Wikipedia talk:Database reports/Archive 7

Which of the inactive reports are top priorities?
Along with User:NKohli (WMF) I'm working through some of the inactive reports here. For many of them it is quite simple to code them up for Community Tech Bot to run.

Does anyone have any strong feelings about which of the currently-inactive reports would be most useful to have running? If there are valuable-but-stale reports which can be quickly re-implemented and tested, I'd like to try to address them quickly.

Thparkth (talk) 00:54, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
 * You might try working through WP:Bot requests or its more recent archives, in the event no-one comments here. --Izno (talk) 11:13, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I'd appreciate getting Database reports/Unused templates back up and running. It's useful to WP:TFD. ~ RobTalk 15:35, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree with Database reports/Unused templates being useful, especially if it could show, and be sorted by, transclusion count. It's useful for finding typos in template transclusions and for finding potential redirects. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:20, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi, , do you think it's helpful if we remove the pagination from the report and show the top 5000 records? Like . Showing paginated results require more time and effort and can take a while. Thank you. -- NiharikaKohli (talk) 09:17, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Top 5000 records wouldn't work out, since there are more than 5000 substitute-only templates. Eventually, it would just display the first 5000 substitute-only templates alphabetically and all the remaining unused templates which probably should be deleted would remain hidden. (As a side note, this database report was updated manually semi-recently, so its priority is a bit lower than it once was. We'll need updates again in the future, but it's not imminently needed.) ~ Rob 13 Talk 14:05, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Also, anything ending in /testcases or /sandbox should be omitted from the list. Typically, those aren't transcluded. ~ Rob 13 Talk 14:06, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks! Feel free to ping me when you want an update for it. -- NiharikaKohli (talk) 14:57, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry, it appears I made an error in the above comment. Since the templates are unused, sorting by transclusion count makes no sense. And showing the "top 5000" also doesn't make sense, unless I am misunderstanding, since they are all used zero times. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:09, 1 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I'd like to see the protection reports updated, as well as Database reports/Inactive users in user groups. Thanks for your assistance. –xenotalk 16:05, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi xeno. I updated a few minutes ago. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:11, 6 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I would like Database reports/Templates transcluded on the most pages updated. I have been adding error-checking to heavily used infobox templates, and it would be useful to know which templates are used most often. A monthly refresh would be fine, and the current 3,000-template count is probably fine. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:20, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi Jonesey95. has been updated. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:40, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Wonderful. I was just looking at it yesterday, wondering. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:54, 7 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the comments - just to note that I'm currently travelling for business with only intermittent and unreliable Internet access, but I'll start working on some of these when I get back home. Thparkth (talk) 01:21, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Your request for longest pages was just archived, and so this section should be of interest to you. --Izno (talk) 09:25, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Community Tech bot stopped updating
I noticed that Community Tech bot stopped updating a few days ago. Can someone give the bot a little push? Unless this is a known break and someone can point me to a status page. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 06:13, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, yeah, it seems so. Special:Contributions/Community Tech bot says the most recent edit was August 30, 2016. I imagine you'll want to contact someone on that team to get it fixed. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:28, 7 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I . -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 06:27, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for reporting. This has been fixed. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 13:09, 7 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi Gogo Dodo. Thank you for noticing and letting people know! I meant to say in my previous reply that if there are any specific/particular reports that aren't updating that you're especially interested in, it might be possible to prioritize those for a one-time refresh. I refreshed two reports earlier this week since it had been a couple of years since they'd been updated. --MZMcBride (talk) 13:35, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Database reports/Templates containing links to disambiguation pages
Is there any possibility of getting this report expanded to list more templates? Currently it only seems to list templates which start with a number or the letters 'A' or 'B'. Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 01:43, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * This report may also need to whitelist some templates, like "*_topic", which is not supposed to be used on its own, but takes parameter values as arguments to form links to non-dab pages. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:26, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I see the report has been updated. Thank you to whoever made that happen. I agree about whitelisting some entries - other candidates include "Did you know nominations/*" (which we're not allowed to edit) and links to generic terms which are often used in template documentation, such as Article and Example. DH85868993 (talk) 09:10, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for expanding the report. Could it replace underscores by spaces in the links? The second column is currently wide enough (at least for me in Firefox to write this on one line: Did you know nominations/Biertan fortified church, Câlnic Citadel, Dârjiu fortified church, Prejmer fortified church, Saschiz fortified church, Valea Viilor fortified church, Viscri fortified church. I replaced underscores by spaces here to avoid widening the talk page. Words separated by spaces are also more readable and a benefit in all database reports. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:35, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, I replaced the underscores with spaces (cf. Special:Permalink/738524355). When the bot re-runs, it will revert everything back to way it was (limited results, underscores) because I updated/used a separate script. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:01, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Request for report similar to Special:WantedTemplates
VPT sent me here. This is a request for a report similar to Special:WantedTemplates, which apparently does not get updated regularly anymore.

I'm interested in transclusions of nonexistent templates within article space, though others might be interested in transclusions of nonexistent templates in other namespaces. Maybe two reports? Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:18, 15 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I have generated this report before, and will do again in the next few hours for you. The list of "transclusions from the main namespace to nonexistant templates" contains a number of distinct subsets, some of which are are available on other reports - missing ISO639 names, missing languages, failed citations and so on. - TB (talk) 08:45, 15 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Your report is now ready at User:Jonesey95/Redlinked transclusions. Please let me know if you need it adjusted or regenerated. - TB (talk) 15:50, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Wow, thanks! That is great. I think it would be great for this report to be a regularly updated database report, as was apparently intended for Special:WantedTemplates. I know that would take a volunteer to set up, so if anyone is willing, we gnomes would appreciate it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:51, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * , some other editors and I have eliminated about 90% of the template and module transclusions on the report that you generated for me. Would you mind regenerating a new list of the top few hundred or so nonexistent transcluded templates and modules in the article namespace? If possible, including the subsets you linked to above would be helpful, since the tool labs reports do not always run for me (they just spin and spin and eventually time out). No rush. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:33, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Done. Apologies for the delay. TB (talk) 14:55, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Very helpful. No apologies necessary. We are all volunteers here. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:13, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Redlinked categories with incoming links from the commons
I would like a report on redlinked categories which have incomong links from the Commons. This report should include links to the commons pages in question, to allow us to fidnd them easily and fix them. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:29, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Your report is now ready at User:Od Mishehu/Commoncats. - TB (talk) 21:22, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Zombies in the database
I've taken Database reports/Uncategorized categories down to just 4 entries -, , and  all of which were originally deleted in April but which were still showing up in the equivalent Quarry search this week as though they hadn't been deleted. I tried recreating them and then getting them deleted, but that doesn't seem to have worked - perhaps they need to be created for a certain period of time in order to be registered? Any ideas? Le Deluge (talk) 00:35, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi Le Deluge. What you're describing is tracked at T28411. I'll comment over there again. Fortunately, that task has recent activity. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 17:11, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Obviously nuking the categories properly would help,  but there's a more fundamental problem. This is more like the thing of a few months ago with categories not "taking" properly in a small % of cases, in that the vast majority of deleted categories don't show up as uncategorised categories - but for some reason these four do. It's like there's a small crack in the fabric of the database, where just a few categories manage to leak through.Le Deluge (talk) 21:16, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Still got those four zombies in Database reports/Uncategorized categories, but there's rather more in Database reports/Red-linked categories with incoming links, of two sorts. and  were deleted back in May/June and are empty but are still in the report. Meanwhile  and  are stuck in the report but have existed for a while, along with ,,,,,,,,, and  even though I've tried to clear them with null edits and even some non-null edits.Le Deluge (talk) 02:53, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Similarly Database reports/Categories categorized in red-linked categories/1 appears to have had (twice),,   and  (about 10 times) stuck in it since at least April. Page 4 also has the deleted /Canada/France/Pakistan/Russia/Singapore linking to  despite them all being deleted back in April.Le Deluge (talk) 13:27, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Having just discovered  - that doesn't work, so it looks like it's something in the main database rather than a secondary caching issue. I've tried recreating  and just leaving it for a few days, but that doesn't have an effect, ditto something violent like moving it - Quarry still thinks the last edit was months ago, by an editor that's not me. Meanwhile this is starting to bug me as the zombies now represent a signficant proportion of what's left on these reports. I'm running out of ideas.... Le Deluge (talk) 20:04, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The same issue is happening in Database reports/Empty categories. was deleted, yet still remains in the database report. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 03:58, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Chronic orphaned talkpages?
Please see Wikipedia talk:Database reports/Orphaned talk pages. Avic ennasis @ 15:23, 19 Kislev 5777 / 15:23, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I'd guess this is an expression of the zombie article problem that's been discussed here previously and eg at talk:BernsteinBot. Not the fault of the bot, but there seem to have been some glitches in database replication at the beginning of 2016 which seem to persist and still show up in low-level database queries even if the pages themselves are deleted and recreated (or vice versa).Le Deluge (talk) 16:54, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Agreed, it's a database problem, because I get the same problem from my SQL queries directly. The bug linked above in the Zobmie section,, is marked as "Closed, Resolved", so I'm not sure how related this might be, or what the fix may be. Avic ennasis @ 15:35, 20 Kislev 5777 / 15:35, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

"Current reports" needs pruning
For example, there are lots of ones marked "weekly" that haven't been updated since 2014. Is there a list somewhere of which ones are actually still generated regularly? Or I guess we could easily look if the frequency is wildly off the as-of date. Maybe DBR row could flag the "Run frequency" display if it's not actively being generated? DMacks (talk) 06:43, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't know of such a list. The as of date is there to be helpful to readers and should be used, yes. Or we could modify, as you suggest, though it'd probably require some date parsing and math, which is rarely enjoyable.
 * Other options include: having a bot update Database reports/Broken reports and Database reports/Working reports. Or we could just move the broken reports to Database reports/Archive and forget about them forever. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:03, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * As a start, could the as-of column be made sortable? Looking at the values, they come from diverse places and don't have consistent formatting. Maybe they're all compatible with the parser function (and if not, I would call "nonstandard datestamp format" a bug in the reports themselves). DMacks (talk) 07:14, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * ...which was actually pretty easy to do. It looks a bit like crap when one sorts it (haven't figured out what to do with subheaders), but the only two broken datestamps are in Database reports/Living people on EN wiki who are dead on other wikis and Database reports/Long pages, both of which are defunct as autmated tasks. DMacks (talk) 07:32, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Fixed mis-copy/paste above. And I left a note for User:Snaevar, who is manually running the /Long pages on occasion. DMacks (talk) 07:53, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Most revisions
Hi all! Would it be possible to get an update for Database reports/Pages with the most revisions? We're using the data for a project/pitch on our side, and I'd rather we use the most recent data possible. Thank you! Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 19:02, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Eh, November 2016 isn't that old. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:59, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Womp womp. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:09, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

WP:Request a query
Pursuant to the discussion at WP:VPT, I suggested and followed up on the creation of a page to WP:Request a query based on the success of the similarly named page at Wikidata. Just wanted to let the kinds of persons who follow the page here know about it, in case someone comes along for a one-off database report. --Izno (talk) 17:40, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
 * you may check my edit here and follow it in other places... -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 18:19, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

hi, any help is appreciated (or suggestion)
from the help desk .....

I'm a member of wikiproject Medicine, basically this happened to us and so we have a source code'' but we need someone's help to do 2016 version (of 2015), I can assist in whatever is needed. ...thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:56, 17 February 2017 (UTC)''
 *  To track down this kind of expert, try posting at Request a query. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:49, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
 * will do, and thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:59, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
 * as indicated above I'm posting there''( with no response )...if anyone can help here it would be greatly appreciated, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:20, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
 * A couple of days is nothing - so don't give up just yet. But to be honest neither here nor there is the best place for this kind of request - people here are mostly "consumers" of reports rather than report-makers. The best place to ask would be Bot requests, that's where the coders are. Le Deluge (talk) 02:04, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Cockroaches emerging from the shadows?
Database reports/Uncategorized categories has been pretty well cleaned out of late (ie nothing pre-2017), yet the last couple of weeks have had the odd entry that claims to have had no edits since 2015-ish, and this week there's been eighteen entries where the last entry was pre-2017 (and in fact there were a couple more that I nailed off a direct Quarry query, like, that had had no categories since their last edit in 2013. These are all categories that should have been showing up in the report, but had managed to hide in the shadows for 4 years. I'd been vaguely aware that there were a few categories like that kicking around, but has anything happened to make them suddenly start appearing in such numbers? I assume it's a database thing as they've not been showing up on Quarry until recently either. (as an aside, Database reports/Categories categorized in red-linked categories/1 is now actually down to just the 14 zombies, rather than the zombies plus a few pending CfDs etc - a little landmark for a report that had >7000 entries about a year ago) Le Deluge (talk) 00:01, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Probably related to . I have been seeing the same thing in other maintenance categories over the past few weeks. Someone from WMF was working out a good way to refresh all pages; if that is in progress, you'll see more of this happening until all of the pages are caught up. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:35, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that looks the one. I was aware that there was the odd cockroach out there as I'd come across them whilst working on different reports, so it's good that they're being brought to light. Still doesn't help with the zombies though, which are resistant to null edits and even creation/deletion, it seems to be the result of a pretty low-level caching problem a year ago.Le Deluge (talk) 11:26, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Request: "New WikiProjects" bot is not running weekly.
Greetings, It appears New WikiProjects was last ran 7:00 pm, 17 July 2016, Sunday (10 months, 1 day ago) (UTC−5). Can this be ran at least monthly? Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 21:31, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
 * There is a WikiProject list, updated monthly, that can be sorted by project creation date. --Bamyers99 (talk) 22:01, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks! That is very helpful. I see at top of page, there is no option to add to my watchlist. How do I know when the report gets updated? Is that link something I should bookmark, or is it on a menu somewhere? Cheers! — JoeHebda • (talk) 22:20, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The report is updated on the 1st of the month. A link is buried in the "Lists and reports" section of WikiProject Council as "List of WikiProjects (includes uncategorized)". --Bamyers99 (talk) 22:36, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quick response! Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 22:41, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Please ping me if there's anything that needs fixing/adding
Hi all, I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up with DB reports lately. I'm going through the talk page now but if there's something that needs fixing, please ping me as I don't check back on this page often. Thank you for your patience. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

More of forgotten, and less frequented articles?
Hi, is there any way to find out "forgotten" or less frequented articles? Especially from some particular category? Thanks a lot. — usernamekiran (talk)  15:21, 20 May 2017 (UTC)


 * is it possible? — <span style="font-family: monospace, monospace;">usernamekiran (talk)  15:21, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi! Can you define a little more clearly what "forgotten" articles should be defined? How many views or how many edits in the past how many days etc....Say "pages with less than 500 views in the last one month" etc. Also, do you want to have it in a category or a wikiproject? Wikiprojects on English wikipedia now have a working popular pages report so you can find out how many views pages in a wikiproject have been getting over the past month. See User:Community Tech bot/Popular pages. That would require some work to setup the wikiproject but the reports can then be automatically generated every month by the bot. Thanks! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 15:39, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
 * hi, thanks for the reply. Sorry for the delayed reply as I didnt realise you replied, I have watchlisted only Database reports/Forgotten articles. I am not sure about the categories. Wikipedia:Database reports/Forgotten articles is a list of articles from all categories, generated by a bot. But the articles are such, that havent been edited in "longest time". On wikipedia, there is a by . The bot can be configured in a few ways. If the current 's source code could be updated a little (not over-write, as a new file), where the user can set the time-period of last edits, category, and number of visitors (for day and/or month); then this bot would be extremely beneficial to update the forgotten articles. Requesting your thoughts Nettrom sir. — <span style="font-family: monospace, monospace;">usernamekiran (talk)   19:41, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Special:AncientPages ? Cabayi (talk) 08:20, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi, I suggest you use Special:AncientPages as well, like suggested. The popular pages bot (as the name suggests) highlights the most-viewed articles and if they are most-viewed, they are unlikely to be "forgotten". Special:AncientPages is probably best for your use case. Thanks. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 13:52, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

thanks for the input guys! The anicient pages looks good. I will get back to you later. Currently in the middle of content dispute of JFK, and Bay of Pigs invasion lol, cross-checking with sources (i think i should stop my involvement to stop feeding the troll). Laters. :-) — <span style="font-family: monospace, monospace;">usernamekiran (talk)  14:02, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Empty categories
The configuration for Database reports/Empty categories needs to be updated to reflect the change in the name of the template Empty category to Possibly empty category as categories containing the template with the new name are appearing in the report. Thanks. -- Star cheers peaks news lost wars Talk to me 01:45, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Editors eligible for Autopatrol privilege
Report has come back empty for the 3rd successive time. Cabayi (talk) 08:07, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm gonna look into this. Thanks for reporting. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:48, 22 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Looks like Database reports/Editors eligible for Autopatrol privilege it is working now. :) -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 22 April 2017 (UTC)
 * , a failure to run at all for the last 3 weeks doesn't look like "working" to me. Cabayi (talk) 06:31, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, this report is kind-of complicated. It has a pretty long-running SQL query and under our current infrastructure, all Tool Labs queries running over 3 hours are auto-killed. This query runs way over 3 hours. Whenever you do see the report showing up, it's because the query wasn't killed for some reason. That happens sometimes but it's not frequent. There isn't much we can do about this, I'm sorry. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 05:19, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
 * May I have a look at the SQL? I'm in the process of signing up at tool labs. Thanks, Cabayi (talk) 14:57, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi Cabayi. There's a version of the SQL here: Database reports/Editors eligible for Autopatrol privilege/Configuration. When NKohli (WMF) says there's not much we can do about this, I don't understand. We can just make generating the report faster. It seems kind of crazy that this report is taking over three hours to generate. If she or someone else can point me to the full current code (not just the SQL, but the Python script), I may be able to help. Optimizing a giant SQL query is an approach to take, but it may make more sense to just split up the work a bit between multiple queries. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:52, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi Here's the code - https://github.com/Niharika29/database-reports/blob/master/reports.py#L99 Feel free to make a PR. Thanks. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 21:59, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Writing to let you know we have a new and improved report! Instead of just listing the raw number of articles created, we have included other information to help users decide if a the candidate is fit to be autopatrolled, and shifting focus to users who are active in article creation. A fresh report is generated daily. Let us know what you think! Regards, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 18:49, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Database reports/Uncategorized categories broken?
This report has improbably produced no results for two weeks in a row (except for some redlinks that inexplicably show up every week). Can someone look into it? Thanks, — swpb T 12:48, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
 * No - it's working OK, but I've had a bit of time in the last few days so I've been emptying it in advance from Quarry queries. But I'm on the road again soon so you should have plenty to play with this week! As for the zombies, I've had some discussion with a techie over on the Quarry talk page, and he pointed me to here. In short, there's something in the way that Mediawiki deletes pages that causes problems when replicating the production database to the Labs copy (which is what DBR and Quarry use). In the next few weeks they will move to a new replication system which should work better, and which will also mean a clean copy of the database which won't have the existing zombies. One of the server clusters has been really struggling in recent weeeks due to some maintenance, which has led to a lot of zombies accumulating in some of the DBR's; on the brighter side, Quarry seems to be running rather better at the moment, there were some queries that were timing out that now run quite quickly.Le Deluge (talk) 15:22, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Featured articles by length
There's a list of featured articles by length, but it's three years out of date. Would it be possible to set the list to generate weekly, to both update the lengths of the listed articles, and add in the new FAs? Thanks! --Usernameunique (talk) 15:34, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Seconding this request. Would be nice if there was a bot to move the results into the page as well, which I put in a request for. Maury Markowitz (talk) 16:49, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi Usernameunique and Maury Markowitz. Would <https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/18330> work for your needs? I used to update Featured articles/By length with a bot, but it looks like it got dropped when the Toolserver died in June 2014. We could revive the wiki page report, but I think part of the reason nobody has yet is that various tools such as Quarry and maybe CatScan2(?) are usually faster. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:03, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Meh, I had a few minutes so I dug up the previous script and fixed it up. I put the updated code here: Featured articles/By length/Configuration. I am not currently committing to refreshing this report weekly. The query is fast enough to run that the report could be updated daily, but I'd vastly prefer to shift the maintenance burden to someone/somewhere else instead. :-) Looking at the page history, it looks like I served my time from March 2009 to June 2014. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:33, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Most excellent. MZMcBride, is there no chron-like system we could have this added to instead of doing it manually?
 * Now for the kicker... the DYK Check tool has a prose counter that would be extremely useful in this context. For instance, the Barack_Obama article is the longest on this list, but the prose content is actually quite short, significantly less than Benjamin_Disraeli for instance (which is on page 2). I have posted to Shrub about the algo for this, but no response yet... is the code above a simply query, or is there the possibility of wrapping it to combine with a prose count? Maury Markowitz (talk) 11:01, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi Maury Markowitz. Yes, we ("we") could use cron to run the report regularly. As I mentioned, I did this for about five years. The question is whether anyone is willing to set this up again and maintain it indefinitely. Are you volunteering?
 * Regarding word counts, they're difficult. For example, should "a lot" be counted as one word or two? How do you exclude all non-prose in a sane manner? Are hatnotes prose? What about links in a "See also" section? What about reference footnote text? And so on. I don't know which specific "DYK Check tool" you're referring to. This report uses the current page's total length in bytes. We could include additional metrics, but that sounds like work, which means doing it yourself or convincing someone else that it's worth his or her time to do. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:45, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Look here. Superb tool! As to the cron side; I'd be happy to, but never having done this before, can you point me in the right direction to get started on understanding it? Maury Markowitz (talk) 20:01, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm just stumbling on this, but you might also like User:Dr pda/prosesize.js. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 23:40, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi Maury Markowitz. In short, MediaWiki uses MariaDB SQL databases. These production databases are replicated to a testing/development environment called Wikimedia Tool Labs and made accessible to users upon request. You need to create a shell account on Tool Labs and then you need to SSH in to "bastion" host with that shell account. Once you can do that, you can execute arbitrary queries and other commands. You can start here: <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page>. Does that help? I can go into more detail as needed. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:23, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Forgotten articles, forgotten report?
According to WP:Database reports, the forgotten articles report is run weekly. According to the revision history, it's not. The current version is dated June 19 - over a month ago. Would someone please nudge the bot and run a new version? Thanks. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 10:06, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi BlackcurrantTea. You probably need to ping NKohli or MusikAnimal about this.
 * I'm a very big fan of having detailed configuration subpages that include at least the relevant source code needed to generate a report and the associated crontab entry. We currently have Database reports/Forgotten articles/Configuration, but it is not super-helpful. I wish we would continue the practice of putting detailed configuration information on-wiki or linking prominently to such information if it must be hosted elsewhere. Doing so allows others to jump in and run/fix a report. Currently, I don't know where the relevant script is, under which account it's running, or where or what the crontab entry is to make the report run. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:21, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmm, maybe this? -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 07:52, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
 * That's the one. Thanks Edgars2007. I can take a look at what's wrong here but it's likely because of it's long runtime (See comment above the function). A lot of these reports actually really need to be in core/an extension. :( -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 14:59, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you all. Whilst I find the report helpful to work from, I don't see it as presenting urgent matters. Perhaps the intended frequency should be changed to every other week or even monthly. I look forward to seeing the next one. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 01:56, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi BlackcurrantTea. Looking a bit more closely at the report, I'm not sure I understand its value. Many articles have recent bot or semi-automated edits, but are largely forgotten. This list, as written, is always going to be the anomalous non-redirect, non-disambiguation pages in the main namespace that happen to not have been edited (or vandalized or...) in a while. If you or someone can better explain what the goal of this report is, we might be able to find a better report methodology. For example, page view counts and number of incoming wiki links might be a lot more representative of the level of forgotten-ness. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:09, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi, . No idea who created the report or why; I simply found it and began working on the articles. I work to revive them: copy edit, update them, add references and wikilinks, and so on. A few are PROD'd (red links now in the June 19 report). I expect some will be merged once I'm more familiar with that process. You could see the report as a to-do list for those of us who've an interest in this sort of thing (gnomes). Were it more widely known WikiProjects and Portals might find it helpful in directing some of their efforts: the recently-active Portal:Indigenous peoples in Canada will likely be interested in the First Nation articles on the list, for example. As I said, not urgent, but good to have. Thanks again. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 03:19, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

New Database Reports
Hi, I have filed a BRFA to add/maintain database reports. Your input is welcome. Thanks,  F ASTILY   17:59, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Support: As on the BRFA page, these reports seem useful and I can't see any issue with changing their publication venue. TheMagikCow (T) (C) 09:13, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The Community Tech Bot that generates these reports currently has very few maintainers and we can use more hands if you're interested. The codebase can be found here. It's in Python. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Zombies can now be killed (?)
Some of you may be aware that since early next year there have been "zombies" lurking in the Labs database that keep showing up in reports even once their main-database incarnation has been edited or deleted in a way that should disqualify them from the report. It's explained more here but in short the Labs database is different to the main one for various reasons such as privacy, but the same operations were being applied to both of them and sometimes an operation like "delete the line after X" would end up applying to different records. Both Bernsteinbot and Quarry work off the Labs db rather than the live one. In recent weeks there's obviously been a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes to upgrade the Labs servers and improve the way they work, and we can now see the first fruits of that in that zombie entries now respond to editing - they can be killed! I imagine that once they've finished all the work then they'll transfer a "clean" version of the database over to Labs, but if there are any zombies that have been particularly annoying you, they can now be made to disappear. I was about to say that uncategorised categories and Categories categorized in red-linked categories are both now clean, but for some reason is still stuck, not sure whether that's because there was just a "window" of time in which zombie-killing was available whilst they tested something, or that bit of the database is particularly corrupted. Still, my OCD has largely been assuaged. <g> Le Deluge (talk) 15:08, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Looks like we now have a clean database, or at least the last zombies have disappeared from the reports I use on Quarry. Bravo Zulu to the techies, who have a thankless task, now we just need Bernsteinbot back up and running on most of the reports... Le Deluge (talk) 18:57, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Database reports/Uncategorized categories not updated since September 17
This report is typically generated weekly, but is now over two weeks old. What's going on? — swpb T go beyond 15:26, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * User:BernsteinBot has not been updating most of the reports since ~20 September. Given all the changes that have been happening on the Labs servers I'd imagine something has happened on the Labs side that has broken the bot. Since that's a report I monitor via a Quarry query, it's not in particularly bad shape, but others will be accumulating... Le Deluge (talk) 18:57, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh. But the bot is still editing: Special:Contributions/BernsteinBot! I'll take a look. Some reports run under the "mzmcbride" account and some run under the "dbreps" account. It feels like the "dbreps" account broke for some reason. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:38, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * As I mentioned over on the bot's talk page, since ~20 September (maybe 21st?), it's only been doing the non-free files and Wikipedians by edit count AFAICT. Certainly all the category DBRs have not been updated since then. Having got two of them completely cleared out, there now seems to have been another glitch on the Labs db - I've not poked around but it's either got a ~24h lag on it or I've got some new zombies showing up. Le Deluge (talk) 00:33, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

I updated the database credentials in, copying the working credentials from. I don't know why this file suddenly broke; it's perhaps related to the recent replica changes. Database reports/Uncategorized categories is now better. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:05, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Cheers. Yesterday's replication problems seem to have cleared, and the Labs server is running MUCH faster. My Quarry equivalent of Database reports/Red-linked categories with incoming links is now running in minutes, whereas for the last 18 months (bar a few weeks in July) it's been hitting the 30-minute timeout even with LIMIT 10. I guess you hit the same problem with the Bernsteinbot version, which hasn't run since July? Still, now the reports are working it just means there's work to be done clearing them.... Le Deluge (talk) 13:29, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Suggested report for Pending Changes review
Would it be possible to set up a report showing who's doing a lot of Pending changes reviewing? Something along the lines of the Top new article reviewers report for new page review. This would provide some recognition for those making a large contribution to the Pending Changes system <b style="color:seagreen">Noyster</b> (talk),  10:43, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Dated
The section headed "Protections" was made up before the new extended confirmed protection came in. As a result, it only deals with semi-protection and full protection. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.226.164.24 (talk) 08:35, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Broken redirect section anchors
I work on fixing these broken section anchors from time to time, (Database reports/Broken section anchors). It doesn't seem that many people do this, but some are. Whenever, I do, I certainly don't remember which ones I have previously fixed and sometimes stumble onto ones already fixed by others. It would be more useful if it were run more often than monthly. Daily would be great, but even weekly would be a significant improvement. <b style="color:#00FF00">MB</b> 21:04, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The program that generates this report has to retrieve over 100,000 articles and takes several hours to run. I am not comfortable using that much server resources more than once a month. --Bamyers99 (talk) 21:21, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I thought that might be the case. But what about running a subset (25% of the articles) weekly, so there is a relatively "fresh" part of the report to work on all the time? <b style="color:#00FF00">MB</b> 21:29, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Or we could use a magic word such as  so that each page would have the latest edit timestamp next to it and you could avoid pages that were recently edited.
 * If there's sufficient interest and demand, I think running this report more regularly would be fine. If it's really expensive to generate, we could find ways to make it faster/less expensive. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:53, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I would fix more of these with more recent reports. After a while, I just give up and put off doing more until next month with a new report. <b style="color:#00FF00">MB</b> 17:18, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
 * It's been over a month now, and no further comments. Does that mean there is not "sufficient interest and demand" to make any kind of improvement? <b style="color:#00FF00">MB</b> 13:03, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

User preferences no longer updated?
Hey, does anyone know why Database reports/User preferences is no longer kept updated? It seems like a really useful and interesting report. Looking at the sidebar of the page, I see it's still kept up to date on a few other Wikipedias and Commons (or at least, the gender part of it is), so why not turn it back on here? (tagging User:MZMcBride since they operate the bot that used to update this page) – Iago Qnsi (talk) 05:21, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * MZM mostly updates things by request related to DBR at this point. That aside, is there a reason you're looking for the data (even if it is still queryable)? --Izno (talk) 12:54, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * No particular reason—just thought it'd be interesting to know the gender split of Wikipedia users (or at least of users who have set it). – Iago Qnsi (talk) 18:44, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It's somewhere in the realm of 10-15% women and the rest men and not much changes that figure. --Izno (talk) 19:12, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The figures are of limited value only, as they will include a high proportion of editors who have gone inactive. However, if you're interested in what options are being selected by new editors, then the rate of increase in the figures would be a good guide if updated regularly <b style="color:seagreen">Noyster</b> (talk),  21:44, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi Noyster, IagoQnsi, and Izno.

It looks like Database reports/User preferences was last updated in September 2015. I agree that it would be nice to have this report updated regularly again. Are any of you volunteering to take this on and indefinitely keep this report updated? :-) I don't need to be convinced that the statistical database reports such as this one about user preferences can be interesting, especially over time, as Noyster notes. BernsteinBot and Community Tech bot are still running regularly, at least, so dozens of reports still get updated. But getting up to 100% would be a decent amount of work.

The code at Database reports/User preferences/Configuration won't work, but given some comments on T60196, I think I may have already fixed this script? It may just be a matter of finding it and re-running it. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:40, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

I updated Database reports/User preferences and Database reports/User preferences/Configuration. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:11, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Just for reference:

I don't see much room to expand this report presently. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:26, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

New report on stale drafts
Hello friends! Following a successful BRFA, the plan is to move the long-running stale drafts report here to DBR. I assume there is no opposition, but I wanted to ask about the name of the report. I see we have the forgotten articles report, which is very similar but for the mainspace. Perhaps the new report should then be called "Forgotten drafts"? Or is "stale drafts" just as fitting? Thanks &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  19:43, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Calling them stale drafts seems reasonable. --Izno (talk) 19:51, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Potentially untagged misspellings report
Hi! is a newish database report that lists potentially untagged misspellings. For example, Angolan War of Independance is currently not tagged with and it should be.

Any and all help evaluating and tagging these potential misspellings is welcome. Once these redirects are appropriately identified and categorized, other database reports such as can then highlight instances where we are currently linking to these misspellings, so that the misspellings can be fixed.

This report has some false positives and the list of misspelling pairs needs a lot of expansion. If you have additional pairs that we should be scanning for or you have other feedback about this report, that is also welcome. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:56, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Report for Oversized Stub categories
Hi, I'd like to request a regular report to update the Oversized Stub categories table. The basic purpose of this table is to provide an overview of stub categories that need priority attention from the WP:STUBSORT participants. These large categories are then diffused into smaller, more specific stub-categories that are theoretically more approachable for wiki editors. The basic columns of the report, along with a sample from the current table, would be something like the following: The table shows all stub categories with more than 5 pages. Note that the "Pages" number differs from the "Articles" number in that it is supposed to reflect how many times you can hit "Next page" in the stub category before you reach the end of the category. I believe this table originated from a user who is no longer active, so I'm not sure how they determined how many pages there were. If there is an easy way to determine this page number, it would be nice to have. Otherwise I think we can approximate the pages by dividing the number of articles by 200, rounding up.

For the articles column, please note that there are commas in the thousands place.

I think it could be run monthly to start. I have mocked up a basic statement in Quarry https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/28451. If it's possible to make a regular report, I hope that it can have better formatting than my query. -Furicorn (talk) 08:27, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Update reports?
Could Database reports/Broken section anchors be updated? I've cleared my cache but it still gives a date of November 2, 2018. Leschnei (talk) 14:39, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Decembers report has been posted. --Bamyers99 (talk) 15:34, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Leschnei (talk) 15:36, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Unprotected templates with many transclusions
Please exclude the subpages of taxonomy from Database reports/Unprotected templates with many transclusions. These templates are effectively semi protected via Mediawiki:Titleblacklist. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 20:54, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That only protects them from creation, not from change? --Izno (talk) 22:07, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Since it contains the flag "noedit", it prevents changing. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:31, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Didn't know we could do that there. --Izno (talk) 18:50, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The documentation is at MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist, before the discussions. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 23:14, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Images for deletion used in Wikiproject Medicine
Doc James suggested to have a report of images for deletions used in Wikiproject Medicine (T206024). I would like to ask to add a new report based on the following SQL query, so users can easily watch the report within the wiki (or include/link it from the wikiproject). Note this is a 3 joins + cross wiki query, but should be quite fast (uses indexes+not many images are to be deleted).

Thanks, Eran (talk) 21:46, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks User:ערן :-) Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 22:51, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Orphaned images
I would like a report listing all orphaned images. We currently list all orphaned *nonfree* images, I'd like them *all* (so that they can be moved to commons or deleted as garbage, depending). Ideally this will have clickable links. Report to run once or twice a month; JJMC89 made an initial query that's linked from my talkpage, and which should be useful. DS (talk) 05:31, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I've started a limited report here. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 04:30, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Notification
I randomly noticed a re-direct I had created was listed in Wikipedia:Database reports/Broken section anchors (no 464) & discovered 14 more - all linking to List of Law Reports in Australia. Basically I had forgotten to add the anchors when I created the redirects. I have fixed them all now, but I was wondering if it is possible to have some form of notification, similar to the DAB page notice, to remind people like me to add the anchors? Find bruce (talk) 10:06, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
 * You don't need to create anchors, since a section name is implicitly an anchor. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:39, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I had to examine the example to understand the request. Find bruce created Commonwealth Arbitration Reports as a redirect to List of Law Reports in Australia in 2017. There was never a "CAR" section but Find bruce added a "CAR" anchor recently.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Law_Reports_in_Australia&diff=883044760&oldid=866891744] The request is apparently to be notified if you create a redirect to a section/anchor which does not exist. An automated process would be unable to guess whether you intended to link an existing section (probably the most common case) or add an anchor. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:07, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
 * While it may not be strictly necessary to create an anchor, it seems like a good idea, when, as the doc for the template points out, section headings can change, resulting in a link to the top of an article which may not have an obvious connection. When I decide to use an anchor, I stop and create it before linking to it, lest I get distracted by something shiny and forget. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 08:03, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
 * You are exactly right BlackcurrantTea, off I wandered distracted by something else, 14 times. I wasn't clear so thanks PrimeHunter for taking the time to figure it out. It sounds like my way of creating the problem is uncommon so even if it was technically possible the return for effort would be low. What prompted the thought bubble is "have I missed any others that I need to go back & clean up" & looking at the list, I have no idea how to figure that out. Find bruce (talk) 09:54, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
 * It's probably simplest to look at your contributions and click on the diff link for edits in which you think you might have missed an anchor or redirect. If you use one of the tools like AWB or Twinkle, there may be an easier way; I haven't tried either. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 13:18, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Check for unknown parameters
Would it be possible to get a report of templates with high numbers of transclusions that do not implement Module:Check for unknown parameters? I'm thinking something similar to Database reports/Unprotected templates with many transclusions. This would not need to be run all that often. Additionally, does it require special permissions to run these reports? Can someone point me towards some documentation about reports and what not? I'd be very interested in learning more and seeing if I can generate my own reports as needed. Thanks! -- Zack mann  (Talk to me/What I been doing) 22:56, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Took me about a week-but managed to get most of the people listed on Potential biographies of dead people (3) under living=no
Yep! It took me a while, but I managed to do it a few hours ago, got most of them under Database reports/Potential biographies of dead people (3) under living=no. (on another note-it looks like it has not been updated yet today, and the shortest bios has been updated in a few days). Wgolf (talk) 01:47, 28 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Seems like none of the reports for BLP's or dead people have been updated this week, hopefully they will be soon....Wgolf (talk) 01:49, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

New reports
Recently, I created Database reports/Polluted categories (2) (drafts with mainspace categories) and Database reports/Polluted categories (3) (container categories containing articles). However, before I create a report tracking articles tagged as orphans containing incoming links, I'd like to see if there is any support for or opposition to the report. Thoughts? --DannyS712 (talk) 06:33, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, please. That would be helpful, . It seems it would be reasonably simple to exclude talk pages and pages outside of mainspace. Could you also exclude DAB pages and redirects, as they don't count in considering a page a non-orphan? BlackcurrantTea (talk) 13:25, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Right now it would just return a count of the number of incoming pages, and (I think) its limited to only the article namespace. --DannyS712 (talk) 14:15, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
 * That's a good start, thanks. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 14:44, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Well-developed articles classified as Start- or Stub-class, and vice versa
Would a report showing Start- and Stub-class articles sorted by inline citation count or length be useful? Similarly, would a report showing B-class articles sorted similarly (but from the other end) be useful? Jc86035 (talk) 00:51, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Any reason why Potential biographies of living people (2) is not listed on here?
It is still updated weekly, but it is oddly no longer on here! Any reason why? Wgolf (talk) 20:49, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
 * It was removed by Fastily [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Database_reports&diff=798285569&oldid=798106051] in September 2017 when it had weekly updates.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ADatabase_reports%2FPotential_biographies_of_living_people_%282%29&action=history&year=2017&month=9&tagfilter=] I don't know why. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:49, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Well it is still being updated (or rather again), so it could be readded. Wgolf (talk) 01:14, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Uncategorized categories
Is there any way to set up the report for Database reports/Uncategorized categories, so categories such as Category:Silverchair do not show up as uncategorized? Categories such as this have been categorized under the scheme of Wikipedia categories named after Foo. In 2012 or so, it was determined to make the "named after" categories hidden but that doesn't mean the categories are uncategorized. Star cheers peaks news lost wars Talk to me 18:25, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Since the default is for hidden categories to not be displayed, that means that a page that belongs to no non-hidden categories is, to all intents and purposes, uncategorised. Hidden categories exist for the maintenance of the project, they are not intended to provide a method for navigation to the general reader. For these general readers, such a category cannot be reached by following the tree. It is isolated: and such isolation is a probem requiring a fix. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:51, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Maybe calling this report "Uncategorized categories" is misleading? Would a title such as "Orphaned categories" be more accurate or better? I'm skeptical.
 * I posted some related thoughts here: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Categorization&diff=910756152&oldid=910747850>. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:12, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Database reports/Unused templates is broken
Last run of Database reports/Unused templates was June 3, 2019. Mackensen (talk) 17:04, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Database reports/Uncategorized categories is broken
— swpb T&#8201;•&#8201;go beyond&#8201;•&#8201;bad idea 14:24, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Or working too well or working incorrectly, depending on who you ask! --MZMcBride (talk) 07:09, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
 * What is that supposed to mean? — swpb T&#8201;•&#8201;go beyond&#8201;•&#8201;bad idea 13:50, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi swpb. Previously this report only included categories that were completely uncategorized. A few months ago I changed the report to also include categories that are only categorized in hidden categories. This change proved to be somewhat controversial. Would you consider categories such as Category:Juventus Managua and Category:Ituano FC to be uncategorized? --MZMcBride (talk) 06:29, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The report doesn't seem to be working at all... — swpb T&#8201;•&#8201;go beyond&#8201;•&#8201;bad idea 12:53, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi swpb. Yes, I'm aware. I'm likely the only person maintaining this report. Until there's some clarity regarding the question I asked, it's unlikely the report will be fixed. (cc: Rathfelder) --MZMcBride (talk) 20:11, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. Is there anywhere else we can raise these issues? Rathfelder (talk) 20:12, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Well that's rather...petulant. Is there any reason you can't put the report back the way it was until this scope question is resolved? Some of us use it to do real work, it's not a ball to take home when you don't want to play. — swpb T&#8201;•&#8201;go beyond&#8201;•&#8201;bad idea 20:23, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
 * What an amusing reply. I've been maintaining this and other reports for over ten years and somehow you see fit to lecture me about "real work"; incredible. This report as written is broken due to underlying infrastructure changes. You're very welcome to fix or maintain this report. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:11, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
 * If you broke it, fix it. I don't know Python, or whatever other language is behind this. If someone else broke it, who and how? I want a working report. I don't care how, or who's grumpy about it. — swpb T&#8201;•&#8201;go beyond&#8201;•&#8201;bad idea 12:39, 15 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Why has this not run since 6 August? Rathfelder (talk) 07:51, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Am I taking crazy pills? All the stats on this report page have been blank for months, and the editor who claims responsibility for it won't touch it. Any idea where we can go to find an adult? — swpb T&#8201;•&#8201;go beyond&#8201;•&#8201;bad idea 12:48, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The reason it's stopped grabbing things like the name of the user who last edited a category is because a few months ago Wikimedia restructured the databases to move out all the user-related data into a separate table, leaving just the numeric userid. So to recreate the report as it was, would need a separate query to translate the userid into a username. But this is a "difficult" report to generate at the best of times, I know it's not quite the same but when I run a similar query on Quarry it sometimes times out (and the timeout-iness comes and goes which is why sometimes all the reports generate normally and sometimes they go months without updating). Adding another query to grab the username tends to tip it over the edge and it always times out IME. So there isn't a good answer in MZMcBride's hands, unless he can request longer timeouts from the administrators. But hey, what you have at the moment is usable in that it has the categories, which is the most important bit of the report - just cut him some slack, like everyone here he's a volunteer, no need to snark at him.Le Deluge (talk) 13:01, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
 * MZMcBride seemed to suggest the breakage was caused by their actions. If that's not the case, I don't know why they injected themselves here to begin with. If the real answer is a request to admins that anyone can send, then please, let's do that ASAP. I could, but it seems like it would be better from someone who knows the mechanics of report generation. — swpb T&#8201;•&#8201;go beyond&#8201;•&#8201;bad idea 14:00, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
 * You're kinda talking at cross purposes. There's three separate things going on :
 * the "report doesn't seem to be working at all" mentioned by Rathfelder - a server timeout issue which comes and goes
 * the 50 categories that are totally uncategorised have now been joined by 1500-odd categories with only a hidden category - a conscious decision by MZMcBride
 * the disappearance of the fields for last user to edit etc - a result of Wikimedia's changes to the database structure, which at the very least would need significant reworking of the script and would make the timeout problem worse
 * So which are you talking about? MZMcBride has made a choice to add the ones with hidden categories only, but the rest is out of his hands. FWIW my answer to the hidden thing would be "it depends - but the genuinely uncategorised are a high priority whereas the ones with hidden categories are either a lower priority or not to be touched, so can we lose the hidden ones please?". WP:EPONYMOUS leaves categorisation of eponymous categories to local convention - the musician editors seem to be firmly against anything except "Wikipedia categories named after ...", and that attitude seems to have spread to other biographies, whereas things like sports clubs generally do get visible categories. But unless there's a way to filter or sort out the hidden ones, they're hindering the categorisation of the genuinely uncategorised ones, which _is_ a high priority. JMO. Le Deluge (talk) 14:39, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
 * It's the last bullet that brought me here (primarily the "Length" and "Members" columns, which I use to prioritize fixes). But I agree with you that the hidden-cat entries should either be removed entirely or filtered out by default – they swamp the truly uncategorized entries, there's no consensus that they need fixing at all, and their presence may be exacerbating the timeout problem (yes?). Can any of us restore the status quo ante, or does MZMcBride need to do it? I can't even tell what page needs to be edited – Database reports/Uncategorized categories/Configuration hasn't been touched in a decade. — swpb T&#8201;•&#8201;go beyond&#8201;•&#8201;bad idea 18:41, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Probably just best if you steal my Quarry code that roughly corresponds to how the report used to work (but just gives the userid of the last editor, so you can't see the IP editors), that way you can run it when you want (as long as the toolserver isn't too busy, it does time out sometimes). But we're down to less than 40 now, it's Special:WantedCategories and the linked red categories that really need the attention... Le Deluge (talk) 20:05, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
 * That's fine for me, but I know I'm not the only user of the report. — swpb T&#8201;•&#8201;go beyond&#8201;•&#8201;bad idea 15:48, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Le Deluge, you're a saint for calmly trying to explain the situation here. &lt;3

swpb, re: "If that's not the case, I don't know why they injected themselves here to begin with."

Bruhhhhhhhh, you're talking about my report, updated by my bot, as part of my database reports project. You're the guest here, I'm not sure how much clearer I can make that. Thank you for the clarifying answers. Fixing the report to update as it did previously isn't very difficult. Tedious and annoying, sure, but not a huge lift. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:03, 16 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Did your addition of pseudo-uncategorized entries cause the report to stop filling the extra columns, or not? You brought it up, and said that fixing the report depended on that question, but according to Le Deluge, it had precisely nothing to do with the problem I came here to report. Which. is. it. — swpb T&#8201;•&#8201;go beyond&#8201;•&#8201;bad idea 15:57, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm not MZMcBride, but I've spent some time trying to get this query working myself. I can confirm that including the only-in-hidden-categories categories has nothing to do with the now-empty columns, and that the way the tools replicas deal with revdeletion/oversight and the newly-separate actor table has everything to do with it. —Cryptic 16:59, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * , you've been incredible rude to MZMcBride who has given countless hours to the DBR page: maybe extending an olive branch of apology might be indicated? You want them to take time out of their day to sort out a complicated technical issue after being fairly abrasive with them. –<b style="font-family:verdana;color:#000">xeno</b><sup style="color:#000">talk 18:06, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Let him answer my question. The time of mine he wasted with an irrelevant side matter is as valuable as his time. — swpb T&#8201;•&#8201;go beyond&#8201;•&#8201;bad idea 18:13, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Right, right. I think I see at least part of your confusion. Specifically, regarding "[...] fixing the report depended on that question [...]", yes, that's correct, if you want me to fix this report. The great, perhaps best, part of being a volunteer is that I don't have to report to people like you when they make demands. I don't have to answer your questions and I can attach any and all requirements or prerequisites to doing work (or not doing work!) that I want to. As I mentioned a few times, you're more than welcome to create your own report or update this report. I don't care at all if you don't like Python, that was my programming language choice that I made in 2008. Pick another language, pick another update frequency, pick a different set of criteria for inclusion in the report, pick a different set of metadata to include with each entry in the report. But these only your choices if you are doing the work or you're able to convince someone else to do that work. Hope that helps. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:37, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * So let's review: you won't do anything until a question that you admit has nothing to do with this problem is answered, because it made you grumpy in a totally separate discussion in which I had no part. Ok. No one doubts your right to act that way, it's the immaturity of that stance that is insane to me. — swpb T&#8201;•&#8201;go beyond&#8201;•&#8201;bad idea 19:43, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, let's review. You refuse to accept MZMcBride's explanation, so you persist in demanding that they fix something that is totally outside their control. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 19:51, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * "Totally outside their control"? According to La Deluge yes, but not according to MZMcBride himself... — swpb T&#8201;•&#8201;go beyond&#8201;•&#8201;bad idea 19:55, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * To quote MZMcBride themselves: This report as written is broken due to underlying infrastructure changes. Those infrastructure changes were not made by MZMcBride, they cannot be reverted by MZMcBride, they are therefore outside the control of MZMcBride. So stop blaming MZMcBride. You have been on Wikipedia long enough to know that we are all volunteers here, MZMcBride included. They are not some paid employee that is subservient to yourself, so you cannot tell them what to do. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:25, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Talk page stats?
Hello, I'm looking for reports on activity on talk pages, how many conversations active at one time over a length of time, i.e. 1-4 weeks, and how many unanswered talk page sections/how often an unanswered post is made? I'm trying to figure if a notification system is feasible. ~ R.T.G 10:23, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi RTG. Wiki talk pages are notoriously difficult to get stats like this out of because they're just a blob of free-form wikitext. However, looking at a talk page's recent history, you could probably get rough estimations. What kind of notification system are you considering? Any talk page can already be watched (added to a user's watchlist) and user talk pages already have associated Echo and e-mail notifications. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:22, 26 November 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm talking about site wide statistics. The history provides info on sections created and edited in most cases, in like way over 95%. Would it be possible to count that, in a way that new posts and replies can be counted? I'm just looking for a rough guide to how many discussions are active, and how many talk posts go unanswered, over given time frames, across the site though. ~ R.T.G 17:50, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's possible to gather this data, but it's a decent amount of work. A way to accomplish this task could be:
 * Write a script that takes a talk page title or page ID and analyzes the past 30 days of edits to it, if any.
 * Iterate over the full list of talk pages with this script.
 * Store the data somewhere.
 * Generate a report or visualization or something else with the data, particularly as it accumulates over time.
 * There are about 6.6 million article talk pages on the English Wikipedia. The vast majority are probably untouched, but you'd need to check them all and then report across the set. If you included non-article talk pages, it would be even more processing and data storage. It would likely take a few hours to write the talk page analyzer script, but it would probably take weeks to run this script across millions of talk pages. Unless you short-circuited which pages needed to be checked or batched the lookups or did some other kind of optimization. If you only care about recent activity, you could probably rely on the data that feeds Special:RecentChanges. Or you could potentially just live-monitor edits to talk pages as they happen and then report on that on an hourly or daily basis or something. This is all doable, I'm just not sure you'll find anyone willing to put in the work. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:58, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks MZM. The idea is to provide automatic reports on talk page activity to the end that you could look through lists and see activity on talk pages based on recent time period for the purpose of finding discussions or unanswered topics. Maybe I'll propose it anyway without the stats. I'll try VP technical for a volunteer too maybe, cheers o/ ~ R.T.G 16:43, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Range blocks
I noticed the weekly Range blocks report hasn't updated in eight months. Anyone have any info or update why not? Thanks. --Mindfrieze (talk) 17:09, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi Mindfrieze. This report stopped updating because it grew too big for a single wiki page. We could pretty easily paginate the report if needed, but I'm curious: do you find this range blocks report valuable? I'm not sure it's worth fixing, especially when we have <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BlockList?wpTarget=&wpOptions%5B%5D=userblocks&wpOptions%5B%5D=addressblocks&blockType=&limit=100&wpFormIdentifier=blocklist>. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:57, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks MZMcBride. I had requested a block on a range of IP's vandalizing several articles and just wanted to check on it's status/duration, but I don't have a special need for this report.  I was able to find the info on your link above.  Thanks again. --Mindfrieze (talk) 23:09, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Database reports/Forgotten articles was forgotten
As requested on the talk page I am reporting this here. Database reports/Forgotten articles hasn't been updated all decade, and it used to be updated roughly biweekly. hasn't touched it since December, and there has been no response on their talk page. --awkwafaba (📥) 18:54, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
 * , try posting on the Community Tech team's talk page at meta. Whilst awaiting their reply, you might enjoy a stroll through the old-growth forests of Special:AncientPages. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 11:56, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi. I don't have access to the "database-reports" account, only the "dbreps" account, so I can't see the exact error message. But my guess is that the SQL query being used is timing out.

I'm not sure the current metric being used for whether an article has been forgotten&mdash;the pages that haven't been edited in a long time&mdash;is very good. It seems like you'd want to ignore trivial recent edits (such as automated edits that are simply changing a link or whatever) and you'd want to examine page view information to better determine which pages are truly forgotten. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:36, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Uncategorized categories
Is there any way of getting this fixed? In principle it is a useful report, and it hasnt worked for months. There are clearly both definitional and technical issues. Rathfelder (talk) 09:25, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi Rathfelder. I clicked on about a dozen entries in the report from October 2019 and nearly all of the categories I checked were still uncategorized by the report's standard. The report is updating currently from a manual run. We could make it automated again, but it doesn't seem like anyone is really using this report. If people are using this report, I'd like to hear from them what criteria they feel should be used. --MZMcBride (talk) 10:09, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I dont think there is agreement on the inclusion of hidden categories. It might be easier if they were excluded. Rathfelder (talk) 10:16, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi Rathfelder. I made a compromise for this report and simply added a "hidden categories" count column to the table. I almost removed the other columns. Thoughts?
 * I'm also curious if Special:UncategorizedCategories could meet your needs. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:29, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

They both look very helpful. Thank you. Rathfelder (talk) 11:13, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
 * It might be helpful if they could include the number of articles in them. Rathfelder (talk) 08:51, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Afyter running through both: Special:UncategorizedCategories is the key list,  and should now be empty,  but Uncategorized categories contained quite a few articles which should be in visible categories. So both are helpful. Rathfelder (talk) 11:15, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Categories, added only into Category:Tracking categories and Category:Hidden categories
Some of the maintenance categories are effectively uncategorized, because they are categorized into exactly two categories: Category:Tracking categories and Category:Hidden categories. For example, this was the case for Category:Pages with misused citation needed templates. Such a report could be incorporated into Uncategorized categories, or be separate. —⁠andrybak (talk) 23:45, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Redirects
For the database reports which didn't have talk pages, I created redirects (using R from remote talk page) to this one. There were many that consisted only of, say, a single unanswered comment from 2011, which I didn't really know what to do with, so I left those alone (merging them here may be intelligent, or at least making the page a soft redirect, but whatever). jp×g 04:53, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I've added central to the pages that weren't redirects (i.e. which had older discussions on them), which should direct editors to this page. jp×g 06:51, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Each database report is different; why make people try and find comments on a specific report in a big mass of mixed report comments? I have reverted this change for the database reports that I maintain. --Bamyers99 (talk) 14:27, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Mostly, my thinking here is that the vast majority of these pages have only one or two comments on them, and seem to languish in obscurity since very few people watch them. If you look at the PrefixIndex of all database report talk pages (excluding redirects), there are 69. While some of them have long discussion threads, most don't seem to. Here is a table of all the pages and their sizes (three of the entries give 0 as the page size, but this is only since there are a lot of calls to the function here). This one consists entirely of the text "Lame, to even consider such an act." added as an unsigned comment by an IP address in 2012. This one contains a single request from 2011 (unanswered); this one is a single request from 2019 (unanswered), this one is a single request from 2009 (unanswered). This one, the largest page that isn't an archive of Wikipedia talk:Database reports itself, still has less than 30 watchers; it was last edited in September 2018, by a bot (the last human edit was in March 2017). In comparison, this page has 269 watchers. jp×g 20:05, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

A couple reports which seem to be broken but still show as being recently updated
Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic is listed as being updated daily, and indeed is listed in the table at WP:DBR as being last updated recently, but the page itself has not been updated by a bot in a very long time. In fact, the most recent death listed is on 2020-08-18. Attempting to run the script that updates the page causes the bot to time out (which is presumably why it hasn't been updated in ages). Is there a way to fix this, or should it be designated historical and removed from the list of active reports? jp×g 09:28, 31 May 2021 (UTC)


 * The same goes for Birthday today, which again is claimed by the table to have been updated on May 27 but currently shows a bunch of people born on March 13. This one, too, causes Toolforge to crap out when running the update script. jp×g 09:29, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Export this page
How can I export this page? 1005581473 is the revision ID but the special export page will not process it. Polymath uk (talk) 20:17, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The Wikitext is more than 2,048 kilobytes long. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:48, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes - I realise that but thanks for replying. Will this prevent it from exporting? I don't see anything in the manual about this restriction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Polymath uk (talk • contribs) 07:38, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
 * This refers to Special:Permalink/1005581473, the 8 February 2021 revision of Database reports/Unusually long IP blocks which is 2,155,847 bytes, exceeding the 2MB limit by 58,695 bytes. Some of the markup processing has failed, so you get visible <nowiki ></nowiki> tags. Is it possible to split the report into smaller pages, say 5,000 rows per page? Judging by [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Database_reports/Unusually_long_IP_blocks&action=history its history], the size fluctuates wildly, so the size isn't always a problem. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 12:57, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I set it to split to 5,000 rows per page but its down to 1 page now. The index listing doesn't seem to be working though... Legoktm (talk) 05:13, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Polluted categories
Could someone please rerun Database reports/Polluted categories? The last time it was run was December 2019, and I'd like to have my bot start working on this again. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:21, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Is this something you could please rerun? Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 05:18, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you!!! GoingBatty (talk) 01:40, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Could you please schedule the report to run monthly? Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 01:54, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Could anyone please schedule the report to run monthly? Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 01:55, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi @GoingBatty, I just triggered a manual run and (fingers crossed) it should run monthly now. Legoktm (talk) 09:32, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Request: Journalist wanting to know number of Daily Mail references in 2016
I am a journalist, Stephen Harrison, who regularly writes about Wikipedia for Slate. I am trying to figure out how many times the Daily Mail was referenced as a source on Wikipedia in December 2016 before the Jan 2017 RfC determining that the Daily Mail was a generally unreliable source. This would be a one-time report, basically a snapshot of Dec 2016. Could anyone help me with producing that database or report? Many thanks for any help you can provide. Stephenbharrison (talk) 14:30, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Hello, Stephenbharrison,
 * I'm not a technical person but you might try Bot requests. Honestly though, I'm not sure if this request is even possible, you're talking about scanning millions of articles history from 4 1/2 years ago. You might have to select a snapshot from a particular day in December, not a month's worth of edits. I think it might be more realistic to go to discussions surrounding the RFC and see if any editor created lists of articles that needed to have Daily Mail links removed. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 04:06, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Liz. Somebody was able to help me at WP:HELPDESK so I now have what I need! Stephenbharrison (talk) 13:42, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Request: Protection reports
To improve the maintenance of our indefinitely protected pages, could we get database reports for:
 * Indefinitely fully protected redirects (quarry:query/44276), ran monthly
 * Fully salted titles with unusually long expiries (quarry:query/55671 though perhaps change from >2022 to durations longer than one year), ran monthly
 * Indefinitely fully salted article titles (quarry:query/55670), ran fortnightly
 * Indefinitely fully protected articles (quarry:query/55719), ran weekly
 * Indefinitely semi protected articles (quarry:query/55720), ran weekly

Ideally, the redirect report would mirror the design of Wikipedia:Database reports/Indefinitely semi-protected redirects and the others would mimic Database reports/Semi-protected articles with unusually long expiries, though "expiry" would be excluded for all but "Fully salted titles with unusually long expiries". I understand this is a big ask but it would be much appreciated. Using categories to track some of these things is a nightmare. Anarchyte ( talk ) 16:05, 6 June 2021 (UTC)


 * I generated the first report, see Database reports/Indefinitely fully protected redirects. There are some duplicates though, so something appears off with the query I used, will try to look into that tomorrow. Legoktm (talk) 07:39, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
 * query/56054 works -- getting rid of dupes arising from multiple protections on a page turns out to be tricky! – SD0001  (talk) 15:32, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I generated the last – Database reports/Indefinitely semi-protected articles using the newly-created database report. Noting that this report used to exist earlier but was marked as historical after the bot stopped updating it in 2017. – SD0001  (talk) 15:30, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Also did the second one – Database reports/Fully salted titles with unusually long expiries. @ The 3rd one (indef fully salted titles) has 41000 items which would be inadvisable to save on-wiki. The 4th one (indef fully protected articles) has very few entries most of which are softredirects, so not sure if this is necessary. – SD0001  (talk) 19:10, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Apologies for the late reply. Just responding to say thank you. I can see why indef fully salted titles would be hard to keep on-wiki, which is unfortunate. Have a great day, Anarchyte  ( talk ) 14:10, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Broken links to a given page
I suspect this request isn't in quite the right place - if so, please let me know where would be better.

The use case I am considering is: a user makes edits to a page, perhaps in particular "refactoring"/restructuring the page and changing a number of section headings (I am in the process of doing this with a particular page). The result of this is that a number of incoming links to section headings (both from redirect pages and from other pages) will break. I would like to make it easier for the user to see which incoming links have broken.

The report "Broken section anchors" seems to be a good general tool for this, but does not allow filtering by target page.

Would it be possible to add, in the "Tools" section of the left-hand sidebar, either:

- an entry "Broken section links", which would produce the output of the "Broken section anchors" report, filtered for the target page in question - or, within the "What links here" page, a filter/other link which would filter the list of "What links here" by those containing broken links?

It seems to me that this would empower responsible users to maintain link quality to a much higher degree than currently possible.

If I'm barking up the wrong tree and just haven't spotted how I can do this myself, please let me know :-). With thanks in advance, --James D DE (talk) 17:48, 1 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi. I maintain anchors in enwiki. I should say, this kind of list will very very long. Please refer to w:ja:Category:Main page containing links with broken anchors. Kanashimi (talk) 06:01, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your answer. What I meant was a report which one could run with (as a parameter) the target page in question. Then it would only show broken links pointing to no-longer-extant section headings on the page in question. While I agree that for some general-interest pages this could lead to a very long list, for more specialist pages, like the one I'm working on, it should be more manageable. (Unfortunately I can't read ?Japanese and couldn't understand the page you linked to). --James D DE (talk) 13:25, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
 * How about leave a report on the talk page of article? This should meet your needs. Please participate in the discussion Bot_requests. --Kanashimi (talk) 21:39, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Database reports/Orphaned article deletion discussions
Most of these AFD discussions listed are old, from before there was a standard format for AFDs. I only found one instance of a malformed AFD proposal that had no participation or closure, it was just a statement and the editor had no other edits. I think whatever criteria is used to put together this mammoth list needs to be sharpened because almost all of these 1500+ listed AFD discussions were closed discussions and unproblematic. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 03:57, 30 June 2021 (UTC)


 * As a first attempt, I added a column for last edit and sorted to put the most recent ones at the top and split the page into two. This kind of worked, except bots/people are fixing lint errors, bumping very old AfDs. Maybe we should sort by creation time instead?
 * I do wonder why we don't delete obviously malformed AfDs as CSD G8 though. Legoktm (talk) 09:34, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Hello, Legoktm,
 * There have been times when some industrious editor has gone through and speedied malformed AFDs, some from quite a while ago. But for some reason, these areas of the project aren't categorized so I'm not sure how they came across them because they weren't on this list. I appreciate you doing some work on this subject. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 04:24, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Gotcha. The next run of the report will switch it to use creation date, which I think will do a better job of surfacing new orphaned discussions. Legoktm (talk) 00:59, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Gotcha. The next run of the report will switch it to use creation date, which I think will do a better job of surfacing new orphaned discussions. Legoktm (talk) 00:59, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Talkpage subpages
At Village pump (technical)/Archive 191, while following up on some unmoved GA pages I found that talkpage subpages are often not moved automatically with the pages. This breaks GA links in some templates and makes the GA pages harder to find. I have found quite a few cases where GA pages were not moved. Presumably, talkpage archives might also not being moved in some situations. Is there a way of identifying a list of subpages which were not moved with their respective talkpage? Alternatively, a list of subpages of redirects might serve a similar purpose, although it would include a few cases where they were meant to be subpages of the redirect. Thanks, CMD (talk) 04:39, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
 * To fix my slight banner blindness, I am asking at the moment if this could be done as a one-off to assess the issue. I imagine if it's a large and persistent issue, it might need a more regular check with a category to note the unproblematic situations, but that would depend on the first check. CMD (talk) 04:08, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Number formatting
I was looking at Database reports/Page count by namespace and found it a little difficult to read. Could the numbers be formatted with thousands separators to make it easier for humans to parse? <b style="color:#034503">MB</b> 18:33, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Unused templates
Can WP:Database reports/Unused templates be rewritten to ignore redirects to templates with transclusions? I use a script which colours redirects green, and all but two of the 5000 templates listed on WP:Database reports/Unused templates/12 are green. Of the few I checked, the redirect target templates all had multiple transclusions, so it's likely most of the templates redirect targets on that page aren't unused. —Somnifuguist (talk) 05:33, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Database_reports/File_description_pages_shadowing_a_Commons_file_or_redirect
Is it possible to get a version of this report excluding DYK used images? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:58, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Unused Templates report
This is part of a discussion that I've started on WikiProject Templates to create a task force monitoring the unused templates on Wikipedia. I would like the report to run for at least two months as the task force is currently in an idea stage. When the reports are going to expire, if possible I would like to be notified of when it will happen. I need four reports from the Unused Templates database:

1) All unused templates that are not stubs or redirects.

2) All stub templates listed as unused. According to one of the users on the talk page discussion, there are either exactly or about 1,000 stub templates.

3) All redirects listed as unused. According to one of the users on the talk page discussion, there are either exactly or about 69,000 redirects.

4) Templates that were created and/or edited in the last year and the present year. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 22:43, 7 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Everything thin Database reports/Unused templates looks to be a redirect, so I think #3 is covered.--awkwafaba (📥) 11:53, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Pages 1 and 2, and a bit of page 3, are not redirects. There is a filtered version of the report that follows most of the criteria above, at User:Jonesey95/unused templates, and a new task force at WikiProject Templates/Unused Templates Task Force. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:18, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I had just come here to make a suggestion along the same lines. In theory, it ought to be simple to just amend the code that generates the database report to either include a redirect status of 1 or 0, or include page length as a field (allowing you to sort the table in such a way that everything below a certain threshold is obviously a redirect). Both of these things, if I recall correctly, are in very easily accessible database tables. jp×g 15:42, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * What suggestion are you making, exactly? Currently, pages 1 and 2 have actual template pages, and the remaining pages in the report are all redirects, as far as I know. In answer to request 1 above, I created User:Jonesey95/unused templates. There have been other discussions explaining why unused stub and redirect templates are not worth looking at. As for request 4, it is a bit redundantly phrased for something being written in September, but I believe that the task force has decided to focus for now on templates that have not been modified in 2021. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:24, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, my suggestion was going to be to make something exactly like that, so I guess I do not really need to make it anyore. Instead, I'll just add a link to your subpage at Database reports/Unused templates. jp×g 02:30, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Request: Articles that link to IP addresses
It has come to my attention that quite a few articles link directly to IP addresses. I think this is bad practice and a possible security risk for readers. I know not all of these are bad, but I think they need some attention and closer monitoring. I’m not sure if this is the best place for this, but could we get a database report or tracking category for this? --awkwafaba (📥) 15:58, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi awkwafaba. That's an interesting query. The Domain Name System (DNS) is a layer on top of IPv4 addresses so that users don't have to remember a specific series of numbers and instead can type in, for example, "wikipedia.org" when navigating the Web. As far as I know, there's no additional security risk for readers to click on hyperlinks that reference IPv4 addresses such as <http://216.58.195.78> over domain names such as <http://google.com>. What attention do you think is needed here? --MZMcBride (talk) 18:35, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
 * i think you misunderstand the risk. It’s not that sites with IP addresses are bad, it’s that you cannot tell whee they really are.  Like if i click on a link to google.com, i know where that is going.  If the link says “216.58.195.78” it could be pornhub or worse for all I know.  The link is very hard to verify without clicking, and there is no reason why an IP address URL is preferable over a domain name.  If we do not patrol these links, they could all be link farms for all we know.  I have tons of scripts loaded on Wikipedia that show me which links are reliable sources and so on, but I doubt any check the IP addresses of the domain names.  --awkwafaba (📥) 00:03, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Request: Articles that use a module or template /sandbox
When developing modules and templates, a probable mistake is to use a  page in mainspace. For example, when doing complicated (compounded, stacked, nested) templates. I propose to run a DBreport for this. Frequency can be once/month (or even slower like once/3months, depending on actual number of pages listed). -DePiep (talk) 04:36, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Or make it a one-off run for starters, then see usefullness for updates? -DePiep (talk) 04:50, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
 * @DePiep: I've been wondering about an edit filter, which would actually catch this at the point the mistake is made. Something along the lines of a warning if a template or module, with any sort of protection, has the text "/sandbox" added, when "/sandbox" or "/testcase" is not in the title. As almost all templates with substantial use are now semi-protected, this would prevent the bulk of issues. User:GKFXtalk 12:05, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
 * As you think best. Since you see the issue(-ette), I'll leave it to you. I also thought this could be a one-off, handcrafted REGEX source-search query too (so not automated); would be a learning project for me. -DePiep (talk) 12:23, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Pages contains too many maintenance templates
Hi. Database reports/Pages contains too many maintenance templates doesn't seem to be updating, although it is listed as refreshing weekly? Jdcooper (talk) 15:40, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi Jdcooper. It looks like Cewbot is updating this report once again. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:41, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Changing config?
Should Database reports/Blank single-author pages exclude namespaces 2,3,118,119? Also it appears there is an extra colon being added to category pages so they are unclickable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.134.118.236 (talk) 06:52, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: These are bot run pages so any errors should probably be discussed on the appropriate bot's talk page. Pabsoluterince (talk) 17:03, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I replied here: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:BernsteinBot&diff=1070373196&oldid=1070372577>. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:43, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Shortest biographies of living people
Database reports/Shortest biographies of living people is updating daily, but appears to be broken. Articles that have changed length are still appearing as their previous byte size and the body of the report does not appear to be changing. Michaelwallace22 (talk) 17:12, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
 * See this VPT thread. This is expected to be a problem for another day or two. Many database reports will show out-of-date information until the database catches up. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:27, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Request: Talk page by number of archives
Also longest talk page by current discussion (taking Wikipedia namespace page), longest pages (not only articles) for record and archiving purposes. I made it in my userpage. Thingofme (talk) 13:36, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Request: New Page Reviewer activity report
https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/32574 is an example. Could this be converted into a regular database report run monthly, and for both the prior six AND twelve months? <b style="color:#034503">MB</b> 04:59, 7 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Wouldn't this just be a modification of Database reports/Top new article reviewers? –&#8239;Joe (talk) 13:21, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * That report stops at the top 100. It would be unwieldy if extended to over 700 lines in each table. This report is geared for use in removing NPP right if minimal review requirements are not met. A full list is not needed twice a day for this purpose, just monthly. Also, need 6 month interval to send out a warning message. The top 100 report shows 3 and 12 months, but not 6. <b style="color:#034503">MB</b> 13:57, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Maybe go further and directly generate a list of reviewers that don't meet the requirement, then? Though as far as I know there currently isn't a minimum activity requirement for NPP. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 14:02, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * The current requirement is >0 in 12 months. That is listed in New_pages_patrol/Reviewers which says 12 months of inactivity (that needs to be clarified - 12 months of NPP inactivity - more about this on my TP). This report could show just those with 0 reviews, but it would need to be changed if we ever were to increase the minimum. <b style="color:#034503">MB</b> 15:33, 7 July 2022 (UTC)


 * I think this page is solely for requesting database reports. I think the ideal place to discuss the merits of obtaining such a report or reports and their parameters, or the relevant parts NPR policy is at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Coordination which has now been created for this purpose. That said, I had already asked at ICH's talk page if he can produce a first list based on a certain time frame. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:49, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Request: Revival of Database reports/Uncategorized templates
From time to time I see a template, mostly navboxes, that are uncategorized. I'm sure since this report is longer updated since June 2014, I was wondering if this report can be revived to find what I assume by now is a small number of such templates. And it shouldn't be just be for navboxes. It should include sidebars, campaignboxes, infoboxes, and all other templates. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 22:55, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
 * It would take a lot a work to do it, I simply assume. Gather some friends and perhaps it could work. <span style="border:1px solid;background:radial-gradient(#777,#ccc);font-family:courier">« 2nd |ias» 02:29, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
 * If the query that produced the old reports is conveniently available anywhere, I don't see it, but this seems pretty straightforward. query/66056 and query/66057.  Are there any categories that should be ignored for this purpose? —Cryptic 05:09, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Both queries provide quite a useful report, but I think the uncategorized templates we can ignore for the moment are for projects like Today's featured article or Picture of the Day. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 16:37, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi Cryptic. Thanks for the Quarry links, those are nice. Is there a way to have the individual rows be hyperlinked? For example "Latest_preview_software_release/Nightingale" as a string isn't super friendly, but a hyperlink to Template:Latest preview software release/Nightingale would be pretty slick. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:23, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
 * There isn't - T74874. I'll sometimes format results like in query/61982 so they can be pasted into a sandbox, but most of the time the boilerplate isn't worth the irritation. —Cryptic 03:51, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Oh right, dang. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:03, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi Cryptic. I had missed your comment about how to find the query. The source code for most database reports is published to the wiki (example) in addition to being hosted in a Git repository on GitHub (cf. <https://github.com/mzmcbride/database-reports>). The newer Rust code is even fancy enough to publish its own source code to a wiki subpage when the report is run. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:43, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
 * The first query looks pretty good. The second one, which also lists subpages, contains many pages that probably do not need to be categorized, such as subpages of testcases pages. I recommend that if a report is created, just the first (no subpages) report be created, at least at first. 9,000+ pages is enough to work on for a while. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:15, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I updated the report and it's now paginated. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:03, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
 * This is perfect. Thanks, MZMcBride. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 16:11, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Conversation's looking pretty good, it's on the right track; progress is going well here. <span style="border:1px solid;background:radial-gradient(#777,#ccc);font-family:courier">« 2nd |ias» 00:12, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Unused templates report malfunctioning
On Unused Templates Task Force talk page, User:Jonesey95 stated that the report has gone "haywire since June 23, the report stopped being contained on a single page, And then it expanded to include thousands of additional pages that apparently had been excluded previously, including the notorious DYK pages". The DYK pages have been fixed since the July 21 edit request at Template talk:DYK conditions. But the report is still not working the way it has been for the past several months. Can someone implement a fix to this? WikiCleanerMan (talk) 14:23, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
 * MZMcBride, are you aware of a fix since the DYK issue has been resolved? --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 13:49, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi WikiCleanerMan. Nothing has gone haywire. If you think there's a bug in a database report, please explain with specific examples. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:18, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
 * MZMcBride, if you take a look at pages 1, 7, 13, 19, 20, 22, 23, outside of the template grouping of Attached route, Editnotices, TFA titles, and other project related template groups such as User templates, the rest on these pages should be moved to the first page. Since these project templates don't represent an issue of unused templates and I'm sure Edit notices and TFA titles should be marked transclusion less to avoid being on the reports. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 15:39, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Yep, many templates should be marked as intentionally transclusionless. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:11, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Now there are 38 pages of the report. There are more DYK and Attached route templates. Cleary, the bug is getting out of hand and impeding the way the report should work. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 21:51, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
 * The DYK subpages aren't a bug and you're complaining in the wrong place to the wrong person. They're a direct and deliberate result of this edit.I can't for the life of me figure out what's wrong with the attached route templates, though; every one I've checked seems to be in use. —Cryptic 22:36, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I think the attached routes are being embedded within articles, but are not considered transcluded from MediaWiki's perspective at the moment. I think we should adjust the code that embeds the attachments so that MediaWiki considers them transcluded. Maybe by doing something silly such as . It seems very reasonable to me to treat these embedded attachments as transclusions.
 * For the editnotices, it's also kind of silly and wrong that they're embedded in the edit view but aren't considered transclusions by MediaWiki. They're so wonky that we may want to just edit Template:Editnotice to insert Category:Wikipedia transclusionless templates. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:42, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
 * The attached routes actually aren't in use - I'd misread whatlinkshere. They're not consistently transcluded, as I asserted, but linked (from the little "KML file" near the end of, for example, Wendell H. Ford Expressway); and, like a dolt, I didn't replace the space in 'Attached KML/...' with an underscore when testing the query.Their use case doesn't really allow for categorizing them.  While they really don't belong in template space, and might even be better off over at Wikidata or perhaps Wikisource instead, the path of least resistance is probably to filter them out by title.  Similarly, not all edit notices actually transclude Editnotice. —Cryptic 23:11, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Cryptic. By bug, I meant the wonkiness of the report in its current state, not that the DYKN templates were the bug themselves, just their inclusion. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 23:27, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I've also informed the coordinators at DYK and TFA about this. So, they will most likely join in on here. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 00:07, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Hi Cryptic. I think you're potentially misunderstanding. The "KML file" link is to an  URL, which is not a standard wikilink and is not tracked by MediaWiki's WhatLinksHere functionality.

What I mean by embedded is that, as described at Help:Attached KML, the XML from pages such as Template:Attached KML/Wendell H. Ford Expressway is being embedded into the article using JavaScript. So when you click the map in the top-right corner, you can see a line drawn on top of the map. That's the KML, which is stored as XML in template pages. I think because we're using JavaScript to embed this data into articles, that's close enough to being a transclusion that we should track it as such.

If you're curious, the wikilink itself is coming from Module:Attached KML, specifically line 176 of this version, which uses standard wikilink syntax:. That's what's populating Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Attached KML/Wendell H. Ford Expressway. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:53, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

The presence of Category:Articles using KML not from Wikidata on Wendell H. Ford Expressway and its category description text makes me think we should just move these KML attachments to Wikidata entirely, as you say. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:01, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm aware, and was deliberately simplifying. —Cryptic 19:21, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

MZMcBride, it seems these templates were included because of this edit you made, or the previous edit right before this one, as Anomie pointed out at the TFA talk page. The route templates have been showing up since July 20. From page two and onward the rest of these group templates have been added since July 20 and/or August 10/11. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 16:58, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
 * So this previously did filter these pages by title. I don't think there's an alternative to returning to that for the Attached KML/ subpages, since putting a category on the pages changes the downloadable file.  I agree that, whenever it's at all feasible, that categorization should be used instead of the title - Category:Wikipedia substituted templates and Category:Wikipedia transclusionless templates have more uses than just generating this report, and those shouldn't have to make the same ad-hoc exclusions.  (Anomie can't be entirely correct, though, unless the script generating the reports crazily runs whatever's on the wiki page, rather than the wiki page just being a convenient mirror of the script's source - whatever changes Gonnym made there shouldn't have made any difference at all.) —Cryptic 19:54, 12 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Relatedly, why separately fetch all untranscluded templates and the entire contents of the excluded categories, then filter them in python? It seems to me that it would be simpler overall and likely less load to do that in sql.  Same with excluding title patterns. —Cryptic 19:54, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi Cryptic. Again, if we actually transcluded the "Attached KML" pages in addition to simply linking to them, we wouldn't need to categorize them and they would automatically disappear from this report, since they would then have a transclusion and no longer be considered unused. Or if we moved the KML to Wikidata and deleted the local pages, that would also remove them from this report. Both of these options seem much more preferable to me than indefinitely excluding them from the unused templates report. I think we should address these issues, not continue to mask them.
 * There are almost certainly better uses of my time than maintaining this report, so if you or anyone else would like to volunteer to maintain this database report or any others, please let me know. I'd be happy to help get you set up. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:03, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Request: Mainspace pages without talk pages
Ignore the redirects and the disambiguation pages, if possible. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 11:27, 27 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi @MPGuy2824 - it looks like there around 120K pages that meet that criteria. Any chance you could explain what the purpose of the report would be? For a one-off list have a look at this Quarry. <span style="border-radius: 3px; padding: 2px; border: 1px solid #808080; font-size: x-small; font-family: Lucida Console, Monaco, monospace">Thparkth (talk) 22:01, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Thparkth, I was mulling over starting some sort of taskforce to add wikiproject tags to every talk page. Also, this seemed like a good beginner task to add to Community portal/Open tasks. Thanks for the query, that will be enough for now. If my taskforce gets off the ground, I might get back here and ask for the top X of that query as a periodic report. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 02:34, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. I suspect a list of 120K pages is too long to be useful, but as you say the top X (maybe the top X oldest articles with no talk page?) could work well. <span style="border-radius: 3px; padding: 2px; border: 1px solid #808080; font-size: x-small; font-family: Lucida Console, Monaco, monospace">Thparkth (talk) 13:10, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, top X oldest or top X most popular (by article page views) would work well. Let me see (elsewhere) if there is any interest in my taskforce idea. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 02:54, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Links to userspace
A user link has been added to Template:Cleanup bare URLs, and as a result Database reports/Articles containing links to the user space is now nearly 30,000 lines, any chance that template can be ignored?-- Jac 16888 Talk 15:14, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
 * You could also replace that link with Citation bot, a redirect. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:19, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Good shout, thanks-- Jac 16888 Talk 15:38, 14 September 2022 (UTC)