Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Feature requests/Archive 10

Fix more in double pipes in wikilinks

 * Rjwilmsi 10:41, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Filter a category
You can use list comparer to do this. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:39, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
 * How? Can you please explain how to do this. (or give me a link where it is writen) Thanks! - (t)  Josve05a  (c)  16:32, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
 * AutoWikiBrowser/User_manual shows a screen shot of the List Comparer. Try this:
 * Choose Options > List Comparer.
 * For List 1, use the options to make a list of articles.
 * For List 2, use the options to make a list of articles in a specific category or using a specific template.
 * Click the Compare button.
 * Look at the results Unique in List 1, and click Use List.
 * Close the list comparer and process your list.
 * Good luck! GoingBatty (talk) 23:21, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I will try. - (t)  Josve05a  (c)  00:10, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Load settings associated with an account before logging in the account

 * Rjwilmsi 14:38, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Adding |date=*** to the Unreviewed-template

 * You can do this yourself, add the template to AutoWikiBrowser/Dated_templates. Rjwilmsi  06:15, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Done with this edit while you were writing that. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:18, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Place commas outside quotation per WP:COMMA
This should not be done per MOS:LQ which states: "On Wikipedia, place all punctuation marks inside the quotation marks if they are part of the quoted material and outside if they are not. This practice is sometimes referred to as logical quotation. It is used here because it is deemed by Wikipedia consensus to be more in keeping with the principle of minimal change. This punctuation system does not require placing final periods and commas outside the quotation marks all the time, but rather maintaining their original positions in (or absence from) the quoted material." Technical 13 (talk) 13:36, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Alert: Unbalanced Brackets
Could you please give an example of an article where AWB doesn't already do this? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 18:12, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
 * It gives an alert that there are unbalanced brackets but when you click the alert nothing happens. Werieth (talk) 18:41, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the explanation. Could you please tell us the name of one Wikipedia article that you have tried to process with AWB where you received this alert, clicked on the alert, and nothing happens?  Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 23:23, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

You need to activate Highlight errors. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:40, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Ability to choose how many random pages you want to generate
Check previous requests on that. Random generator is an expensive procedure. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:27, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Show non-existent pages as red
Do you mean after running some pre-parse mode on the list? -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:42, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Very expensive to check all pages in list. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:36, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Skip dead link alert
Hello, I would like to be able to skip alerts for dead links. Would it be possible to add a 'skip' option for this? Thanks! DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 16:07, 6 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure exactly what you are requesting. If you really want AWB to skip straight past any article containing the dead link template, you can do that with the "Skip" tab. But I'd welcome an option to turn off the alert and red highlighting for dead links. It's common for an article to have, say, 31 dead links and an unmatched bracket, in which case the dead link highlighting gets in the way of finding the bracket. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:27, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Currently, I have been using AWB with the 'skip if no Alerts' option checked. I do want to see other kinds of Alerts, as I find that useful, but I do not want to see articles that have only deadlink Alerts. Thanks, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 12:45, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * P.S. Even better would be to have an option to 'ignore deadlinks'. DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 12:46, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Summary: For two different reasons, we'd both like an option to stop dead links being treated as alerts. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:30, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I think I have found an existing way of doing this, via 'Options:Preferences:Alerts'. If this is true, then this is already taken care of. Thanks, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 09:20, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I can now confirm that, yes, this feature already exists, as referenced above. REQUEST WITHDRAWN. Kind regards, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 09:39, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Expand FixCitationTemplates I

 * . Rjwilmsi  10:50, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Accepting URLs to make list
I think now it works for https and not for http. Probably we broke something. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:34, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Wanted pages listing
I found out that here at Wikipedia the Special:WantedPages has been disabled (I don't know why), but on other wikis such as the RuneScape Wiki, have wanted pages and is not disabled. When I tried to make a list in Special Pages, there was no such option, nor was there for Special:WantedFiles. This would be helpful for those non-wikipedia wikis. Evil1888 00:11, 18 November 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.236.58.30 (talk)
 * Waiting on 14869 —  Ree dy  00:20, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Bug fixed recently (2011-02-08). -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:44, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Indeed. But we need 1.18 to go live on the WMF cluster now. Reedy (talk) 13:08, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

It works now. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:46, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Finding a string in the edit box

 * This is already available, using the controls at the bottom right of the "Start" tab. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:00, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks! APerson (talk!) 18:02, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

instead of reporting "Fixed typos" report "Fixed typo(s)"
We are trying to save bytes from the edit summary. -- Magioladitis (talk) 05:44, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Pretty output of typos.txt
We want to make it easier to import into a spreadsheet rather than more "pretty". -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:10, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

GenFix on: Stub goes above Cats!
I'm on cy (Welsh); when Genfix is on, it moves the stub template ("Eginyn") from the bottom to above the Cats. Please amend.


 * Per WP:ORDER, stubs go after cats. Also, you have an illegal username per WP:IU.  You cannot have "bot" in a name. Bgwhite (talk) 03:50, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The Welsh user page makes it clear this account is a bot. -- John of Reading (talk) 04:55, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Then per WP:BOTACC, a bot account should not be asking questions or be in any discussions. An editor should use their username. Bgwhite (talk) 06:00, 26 July 2013 (UTC)


 * This bug archive says "Egin" was recently added as the Welsh-language equivalent of "stub". Is "Eginyn" also to be treated as "stub"? -- John of Reading (talk) 04:55, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

We can customise the order of things for other wikipedias as soon as a proper link to a Manual of Style is provided. -- Magioladitis (talk) 05:55, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

BOT-Twm Crys can you please answer John of Reading's question? -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:16, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Bug fixed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:08, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Expand WikiProjectBannerShell fixes to include WPBannerMeta
Which pages use WPBannerMeta directly? -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:09, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
 * As I showed in my example, Talk:List of city districts by population density uses Template:WikiProjectNotice, which redirects to Template:WPBannerMeta. GoingBatty (talk) 00:48, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

This is not a WikProject, is it? -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:18, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I need someone to give me a full list of pages directly using this template. I think I can fix all. WOSlinker may can help with it? -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:15, 26 June 2013 (UTC)


 * It shouldn't be being used like that. They should create their own banner template rather than adding it directly to talk pages. To find them all, see the talk pages listed at Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Demographics. It's not that many. -- WOSlinker (talk) 15:08, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Marked as "no". It only applied to 8 pages. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:08, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Make a list from a list
Mandarax load the list, select all, left click, create list based on wiki search. Does that work for you? -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:34, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Wow! I had no idea that capability was available. Thanks for the quick response. I've marked the status of this request as "exists". For others interested in this, after you load and select, you right click, select "Add selected to list from...", then choose your list making option. M AN d ARAX  •  XAЯA b ИA M  00:05, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

"#REDIRECT=" and "# REDIRECT "
I second this one. CHECKWIKI error 36. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:34, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Number 3 is NO. Wikipedia adds REDIRECTS through edit box with a space in between. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:42, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Josve05a Number 4 is risky. Number 2 under these circumstances is a NO. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:51, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

for number 1. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:56, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Josve05a also check Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Feature_requests where adding the space is requested. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:58, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

When changing "b." to "born", add Category:xxxx births
The problem that in the specific article there is nothing to 100% determine that this is an article about a person in order to add Human Categories. There isn't any person infobox or other human category. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:07, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * You're right - there's no infobox or other human category to make it 100% clear that this article is about a person. But if AWB is confident enough to change "b." to "born", isn't that enough? Or is "born" also used for non-persons, like animals? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 23:28, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * It is used for animals too but yob/yod categories apply for animals as well. -- Magioladitis (talk) 03:01, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Marked as "no". We can improve human categories but this one is way too risky. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:17, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Automatically comment out missing files
Would this be appropriate for a bot request to go through the backlog instead of adding to standard AWB general fixes? GoingBatty (talk) 19:33, 22 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I have asked for it to be done with a bot but in the long term we should let AWB do it so we don't build up a backlog. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:09, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Too risky to be done by us. We need some bot first so we can detect false positives, ensure consensus, etc. -- Magioladitis (talk) 06:54, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Move Image requested below WIkiProject templates
Implemented steps 1-8 from WP:TPL but only for the templates shown as example. I need a list of templates to copy-paste in the code if you need full functionality.

Moreover, I don't like the idea that Image requested has 20 redirects. The bypass redirect should be used for full functionality in this FR. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:28, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Remove link from ISBN

 * Rjwilmsi 07:49, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Expand FixLivingThingsRelatedDates to fix "born on"
GoingBatty I did this addition to MOS:DAB. Let's first be sure born on is not an accepted format. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:01, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Rjwilmsi 07:39, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Expand FixCitationTemplates II

 * Rjwilmsi 08:18, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Spaces inside wikilinks

 * Rjwilmsi 08:45, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Reference list duplication (CHECKWIKI error 78)
This is a bug. . -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:30, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Escape character in the replace expression

 * works for me, enclosing the 1 inside curly brackets. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:40, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * You mean I don't have to use  any more? Technical 13 (talk) 19:53, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks. Then I don't need any escape character anymore (at least not until the possible day I want to write a dollar sign in the replace expression). Svensson1 (talk) 21:03, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Just want to mention that the possibility to use ${1}0 and also the possibility to use $$ as an escaped $ means that no more escape characters are needed. Svensson1 (talk) 12:52, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Change template-name when redirect

 * - Until we can, you can use the module User:Magioladitis/WikiProjects for this. GoingBatty (talk) 01:02, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

We don't plan to bypass redirects on talk pages based on a case by case scenario. We already provide a custom module for those who want to do this. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:30, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Putting HTML comments on a separate line
In fact it was a bug and we should have fixed earlier. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:36, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Immediate new noinclude.
Could you do this with a F&R rule, such as " ]]  " → " [[ "? GoingBatty (talk) 19:32, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * No, as I tried adding text at the end of the page, the F&R doesn't work. Possibly because F&R run earlier than adding text.Justincheng12345 (talk) (urgent news here) 10:31, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Using Regex it would be " \]\]<\/noinclude> \[\[ " → "''' ]]T13  ( C • M • Click to learn how to view this signature as intended ) 16:12, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Fail:. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:16, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * {{{U|Technical_13}} you can activate F&R "After fixes" and it will work fine. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:19, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

FixSyntax to fix reversed italics tags inside cite fields

 * How common are these errors? Unsure whether it's worth the effort of changing AWB logic. Rjwilmsi  11:30, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know the exact number. 10-20 pages were reported with this one. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:53, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I think this is a rare problem then, can't see it would be easy to rejig Hide or HideMore just for this. Rjwilmsi  14:48, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Database scan for = (explicit string) gave me 63 matches. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:54, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
 * It seems there are more with =  (explicit string) etc. After running general fixes to all pages that contain HTML italics markup there were at about 800 pages (out of 2,000-2,500) not fixed for various reasons. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:24, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Here is the list. I excluded at about 30 pages which I fixed manually. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:31, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Weird. Some people use the inverted italics to abuse use of title for non-italised titles since title is automatically italised. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:43, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Fix whitespace before/after punctuation

 * How about a new page, similar to WP:AWB/T but much smaller, containing rules that are to be treated as part of the general fixes? These would be controlled by the "general fixes" checkbox, not the "Enable RegexpTypofix" checkbox, and the changes would not be listed in the edit summary. The rules could then be developed independently of the core software.


 * Failing that, I would like the typo rule named " ," to be included in GoingBatty's request and re-implemented as a general fix. I think it's messy to have some of the space/punctuation fixes implemented as general fixes (eg WP:PAIC) while others are implemented as typo fixes. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:45, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

This is done via typo fixing right now. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:51, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Skip pages with Template:In creation
GoingBatty the tooltip is fine because it may refer to other wikis too. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:45, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Rjwilmsi 16:00, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Using AWB on a private wiki protected by WinAuth
Steve, I added credential from IE in, could you check this out? Also, you could try CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials. Max S em(Han shot first!) 07:35, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Need an update on whether this is still a problem. Rjwilmsi  13:54, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

If it is still a problem please report as a bug. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:17, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Alert for invalid citation parameters in templates other than Cite web
I just wanted to follow this with a little more information. I was looking at the instructions and at the coding of these templates for the 4 main ones(News, Web, Book and Journal) and I noticed that the instructions are essentially crap. If you look at the coding of these 4 templates there are very few parameters that the others don't have. The instructions just may not say it. I have created an excel spreadsheet showing most of these parameter differences and I will post a table of the results out in the next day or 2. Kumioko (talk) 14:59, 18 July 2012 (UTC)


 * There is ongoing work to improve documentation; please discuss at . There is also a discussion to deprecate and eventually remove a number of superfluous aliases; see Help talk:Citation Style 1. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 15:07, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Great thanks. User:Kumioko/sandbox2 has a the table I just created to help sort out the parameter differnces. Its not done yet but its a start and makes it easier to see the differences. Kumioko (talk) 15:53, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

It seems that AWB also provides alerts for citation - try Ric Flair. Could you please let me know which templates AWB provides alerts for so I can update the documentation? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 00:24, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

It provides alerts mainly for "cite web" and "citeweb" and some general stuff for "cite web", "citeweb", "cite news", "cite journal", "cite book", "citebook", "citation", "cite press release", "cite paper", "cite hansard", "cite encyclopedia" -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:09, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Now that the invalid citation parameters are visible when viewing the article, it is more important to clean up these issues. It would make it easier to work on Category:Pages with citations using unsupported parameters if alerts could be generated for all citation templates.  Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 03:27, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

. Added alerts for cite arXiv. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:16, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

youtu.be/xxxxxxxx/ >> www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxx
Josve05a I think you need to ask for a bot to do it. Check WP:BOTREQ. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:00, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not suggesting/or requesting that every page w/ that should be changed, just that AWB will change this as standard when it finds it. - (t)  Josve05a  (c)  15:14, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Are you asking only that 'www' be prefixed to 'youtube.com' urls that lack it? Or that any string that seems like a malformed youtube.com url ("youtu.be") be "fixed"? Or are you trying to circumvent a blacklist? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:37, 17 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I was trying to edit on that page (see above) when AWB was stopped due to that the url youtu.be is blacklisted. I want AWB to change that link to the full original link with the full youtube.com string. That would make me, as a user, allowed to edit the page with the stuff that I edited with AWB. (Or if someone could chenge the blacklist, that would also work in this case). I hop you understand what I mean. I want to do as the typo program in AWB. Change "youtu.be/xxxxxxxx" to "youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxx". (I highlighted the changed parts of the url.) - (t)  Josve05a  (c)  19:44, 17 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I am not entirely clear on the context of what you are trying to do. But if you are correcting specific typos then use of the general find and replace function might be more appropriate. Or perhaps a bot (as Josve05a suggested). I don't know (and you have not shown) that this specific change is so common that AWB needs to watch for it. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:25, 17 October 2013 (UTC)


 * It's very common and persistent as the "youtu.be/xxxxx" format is created by YouTube's own URL shortener. —Pengo 01:15, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
 * , except for references where "youtu.be/xxxxx" is part of a citation title or quote (e.g. Michael (Glee)). GoingBatty (talk) 02:53, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅ - I only found 15 that needed fixing, which is neither common nor persistent.  Please let me know if I missed any.  GoingBatty (talk) 03:35, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Since the blacklist will not allow any more direct links to "youtu.be/xxxxx", any further cleanup will be to links that need manual care to cleanup, a task not well suited for a bot. IMO, this is better to be done with a find & replace rule with a human to fix the link before saving.  GoingBatty (talk) 13:50, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Marked as "no then. Not suitable for General fixes. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:30, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Remove sort for F&R box

 * Yes please, either remove or add a confirmation popup or an "undo". Just one slight misclick, and the only workaround is to abort the program and restart with the last saved version of the settings file. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:06, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Add an "undo". After destroying a few sets of F&R rules by misclicks, I learned to use the feature to my advantage. On large sets where the order of firing is important, I put sort keys at the beginning of the comment field of each statement (aa010, aa020, ... az340 etc) so that I can resort if the order gets whacked. It also make it easy to move groups of rules, by adjusting the sort keys and then sorting the comments. Adding an "undo" or adding a "Cancel" button in addition to "Clear" and "Done" would allow us to have the best of both worlds. Chris the speller   yack  19:07, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I apologize for duplicating this request (thanks to John of Reading for pointing this out). I have moved my duplicate request (after untemplating it), and the two replies it received below. M AN d ARAX •  XAЯA b ИA M  05:52, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Please don't make it so easy to accidentally sort everything in Find & Replace! I have long, complicated sets of F&R which must be in a specific order. When I accidentally click on a column heading, it sorts all rows by that column. (These accidental clicks usually occur when I'm trying to resize columns.) I would be fine with disabling column sorting entirely, but I imagine some people could find it useful in certain circumstances. How about one of the following? A popup when a column heading is clicked, asking if you really want to sort all rows by those column values. Or provide a general option or a checkbox on the F&R page to enable/disable such sorting. Or disable the left click on column headings, but provide a right click menu to sort ascending or descending. M AN d ARAX  •  XAЯA b ИA M  23:02, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

A button would work well too. Three workarounds: Hope this helps! GoingBatty (talk) 01:33, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) Add numbers in the Comment section so you can always resort by this column
 * 2) If you misclick, exit AWB without saving your settings
 * 3) Recreate your F&R rules as Advanceed F&R rules
 * See for earlier requests. I'd be happy with any of Mandarax's proposed fixes. An additional workaround - begin the F&R rule list with a dummy line or two, so that there is no reason to click just below the headers either, reducing the chance of an accidental misclick from that direction. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:39, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

We now provide a CANCEL button if something goes wrong. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:04, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Birth dates with "c."
The first request is a very good thing but unfortunately only manually. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:19, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * If a birthdate was "c. 1899", it might plausibly be 1900. To automatically add it to "1870s births" could be incorrect, and seems presumptious. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 02:22, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Marked as "no". Too risky in edge cases. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:48, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Change "Main Articles" to Main|xxx|yyy
GoingBatty  merges main templates. Not exactly what you asked but close. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:15, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

can you please database search for "Main Articles" and tell me if it worth to try this one? -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:51, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I found 504 articles containing "Main articles", but not all of them qualify for using Main. GoingBatty (talk) 21:38, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
 * maybe you could save the list somewhere so we fix them manually? -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:50, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
 * - Created at User:GoingBatty/Main articles. GoingBatty (talk) 21:59, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Your help on cleaning this would be valuable. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:08, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Standardise redirects II
There is no documentation for that. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:16, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

thinsp
where have you seen this being used? I am not sure it is expected in body text. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:03, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I just saw it in a talk page and thouht that is might be used at other places. - (t)  Josve05a  (c)  15:06, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

, any chance that someone can give me a list of pages that contain this character? -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:18, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * - an AWB Wiki search for the text  (with quotation marks) brought back 60 articles.  I think it would take you longer to load a list I was to post than to just redo the search.  GoingBatty (talk) 22:08, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * what about replacing them with space if there are not needed? -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:06, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a better question for, the requester of this feature. GoingBatty (talk) 23:21, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Since it does not have any other purpose than to act like a small space I think it is better to replace it by a normal space (or nbsp; if between e.g. 23 km). - (t)  Josve05a  (c)  23:24, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I replaced some of them. Here are less than 60 cases. I don't feel comfortable to replace the rest. Feel free to do the rest if you like. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:22, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Thinspace is used in some very cases and Wikipedia provides a template too. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:38, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Less than 15 occurrences. Someone needs to deal with them manually. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:48, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Saving list in batches
BlackBot. Feature already exists. Tools → List splitter. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:28, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I have tried to find it... Sorry for these senseless requestes. BlackBot (talk) 14:32, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Fix double colons in category names

 * Rjwilmsi 14:46, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Turkish edit summary
Sadrettin are you able in downloading the latest revision? We could cooperate to make full changes in the edit summary in Turkish. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:48, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

http

 * You want us to change a protocol-relative link to forcibly be an HTTPS one? Rjwilmsi  11:24, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I disagree with this suggestion. For example, based on the discussion at Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_111 I've been removing the http(s): for links to www.youtube.com and web.archive.org when making other changes to an article.  I suggest only manually adding the http(s): after testing a protocol-relative link and determining it doesn't work.  GoingBatty (talk) 14:50, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with GoingBatty. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:24, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I also agree with what GoingBatty wrote. I just found it peculiar and stange to write  instead of http:// or https:// .-  (t)  Josve05a  (c)  20:59, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Convert strike to s (CHECKWIKI error 42)
Bgwhite we need to check if this change causes any problems. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:13, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * , I did a database scan for . AWB fixed all cases correctly.  It also correctly did not fix a case where the strike tag was in between nowiki tags.  Bgwhite (talk) 19:35, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Page numbers

 * Is either version recommended in the manual of style? -- John of Reading (talk) 11:35, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The MOS is silent on this, and AWB should not enforce either style. Personally, I find it a pain in the ass to fix 42-3 to 42-43. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 22:46, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I see.  Mohamed CJ  (talk)  07:20, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Marked as "no" until Manual of Style says something more specific on the matter. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:39, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Convert named citations with empty cite web template

 * Rjwilmsi 17:11, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Avoid stretching the diff area
Yes, please! That is easily the most annoying problem with AWB. Seems like it could just be set to insert soft line-breaks after forward slashes.&mdash; Chowbok  ☠  20:32, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, please! I don't like horizontal scrolling at all. --Siddhant (talk) 18:33, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
 * None of you would happen to know what the fix would be? (It'd be HTML/CSS/JS I suspect) —  Ree dy  12:35, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
 * If the Mediawiki diff.css is used as a custom style we get no horizontal bars but truncation of the diff at column width. In Firefox I get the vertical wrap we want. I believe it's because the .NET webcontrol doesn't support the CSS word-wrap feature. Rjwilmsi  18:47, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; SLCC2; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Tablet PC 2.0; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E)
 * Is the browser user agent... So... It think it's IE7.. —  Ree dy  22:48, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Diff was previously fixed size 50/50 but changes after a long string (e.g. URL) could overflow. Add  to force long strings to break, don't overflow.  Rjwilmsi  19:19, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Expand RefsAfterPunctuation for use with inline templates

 * Updated list - GoingBatty (talk) 02:53, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Added who to list. GoingBatty (talk) 21:19, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment that this would be in line with the instructions at Template:Citation needed. GoingBatty (talk) 00:19, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Fixed for sfn. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:25, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Added efn Bgwhite (talk) 22:32, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Is this the definitive list now? Rjwilmsi  15:40, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
 * - I've added a few more that I can think of. I didn't add any redirects, hoping that this fix could happen after WP:AWB/TR.  Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 23:41, 15 November 2013 (UTC)


 * For us being on the safe side we could use those given here and add if necessary later. -- Magioladitis (talk) 01:24, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Efn and Sfn are footnote templates. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:29, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Added in with the help of Rjwilmsi. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:54, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Expand FixNonBreakingSpaces for temperatures

 * Rjwilmsi 10:46, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Double-click shouldn't return diff window to top

 * I have also noticed that in addition to this if I make a change in addition to those being suggested by AWB, double clicking will eliminate any manual edits I have made. --Kumioko (talk) 16:32, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You can get around this by clicking "diff" immediately after doing a manual edit.&mdash; Chowbok  ☠  16:42, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * thanks, didn't know that. --Kumioko (talk) 19:24, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Resolves Kumioko's issue. Rjwilmsi  13:06, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Both issues (loss of position and loss of manual changes) resolved. Rjwilmsi 13:22, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm... I checked-out & compiled revision 5036 and I'm still seeing this behavior. Is there something I need to set?&mdash; Chowbok  ☠  21:07, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Try the latest API edit snapshot. Rjwilmsi  09:43, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm restoring this from the archives, because I have never seen this fixed, in any version. Using 5.0.0.0 now.&mdash; Chowbok  ☠  20:10, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The fix which was implemented deals with the focus in the edit box rather than the requested diff window. I agree that the original request would be very useful, but I also realize that it's much more complicated since the double clicked paragraph probably won't be displayed, so it would have to find the closest paragraph which would be displayed. M AN d ARAX  •  XAЯA b ИA M  20:56, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Aha. That makes sense. Changing this back to "new", then.&mdash; Chowbok  ☠  20:29, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I made a duplicate request below. The clicked paragraph may or may not be displayed, depending on how many automated changes there are; but if not, focusing on the next (rather than previous) paragraph that is displayed would be a nice feature. That way one could go through the diffs one by one from top to bottom, eliminating those which aren't desired.

Note that if you click the 'diff' button to fix any manual changes (resolved request above), that also takes you back to the top of the diff page. It would be nice if both actions (dbl click on paragraph and manual edit plus 'diff' button) would keep you where you are on the page so you can continue editing uninterrupted.—kwami (talk) 22:04, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Rjwilmsi 12:23, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Remove WikiProjectBannerShell if only 1 WikiProject tag is inside.
Remove if only 1 WikiProject tag is inside. (copied from Bugs page). -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:36, 13 December 2013 (UTC)


 * There should at the very least be an exception for Wikipedia space. For example WT:JOURNALS uses the bannershell to collapse the banner and save space because of the three zillion notices. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:03, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Marked as no since False positives exists. Let's leave this to a bot. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:14, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

ISBN with wrong syntax (#69)
I detected that AWB did not fix this on svwp within a ref. - (t)  Josve05a  (c)  13:20, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
 * so you want this change, that right now happens only in enwiki, activated for svwiki? -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:06, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, please. BTW it did not change this in my sandbox on enwp, any reason why AWB did not change it there? - (t)  Josve05a  (c)  19:13, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
 * It seems that some of the general fixes are enabled for mainspace and not userspace. You might want to try AutoWikiBrowser/Sandbox.  GoingBatty (talk) 23:45, 4 January 2014 (UTC)


 * We still do not fix "-" till we find a solution not to replace ISBN-10 and ISBN-13. Check which reverts my previous try to fix the thing you requested. Check also Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Feature_requests/Archive_10 which contains the previous similar FR. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:44, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

done. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:05, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Stop using non-breaking spaces between figures and unabbreviated units of measurement
I didn't know it did that but I welcome any reduction in the use of nbsp. Lightmouse (talk) 22:40, 26 June 2011 (UTC)


 * MOS:NUM says to use non-breaking spaces "in other places where breaking across lines might be disruptive to the reader". In my opinion, 5
 * foot and 3 inches looks odd.  McLerristarr &#124;  Mclay1  06:36, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, it looks odd to me, too, but using a non-breaking space won't fix it, and it might be harder for an editor to notice it with a non-breaking space in it. If there were a consensus to always use a non-breaking space between figures and spelled-out units, I think WP:MOSNUM would say so. Avoiding breaks "in other places ... disruptive to the reader" seems to be giving freedom to editors to exercise good judgment, but I don't think AWB is to the point where we can say it has good judgment. Chris the speller   yack  14:03, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with Chris here. Please can we drop this? Lightmouse (talk) 11:54, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * How will a non-breaking space not fix it?  McLerristarr &#124;  Mclay1  15:59, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * When I said it looks odd, I meant the strange wording, with mixed plural and singular units of measurements, and with the word "and", instead of "Melton stands 5 feet, 3 inches". It wasn't clear to me (and still isn't) what looks odd to you, since the sentence (in the article on Nikki Taylor Melton) has no line break in it anyway, so a non-breaking space or lack of same is not detectable by the reader. Adding a non-breaking space will not help the issue with the strange wording, and AWB did not try to add a non-breaking space after the "5". What AWB does and doesn't do with non-breaking spaces, and why, is somewhat of a mystery to me. Chris the speller   yack  20:17, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
 * There may be no break on your screen but if someone has a narrower screen, then there may be a break.  McLerristarr &#124;  Mclay1  02:46, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Good point. Chris the speller   yack  14:41, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed with Mclay1's initial comment - our goal should be to make the article text more readable to the general public, even if that makes the code a little less readable to editors. GoingBatty (talk) 17:38, 29 June 2011 (UTC)


 * While I agree that At the market, Jimmy bought 27 sheep, 254 birds, 5 heads of cattle and a ladder that is 20 meter long
 * isn't desirable, AFAIK the MOS never got consensus on systematically using non-breaking spaces in the generic "number + noun" situation (which is basically why it's telling people "if things look bad, consider using an nbsp" rather than "this could look bad, so always use an nbsp to make sure" in those situations). Maybe that changed, but it should go through MOS first. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:00, 29 June 2011 (UTC)


 * There really is no good reason for using a non-breaking space between a value and a unit, any more than between a different pair of words. Breaking a line between "ten" and "feet" (or even "10" and "feet") is no worse than between "the" and "market" or "of" and "cattle". The situation where we have consensus is between values and unit symbols like "10&amp;nbsp;ft" as it is agreed that starting a newline with symbols/abbreviations like "ft" does disturb the reader. An example of consensus use is the convert template, which only outputs &amp;nbsp; where abbreviation is off. For reference, the MOS is clear about where we use non-breaking spaces, WP:NBSP and MOS:NUM.
 * May I remind editors of the ArbCom ruling that:
 * "Editors who collectively or individually make large numbers of similar edits, and who are apprised that those edits are controversial or disputed, are expected to attempt to resolve the dispute through discussion. It is inappropriate to use repetition or volume to present opponents with a fait accompli or to exhaust their ability to contest the change. This applies to many editors making a few edits each, as well as a few editors making many edits."
 * This feature of AWB does not enjoy consensus, and editors who continue to use AWB to make such changes after they become aware of the lack of consensus risk falling foul of an ArbCom ruling. Please remove this feature. --RexxS (talk) 17:50, 20 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't see how inserting a "non-breaking space" makes the copy harder to read, but I suspect Chris was really referring to the "&amp;nbsp;" code for a non-breaking space. Yes, that is hard to read, but how a nbsp is to be inserted is a different matter than whether the result is a good thing or not. (And this is not the place for that discussion.) What I would strongly suggest, given the strong feelings on the matter, is that AWB – and bots generally – not be messing with any non-breaking space (either adding or deleting them), nor with the the "&map;nbsp;" code that represents them. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:38, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * A "non-breaking space" is an html entity, "&amp;nbsp;". This is the only way of inserting a "non-breaking space" into wikitext and having lots of them makes the copy harder to read, period. You may be confusing that with a nowrap style that stops a particular block of text from wrapping, which has absolutely no relevance to the issue here. I'm complaining about AWB sticking "&amp;nbsp;" in front of ordinary words like "kilogram"; it is perfectly reasonable to place "&amp;nbsp;" in front of unit symbols like "kg". --RexxS (talk) 02:25, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Update: "Don't add non-breaking spaces for unabbreviated units" by Rjwilmsi fixes this issue. Thanks to all who contributed. --RexxS (talk) 23:16, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Another Question: Is it possible to create a template (mayby template:fnb for figurenobreakingspace) that do this: on a very narrow screen: "At the market, Jimmy bought 27 sheep, 254 birds, 5 heads of cattle and a ladder that is 20 meter long" Source text would be easy to read. It should work as &amp;nbsp; after every figure (0-9). --Diwas 00:39, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Pages which use a template in place of a magic word
GoingBatty I just added the redirect to WP:AWB/TR. Otherwise, it won't work. I already tried. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:03, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Added documentation. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:10, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Request to automatically replace ship names with ship-name templates
- IMHO, it seems like this would be better suited to be a bot request than added to AWB's general fixes. I suggest you also add the details on the variations, and a link that shows consensus from WP:SHIPS. GoingBatty (talk) 14:55, 9 December 2013 (UTC)


 * It seems to me the examples are a little bit contrived. It seems to be a better comparison would be "USS Enterprise (CVN-65)" versus "USS Enterprise (CVN-65)", for which I see no particular benefit. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:47, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * @GoingBatty, that is an interesting idea, I will start a conversation about it on the project page.
 * @J. Johnson, actually, it is very rare for a ship to be linked in an article as you propose, by the complete name of the ship, since the hull number (such as the CVN-65) in that link) is basically included as a disambiguator to distinguish the ship from other ships of the same name (in this case, others named Enterprise). CVN-65 is another name for the U.S. aircraft carrier Enterprise in much the same way that AgNO3 is another name for silver nitrate, in that you could say "Silver nitrate (AgNO3)" to distinguish it from other things called silver nitrate if there were different formulas with that name, but both individually refer to the same thing. If you look at articles like British Pacific Fleet and 1944 in aviation you will see that the routine presentation of ship names either avoids presenting the hull number (which is done by adding "6" to the last field in the template) or avoids presenting both the hull number and the "USS" or "HMS" portion (which is done by adding "2" to the last field in the template). Also, "USS Enterprise (CVN-65)" actually does not even produce the same output as "USS Enterprise (CVN-65)"; that output would be produced by "USS Enterprise (CVN-65)," because ship names are properly italicized, and putting the ship name in the template adds the italics in the right place. Thanks for your comments.   - WPGA2345 -     ☛   02:56, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I was in the Navy, I know about hull numbers, etc., thank you. So the main effect of your template is to properly italicize ship names? For all that a few editors specializing in ship-related topics appreciate having a shortcut, it seems more complicated than the rest of us want to deal with. If you want to cleanup any inconsistencies left by the rest of us I think a bot-based approach would be better than making this a feature of AWB. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:42, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your experience. As you know, the template does more than just properly italicize ship names, it insures the consistent presentation of these names throughout Wikipedia in a variety of formats (for example, with or without the leading USS or HMS) - and of course allows for instant systemwide changes of the formatting. I agree that a bot could probably do a large share of this work, but there may also be cases which need a human eye to look over them to determine whether the most appropriate field is being used for each article linking to a ship name. Regardless, I will proffer creating such a bot in WikiProject Ships. Thanks again.     - WPGA2345 -     ☛   05:35, 12 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Please note, AWB is not only used in en.wiki. A general fix like this will bring serious problems to users of AWB in other versions of wikipedia. I often use AWB for ship articles in de.wiki, where a template like USS undefined does not exist, but links like USS Enterprise (CVN-65) do. It would be very annoying, if this links would be chanced to not existing templates. --Ambross07 (talk) 09:58, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the information. If the interwiki issue can not be worked around, then I will have to withdraw the request, and find a bot or a manual way to do this.   - WPGA2345 -     ☛   01:29, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Intro-missing
Comment: If article starts with a header that has the same name with the article, then AWB removes the header. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:13, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * We need more feedback. A bot should try to do that first. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:47, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Check if the article lacks intro >> if yes, check if the headline of the first section of the article's body match the name of the article >> if yes (example) >> remove that headline. Sole Soul (talk) 17:00, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Is any bot doing it? We need feedback if they are any articles that this tag doesn't apply. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:17, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Better use a bot for this and if a bot works fine then re-apply for a feature. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:22, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Update FixHeadings to fix misspelling of References
fixes "Refferences" "Referrences" and "Refferrences". -- Magioladitis (talk) 04:57, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

fixes "Refrences",  "Reffrences" and "Refrence". I think it's better we stop here. GoingBatty? -- Magioladitis (talk) 05:03, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Looks great - thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 12:36, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Move dead link template inside reference tags
Catch  -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:18, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
 * You might want to check for spaces between and dead link.  Also, per WP:AWB/OP, if this was part of mainspace general fixes, it would come after WP:AWB/TR and therefore you wouldn't need to check for deadlink (with no space).  Thanks for considering this request!  GoingBatty (talk) 01:48, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

GoingBatty This was a first try. I have now a better one:

My problem is that  does not work as expected. -- Magioladitis (talk) 05:36, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

submitted first part of code. Date should be added to the regex. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:45, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

-- Magioladitis (talk) 17:07, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

supports lowercase AND capital first letter. Still not working for this case (two parameters in dead link). -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:28, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

allows spaces between parameters. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:22, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Musuem -> Museum typo fixing

 * I only got 58 results for musuem in articlespace. There's already a typo rule to change "musuem" to "museum" in the article text, which I just used on many articles.  Several articles include "musuem" in a valid URL.  Roundhouse Railroad Museum and 10th Vermont Infantry are examples of articles that included a broken URL that I fixed by changing "musuem" to "museum", while Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art had a dead link that could not be fixed by changing "musuem" to "museum". My guess is that this would not be successful enough to be worth the time it would take for AWB to check dozens (or hundreds) of URLs in an article.  GoingBatty (talk) 22:04, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
 * There are also several Wikipedia image files that contain "musuem" in the file name. GoingBatty (talk) 22:25, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Thryduulf, GoingBatty. This is a "no". I won't risk it. Use typo fixing for typical typos and use search engine to spot the rest and fix them manually. Request file renaming if necessary. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:28, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

op. cit.

 * This will be tricky to code properly. "Op cit. H. Cordesman, p.44" might be acceptable, but "Op cit. p.44" is not. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:23, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Only because the original contributor used the "op cit" in an incorrect way, that doesn't mean that it will be/is used in every situation incorrect. Of course I try to resolve that ibit-tagging and clearing the backlog, if I can, but per se op cit isn't forbidden. mabdul 19:24, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Should we include "loc. cit." though? -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:36, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
 * For instance, I found 220 pages that use it. Should we tag them or not? list. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:42, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
 * for "loc. cit.". -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:45, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

mabdul, John of Reading. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:50, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Automatic capitalization of sentences
If you could provide an example of the regex you're using for word removal with some examples, maybe we can come up with a suggestion for you. GoingBatty (talk) 23:10, 2 March 2014 (UTC)


 * , for example, see the removal of the word "sadly" (in compliance with WP:EDITORIALIZING) in the following diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charlie_Tagawa&diff=prev&oldid=597680072 . I think that AWB should be smart enough to automatically capitalize the word "The" after removing the word "Sadly". Marokwitz (talk) 06:41, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the example. It seems that you would want two regex find and replace rules that are case sensitive:
 * Find:  → Replace:
 * Find:  → Replace:

Until someone comes to your rescue, you could create 26 rules (one for each letter of the alphabet) that look like this:
 * Find:  → Replace:
 * GoingBatty (talk) 13:02, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * ought to work, though the edit summary will be a mess if you have ticked "Add replacements to edit summary" -- John of Reading (talk) 14:00, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, that works great on the article itself, but it displays the subst template (instead of the capital letter) in the preview. GoingBatty (talk) 02:06, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll try it. Still, I think it would be much easier if AWB performs that fix automatically, don't you agree? Non capitalized sentences are errors that can easily be detected and fixed with very low risk of "false positives". Marokwitz (talk) 07:51, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Before you go too far, I've remembered the known limitation that subst doesn't work inside  tags. But it sounds as if you are working with article text, not with references, so you may be OK. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:02, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't agree that it's safe enough to add functionality to AWB general fixes, which would be run by bots with no human review. For example, "Warner Bros. sadly has not released my favorite movie on DVD."  Maybe you could suggest a typo rule at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos.  GoingBatty (talk) 02:03, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
 * , agreed, my suggestion was to add this fix to the search & replace functionality in order to reduce the amount of manual work. Human attention is still required. Marokwitz (talk) 06:53, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

GoingBatty,Marokwitz Marked as "no". to risky to implement. Seek some rules to expand typo fixing if necessary. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:56, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Replace literal hard spaces with corresponding HTML entity
Makyen, GoingBatty only replaces existing "invisible nbsp" with their visible version between units. It treats hard spaces exactly as soft spaces. Any feedback would be nice. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:01, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Merge multiple multiple issues templates together
Silliman University College of Engineering and Design is an example of an article with two multiple issues tags. GoingBatty (talk) 16:11, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

How many pages with this problem are out there? -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:19, 31 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Reasonable question, but I don't know how to count this. GoingBatty (talk) 20:51, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I think it is extremely rare so I am tempted to close it as "no". We can ask someone in WP:BOTREQ to fix the existing cases, if any. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:36, 15 November 2013 (UTC)


 * OK, that sounds reasonable. I'd fix them manually if I knew how to search for articles with more than one multiple issues.  GoingBatty (talk) 14:40, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

GoingBatty Maybe search for (.*)\b([Mm]ultiple issues)\b(.*)(\2)(.*) ? -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:45, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Do you have any recommendation for searching for a regular expression, other than loading all the pages that transclude multiple issues into AWB and preparsing the list? GoingBatty (talk) 00:23, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
 * er... no :( -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:32, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
 * - Your regex works as long as the Singleline option is checked. Preparsing now....stay tuned!  GoingBatty (talk) 21:21, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Upon further review, I needed to simplify the regex to \b([Mm]ultiple issues)\b(.*)(\1) so it would process properly. GoingBatty (talk) 21:38, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

- Many of the 155 I found were either articles with at least Multiple issues in sections or false positives (e.g. "multiple issues" in a comment or prose). However, I did find 29 articles with multiple Multiple issues in section zero: Thought I'd let you have a look at them before making any changes. GoingBatty (talk) 03:44, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Baba Kalyani
 * Tourism in Thailand
 * Prominvestbank
 * Industrial Arts Curriculum Project
 * Lost City Products
 * Harrison Owen
 * Armand Hirsch
 * Bliss Media Ltd
 * Sri Anna Subramanium
 * Temple University Army ROTC
 * Oktiabrskaya (hotel Oktiabrskaya)
 * GOST R Conformity Declaration
 * Khizr Khoja
 * Tereza Gevorgyan
 * Digital Clarity Group
 * Bupa Arabia
 * St. Dominic Catholic Church (Miami, FL)
 * N K Raghupathy
 * Preparatory School of the Brazilian Army ( Escola Preparatória de Cadetes do Exército)
 * Linear transformation in rotating electrical machines
 * Les Schirato
 * Università Leonardo da Vinci
 * E-Dostluk
 * Gyanam Academy
 * List of songs recorded by Mohammed Rafi (T)
 * Antón Gazenbeek
 * UServe Utah
 * Ramkumari Sharma
 * Neuman & Esser
 * GoingBatty I think I'll fix the existing cases and check next month how many new were produced. Moreover, I hope we get rid of the old style. If we do that, there will be much simplification that will allow us to do more with Multiple issues. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:20, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

GoingBatty I fixed everything in the list given above. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:26, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * - Thanks - I merged the templates at Preparatory School of the Brazilian Army (Escola Preparatória de Cadetes do Exército). GoingBatty (talk) 01:57, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

GoingBatty maybe you could one more check this month? Then we can check whether to implement or not. Thanks. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:45, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

July db scan: Only 1 result. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:58, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Marked as "no". Very few results and right now MI has two different syntaxes making things very complicated when it comes to merge. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:54, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Add space after bullet points or numbers in lists similar to how AutoEd already does
Jamesmcmahon0 Please try to make documentation more specific before we implement this. We have a policy to avoid cosmetic changes that may be controversial. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:35, 26 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I was about to post on the talk page about this but noticed someone had already brought it up there. It seems that the consensus is to always have a space (Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lists) but I've asked for clarification and the documentation to be updated since the discussion got a bit technical for me Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 10:22, 26 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I've updated the documentation myself (Manual_of_Style/Lists) after having 20 days of no response for it to be added. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 10:31, 15 September 2013 (UTC)


 * And something close to an edit war is going on there. There exists no consensus on always requiring a space. I suggest no action should be taken to implement this in AWB until it is quite clear that there is such a consensus. Chris the speller   yack  16:00, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I got the same feature request several times for my Auto-Formatter. I always refused to add this feature for several reasons. It's ok as a per-user rule but shouldn't be a default feature for all users. It's a purly cosmetic change with no benefit to the rendered article. It adds a lot of negligible changes to the diff view and makes it hard to read. It's dangerous - you never know if a star in front of a line really means it's a list. There are many exceptions. It's debutable - some user want their wikitext to be condensed. I also suggest to not implement this. --TMg 12:23, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Marked as "no" after TMg's comment. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:00, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Convert p tag to br tag inside infoboxes
Marked as "no". Very few p tags and better ways to handle them. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:14, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Expand FixCitationTemplates to remove deprecated parameters
GoingBatty for origdate. But we need a more general approach. We need Rjwilmsi's help. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:14, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

xfd tags
Where is this written in the manual? -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:03, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

localization for zh.wikipedia

 * That's some imperfections of general fixes. We don't want to make a module to do that. -- Makecat  Talk  09:51, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

First one is done. . -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:37, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Second one is done. . -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:52, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

to prevent nbsp addition in Chinise Wikipedia. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:31, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

I checked in and I see that nothing happens to the last one one. We are done here! Report any bugs if needed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:27, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Handling Template:Not a typo
What is the reason to use not a typo around a stub tag? Thanks Rjwilmsi  15:37, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
 * In this case, I would guess that the reason is that NewYorkNY looks redundant (users would possibly be likely to thinjk that the NY at the end is a mistake). It was inserted in this edit by . עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 17:02, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Renaming the stub as you do is a better solution. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:53, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

עוד מישהו I orphaned the given redirect for you to avoid this problem. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:56, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Change "Image:" links to "File:" links.
bd2412 Image: is a redirect of File: and works fine. If you want to make this kind of changes please use F&R. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:22, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, it works, but it's wrong. As long as other things on the page are being fixed (including many template redirects, which AWB also fixes), why not also fix these? bd2412  T 14:51, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
 * There were many editors in disagreement with this change in the past. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:59, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Fix references that use Ibid

 * What logic to fix? Could be a manual task in many situations. Rjwilmsi  15:53, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll form some rules probably tomorrow and experiment a bit. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:17, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Here's some examples:


 * . "Ibid" without any other specification obviously refers to the previous reference. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:33, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Even easier: No other references in the article. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:09, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * . Only reference in section. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:32, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Too risky I guess. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:33, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Infobox cleanup (edit window only)

 * My personal opinion on this is that the second change is very good. Much needed. The first one seems a bit more controversial though... I prefer that the whitespace isn't present, and I think that opinions are pretty divided on that. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:27, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with you that the whitespace is annoying, and that the latter change is good (but only in infoboxes, not in cite templates where it breaks the flow of paragraphs). --NE2 22:34, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I would like to see evidence of a discussion in favour of this non-visible change before any implementation of it. Also, it seems like a fair amount of work for a non-visible change. Rjwilmsi  08:01, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * AFAIK there is no consensus for adding whitespace. In fact I personally am removing it because it adds extra space to articles and makes no good. The only thing that I find really useful for editors is that every parameter starts in a new line with a vertical line. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:07, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I am also in favor of example 2 but I don't think we should do example 1 either.--Kumioko (talk) 11:13, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Based on the response so far, I withdraw my request for example 1. I agree that AWB should not be used for something that largely boils down to personal preference when editors have vastly different preferences. –B LACK F ALCON  (T ALK ) 17:17, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I know I come to this a bit late, but I do have thoughts on it. Specifically, I like the two proposals as they stand, but I also appreciate that not all editors do. I would go further and say that I personally like indenting the pipes on each new line just by one space for visual ease, and also the same new-line/indented/aligned style when doing cite templates, as there are many possible parameters. However, I do see the point of view of those who prefer things to be in-line. What about having a formatted editor purely as a UI within AWB but writing it back to the servers in a "least-change" format? ClickRick (talk) 18:20, 27 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I rather like the idea of something like that. IMO, example 2 should be enabled by default, and then whitespace one can be enabled on a per-editor basis (certainly not a general fix, but this would fit in the assisted editing). Also incredibly useful would be the standardizing (not enabled by default) of the presentation of citation templates as detailed in here. This would save reference gnomes tremendous ammounts of time. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 10:46, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree method two should be a genfix, templates/infoboxes are currently a clusterfuck and anything we can do to make it better is a good thingtm ΔT The only constant 23:05, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * (\{\{[\w\s_]*[Ii]nfobox([^{}]*?\{\{[^{}]+\}\})*[^{}]*?[^{|}](= )?) *\| *\n ?(?=[\s\w]+=) and $1\n| run until the regex has no more hits. (right now I use it in the advanced find and replace running 20 times). ΔT The only constant 19:23, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Infoboxes could be cleaned up to remove the pipes (and spaces) after the template name and the parameters and put pipes before the parameters like here.  McLerristarr &#124;  Mclay1  22:42, 2 November 2010 (This comment was moved from another feature request.)

After many tries to make this happen there were always reactions that this is cosmetic. So marked as "no". -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:09, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Allow the refresh of Rename template parameters
GoingBatty we already do. Main.cs line 3125. -- Magioladitis (talk) 04:51, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * It doesn't work for me - does it work for you? GoingBatty (talk) 05:15, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

GoingBatty it seems it works now. I only pressed refresh status/typos. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:48, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * step 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Sandbox&diff=prev&oldid=620943611
 * step 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAutoWikiBrowser%2FTemplate_redirects&diff=620943762&oldid=620656394
 * step 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAutoWikiBrowser%2FSandbox&diff=620943902&oldid=620943611
 * Confirmed - thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 22:52, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Auto correct Pseudo-Headings
The problem is that replacing a misused  with   doesn't really make things better. It's still of no value in terms of semantics. I think this needs a user to decide if, for example, a  is missing in the next line. --TMg 12:33, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Stephan Kulla marked as "no" after TMg's comments. This one most probably will have a lot of false positives. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:00, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

No autoreplace for "life long"
Opus33 you have to address to WP:AWB/T. this is a typo fix and not a general fix. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:22, 14 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Opus33 (talk) 22:37, 14 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Typo fixes are not done by bots, but by human editors who should review their edits before saving. To avoid the issue, I changed the article from "his whole life long" to "his entire life". GoingBatty (talk) 22:40, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

New Tab and improvements for Admin functions
Reguyla hourly protection is possible. Just time "1 hour". Example. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:07, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

added templatecreator for edit/move protection. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:08, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

more edit summaries for Protect/Move. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:17, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

anyone with delete rights can delete. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:38, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

After the last change not only admins can delete pages so putting everything in a new tab might not be a good idea. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:47, 18 September 2014 (UTC)