Wikipedia talk:PetScan

Bug or what: randomly adding "®exp_filter" into fields
Sometimes PetScan adds  into text fields after I hit the "Do it!" button. Those can be found in random fields, like in Linked from or Site links text fields, sometimes in multiple fields and other times just in one field. Any idea what's causing this odd behaviour? Everytime this happens, I'll have to reload a fresh PetScan page to make PetScan work properly because those "®exp_filter"'s break the search. 87.95.206.253 (talk) 17:31, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I've seen  appear in the "Link to a pre-filled form for the query you just ran" URLs, causing them to appear in the form when the external link is followed. Certes (talk) 17:40, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I have the same problem. It is annoying. How can I urge this problem to be solved? --Herzi Pinki (talk) 10:09, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
 * PetScan accepts a URL parameter called .  "Link to a pre-filled form..." inserts   into the URL it generates.  (value is usually blank.)  This works perfectly when the link is clicked.  However, such links are often pasted into wikitext or HTML.  Some browsers interpret the string "&amp;reg" as an HTML entity for the registered trademark symbol, even when not followed by a semicolon, so   becomes , appending the unwanted text to the preceding parameter and usually causing it to make an unwanted appearance in one of the input boxes.Could we change the parameter name to something that doesn't begin with reg?  Of course, regexp_filter= should also be accepted for backwards compatibility, but if a replacement parameter name not beginning with reg can be offered in "Link to a pre-filled form" then the problem should be solved.  Certes (talk) 23:37, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Other discussions about this longstanding annoying bug: 2001:14BA:9C35:6600:193F:16A0:BF8A:43A1 (talk) 18:55, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * https://github.com/magnusmanske/petscan_rs/issues/120 (most recent discussion on GitHub)
 * meta:Talk:PetScan
 * https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Amagnusmanske%2Fpetscan_rs+%C2%AEexp_filter&type=issues (proves that this issue dates at least back to 2019)

I have replaced 'regexp_filter' with 'rxp_filter', which should prevent the issue. 'regexp_filter' is still supported for backwards compatibility. --Magnus Manske (talk) 10:55, 22 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Great news; thank you! Certes (talk) 10:58, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Petscan displays blank page, unusable
https://petscan.wmflabs.org/ just displays a blank page. Taking a peek at the HTML, I see this likely culprit:. Reported on Discord, affects at least 2 people. – Novem Linguae (talk) 00:03, 26 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I think it's probably unrelated to that CSS, as that line seems to have been there since the tool was created (initial commit).
 * However, in the browser-console I see ORES is mentioned, which makes me wonder if T347344 is involved? I've filed a separate task at T347367 (as it's a different error-message) in case it is related. Quiddity (talk) 00:52, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
 * It affects me too, and has been thus for a few days now. I didn't think to examine the CSS; I just assumed its server was down. Certes (talk) 10:03, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
 * As Quiddity mentions, display:none has been in the repo forever, so is probably normal. JavaScript probably changes that to display:block when it is ready to show the app. The cause of the current blanking is probably ORES-related errors messing up the JavaScript before it reaches the code that shows the app. T347344 is fixed or will be fixed shortly, but there is also T347317 and T347367. These are all ORES-related and are all probably what is breaking PetScan, so all of them probably need to be fixed. Looks like the machine learning team is working on everything except maybe T347317, which may require a code change to PetScan (@Magnus Manske) – Novem Linguae (talk) 16:08, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Just reported at User talk:Evad37/rater.js that ORES for Rater is now working. Thought to share here. PETSCAN remains a blank page. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 20:38, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Good news: PetScan actually works, as long as you go into the browser's object inspector and remove the display:none property manually before using both the query entry screen and the results. Certes (talk) 21:00, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
 * All fixed now. Yaay! -MPGuy2824 (talk) 03:04, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Seems to be down again - I just tried it, no luck. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 07:18, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Scratch that - seems to have been a momentary blip. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 07:32, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Might have been T347665. All of Toolforge was down tonight for awhile I think. – Novem Linguae (talk) 10:05, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at WT:CATP § Alternatives to PetScan?
You are invited to join the discussion at WT:CATP § Alternatives to PetScan?. &#x0020;Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 09:32, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

"No result for source categories"
When using PetScan, I will intermittently get the error No result for source categories. There doesn't seem to be anything I can do to control this (at least, that I'm aware of) - sometimes a query will work, and sometimes it won't. I just wanted to check if this was a known/reported issue. (pinging )

All the best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 12:52, 10 January 2024 (UTC)


 * A similar problem was reported above. Certes (talk) 13:49, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Are you following an old link to a pre-filled PetScan query? A bug, now fixed, put the spurious text "®exp_filter" into a random(?) field on one of the tabs.  Blanking that field may solve the problem. Certes (talk) 13:53, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Certes: I'm not, no - this is happening on newly-created queries. Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 13:54, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Certes and meow: Here are some "clues" that seem to make PetScan work better without failing off. 1. At top forward thru fields to Categories, usually Depth 0 (zero). 2. At Categories, hand-type the cat. as copy/paste seems to often not work. SOmetimes replace those spaces with "underscore" (_). 3. Then "Do it!". 4. If it runs Ok, optional, go back and make Output changes (plain text, sorted, etc) and run again. Bottom-line, while "buggy" maybe these work-arounds can help. Good luck, JoeNMLC (talk) 00:28, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * When copy-pasting within Wikipedia, I sometimes get unwanted invisible characters such as a zero-width space on my clipboard. I'm not sure where they come from – possibly search results.  If typing rather than copy-pasting works, this may not be a PetScan problem.  If the text is still on the clipboard, pasting it to somewhere like http://qaz.wtf/u/show.cgi might be instructive. Certes (talk) 09:50, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Certes and meow: More: - Another clue, whenever I launch PetScan without the after the  it always runs Ok. Tested on 3 completely different (new) categories with good results. Cheers! JoeNMLC (talk) 01:54, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That's weird. Could your browser be auto-filling a field with unhelpful text, perhaps thinking PetScan wants a line of your address or other irrelevant information?  You could examine the "Link to a pre-filled form for the query you just ran" and see if it contains any unexpected filters that would limit the search unhelpfully. Certes (talk) 11:21, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Certes - Here's that URL as I'm totally clueless of what to look for. https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?before=&source_combination=&links_to_all=&format=html&manual_list_wiki=&minlinks=&search_max_results=500&cb_labels_any_l=1&categories=Orphaned_articles_from_January_2024&manual_list=&cb_labels_yes_l=1&edits%5Bflagged%5D=both&labels_no=&since_rev0=&smaller=&templates_yes=&output_limit=&project=wikipedia&language=en&show_soft_redirects=both&templates_no=&wpiu=any&edits%5Banons%5D=both&links_to_no=&ores_prediction=any&cb_labels_no_l=1&langs_labels_no=&active_tab=tab_categories&ns%5B0%5D=1&show_disambiguation_pages=both&sitelinks_no=&search_wiki=&langs_labels_any=&sparql=&larger=&langs_labels_yes=&ores_type=any&referrer_url=&edits%5Bbots%5D=both&output_compatability=catscan&interface_language=en&ores_prob_to= It's a plain PetScan, depth-0, cat-Orphaned_articles_from_January_2024 (copy/pasted). So hope this helps. JoeNMLC (talk) 15:51, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Nothing there looks suspicious. That URL also produced "No result" for me.  I also tried typing "Orphaned articles from January 2024" into a blank PetScan form and still got "No result".  Same for 2023, so it's not using an out-of-date cache.  Then I messed about with a few things randomly and it started working ... so I went back and tried your version again, without my "improvements", and it works too (718 results).  It seems to be an intermittent bug, which is often the hardest sort to fix. Certes (talk) 16:05, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

PetScan currently down
Just leaving a notice here that PetScan currently seems to be down, displaying the error This web service cannot be reached. Please contact a maintainer of this project. This has been reported in the GitHub repo. Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 19:40, 26 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Greetings @A smart kitten - Thank you for reporting. I use PetScan almost daily & it's frustrating without. I had searched for where to report without any luck. Do you know of any alternate tool like PetScan? (Category filter, etc.) Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 16:05, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @JoeNMLC: I don’t personally know of any, unfortunately (expect for potentially crafting database queries by hand using Quarry). I’m therefore hoping that this is just a temporary issue :) Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 16:31, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Update @A smart kitten - PetScan up & running again. Cheers! JoeNMLC (talk) 19:45, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

PetScan timeouts
Once a month, I try to run a simple PetScan query- categories=List-Class articles, depth=3, namespace=Talk. The idea that I want a count of all talk pages in a "List" category. This usually takes several dozen tries at minimum to actually return results; this month I'm getting nothing but "Io(Io(Custom { kind: UnexpectedEof, error: "connection closed" }))" as the response. I'm guessing that this is because it returns around 300,000 results, but I don't know. The thing is, I only need the count, not the page details, so is there a better way to run the query that will actually finish? -- Pres N  15:21, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

PetScan not working
When trying to make any request, I get instead the following error: "Reqwest(reqwest::Error { kind: Request, url: Url { scheme: "https", cannot_be_a_base: false, username: "", password: None, host: Some(Domain("en.wikipedia.org")), port: None, path: "/w/api.php", query: Some("meta=siteinfo&action=query&format=json&siprop=general%7Cnamespaces%7Cnamespacealiases%7Clibraries%7Cextensions%7Cstatistics"), fragment: None }, source: hyper::Error(Io, Os { code: 104, kind: ConnectionReset, message: "Connection reset by peer" }) })". Is there any way to fix this? Kostja (talk) 12:40, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * It works for me on a random query. (I didn't test it earlier.) Certes (talk) 16:29, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Works for me, too. I use it about 2x a day, and it hasn't failed for several weeks now. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:29, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
 * It started working again after a few hours. Kostja (talk) 06:45, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

"error sending request for url"
When I try to perform any search (for example: this one) I get the following error:

error sending request for url (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?format=json&action=query&siprop=general%7Cnamespaces%7Cnamespacealiases%7Clibraries%7Cextensions%7Cstatistics&meta=siteinfo)

I'm not sure what's up with this, or if I'm making an obvious error. Is this a known issue? I couldn't find anything in the page history or the github issues.— Moriwen (talk) 17:50, 2 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Your link works for me. I didn't do anything clever other than click on it and press "Do it", so you may have seen a transient error. Certes (talk) 20:33, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at wikitech:News/Cloud VPS 2024 Purge
You are invited to join the discussion at wikitech:News/Cloud VPS 2024 Purge. – Novem Linguae (talk) 15:14, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Help creating query
I want to get a list of all articles:


 * with Category:All articles lacking sources (mainspace)
 * not Category:Society and medicine task force articles on the talk page
 * with Template:WikiProject Medicine on the talk page (including redirects; could use Category:WikiProject Medicine articles instead)

The settings I tried don't seem to work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 19 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I got 168 results when I ran your query. Link. Are you seeing something different? – Novem Linguae (talk) 22:20, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm getting 168 results. But if you look at the pages, e.g., the last one, which is Talk:ZAMBART Project, you will see that it is in Category:Society and medicine task force articles.  I want a search that excludes Talk:ZAMBART Project and everything else in Category:Society and medicine task force articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:01, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * PetScan doesn't really handle talk page categories intersecting with mainspace categories. Plantdrew (talk) 03:25, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * ...but you can always make two separate PetScan searches: just copy these 164 pages (using the same search query as yours but with "Change to talk page" selected in the "Other sources" tab) to this search's "Manual list" in the "Other sources" tab, and it yields 144 results. --JAAqqO (talk) 16:22, 1 July 2024 (UTC)