went out of their way to insert it at the head of the line, when it would have been a little easier to add it at the end. From what little I know about it I believe that was because it is the source that contributes the most to the preceding diagram. If a reader looks at any of those sources, the editor wants them to look at that one first. The reader doesn't need to "divine" anything, exactly, but the first in line is most likely to be the first accessed. The same applies to many situations where one source in a sequence is more important than the other(s). &#8209;&#8209; Mandruss  &#9742;  00:23, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, there are two ways discovered by User:John of Reading, and illustrated in his sandbox, one uses the template, the other simply inserts an HTML comment between the refs.  Be aware, though, that many style guides insist on ascending numbering, and I have been told that it is a requirement for FA.   All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:05, 10 December 2014 (UTC).


 * Thanks, I'll try R and not worry about FA. &#8209;&#8209; Mandruss  &#9742;  00:23, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Bulk protecting of pages
Hello, is it possible to change protection of multiple pages at once? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.175.62.98 (talk) 16:51, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Listas parameter
Is there anyway to automate the listas parameter, in order to implement alphabetical sorting for talk pages of article titles starting with "A or "The"? Because otherwise, those articles are sorted alphabetically into the "A" or "T" sections respectively of talk page categories. Thanks! Fortdj33 (talk) 16:53, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes and no. One has to manually go thru the articles and add listas values for non standard "western" names.  Examples would be Asian names, Spanish names, Arabic names, names with prefixes (von, la, de, van) and other oddities listed in WP:NAMESORT.  After the "weird" names have been dealt with, then a bot can fix the rest.  Bgwhite (talk) 19:02, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Regex help: variables
I'm trying to use variables with $1|$2000$3$4 as the output string. But it's not working, presumably because it thinks $2000 is the variable, not $2. How do I fix this? --NE2 22:18, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Enclose the "2" inside a pair of curly brackets -  -- John of Reading (talk) 22:28, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. --NE2 22:40, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

RegEx conditional parameter-insertion
Hello. Up to now, I've only been using AWB's "Advanced settings" to make find and replace rules, but what I want to do now I think requires RegEx. For each, , etc. template, I want to add url if and only if (accessdate exists and url does not exist). I learn best by examples and tweaking existing code, so, if this indeed can be done using RegEx and AWB, could someone paste the code to do this, or at least point me to a similar example? Thank you! ~ <font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:18px;">Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf) 15:04, 19 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I guess I have to wonder why you want to do this. Adding an empty url to a CS1/2 template that has a non-empty accessdate does nothing to remove the article page from .  If the intent is to remind editors that a url is needed, it has been my experience that such reminders rarely work.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:14, 19 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Sure. I want to easily pinpoint the citations in the article which are missing a url and immediately fix them in the same edit. This will save considerable search-time, especially for long articles, since the error does not appear next to the reference itself, but is instead a hidden category applying to the whole page. Edits for citations for which I'm unable to find url's will not be kept, of course.  ~ <font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:18px;">Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  15:21, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You can make the "accessdate without url" errors display by adding the following to your common.css file:




 * You might want to discuss your thinking at Help Talk:Citation Style 1 to get advice from editors who have been working on these citation errors for a while. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:44, 19 December 2014 (UTC)


 * You can turn on the error message display: Help:CS1 errors.


 * The error messages only apply to those CS1/2 templates that use Module:Citation/CS1. This regex finds most of them (it doesn't find the redirects):
 * There are at least three cases you are looking for:
 * templates where url is present, empty, and positioned ahead of accessdate with or without intervening parameters
 * templates where url is present, empty, and positioned after of accessdate with or without intervening parameters
 * templates that only have accessdate
 * While that last one seems the simplest, it isn't. But, if you modify citations that have url empty or not it gets easier.  Like this:
 * Find:
 * Replace:
 * Then do another rule that finds templates with accessdate to which you add url (right after accessdate would be easiest).
 * A must do last step is to undo the protection by removing  else you'll leave behind broken citations.
 * A must do last step is to undo the protection by removing  else you'll leave behind broken citations.


 * To properly fix citations in requires that you search through the article's history to see if there was an original url that may have been improperly deleted for whatever reason.  It is also necessary to make sure when restoring url that it supports the cited article text.  We must consider the possibility that when url was deleted, that the editor who deleted it inadvertently failed to delete accessdate at the same time.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:10, 19 December 2014 (UTC)


 * That is awesome. I think I'll try Help:CS1 errors first and see how I like it.
 * So far, I've only been finding URLs for citations containing bibcode and/or doi and linking to the corresponding full-text that matches that and the remaining citation parameters, since this seem to be the most straightforward case. If there are any inconsistencies in the citation and the new URL, I move on. Looking through revision history is a lot of work, especially for old missing-URL articles or for multiple missing URLs. Based on this simplest-case scenario that I've been using, do you still recommend a history search?  ~ <font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:18px;">Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  16:51, 19 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Citations that link to sources by way of doi and other identifiers, id excepted, don't require the duplication of the long form of that link in url. And, because these link are not ephemeral, accessdate is not required.


 * This does not mean that the original citation didn't link elsewhere through the value in url so, yes, history searching is still appropriate.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 17:29, 19 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Damn; ok. At least Controlling error message display will help with that, too.  ~ <font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:18px;">Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  17:42, 19 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I take this to mean that, if 19 December 2014, and 1967AJ.....72..351D, and  all exist (my über-emphasis), that both the accessdate and url parameters should be removed (for such a non-ephemeral source). Is that correct? I think it's useful having the title of the paper hyperlinked directly in the reference (what url does, for anyone else reading this), as opposed to indirectly through bibcode or arXiv or the like. It also gives the user a larger target on the screen to click on. (I think I've just migrated off of the AWB talk page)   ~ <font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:18px;">Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  18:16, 19 December 2014 (UTC)


 * You're right. I found the answer here: Help:CS1 errors. Removing both accessdate and url isn't problem-enough to be worth doing for non-ephemeral sources, but if one or the other are producing errors, and a bibcode or doi are given, then remove accessdate if url was never given as per edit history (for example) or if url originally pointed to the non-ephemeral source. Man, I wish I'd known about this page sooner... Thanks for pointing me to it!  ~ <font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:18px;">Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  20:30, 19 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Just on the regex, try: . This will look for templates starting cit with accessdate in the middle, and not containing url. Checking for parameter population and other variations would get hard to achieve in a single regex.  Rjwilmsi  16:24, 19 December 2014 (UTC)


 * This rule also finds CS1 templates that are not yet supported by Module:Citation/CS1; it will also find templates that aren't CS1/2 that begin . This is why I'm using (and probably will continue to use) that long convoluted regex or something similar.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 17:29, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Still not able to use full power of insource: regexp.
I decided to look for pages with three left brackets in a row, often this indicates a problem. Searching with insource:/\[\[\[/ gave 218 hits just in content pages. Using Wiki search(text) and entering this string gave no records in AWB. Any ideas for using the full power of insource with regexp in AWB? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Naraht (talk • contribs) 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I think a database dump would be a better way of going after triple brackets. If you just use insource: without previously cutting down to a few thousand articles, you are really going to tie up the process that other people have to wait in line for. <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  02:24, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Finding unlinked "Phi Beta Kappa"
What I'd like to do with AWB is find all instances of Phi Beta Kappa that aren't linked. I can do the search in the new search tool on the wikipedia page ( insource:/Phi Beta Kappa/ -insource:/\[Phi Beta Kappa/ ) any ideas how to do this either using this search or another?Naraht (talk) 21:14, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Any special syntax that is valid at Special:Search is also valid in AWB when you set the source to "Wiki search (text)". But this search won't quite do what you say you want it to, because it won't find an article where the phrase is linked in one place but unlinked in another. I can't immediately see how to do that using only the regexp subset allowed by CirrusSearch. -- John of Reading (talk) 22:12, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * What I want it to do is find the articles that have an unlinked Phi Beta Kappa that don't have it linked elsewhere. Is the code supposed to work for that? The other problem is that Even then I get rid of the choices that limit it to mainspace (and delete dups, etc) I only get three entries when I do it through AWB (Milton Babbitt, Thomas Schelling, John Gresham Machen) When I do it through Special:Search, I get 597. For example San Diego State University is in the list on Special:Search, but I don't understand why it isn't showing up on AWB. The only thing that would make sense for it not to show up is if I reached 100 entries, I think. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Naraht (talk • contribs) 21:20, 19 December 2014‎ (UTC)
 * In AWB, you could use List Compare to find what is in "Wiki Search (text): Phi Beta Kappa" but not in "What links here: Phi Beta Kappa|Phi Beta Kappa Society". You could also use https://edwardbetts.com/find_link/Phi_Beta_Kappa - good luck!  GoingBatty (talk) 22:41, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Even dokng it by hand in the search would be better. Edward Betts's tool only found four! And I've had situations that I knew it didn't catch. (Article has both Alpha Phi Alpha and Omega Psi Phi unlinked, it found one, not the other. I'm not sure on the list compare, wouldn't both be limited to 100 entries?Naraht (talk) 01:09, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The "Wiki Search (text)" comes up with 1,000 (not 100), and "What links here: Phi Beta Kappa|Phi Beta Kappa Society" comes up with 2,351. Put them together and you get 260 in the first group that's not in the second, which should keep you busy for a while.  GoingBatty (talk) 03:12, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I just did all the articles in the Find Link tool. Anyone know why it's not finding more?  GoingBatty (talk) 03:24, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

After generating the list, run through with 'skip if contains Phi Beta Kappa '. --NE2 03:48, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
 * By using the List Compare function as I described above, that shouldn't be necessary. GoingBatty (talk) 15:25, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
 * In order to handle cases a little more broadly, I'm doing skip if contains Naraht (talk) 19:35, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Did what was recommended (AWB, search for "Phi Beta Kappa" and then skip if they contain "[Phi Beta Kappa" but still didn't get them all, I think the problem is that the original search is limited to 1000 records and there are more than 1000 articles with the string "Phi Beta Kappa". Is there any way to search for "Phi Beta Kappa with a space before it?Naraht (talk) 01:29, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I've created User:Naraht/Space Phi Beta Kappa using the 8 December 2014 database dump; on that date there were 707 articles containing exactly . This is the only search that I trust, though the results are two weeks out of date.
 * 1977 in literature is not in that list; this is correct, because the phrase is preceded by "[" and not by a space. Yet the AWB sources searches with various kinds of "insource" test persist in returning it. The article also contains the unusual word "Coetzee", so to avoid hogging the servers and/or running into the 1000-page limit, I've included that word in the following searches. All these return 1977 in literature, but, as far as I can see, should not:
 * As a sanity check, something like  correctly returns no results; the "insource" is being processed. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:47, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It appears that the text and link was . Since this appears an issue outside of AWB, should this be moved to WP:VPT? GoingBatty (talk) 14:42, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I've bypassed that step and logged it at Phabricator, Task 85224. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:11, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * As a sanity check, something like  correctly returns no results; the "insource" is being processed. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:47, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It appears that the text and link was . Since this appears an issue outside of AWB, should this be moved to WP:VPT? GoingBatty (talk) 14:42, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I've bypassed that step and logged it at Phabricator, Task 85224. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:11, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I've bypassed that step and logged it at Phabricator, Task 85224. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:11, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Current version – 5.5.5.1 or 5.5.6.0?
CurrentVersion page says 5.5.6.0, but SourceForge has 5.5.5.1, what gives? <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  18:06, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
 * <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller re-download the zip. Which version did you get? -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:24, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
 * SourceForge is giving me AutoWikiBrowser5551_rev10476.zip, and when it runs, it identifies itself as 5.5.5.1 SVN 10476 (2014-09-29 20:01:02). <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  18:37, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, I found it on SourceForge by hitting "Browse all files" and digging around, but it's not set up right on SourceForge. <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  18:54, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
 * <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller I fixed it now. Thanks! -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:14, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank YOU! <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  19:28, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Updater
This page says: "... AWBUpdater.exe. The current version is 2.0.2.0." But my updater identifies as: AWB Updater - 2.0.2.1. (and then fails to check for update btw). Any action needed? -DePiep (talk) 11:52, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
 * DePiep documentation was outdated. Fixed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:16, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Restarting in >> seconds
My AWB does not actually start, being in a "Restart in x [seconds]" continuously. (As it did yesterday). I understand that this is controlled to reduce server load at moments, but now it is completely blocking. Is there something I can do on my side to get it going? -DePiep (talk) 11:47, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Again: my AWB keeps postponing a start (first page load) continuously. Third day approaching. Am I the only one? Any background? -DePiep (talk) 08:21, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I was also getting this just now, but closing and reopening AWB fixed it immediately. --McGeddon (talk) 13:55, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

DePiep this is usually to slow connection. I get it very rarely. Sometimes I have to press stop 2-3 times. And then press start to avoid this. Or sometimes I relogin. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:13, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Create list of article with external links
I searched the archives but couldn't find an answer to what I'd thought would be a routine issue. I want to work on articles that use specific websites as sources, to make sure that self-published sources aren't being misused. I have a list of the URLs and I can search for articles using the external links search special page. Is there any way of conveniently feeding that search into AWB? Or should I rely on RegEx searches? Any suggestions? I have a few hundred websites in the list, and some are used in hundreds of articles, so it's a big project. Rezin (talk) 19:06, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Have you tried selecting Source: Special Pages, clicking, and then in the Special Pages window selecting Source: Link search? GoingBatty (talk) 19:32, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Aha! No, I hadn't realized that 'link search' referred to external links. If I had, I don't think I would have guessed that the 'pages' slot would take a URL. This is just what I was looking for. Thanks! Rezin (talk) 19:54, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Creating lists for articles in multiple categories (AND)
Hello, I am aware that you can create article lists from category1 "or" category2 via piping (with "|"). Is there an easy way to create such a list for articles within both categories (where articles must be both in category1 "and" category2)? I could probably export one cat as list and use that as filter or prepare a catscan2 list (which would need to be reformatted). But both methods appear really clumsy - is there a better way? GermanJoe (talk) 11:40, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Have you tried "Tools > List comparer" in AWB? -- John of Reading (talk) 11:51, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Haven't seen those (still fairly new to all special functions), many thanks. I have only checked the "list" menu tab and buttons inside the "create list" process. Will test a bit with this function, but it looks like it will do exactly what I need (with 1 small extra step to create the comparison list). GermanJoe (talk) 12:07, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I had to use Catscan2 once (WikiProject Germany has over 25,000 stubs ...), but aside from that tiny roadblock all worked great - thanks again. GermanJoe (talk) 13:39, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Lower part of the page is missing
Dear AWB experts: I have been trying to use AWB, but it seems that the screen display is cut off at the bottom. For instance, I can't see the "Filter" button at the bottom left. On the "Skip" window the last item is "Only comsmetic changes are made". I'm sure that when I first used this program several months ago it was okay. I downloaded the latest version in case that was the problem. I am using Windows 8 with a 16:9 screen aspect ratio. Is there a setting that I am missing? I worry about using it when I can't see options that may be at the bottom of the page. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 21:16, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
 * This may be related to Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs. Have you set the text scaling in Control Panel somewhere? -- John of Reading (talk) 07:23, 5 January 2015 (UTC)


 * John of Reading, that is exactly it. I have a small, high resolution screen, and I have my whole desktop set to 150%.  I changing my settings to "small (100%)" and AWB then appears normal - but unfortunately I would not be able to read the text without a magnifier.   It seems that this has already been reported, so I guess I will not be able to use AWB until this is fixed. (unless maybe I haul my old Windows Millennium computer out of the basement?)  Thanks for figuring this out for me.  &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 12:35, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Includ --> Include = Including --> Includeing
Here's a weird AWB choice:. (I spotted it before I saved, but wanted to preserve a tangible example). What happened here? Is there some weird hidden space that confused AWB? Cyphoidbomb (talk) 08:50, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, the word has U+00AD soft hyphen in it, which should be removed. Rjwilmsi  08:55, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Fixed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:23, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Geniuses, the lot of you! Thanks guys, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 09:40, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

I removed soft hyphen form 3,500 pages. This resolves the problem for all pages. Soft hyphen is now added in the list of CHECKWIKI errors. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:55, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Page protection template gets demoted
Hi all, is there a reason why page protection templates get moved downward by default with AWB? I've noticed it in such edits as this and this. Seems like a weird thing for AWB to monkey with, since PP template tend to be applied to pages with a lot of monkey business. :) Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 08:29, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Does what AWB does contradict WP:ORDER? That's what it should be following. Rjwilmsi  08:44, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * My comment wasn't a complaint; I was hoping for edification, which you were kind enough to provide. Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 09:38, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Actually,, since protection and deletion are considered the same level of event, I believe it may violate ORDER as protection tags (which aren't specifically mentioned in that list) are equivalent to deletion tags (in my opinion, which is backed be the fact that protection and deletion log/notices are grouped in the editnotice that is placed by the system) and should be placed above maintenance and dispute tags. I'm not sure if this is done correctly or not, but ORDER should be updated to specify this. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 14:51, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
 * OK, so when WP:ORDER is updated then please post back here and we'll look at updating AWB. Rjwilmsi  15:02, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 16:06, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
 * OK. The two example diffs provided showed AWB moving protection templates below dablinks, so still after your clarification at WP:ORDER AWB is meeting the rules. Or do you have another example diff involving a maintenance template not a dablink? Rjwilmsi  16:30, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Before any further action I would like to note that dablinks correctly go before anything since the spirit is that they do not directly are related with the page content but are links to other places i.e. dablinks should be above protection/xfd tags. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:43, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Unable to log in
Hi, I'm unable to log in through AWB. It shows message: Mr RD is not enabled to use this. Please help.  Mr RD   14:09, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Mr RD you have to request registration via Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:17, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I've done that already and it is accepted also. Please see for yourself.  Mr RD   16:28, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I re-added you and purged the page, can you try now? — xaosflux  Talk 19:39, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes I can. Thank you.  Mr RD   19:43, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
 * [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAutoWikiBrowser%2FCheckPage&diff=641464701&oldid=641383390 The net diff of Xaosflux's changes to the CheckPage] shows a difference between the versions before and after the removal and re-insertion. Copying the entry into a Unicode converter shows there was an LRM character (U+200E) in your entry in the CheckPage, which is probably why AWB did not find your username in the check list. SiBr4 (talk) 20:00, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Proposed change to Multiple issues template
I have proposed changing multiple issues to remove support for the deprecated old-style parameters. Discussion is welcome at Template talk:Multiple issues. Presuming this change takes place, what changes could be made to general fixes for multiple issues? Would the alert for "Unknown parameters in multiple issues" still be necessary? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 00:03, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
 * GoingBatty AWB's MultipleIssuesOldStyle function is not called by general fixes anymore and it exist only as a helper function. I think I have to update the documentation once again. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:51, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage
Hi, to create a page (wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage) for local (hy) wikipedia, what to do? (probably need to write a letter into Bugzilla?)---6AND5 (talk) 15:17, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, this doesn't need any change to the software. The instructions are at AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage format. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:31, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
 * thanks--6AND5 (talk) 16:15, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

how do I tell AWB to keep its hands off certain text?
Apologies if this question is answered in the documentation&mdash;but said documentation is all geared towards users, and I am a happy non-user.

I edit various pages on which strings like "ie" and "eg" appear and are not errors (recent example, Manx_language). Regularly such pages are subject to drive-by disfigurements committed by careless users of AWB who don't take the two seconds to check that the "corrections" they're making aren't spurious. Is there some sort of wikimarkup or template or whatnot that I can put these strings in to tell AWB not to look at them? 4pq1injbok (talk) 11:27, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Not a typo should work. SiBr4 (talk) 11:34, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Brilliant, that should do it. Thanks.  4pq1injbok (talk) 11:35, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

since typo fixing is done manually please also warn the editor who did the mistake. AWB makes only typo fixing suggestions. It's editor's choice whether to change a word or not. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:36, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Eh, I know this, but it's different editors each time and I feel a little powerless to stem the entire tide of inattention. I will from now on, though. 4pq1injbok (talk) 14:40, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I suspect there are lot of bad edits using AWB's typo fixing. I need your help to notify all newbies who try to help but do not know how exactly typo fixing works. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:32, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

disassembling a pagename
The Naval History and Heritage Command has changed its website structure so now there are some 9000ish dead links to DANFS. A lot of them can be repaired by simple find and replace methods. When DANFS has articles about ships that shared a name, USS Enterprise for example, they now disambiguate the articles with the ship's hull number and lowercase roman numerals that are a holdover from the old version of DANFS:

Is there a way for AWB, probably as a custom c# module, to get the value from  so that the hull number can be extracted, made lower case, and then inserted into a new DANFS file name?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:16, 15 January 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't know about the lowercasing, but %%pagename%% will insert the page name, which you can then use regexes on. --NE2 23:16, 15 January 2015 (UTC)


 * That keyword apparently doesn't doesn't work in custom modules (it should – hint). There are 280ish hull classification symbols (the 'cv' in my example url) so it would be really handy to have   work in a custom module so that I could use  .  It appears that the custom module executes before any rules in normal settings; for this I need the custom module to execute after normal settings.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 00:24, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Trappist the monk In my opinion all links should be replaced by a template so that we avoid similar problems in the future. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:34, 15 January 2015 (UTC)


 * That thought has crossed my mind. There are generic external links, there is, there is  and there are CS1 citations that use a DANFS url.  Each and every one of those instances needs to be touched.  It seems to me best to get the majority of these links working again so that I can take my time to properly consider how best to bring the url into  and .  And, real life about to interfere, this seems the best course.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 00:24, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Login
I must be doing something wrong. I've asked that my name be put on the list, and it has been added. I've downloaded the software – no problem. Am I supposed to be logged in using IE first before I login with the AWB program, or not? I've tried both ways, direct and indirect, and the little box with the annoying "BING" keeps popping up and tells me "Paine Ellsworth is not enabled to use this." After that either IE opens to the CheckPage screen (direct login) or a new tab is opened to the CheckPage screen (already logged in with IE), and if direct, I am not logged in. I use IE v.10 and Windows 8 – I usually use HTTP to edit, but just to test AWB, I changed my prefs to always use HTTPS, but still no joy. Can someone get me past this and on my way? – <b style="font-size:85%;color:darkblue;font-family:Segoe Script">Paine Ellsworth</b>C LIMAX ! 20:25, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * This is the same problem as Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive 28: there is an LRM character in your username on the CheckPage, which causes AWB to not recognize your name when you log in. Having your name re-entered on the CheckPage should fix it. SiBr4 (talk) 20:53, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Fascinating! And how did such a character get into my user name, plus why doesn't it cause a problem when I login to WP? (misunderstood you)  Anyway, thank you very much for your response, SiBr4, and I'll go see if the admin who added my name can make the adjustment. – <b style="font-size:85%;color:darkblue;font-family:Segoe Script">Paine Ellsworth</b>C LIMAX ! 21:41, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Try again, I have readded your name, and the diff chows something changed, although I cannot see what is different. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:56, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much! Whatever you did, it did the trick and I am now able to login. – <small style="font-size:85%;"> Paine    22:25, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

SSL/TLS error in XP
I tried to use AWB in XP (vitualbox) but the following error coming. Please, give guidelines to use AWB in it.--தகவலுழவன் (talk) 11:49, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * What version of XP? ie which service pack? What versions of the .NET framework do you have installed? Reedy (talk) 19:00, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

தகவலுழவன் -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:01, 23 January 2015 (UTC)


 * XP-proffes-2002-ser.pack2 & .NET 3.5framework--தகவலுழவன் (talk) 01:00, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Firing off DuplicateNamedReferences/DuplicateUnnameReferences
I'd like to have AWB help with cleanup of Duplicate References on St. Mary's College of Maryland, but when I load it, it says no changes needed. Do I need to load something?Naraht (talk) 15:28, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Have you ticked "Apply general fixes" on the "Options" tab? AFAIK, that's all you have to do to get duplicate references merged, provided that there is at least one named reference in the article. For me, AWB is offering to do lots of work on the references in the St Mary's College article. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:38, 29 January 2015 (UTC)


 * If you're just merging references, wouldn't it be more efficient to use User:Dispenser/Reflinks or User:Zhaofeng_Li/Reflinks? —  17:01, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you found it, I was looking in the Options Menu rather than the Options Tab (would it make sense to rename one?). I turned it off at one point because I was doing some work in a language wikipedia where someone objected to AWB's general fixes. And I knew that AWB could do the ref fix, I just didn't know how. I'll take a look at the reflink tools to see how they would be better for specific work.Naraht (talk) 17:29, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * It actually doesn't look like User:Dispenser/Reflinks or User:Zhaofeng_Li/Reflinks does the merging of references, just improvement...Naraht (talk) 17:45, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Per User talk:Zhaofeng Li, Zhaofeng Li has enabled the test version of User:Zhaofeng Li/Reflinks to merge references. GoingBatty (talk) 18:56, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * The feature is already available on the stable version of the tool. Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 03:38, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Reference > References
Is there any neat way to stop damaging the "Reference" section at Word and Object? The section does not contain references, but is about the subject of reference. AWB wants to add an "s" and move the "See also" section above it. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:55, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * John of Reading I wonder if you could use a different section title such as "Language reference" or something? I suggest this only as a workaround ofcourse.-- Magioladitis (talk) 10:06, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I enclosed the word in the Not a typo template. I don't know if there are unintended side effects of doing so. The anchors still appear to work, which is the only thing I could think to check. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:49, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

List of users
hi;

How can I get a list of user has more than 500 edits thank you --Touzrimounir (talk) 17:33, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Touzrimounir you need to load the No limits plugin and have user rights to use it. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:36, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Could you please be more specific? How would you get a list of users who have more than 500 edits using the plugin?  Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 17:40, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * GoingBatty I think the right question of Touzrimounir is "How can I get a list of the contributions of a user that has more than 500 edits?" -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:48, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I didn't interpret it that way - guess we need Touzrimounir to clarify. GoingBatty (talk) 21:24, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi and, first thanks for your answer, I I want to invite all users have more than 500 edits for a meeting in ar.wikipedia --Touzrimounir (talk) 16:19, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Touzrimounir OK then GoingBatty was right. My answer won't help you on that. You'll have to use another tool to get the info you seek. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:22, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * You could start with the Arabic version of List of Wikipedians by number of edits, which is this page.

GoingBatty forgot to sign. (I added this message to help archiving bot.) -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:51, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module weekend of 14–15 February 2015
On the weekend of 14–15 February I propose to update the live CS1 module files from their sandbox counterparts:

Changes to Module:Citation/CS1 are:
 * 1) bug fix to ASIN error checking; discussion
 * 2) fix cite encyclopedia format promotion; discussion
 * 3) fix cite conference format promotion; discussion
 * 4)  mimics ; discussion
 * 5) no CITEREF anchor id when no author or date; discussion
 * 6) migrate cite mailing list; discussion
 * 7) authorlink error when value contains one or more [ or ]; discussion
 * 8) duplicate separator fix; discussion
 * 9) migrate cite report; discussion
 * 10) deprecated separator and display parameters: (discussion)
 * 11) parameters: authorformat, author-format, author-name-separator, author-separator, editorformat, editor-format, editor-name-separator, editor-separator, name-separator, separator;
 * 12) added support for mode and name-list-format;
 * 13) removed support for scap and for none
 * 14) require yes, true, y values for registration and subscription; discussion
 * 15) Upgrade arxiv validation; discussion
 * 16) Fix bug in Norwegian language handling;

Changes to Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration are:
 * 1) Add mailinglist; discussion
 * 2) deprecated separator and display parameters: (discussion)
 * 3) parameters: authorformat, author-format, author-name-separator, author-separator, editorformat, editor-format, editor-name-separator, editor-separator, name-separator, separator;
 * 4) added support for mode and name-list-format;
 * 5) removed support for scap and for none

Changes to Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist are:
 * 1) Add mailinglist; discussion
 * 2) deprecated separator and display parameters: (discussion)
 * 3) parameters: authorformat, author-format, author-name-separator, author-separator, editorformat, editor-format, editor-name-separator, editor-separator, name-separator, separator;
 * 4) added support for mode and name-list-format;
 * 5) removed support for scap and for none

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:50, 7 February 2015 (UTC)
 * After this change has been made, could you please update the list of valid cite web parameters in /AWB/WikiFunctions/Parse/Parsers.cs? Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by GoingBatty (talk • contribs) 14:59, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

AWB inappropriately suggesting underlinked tag
For some time, I noticed that editors using AWD are adding inappropriate underlinked tags to Gene Wiki articles, for example ART3. This particular article has only one sentence of prose which already contains two wiki links. The problem with this article is not that it is underlinked, but rather it should be expanded. Hence I would request that the AWD be modified so that it does not flag articles such as ART3 as underlinked. Thanks. Boghog (talk) 05:14, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Boghog fixed in . -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:32, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Perfect! Thanks for your quick response. Boghog (talk) 13:09, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Ijon (talk) 03:16, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Removing parameters and their contents from templates
Is there a way of removing the parameter "|name=" and the text that follows the = sign (which varies each time) from every instance of Coord at List of public art in the City of Westminster? It occurs 257 times... (Apologies if this is very basic.) Ham II (talk) 17:24, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Try the following regex find/replace:
 * &rarr;
 * This should work as long as the template parameters do not contain other templates (see some tests). SiBr4 (talk) 17:43, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Since the article does use templates within parameters of Coord, here is a version that allows one-level nested templates in parameters other than "name":
 * &rarr;
 * SiBr4 (talk) 18:00, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, this is way beyond my level of understanding. I tried copying and pasting the second lot of code into Find & Replace (Normal settings) and ticked the RegEx box, but this doesn't seem to have worked. Ham II (talk) 18:18, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I have fixed the second regex above; it only matched one nested template before and after the name parameter. Try it now. (test: ) SiBr4 (talk) 18:28, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * That's magic! Thank you so much! Ham II (talk) 18:49, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Links on: Colonel Sanders isn't loading anything
Even after going back to original default settings, when I try to load "Links on:" Colonel Sanders, nothing loads. Is there anything in that article that could be preventing this load? Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 03:01, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
 * It looks like the links table wasn't updated correctly after the recent blanking was undone by Cluebot. I gave it a null edit, and now AWB sees the links. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:04, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 13:42, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Missing items in database scan
As part of a test for something larger, I'm trying to find the Featured Lists in WP:VG. There are 67 of them listed here. I suspect its a problem with my RegEx, but I'm probably suffering snow blindness and can't see something obvious. The RegEx I'm using is  to find the transclusions of the template on the talk pages. The RegEx brings back 65 results, and regardless of whether I use greedy or non-greedy it still misses out the same two articles (Talk:List of Crystal Dynamics video games and Talk:List of The Elder Scrolls video games) The template code in them is exactly the same as other articles that are detected by the RegEx. I've checked that both pages are in the database dump and I'm now scratching my head as to what the reason for their none appearance in the results is. Any help gratefully received. - X201 (talk) 16:02, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The two mentioned talk pages use WikiProject Video games, with capital P. Regexes are case-sensitive. There are also [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:WikiProject_Video_games&hidetrans=1&hidelinks=1 several more redirects] your regex would not catch. SiBr4 (talk) 16:10, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Also these two talk pages were edited only a few days ago. If your database dump predates those edits then the scanner will be running your regex against the old version of the project tag. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:15, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
 * That's it. I forgot I'd cleaned up the few WPVG redirects. Told you it was snow blindness. Thanks chaps. - X201 (talk) 16:18, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

scowiki
AWB is adding to a bunch of bio articles at scowiki when I use it there, can anyone fix it so it'll understand that articles with a category "XXXX daiths" shouldn't have the category "Living people" added to it? And the correct translation for "Living people" is "Livin fowk" for Scots anyway. -- Amaryllis Gardener  talk 22:35, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
 * this is a bug. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:48, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Rjwilmsi (correct link for the ping) -- Amaryllis Gardener  talk 22:50, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Fixed in the next release. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:13, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

AWB again inappropriately suggesting underlinked tag
Per this discussion, Gene Wiki articles were placed on a AWB Underlinked ignore list. This ignore list no longer seems to be working (see this discussion). I would appreciate if you would take another look at this. Thanks. Boghog (talk) 06:14, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * After checking [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AWhatLinksHere&limit=500&target=Gene+Wiki&namespace= what links here], I would echo that the underlinked tag was correctly added.  Occult Zone  (Talk • Contributions • Log) 06:22, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Looks like you wanted to link to on User talk:TAnthony.
 * Thanks for fixing the link. I should get in the habit of using oldid2 in the future. Boghog (talk) 05:54, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The underlinked tag indicates an article needs more links going out, not [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AWhatLinksHere&limit=500&target=Gene+Wiki&namespace=0 article links going in] [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AWhatLinksHere&limit=500&target=C6orf89&namespace=0 article links going in] to C6orf89. GoingBatty (talk) 03:05, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
 * 5 internal links to other Wikipedia articles are enough.  Occult Zone  (Talk • Contributions • Log) 04:42, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Ping Special:PermanentLink/649043204. <span style="background: turquoise;font-family: 'Segoe Script', 'Comic Sans MS';">(t) Josve05a  (c) 04:52, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The criteria for determining if an article is underlinked should be a percentage and not an absolute number of words linked. Furthermore the word and link count should be limited to prose (ignoring infoboxes, categories, references, lists, and tables etc.) determined for example using  this script. I realize that this may be difficult to code. Boghog (talk) 05:54, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Oops - the article in question was C6orf89, so I have fixed my post above.
 * AWB's tagger logic is that it "Appends Underlinked if article has 1–3 wikilinks or the number of wikilinks is smaller than 0.25% of article's size. Removes tag otherwise (comments, categories, defaultsort, Persondata, infoboxes, Chembox and Drugbox are excluded from wikilink and size count)." It also excludes articles with certain templates, including PBB, which C6orf89 contains.
 * I can't replicate this problem with AWB - can you? Thanks everyone!  GoingBatty (talk) 22:14, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Well I set up AWB for a task but made a mistake so it was skipping/not catching what I was actually trying to do. It detected a couple of orphans, and then some underlinked articles, so I tagged a few until Boghog alerted me. The common denominator between the articles I was dealing with seems to be the PBB tag, which AWB didn't seem to be skipping.&mdash; TAnthonyTalk 22:34, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

I am pretty sure I fixed the code for Gene Wiki articles per Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive_28. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:05, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

I am making a release, during next week, and this will resolve the problem. TAnthony use the latest official version, while the issues has been fixed in the latest revision. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:17, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

deadend tag removed?
Hello, this diff at the Hannah Moskowitz article shows some weird behaviour: AWB removed a deadend tag, but the article only contained a few categories and some (deadlink) links to non-existant inter-language links at the end of the article (has been fixed later). It looks like, "deadend" would be a correct tag in this situation - any idea, why AWB removed the tag? (, for the AWB batch changes). GermanJoe (talk) 06:59, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Just ran AWB against the article again, and it doesn't want to remove the dead end tag. GoingBatty (talk) 03:15, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Did you test the current or an old version of the article? There have been a few bug fixes after the initial AWB run, that might affect the result. Just making sure to avoid misunderstandings. We could briefly reset the article (it's an orphan anyway). GermanJoe (talk) 04:04, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

OK, I just did another test and the problem can be reproduced based on the "old" version of the article (27 February 2015 with 14,436 bytes, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hannah_Moskowitz&oldid=649102120). Note: I have reverted back to the "correct new" version for now. Testing with the previous, old version: AWB tries to remove the "deadend" tag, but the tag is valid. Unless there is some special AWB rule for this situation, that behavior is a bug. Could someone please double-check my test based on the old version? Thanks for your help. GermanJoe (talk) 16:20, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

-- Magioladitis (talk) 18:26, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

GermanJoe Two possible explanation: Older AWB buggy version was used or custom editing. AWB does not remove the tag in its current version. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:22, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The tested version, where I could reproduce the error in a second run, was 5.5.6.0 (should have mentioned). If you need more specific information about my actual AWB settings (most is default iirc), please let me know. GermanJoe (talk) 01:18, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

GermanJoe The problem seems to have been fixed in 5.5.6.1 -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:22, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Good news, thanks for the information. GermanJoe (talk) 14:29, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Failure to Merge refs...
Not *completely* sure this is a bug rather than my own stupidity. I ran AWB on St. Mary's College of Maryland and it merged a *lot* of the references, but it appeared to miss at least one. The three references for Zach P. Messitte in the article appear to be identical, but weren't merged. any ideas?Naraht (talk) 12:57, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
 * They look the same to me too. I think one reference is sufficient for the Messitte entry, so I would remove the first two.  However, I didn't do so in order to give the AWB developers a chance to diagnose this issue.  GoingBatty (talk) 17:31, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I copied them to a notepad and couldn't find a difference. Theoretically there could be something bizarre like an LtoR marker to force them to be different but if that's true, I'm going to be *really* annoyed at that editor.Naraht (talk) 17:47, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Oops. Soory. I merged them automaticly [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=St._Mary%27s_College_of_Maryland&diff=649591174&oldid=649559906 when tagging dead links]. <span style="background: turquoise;font-family: 'Segoe Script', 'Comic Sans MS';">(t) Josve05a  (c) 21:27, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Hopefully a copy of the page as it was prior to this edit can be tested on...Naraht (talk) 21:35, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

BLocking
Hello, i was blocked to Lithuanian Wikipedia user User:Homo supposedly I am your son's baptism clone, my son baptism also blocked, and I do not know what to do. Can you take me and my son baptismal name: Lukas_GamingLT unblock? I would be very grateful, because I mistakenly blocked, and the baptism of my son's birthday tomorrow, and it is sad that it is now banned. Dovydaz 35 (talk) 16:10, 7 March 2015 (UTC)Dovydaz_35Dovydaz 35 (talk) 16:10, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
 * This post is misplaced. One, this page is part of the English-language Wikipedia; administrators' actions on the Lithuanian Wikipedia need to be discussed there, not here. Two, this page is for discussing the AutoWikiBrowser software program. Sorry! -- John of Reading (talk) 19:32, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Would you have any advice? Sorry, i translated from translate.google.lt so bad translate. Thank you Dovydaz 35 (talk) 13:51, 8 March 2015 (UTC)Dovydaz_35Dovydaz 35 (talk) 13:51, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

search pages titles by suffix
Hi,

How can I use AWB to search in a list of articles, a concrete pattern. For example, I'd like to get the article titles ending (or beginning, or matching) with 'ing' in a list. I know it's possible with using regexes, but I can't remember how... --Subreptice (talk) 23:12, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
 * You could load a database download into AWB's Database Scanner, and then use regexes to specify the article titles. GoingBatty (talk) 02:08, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
 * What are you specifically trying to do? - X201 (talk) 06:22, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I think this is the easiest way to do what I want. AutoWikiBrowser/Regular expression is the page I was looking for.
 * : I'm working on a personal (lexical) wiki, it's not easy to resume in a few words (and my english is far from perfect). --Subreptice (talk) 13:58, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm a newbie, but I hope I can learn soon... Can you tell me how to delete any hidden text ? I've tried to use 'replace special', find '\<\!\-\-.*.s\-\-\>' (I've tried other things, I've thought it might include all hidden text...) and replace by nothing, but doesn't work... I don't know how to match 'whatever' (any character,space, whiteline...) in regex. Subreptice (talk) 18:15, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks to regexr.com I've found: '\<\!\-[\s\S]*-\-\>' works fine! --Subreptice (talk) 18:36, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module weekend of 21–22 March 2015
On the weekend of 21–22 March I propose to update the live CS1 module files from the sandbox counterparts:

Changes to Module:Citation/CS1 are:


 * 1) long-term bug fix in ; discussion
 * 2) Vancouver style author/editor name error checking; discussion
 * 3) add |script-title language codes bg and ka for proper categorization;
 * 4) migrate cite map from ; discussion
 * 5) strip 'et al.' from author/editor lists; discussion
 * 6) add maintenance category messaging; discussion
 * 7) fix bug in accessdate nowrap; discussion
 * 8) refined simultaneous date/year checking; discussion
 * 9) reorganized and limited function scoping; discussion

Changes to Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration are:


 * 1) fix invalid parameter value error categorization; discussion
 * 2) Vancouver style author/editor name error checking; discussion
 * 3) add map, mapurl, map-url map-format; Section annotation; discussion

Changes to Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist are:


 * 1) add map, mapurl, map-url map-format, sections; discussion

Changes to Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation are:

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:59, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
 * 1) refine simultaneous date/year checking; discussion
 * 2) reorganize and limit function scoping; discussion

Why do Typos not run on one article?
The article Post Graduate Programme for Executives for Visionary Leadership in Manufacturing (PGPEX-VLM) has "the 12 month period", but Typo rule "n-year" does not fix it. The page has no "sic" tag, and the text is not in a file name, link, infobox, quote, or anything like that. What gives? I thought I had figured out how to use AWB. Now I don't know whether I can trust myself or AWB or neither. <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  21:14, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Fixed it. The missing  made the software think most of the text was inside a quote. The n-year rule now takes effect. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:47, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
 * John of Reading Nice. I spent 10 minutes checking our code. :) - Magioladitis (talk) 22:02, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks to you both. I had also looked for unclosed infobox templates (which have often caused similar failures). I am pretty sure that there was no alert shown for unbalanced quotation marks, and I checked "Highlight syntax in edit box", which sheds no light on quoted text. Is there more that AWB could/should do to highlight quoted text and/or to post an alert when quotation marks are unbalanced within a section, or is that really gnarly coding? <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller  <font color="#900">yack  02:14, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
 * When I've run in to this, I have selected Options > Highlight Find matches, entered  in the Find box, checked the Regex box, and then clicked Start.  I then kept clicking Find until I could see where the missing quote should be added.  GoingBatty (talk) 04:02, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'm glad you and John have the patience and endurance for that kind of investigation. I'll have to build up to that level. <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  04:37, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Better way to handle excessive wikilinks
Hi there! Does anyone have any tips on how to use AWB to handle duplicate wikilinks? this article was a mess and I did my best with the Wikilink alert/delink selection tools, but 1) The alert box is so small that you don't always see the entire Wikilink, 2) the tiny box is very difficult to click-navigate through, and the thing you want to click on sometimes winds up above the displayed information, so you have to scroll back up to get it. (It's hard to explain unless you've used it.) 3) Removing 14 excessive wiklinks theoretically requires 14 clicks, (which seems like the opposite of what AWB is supposed to do anyway), but with the difficulty of navigating, you wind up taking more like 25-30 clicks to clear out 14 links. Most of you seem pretty slick with the best ways to use the tool, so I thought I'd ask. I've also tried installing scripts that are supposed to help reduce overlinking, but they seem spotty. Thanks for any help you can toss my way. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:43, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

List from links on a previous revision of a page
I was wondering if it was possible to make a list from the links on a previous version of a page. The "popular pages" tool generates a list of most viewed pages in a wikiproject, but each month's new data is copied over the previous month's. I would like to do list compares between the current month's data and a previous month's which is in the previous revision. If this isn't possible, I'll add this to Requests. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 15:32, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
 * You could copy the previous version to your personal sandbox, and then make the list from your sandbox. GoingBatty (talk) 00:44, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'm aware I can do that, but I wonder if it's feasible for AWB to add the ability to work with previous revisions of pages, as that would make my process a lot easier in this case. (No need to ping me in response as I watch this page) Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 18:02, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Making the regex find/replace feature redlink sensitive
I'd like to be able to search for strings with one or more redlinks in them. I'd also like to be able to replace strings that have one or more redlinks in them.

AWB would be much more powerful if it could do that, especially for cleaning up pages with excessive redlinks, removing main entries with a redlink in them, removing redlinks from see also sections, delinking or removing redlinks from disambiguation pages, etc.

How is regex implemented? Can the regex source code itself be tweaked?

How would a redlink be delimited in a regex?

What method could be used in the source code to identify a redlink? The Transhumanist 07:23, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * This section was [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser&diff=654097711&oldid=654094118 added] at 22:56, 29 March 2015‎ by Magioladitis. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:31, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

GitHub
I was wondering if there's any possibility of migrating to GitHub or Phab or something, as SourceForge is blanketed with advertisements (not to mention how it's just a poorly-designed website in general) and if we used GitHub, issue tracking (and the wiki!) would be a heck of a lot easier. APerson (talk!) 13:38, 26 March 2015 (UTC) (Pinging some devs:, , APerson (talk!) 13:46, 26 March 2015 (UTC))

We already migrated bug reports to Phabricator. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:46, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * , what about the actual code? APerson (talk!) 16:34, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I do mirror it on an adhoc basis to github. And could accept pull requests via it if necessary, make them into SVN commits (hacky, I know). I think we discussed it before, but wasn't any overruling reason to do so. I do agree that github is a lot better than sourceforge. I don't know if I'd want to use github for the wiki or issue tracking (particularly), but phabricator makes sense (and any and all requests can be made there), it also makes tracking issues that affect AWB easier, as we can tag it as WMF and AWB, or MW API and AWB etc. We could move to gerrit, but I'm not sure the gated CR is so useful, though could work well, if people were reviewing stuff. The question is whether and  are comfortable using git. Last time I checked, both weren't, so it would be a blocker to them to continue development. Github for Windows is apparently pretty decent, so might alleviate some of the issues. Technically, we could use TortoiseGit in a similar way as to how we do commits to SVN... Reedy (talk) 20:45, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I've no familiarity with git or GitHub. There don't seem to be a raft of other people who want to submit AWB patches via git, so I don't see any driver to change. Perhaps we could mirror the latest version of AWB for dowload on WMF labs, so if desired, there is no need for regular users to touch sourceforge? Rjwilmsi  11:03, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Windows XP users
We would be interested to know if there any AWB editors still using Windows XP. If you are one of them, please leave us a note. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:54, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I still use AWB on XP. Keith D (talk) 22:14, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * If you haven't done so already you may want to inquire over at Wikia as well. A lot of folks over there use AWB as well. 96.255.237.170 (talk) 22:17, 29 March 2015 (UTC)


 * +1 for XP-usage (but I only use AWB occasionally for relatively trivial tasks like disambig checking). Just curious, have there been actual problems with XP aside from the bugs listed on the bug page, or is this just a general precautionary move? GermanJoe (talk) 22:22, 29 March 2015 (UTC)


 * And another. DO NOT make it impossible to run at least some final version of AWB on XP.  Yeah, this is an old machine but it works just fine for Wikipedia work including AWB.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:09, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * We're evaluating options. Mostly, it's looking at bumping to a newer version of the .NET Framework to take advantage of new features (like regex matching timeouts). Eventually when WMF drop TLS 1.0 support, we can't support XP and AWB for Wikimedia usage (using HTTPS anyway). TLS 1.1 and 1.2 are only seemingly in .NET 4.5, and you can't get that on XP. Never mind that XP is a dead OS as far as MS is concerned. I'm not sure if there's a specific need to drop XP support, or bump to .NET 4.5 yet. Reedy (talk) 23:19, 29 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Another XPer here. M AN d ARAX  •  XAЯA b ИA M  08:30, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Me, too. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:39, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I was wondering if the AWB Usage stats would show this information, but the link in the AWB header doesn't seem to be working. GoingBatty (talk) 02:23, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
 * WMFLabs has been dead since March 30 22:00 UTC.  They were switching NFS systems and it was only going to be brief outage.  As of about 30 minutes ago, they were still looking into the problem.  Bgwhite (talk) 06:41, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

OK, so we're not going to deliberately break XP support, but it may be that at some point we switch to only providing a "legacy support" version of AWB for XP, so we can move things on for newer platforms. AWB is generally working on Linux under wine, that is a free option for XP users. Rjwilmsi 11:09, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
 * That's fine, as long as we XPers aren't left completely out in the cold. :-) -- SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:09, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

dmy/mdy regex
I'm not sure how to write a good regex for converting to dmy/mdy from the other and from ISO to either one. This would be useful for the use dmy dates and use mdy dates. Jerodlycett (talk) 23:43, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Have a look at User:Ohconfucius/script/MOSNUM_dates.js for some hair-raising ideas. After figuring all that out, come back here and post "Wow!" <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  05:00, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Decent reference. I have date)\s*=\s*(\d{4})-0?5-(\d{1,2}) which replaces with . Now to figure out how to strip the leading zero from the day in the same move if possible. Jerodlycett (talk) 06:54, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
 * You could add another regex before the one above: date)\s*=\s*(\d{4})-0?5-0(\d) which replaces with . GoingBatty (talk) 01:24, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I brewed recorded and $1$2 which I put below the others. However what about recorded Though I'd really like to be able to do something like 0?(\d) for the day, just not sure how to bracket that correctly so the pipe doesn't count for the whole left of the expression. I don't think it's squirrelly or square brackets, and it definitely doesn't seem to be parentheses. Jerodlycett (talk) 01:58, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Questions

 * Is there a way to get the Alerts and Multi-wiki links boxes on the Start panel to ignore content in ref, templates, etc.?
 * Is there a way to get AWB to recognize wikilinks to common word pages (in order to address WP:OVERLINK)? Like, we don't need links to Canada 99.9% of the time.
 * Any way AWB can get rid of line returns in citation templates? Example, turn

cite web


 * url       =


 * title     =


 * last      =


 * first     =


 * date      =


 * website   =


 * publisher =


 * access-date=


 * in to

cite web | url = | title = | last = | first = | date = | website = | publisher = | access-date =  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) Please &#123;&#123;re&#125;&#125; 05:07, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I'd do some type of regex. Find something like \s*url\s*= and replace with . Jerod Lycett (talk) 15:11, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I'll try it out.  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) Please &#123;&#123;re&#125;&#125; 16:06, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * You could even find \s*(url and replace with $1 = to get them all at once. GoingBatty (talk) 22:26, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I had sort of left that as an exercise for the reader. Figured a prod in the right direction was best. Also, I have no answer to his other two questions, do you? Jerod Lycett (talk) 22:37, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you both. Even with it being handed to me, I still don't know regex and will need to learn its basics. :) Surprisingly similar to some code I use in STATA  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) Please &#123;&#123;re&#125;&#125; 03:10, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Are you planning to make this change widely, or only in articles that you are writing yourself? Different editors will prefer different parameter layouts. -- John of Reading (talk) 04:13, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Wasn't planning on using it too widely, mostly my watchlist and maybe articles vandalized by this IP hopper that likes to add curly quotes and apostrophes (see here for details). But there's little reason to have fully expanded citation templates like that and I see little harm in collapsing them when encountered. I won't be going out of my way looking for them though. Is there a policy or guideline I'm unaware of that says I shouldn't be altering them?  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) Please &#123;&#123;re&#125;&#125; 04:48, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * There's WP:CITEVAR, though it's not clear whether its scope extends to the layout of the template parameters. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:29, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Actually, it only talks about the style. I prefer MLA style myself. The layout is a question of readability and editability of the source. In the case of inline citations it's more readable in one line. Jerod Lycett (talk) 11:05, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * If someone objects to it, I won't be an ass about it. Just much more readable.  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) Please &#123;&#123;re&#125;&#125; 20:02, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module weekend of 18–19 April 2015
On the weekend of 18–19 April I propose to update the live CS1 module files from the sandbox counterparts. See here.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:07, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Can AWB be used to extract text from an infobox and insert the values into a block of text?
Over at the Help Desk, I asked about/wished for a 'magic button' that would extract the information from the various fields of an article's infobox (specifically Infobox ship), insert it into a pre-generated block of text, and present it for insertion into the article. I do a fair amount of work on ship articles, and find myself writing very cookie-cutter, insert-values-here chunks of text to proseify design details and construction dates: see HMAS Swan (D61) for a pretty basic example, or HMAS Vendetta (D08) for one where more article-specific context has been added. Help Desk has directed me here, so, here I am.

Is such a magic button possible and feasible with AutoWikiBrowser? If so, how difficult would it be to implement it? If not, any suggestions on where else I could ask would be appreciated. -- saberwyn 22:10, 11 April 2015 (UTC)


 * We have Tools.GetTemplateParameterValue. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:12, 11 April 2015 (UTC)


 * All due respect, but I'm not an AWB user or a programmer, so you're going to have to give that to me in dummy-talk. -- saberwyn 05:36, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Microsoft Visual Studio Code & AWB
Now that VS is out for Mac, AWB is supposedly coming native according to this, no? Buffaboy  talk 18:24, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Maybe? Certainly be interesting to see what's what. Reedy (talk) 23:35, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Sorting template fields
Is there a way to sort template fields in AWB? e.g say you had: and wanted to sort it so that it ended up as:

Is it possible in vanilla AWB with RegEx, or do I need to create a custom module? The reason I ask is that I've got a find and replace job planned, and I want to leave the template code in the specific neat order that the WikiProject currently uses.- X201 (talk) 10:51, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I presume you know you're missing the pipe seperators. But no, you'd not be able to do it with just regex. Or at least, not without obscenely complex regex. The best way would probably be to extract the template in a custom module, then rebuild it in the order you want. Reedy (talk) 23:37, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks. I thought that would be the case, I just wanted someone to confirm it. I've got working extraction code that I can build from. - X201 (talk) 08:18, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Auto-save mode
Can an editor receive "bot" permissions in AWB without creating and running a separate bot account? I use AWB regularly for basic and routine category- and other maintenance-related edits, often making the same change to many pages. The inability to auto-save edits forces me to stare at the screen for a long time for no reason other than to repeatedly click "Save" tens or hundreds of times. The option to automatically save the edit box every 30–60 seconds would allow me to run these maintenance tasks while working on something else. Thank you, -- Black Falcon (talk) 00:41, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
 * , if you're not the one who's clicking "Save", then it counts as a bot; also, only bot accounts get a bot flag. However, it's not that hard to get a bot approved if you need something done. APerson (talk!) 01:12, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you! -- Black Falcon (talk) 15:36, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

CirrusSearch
My experiences with CirrusSearch:

With the introduction of CirrusSearch, the search features of AWB have been expanded such that downloading the database is no longer required. I am not going in-depth on the CirrusSearch features here, see Help:CirrusSearch.

AWB has a search bug that we need to work around. We will use a dual-track method: on-Wikipedia search and AWB search. As an example, lets search for the obsolete <font ></font> tag and attribute.

First do an on-wiki search. You may want to save the search in your sandbox or elsewhere; is useful.

Next do the AWB search. If you do a search for, the list will not populate due to the bug. As a workaround, we need to include a prephrase: the most common words in English work well.
 * "the" insource:/\<font color/

This will populate the list and you can do your search and replace. Remember that the AWB search is limited to 1,000 pages so you may need to search again multiple times as you work through the list. When the list no longer populates, check the on-wiki search and you will find there are results left to work. We need to change our prephrase to get more results.
 * "be" insource:/\<font color/

As you work through the list, changing the prephrase returns different results. Using "the", "be", "to", "of", "and" should be sufficient. If your results are under 1,000 you can do sequential searches and filter the duplicates. Checking the on-wiki search will show the true results. CirrusSearch updates quickly, but there may be a handful of results that persist even after you have worked the articles.

--  Gadget850talk 10:11, 4 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Also note that if you do an on-wiki search and select multimedia or everything, then Commons will be searched as well. --  Gadget850talk 19:58, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

what's that template

 * I dimly recall a template that instructs AWB to skip spelling corrections on text that may appear problematic but is in fact correct.. something that looks like NoAWB or similar.. what was that template? Thanks &bull; Arch&diams;Reader 21:18, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Not a typo is probably what you're looking for. SiBr4 (talk) 21:24, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I remember a different name, but that one probably works just as well or better. Tks! &bull; Arch&diams;Reader 21:29, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

"Controversial" edits.
My understanding is that AWB is not supposed to be used to make controversial edits. According to this discussion on AN/I, editor User:Dan Koehl is using it to make mass changes of "Viking" to "Norsemen", apparently without a consensus to do so. If this is the case, would these be considered to be "controversial". BMK (talk) 01:20, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Here's a different kind of "controversial"--the typical use by a patroller to simply revert a whole bunch of (explained) edits with the click of a button, followed by an automated warning. 207.93.13.145 (talk) 16:54, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * That's rollback, not AWB (AFAIK you can't directly revert edits with AWB). The warning on your talk page was added separately. SiBr4 (talk) 17:20, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh. Well. Thanks. Where shall I take my complaint? Never mind. 207.93.13.145 (talk) 17:28, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * WP:Rollback does not list a specific page to report possible abuse of the rollback tool, so I think the first place to discuss the issue is either the article talk page or his user talk page (see WP:DR). SiBr4 (talk) 18:50, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Can someone help me fix this:
Yesterday I used AWB 5.5.5.0 from two different machines as Monkbot on this win7 machine and as Trappist the monk on a win XP machine. This morning I got error messages similar to the one above. Not knowing what else to do, it seemed appropriate to at least update to the current version which one this win7 machine gives me the above error. Anyone know what it is that I've broken and can give me some idea of how to fix it?

The AWB splash screen says: MainForm::.ctor

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:21, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
 * See the bottom of the bugs page. Rjwilmsi  16:25, 14 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Excellent, thank you.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:47, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Updater homepage?
What is the homepage for the AWB Updater? I want to report a malfunction. -DePiep (talk) 14:18, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Please file a bug in phab:Phabricator Reedy (talk) 16:04, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * OK, and xl=weird. -DePiep (talk) 20:43, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * In all kindness, I refuse to process xl to have AWB functioning. I'll try manual downloading 5.5.7.0 etc, and will risk an other 5 months of non-AWB. AWB Updater 2.0.2.1 fail. -DePiep (talk) 21:00, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * xl? Reedy (talk) 21:13, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I did mix up wrong: xl=WP:EL, external link. I meant to say: I do not like having to use a WP:EL to fix such a main issue. (will read Magioladitis' reply next). I think this subthread can be closed. -DePiep (talk) 21:28, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * It's an external link to a WMF hosted bug tracker. We used to have things on WP:AWB/B, but it's really not manageable for the task. Reedy (talk) 22:33, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * To me, it does not work.-DePiep (talk) 23:25, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Does not work isn't helpful. Reedy (talk) 00:18, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
 * 'Does not work' is the ultimate bug report. Any questions? -DePiep (talk) 00:25, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

DePiep 5.5.7.0 works. From which version are you trying to update? What is the malfunction exactly? -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:16, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I open AWB version 5.5.6.0 using Windows XP (AWB installed Dec 2014), 'as usual'. It starts up with earlier error messages as reported before. Limiting but not blocking, so I can use AWB up to a level.
 * Then today I click "Help | check for updates" and AWBUpdater.exe starts. The screenbox says:

AWB Updater 2.0.2.1 Initialising... Getting current AWB and Updater versions Retrieving current version ...FAILED
 * I could also skip the whole AWB Updater, trying. But that could also skip essential edits (Windows registry cleanup?). -DePiep (talk) 21:51, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * To be clear: I did not download & click 5.5.7.0 manually (I could have done that), because I prefer to have it performed by AWB Updater. AWB v5.5.6.0 failed with me big time. I'm anxious to learn from developers here. -DePiep (talk) 22:24, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The updater doesn't touch the registry. It only updates/removes files in the current AWB dir. Why retrieving the current verson stuff failed is a different issue. Reedy (talk) 22:35, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * OK then, but I'd like to see AWB functioning. -DePiep (talk) 00:35, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

DePiep can you please try to update once more? -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:38, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Ay Magio. I did not update once, because AWB Updater.exe FAILED. That's the process I tried from AWB Helpmenu etc, as described.
 * I can do a manual update, skipping any AWB Updater issues. (That is: I download the 5570zip, unpack, and clickstart the AWB exe).
 * If you can confirm, that I can skip the Updater ("the Updater does not matter"), I'll install AWB 5.5.7.0 5.6.7.0 manually. -DePiep (talk) 22:48, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * DePiep yes. Install AWB 5.5.7.0 manually. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:54, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Will do. Will report back here. -DePiep (talk)
 * I appreciate your contributions. Right now I can not even find or click any basic download page. -DePiep (talk) 23:21, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Negative. I downloaded and then started AWB 5770 5.5.7.0 manually (=clicking the .exe). It gave the same error messages I reported before (two). When I Start the AWB to process a list of pages, it turns to the same old ever "restarting in xx seconds" etc. To be clear: AWB is useless for me, since December 2014. -DePiep (talk) 23:46, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * So AWB 5.5.7.0 sucks too. My bug report had no response. And here I still don't know where to report issues with WikiUpdater (which is still disfunctioning too). -DePiep (talk) 19:07, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
 * DePiep Since it works for everybody else. I do not know what to do about it. Did you try to reset to the original default settings? -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:42, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
 * 'works for everybody else' - well, I added to an existing bug report, and last week a similar report was added . That's three. I think the frustrating part is that the bug reports did not get follow-up. Not even a "won't solve/cannot reproduce/more info please/etc.". Then the Updater failed. -DePiep (talk) 18:58, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Four unhandled bug reports by now . -DePiep (talk) 21:27, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

I have been using AWB for over a week and had it open for with no issues. This morning I got Windows updates, installed and rebooted. When I started AWB, I got two errors, then the restarting issue. I then ran the updater, it suceeded and AWB is working OK.

One issue I have seen with other applications is a loss of rights to the folder. A quick test: can you create a text file in your AWB folder? --  Gadget850talk 21:28, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes I can create (add, edit delete) txt file in the AWB folder. Will do more tests. -DePiep (talk) 18:58, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Test #2: I logged as sysadmin on my WinXP desktop (i.e. with admin rights). Same responses (Uploader says 'failed', AWB 5.5.7.0 has same massages and loops eternally before opening for editing). Shall I open a new AWB bug report, adding the Uploader details? -DePiep (talk) 19:20, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * DePiep yes please. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:29, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Will do, later on. (So Uploader bugs are to be reported as AWB bugs). -DePiep (talk) 21:34, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Phabricator
All open bugs have been migrated to Phabriactaor (link to AWB-board). ALl bugs should be reported there from now on, if possible. However since a new guide on how to do this isn't at place here on WP:AWB/B, a task has been created on Phabricator for somebody to do T99342. Developers please help out sort these bugs now created in to boards and triage them. Thanks. <span style="background: turquoise;font-family: 'Segoe Script', 'Comic Sans MS';">(t) Josve05a  (c) 23:57, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Wait. You say Phabriactaor is the required bug reporting tool? -DePiep (talk) 21:21, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
 * We are currently working on migrating all bug reporting to Phabricator, yes. All you need to do is log in with your WIkipedia (MediaWiki) account there. But untill all groundworks has been done, and guides on how to do so has been made, reporing here is ok, although comments wil be manually copied by another user to Phabricator, which has been done by e.g. me, see all those green "boxes". <span style="background: turquoise;font-family: 'Segoe Script', 'Comic Sans MS';">(t) Josve05a  (c) 15:46, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I get it. It happens to concur with my cross-version bug reports, so I got confused. (the typos in 'Phabriactaor' are yours ;-) ). -DePiep (talk) 20:25, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Can I achieve different skipping logic using a module?
First, I'm not talking about using a module to do a skip based on the article/page content the module processes, as I can already see how to do that. What I'm talking about is that currently, all the skip options use 'OR' logic; that is, a skip happens if any one of the checked skips are triggered (correct me if I'm wrong). I would like to have more advanced skipping based on those skip options. I logged a suggestion to this effect, but I wonder if I can achieve this using a module.

For example: I would like to do a skip if no typo fixed AND no or only minor replacement made AND no or only minor genfixes, and these OR'd with skipping cosmetic/whitespace changes.

Can I do this using a module, and how? Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 15:28, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Read-only requires registration?
I sometimes make lists of pages with AWB, save them and process them off-AWB (that is, AWB does read-only). I notice I can do this without logging in. Can a non-Registered editor do this too, wikilegally and technically? -DePiep (talk) 11:45, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Technically yes, any user can use anything in AWB that does not require logging in, and any online/API query function if it's available to unregistered users of Wikipedia. Wikilegally I would think this is also fine, Wikipedia's licence is free access (read) for all, but wikilegality is not up to me. Rjwilmsi  07:59, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank. btw, with "wikilegal" I meant to say according to thie AWB-rules, and "non-Registered editor" I mean the license to use AWB only. Answer equally useful. -DePiep (talk) 12:51, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Listing from a "Special:" page
Is it possible to list all the pages from a page in the "Special" namespace, like Special:BrokenRedirects, in AWB. I can't for the life of me figure out if it's doable, as the "Links on page" doesn't work and the "Special page" option has a completely different purpose. Thanks in advance.

With kind regards, Kippenvlees1 (talk) 21:28, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
 * This works: use source = "HTML scraper (advanced regex)", URL = . Then use regex =   and group = 1.  Rjwilmsi  08:16, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot for this! - Kippenvlees1 (talk) 12:57, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Persondata deprecated
Persondata has been deprecated by this RfC. It should no longer be added to articles on this project. A bot will be requested to remove existing instances. Please remove any relevant features/ code from AWB. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:27, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

I replied to BOTREQ. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:34, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
 * On May 30, I submitted two requests to remove AWB's persondata functionality: Stop adding/updating Persondata and Remove functionality to Insert Meta-data template. Are there any other relevant features/code?  I believe the former should be done before we embark on any systematic approach to delete Persondata templates, to avoid edit-warring bots.  Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 16:51, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Hello. I don't use AWB, so don't know how it gets updated and how people get the latest version. But I've been checking that data has been correctly transferred to Wikidata and then removing the Persondata from articles on my watchlist, and then last night the Persondata started arriving back again via AWB cleanup, e.g. at Steven Caldwell and Adam Rooney. Should this be still happening? cheers, Struway2 (talk) 07:18, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Struway2 there will be an official release soon. Meanwhile, every editor is responsible for their editing so you have to contact the editor who added Persondata directly. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:21, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
 * FYI - Magioladitis released AWB version 5.6.0.0 yesterday, which does not automatically add or update Persondata. GoingBatty (talk) 22:24, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Removal of "per se" rule
User:Esquivalience removed "per se" with no explanation. Without this rule how are we going to fix the King Kong article and others? If a problem was found with this rule, let's discuss it here. There are several ways to handle such a situation short of removing a rule that has been working for years. <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  15:02, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Oops, my goof. He added the rule, just not in the "New additions section". I misinterpreted the change. <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  15:07, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
 * My second goof: I added this section on the wrong page; s/b the Typo talk page. I better take a break. <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  15:09, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Chris the speller lol. The easiest resolved tag I put in my wikilife. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:28, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

AWB is using wrong fonts
Three years ago I installed AWB on a new machine and discovered that AWB was using wrong fonts and as a result many interface features were gone. I talked about this issue at Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs/Archive_21. Eventually I fixed the problem and for last 3 years AWB worked fine. I got a new machine lately: a PC running Win 7. I installed current version of AWB and I see the same problem: See image. Unfortunately I do not remember how I fixed it 3 years ago. I tried copying all the AWB files from the old machine to the new, including xml files in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\AutoWikiBrowser, but the problem persists. Any ideas on how to fix it? --Jarekt (talk) 15:25, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Have you set windows DPI/font scaling to > 100%? Rjwilmsi  20:36, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you. That was it. I will add a section to FAQ, at least so I can find it in the future. --Jarekt (talk) 12:53, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

AWB script link
Could you incorporate a link to the WP:AWB script, preferably in AWB? And any extra integration would be great. -DePiep (talk) 19:02, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

That'd be User:Joeytje50/AWB. &mdash; Cp i r al  Cpiral  06:44, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
 * There's already a link at AutoWikiBrowser. GoingBatty (talk) 12:59, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Make list returns same list
I'm using AWB to remove euphemisms, but now that I have gotten through a chunk of articles, the same articles, which I have already edited, turn up over and over. I need a way to filter out articles I have already edited, if possible. I have searched and tinkered with settings, and I have not found a solution to my problem. I suspect the edited articles have problems AWB recognizes but I chose to skip (and this is why they are listed), but I can't say for sure because I have not used this program for long. Thanks in advance. fds Talk 03:53, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Try using AWB's List comparer tool to compare your list of articles with a second list with Source: "User contribs (user defined number)". Enter your username in the User field, and then a number representing how many of your recent edits shoudl be in the list.  Compare the two and you can bring your results back into AWB's list.  Good luck!  GoingBatty (talk) 13:06, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, GoingBatty. I'll give it a whirl. fds  Talk 18:20, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Can AWB edit the list of titles on a search results page?
I hear hopeful things, but after looking through the manual, I don't see the functionality I'm looking for.

I want to edit every page on a MediaWiki search results page. Can AWB do that? If not, can it accept a list of titles I generate from such a search results page? And if so, will it auto-edit every page (after I press yes on a Show Changes screen)?

Sounds like AWB can only perform its own searches from a required database dump. Is that right? If so can its search engine compete with the new CirrusSearch regular expressions of the wikitext?

Finally, does AWB have any in-class competitors (AWB script? WikEd?) that can do these robo-edits from a list like AWB can somehow do, but perhaps without the database dump or IE? I'm not complaining, really, keep up the fine work. Thanks. &mdash; Cp i r al  Cpiral  06:34, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
 * You can copy and paste lists in to AWB's page list, you can also load a file the contains the list of articles. AWB can create a list from a database dump or by directly querying Wikipedia.- X201 (talk) 07:57, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Sounds hopeful. &mdash;  Cp i r al  Cpiral  18:15, 27 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Are you actually searching for pages on the MediaWiki.org web site, or are you searching for pages on wikipedia.org? If you gave us the URL of a sample search, we could do a better job of helping you. <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  02:26, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
 * &mdash; Cp i r al  Cpiral  18:15, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I give up. I tried using this in AWB as "Wikisearch (text)" after unchecking the menu item under "List" that says "Remove non-main space" and adjusting the article filter to allow "User:" namespace. No pages are found by AWB. I'm not totally surprised, as AWB's interface to CirrusSearch is a little weird. Have you tried using a forward slash (/) to surround the insource argument instead of double quotes? I didn't know that double quotes would work for that. Good luck! <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  02:48, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm up to speed on using mw:Help:CirrusSearch, but I'm just starting to understand what AWB is. Like toolserver stuff, it shells the database directly? I don't know what internal APIs MediaWiki provides AWB or toolserver, if any, so I can't determine AWB's abilities. It would seem that AWB javaScript, would wrap the usual MediaWiki user interfaces passing edits to the edit box and searches to the search engine. &mdash;  Cp i r al  Cpiral  05:19, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're ahead of me on using CirrusSearch. I had forgotten that "insource" comes in two flavors. Good luck! <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  13:24, 29 June 2015 (UTC)


 * You may also want to look at WPCleaner. Happy editing!  GoingBatty (talk) 13:07, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you. &mdash; Cp i r al  Cpiral  18:15, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Cannot find AWB
I lost my copy of AWB in a system crash. When I try to download it from this site I get a message that the file doesn't exist. Am I doing something wrong or is there a better location for the latest version?-- S Philbrick (Talk)  14:31, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * does this work for you? -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:03, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The download worked, thanks. I'm still working on the setup but I'll sort that out. Please note that I reach the location that failed by accessing the link here:
 * AutoWikiBrowser


 * Does that link need modification?-- S Philbrick (Talk)  16:10, 6 July 2015 (UTC)


 * It works for me. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:11, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Me too. Very odd, it failed a couple hours ago. I tried several times. But it now works. Thanks.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  16:28, 6 July 2015 (UTC)-- S Philbrick  (Talk)  16:28, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Loading pages from my watchlist
I am trying to go through my watchlist via AWB. I have around 2000 pages on my watchlist. Per the program I can only open 500 at a time. How can I get past and go through the rest past the original 500 that load (the first 500 alphabetically). Thanks! Sulfurboy (talk) 22:30, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Sulfurboy It is a bug. It was fixed and it will be available in the next release. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:58, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Awesome, thanks for your quick response. Sulfurboy (talk) 23:00, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Sulfurboy try downloading version 5.7.0.0 -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:02, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

"Transclusions on page" limit
There seems to be a new limit of 500 when making a list of "Transclusions on page". Is there any way around it? M AN d ARAX •  XAЯA b ИA M  21:29, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I am having the same problem trying to create any sort of list. I have now raised a bug in Phabricator. --Racklever (talk) 22:12, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I suspect the problem is not AWB, but maybe somebody has a workaround. M AN d ARAX  •  XAЯA b ИA M  23:17, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I see that the problem was with MW API updates, and that AWB has been tweaked to handle it. This is an essential update for people to be able to do useful work, so I hope a new version will be available soon for those of us who don't go around compiling our own. M AN d ARAX  •  XAЯA b ИA M  21:45, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Bug fixed in the next release. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:54, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Hopefully the next release will be soon, because AWB is pretty much unusable for me with this limit. Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 04:56, 4 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I am seeing a limit of 50 for "Wiki search (text)". Can we assume that this will also be fixed in the next release, or have they broken something else? <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  17:54, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I was assuming there was now a limit of 500 for all list generation, including in the List comparer. But 50, yikes.  We need the 25,000 limit back (even though that's too limiting on occasion as well).  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 21:01, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I have to make some lists for one of our local GLAMs in relation to their donated imaages and there are tens of thousands of them. Is there any workaround for this? Kerry (talk) 03:56, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

All lists have unbroken to reach usual limits instead of the narrow 500. The next release will be out very soon. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:17, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Please download version 5.7.0.0 -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:03, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, yes, yes! It works. Thanks much! <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  19:43, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * So far, so good. I'll let you know if I run into any issues. Thanks! Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 21:21, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * • Sourceforge was misbehaving, so it took litterally forever to download, but now that I finally got it, it works great. Thanks! M AN d ARAX  •  XAЯA b ИA M  22:28, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * It's wonderful to have it back! It's so often the only tool for a big job! Kerry (talk) 06:11, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

AWB 5.7.0.0 not digitally signed
Hi there,

I just downloaded AWB 5.7.0.0 and noticed it is not digitally signed. So every time I double-click, Windows makes a warning message pop up. As far as I remember, earlier versions were digitally signed, weren't they? --Bildungsbürger (talk) 19:50, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Bildungsbürger this problem was never reported before. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:53, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Windows 10 has an optional security feature called Device Guard that requires all applications to be signed (see ). It would be a good idea to add a signature future versions of AWB.--Racklever (talk) 20:15, 15 July 2015 (UTC)#
 * I am using Windows 7. When double-clicking AutoWikiBrowser.exe, I get the security warning "The originator of the software could not be verified. Do you want to execute this software?" --Bildungsbürger (talk) 21:49, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I have added a feature request at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T105995. --Racklever (talk) 06:08, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
 * My Norton Security Suite SONAR module quarantined the new AWB executable and the default settings, just like it did back in May. This time I figured out how to restore it.  GoingBatty (talk) 21:55, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Where is 5700 download?
Maybe I'm missing something, but the source forge download page is not listing v. 5700. It only goes up to 5560. North America1000 06:54, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
 * North America sourceforge is experiencing problems. They are restoring the problem very slowly. You must probably see a back-up version of the site of 2014. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:03, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much for the response. I'll just wait and check again there at a later time. North America1000 07:04, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
 * is preparing an improved AWB updater version where at least we will be able to warn editors about similar problems. Sourceforge seems to be down for almost a day now. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:07, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
 * N.b. ✅. AutoWikiBrowser5700 is now appearing at the Sourceforge page. North America1000 16:39, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module weekend of 25–26 July 2015
See Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 8

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:13, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Skipping if no automatic changes
I've been using AWB for over a year now, and there's still a couple things that stump me about this tool:
 * 1) "Skip, No changes are made" checkbox tooltip says "Automatically skips pages when no changes were automatically made" but in actual use it skips pages when no changes of any kind (including Find/Replace and typos) are made.  "Automatic changes" are supposed to be "Auto tag", "Apply general fixes" and "Unicodify whole page" only.
 * 2) With the above not working as I expect, I wonder why there isn't a skip for when any none of the aforementioned "Automatic changes" are made.  Currently, I can only skip when a particular kind of automatic change isn't done (via "Auto changes skip options").

Does anyone have any ideas for how these things can be addressed? Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 12:55, 21 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I think it is unclear from the layout of the Options tab whether "Automatic changes" applies only to the three checkboxes immediately below it and closely clustered (the way you interpret it) or to all the checkboxes on that tab, including "Find and replace" and "Regex typo fixing" (the way I interpret it). Adding to the confusion, the AWB manual sort of supports your view, but breaks the Options tab into three sections, with the first referred to as "General" (not "Automatic changes"). I most often run with the three "General" checkboxes unchecked, but "Find and replace" and "Regex typo fixing" checked. On the Skip tab, I check "No changes are made" so that a page will be skipped if no F&R changes and no Typo changes are made. Either the manual or the code could be changed to make this clearer. Maybe there should be a line across the tab to separate the three "General" checkboxes from the two sections below it (F&R and Typos). <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  13:29, 21 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, even more confusion there. What forms the basis of my need for clarification (and potentially a new skip option) is that AWB provides for only primitive skipping logic, IMHO.  Because of how the skip logic works, I have to run AWB with different sets of settings across the same set of files. As part of this approach, I've realized that I can't skip if no automatic/general changes, which means I can't reasonably fix all the non-minor issues that are actually in the set of files without going through the entire set and manually skipping when the changes are too minor.  In a more perfect world. I'd like to have much more sophisticated skipping logic so I can do all my intended fixes in just one run against a set of files. I'm sorry if any of my explanation here is confusing.  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 13:52, 21 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I just wanted to note that if you look closely, "Automatic changes" is the heading to a group box that includes "Auto tag", "Apply general fixes" and "Unicodify whole page". The lines that make up the group box are very faint.


 * I also have requested a change to AWB that makes skipping smarter with the above #2 suggestion as the alternative. Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 16:47, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Find & Replace anomalies
I just reported an issue on Phabricator where the "After fixes" setting in Find & Replace (Normal) acts like "Ignore if not any general/typo fixes" instead of "Run after general/typo fixes are attempted, whether something is fixed or not" (my expectation) and has seemed that way for a very long time but the exact problem didn't dawn on me until today. But there are anomalies beyond that.

Another general problem I frequently encounter is when I do a AWB run, where an article isn't changed by AWB, but then at a later time, it is changed, even though the article on Wikipedia hasn't been edited by anyone and the non-minor F&R rule that would change the article hasn't changed in the intervening time. What has changed, however, are other F&R rules, either by insert, delete or revision. As someone with programming experience, this leads me to a hypothesis that some kind of memory overwrite or data garbling is occurring when AWB is going through the F&R (Normal) list. How else can a rule not be triggered in one run, go unchanged (and the article goes unchanged), then get triggered in a subsequent run?

Any thoughts? Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 22:23, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

== vs ==

I've been told that the HTML standard is no longer to have the "/" for but this tool continues to replace all with the / - can someone tell me what the accepted syntax is on Wikipedia. It appears from the HTML reference and other research that the preferred method is but that  can be used for compatibility. -- Trödel 15:59, 27 July 2015 (UTC) is compatible with HTML5 but I don't know if there is a hard wiki guideline for whether or  is to be used. In my own opinion, stands out better for editors. At any rate, these should be considered cosmetic changes and shouldn't be done unless a non-cosmetic fix is made at the same time. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 17:05, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
 * AWB on its own doesn't replace these, but individual AWB users may be replacing these using the find/replace component of AWB.
 * I typically make that edit because I use this syntax highlighter which is available under Preferences/Gadgets/Editing. I don't know how many other people use it, but I find it quite helpful and I suspect more people would use it if they knew about it. One particularity of the highlighter is that it differentiates between a and a , as it says in the documentation "For performance reasons, the highlighter requires all tags to be valid XML. For example, make sure that if you start a   tag you end it with  , and use   instead of  ." Hence, I do it because it helps some people and doesn't hurt anything.  SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   17:10, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Can't update AWB
I can't update AWB to latest SVN revision using TortoiseSVN 1.8 under Windows 8. It gives me the error:

Unable to connect to a repository at URL 'svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/autowikibrowser/code/AWB' Can't connect to host 'svn.code.sf.net': No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.

Is it just me or is this a general problem? --Meno25 (talk) 16:36, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
 * It's not just you - I'm having the same issue with TortoiseSVN 1.7.13 under Windows 7. GoingBatty (talk) 17:15, 19 July 2015 (UTC)


 * See here and here for details about the downtime. --Meno25 (talk) 16:06, 24 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the links. They posted an update on July 24.  GoingBatty (talk) 12:53, 25 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Problem finally resolved. --Meno25 (talk) 09:25, 26 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Confirmed - thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 13:04, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

GitHub?
Given both the recent outage and the also-recent ethical failures of SourceForge, would the developers consider moving the code repository to GitHub? I am happy to help with the migration from SVN, if that's a concern. Ijon (talk) 22:40, 24 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree with you. However, as an alternative, why doesn't AWB move to Wikimedia code repository like Pywikibot? --Meno25 (talk) 08:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Having raised this question here before, one major issue in moving to GitHub is that has no familiarity with git or GitHub. I support a merge to either GitHub or Phabricator, for the record. APerson (talk!) 21:19, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Empty DEFAULTSORT
Hi. I noticed that AWB doesn't remove empty DEFAULTSORT both on English and Arabic Wikipedias (DEFULTSORT is localized as ترتيب_افتراضي), whereas I think it should. Is this intended by AWB developers or is this a bug? I just wanted to ask before reporting this to Phabricator. --Meno25 (talk) 05:40, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Currently we deliberately do not change DEFAULTSORT with only whitespace as the sortkey, including zero whitespace i.e. a blank sortkey as well. If there is clear consensus to remove these then you could post a feature request for us to change our logic. Rjwilmsi  08:55, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the quick response. --Meno25 (talk) 11:55, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * When  is used without a colon, the page appears in the hidden maintenance Category:Pages which use a template in place of a magic word.  My bot removes the template in those cases.  Pages containing   with a colon (as in Meno25's test) do not appear in the category.  GoingBatty (talk) 10:43, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The problem is that we have cases where the sortkey is a simple space. is quite common. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:55, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Add links
Hi all ; how I can add links to pages? Thank you --Touzrimounir (talk) 20:50, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Depends on what you're trying to do. For example, if you want to add links to Wassila Ben Ammar from other articles that mention him (and you want to use AWB instead of Find link), you could do this:
 * Make a list using Source:Wiki search (text) looking for "Wassila Ben Ammar"
 * Add a rule to find  and replace it with
 * Check each page to make sure the link is correct before saving.
 * If that's not what you're looking for, could you please provide more information? Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 22:45, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
 * thank you for your answer; I want to add links to Category:Dead-end pages but in Arabic wikipedia ? --Touzrimounir (talk) 12:04, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * You could add the links manually in the edit window, view the article and test each link, and then reparse to see if your addition will remove the dead end template. Happy editing!  GoingBatty (talk) 16:55, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

New pages - orphan and category tags; inconsequential edits

 * Is it correct to flag an article as an orphan when that is the only edit AWB will make?
 * Is it correct to flag an article as uncategorized, without creating categories?
 * Is it acceptable to make minor changes involving a single character, such as deleting a space before a new line?

(My questions are above; this is meant to clarify.) I have mostly used AWB on new articles. Some have been patrolled/reviewed and some have not. I also patrol new pages, and I add categories to articles that don't have any. So, does it waste people's time to put the orphan flag on a new article, or to flag as uncategorized? I do not like adding categories in AWB itself because it doesn't appear to be possible to check whether the categories exist without viewing the page in a browser.

Also, the rules for AWB say it is not to be used for inconsequential edits. AWB often proposes changes that are necessary per the MoS but may only change one character. Examples include changing - to –, changing "January 12th" to "January 12" and changing " ¶" to just "¶" (i.e. removing spaces at the end of a line). The last case in particular might make no difference at all in how the article appears. Roches (talk) 21:07, 8 August 2015 (UTC)


 * 1) Sure, why not? 2) Sure, why not? 3) Changing - to – and changing "January 12th" to "January 12" are not inconsequential edits; they need to be fixed, and AWB is the best way to do that. Removing spaces at the end of a line have no effect on the rendering of a page, and should not be made by AWB unless other, visible, changes are made at the same time. <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  22:02, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * You may find that "correct" is in the eye of the beholder. If you deorphan an article or add categories (outside of AWB) instead of tagging the article, you may get less complaints on your talk page.  Happy editing!  GoingBatty (talk) 14:32, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

From ta.wiktionary - How can i extract?
Happy to meet you all after long time from ta.wiktionary. This page contains words list. I can extract the red words but not with its meaning. How can extract the red words with its meaning.--Info-farmer (talk) 18:00, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Google search limitations for making lists
I noticed that I after I did so many Google searches in making a list, I started getting a 503 error. So I proceeded to do a Google search through my browser, and I then had to enter a captcha to proceed because of suspected bot activity from my IP. I went back to AWB to try again, and I'm still getting 503s. Is this expected behavior? If so, perhaps the user manual should be updated to indicate there are limits to using this source when making lists. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 19:25, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

-- Magioladitis (talk) 11:47, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Improper Semi-Automated Grammatical Change
On several occasions, I've noticed that using Auto WikiBrower, users have changed statements in the form of "[month] of [year]" (e.g. "July of 1978") to the form "[month] [year]." To my knowledge, there is no grammatical basis for this, but simply an aesthetic one, which would make such a decision a subjective matter of choice. I am not aware of any major English language style guide that advocates the use of the latter format in place of the former. To automate a change with no basis in the proscriptive rules of language (which, in themselves, are continuously disputed) is not fitting of an open and free encyclopedia.  Ergo Sum  00:42, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't speak for the developers, but it would seem that calling it "improper" before having the discussion and finding out why it's done jumps the gun. I can only assume the developers are following the Wikipedia Manual of Style per this guideline: MOS:BADDATEFORMAT. If you disagree with what AWB does, then you are disagreeing with the guideline as far as I can tell.  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 01:10, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you. You are right that this, evidently, is an issue with the Wikipedia Manual of Style. I was unaware that AWB was strictly tied to the MoS.  Ergo Sum  03:52, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
 * In my experience, AWB by default is pretty conservative with the guidelines it enforces. It targets guidelines-based fixes that are considered safe to make in the vast majority of instances. Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 10:13, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The AWB developers use AutoWikiBrowser/General fixes to document fixes such as this one and why they are done. For example, AWB removes 'of' between a month and a year per WP:DATESNO.  Hope this helps!  GoingBatty (talk) 18:51, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Cleanup of "naked" google books?
Is there any way to combine AWB with Wikipedia citation tool for Google Books at http://reftag.appspot.com/ to clean up the "naked" google book entries (defined as anything that includes the string >http://books.google.com/ ) Right now there are about 2600 of them.Naraht (talk) 14:58, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Naraht ask this at WP:BOTREQ. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:08, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Porting
How difficult would it be to port AWB to other operating systems, or even to make it more platform-independent and portable to begin with? Surely the functionality it gets from .Net is available in less proprietary ways? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 04:38, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
 * We can already compile under Linux (Mono) and run under Linux/Mac (Wine), see AutoWikiBrowser/Mono_and_Wine. Rjwilmsi  05:02, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Natively, I mean, without relying on direct translation from .NET. How difficult would it be to port away from .NET? (And actually, shouldn’t it be able to compile against Mono on Mac, too?) —67.14.236.50 (talk) 05:40, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

AWB Cleanup
I've been having a disagreement with @User:Lugnuts about using AWB for cleanup. I've been using the cleanup feature both on recursive categories and on new articles to (a) make minor grammatical corrections, and (b) add two blank lines above stub templates and other templates, as per WP:STUBSPACING recommendation: "It is usually desirable to leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it.". Gloria (2014 film) and Tavua Island are two examples of where I did that, but got reverted by Lugnuts.
 * He angrily accused me of violating AWB Rule #4.
 * He demanded that I stop using AWB for such edits.
 * He reverted me — in several places.
 * I re-reverted him in about 5 places. He then accused me of "hounding" and "stalking" him and of "edit warring." I did no such thing! He accused me of following all his articles. How could I? I have no idea whether the articles I edit are of any interest to him or not! After all, I'm not privy to his watchlist, am I?
 * He made some other angry comments (some factual, some not factual, but none bearing on this discussion, so I'll leave them out).
 * He repeatedly harassed me on my talk page about my editing last night.

Now, with all that said, can users who have no direct interest in either my work or his answer the following:
 * DO my cleanups — which bring each article CLOSER to the Manual of Style — violate any rule, in letter or in spirit? He says they do because they don't make a visible change. I say they DO make a visible change — a very noticeable one: If the stub templates and other templates are "bunched up" under the External Links, as in Gloria (2014 film), that makes it look as if they are a part of that section. It looks a lot more cosmetic with the two lines between, as recommended by the MOS. That's what I've been doing! And in both of the examples I've cited, he's reverted me.
 * I believe my edits brought the pages closer to the MOS. Am I right or wrong?
 * I believe that by reverting my edits, he's moved the pages further away from the MOS. Am I right or wrong? And if I'm right, does his reversion constitute vandalism, or doesn't it?

Numerous edits have sent me thanks for my cleanup work. This ONE editor is claiming that I'm violating policy. Am I? David Cannon (talk) 05:54, 23 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, Cannon, you are. Here are my thoughts complete with evidence.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 08:33, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * More discussions on this topic can be found on my talk page and on User:Lugnuts's talk page. David Cannon (talk) 08:39, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * That would be Lugnuts' talkpage, not "Lugnuts's". Maybe AWB can fix that for you.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 09:06, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Either is correct per WP:Manual of Style. So AWB won't make that change. :) --Izno (talk) 15:18, 23 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Using AWB to make only a change as superficial as shortening up line spacing looks like a fairly clear breach of #4 to me. (As an aside, @David Cannon, I'm unsure why you keep saying that this bring each article CLOSER to the Manual of Style; WP:Stub isn't a part of the MOS and never has been, and the actual relevant section of the MOS says nothing to support double-spacing.) Situations like this are exactly why the "skip if only minor changes are made" box exists. &#8209; iridescent 11:59, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't see it that way, but I'm committed to accepting and complying with whatever the community says, whether I agree with it or not. So far, you and Lugnuts are the only ones who have weighed in. The discussion will continue, but unless or until the picture becomes clearer, I will enable that "Skip if only minor changes are made" box. My opinions about the matter have not changed, but I'll wait until a clearer picture of the community view emerges before unchecking that box, and if no such consensus is found, I will leave that box checked. Anyway, that box is enabled as of now — and I've saved the file accordingly. David Cannon (talk) 12:22, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * And for good measure, I've also now enabled another box, "Skip if no typo fixed." That's causing it to miss a lot more pages, but at least it will avoid the kind of edits that are causing conflict, unless/until the situation is resolved. David Cannon (talk) 12:35, 23 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks Iridescent. Cannon now continues to do pointless edits and stalks my contributions despite being told many, many times to stop.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 12:39, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * That is not true, Lugnuts. I have now enabled the checkbox that Iridescent mentioned. I have also now enabled another checkbox that will skip all pages if no typo is fixed. I did a test drive and enabled the second checkbox about 60 edits into the test drive. Since then, it's skipped 398 of the 500 pages I've tested. EVERY page edited since the enabling of the second checkbox has had spelling errors or typos. You CANNOT complain about that without being out of order. David Cannon (talk) 12:48, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * As for you claim that I'm stalking your contributions, that's not true either. The one you pointed out was before I checked the second box (restricting edits to pages with typos). You won't find any more. Stalking your edits? NO, I clicked the NEW PAGES option, and it simply gave me a list of 500 new pages. I don't know or care whose they are — there's no such thing as ownership of articles on Wikipedia! David Cannon (talk) 12:52, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * You deny your stalking me, yet edit a whole batch of female pole vaulter articles I created today. Pretty sickening that you continue to hound me after multiple times being told not to.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 12:53, 23 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Look it simply gives me the last 500 articles that have been created! If some of those were yours, so what? Is that stalking? You have no right to ban me, or anybody else, from touching "your" articles. Don't you know about Ownership of articles on Wikipedia? Once you hit the edit button and publish it, it's not yours anymore. All I'm doing is going through the last 500 articles created. As I said, I checked the second button about 60 edits into tonight's test drive. But now that it's checked, there won't be any more that you can object to without sounding thoroughly unreasonable.David Cannon (talk) 12:57, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Funny how your finding these articles I've been creating and then applying AWB edits to them afterwards. Keep up your bullshit, Cannon. The hole you're digging is getting very deep.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 13:00, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Special:NewPages —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:04, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Trappist. And what the "new pages" option on AWB does is load that list and run it through. SO OF COURSE, it's going to collect some of Lugnuts' if they're in the list. The great majority of pages I've so edited had nothing to do with Lugnuts but were created by other editors. Funny how none of them have come forward to complain about being stalked or hounded. Funny how so many of the others I've "stalked" and "hounded" have sent me thank-you popups. David Cannon (talk) 13:13, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

The general idea is if the only change you're making is cosmetic, like adding blank lines above the stub tags, that's generally considered to not be a good use of AWB, even though two blank lines there is indeed a guideline. Now, if you are correcting grammar or making any visual change (to the reader), it should be fair game and you can then toss in any reasonable cosmetic edits on top of that. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 14:16, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Steve. If that is indeed "the general idea", then I accept that. As I've said, I've now got the boxes checked to do only that. By the way, I have a huge passion for Wikipedia and love to see articles not only with good content, but also looking professional. From what you've shared, it now appears that my purely cosmetic edits were not compliant with that, and I apologise. In case you missed what I said earlier, Steve, I reset the check boxes tonight —first checking the "skip if only minor replacement made". I made about 60 edits, but found it still made some purely cosmetic ones. So I then checked the "skip if no typo fixed" box. I went through about 500 articles on that setting. It skipped 398 of them, ONLY changing those that had spelling and typing errors. For the sake of community consensus, I will I will refrain from making purely cosmetic edits from now on. Thank you (and Iridescent) for explaining. David Cannon (talk) 15:08, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I would recommend checking "Only whitespace is changed" and "Only cosmetic changes are made" under "General skip options" too, but I would uncheck "Skip if no typo fixed" because you could be missing a lot of potential useful fixes. I share your view that we should work to make the Wikipedia look as professional as possible, and I'm sure even your recent detractors will welcome responsible non-cosmetic AWB edits from you. Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 16:39, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for that suggestion, Stevie. I'll do a test drive on that setting when I get home from work later- but I'll probably do it on just a small sample (say, 20 pages) in case something goes wrong. David Cannon (talk) 02:15, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree with Stevie is the man! here (and not just because he shares my name, which means that he is, of course, the man. :-) ) I use AWB a lot, as many know...in my case it's mainly used either for talkpage creation or category addition, so not just cosmetic things.  I would prefer that it were available for cosmetic use, because I think consistency is key in a project like this - if every article follows the same format as others, then so much the better.  However, I do try to follow that guideline.


 * That being said: I don't uncheck any of the boxes, because I'm adding a category, or a stub tag, or something of that nature. So I figure: I'm adding a little content, so there's no reason why I can't also make sure the article looks a bit better.  I especially wouldn't keep the typo box checked - fixing typos is a little more than cosmetic editing in my book.


 * That's my two cents, for what it's worth. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 02:17, 24 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your input, Ser Amantio. And Stevie — I found a spare moment to test your settings. They seem to work! They do most of what I want to do, but avoid the kind of cosmetic edits that could be objected to. Thank you for your advice! David Cannon (talk) 03:04, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

I hate to pile it on, but you need to be more careful. I come to an article because it's listed on CheckWiki. Usually it's a broken bracket or other type of problem. I see the article and something is funny and I check the history for possible vandalism. If the article is new, it usually has you listed in the history.

I'm seeing two types of problems. First one is trivial edits you should not be making. Examples are, , and. These come from your last 15 AWB edits. As much as I would like to make the same edit, just changing the name of a template is a trivial edit. Second problem is you are not fixing some obvious errors. It appears you only do what AWB recommends. In the past day, I've found articles you edited that had user signatures, broken brackets, broken tables and html tag problems. All these AWB gives you an alert for.

I'd also recommend you turn "auto tag" off. Some of the tags are unnecessary (see 4th diff above) and you will get yelled at for adding them. I already have my wife and mother-in-law yelling at me and would rather not have others pile on too. So, I turn "auto tag" off. Bgwhite (talk) 06:56, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your advice, Bgwhite. I will endeavour to be more careful from now on. Um, the four links you've just given me don't seem to work on my browser - they prompt me to create new articles. David Cannon (talk) 07:07, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I've fixed Bgwhite's diff templates - the links should work now. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:48, 26 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you! I've had a look. Not sure that I agree with turning auto tag off. Articles that are orphans or stubs should, in my opinion, be clearly labelled as such. Ditto for uncategorized pages. I do understand how some people might get upset, but an orphan or stub tag serves to alert other users to articles that can be improved rather easily. I've followed orphan tags myself quite a bit, and have then added links, cats, etc. So I think adding the tags, even if it's "unnecessary", adds value to the project. Of course some mistakes get made — and I'll try to slow down a bit and weed them out. But as one who has created a lot of articles in the past, I've seen a other editors stamp a lot of "my" articles (NOT implying ownership) with tags. A FEW of those have been in error, in my opinion, but I'd rather just fix that problem by removing the tags than stop the tagging process. When other's have tagged "my" articles, it has alerted me to ways in which they need attention, far more often than not.David Cannon (talk) 11:12, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think you should stop the tagging, but in the case of orphans, I would recommend checking the AWB option (under "Options" in the menu) "Restrict orphan tag addition to linkless pages". Nobody can honestly argue against the orphan tag in that case.  As for updating the name of template(s) alone, that is considered cosmetic because readers won't see any difference.  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 13:14, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Stevie. I've made that change to my settings right now and will give it a go. David Cannon (talk) 13:26, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I didn't say you should stop, only that I would recommend you do. You will get complaints.  You will get yelled at.  Main complaints:   You will tag a page that shouldn't be tagged.  You will tag a page that already has a similar tag.  You will be yelled for tagging a page and not spending 30 seconds to fix the problem.  Alot of editors hate tags.  Be careful.  Bgwhite (talk) 18:04, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
 * "Be judicious" works better, I think. The tags exist so as to spur proper development of the articles. Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 19:02, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

just a heads up
Today I was running monkbot task 6n and went off to do errands. Upon my return, another editor had, rightfully, stopped the bot because it had started blanking pages.

During subsequent debugging I could repeatedly get the the bot to catestrophically fail regardless of what I did to my script. I noticed that one article should have been skipped which caused me to wonder if the problem was AWB and not my script. I restarted AWB, restarted task 6n and allowed it to edit the articles that it had previously blanked. This time, none were blanked.

I tend to leave things running so the failed instance of AWB was probably started weeks ago. I had noticed that the elevator in the difference window had vanished making scrolling of that window a bit difficult. Perhaps there is a clue there.

So the heads up is, periodically restart AWB whether it needs it or not.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:21, 27 August 2015 (UTC)