Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Working/Archive 1

What happens when category is deleted?
Category:Environmental science timelines was deleted and I would have thought that you would have upmerged all the pages in it to Category:Science timelines but instead the category was just deleted. Now there are a bunch of timelines with no timelines cat and I have no way of finding them. Is this what is supposed to happen? Do I need to make a special request during the discussion if I think the categories should be upmerged instead of deleted? --JeffW 19:33, 6 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, and yes. According to the nomination, there were only 4.  Unfortunately, the actual deletions were done by, and the new administrator  was careless and the edit summaries don't indicate the category that was removed.  So, hunting will be hard.  Good luck!
 * --William Allen Simpson 05:02, 7 May 2006 (UTC)


 * JeffW - if you still need help with this, I can use some bandwidth and download a database dump. I might be able to recover those timelines. Syrthiss 12:37, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

** Category:ALGOL dialects to Category:ABCL programming language family
This change was a mistake that unfortunately wasn't caught in the discussion because of the huge number of categories listed. They should have been changed to Category:Algol programming language family can it be corrected? --JeffW 03:47, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Of course, I'll add it to the queue. My apologies. Syrthiss 12:42, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * It was my cut-n-paste error so it should be (and is) my apologies. If there's away for it to be double checked that would be good, but I think it's fixed. SMALL was the only one left in Category:ABCL programming language family that should have been in Category:Algol programming language family instead. The other three in Category:ABCL programming language family are all ABCL languages. It looks like the rest had already caught by Cyde and others. Sorry! -- JLaTondre 12:47, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah, ok. Thanks for following up on it then. Syrthiss 12:55, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Full automation
Just so you guys know, I've programmed up a little something special for Cydebot that lets him tackle everything on this page with a single command. So if stuff is ever lagging behind just send me a ping and I can have Cydebot do it all in a jiffy ... there's no reason to waste time setting up a bot manually to handle each different move, especially when there's lots of them to work on. -- Cyde↔Weys 13:52, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Speedy moves
removed this section as redundant. Admittedly, the format is the same as the "Move/Merge and delete" section, but traditionally this has been kept separate. I can only speculate as to the original reasons, but the practical aspects are:
 * 1) There isn't a "per-day page that has the discussion on it."
 * 2) Busy folks (both editors and administrators) can quickly list the final results from WP:CFDS here, and rely on others (and bots) to finish the work.
 * 3) It may help these non-controversial moves be SPEEDY (or speedier)....

What thinkest anybody else?
 * --William Allen Simpson 23:59, 18 June 2006 (UTC)


 * (from my Talk)

What do you see as the differance between items that should go in WP:CFDS and items that should go in Categories_for_deletion/Working? — xaosflux  Talk  04:36, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Huh? Requests go in /Speedy, then the results go in /Working.  Same items.
 * --William Allen Simpson 11:17, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

The speedy move section should be kept ... it is different than the "regular move" section. If nothing else, it does require a different edit summary format for the bot, and thus the bot needs to know how to differentiate between normal and speedy moves ... putting them into two separate sections on the page is the easiest way to do this. -- Cyde↔Weys 16:07, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * It sounds like Xaosflux isn't saying that the speedy move section of the working page is redundant with the regular move section of the working page. Instead I think he's saying that an administrator (or bot) can work off the speedy move section of the main page so there is no need to move it to the working page.  I think the answer to that is that it gives an admin a shot at weeding out those entries that don't meet the speedy criteria before a bot does the dirty work.  --JeffW 17:11, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * There may be some use, but this at least seems confusing for other editors wanting a speedy move/rename for a category, should it go in: Speedy Moves or WP:CFDS. I work WP:CFDS fairly regulary, but almost never look at Speedy Moves.  The most common template,, references CFDS. —  xaosflux  Talk  01:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Of course cfr-speedy references WP:CFDS! All nominations go in WP:CFDS.  Nominations NEVER go in /Working.


 * Are you saying that having /Working display at the bottom of the CfD page is confusing? In that case, we should stop transcluding it, and just link to it instead.  That's OK with me.
 * --William Allen Simpson 03:46, 20 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Or is he saying that admins who want to speedy delete some categories don't know that they're supposed to go to the list on the /working page instead of the main list. --JeffW 04:07, 20 June 2006 (UTC)


 * For the possible editor confusion, I've made a proposal for a simpler linear organization of the listing over at Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion. They'll only see WP:CFDS on the main page.


 * For the possible administrator confusion, we'll need cleaner/simpler documentation....
 * --William Allen Simpson 05:05, 20 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Even I'm getting lost now! On WP:CFD anyone coming to list something sees the /Speedy transclusion (which I think is JUST FINE) and the /Working transclusion as well (which I also think is just fine).  The part that I'm seing as redundant is that to anyone viewing WP:CFD there is a speedy category section inside of /Working that is diferant then the /Speedy transclusion. —  xaosflux  Talk  02:15, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
 * As of right now these are seciotns 4(Speedy renaming) and 6.3.1 (Speedy moves) on the TOC. As renaming and moving are the same thing with regard to a category, why have 2? —  xaosflux  Talk  02:17, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * We have two because:
 * one is a primary (level 2) section with a "Add requests for speedy renaming here" as a level 3 under it,
 * the other is a level 4 under "To be emptied or moved",
 * they have somewhat different names so that any links to the CfD page will link to the correct section, a requirement of the current Mediawiki software....
 * --William Allen Simpson 06:03, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Does this imply that the correct process is to put a nomination in /Speedy, wait 2 days, move it to /Working, work it, then remove it? If so all that process seems to be taking the speedy part out of the process. Personally I work nominations to completion right out of /Speedy all the time, and haven't gotten any complaints yet. — xaosflux  Talk  12:23, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, that used to be the process (long before I split off the /Working page version of "Cleanup overhead"). In fact, each item in the "Speedy Move" section would have an annotation "approved by ...", so that the decision was recorded in the history.  For example,
 * approvals as noted on old page
 * cleanup of old page just before /Working
 * as split to /Working
 * continuing same tradition in /Working


 * However, I'm sure that occasionally working them right out of /Speedy is not a problem, as long as each decision is clearly documented in the edit history with appropriate summaries. Really, the /Working version would be most useful for bots doing cleanup, as noted by Cyde above.
 * --William Allen Simpson 17:04, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the elaboration. My bot Fluxbot has begun working WP:CFDS items, but is only running under AWB, after I manually review the entries. Happy categorizing! —  xaosflux  Talk  00:46, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

are we stalled out for a reason?
It seems very few discussions are getting closed. Is there a reason for this?--Mike Selinker 07:50, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Both CfD and TfD are way behind, so I'm assuming the regular administrators have gone on break.
 * --William Allen Simpson 11:14, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm personally still on break for a bit until work settles down. Syrthiss 12:30, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
 * No problem. I was just wondering if there was a technical reason or debate among admins or something.--Mike Selinker 15:14, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, I've worked on the 6 weeks behind TfD, and with, we've gotten it almost caught up! I'll try to do more here soon.
 * --William Allen Simpson 02:32, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not doing CFDW anymore until the user categories are split out into a separate process and not listed on this page. -- Cyde Weys 01:52, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * That's a shame. It'll just take longer to do without your help.  --Kbdank71 02:12, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

There's something big in the joblist (470k items when I looked last) so some of the user category moves are taking longer while the templates sort out. The smaller categories I was going and touching the articles by hand, but I'm not going to do something that labor intensive for 100+ userpages. :) I still managed to knock out most of the 21st's queue today while working. Syrthiss 19:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Where do you find the joblist? --Kbdank71 13:38, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Special:Statistics tells you how many items are in the job queue (currently 0). Syrthiss 13:44, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Reason is that all the standard bots for handling this choke at categoruies created out of templates (which are most Wikipedians... categories). The problem is that one needs to track every single tempalte including the category and manually remove them, and some categories are cinluded by up to 10 different userboxes, not helpful. -- Drini 17:28, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
 * seconds this. Syrthiss 22:49, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I have created a tool that averts this situation. I will be uploading to my website with source and ,exe it iw written in VC++. The program was used today to help find the remianing UBX in the september 2 User Cats for deletion. (was working with Sagaciousuk and his bot User:Sagabot, on IRC. The results given from the program allowed easy cleanup after the bot made initial passes) —— Eagle (ask me for help) 17:24, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

ARGHHHHH
There was this line:
 * **category:Fictional characters with spiritual awareness - unchanged

on the /Working page under Moves and Deletes. whoever what pasted it, please don't!!. It confuses bots. And if there was nothign to do, why list it at all? -- Drini 15:06, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Just keeping you on your toes. Or an oversight on my part.  --Kbdank71 16:43, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * While I'm here, what are you doing with the discussions you closed on the 24th? I don't see anything happening with them, nor are they listed on cfd/w.  --Kbdank71 16:43, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I got interrupted while I was doing them. I?m resuming the working, and wil lcontinue clearing logs along the day. 23 and 24 have some really huge categories, I?ve been doing superheroe stuff for the past 2 hours. -- Drini 17:25, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Also, for cases that noone will really dispute since they're clear cut, I usually clear them before closing. Only the ones I?m about to clear and not clear-cut, I?ll close first (so noone closes witha different option in the middle of my run). I do this precisely to minimize the state of closed CFDs whose category has not been processed. -- Drini 17:28, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Gotcha. No problem, I was just curious.  I noticed the clear cut ones that were deleted but not closed yet.  I just went ahead and closed them.  --Kbdank71 18:28, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Backlog cleared sir! Almost 5000 pages done. -- Drini 22:45, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks much for the help. It's very appreciated.  --Kbdank71 02:11, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that some of the discussions from Sept-24 may still have some pending actions, such as Categories for deletion/Log/2006 September 24 which was closed delete, but not yet deleted. In general is it OK for me to list these on cfd/w or would you prefer that only admins put things on that page when they close the discussions? --After Midnight 0001 12:39, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
 * If some categories still need to be processed (like Fictional love triangle) for all means, DO relist them again on the /working page, it's easier for us to spot them there. -- Drini 00:06, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks. It's good to know that I am allowed to do this when needed.  I've added a couple from the 24th onto the page. --After Midnight 0001 02:34, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Fictional cats
Speaking of superheroes... is it just me or are there just way too many of these "fictional" categories? In the last few weeks, I have nom'ed a couple of these and I've seen alot of activity on many others. Do we have a glut, or are we comfortable with the current state? --After Midnight 0001 03:13, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Category:America Online to Category:AOL
I ain't being funny or anything, but why can't bots complete this move? --Sagaciousuk (talk) 20:04, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I didn't want the cat redirect to get moved to aol. If it won't, then have at it.  :)  --Kbdank71 20:29, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Waxy Yellow Buildup
I've been cleaning up some of the old entries in Category:CfD 2006-10 ... It seems that when a bot renames a category, sometimes it makes a mistake and copies the cfr tag into the new category. Look at the history of Category:Harvard Medical School alumni for an example. The subst headers are considerably more difficult to parse.

I've gotten several warnings from AntiVandalBot, it gets annoyed by people removing cfr/cfd/cfm tags. I don't blame it, it's working as designed, we want it to consider removing these tags as vandalism. However, I've taken to putting the discussion link as a comment to the change, so that someone looking over it later can tell what was going on.

However, it's often quite difficult to find the discussion, since often there's no indication of even what day to look at. And then of course the discussion is often listed under the old name, and not the new one, or it could be part of an umbrella nomination.

I've had a few thoughts about this ... it seems to me that when a new category gets created as the result of a discussion on the cfd page, we ought to add a link to the relevent discussion on the new page. Otherwise it can be difficult to find, later.

I've created a few of these, see Category talk:Solar System, although it seems strange to see a cfdend with an outcome of rename.

I'm hoping the bot bug can be fixed soon. If they could be made to add some kind of discussion link that would help a great deal too. -- ProveIt (talk) 15:55, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Can you run your bot to ignore everything between "BEGIN CFD TEMPLATE" and "END CFD TEMPLATE" when creating the new category? As for finding the discussion, it should be fairly simple.  It's linked to in the CFD template "this category's entry".  And even if by mistake, the CFD stuff gets moved to the new category, the link will still point to the correct discussion.  And if, for whatever reason, it's not linked right (which it should be), "What links here" will get you to the discussion.  --Kbdank71 16:43, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

deletion of CFDU empty categories
There's another big backlog of categories that have been emptied on Categories for discussion/Working/User. Can someone delete all of them, please?--Mike Selinker 16:12, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Done. the wub "?!"  00:30, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Much obliged!--Mike Selinker 00:51, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I just dropped another large collection of categories to be deleted in there, so if someone wants to take those out, I'd appreciate it. Also, Category:Members of the SpongeBob SquarePants Wikiproject contains a banned user whose page has been locked, so someone please fix that (or delete it).--Mike Selinker 06:00, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm on it :-) the wub "?!"  21:35, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

need a bot or two on UCFD
Over on Categories_for_discussion/Working/User, there are some categories that really need bots to handle them. AMong them are the conversion of Category:User languages to Category:Wikipedians by language, the conversion of Category:User writing systems to Category: Wikipedians by writing system, and the deletion of Category:Friendly Wikipedians and Category:Angel Wikipedians. If anyone has a bot can that can go to the working pages and take those necessary steps, I'd appreciate it.--Mike Selinker 08:06, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Is it possible to get a list of ALL category members on a single page??
My query is that when I visit a category page that contains links to hundreds of articles, such as Category:Cleanup_from_December_2006, the initial page presented only presents a subset of the total articles, with links to the "next 200" etc. This is obviously a useful feature to stop a user's browser having to try and print 10,000 articles if you are viewing a huge category. However, is it possible to override this behaviour and get a list of all articles in a category on a single page, no matter how many there are? (perhaps by sending an argument in the URL such as "&showall=true") The reason I ask is that I have a bot that needs to fetch a list of all articles in a category and it would obviously be a lot easier if it could do this from a single page. Many thanks - PocklingtonDan 17:00, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
 * You can use the query API to fetch a list of category members, but this is limited to the first 500. AutoWikiBrowser seems to manage with fetching larger categories though, you might want to ask on the talk page how it does it. the wub "?!"  22:58, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Culling bot list
While it makes sense to have removed bots that haven't been active since October or November, removing bots that were making daily CFD edits, including edits the day before the "purge"——makes no sense. I had made my latest CFD edits exactly one week prior to the list being deleted. How often will this have to be done? Do I have to add myself back to the list every time I don't make edits for a week? Just a mite heavy-handed. &mdash; DomBot / ChiDom  talk  08:39, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Upmerge but bot
Can any of the bots do an upmerge only if the article is not already a member of another subcat for the parent? Vegaswikian 00:08, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Pointers to lists created by listifying categories?
Several categories whose CfD was closed as "Listify then delete" have recently been deleted. How can I find whether lists have actually been created for these categories or not? I'm looking for the lists that should have been created from the now-deleted categories Category:Doctor Who cast members, Category:Doctor Who directors and the like. Can someone point me to them? And is there a way that in future "listified" categories can have some sort of pointer towards the list that's been created? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:05, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

not closed ?
Category:Actors_by_science_fiction_television_series

I think this cat wasn't correctly cfd closed, and that since this cat should be listified actually per the performer by performance concensus --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 09:35, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Possible bot help?
There's a rename for Category:WikiProject Cheshire that's been stalled for a few days now. The problem seems to be that the usual transclusion magic isn't quite working right. We can update the template, but the new categories don't take effect until the relevent talk page gets touched. I think I may have figured it out though. The "broken" tags all include the namespace specifier. I'm not 100% sure that that's the problem, but the ones that work were transcluded the normal way, and changing it always fixes the problem. Of course any change fixes the problem. In any even we certainly don't want to update hundreds of files by hand.

Would it be possible for a bot to replace all   with  ?  Just removing the Template: is all thats required ... -- Prove It (talk) 03:20, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It seems the servers are way backed up, with over 2 million in the job queue. That's probably the problem. -- Prove It (talk) 04:22, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

In process
Should this be made a subpage that is transcluded? If we do that, we can update the information once and it will appear on both pages. Right now we need to update this information in two places. Vegaswikian 06:21, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Could do, though I was pondering this today and can't really see any practical benefit to listing these on WP:CFD (I presume that is what you are talking about). This information is necessary to getting things done on WP:CFD/W, but what use is it to a general (ie non working) CfD contributor?  Someone who pops up here to contribute to discussions is (typically) not interested in the whole closing process.


 * X damr talk 12:48, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't have a problem if we leave a link to the work section. I may just make that change since your points on target. Vegaswikian 19:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Time to protect this page
WP:CFD/W is currently semi-protected, and I propose that it should now be fully protected to prevents its exploitation by vandals.

A recent spate of vandalism by User:Mais oui! (see User talk:Mais_oui%21) included these edits to WP:CFD/W, which had the effect of inappropriately merging a category into its grandparent category instead of deleting it (it was a duplicate category)

Luckily, it was part of a wider piece of vandalism, so I checked MO's contribs, and spotted the CFDW edit, and was able to revert it only 100 minutes later in this edit.

Unfortunately, even though cydebot began its run several hours later, the vandal's merge instruction was picked up cydebot (which, luckily, I spotte while it was in progress).

I discussed the problem with Cyde at User talk:Cyde, and suggested protecting this page, which Cyde thought was probably unnecessary, because he "manually inspect the list to verify that nothing outrageous has been inserted into it", which is good news ... but I don't feel happy about relying on the bot owner to spot the more subtle forms of vandalism. No disrespect to cyde, who I know is very careful and conscientious, but Mais Oui's vandalism illustrates how it is possible for for a small and subtle act of vandalism to CFD/W to have huge destructive consequences. This exploit was relatively minor, but the next one could be much bigger.

Non-admins should not need access to CFDW, because non-admins are usually supposed to close only those CfDs which can be closed with a "keep". I know that we allow an exception when there is a backlog, but I would prefer to have backlogs accumulate from time to time than to leave CFDW open to vandals in this way. The ability to lever the power of a bot gives a vandal the possibility of doing immense damage, and now that the loophole has been exposed, I think it should be closed promptly. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:11, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Also, Cyde is not the only one who runs a bot for this page, and I believe some people change cats semi-manually using AutoWikiBrowser. In other words, it's kind of difficult to rely on all of these people to check the circumstances all the time. Based on that, the protection seems like a good idea. This page is basically a vulnerability much like the high-risk templates.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  08:05, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, I have upped the protection from semi-protection to fully-protected. Sorry for jumping ahead of consensus, but now that the security-through-obscurity is gone, it seemed better to protect it now. This can of course be undone if needed; if it stays protected, we will need to revise the text at Deletion process to note that non-admins can never close CfD discussions with anything other than a "keep" or "no consensus" result, because they cannot edit WP:CFD/W. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:43, 5 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I endorse this action. I've always been somewhat surprised (though pleased that it didn't seem to be necessary) that a high risk page like this is merely semi-protected.  However recent events have shown the potential for chaos.  I am a little sorry that non-admins will now be restricted to closing keep/no consensus debates, as per the strict letter of policy; many editors have done good work in this area while not being admins.  This has always been an exception though, and I think that we can live with it closed.


 *  X damr  talk 12:34, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I share your concern about those editors who have done good work without being admins. Maybe there are some people who ought to be nominated at RFA? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:37, 5 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not opposed to full protection per se. The only problem I see is in regard to Categories for discussion/Working/Manual. Basically, I can't move categories to WP:CFD/W's ready for deletion section after I'm done any more. No biggie but I wonder if it's appropriate to just tag the empty category as CSD after I've emptied it? -- Seed 2.0 14:44, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Couldn't it just be marked at Categories for discussion/Working/Manual "ready for deletion", so the admins can delete it (if empty) or pass it over to WP:CFD/W for the to finish off? Maybe an extra section at Categories for discussion/Working/Manual would help? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:37, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a good idea. I'll make the changes to WP:CFD/W/M. By the way, I have a feeling that you just put CfD in the lead in the prestigious 'scariest-looking shortcut' competition. ;) Seed 2.0 19:41, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * :) I did also create WT:CFDWM, which is less scary, but does somehow suggest to me something to do with WMD. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:53, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Hehe. Let's hope Googlebot misses this page or we'll be responsible for misleading all those nice people who search Google for 'WMD manual'. ;) Seed 2.0 08:29, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:CFD/W should be updated with new Ready for Deletion instructions -- pb30 < talk > 20:43, 6 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I have added a note at Deletion process warning that non-admins should not close discussions with a "delete", "rename" or "merge" result. Feel free to improve the wording if you see fit! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:48, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Ack, I was working through the 4 day backlog, starting at the bottom of June 10th, and closed a delete discussion. I've worked with CfD closure many times before so I am familiar with the process (which means, I missed the newly added note regarding non-admins and page protection). Anyway, my point is sorry for doing that: Category:808 State is ready for deletion. Maybe the sysop tools are useful for something ;) (p.s. I added a note on the deletion process page as well) -Andrew c 01:28, 20 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Done :) --  X damr  talk 10:45, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Protection may reduce vandalism problems with this page, but will do nothing against errors. Bot operators should not just blindly let their bots process anything on this page, as even admins can make errors. —  xaosflux  Talk  16:41, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

2-day waiting period before running category deletion bot. "Hang on" tag.
I contested a closing admin's "delete" decision for a category. I thought the admin made a mistake, and did not have a consensus, or even a rough consensus, to delete the category. I left the following message (paraphrased) at User talk:Cyde since Cyde runs the category deletion bot. The bot had depopulated the category, and then deleted the category.

Can the bot recreate the category? If not, then it is not easy to repopulate the category. I suggest instituting a standard waiting period of say, 2 days, before running the bot. I still haven't heard from the closing admin. I left a message on their user talk page. I don't see any great need to rush these things. Maybe a notice can be created for contested category deletions. Same as for contested speedy deletions of images. What happens if an official deletion review is started? Are you notified? Do you delete in spite of an official deletion review? That would really be wrong. I appreciate what you do. You need to appreciate my efforts, too, in my opinion.

See Template:Db-reason. One can remove the speedy-delete template if the reason does not apply. Or one can add. We need some kind of "hang on" tag that creates a "hang-on" list of contested category deletions. Kind of like a category tag adds a page to a category list. That along with a 2-day waiting period should solve the problem, and give some time for the hang-on tag to be added. --Timeshifter 06:27, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Are you asking about Categories for discussion/Log/2007 June 11? Seems like there was a clear consensus with supporting reasons for deleting.  As to your suggestion, I don't see a problem with the current process.  While there is no hang on tag, you can always request a deletion review and request that someone there hold up the process.  Also, the hang on tag for speedy deletes does not guarantee that the article will not be speedy deleted.  In some cases, the reason is clear and no amount of discussion will change the facts of why the article needs to be deleted.  I fail to see why you think there was no consensus for the action taken if this was the discussion in question.  Vegaswikian 06:49, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

(Undelete) I gather that categories are depopulated in spite of ongoing WP:DRV discussions. That needs to be fixed. I don't see why a "hang on" category deletion tag could not be created. In fact, I suggest making it a category itself. For example: Category:Hang on. Do not delete category.

Category:East Jerusalem closing admin decision was to delete it. Incorrectly, I believe. east jerusalem. See discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Palestine. I left a message at the user talk page of the closing admin. The deletion discussion took place at Categories for discussion/Log/2007 June 11. The deletion was incorrect in my opinion due to this: From Deletion process {emphasis added): "If the discussion failed to reach consensus, then the category is kept by default, but the decision should generally include a reference to the lack of consensus, in order to minimize ambiguity and future confusion." I count 8 keeps and 19 deletes from non-anonymous users. The "oppose" is a keep vote, and I counted it in the 8 keeps. Most of the deletes were from users who did not enter into discussion. I see no consensus, and not even rough consensus. Deletion review says to ask the closing admin politely to correct possible mistakes in closing: "Deletion Review is the process to be used to challenge the outcome of a deletion debate or a speedy deletion. 1. Deletion Review is to be used where someone is unable to resolve the issue in discussion with the administrator (or other editor) in question. This should be attempted first - courteously invite the admin to take a second look." --Timeshifter 06:54, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * If DRV undeletes a category, it can be repopulated by reverting/undoing bot edits. It's easy for all categories except the very large ones. Conscious 06:31, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the info. --Timeshifter 11:03, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Merges to multiple destinations - can any bots handle these?
Title says it all really - do these still need to go to WP:CFD/W/M? I only ask because it was my hazy impression that these could now be handled on CFD/W, though this might be completely wrong. Anyone able to tell me?

 X damr  talk 14:16, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I obviously can't speak for Cyde or anyone but myself but, as it presents itself to me, the problem isn't so much that they can't be handled in an automated fashion. It's that they differ from the usual MO and therefore require human attention. In other words, if a move deviates from the usual A->B pattern, human interaction is required to tell the bot what to do. --S up? 14:22, 29 June 2007 (UTC)


 * AMbot can handle these just fine, but many bots do need manual intervention to start the process for them, so they should be listed on the manual page. Also, feel free to list any of them at User talk:AMbot/requests if you like. --After Midnight 0001 15:22, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Edit Protected
editprotected


 * Under the bot section, change to:

Bots
Bots task pages are listed below. Tasks on those pages are being handled by the bot, and may or may not also be listed below.


 * I removed the inactive bots (no edits in the last 2 months or more) and add an active bot. Thanks! ~  Wi ki her mit  20:43, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
 * ✅ by Animum: . ~  Wi <font color="#3DD0F5">ki <font color="#6EDCF7">her <font color="#9EE8FA">mit  00:24, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Category member move
Hi there. Whenever you guys get a chance, can someone please send a bot to move: Per SineBot's RFBA discussion. I totally didn't realize that only one category was moved over. :P Cheers. :) -- slakr 04:10, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Category:Non-talk pages with subpages automatically signed by HagermanBot
 * to ==> Category:Non-talk pages with subpages that are automatically signed

Category:"Related ethnic groups" needing confirmation
I was going to close this CfD but, as a new admin, I have no idea how to do it. The closure should be that the articles that are now in this category, should be the corresponding talk pages. Example, Abayudaya is in this category but should not be. However Talk:Abayudaya should be in the category. WikiProject Ethnic groups is concerned but does not seem to have been very active in the CfD discussion. Articles are placed in this category by a infobox, which is very complex. There are over 700 articles in this category. How should this be done. I'm happy to leave this one to a more experienced admin but I'm curious. --Bduke 05:47, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Without actually looking at the discussion, it sounds like you are wanting to close the discussion with a decision to repurpose the category to the talk pages. Requests of this type are usually placed at WP:CFD/W/M. --After Midnight 0001 11:17, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, that is exactly how I think the CfD should be closed. These categories are to help the Project administer things. They belong on talk pages. However, I am not going to close it because I still do not understand exactly what to do. I am not sure the template adds all articles that it is on to the category, or only some that "need confirmation". Should the category be removed from the template first? That would depopulate the category. How then does a person or a bot know what talk pages to put in the category. I think it needs a more experienced admin that myself, but I would like to learn from the process. --Bduke 01:20, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I was looking to see how this could be done, hence not closing it myself. AWB can grab the list of pages in the category, then convert them to the corresponding talk pages. It can then run through and add a template or category to the correct talk pages, before removing the category from the infobox altogether. With almost 800 articles it would probably need someone with an AWB bot. CJLL Wright has closed as keep for now though, but this method would work if we decide to go ahead. the wub "?!"  18:59, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Closing script
User:The wub/CloseCFD.js is a script for closing CfD debates, heavily based on WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/CloseAFD.js. To use it, add importScript('User:The wub/CloseCFD.js'); to your monobook.js file. Then when you edit a CfD section, there should be a "close" tag at the top of your page. I hope to add automatic insertion of cfdend on talk pages at some point. Any other suggestions are welcome on my talk. the wub "?!"  19:04, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Edit request
editprotected Change

Bots
Bots task pages are listed below. Tasks on those pages are being handled by the bot, and may or may not also be listed below.

to

Bots
Bots task pages are listed below. Tasks on those pages are being handled by the bot, and may or may not also be listed below.

I removed all bots that haven't edited in over a month. <font face="Verdana,Arial,Helvetica"> Carbon Monoxide  16:32, 6 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Declined. This is the second time that you have tried this.  As I said last time, these should not be deleted without discussing with the bot operators. --After Midnight 0001 11:52, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Ready for deletion
Is the "Ready for deletion" section necessary? I assume that it was added at a time when non-admins could edit this page, but it doesn't seem useful now that the page has been fully protected. Anyone with the ability to move an entry to that section could just as easily delete an emptied category. – Black Falcon (Talk) 17:00, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's what it was for. I'd say leave it in case it ever becomes unprotected, but then again, we have so many bots doing the depopulation that it probably isn't necessary.  --Kbdank71 17:25, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Has this section been used at all in recent months (years?). My bot still supports it, but if the section isn't being used at all, we can just get rid of it (and thus make the bot slightly simpler). Cydebot is already doing the deletions on its own in most circumstances, so there probably isn't much of a need for this section. -- Cyde Weys 03:29, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Any bots available for null edits?
All of the moves/merges left from Dec 1 just need null edits. Are there any bots that are around to help out? --Kbdank71 15:47, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Handling CSD C1
Perhaps I'm being a thickie - wouldn't be the first time - but I don't see how to check for speedy deletions of empty categories that they've been empty for four days like WP:CSD says. Can someone clue me in? Angus McLellan (Talk) 01:02, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think there is one. At least, in the several years I've been doing CFD, I've never been able to find a way.  Unless you know what articles were in the category prior to being emptied, then you can check the history of the article, or if you know who did the emptying, and you can check their contribs.  Those are both long-shots at best, though.  I usually stay away from CSD C1.  If I find an empty category, I just nominate it at CFD.  If I'm closing and a category makes it through CFD and it was nominated as being empty, that's your four days.  If it was emptied while the discussion was on-going, the regulars are good enough to notice this and say something. --Kbdank71 02:46, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I was thinking that was going to be the answer. Thanks, Angus McLellan (Talk) 02:50, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Bot strike?
Anyone know if we are having a bot strike? There appears to be a growing workload of moves and renames. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:18, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
 * poke cyde. βcommand 00:26, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll be doing some of the work with User:PbBot -- pb30 < talk > 20:55, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

If this comes up again, it's most likely because my server is down. Please do let me know in the future. Though commenting here isn't the best way to do it, because as you see, it can take me awhile to see these messages ... Cyde Weys 03:27, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Anyone have an idle bot? (or a working copy of AWB?)
The last move from Jan 27 still needs to be completed. I poked Cyde as his bot seems to have taken care of alot of CFD moves lately, but he made a change recently to his talk page to the effect that he isn't around as much anymore. Can someone take care of that last category with a bot or AWB? For some reason, AWB doesn't work for me anymore, and I can't get a bot to work from behind my work proxy. Thanks. --Kbdank71 21:51, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Date subheadings
I'd like to get everyone's thoughts on the date subheadings that are currently being used to link to the per-day CFD discussions. Up until today they were mandatory because Cydebot relied on them to generate the proper link in its edit summaries (and if the subheadings were wrong or missing, that caused problems). But I rewrote Cydebot in Python today to take better advantage of PyWikipediaBot and it's now harvesting the per-day CFD discussion links directly from the CFD templates on the relevant categories. This is definitely more foolproof (assuming the CFD templates are always used on the relevant categories, anyway; is this mostly the case?), although it does still use the day subheadings as a fallback.

So my question is, should we keep the day subheadings in the standard listing format, or should we get rid of them? I'm mostly ambivalent either way. Are they a useful aide to the people updating this working page, or are they more of a hassle to deal with than anything else? Your input, please. -- Cyde Weys 03:33, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment. For me personally, I wouldn't say they are an aid—more like something that has to be included that takes up a small amount of time. I'd probably prefer to not have to add them, but if it means we'd have to be double checking the categories to make sure the correct date is linking from the template in the category, getting rid of it may actually create more work for closers. That said, I don't think there's a huge problem with CfD templates being missing or inaccurate, so the double-check be unnecessary. All things considered, I'd be fine either way, really. Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:44, 26 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The only reason I can think of to keep the dates is that sometimes, when we have a category populated by template, we need to wait a while if the job queue is high. It's a reminder to check whether the category is being depopulated and, if it seems to be stubborn, to check that something hasn't been missed. We don't relist that many CfDs, so the chances of linking to the wrong day are pretty low. And even then, you can still find the right page from the what-links-here link. I could live just fine without the day links, if that's what people want, and I could live with them, if that's what's agreed. Angus McLellan (Talk) 19:57, 26 September 2008 (UTC)


 * While it is an extra effort, I do think that they serve an informational purpose. (Especially for any NOBOT or manual results.) So I think I'd weakly oppose getting rid of them. - jc37 06:45, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, the CFD per-day page is available as a link in the CFD template on the categories in question. Not quite as convenient, mind you, but at least it's still accessible two clicks away.  But this is a good point &mdash; I hadn't really thought of human uses of the metadata implied in the date subheadings.  It sounds like there's not much of an argument to get rid of them?  -- Cyde Weys  04:41, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

They're useful for me, because that's what my bot uses to link to the discussion. Granted, I use my own subpage to set up the bot, and I only use CFDW when your bot has been AWOL for a while (that's actually the reason I wrote the thing to begin with, but I digress). Outside of my bot using them, I think they are helpful, as it helps when checking the discussion close against the CFDW listing (everyone makes typos). But like Angus says, if I really need to I could use whatlinkshere. And we could always create a new subheading on the page for NOBOT listings. (bear with me, just thinking out loud here) I happen to relist quite a few more these days, ever since the, well, ever since last week, and when cleaning out the monthly CFD category, I find a lot of relisted categories that weren't adjusted for the relist. I guess that would be a reason to keep the headings on CFDW, just in case something is relisted and the admin forgets to change the link to the new discussion. But then again, that wouldn't help either because your bot wouldn't know it's the wrong date and wouldn't use the fallback header. After all that, I suppose I'll go with very weak keep. --Kbdank71 13:27, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Please help keep this page clean!
I'd like to, even tried to before I noticed that the page has been protected for over a year. If the page can be unprotected, can someone please unprotect it, otherwise edit the page to remove lines like "After a category is empty, editors may move the entry to Ready for deletion below."? Someone can move Category:Proposed Sites for the United Nations Headquarters too. Otto4711 (talk) 05:09, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

editprotected
Please move the three categories in the "empty then delete" section down to the ready for delete section (or just delete them). Thanks. <font STYLE="verdana" COLOR ="#990000">Gtstricky Talk or C 15:52, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ - Deleted categories, removed from the page. The  Helpful  One  23:18, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Also downgraded semi protection to semi, per your request at WP:RFPP. The  Helpful  One  23:20, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Full protection restored
My attention has just been drawn to this downgrade to semi-protection, which was requested at WP:RFPP in December.

Whilst I understand that the admin who downgraded the protection was acting in good faith to allow some legitimate edits to proceed, I think that the removal of full protection should have been temporary unless it was further discussed here. The editor who requested a downgrade to semi-protection commendably linked to the discussion above (see ) about the huge vulnerability created by non-admin access to this page, and semi-protection would not be sufficient to prevent a recurrence.

This page effectively gives an editor the ability to set a bot off to delete, merge or move categories ... and unlike articles, categories are very hard to restore if the damage is not spotted promptly. I know that bot-owners such as Cyde are usually very careful to check before their bots get to work, but as the volume of work at CFD increases over time it will become more time-consuming for them to manually cross-check every entry in CFDW, so I think that the vulnerability will increase over time. In any case, the vulnerability is fully described above, providing clear guidance to anyone minded to try this sort of vandalism.

I note that the editprotected request was acted on quite promptly (within 6 hours), and a delay of 6 or 12 hours does not seem to me to be too great a hindrance to processing far-reaching changes when the alternative is a major security loophole. For those rare cases where a non-admin needs to edit WP:CFD/W, the extra step of an editprotected request seems to me to be a very small prce to pay for the added security.

I am sure that acted in good faith on accepting the request to downgrade from full to semi-protection, but I think that in hindsight (bearing in mind the history) it would have been better to have sought a consensus here first before making the change permanent. I will therefore restore indefinite full protection for WP:CFD/W. If others think that indefinite full protection is excessive, please can we discuss it here first? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:01, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Now done, in this edit. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:06, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * ... and I have left a note for Thehelpfulone. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:17, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 04:55, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I created this page, and was not (and am not) an administrator. It was specifically organized to allow helpful "common" users to work here. We had a terrible backlog at the time, and as this site expands and the workload increases, that can happen again at any time. The problem described above (and at ) was a result of a bot automatically processing a section here. That's wrong! Such a bot should only run as directed by its owner, one thing at a time. They should manually cross-check every entry in CFDW. Semi-protection is enough to prevent casual vandals. No amount of protection will aid against an administrator that has a specific agenda to push. Remember the user categories imbroglio?


 * I'm going to support the protection. We don't have a backlog right now, and since the bot is running this way (which I don't have an issue with), it should stay at full protection.  Your argument about protection not aiding against an admin with an agenda would appear to be a red herring, as that's not why the full protection is in place.  And honestly, it doesn't stop helpful "common" users from helping out at CFD.  Let me ask you, what reason would you need to edit this page?  Perhaps we can come to a compromise.  --Kbdank71 14:04, 23 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I noticed because I'd just repaired the TfD page, and came here to see how things were going.
 * There are some comment lines missing their leading "*", which in turn yields extra space before section headings. It would have been easiest to leap in and fix them.
 * As you may remember, we "common" users used to frequently populate the "Discussions awaiting closure" section, and the "Ready for deletion" section, and sometimes other sections as well.
 * Heck, I moved all the CfD pages to "Discussion", and hand built and rotated the daily pages, for many months.
 * As for a red herring, the very top entry on this Talk page is about a misbehaving bot. Speaking as an Internet security professional, this isn't a security issue, it's a misbehaving bot operator issue.
 * Perhaps it would be better to have a protected sub-page for controlling each bot.
 * --William Allen Simpson (talk) 14:34, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I do remember, well. But that was all before we had Cydebot, and most of the moves were done by editors (there is a reason I'm over 100K edits).  And in spite of the full protection since June of 2007, CFD still runs well, IMO.
 * The top entry talks about Cyde being "careless" (your word), not having an agenda. And careless way back in 2006.  Regardless of what you want to call it, as I said, the protection isn't in place because of an admin with an agenda, or even a careless one.  It's to prevent vandalism, and anyone who is autoconfirmed can get around semi protection.
 * If you are interested in jumping back in to CFD work, may I suggest using WP:CFDWM? Anything added there can be checked and moved over to CFDW by an admin (which would be the same result of using a protected subpage anyway).  --Kbdank71 15:38, 23 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I think this problem is already addressed on the main cfd page with a pointer to Categories for discussion/Working/Manual. Anyone can edit that and then an admin can delete it from there. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:15, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Multi merge targets
I added some functionality to Kbdankbot to deal with multi-merge targets. Well, actually, two-merge targets. So if you have some that need work and I don't see them, ping me. --Kbdank71 13:25, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Christ myth

 * Category:Christ Myth to Category:Christ myth should be under deletion not move. Everything has already been moved.  jbolden1517<sup style="color:darkgreen;">Talk  04:10, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Taken care of. If in the speedy move section typically the bot will move anything left in it and then delete the old one. Good Ol’factory (talk) 05:51, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for doing the final step. I wanted to do the move by hand because the category has some unusual text and I wasn't sure how the bot would respond.  In retrospect probably the smarter thing would have been to copy the text and just see what happened. jbolden1517<sup style="color:darkgreen;">Talk  15:38, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * No worries. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:41, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Category:Greek names - deleted without CFD
This edit, by User:Cydebot says "Robot - Removing category Greek names per CFD at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 28", but there is no listing of a discussion on Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 28 nor is there a posting on the deleted page Category:Greek names indicating a CFD discussion anyplace. What is up? Jeepday (talk) 09:32, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * There is a discussion on that page - Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_May_28 - the long list of individual categories nominated is in a collapsed box, including Category:Greek names. BencherliteTalk 09:47, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Can the box be un-collapsed so others will be able to search and find named pages? There is no benefit to hiding it now, and I found helpful suggestions for a better category once I was able to find the discussion. Jeepday (talk) 09:56, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * That's a good idea. I'll try to remember to de-collapse the sections as I close discussions.  --Kbdank71 12:50, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * As will I. I'm sorry I didn't do so in this case. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:07, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * This was equally confusing to me - but even when I found the discussion it still seems completely unnecessary information-destruction to delete Category:Icelandic names. Whatever ambiguous cases exist for surnames from New Zealand don't affect that Guðrún or Sigurrós are in every possible sense Icelandic names and should be categorized together. Note that "Icelandic" can refer to the language as well as the country. Haukur (talk) 14:14, 24 June 2009 (UTC)


 * There's a discussion at Category talk:Surnames re: how to re-name some of these when they are re-created, because some of them will be. Right now it sounds like they are going with "Fooian-language names". Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:59, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Cydebot
Is Cydebot jammed? Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:56, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think so. This looks like it is only doing the planned tasks and not checking our queue.  Vegaswikian (talk) 22:10, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that based on other discussions, Cydebot is not dealing with page names that include special characters. When one is encountered he just skips the rest of the queue.  This has causes two problems.  First, the rest of the queue is not processed.  Second, we do not appear to be able to process any change that involves special characters.  I'm going to post a notice to all of the bots listed to see if they are still running and ask the owners to join this discussion for a solution. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:21, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Remove the ones that are stalling Cydebot and put them here and I can do them. –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 20:37, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Categories for discussion/Log/2009 July 29
 * Category:Doctors Without Borders to Category:Médecins Sans Frontières
 * I've just ✅ this one manually using WP:HOTCAT. Should I leave a soft redir in place at the old location? –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 00:55, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think a soft redirect would hurt. Vegaswikian (talk) 04:28, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Categories for discussion/Log/2009 July 17
 * Category:Dunaújváros FC footballers to Category:Dunaújváros FC players
 * Those are the two current problems. We are currently working around the problem by tagging these as NO BOTS so that clydebot ignores them.  If your bot is automated, any chance it can drop by a few times a day and see if there is any work?  If we know that is happening we would not need to use the NO BOTS tag to keep clydebot moving. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:04, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * This is ✅ Let me know if this happens again, I can't automate it though. –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 23:16, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Kbdankbot can do them as well, but it's not automated. --Kbdank71 22:01, 8 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Cydebot seems to be stalling on more than just ones with special characters now. It's historically worked great but clearly it has some specific bug in it right now. Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks like Cydebot is working again. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:22, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes; we'll have to try a special character one and see if that's still the hang up. Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:23, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

All right guys, I'll be taking a look at this issue later tonight. There's no reason Cydebot shouldn't be able to handle non-standard-ASCII characters. Good troubleshooting. -- Cyde Weys 20:11, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the recent outage (around August 8-10), power went out temporarily at the my server's location and it did not come back up on its own. It took me a day or two to realize it was down and then another day to do something about it. Keep in mind that Cydebot does multiple tasks, some of which are extremely dependable, so if there ever seems to be a problem with CFD, check Cydebot and see if all of its contributions have ceased. If they have, then the server is just down. If it's only the CFD-related contributions that have problems, then we have a bigger problem.

I just updated to the latest version of PyWikipediaBot and I was unable to reproduce any issues with handling categories with non-standard-ASCII names, so hopefully the issue has already been resolved? If it comes up again, do leave me a message on my talk page. Right now I just don't have any "working" examples of a CFD change that isn't working. -- Cyde Weys 20:30, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The story checks out. :) I just ran a test on a diacritic-containing test category, and it processed fine. Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:09, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

"Plays by" changes not completed
The speedy renames of the "Foo Bar plays" to "Plays by Foo Bar" haven't been completed. The resulting categories are still tagged with the cfr-speedy template, see this search. Tassedethe (talk) 09:18, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * This was an error that the bots created in the new categories after someone changed the Template:Cfr-speedy coding. A few hundred new categories were created without the bots deleting the template. The categories are fine, the template just needs deleted from them. I've cast out for some help here—surely there is a bot that could just remove these? Good Ol’factory (talk) 09:37, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I started to remove a few then noticed there were quite a lot. A bot would certainly help; perhaps a posting at WP:BTR? Tassedethe (talk) 09:52, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Debresser took care of these himself. It's done now. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Procedure section
Does anyone know where Category deletion policy is supposed to point? The page just redirects to the CFD page, which has no such section. Jafeluv (talk) 07:27, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Ready for deletion?
In the notice at the top of the page, as well under Move/merge then delete and Empty then delete, it says: After a category is empty, editors may move the entry to Ready for deletion below. I'm assuming this notice was handy before the admin bots, but considering that administrators don't delete categories when processed here in addition to the section "Ready for deletion" doesn't exist, shouldn't the line have been removed from the page long ago? — ξ <sup style="color:#000000;">xplicit  07:08, 4 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Completely right, this all dates to the pre-protection days when non-admins could edit the page. I myself got rid of the "Ready for Deletion" section a little while ago.  What I should have done was to also go through the page and get rid of any references to it.  I've taken another look at it to bring the page more into line with contemporary reality - hopefully all vestigial/legacy references should now be removed.


 *  X damr  talk 14:39, 7 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Following on from this I notice that we still have Categories for discussion/Working/User knocking around. I'm guessing that this is good for deletion now?  --  X damr  talk 14:53, 7 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure deletion would be the best outcome. It might be worth tagging it with Historical. — ξ <sup style="color:#000000;">xplicit  21:28, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Cydebot not running since nov 21
Looks like Cydebot is not running creating a backlog of work. If any of the other bot operators see this, maybe they can deal with the backlog of work. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:29, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Bot needed to move Category:Football (soccer) logos to Category:Association football logos
Category:Football (soccer) logos has been moved to Category:Association football logos, per Categories for discussion/Log/2010 February 5. However it is stuck in the processing queue because it is populated by a template, or rather by a parameter to a template.

Currently it is, but this needs to be changed to.

About 1000 pages need to be changed, so I will lodge a request at WP:BOTREQ. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:29, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Request made at Bot requests/Archive 34. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:38, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

UCFD templates up for deletion
Templates_for_discussion/Log/2010_February_22

--Kbdank71 15:01, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Swiss Americans are not of Syrian descent!
At least, not usually. Cydebot doesn't seem to realize this, though. +Angr 20:23, 10 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh dear. A typo which has led to a big problem. I'll set to work on fixing these. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:30, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

This should be resolved now. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:57, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Cydebot and category redirects
I noticed recently that Cydebot did not check whether a move target was a category redirect, and proceeded as if it was a real category. This led in one situation to articles being recategorised in a redirect which pointed to a now-nonexistent category.

After discussing it with Od Mishehu, I asked whether anything could be done about this, and he kindly got to work promptly on a fix. (see User talk:Cyde)

I am just testing it with a pair of dummy categories, and we will see how it works.

If all is OK (as I'm sure it will be), this adds something else to look for if a category is not processed, viz. is the move target a redirect? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:43, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The test worked fine. Cydebot will now skip a move or merge where the target category is a redirect. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:19, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

This is a good thing. I note that Cydebot still doesn't delete the old category if the merge target is not newly created; I don't know why. Good Ol’factory (talk) 07:38, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Requesting a bot to help maintain the Working page
I think it might be useful to have a bot to help maintain the Working page. I know that Cyde Weys' bot, Cydebot, currently implements category changes, but it does not (to my knowledge) directly edit the Working page. There are a number of useful tasks a bot could perform—organizing entries, flagging potential issues (e.g., a category was deleted but is not empty, a category was deleted but has incoming links from a content namespace), and carrying out specialized instructions (e.g., recreate as a category redirect)—and it might simply be a matter of asking Cyde if he could add functionality to his bot, but we could start with the most routine ones: Any thoughts? -- Black Falcon (talk) 07:33, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) At the start of each day, add a link in the section 'Discussions awaiting closure' to the most-recently-overdue log page; and
 * 2) At the start of each new day, or perhaps on request (cf. Articles for deletion/Old), calculate and list for each day's log page the number of open discussions.
 * FYI: The code for MathBot, which does the same tasks at AfD, is available here. -- Black Falcon (talk) 17:15, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I see this was added. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:27, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

UK MP cats
These were listed here by the same person who put them up at speedy despite a previous CfD saying No to endashes. . I think the previous CfD should have made them ineligible for Speedy. DuncanHill (talk) 15:38, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I told the bot to do it. Being discussed on my talk page. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:58, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Large impact closes
One day last week, no regular closes were being processed for over a day since the bot was busy doing a huge number of speedy renames. This happens when the categories being renamed affect large numbers of articles. We have several of these types of renames pending at CfD. Since they are not contentious nominations, we can expect them to be added in mass to the work queue. Can I suggest that we release this type of category work to the bots slowly, so that new smaller work items can be processed. Maybe include them with a NO BOTS flag and a simple note to add a few more after the previous ones have been processed? Vegaswikian (talk) 20:26, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That sounds like a good idea. I must apologise for the massive speedy rename work that I set the bot to do over the last week. I didn't anticipate that it would take so long, but it did take a very long time. Good Ol’factory (talk) 09:16, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Section for "waiting for template" issues
Do we need a separate section on this page where we can park renames/deletes where we are "waiting for the template to reset" so that the change can be completed? These are again seeming to take a very long time—well over a week for a category with over 100 articles. Or are we happy just keeping these listed in the normal sections? Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:44, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd support such a section, but I'm more inclined to make it at WP:CFDWM. The pages remain in these categories until the pages are edited, which is why the counts slowly declined from day to day, if at all. I forced all the pages in to purge by clicking the edit tab and just saved the page, even though no changed were made, nor does it count as an edit. I figured out this method just a few minutes ago, which makes me wish I'd known about this before making edits like this, but oh well. —  ξ <sup style="color:#000000;">xplicit  22:05, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually there is Wikipedia:CFDWM which has fallen into disuse. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:19, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, so there is a section at CFDWM—I suppose we can move them there if needed. I don't think we have to wait for the pages to be actually edited—though if an actual edit or null edit occurs, it does reset it immediately. For the rest, they are added to a reset queue, which is apparently very, very long. A few months ago Kbdank71 did some tests and I think figured that at that time the reset queue took about 3 weeks to go through a cycle. That's crazy. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:31, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * How odd, I've edited CFDWM a couple of times, but somehow never noticed that section. Three weeks is quite a while. I don't mind doing my simple but time-consuming method when I have spare time. —  ξ <sup style="color:#000000;">xplicit  22:40, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually I moved them over there. I'm going to update the instructions to add a subst of the date for this type of chnage so that we can see when how long it actually is taking. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:43, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Check the new sysop
Can one of the regulars make sure I did this correctly? Thanks. --Bradjamesbrown (talk) 04:41, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh no, you broke it! Just kidding, you're doing fine. Welcome to the club. —  ξ <sup style="color:#000000;">xplicit  05:22, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'm trying not to do anything controversial for a while. Bradjamesbrown (talk) 09:55, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Please, be controversial! Then I could take a break for awhile! Seriously, congratulations. Any possible help at closing CFDs is always welcome. Good Ol’factory (talk) 10:09, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Category:Fictional characters on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Cydebot deleted the above category with the rationale "per CFD at Categories_for_discussion/Log/2008_September_23" but I can find no mention of this category ever having been discussed, and it does not appear to have been clearly roped in by the discussion of Category:Hollywood Walk of Fame. For context, see this request for undeletion.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:01, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The bot deleted again and started removing the category from all associated article. I have blocked and will go talk to its master directly.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:04, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The category was added by under WP:CSD as the category is serving an identical purpose. Cydebot emptied and deleted it a second time because the category was still listed at WP:CFDW. It has since been removed and Cydebot will no longer touch that category, so I've unblocked it as it still has work to do. —  ξ <sup style="color:#000000;">xplicit  02:09, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Glad the circle was stopped and the block was of short duration. Regarding the category serving an identical purpose, it might be that if this was specifically discussed, the conclusion would be that it was roped in under the same arguments, but it's not clearly so. Multiple arguments made at the discussion are distinguishable when applied to a fictional character. For example, a fictional character does not receive many awards during their life, while, as argued at the discussion, a notable person does; another argument was that anyone can get a star for a $2500 fee; this may not be true for fictional characters. I do not think this can be simply asserted to be identical without discussion (which does not mean I think it would or should ultimately be kept).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:27, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * At this point, I think it's safe to say it won't be speedily deleted. I've notified Good Olfactory of this discussion and we'll see where it goes from there—probably a full nominated of the category. — ξ <sup style="color:#000000;">xplicit  02:33, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Ugg. I didn't notice the category had been created recently (which is why I was actually looking for it being specifically debated at a CfD discussion that predates its creation). I'll go nominate it now.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:51, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, here's the nomination.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:13, 21 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry for the action of deleting this, which in retrospect may not have been the right thing to do. I figured if a category for all the members of the HWOF had been deleted, it made sense to also delete subgroupings—otherwise we could get around the result of the CFD by having "fictional characters on the HWOF" and "real people on the HWOF". Seeing as how the latter wasn't created, probably a discussion is the best way to go with this. Thanks. Good Ol’factory (talk) 04:14, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * By the way, I've restored the contents of the category as it was before the initial deletion. Good Ol’factory (talk) 04:19, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * We can't do what we all do with breaking eggs sometimes. If I could do it over I would remove the category from the associated page, and would have dropped a message on your talk page about the undeletion request, but I was clueless as to the existence of this page given my lack of familiarity with CfD processes so did not know how the deletion was implemented by the bot.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:20, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Renamed cat not appropriate for bot to do.
Just saw this on my watchlist, where the bot, as a result of this discussion introduced an incorrect category. This is a rename that needs to be done manually. DuncanHill (talk) 18:36, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Cydebot not removing spaces
I noticed a quirk in Cydebot's editing today. When the bot removes a category, it leaves behind an extra line (see ). I have notified Cyde about the issue (here) and added, in the 'Empty then delete' section, a note asking closers to list all category removal tasks for manual handling (i.e., "NO BOTS"). This may, temporarily, impose a burden on the process, but we can probably make do with AWB or, better yet, a replacement bot. I am posting here both to explain and to make sure that there is consensus for (or, at least, no objection to) this action. Thank you, -- Black Falcon (talk) 00:47, 7 March 2011 (UTC) Would you be opposed to trying manual removal for a while? Most category tasks at CFDW involve renaming and merging, which would continue unaffected, and I think that the comparatively small number of deletions could be handled via a semi-automated tool (it's quite possible to reach 30 edits per minute with AWB); of course, I would 'put my money where my mouth is', so to speak, and work to carry out deletion tasks. If a backlog develops, then we could drop the "NO BOTS" tags and allow Cydebot to resume working on category removal. -- Black Falcon (talk) 01:49, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I think this has been going on for quite a while. I don't believe that the issue is a reason to manually do the edits. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:58, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Although the issue is minor, it can be a cause of some confusion. For example, seeing a blank line in the middle of a category list made me wonder whether it is there due to vandalism or misguided recategorization. I did not suspect a bot until I actually located the relevant diffs.
 * I think you are making this into something larger then it needs to be. If you want to do them manually, you can.  This may be an easy fix for Cyde once he becomes aware of the issue.  Vegaswikian (talk) 06:12, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I know that Cyde edits only occasionally, so it may take a while for him to notice the post (though any fix that he applies will not apply retroactively). I will understand if someone removes the notice (after all, I did add it before any discussion), but I believe that temporarily handling category removal tasks with semi-automated tools will not pose a significant burden. Again, if it proves to be a hassle or a backlog forms, we can always turn Cydebot loose on the backlog. -- Black Falcon (talk) 19:15, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I have Cyde's email so I will send him a message; he's usually very prompt if he is emailed. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:13, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Good idea, thanks! And thanks to Cyde for checking on this. :) -- Black Falcon (talk) 07:37, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Just a heads up that I am now aware of this issue and will be investigating shortly. Thanks for the email Good Olfactory. -- Cyde Weys 04:00, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

The basic issue is that there are two category modification methods in PyWikpedia as follows: As you can imagine, there were many more complaints with Normal mode than there ever have been with InPlace mode. It sounds like a simple enough modification is needed here -- if using InPlace mode for a removal, and a change turns a formerly non-blank line into a blank line, then just remove the newline associated with that line as well. I guess I'll go ahead and do that, and then we'll keep our eyes open for any potential collateral damage. -- Cyde Weys 22:34, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Normal. In this mode, PyWikipediabot collects all categories on a page, sorts them in order, and formats them in a single Category block at the bottom of the page.  This absolutely wrecks anything using categories in templates, as you can imagine.
 * InPlace. I wrote this mode specifically for the CFD bot.  It uses regular expressions and modifies things in place rather than monkeying around with rearranging *all* of the categories.

All right, I fixed the bot using essentially the strategy as explained above. I've turned it loose on CFDW and it appears to be functioning correctly on all edits. I've removed the special NO BOTS instructions as well. Please keep a closer eye on Cydebot for a little while just to make sure that there aren't any edge cases that I didn't correctly compensate for that may cause issues down the line. Thanks. -- Cyde Weys 19:42, 12 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Everything looks to be in order now, though I'll keep a watch for any odd edits over the next few days. Thanks, -- Black Falcon (talk) 18:51, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Cydebot leaving junk text
For category renames, Cydebot seems to be leaving the invisible part of the Cfr template on the new category page. See, e.g.,, ,. It's not affecting how the categories appear, of course, but it's a little bit junky for anyone who comes along to edit the category. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:50, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Are you sure you used, as opposed to directly inserting the code yourself? In the revision where you tagged the old category for renaming, I don't see the &lt;!--BEGIN CFD TEMPLATE--&gt; line, which clues in the bot that these comment lines are part of the CfD process tag. It otherwise recongizes just the template, which I see it did, in fact, remove when copying the categories over. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 18:16, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that must be it. A bit odd, as I always use the "subst:", but something must have gone wrong with these. Good Ol’factory (talk) 10:37, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

closing the UK and Australia alumni discussions
There is a six-week old discussion on British alumni categories here, and a similar one about Australia here. No one seems to want to close them, especially since many of the people who might close them are involved in the discussion (me, for example). The discussions are not at consensus, and contain much sniping and griping. There are two camps: people who defend the "Old (X)ans" format and those who want some other non-jargon format, though they don't always agree on which they would prefer. The 400+ category names use quite a few different formats. I can see a few possible outcomes: 6 seems intolerable, so I hope someone is willing to step up and make the decision. Since any choice involves some categories not getting changed, there may need to be a bot to help remove tags. Note that this post is not on the merits of the arguments, and I really hope no one decides to make this a separate discussion of those arguments. This is just to figure out how the discussions get closed, and what happens then.--Mike Selinker (talk) 14:55, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) Someone decides that the "Old (X)ans" people are right, and leaves those categories alone. He or she then decides that all the rest of the categories should be renamed to one standard, such as "People educated at" or "Alumni of", and renames those that need to change.
 * 2) Someone decides that the "Old (X)ans" people are right, and leaves those categories alone. He or she then decides that for the remaining categories there should be consistency, but that there's no consensus between "People educated at" or "Alumni of," and relists just those categories for a single standard.
 * 3) Someone decides that the "Alumni"/"People educated at" people are right, picks one format to rename everything to, and renames them.
 * 4) Someone decides that the "Alumni"/"People educated at" people are right, and renominates everything for renaming for a simple decision between the non-jargon options, noting that votes for "Old (X)ans" formats will be ignored.
 * 5) Someone decides that there is truly no consensus, and doesn't change anything in their close.
 * 6) No one decides anything, and the nominations never get closed.

Closing big keeps in general
Another big close is Categories for discussion/Log/2011 March 29 with a lot of categories to manually edit to detag. Is there any way we could set up a bot to detag a list supplied and add the Keep or No consensus notice? Timrollpickering (talk) 00:00, 6 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I've done this kind of work before using AWB. I could file a BRFA to automate this task under User:AvicBot, if you want. :) <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis  @ 19:48, 10 Nisan 5771 / 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Categories populated by templates
Can someone have a go at depopulating Category:Communes of the Province of Bolzano-Bozen? I simply cannot easily locate the template that is populating it - it's far too embedded. Timrollpickering (talk) 09:18, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Found it... and boy is it convoluted (which is saying something).
 * It is part and parcel of the navbox. Now... Why does the cat need to be depopulated?
 * - J Greb (talk) 14:29, 22 April 2011 (UTC)


 * It's being renamed to Category:Communes of South Tyrol but from what I can see all the articles have already been added to the latter. Timrollpickering (talk) 15:49, 22 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I believe this edit did it, however I think Template:Navbox Province of Italy/Categories for commune and Template:Navbox Province of Italy will need a null edit by an admin before it starts propagating through. I already tried purging both pages. <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis  @ 16:31, 19 Nisan 5771 / 23 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I gave them both null edits but to no avail. Category populating templates are getting out of hand and at some point there'll need to be a crack down on them. Timrollpickering (talk) 23:35, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * We probably need an outright ban on templates in foreign languages. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:16, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

So is there any traction on getting a bot to replace this auto-categorisation? Sounds like a good time to do it. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 14:36, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * What needs to be done for this rename isn't the edit mentioned above, but to change the BZ entry at ProvinciaIT (unlinked). I'd do it myself if I waqs convinced that it was the correct thing to do; however, gven that all the other categories there are in the form of "Province of Foo", and this one isn't, I'm not sure that this is correct. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:46, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Well I changed it. Let's see what happens. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:12, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, I'm going to undo the change. What we need to do, is rename Category:Communes of South Tyrol to Category:Communes of the Province of South Tyrol.  Until we can remove this categorization from the templates, that may be the best choice.  I'd support an immediate speedy to fix this and support a bot to remove this auto categorization and to replace it with categories in the article. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:17, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Note that we are going to probably have this problem with Category:Communes of the Province of Trento to Category:Communes of Trentino which was also approved. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:24, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Retain CFD bot
I've finally gotten around to the Retain CFD bot, the details for which are here (skip to the bottom for the relevant details). This should help you CFD closers out with discussions whose result is "Keep", especially when a large number of categories were involved in a single discussion. As always, keep me updated of any issues with the new bot via my talk page. Note that it's still very much in testing, a "We'll Do It Live" style of development if you will. -- Cyde Weys 21:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I've implemented "Phase 2" for the bot. It will now maintain the Retain list, so you won't have to manually go back and remove items from the list after they have been processed. -- Cyde Weys 20:05, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I've found one issue so far. The bot successfully removed a CFD template from Category:Horatio Nelson, but was then edit-conflicted when it tried to write back the list to take account of the change it had just made. So it failed on the edit conflict, and then when it parsed the list the next time, it saw that there was no template on that category page and left an error message. Any idea on the best way to handle this? It'd be pretty simple to have the bot just remove categories from that list that don't have CFD templates on them, rather than erroring out. -- Cyde Weys 14:35, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Another template mess

 * Categories for discussion/Log/2011 July 19
 * Category:Client states of the Great French War to Category:Client states of the Napoleonic Wars

I can't locate the template that populates the former category - my best guess is this is embedded in infoboxes. Is there any way we can ban categorising via such convoluted mechanisms? Timrollpickering (talk) 14:57, 26 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I've managed to find the template to fix it but these types of category are getting annoying. Timrollpickering (talk) 23:38, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Total mess categories

 * Categories for discussion/Log/2011 August 29
 * Category:User archives
 * Category:Talk archives

Both the above appear to be populated by incredibly convoluted syntax that needs to be identified by someone who understands the more intricate codes and removed from each talkpage one by one. Does anyone have any ideas how to go about this? Timrollpickering (talk) 15:47, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Category:Short-lived states
Category:Short-lived states seems to be populated by a template. I tried to find which one without any luck. Can someone else look into this? Vegaswikian (talk) 00:19, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Found it! It's generated by the infobox. See the discussion at Template_talk:Infobox_former_country/Archive_3. I don't play with templates, so have no idea how to go about changing it, but that's where it's coming from. Dana boomer (talk) 00:47, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * That edit should do it. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:39, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

unprotecting this page
We have another massive backlog on CFD/Working, just like we had last month. I believe that this would be less likely to occur if non-admins could edit Working. Does anyone agree with me on that front?--Mike Selinker (talk) 17:59, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
 * And then a vandal account posts a request to rename Category:Government to Category:Penis. Ruslik_ Zero 18:42, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * As I recall, the page was protected when it was discovered that anyone could add a merge or a delete for the bot to process. This would generally not be detected until after the fact leaving a big mess to cleanup.  If the question is the ability to close a discussion, then it could be addressed adding a section to Categories for discussion/Working/Manual, say Categories for discussion/Working/Manual/Non admin adds, where the bot work can be listed by any editor and then moved by an admin to the protected page to allow the bot to do the work.  So more editors would be able to do closes and we would still have admin review on feeding the bot. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:33, 6 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Are there a bunch (or even some) non-admins who are chomping at the bit to close CFDs? Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:16, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe we need a sit in over at Requests for adminship. While I don't generally follow that, I seem to recall if you say you will be an active WP:NPP participant with your broom, that helped your nomination.  Maybe we need them to work WP:CfD and WP:RM instead?  But then new admins doing that... Vegaswikian (talk) 00:57, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't know if there are people chomping at the bit. Right now, I can't really approach people to help, because they don't have the tools.--Mike Selinker (talk) 18:21, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * In this discussion, there is one particular editor who seems troubled by non-admin closures at CFD. He's essentially proposing that they be banned, among other proposals. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:59, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the backlogs
Regarding the recent backlogs—I think those who close discussions should not be shy about closing a discussion if it's been open for a one or more weeks and it has no comments apart from the nominator's statement. If there are no objections to a proposal, I think it should just be implemented. It can always be discussed again if there are objections post-implementation. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:22, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Silence = consent.--Mike Selinker (talk) 18:22, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Edit request on 22 January 2012
Please move before ===Discussions awaiting closure=== after it. Every relevant pages, where this page is transcluded, has already a "Discussions awaiting closure" header.

Armbrust, B.Ed. <sup style="color:#E3A857;">Let's talk <sub style="color:#008000;">about my edits? 18:34, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ Tra (Talk) 06:47, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Anime/Manga by year categories
Cydebot is screwing up all the categorizations when it's renaming these cats. The new cats don't have the categorization the old cats did, so all this work is going to have to be done by hand if the bot can't transfer the cats over, too. Is the bot going to be doing this, or should we start slogging through the categories by hand and fixing this oversight? Sorry if I sound frustrated, but we're having to fix a template and do all this by hand if the bot isn't going to do it. The project wasn't even notified of this CfD discussion, and neither were those who originally created the categories and set everything up for the categorization, so I hope you can understand why we're a little frustrated at the moment. I'm not trying to take it out on you as your bot does good work. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 07:00, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay, it looks like I may have caught the bot inbetween things as I can see some of the cats have been transferred to the cat pages. That's a load off my mind. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 07:05, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The renamed categories initially lacked their parent categories because they're automatically populated by that template, not by entries in the individual categories. The bot changes the latter but not the former so I tried to change the template but it is exceptionally complicated, constructing the categories on the basis of the category name. Once the template was properly amended the new categories were automatically populated accordingly. Timrollpickering (talk) 19:58, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Arrests of journalists category rename
It appears that someone instructed Cydebot to rename the category Arrests of Journalists as Category:Journalists imprisoned for refusing to reveal sources. I don't have any problem with the first, vague category disappearing, but the problem is that many or perhaps even most of the articles in the first category don't fit the second... see, for example, Shi Tao or Yndamiro Restano Díaz, two I happened to have on my Watchlist. Can these edits be reviewed manually, or can the category simply be deleted instead of being replaced with the second? Otherwise we're unintentionally adding false information to a number of articles. Thanks, Khazar2 (talk) 19:51, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * So far out of the seven articles I've checked so far, all seven have been incorrect and the new category has had to be deleted: Yndamiro Restano Díaz‎, Aung Pwint‎, Jamal Amer‎, Chris Anyanwu, Omar Belhouchet, Mohammad Davari‎, and Shi Tao (most of whom were arrested for critiques of their governments). I can't seem to find who's in control of this bot. The bot's page sent me here, but there's no obvious record of who's controlling this change. Is it possible to set the bot to undo these insertions? I'd love to not spend the next hour re-reading all of these to see where the bot's new category applies. =) Thanks! Khazar2 (talk) 20:00, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The discussion closed with rename & purge; however the latter didn't happen before the bot eventually reached the category. The bot can either remove a category altogether or rename it altogether but not mix & match in the same task - that relies on human editors to check each entry. Timrollpickering (talk) 20:08, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Given the high percentage of errors here, then, is it possible to ask the the bot to just remove this category altogether? I just glanced over a few more on my watchlist-- Madi Ceesay, Jesús Joel Díaz Hernández, Doan Viet Hoat... all are wrong. Presumably we'd eventually see some correct fixes in here, but even if the bot ends up at 80% wrong instead of 100%, that still seems rather high. Khazar2 (talk) 20:13, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, if I can't get anyone here to have the bot do it, I'll go ahead and delete all articles from this category manually. It's still not the ideal solution, but it appears that this new category is wrong far more often than it's right (I've checked seven more--17 out of 17 wrong), and avoids the problem of adding false information about criminal charges to so many BLP articles. I'll leave some sort of note in the edit summary asking editors to revert me on false positives. Cheers, Khazar2 (talk) 21:00, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * After glancing each of the articles in question, I saw only one of the fifty-plus that clearly fit the proposed new category name of "Journalists imprisoned for refusing to reveal sources", Judith Miller (journalist); it's possible I missed one or two other matches if it was in the body rather than the lede, though. I manually removed every other article from the category.
 * On a more general note, I also wonder if there might be a clearer place to post concerns about Cydebot's edits. Adding an incorrect arrest to 40-50 BLPs in order to add a category only to Judith Miller seems like a poor trade-off... is there a way other users can access this bot in the future to undo these mistakes automatically instead of manually? Thanks for the help, Khazar2 (talk) 22:07, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Cydebot issue?
I noticed that Cydebot has stopped deleting categories it processes when the target category is a bluelink (it still does so on renamings when the target was a redlink). Any idea what's up with that? - The Bushranger One ping only 09:20, 7 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I can't remember it ever doing it in the first place. What I think we need is to adjust the main CFD template to include a link for admins to delete a category with an auto generated edit summary. There's just such a feature on the speedy template and it's very useful for merges or when not all the contents get moved on the first pass. Timrollpickering (talk) 21:02, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


 * It used to do it all the time, as far as I could tell. But yeah, that sounds like a good idea. - The Bushranger One ping only 21:03, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Speedy processing issue: remember the hyphen issue, please!
Could those who process speedy nominations please remember the following?—for category changes where we convert a hyphen to an endash, we need to re-create the original category (the one with the hyphen) as a soft category redirect to the new category (the one with the endash). These finishing touches have been getting overlooked lately, and some users have been experiencing difficulties in category accessibility. The redirects are intended to help that issue, especially for those users who use hotcat. Thanks. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:44, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * What if we move from one en-dashed name to another? e.g. Chinese aircraft by decade. The original hyphenated redirects to the old en-dashed names need deleting, but should we create new redirect pages at the hyphenated names corresponding to the new category names? e.g. Category:Chinese attack aircraft 1990-1999 for Category:Chinese attack aircraft 1990–1999? – Fayenatic  L ondon 15:25, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, to have the redirects would be ideal, but I wouldn't say we must create them all if it's a big job. We do what we can, I suppose—if we remember to at least do it at the time of renaming for the ones that are originally created with hyphens, at least we're doing the ones most likely to be needed. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:40, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I noticed yesterday that Armbrust created a lot of them using AWB. Credit where credit's due! – Fayenatic  L ondon 13:47, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

New Bot
AvicBot is now approved to help Cydebot out if it gets backlogged. Simply change this page to 'enable' to have AvicBot help out. He will check the page once an hour, and start processing CFD/W The same way Cydebot does. Instructions are in the editnotice. I hope this helps with any backlogs that might arise. <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis @ 05:31, 7 Tamuz 5772 / 05:31, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Cool. Thanks for doing this! (And I've just enabled AvicBot 11 as Cydebot is fritzing...) - The Bushranger One ping only 04:34, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
 * AvicBot's trying to chug along - it keeps pausing because of server lag; this might also be why Cydebot is fritzing. <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis @ 05:07, 10 Tamuz 5772 / 05:07, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Looks like it moved one and stopped. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:11, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I killed the rest of it's Cronjobs - it's moving along now. <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis @ 05:28, 10 Tamuz 5772 / 05:28, 30 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Just for the record, Cydebot will be down until power comes back up from the big derecho. - The Bushranger One ping only 16:46, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

It's looking good so far though we may want to make a few changes that would ease things up. Changes I'd suggest could include: Thoughts? Timrollpickering (talk) 20:18, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Modifying the full CFD templates to include "Administrators: Once the category has been copied to the new name and/or emptied, click here to delete", with a link to deletion that generates the relevant summary. The Speedy template has this and it makes it much easier to delete a renamed or emptied category than having to faff about with copy & paste to get all the information or have people moaning at you for not crossing every last t.
 * Considering getting admin status for Avicbot for specific purposes. The actual individual tasks may have to be approved separately but the main ones where admin rights would help the bot are:
 * Changing categories on protected articles.
 * Creating in previously salted space (which appears to have caused problems today).
 * Deleting emptied categories.
 * Sounds like a good plan to me. - The Bushranger One ping only 21:21, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I can try to tweak the delete message to create the proper summary - I'll work on that today. As for AvicBot becoming an Adminbot - I'm afraid, if I'm reading WP:ADMINBOT properly, that AvicBot's not eligible. Perhaps someday, though. <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis  @ 23:42, 12 Tamuz 5772 / 23:42, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me to. I'm not familiar with the bot rules, but if this is an issue, a note here would gather support if needed.  Not trying to vote stack with this request, but just pointing out that a lot of admins don't feel the need to have to cleanup when a bot does not have the proper authorities.  Vegaswikian (talk) 00:03, 3 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Cydebot's back up, so for the moment I've disabled AvicBot's CFD runs until it's needed again. - The Bushranger One ping only 20:00, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 23 July 2012
Can someone add " to  " to the "Speedy moves" section? The category was removed from CFDS by The Bushranger in this edit, but by mistake it wasn't included at the time he added it to CFDW.

Armbrust, B.Ed. <sup style="color:#E3A857;">WrestleMania XXVIII <sub style="color:#008000;">The Undertaker 20–0  07:29, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Cydebot is down...
...and has been for nearly 12 hours. So I'm going to enable AvicBot until it comes back up.
 * And I see I've been beaten to it! - The Bushranger One ping only 23:48, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

AvicBot down too?

 * ...except AvicBot doesn't seem to be doing the CfD stuff. Hm. - The Bushranger One ping only 00:17, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry - there was data crash, and the automated backup restored some files that were out of date. This should be corrected shortly. <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis @ 13:32, 10 Tishrei 5773 / 13:32, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
 * <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis @ 13:37, 10 Tishrei 5773 / 13:37, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

No bots entry?

 * Categories for discussion/Log/2012 October 1
 * NO BOTS Category:Recipients of the Croix de guerre 1914–1918 (France) to Category:Recipients of the Croix de Guerre 1914–1918 (France)

Is there a reason this is marked as no bots? It seems fairly straightforward and I didn't see anything in the discussion which would require human intervention. Legoktm (talk) 11:28, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Category redirects
ClydeBot yesterday moved the categories Category:Adele songs and Category:Adele albums to Category:Adele (singer) songs and Category:Adele (singer) albums respectively. Leaving aside the fact I feel it was unnecessary since we don't have to categorise albums by another singer of the same name, I do think some category redirects should have been created in its wake. I've created the category redirects for the two I've mentioned above, but think that if we are to have sudden moves like this it would be very useful to be redirected to the new name.Paul MacDermott (talk) 13:57, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 8 January 2013
User:CrimsonBot also helps in this area and should be added to the list of bots. See Bots/Requests for approval/CrimsonBot

CrimsonBlue (talk) 05:25, 8 January 2013 (UTC)


 * User:CrimsonBot is failing to delete the categories it renames under the speedy section. This is not good because it means it has to be done manually. User:Cydebot deletes it and leaves a reference to the new category in the summary. Good Ol’factory (talk) 05:32, 8 January 2013 (UTC)//
 * Those pages will be automatically deleted the next time User:Cydebot runs all it will have to do is delete the pages, so if you leave them they will get deleted CrimsonBlue (talk) 08:21, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * In my experience, Cydebot seems to have trouble deleting empty categories that have been renamed (unless it was the one that emptied it), but I'll take your word for it that it would happen. Good Ol’factory (talk) 09:05, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * If the target category is a bluelink, Cydebot does not delete the 'from' category. Annoying, but that's the way it is... - The Bushranger One ping only 07:47, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh—the original point—I had made the requested edit. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:33, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Split into subpages to minimize full protection?
What if we took WP:CFDW and split that off into its own subpage? That way we could full protect it (which it needs, per discussion above, since editing it causes bots to delete things) and not protect the rest of the page, e.g. Discussions awaiting closure. That way non-admins could help out with those sections, which they might need to do if they do non-admin closures, or just notice that the section needs to be updated, or whatever. delldot  &nabla;.  06:58, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * AFAICS, the only section which would benefit from regular access by non-admins is Discussions awaiting closure. It would be best to move that section to an unprotected subpage. - Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:03, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

AvicBot enabled
as CydeBot seems to have stepped out for a margarita. - The Bushranger One ping only 07:48, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I just turned on Legobot as well. Legoktm (talk) 08:00, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Cydebot is back up, so I've disabled the AvicBot CFDW function. - The Bushranger One ping only 19:18, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Deleting stub category and template
I have just closed a CfD discussion on Category:Harz Mountain geography stubs as "delete category and templates". For deleting categories, we have bots which patrol WP:CFD/W ... but do we have any bots which will delete templates? If so, how do I list a template for the attention of those bots?

Thanks! -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:03, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Pretty sure templates have to be manually deleted, since, as far as the system is concerned, there's no difference between a stub temblate and a navbox template. (This is one reason the stub templates going through CfD puzzles me...) - The Bushranger One ping only 19:19, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Bushie.
 * I'll just put in a request at WP:BOTREQ. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:01, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Who put Anosy here?
WHO put the Anosy categories in that list???? Sample: Category:Anosy to Category:Anosy Region Category:People from Anosy to Category:People from Anosy Region

There are no 2 Anosy in the world - there is absolutely NO need for precision on these categories. As I do 80-90% on the articles on that region of the world (Madagascar) - and I am NOT READY to type each time a lifelong list of cats. and more : I REFUSE THAT ANY BOTLIKE FUNCTIONING ADMINS THAT EVEN DONT KNOW WHAT OR WHERE THIS IT IS FUCK INTO MY WORK.

Who the hell was it, is it. Do you want to drive me out???

How to set this back? Damn. Tonton Bernardo (talk) 15:38, 22 May 2013 (UTC)


 * This is now being discussed at my talk page, since I am the admin who added the rename in question to this work queue and thus was the one "fuck[ing] into [the user's] work". Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:48, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Cydebot problems
I came here becuase cydebot sent me

Cydebot seems to be doing a fair amount of damage. Here is an example of cydebot messing up. The end result is that this subcategory was left without a parent category, and the link to the cfd discussion is incorrect. I posted other problems that have already been fixed by user:Good_Olfactory.

Just wondering if anything can be done about it? XOttawahitech (talk) 01:49, 21 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Cydebot only does what users tell it to do, so if there's a problem it's likely human error. The discussion was here, so the date link was correct. (I see though that the subcategories were not listed in that discussion, so it's a bit trickier to find than usual.) What do you mean by the subcategory being left without a parent category? The parent category is hidden, but it exists—Category:Wikipedia categories named after airlines. You can see hidden categories if you turn that function on through your WP preferences. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:53, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * 1. INCORRECT LINK: How is one to know that this discussion happened under the title: Eponymous categories when the Cydebot edit summary says this:
 * Moving category  Categories named after airlines to Category:Wikipedia categories named after airlines per CFD at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2012 March 3.)?
 * 2. MISSING PARENT CATEGORIES:  When Category:Widerøe was created in 2009 it had the following parents:
 * Category:Airlines of Norway
 * Category:SAS Group
 * Category:Airlines established in 1934
 * These three reader-categories were replaced by one admin-category and left with no parent category that is visible to wikipedia readers (the ultimate consumers?).
 * 3. HUMAN ERROR: Who should be contacted to have such errors corrected?
 * (Thanks for responding User:Good Olfactory) XOttawahitech (talk) 12:36, 21 June 2013 (UTC)


 * 2 was the result of a human change in 2010. With 1 ISTR we've tried longer links in edit summaries before but they seem to get chopped arbitarily by the software leaving an incomplete link which is even worse. Timrollpickering (talk) 15:55, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for responding User:Timrollpickering. I am still hoping someone would answer #3. XOttawahitech (talk) 15:23, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

April down to one open
I have worked on the backlog getting us down to only 1 discussion open from April. Can someone look at that and see if it can be closed? Vegaswikian (talk) 00:05, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Closing backlog
We still have discussions open from as far back as May 10! Also there is a significant number, and growing percentage, of discussions that I can not close since I am an involved party. We really need a few more admins to participate. Yes I know that I am not the only one working on this, but more involvement is needed. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:20, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Cydebot (2013)
We really could use User:Cydebot these days. Could someone else try emailing User:Cyde? (He has an "email this user" link on his page.) In the past, I've let him know via email and he has fixed things relatively quick. I've already contacted him 4 times this month—each time he replies and says it's fixed, but Cydebot still isn't processing categories. I don't want to pester him for a 5th time—maybe if another user contacts him he will realize that it's not just me thinking it's broken. Good Ol’factory (talk) 19:25, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I think it's a Toolserver issue, which Cyde can't fix. The bot breaks to recategorise pages, but it works perfectly to create the new categories. Armbrust The Homunculus 20:33, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Is it even creating new categories? Not since 14 Sep, according to this. Good Ol’factory (talk) 20:59, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I mean recategorising pages is the source of the problem. For example on 12 September it created many new categories in a row. Every category was emptied already at that time by my bot. On 14 September it created, but than couldn't recategorise the contents of the page and it's CFD function is on a hiatus since then. Armbrust The Homunculus 21:11, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Even if we could get the category creation functions up and running, it would help. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:06, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing it broke during the HTTPS switchover. I can get Legobot running using Cyde's code if that would be helpful. Legoktm (talk) 06:21, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * If that is the case, it's another example of the foundation not considering the negative impact of their changes. They seem bent on a series of changes, that on the surface, seem intended on pissing off existing editors with no obvious advantage.  This is compounded by their lack of any desire to communicate any of these changes to existing editors.  Vegaswikian (talk) 23:40, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Hrm, I didn't realize it was not doing the categorization correctly. My best guess is that I'll need to update the version of PyWikipediaBot in use. I'll know more soon. I thought that you were contacting me just to tell me that it was down again, so when I saw recent edits, I assumed it was back up. Whoops. Sorry. -- Cyde Weys 21:48, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

And we're back. I needed the latest version of PyWiki. -- Cyde Weys 19:48, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Vegaswikian (talk) 20:43, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

To everyone here: In the future, please don't hesitate to email me (via my user page) if anything ever goes wrong. I'm not out of the country or hiking the AT or anything; I spend more than half of my waking hours every weekday in front of a computer, so if you email me, I'll get it very quickly. Sorry for the communication breakdown Good Olfactory; for whatever reason I didn't realize that it wasn't processing CfD at all. I'll be more attentive to future emails. -- Cyde Weys 17:49, 23 October 2013 (UTC)