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Archive 80 ← Archive 84 Archive 85 Archive 86

Add articles under the the following categories and subcategories to Wikiproject

I want to add the articles under the following categories+subcategories to wikiproject: Indian caste system. Is this a good request for a bot?

Category:Dalit (44)
Category:Dalit literature (18)
Category:Dalit politics (74)
Category:Navayana Buddhists (3)
Category:Ambedkarite political parties (23)
Category:Satnami (5)
Category:Paraiyar leaders (3)
Category:Balmiki (4)
Category:Adivasi (39)
Category:Caste system in India (75)
Category:Anti-caste movements (43)
Category:Scheduled Tribes of India (180)

Miximon (talk) 19:48, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Probably not; humans will need to add the WikiProject templates based on context. I picked a couple of articles at random from the categories, and Giraudpuri and Guru Balakdas, in Category:Satnami, do not appear to have anything to do with that WikiProject. (edited to add: I believe that the OP is referring to {{WikiProject Indian caste system}} and the associated WikiProject.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:10, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
I would also make the argument that other than the Scheduled Tribes cat, none of these are heavily populated - a quick AWB run would probably be both faster and more accurate (since there would be human oversight). Primefac (talk) 20:15, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Even the big category will need human oversight; I don't see a reference to caste in Tani people, which is in that scheduled tribes category. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:21, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Just adding context to clarify - Scheduled castes and tribes are Govt of India's list of castes and tribes that are recognized for affirmative action because of historic discrimination - Caste system in India#Recognition Miximon (talk) 20:29, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
@Miximon: If you want to post a list of pages (not categories) on the WikiProject's talk page, and there's consensus to tag each of them, I will be happy to have my bot tag them. GoingBatty (talk) 21:06, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Backlog drive leaderboard updates

Hi, is there a bot that can automatically update the leaderboard for the unreferenced articles backlog drive? Ideally, it would count the number of edit summaries made by each participant with "feb24" (not case-sensistive) to unique articles. Then, it would update the "Points from references" column in the leaderboard with that number. The rest of the leaderboard doesn't need to be updated by the bot, as the points from reviews is simpler to update, and the total points is automatically provided by a template. There's a bit of prior discussion at the talk page. Thanks! ARandomName123 (talk)Ping me! 23:14, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I created a simple scraper which I plan to use daily to update the leaderboard. I don't think it's a very good solution, so if bot experts want to help, it would still be greatly appreciated ;) Broc (talk) 21:32, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Y Done. Bot created based on script above. See User:BaranBOT/FEB24DriveLeaderboard. ARandomName123 (talk)Ping me! 18:12, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Categorizing ACM Fellows by Year

Right now, there is a category "Category:Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery" - which is added to all ACM Fellows. I created a bunch of categories "Category:202x Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery" as subcategories of the main category to organize these by year. The recepients are already organised by year in this page.

  1. Go through each section of the page (which corresponds to a certain year).
  2. Foreach blue linked article in that section add the correct year-specific category "Category:202x Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery" to the article.
  3. After all sections are done, remove the generic "Category:Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery" from all the linked articles since they are now living under a subcategory.

KNivedat (talk) 18:37, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

KNivedat, Coding...— Frostly (talk) 18:37, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
@KNivedat, BRFA filed— Frostly (talk) 03:45, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Bot request for Korean hangul text

Per the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Korea-related articles#About adding a link to each hangul syllable using Template:Linktext, I am submitting this bot request. Please perform the following.

  1. Check if Template:Linktext only contains [ ]?[0-9가-힣][ ]? in each parameter.
  2. If so, remove Template:Linktext and |, but retain the text entered as parameters (including space characters before and/or after [0-9가-힣]).
  3. If not (that is, if Template:Linktext contains (1) any character other than [0-9가-힣], or (2) two or more adjacent [0-9가-힣] in at least one parameter), leave it as-is.

The following examples would help you understand this request.

  • Cases that should be changed
    • {{linktext|국|립|중|앙|도|서|관}} → 국립중앙도서관 (currently found in National Library of Korea)
    • {{Linktext|수|도|권|제|1|순|환|고|속|도|로}} → 수도권제1순환고속도로 (currently found in Capital Region First Ring Expressway)
    • {{linktext|새|터|데|이| 나|이|트| 라|이|브| 코|리|아|}} → 새터데이 나이트 라이브 코리아 (space characters have to be retained; currently found in Saturday Night Live Korea)
    • {{linktext|구|름|은}} {{linktext|흘|러|가|도}} → 구름은 흘러가도 ((added this example just in case) a space character between two instances of Template:Linktext has to be retained; currently found in Even the Clouds Are Drifting)
  • Cases that should NOT be changed
    • {{linktext|中|文|維|基|百|科}} (contains any character other than [0-9가-힣]; currently found in Chinese Wikipedia)
    • {{linktext|새|마을|호}} (contains two or more adjacent [0-9가-힣] in at least one parameter; currently found in Saemaeul-ho)

172.56.232.167 (talk) 00:24, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

The regex will need to be a bit more complex than what is described above, but this should be doable. Let me do some small-scale testing and get back to you. Primefac (talk) 12:30, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
BRFA filed. Primefac (talk) 21:34, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for running your bot. I greatly appreciate it.
But can you please also remove them in the Draft namespace? There are currently 86 pages containing them (see this). They can be moved to the main (article) namespace at any time. 172.56.232.239 (talk) 05:46, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Didn't think about draft space, seems reasonably uncontroversial
 Done. Primefac (talk) 12:54, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Copyvio bot

Hello,
I was looking around for something like this, and did not find it, could a bot run a page against earwigs copyvio detector automatically, and flag it for human review if its score is too high? (I am willing to attempt to code this if there is not a glaring issue with it)
 Thanks Geardona (talk to me?) 22:28, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Nevermind, I see the village pump thread. Geardona (talk to me?) 00:09, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
You may find User:Novem Linguae/Essays/Copyvio detectors to be a good read. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:41, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Using coordinates on Wikidata

Category:Articles missing coordinates with coordinates on Wikidata contains 19,925 articles tagged with {{coord missing}}, but they all have coordinates available on Wikidata. Would it be possible for this template to be removed and replaced with {{Coord|display=title}} which will fetch the coordinates from Wikidata? I am not familiar with previous discussion on this, but I have also contacted The Anome for comments — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:32, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

@MSGJ and The Anome: BRFA filed. GoingBatty (talk) 14:13, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Protection padlock bot

Bot to look through the page on the list of protected pages, find ones missing the padlock and add it at the correct level, and to correct the padlock level if needed.  Thanks Geardona (talk to me?) 14:06, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

 Already done by User:MusikBot II. Primefac (talk) 14:20, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
Can we confirm is is still up? Geardona (talk to me?) 15:06, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
It is. You can check its user contribution for the recent edits. – robertsky (talk) 15:11, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
Good, thanks Geardona (talk to me?) 15:13, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Google cache

Google cache is shutting down, it is making the news. We have 5,000 pages on Enwiki. It is at WP:URLREQ#Google_cache. Thanks. -- GreenC 15:26, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

 Done -- GreenC 16:38, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Proxy Blocking Bot

This bot is programmed to use a wide range of VPN services; using so, it detects the IP addresses, and then blocks them. This means that a lot of time could be saved. HedgehogLegend (talk) 18:48, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

We already have a proxy blocking bot. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:49, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
Specifically, User:ST47ProxyBot. Primefac (talk) 18:49, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Question or another bot request for Korean hangul text

This is also related to the #Bot request for Korean hangul text above.

Any instance of Template:Linktext in Korean personal names should also be removed.

Korean personal names are usually in the "one-syllable surname + two-syllable given name" format (e.g. 홍길동 – surname 홍, given name 길동), so some people added Linktext like this: {{linktext|홍|길동}}. There are currently 726 pages containing such instances of Linktext (see this), and these are mostly—but not always—personal names.

In this case, you should not look for any space characters and [0-9]. You only need to look for \{\{[Ll]inktext\|[가-힣]\|[가-힣][가-힣]\|?\}\} (that is {{[Ll]inktext|[가-힣]|[가-힣][가-힣]|?}} without the backslashes), and remove Template:Linktext and |, but retain the text entered as parameters (i.e. change {{linktext|홍|길동}} to 홍길동).

Here are my questions:

  1. Is it possible to remove such instances of Linktext just from personal names?
    1. If so, please perform the bot removal.
    2. If not, if I provide pages that should not be affected by the bot removal, would that work? For example, a case like {{linktext|집|으로}} (found in The Way Home (2002 film)) should not be affected.

172.56.232.179 (talk) 21:27, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Note that "no linktext in personal names (that is, do not add any kind of link to a personal name, including other forms of segmentations such as 가|나다)" was also part of the discussion. Look under "For personal names (including pseudonyms such as pen names, stage names, etc.), no links should be added." in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Korea-related articles#About adding a link to each hangul syllable using Template:Linktext. 172.56.232.188 (talk) 04:13, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I am slightly concerned about the CONTEXTBOT issues presented. Primefac (talk) 12:43, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I manually checked the search results and prepared a list of pages (total 11) where \{\{[Ll]inktext\|[가-힣]\|[가-힣][가-힣]\|?\}\} is not a personal name. (As of 02:02, 23 February 2024 (UTC), this list still remains the same)
But you don't need to add these as exceptions when running your bot because these can be manually re-added/reverted after the bot runs.
Is the task doable now? If so, please perform the bot removal. 172.56.232.101 (talk) 20:24, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
FYI you can just write {{tld|linktext|꽃|부리}} --> {{linktext|꽃|부리}} without all the nowikis. Or to link the template: {{linktext|꽃|부리}} -- GreenC 21:00, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
If you are still concerned about the CONTEXTBOT issue, just don't worry about it. Since there is only a small number of exceptions, and since Linktext has never been a requirement (i.e. any instance of Linktext does not have to be there in the first place), you don't really need to worry about anything. Don't even add those cases as exceptions when running your bot either. 172.56.232.239 (talk) 03:14, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
insource:/\{\{[Ll]inktext\|[가-힣]\|[가-힣]\|[가-힣]\|?\}\}/ also has two. Also, I'm curious if it's necessary to leave something like {{linktext|黄|喜|燦}} behind? Kanashimi (talk) 07:46, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
Nothing was discussed about Chinese characters. 172.56.232.179 (talk) 21:48, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't want to urge anyone, but can anyone please take care of this? I also want to move on. 172.56.232.179 (talk) 21:51, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Can anyone please take care of this? 172.56.232.239 (talk) 02:02, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

@Primefac Can you please also take care of this? Just don't worry about the CONTEXTBOT issue. It's not really worth worrying in this case. 172.56.232.239 (talk) 14:26, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Chill. Yes, but chill. Primefac (talk) 16:40, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
Got it.
I didn't mean to urge you. I was just concerned whether this request was getting forgotten. 172.56.232.234 (talk) 22:16, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

{{BOTREQ}} (for the bot). Primefac (talk) 18:31, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for running your bot. I greatly appreciate it. 172.56.232.234 (talk) 21:44, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Replacing invisible space characters in short description templates

This is a request to replace invisible space characters with regular space characters in {{short description}} templates within articles. As the MOS says, these characters are typically placed inadvertently via copying and pasting, and they can cause problems of various sorts. The task would be to replace invisible nbsp and thinsp characters found within short descriptions in the articles listed at Wikipedia:Database reports/Short descriptions containing invalid space characters.

I am pretty sure this would be a cosmetic task that would need explicit BRFA approval. Fixing the existing 3,000 or so instances of the problem will help us understand the root causes of the problem by identifying how new instances are occurring. I have some regexes that might help at User:Jonesey95/AutoEd/pages.js. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:30, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

If it's an issue and if there's consensus, I can probably run this. Of course, if these invisible formatting characters are in the "private use area" then AWB will be useless. Primefac (talk) 16:45, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, Primefac. This request follows from this discussion. My impression was that a long-standing MOS guideline was consensus enough to remove these characters. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:39, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
@Primefac: Did you want to submit a BRFA for this, or would you like me to do so? GoingBatty (talk) 04:44, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
Totally forgot about this. Looks like I should be able to make AWB do what I want, so I can handle it. Thanks for the reminder. Primefac (talk) 13:22, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
@Primefac - Thanks! Marking as BRFA filed so the table at the top of the page is updated. GoingBatty (talk) 21:14, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
Jonesey95, dbase report is down to 15 members, at least half of which are due to oddities with an infobox shortdesc (I didn't look too deeply but there are at least two different infoboxes in use). Primefac (talk) 06:27, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Wonderful, and thank you. I will take a look at the outliers unless someone else gets there first. – Jonesey95 (talk) 08:03, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

{{BOTREQ}} (for the bot). Primefac (talk) 18:31, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Bot request

Would it be possible to get a bot to expand the match report citations at 2023–24 UEFA Europa Conference League qualifying phase and play-off round (Main Path) to stop the article exceeding template size limits? I've tried sandboxing a couple of different ways to try and reduce the number of templates on the page and I think the best (and possibly easiest) way to do so would be to expand the Cite web templates but there are quite a few so it would take a while to do so manually. As an example, <ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.uefa.com/uefaeuropaconferenceleague/match/2038534/ |title=Sutjeska-Cosmos |website=UEFA.com |publisher=Union of European Football Associations |access-date=13 July 2023}}</ref> would become <ref>[https://www.uefa.com/uefaeuropaconferenceleague/match/2038534/ "Sutjeska-Cosmos"]. UEFA.com. Union of European Football Associations. Retrieved 13 July 2023.</ref>

Any help would be much appreciated. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 12:08, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

If it's just one page, a find/replace (either via AWB or just a text editor) is better than a bot. A bot won't really do anything different than a user. Primefac (talk) 12:30, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
Okay, it should be  Fixed; I did a mass find/replace on the most re-used cite style and everything seems to be showing up now. Primefac (talk) 13:02, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
Thanks Primefac, much appreciated. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 13:51, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
Marking as {{BOTREQ}} to update the table at the top of this page. GoingBatty (talk) 03:55, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Remove NYTimes tracking parameters

Hey all! I know there is previous consensus to remove tracking parameters from URLs in articles (ex: PrimeBOT 17 and its predecessor), and I've noticed a parameter that appears in many URLs from The New York Times (in almost 3,700 articles as of now). There's also this particular link from the Mona Lisa article that shows a few more tracking parameters used by NYT: https://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/mona-lisas-identity-solved-for-good/?searchResultPosition=2&mtrref=www.nytimes.com&gwh=9DE4B32CC79812F2537467E9D52707E9&gwt=pay&assetType=REGIWALL.

I'd like to create a bot task to remove these but wanted to start a conversation on-wiki first to ensure there's consensus. I believe I have some draft code started that would work well, matching all NYT subdomains and whatnot. (Using the following regex to find NYT links in source code and this library to edit them \b(?:https?://)?(?:[\w-]+\.)*nytimes\.com/[\w/.\-#?&=]*\b — test it)

Overall thoughts from the community? Bsoyka (t • c • g) 03:14, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Please do not modify archive URLs eg. avoid "/https://" or "?url=https://" covers most cases. -- GreenC 03:56, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
@GreenC: Ah, good point — thank you! I've updated the regex and I think this should work to avoid archive URLs. You can see it working here:
(?<!/)(?<!\?url=)https?://(?:[\w-]+\.)*nytimes\.com/[\w/.\-#?&=]* Bsoyka (t • c • g) 04:15, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Notifying AfC acceptors an article gets AfDed

Hello, I am wanting to propose the idea of creating a bot that notifies Articles for creation acceptors when an article they accept gets AfDed around 100 days within them accepting it via their talk page. GMH Melbourne (talk) 05:41, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

There is a script called User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/WatchlistAFD.js that automatically adds the AfD pages of your AfC accepts and NPP curations to your watchlist for 6 months. It's really handy because then you can easily keep track of when things are AfD'd and adjust your reviewing accordingly. – DreamRimmer (talk) 06:18, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
I think my user script is broken. I should probably fix it one of these days. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:27, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Teahouse § Bot inoperable

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Teahouse § Bot inoperable. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 02:11, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Date ranges for noticeboard archives

This seems uncontroversial.

It would be pretty cool if some kind bot could go through the pre-current (should never change) archives of the boards listed in the dramaboard archivebox series, extract the earliest and latest timestamps, truncate them to dates, and use those dates to annotate the links somehow. Inactive archives at time of writing are:

User story: I was recently trying to find an archived conversation from a few months ago, and the best tools I had available were a scattershot "tap an archive number, wait for the entire page to load, check top and bottom timestamps" and "search archives for exact string matched date". Improved navigability gained from annotating the archive links with date ranges should save people time.

Implementation ideas: The quickest implementation would just be a plaintext date range edited onto the archive list pages linked above. A further step could be to add a |date-span= (or similar) to {{Administrators' noticeboard navbox all}} which, if present, would display the date range of comments posted at the top of the page itself, so the information is available both on the archive page and the index of archives. The most elegant, stupid, and expensive implementation would be to add {{shortdesc}} to all the archives, set the |1= to the date range, and convert the indices to use {{annotated link}}.

Anyway though: Anyway though the first step is getting the date ranges. Maybe this is already in a report somewhere? Folly Mox (talk) 18:30, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

@Folly Mox, I suspect you'd need consensus to go through with this. Perhaps trying asking at those noticeboards first? — Qwerfjkltalk 19:06, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
Oh right I tacked on all those expanded scope ideas in the process of making the edit. Folly Mox (talk) 20:22, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
Just noting, an Index of some variety would probably be easier than going through the thousands of archives and amending them. Primefac (talk) 08:10, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
Yep. A user script could be useful for displaying date ranges without the need for edits. — Frostly (talk) 10:04, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
The lists mentioned are generated by Template:Archive list. Could we change it's module to show the date ranges? Wikiwerner (talk) 12:50, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

ID pages needing infoboxes

Identify pages with Template:WikiProject Albums in their talk page but not Template:Infobox album on their main page and add |needs-infobox=yes to them. Please and thank you, J04n(talk page) 15:24, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Question, what about disambiguation or redirect pages, do they require the infobox? Would this be a 1 time run or a ongoing thing, if it is 1 time I could try to figure out some AWB or JWB regex to get this partly done. (given the pages a bot would be more efficient in my opinion)  Thanks Geardona (talk to me?) 15:37, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick response,disambiguation or redirect pages don't need them, if they can be filtered out all the better. I suppose continuous is better, not sure of the logistics. J04n(talk page) 16:07, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
I am not a bot programer myself, but it seems possible, (405683 pages) would need to be checked, and thats way too many for 1 or 2 people to check manually in any reasonable time (even with AWB). Geardona (talk to me?) 17:20, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Geardona, J04n, according to my PetScan query, 29,831 results. I could run my bot on these pages. — Qwerfjkltalk 17:59, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Looking at the results though, seems there are quite a few false positives. — Qwerfjkltalk 18:01, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Less amazing, how did it fail? Geardona (talk to me?) 18:02, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Geardona, because whilst they are in WikiProject Albums, quite a few of the articles likely don't need an infobox e.g. Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. — Qwerfjkltalk 18:04, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Im not sure how to filter those out, Wikipedia:CONTEXTBOT is rearing its ugly head. Might need to be done manually, at least the list is a tiny bit shorter. Geardona (talk to me?) 18:06, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Most of those seem to be redirects. — Qwerfjkltalk 18:02, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
I see a "redirects yes/no" setting, would that fix it or am I missing something? Geardona (talk to me?) 18:04, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Amazing, I thought that something like this would exist, maybe post a notice with the albums project talk page, wait a day or 2 and then start. (Not sure if a BRFA would be needed here?) Geardona (talk to me?) 18:01, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, the majority seem to be false positives. Can redirects be filtered out? J04n(talk page) 18:04, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
J04n, I did so in my second query. Sorry if that was unclear. — Qwerfjkltalk 18:14, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Very cool, I don't mind filtering out other false positives by hand. Thank you so much! J04n(talk page) 18:18, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
@J04n: Is there consensus that all articles should have an infobox? When creating the BRFA, it would be good to link to that consensus (whether it's a conversation or an albums style guide). Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 18:37, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
I'll start a conversation, thanks J04n(talk page) 18:49, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
I reached out to the project, another thought I had was maybe have the bot look for any infobox template not just album. This would further reduce false positives. J04n(talk page) 19:09, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Rather than looking for the WikiProject template, you could work through yyyy albums, i.e. the subcategories of Albums by year. That might miss a few pages but should produce dramatically fewer false positives. Certes (talk) 22:21, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
That's a great idea, appreciate folks putting thought into this. J04n(talk page) 00:39, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

I started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums#Bot to help identify album pages missing infoboxes, which generated pretty much no interest one way or the other. I would like to go on with this as a one-time sweep of pages in the subcategories of Albums by year that do not have an infobox, if redirects could be filtered out it would be a big help. Can this be done? Thanks! J04n(talk page) 18:33, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Fixing broken links to talk page discussions

Links to talk page discussions often break when the discussions are archived by User:Lowercase sigmabot III. Could this bot be configured to replace the links (by linking to archived discussions) instead of breaking them? Jarble (talk) 18:58, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Jarble, this is not the right place. Ask on the bot operator's talk page. — Qwerfjkltalk 14:02, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
@Jarble: clubot III does this by default. See User:ClueBot III#Keeping linked. —usernamekiran (talk) 21:19, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
@Usernamekiran: Does ClueBot III repair links to discussions that were broken by other bots, including Lowercase sigmabot III? Jarble (talk) 21:40, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
@Jarble: To keep it short, I don't think so. —usernamekiran (talk) 21:54, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
cewbot regularly fixes these types of link errors. If there are any that are not fixed, please let me know and I'll see what's wrong. Kanashimi (talk) 05:37, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
@Kanashimi: I frequently find broken links to sections of talk pages that were archived. Does Cewbot replace these broken links with links to archived talk page discussions? Jarble (talk) 21:48, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
That's what a robot would do. If the robot misses something, you can give me an example and I'll see what's wrong. Kanashimi (talk) 22:41, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
@Kanashimi: For example, I found several broken links to talk page sections on this page. Does this bot not repair broken links from archived discussions? Jarble (talk) 17:32, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
@Jarble The bot works by checking all the links to a specific anchor. There are too many links on this page, can you point out the exact anchor? Thank you. Kanashimi (talk) 03:18, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
@Kanashimi: One of the broken section anchors is at the beginning of this section, but there are probably several others. Jarble (talk) 03:39, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
@Jarble This page will be processed by the bot when it processes all the pages linked to Talk:BTS (band). Kanashimi (talk) 06:22, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Toolforge tool/bot to send email notifications

I've started a tool request about the recent "bots don't trigger email watchlist notifications" change to the backend at VPT (since it's not a botreq) but thought folks here might want to know. Primefac (talk) 12:12, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Bot to mass-undo edits & pagemoves

There seems to be (at least a rough) consensus at WP:BOTN#Rollback Proposal to mass-undo at least a set of the edits and pagemoves that were proposed for reversal. I originally said that I would be happy to submit a BRFA to do this myself, but I am no longer personally able to take on this task.

Let me know if there are any queries. All the best, ‍—‍a smart kitten[meow] 18:44, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Looks like this user changed his name? Kanashimi (talk) 14:25, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
@Kanashimi: Yes, this user is now Renamed user g5s6n3yi8z7g08cs. All the best, ‍—‍a smart kitten[meow] 15:36, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Mass changes needed for retirement of Drug Information Portal

(I am contacting WP:BOTREQ at the suggestion of Andy Mabbett)

The National Library of Medicine's Drug Information Portal has been retired, with all information moved to the Library's PubChem database. I think all the links to the Drug Information Portal should be updated to the corresponding article in PubChem. I suspect that someone can set up a bot to do this, but I don't know how. Perhaps someone can point me to instructions to do this or turn this over to someone who already knows how? — HowardBGolden (talk) 20:40, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

For example: Here's an example of a change I made manually:

Synopsis:

"druginfo" -> "pubchem/ncbi"
"drugportal/name" -> "compound"
"Drug Information Portal" -> "PubChem"
"charcoal" -> "Activated%20Charcoal#section=Drug-and-Medication-Information"


BEFORE 

* {{cite web |title=Activated charcoal |url=https://druginfo.nlm.nih.gov/drugportal/name/charcoal |work=Drug Information Portal |publisher=U.S. National Library of Medicine}}

AFTER 

* {{cite web |title=Activated charcoal |url=https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Activated%20Charcoal#section=Drug-and-Medication-Information |work=PubChem |publisher=U.S. National Library of Medicine}}

HowardBGolden (talk) 22:25, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

@HowardBGolden: Could WP:URLREQ do this more efficiently than a new bot? Certes (talk) 23:06, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
There is a |Pubchem= parameter for {{Infobox drug}}, and presumably many/most of the affected articles have that infobox, so I don't think it should also be listed in WP:EL. And it's maybe even already populated with the correct entry, so in many cases this item should simply be removed altogether. That would certainly limit the scope of the pages needing actual attention. And in many of those cases, it probably merits an infobox update (and then nuking the EL) rathe than changing the EL. DMacks (talk) 02:08, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
I asked WPMED for advice on whether they see a need to special-case around WP:EL vs infobox link. DMacks (talk) 15:24, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
Thank you so much for this, and to DMacks for dealing with it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:40, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

To add categories based on article's listing in a third page

I wish to add the Category:Banaras Hindu University alumni to all articles listed in List of Banaras Hindu University people. The bot should automatically update/add Category to any article added in the List. This List-Category linker can not only be used across WP:UNI but also other such relations where a list and category exist for same theme. Thank you, User4edits (talk) 04:36, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

@User4edits: The first person in the article is "C. V. Raman, the Nobel Prize winner in Physics in 1930 and Bharat Ratna laureate..." The bot would have to check C. V. Raman and ignore the links to Nobel Prize and Bharat Ratna. Might be easier if all the lists in the article were in the same format (e.g. all tables or all with bullets). GoingBatty (talk) 04:43, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
@GoingBatty would it not be possible to filter only biographical articles? Re-formatting would be tedious for such large article, and will not make the bot a universal use. Thanks, User4edits (talk) 04:59, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
@User4edits: It might be possible, but more challenging when you look at List of Harvard University people#Royalty and nobility where you would also have to filter out the biographical articles from the "Notability" column. GoingBatty (talk) 05:26, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
@GoingBatty That is an issue. However, we can counter this by providing users with two modes -- biographical filter, or columns (formatted lists as Harvard above). Thanks, User4edits (talk) 06:02, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
@User4edits: Another issue that any potential bot owner (i.e. not me) will have to consider is that it won't be appropriate to add "Category:XXXX alumni" to an article if it already has a sub-category (e.g. Category:Harvard University people has 17 subcategories and numerous sub-subcategories). GoingBatty (talk) 08:10, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
@GoingBatty Yes, it will have to skip if any sub category of the main category is already listed. Although in the example you gave, I see Category:Harvard University alumni a sub cat of people. Thanks, User4edits (talk) 04:25, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
The category at the start of this topic has no subcategories, so that is not an issue. AWB's list comparer yields 196 pages that are linked on the list, but are not in the category (plus 146 pages in the category that are not in the list). Filtering out biographical articles can be done by checking whether a category "... births" exists, or by a human. Wikiwerner (talk) 17:40, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Bot to automatically revert date change vandalism

Hi, I want to create a bot that automatically reverts obvious date change vandalism. For example:

"James H. (born 26 December 2002)"
And then a vandal comes and changes it to:
"James H. (born 29 December 2002)"

And the goal of the bot is to revert these changes as accurately as possible. And here's how it's gonna work:

A bot sees that someone changed the birth date. The bot looks up the name of the person on wikidata. If the person appears on wikidata, The bot searches for his birth date on his wikidata page. And if the birth date written on wikidata is different than the date the vandal changed it to, the bot automatically revert these changes. I hope this bot can be coded for me. It seems like a great idea for a bot. 93.173.38.154 (talk) 11:28, 5 February 2024 (UTC) Very minor formatting changes made for readability. Primefac (talk) 12:58, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

This might require a discussion to get consensus rather than being an automatic "do now". I would check that the Wikidata matches the old date, rather than just differing from the new one. Bear in mind that Wikidata also has vandalism and good-faith errors, so (with all due respect to the IP proposer) we might want the bot to revert non-autoconfirmed editors only. Certes (talk) 12:07, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
This might be something that an edit filter could be able to accomplish, just disallowing changes like that. Geardona (talk to me?) 12:27, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Minor changes to numbers are depressingly common. I have been combating a mobile IP from Italy for over 6 months, who modifies incorrectly the heights of buildings, in 100s and 1000s of articles. Might be game or competition. I agree watching birth/death date changes is a good idea. I have some ideas how to do this, but it gets involved, it's not easy. -- GreenC 15:22, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Not sure if this is possible even remotely, but a bot to unaccept any change like these, pushing them onto pending changes, even if the page is not protected as such, just for new/unregistered users, might solve the immediate problem of false info presented to readers. Geardona (talk to me?) 15:26, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
  • I like the gist of the proposal but not the substance. If we're going to revert number vandalism (and I would say everything from DOB to height/weight to number of albums sold, etc) it should just be done, without checking WD (which might be wrong or nonexistent anyway). If a number is being changed without a reference, it's likely to be vandalism. Basically ClueBot NG but specifically for numbers. It would need broader consensus to get implemented, though (regardless of how the bot is set up). Primefac (talk) 12:58, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
    I would say that this seems more possible with a edit filter, so it should be proposed there (edit filter talk page). Then see what they think. Geardona (talk to me?) 13:11, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
    That would certainly catch a lot of petty vandalism, such as changing the lead of 123 to begin "420 is..", but it might have many false positives. For example, good-faith editors regularly update sporting records for players and teams after each match, without waiting for some newspaper to mention that Smith has now played 42 matches rather than 41. Certes (talk) 13:34, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
    Potentially limiting it to just dates in the past (1 year +) would alleviate false positives? Maybe also limiting it to large number changes, would stop good faith false positives. Geardona (talk to me?) 13:38, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
    Oh, don't take my suggestion as what must be, just throwing out an idea that I feel is better than trusting WD. Whether edit filter or bot, I suspect that the reverts would be limited to IPs and non-AC users. Primefac (talk) 13:49, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
    Potentially even having it set to revoke AC status would really solve the problem, AC is not that hard to get. Geardona (talk to me?) 13:53, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
    That's an interesting idea but I don't think we have a precedent for a "Robocop" bot which removes permissions and it would need at least an RfC. Getting AC for the first time is easy, but we would need to think about how affected editors would recover AC - permission request? Certes (talk) 14:05, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
    To my knowledge some of the high-power filters can revoke AC. Geardona (talk to me?) 14:07, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
    From Wikipedia:EFBASICS "The strongest setting is disallow. In this case, the edit is rejected, and the user will see a customizable message. A link is provided for reporting false positives. It is also possible to have a user's autoconfirmed status revoked if a user trips the filter." Geardona (talk to me?) 17:23, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
    This is indeed technically possible. It's also technically possible for an abuse filter to block someone entirely. We've chosen (for good reason IMO) not to use those options. * Pppery * it has begun... 19:25, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Bot to add uncategorized tag to untagged uncategorized pages

Could we have a bot to automatically add the Template:Uncategorized tag to untagged uncategorized pages? BlueberryIntoTheWild (talk) 06:29, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

It's been discussed previously at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Coordination#Reviewing backlog. – DreamRimmer (talk) 07:10, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
@BlueberryIntoTheWild: Y Done I already have BattyBot 55 to do this, and I last ran it on March 21. GoingBatty (talk) 03:43, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

IMDB Bot

I would like to request that a bot add the IMDb template to all articles that needs it. If possible (actors bios, entertainers etc). It is a very useful template. BabbaQ (talk) 13:27, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Green Bay Packers draft picks (1936–1969) & Green Bay Packers draft picks (1970–present)

I am working on bringing both of these lists to WP:FLC in the future. Unfortunately, the style of the tables is based on an older layout not typically used any more. Fixing each individual table (like 90 tables comprising like 1,500 different players) is going to be a time drain of repetitive editing. After working on a few, I wondered if someone would be able to automate these steps. The idea would be running an input of a table and receiving an updated table as an output. This wouldn't need to actually edit the article, it could just be placement of the tables in my user space for me to QA/QC and then update the table accordingly. As an example, the following table would be the input:

Round Pick # Overall Name Position College
1 7 7 Russ Letlow Guard San Francisco
2 7 16 J.W. Wheeler Tackle Oklahoma
3 7 25 Bernie Scherer End Nebraska
4 7 34 Theron Ward Back Idaho
5 7 43 Darrell Lester Center TCU
6 7 52 Bob Reynolds Tackle Stanford
7 7 61 Wally Fromhart Quarterback Notre Dame
8 7 70 Wally Cruice Back Northwestern
9 7 79 J. C. Wetsel Guard SMU

And the output would be this:

Round Pick # Overall Name Position College
1 7 7 Russ Letlow Guard San Francisco
2 7 16 J. W. Wheeler Tackle Oklahoma
3 7 25 Bernie Scherer End Nebraska
4 7 34 Theron Ward Back Idaho
5 7 43 Darrell Lester Center TCU
6 7 52 Bob Reynolds Tackle Stanford
7 7 61 Wally Fromhart Quarterback Notre Dame
8 7 70 Wally Cruice Back Northwestern
9 7 79 J. C. Wetsel Guard SMU

What steps would this entail? Well here are the main things:

  • Adding {{Sortname}} to each person's name.
  • Adding accessibility features (scope="row")
  • Converting from the double-piped style on one line to the single-pipe with each piece of data on its own line
  • Centering the data in columns 2 and 3

This would save me a ridiculous amount of time and energy. I know this isn't the typical "bot request", but it seemed the most appropriate venue for such a request. Note again that this request would not require any bot editing to the mainspace, it could just paste the tables to my user space for me to add in, QA/QC and make some smaller changes not easily automated. Thanks for any help! « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 16:14, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Y Done with some tweaking with regular expressions. Wikiwerner (talk) 10:09, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
Wikiwerner, you are a lifesaver! Thank you so much :) « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 15:57, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

UTF-8 debugging

After seeing the use of ’ in place of ' in the titles of several references, I noticed similar broken characters and determined that most of them are likely on this list. Further research indicated that the issue is known as Mojibake, with there being one prior bot request for the issue that appears to have been left unresolved.

As the character combinations in the chart are unlikely to occur by happenstance, their use of any given article likely corresponds to the characters on the chart. Assuming the chart I found isn't missing any commonly broken characters, the current number of articles with characters broken in this manner to be around 800. As periodically scanning for and correcting all of such occurrences would be repetitive, perhaps its a task a bot could handle? CoolieCoolster (talk) 07:13, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

CoolieCoolster, if I search for ’, the first result links to https://www.thenews.com.pk/archive/print/269366-cm-doubles-baloch-students’-quota; https://www.thenews.com.pk/archive/print/269366-cm-doubles-baloch-students'-quota throws a soft 404. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:56, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
In the case of ’, I fixed all erroneous instances of it (about 400, mostly in reference titles) using AWB, with the remaining ones being in URLs like the one you found. There's also the remaining characters to fix, though I think ' is the most common one to be affected. It would be helpful if there were a means of having the process be entirely automated for the inevitable future fixes needed. CoolieCoolster (talk) 19:33, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
CoolieCoolster, the problem is context (WP:CONTEXTBOT), which is why it can't be automated. — Qwerfjkltalk 20:55, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Converting Category:Harold B. Lee Library-related articles to talk page categories

Hi! This is my first request here, so please tell me if I did something wrong. At Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 March 13#Category:Harold B. Lee Library-related film articles, consensus was reached to move Category:Harold B. Lee Library-related articles and its subcategories from hidden mainspace categories to each article's talk page. (The category tree is used by User:Rachel Helps (BYU) and her students to keep track of their work.) I have created {{WikiProject Harold B. Lee Library/sandbox}}, which has associated task forces corresponding to each of the categories. Would it be possible for a bot to do this conversion?

The TL;DR is a bot which takes an article in (e.g.) Category:Harold B. Lee Library-related 19th century articles, removes it from that category, and adds {{WikiProject Harold B. Lee Library|19th century=yes}} to the talk page. Thanks, HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 02:21, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to comment, but my understanding was that we agreed to moved the category itself to the talk page. That way I can still use the categories for AWB editing and with the massviews analysis. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 16:17, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
That is, as far as I can tell, what is being requested. This is done via the WikiProject template as described. Primefac (talk) 16:23, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
That is correct. HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 16:40, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
This doesn't seem overly complicated, if I get time this weekend I'll see if I can manage with AWB. Primefac (talk) 16:25, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
HouseBlaster, I've started working through these, so please implement the relevant WikiProject updates to allow for the tracking to work. Primefac (talk) 19:56, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
@Primefac: {{done}} HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 20:27, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
Cool. Just noting for my own reference (as I'm heading out) I made it to folklore. Primefac (talk) 20:37, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
I have deactivated the {{done}} template because it caused ClueBot to archive this discussion. HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 00:20, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
Y Done and many thanks to Primefac! HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 17:08, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Converting positional parameters to named parameters

Please can someone process Category:WikiProject Arthropods articles using positional parameters and change the syntax of {{WikiProject Arthropods}} to use named parameters, e.g. {{WikiProject Arthropods|C|low}} to {{WikiProject Arthropods|class=C|importance=low}}

I have posted on the template talk with the reasons and no has responded — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:18, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

172 pages? I can get that with JWB real quick.  Working Geardona (talk to me?) 16:19, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
Thank you. There are a few in Category:WikiProject Islands articles using positional parameters too ... — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:22, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
 Done Geardona (talk to me?) 22:30, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
Cheers — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:55, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
Would you mind doing Category:WikiProject Insects articles using positional parameters as well? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:37, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
And Category:WikiProject Spiders articles using positional parameters — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:00, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
No problem.  Working Geardona (talk to me?) 14:19, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
 Done Re-used regex from last time. On another note does the capitilization of importance or class matter? Geardona (talk to me?) 14:48, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
Thanks again. The parameter name must be lower case but capitalisation of the value does not matter. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 05:49, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Bot to change page links from Baetylus to Baetyl

I made a technical request asking Baetylus to be moved to Baetyl and it has been granted. Baetylus is now a redirect to Baetyl. All pages previously linking to Baetylus are therefore now redirects to Baetyl. I want a bot to go through all the pages that directly link to [ [ Baetylus ] ] and change them to link to [ [ Baetyl ] ] instead so that all the pages linking to Baetyl are not redirects but direct links. Pogenplain (talk) 23:29, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

This is generally not done per WP:NOTBROKEN. * Pppery * it has begun... 23:45, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Update WP: maintaince pages

A bot to make edits like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ABacklog&diff=1214091029&oldid=1197405012. Also used at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links#Current disambiguation collaborations. OrdinaryGiraffe (talk) 23:43, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

NFL Draft move downcasing cleanup

The report Wikipedia:Database reports/Linked miscapitalizations shows something over 20,000 links to over-capitalized redirects after the NFL Draft downcasing moves, and there are of course lots of other over-capitalizations in the text other than links. User:Bagumba has fixed a few thousand over the last few days, but I think it might be better to take his JWB setup and make a bot run of it. Someone with more experience with such things could tune up his regular expressions to be more precise and effective, I expect. See our discussion at User talk:Bagumba#JWB followups. Dicklyon (talk) 05:05, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

At a high-level, some of the changes are to:
  1. Replace links to all "XXXX NFL Draft" and "XXXX NFL/AFL Draft" redirects to the actual page title "XXXX NFL draft" or "XXXX NFL/AFL draft" (see Category:National_Football_League_draft)
  2. If any of those links are also piped, changed the displayed text from "Draft" (when present) to "draft"
  3. Change links to the redirects if referred by {{main}} or {{see also}}
The relevant discussion to lowercase to "NFL draft" was at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Capitalization of NFL draft article titles.—Bagumba (talk) 05:29, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
I think this would be a fun one to take on! I think it could be done really effectively by using mwparserfromhell to filter and edit wikilinks across these pages. If no one else wants to work on this and no existing bot task can handle it, count me in. Bsoyka (t • c • g) 13:40, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
Also, should this task potentially be expanded to cover all the linked miscapitalizations at that database report? Bsoyka (t • c • g) 13:49, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
Potentially, though I'd go slow on the general case, as some of those have their own complications that might not be obvious at first. I'm glad to hear you have a decent parser, as that's clearly what's needed for best results. I look forward to seeing how you take this on. We're willing to help. Dicklyon (talk) 09:23, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
This will likely not get approval as a bot task; "fixing" redirects is very, very rarely supported on a mass scale. You should know this already, Dicklyon, given that your insistence on doing so was what got you banned from using AWB in the first place. Primefac (talk) 09:48, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
That is totally not true! What got me banned was that I made a few mistakes while editing too fast; some false positives in contexts such as reference titles slipped by me. Nobody objected to what I was trying to do, as far as I recall, though some general discomfort with case fixes was likely an underlying motivation for them wanting to throttle me. Dicklyon (talk) 09:57, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
@Primefac: This specific case has gone through an RFC, approving both the page titles and the general usage of the term "NFL draft" in text. Seems uncontroversial at this point for this case. —Bagumba (talk) 10:00, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
I recognise that there was an RFC to change the article titles, but bots replacing redirects is usually seen to be a minor task that should be done in combination with other tasks, not done on its own (especially when considering piped links which would offer no visual change to the page). I can't deny a bot request that hasn't been filed, and you are welcome to do what you feel is necessary, I'm just telling you my initial opinion based on this request. Primefac (talk) 10:12, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
Understood. FWIW, 95+% of the links are not piped, so it generally would be making a visual change and not just be cosmetic. —Bagumba (talk) 10:20, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
Primefac, if you'll review the RFC, you'll see that it was not just to change article titles. As for replacing piped redirects, yes it's a minor task, but an important one in making the maintenance report useful. It's not just cosmetic, as it affects that report. Prohibiting such fixes would make that report useless. I've been doing such fixes manually for many months now, thousands of edits, and have had zero pushback about fixing piped links to miscapitalized redirects. Dicklyon (talk) 10:26, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
For reference see a recent run on JWB. Mostly (if not all) unpiped links i.e. non-cosmetic.—Bagumba (talk) 10:35, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
Right, most of these are not piped links. But we should also be fixing those that are, such 2000. Dicklyon (talk) 10:48, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
Bagumba, did you use any patterns that would have replaced piped links? If there's any significant pushback such as Primefac suggests, we could just not do that at all. It would still be huge progess, avoiding fixing piping through miscapitalized redirects, and we could use non-bot methods to decide what else to do. Dicklyon (talk) 11:04, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
In my experience, almost every (all?) page that was edited had at least one link that was not piped. Later links might pipe just the year only, when it was obvious that the context was to a particular draft. Otherwise, it'd be pipes like [[2023 NFL Draft|2023 Draft]] or [[2023 NFL Draft|the Draft]], where "Draft" was still in the displayed text. —Bagumba (talk) 11:26, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

From my understanding of the RfC, I do agree that it says "draft" should be lowercase across NFL-related articles, not just in the titles but in the content as well. I believe that with my intended method of parsing the wikicode itself with mwparserfromhell rather than simple regexes, everything can be taken care of, including piped links. (i.e. [[2024 NFL Draft|2024 Draft]] -> [[2024 NFL draft|2024 draft]]) If this is decided to be a good bot task, I'd love to take it on, but if not, I respect the consensus of the community. Bsoyka (t • c • g) 15:11, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Probably it's best to avoid controversy by not doing edits where the only change is to piped links (e.g. [[2024 NFL Draft|2024]]); where other things are being fixed, these are worth fixing at the same time. I don't think this will leave many articles linking to the NFL Draft articles, as they pretty much all have the capitalized Draft in text, too, per Bagumba's experience. Dicklyon (talk) 07:03, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
@Bsoyka: Are you an experienced bot operator, familiar with how to do the approval request and such? Can we get started on that? Dicklyon (talk) 07:08, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
@Dicklyon: Somewhat, in that I've been through the process a couple of times and currently run a daily bot task (see User:BsoykaBot). I'll work on some code and get a BRFA going shortly. Bsoyka (t • c • g) 02:10, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
Sounds good. Don't rely on the report at Wikipedia:Database reports/Linked miscapitalizations, since a user has untagged all the NFL Draft redirects as not "errors". See discussion at User talk:Hey man im josh#NFL Draft capitalization. @Hey man im josh:. Also, many were not yet tagged. Dicklyon (talk) 02:19, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
I actually have a script working to generate a list of these "XXXX NFL Draft" redirects without that database report; in other words, my tentative bot code doesn't rely on the {{R from miscapitalization}} template, so no worries on my end. Bsoyka (t • c • g) 02:25, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
My code appears to work, so... BRFA filed! Bsoyka (t • c • g) 02:55, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Bot to clean up wikiproject templates

Some relevant tasks include:

  • Disabling the needs-infobox parameter if there is an infobox on the article
  • Disabling the needs-image parameter if there is an image on the article

Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 15:14, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Disabling the needs-infobox parameter

@Cocobb8: I haven't run BattyBot 70 since October to work on removing |needs-infobox= where it's no longer needed, so I'll start that up now. GoingBatty (talk) 03:38, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
@Cocobb8: BattyBot 70 is in the process of removing the |needs-infobox= parameter from about 830 pages. GoingBatty (talk) 19:12, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
Awesome! Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 15:05, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Disabling the needs-image parameter

@Cocobb8:Is there consensus somewhere to disable the |needs-image= parameter if there is an image on the article? I believe it's possible that an article needs another image or a better image even though it already has one. GoingBatty (talk) 03:38, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
@GoingBatty: Quoting from the image requested template: It is a residual indicator, not a general-purpose "no image present" indicator (for that, use {{improve images}}) Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 14:00, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
@Cocobb8: Thank you for the link to the template {{Image requested}}. However, I don't see how that is related to the request to disable the |needs image= parameter (and presumably all its variations) from WikiProject templates. GoingBatty (talk) 19:08, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
@GoingBatty Yes my bad, I got mixed up. No idea if there is consensus for it or not, but I would assume that it is only set as "yes" if there no images at all. Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 14:58, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Automatically replace superscripts with sup and sub tags

Having just learned that the preference for superscript and subscript usage is to use sup and sub tags rather than Unicode superscript and subscript characters, I generated a list of 3000 articles in AutoWikiBrowser and fixed around 1500 articles with Unicode superscripts via that method. As fixing all superscripts and subscripts on Wikipedia would take a while with that method, perhaps a bot could be tasked with replacing all such instances automatically? Reviewing the exceptions for when Unicode characters should be used, they seem relatively easy for a bot to avoid. Another such case for replacement would be № with No., though as I found at least one case where the character was used in a file name, any automated means of replacement would need to avoid replacing characters in file names. CoolieCoolster (talk) 10:07, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

CoolieCoolster, my bot is approved for that task. There are currently 794 pages that need fixing. — Qwerfjkltalk 12:28, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
Note that some errors there, like the one at 2023 IFK Norrköping season should not used either style and need to be converted to normal text. Gonnym (talk) 15:06, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
Unless I'm mistaken, it seems that your bot fixes cases of th and nd being used as superscripts when they shouldn't, rather than replacing Unicode superscripts and subscripts with tag-based superscripts and subscripts. For instance, I went ahead and fixed another 200 or so superscripts with AWB and your bot's number is still at 799. CoolieCoolster (talk) 01:16, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
Sorry, my mistake. — Qwerfjkltalk 19:54, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Long-dash URL

In 2018, during this Special:Diff/849981928/849983506, this error occurred:

https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/leonora-aragon-1405-1445
https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/leonora-aragon-1405–1445

The dash in 1405-1445 was changed from normal to long. This broke the URL. Since no archive exists for a broken URL, it was tagged dead and has been dead ever since: Special:Diff/886267655/916302781 (the fix-attempted=yes means the bot has given up looking for an archive replacement).

This is not the only instance -- humans, search-replace commands, AWB, scripts and bots -- change normal dashes to long dashes. In the process breaking URLs permanently. The fix is "easy": find URLs with long dashes (grep the external links database dump enwiki-20240401-externallinks.sql.gz at here), convert longs to short, verify the repaired URL works, commit the change. -- GreenC 22:16, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Bot to sync talk page redirects with their corresponding page

So, as I said in Wikipedia talk:Redirect#Deprecation of redirecting the talk page of a mainspace redirect, sometimes the talk page of a redirect is itself a redirect, most commonly after a page move. The problem is that sometimes, like in Acts of God (book) (before I corrected it in [1], 10 years later), someone retargets the redirect but forgets to retarget the talk page redirect, so any editor that tries to discuss the redirect is sent to the wrong place. I think that a bot should exist that retargets the talk page redirect to the talk page of the new target. One more thing that needs to be taken into account is that because of WP:TALKCENT, the bot needs to make sure it doesn't make a double redirect.

Just to be clear, despite what I wrote in the thread linked above, I would be against the bot changing every talk page redirect with {{talk page of redirect}}. I can explain the reasons why if necessary. Nickps (talk) 23:43, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

@Nickps: I am not sure what exactly you are asking. But if you want to change a major policy/guideline, or a longstanding norm, then it requires consensus through proper RfC. Until RfC is concluded, no changes should be made. —usernamekiran (talk) 02:26, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
I don't think my request requires a policy change. All I'm saying is that when the talk page of a redirect is itself a redirect, those two should point to the same place and a bot should be made to ensure that. In the example I provided, someone updated the mainspace redirect but not the talk page redirect. What happened then was that Acts of God (book) targeted Act of God (disambiguation) but Talk:Acts of God (book) targeted Talk:Acts of God (novel) which is obviously wrong. I don't think we need an RfC to tell us that. Nickps (talk) 02:34, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
We already have at least one bot performing similar tasks. For example, Bot1058 makes edits such as this. (BFRA page) Wbm1058 may be able to provide more information. Certes (talk) 08:15, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
My bot uses the categorization done by {{R from move}} to detect talk pages which are out of sync. The problem with Talk:Acts of God (book) was that when the page moved at 16:42, 8 May 2009 it was not simultaneously tagged with {{R from move}}. Detecting such un-tagged moves and properly tagging them is a project that hasn't been done yet. Maybe with a good database query we could find all such pages. In the olden days, the act of moving a page didn't automatically leave an {{R from move}} on the redirect. – wbm1058 (talk) 12:05, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
Note that some talk page redirects are not {{R from move}}s like Talk:What is to be Done? (Chernyshevsky). Nickps (talk) 12:24, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
In addition to WP:TALKCENT, the proposed bot would also need to take into account cases where A is intended as a redirect to B (and so Talk:A should redirect to Talk:B), but B is a redirect with a non-redirected talk page. Anomie⚔ 12:30, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
Good point, I think. Let me check that I've understood the example. Mainspace pages A and B are two redirects to the same target C. A is a {{R avoided double redirect|B}} but not necessarily tagged as such. Talk:B is an actual talk page rather than a redirect to Talk:C. Talk:A should redirect to Talk:B, rather than to Talk:C, even though A redirects to C. Is that correct? Certes (talk) 17:15, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
That's right. Anomie⚔ 11:40, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
yes, I was kind of thrown off because of the title linked discussion. I understood it after going through this post, and the linked discussion for the second time. —usernamekiran (talk) 00:34, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Implementing the outcome of Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television)#Follow-up RfC on TV season article titles

This is a rather big and somewhat complex job. Per the RfC, we need to move all articles on individual TV seasons from, e.g., Loki (season 2) titles to "Loki season 2" titles (get rid of the parens and add a DISPLAYTITLE template to maintain the italicization scheme; and add "| italic_title=no" to the television infobox to avoid a conflict). BD2412 T 01:00, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

@BD2412: thinking about this, but not actively working on it. Per the RfC, this is not a task for blanket removal of brackets as Hawaii Five-0 (2010 TV series, season 10) is supposed to become "Hawaii Five-0 (2010 TV series) season 10". Am I getting this correctly? —usernamekiran (talk) 04:05, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
That is correct. My thinking is that we hold those off to the end. BD2412 T 04:12, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Apparently this will actually require retooling of the infobox first to avoid clashes, but once that is done, this can roll. BD2412 T 22:22, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
add a DISPLAYTITLE template to maintain the italicization scheme; and add " I think all of this will eventually be handled on the infobox level, so we shouldn't need a multitude of DISPLAYTITLEs (and thus that parameter in the infobox). - Favre1fan93 (talk) 18:47, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Yes, the infobox sandbox version should be working with the new style. More testing by other editors is of course always appreciated. The display title and italic_title should not be needed to be edited by a bot. Other things mentioned in the follow-up still need bot work. Gonnym (talk) 13:17, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
This is technically two different tasks (first, move, second, cleanup). I'm happy to help out with the second half. Primefac (talk) 13:28, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
For the moves, the complete list of articles to be moved (original and new location) are listed at User:Alex 21/sandbox/NCTV. -- Alex_21 TALK 00:49, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
Just bumping this, to see if any available editors with bots are willing to help out. Cheers. -- Alex_21 TALK 09:17, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
Alex 21, I can take care of this. (The first part, moving the pages.) — Qwerfjkltalk 15:45, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
@Qwerfjkl Fantastic, thank you! The complete list of articles to be moved are at User:Alex 21/sandbox/NCTV; the former link is the current location, the latter link the location to move to (some of which are already redirects and will require overwriting). Let me know if you have any questions. -- Alex_21 TALK 11:00, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
I suppose I should have mentioned BRFA filed. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:57, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
Just so as I can hopefully get to the "part two" as quickly as possible after "part one" is done (unless someone else feels like tackling it), my list of things to update after the pages moves are:
  • Add |italic_title=no to the infobox
  • Update talk page archiving to point to the correct location
I seem to be reading from the above that the DISPLAYTITLE issue is being fixed on the backend in the infobox itself, yes? Is there anything else that needs updating? Primefac (talk) 12:37, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
First trial is complete, for the record; extra eyes are always appreciated. Primefac (talk) 12:55, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
No to your first bullet. The infobox handles italics (or at least should if I didn't mess up the code). Once the moves are done Template:Infobox television season/sandbox and Module:Infobox television season name/sandbox2 should be moved to live. Gonnym (talk) 14:16, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
The main update that will need to occur after the page moves will be updating usages of {{Episode list/sublist}} (e.g. from {{Episode list/sublist|American Idol (season 1)}} to {{Episode list/sublist|American Idol season 1}}. This could be done through a bot or AWB, either works; the latter would need a find-and-replace with (\{\{Episode list\/sublist\|).+ to $1{{subst:BASEPAGENAME}} (regex enabled). This was a test edit of exactly that. -- Alex_21 TALK 20:18, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
Hello, please also see
Thanks a lot! M2k~dewiki (talk) 12:13, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
@Alex21 - See hastemplate:"Episode list/sublist" insource:/\{\{\s*[Ee]pisode list\/sublist[^}]*\(season/: 66 hits. Someone with AWB rights? Wikiwerner (talk) 17:49, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Football league infoboxes

I've noticed a major past screwup that resulted in a significant number of people using an incorrect infobox for their notability claim.

There was formerly a generic {{Infobox gridiron football person}}, used on articles about players in gridiron football (NFL, AFL, CFL, etc.) regardless of their league — but because the two major American gridiron football leagues also had their own more specific infobox templates ({{Infobox NFL biography}}, {{Infobox AFL biography}}), in 2017 the generic "gridiron" template got unwisely moved to {{Infobox Canadian Football League biography}} on a faulty assumption that all American football players were using those infoboxes so that only CFL players were still using the generic "gridiron". But that wasn't the case at all, and in actual fact hundreds upon hundreds of NFL or AFL players who never had anything whatsoever to do with the CFL were still using the generic "gridiron" infobox.

I've recreated the generic gridiron template back to what it looked like shortly before the move, which has resolved the issue on some of the articles — however, there are still several hundred other articles where later bot or AWB edits had "genfixed" the template from "gridiron" to "Canadian Football League" despite the person's lack of any affiliation with the CFL. So I wanted to ask if there's a bot that could more or less generate a list of all articles that are using the CFL infobox but cannot be found under Category:Canadian Football League, and then wham through that list flipping {{Infobox Canadian Football League biography}} (or the {{Infobox CFL biography}} redirect) back to {{Infobox gridiron football person}} in those articles. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 18:55, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

The caution being to use the base Category:Canadian Football League and not the more specific Category:Canadian Football League players, as the reference category — as there are people (e.g. Frank Clair) who never played in the CFL but do still have CFL-related notability claims such as coaching or management. Bearcat (talk) 19:14, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
@Bearcat: Would it make sense to convert most of those to {{Infobox NFL biography}} instead if an individuals is only affiliated with the NFL? Or is it too complex too automate? —Bagumba (talk) 12:00, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
I tried that myself in a couple of cases, and ended up with a radically shortened infobox because of too many parameters that the NFL box failed to recognize — basically, because the CFL infobox stayed patterned on the generic gridiron while the NFL one diverged from it significantly, switching back to gridiron will keep the infobox relatively intact while switching it directly to NFL will break large chunks of it. So I'd recommend leaving it to human editors to convert to NFL later on. Bearcat (talk) 13:37, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
(Not sure if this has any relevance or impact, but FWIW I think it worth noting that "Infobox AFL biography" does not apply to American Football League players; but to Australian Football League players instead – gridiron AFL seems to generally use NFL infobox). BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:55, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
I think long-term, expanding {{Infobox AFL biography}} to {{Infobox Australian Football League biography}} and NFL likewise to match {{Infobox Canadian Football League biography}} would likely clear up a lot of the misuse. Primefac (talk) 12:01, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
I don't believe there is any actual incorrect usage of the AFL or NFL templates. And at least for NFL, the National Football League is the primary topic.—Bagumba (talk) 13:43, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Auto-WP:NAVNOREDIRECT

Could we have a bot to automatically bypass redirects in navboxes? It would simplify part of the WP:POSTMOVE work that page movers have to perform. – Hilst [talk] 00:39, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Not all redirects in navboxes should be bypassed. WP:NAVNOREDIRECT recommends bypassing redirects which are synonymous with the target but not those which are subtopics or other related topics on which a separate article might be written. In some cases, bypassing everything might create a navbox for Garage Band where all the entries are of the form [[Garage Band|Mike Singer]], [[Garage Band|Obscure Single]], etc. Certes (talk) 11:19, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
Declined Not a good task for a bot. As indicated above, there are context issues. Primefac (talk) 18:37, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
Alright, thanks. – Hilst [talk] 20:18, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
@Hilst: One could generate a report of existing redirects on navboxes, whether or not filtered by redirects containing {{R from move}}. Then the results can be processed manually. A nice one is Template:Districts of Cambodia: all districts have been renamed from "... District" to "... district". Wikiwerner (talk) 19:49, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
Yes, R from moves should be safe. Districts of Cambodia is one template where a bot or other process to bypass redirects automatically would be helpful. There may be other categories/templates of redirect which can also be bypassed safely. Others such as R from misspelling look tempting but might be mislinks where a topic with no article has its title redirected to an unrelated topic with a similar spelling. Certes (talk) 20:53, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
And those navboxes should go straight to WP:TFD for being pointless. Gonnym (talk) 19:17, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
And now this bot would have been very useful as all television season articles with disambiguation have been moved. Most of which have navboxes. Gonnym (talk) 12:36, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
I would certainly welcome some sort of tool to bypass redirects in navboxes in a semi-automated way, perhaps by presenting a table of link targets which are redirects alongside the article title to which each redirect leads and a tickbox or similar to authorise bypassing. Certes (talk) 20:56, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
One should also consider changing the link text. I may generate something like this:
== Template:Andy Warhol ==
Redirect title Redirect target {{R from move}}? Link text Change link target? Change link text?
Athletes (1977 series) Athletes (Warhol series) Yes Athletes (1977)
Blue Movie (1970 book) Blue Movie#Aftermath No Blue Movie
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1982 painting) Jean-Michel Basquiat (Warhol) Yes Jean-Michel Basquiat
New Andy Warhol Garrick Theatre Garrick Cinema No
Olympics (1984 painting) Olympics (Basquiat and Warhol) Yes Olympics
and so on for all templates in the category:Navigational boxes by topic and subcategories. The latter columns must be filled manually. Then a bot can process the list. Wikiwerner (talk) 12:22, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Find linkrot with a specific pattern

In this edit I removed a link to http://www.mycoincollection.co.uk, because it's definitely not the intended page. At the top of the page, you can see The domain Mycoincollection.co.uk may be for sale. Click here to inquire about this domain.

Would it be practical to write a bot that examines bulk quantities of external links in some manner, and identifies links that begin with the text "may be for sale" or "is for sale"? I'm thinking of starting with a database dump (partial or complete, who cares), truncating to just the domain names, creating a page with a list of those domain names, and after checking each one, indicating whether it has this text at the top. Bonus points if the bot can be instructed to remove links after human review, e.g. a human checks a batch of links, marks some as "confirmed, rotten", and the bot goes around and removes those links from sections entitled "External links", and marks them with {{dead link}} if they're anywhere else. Nyttend (talk) 23:49, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Would only need the root URL. Like in this case, http://mycoincollection.co.uk without the "www" or any other hostname. That will reduce the number of URLs to check. The view source has:
href="https://www.trifega.com/contact.php?domain=mycoincollection.co.uk">The domain Mycoincollection.co.uk may be for sale. Click here to inquire about this domain.</a>
So really looking for https://www.trifega.com because that message "may be for sale" may change .. or not. It is common phrasing. There are a lot of sites like this around. Keep in mind, trifega.com is paying for the domain name and won't hang on to it forever. Eventually it will let it go, and the URLs will resort to 404, and be repaired by the bots as normal. Or someone else will buy it and the old URLs will return 404 since the new owner won't support them. In some cases, we have seen domains for sale this way, a new owner picks up the domain, then serves spammy content at the old URLs. It's a devious way to monetize (steal) the good name of an old site. Another scenario can occur, the old owners go out of business for a while, then reconstitute and bring it back the old URLs working again. -- GreenC 00:57, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
I'm unclear: do you think this is a (potentially) workable idea or not? I know I've seen this happen heaps of times with various websites, not just trifega — otherwise I'd request something trifega-related — so I'm interested in anything where the site is for sale. Nyttend (talk) 01:04, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
I've thought about doing this in the past, but for lack of time, the resources it will take, other hanging fruit, reasons I gave above (it might resolve on its own in time), I never did it. But go for it, would be an interesting experiment to see what you discover. It will probably be an exercise in edge case hunting for those 'for sale' strings without getting false positives or false negatives (the things we don't know). Also I just asked the WaybackMachine developers if they had a mechanism for detecting these, or a database of them, I don't think so, but if they respond I'll let you know. -- GreenC 01:57, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
How many mass domain squatters are there? The coin site has a privacy link to skenzo.com, who presumably now own the domain and many similar ones. If, say 90% of parked domains use one of a dozen standard formats, thenan option less prone to false positives is to look for the distinctive HTML behind each of them and to mark them as usurped so they can be treated similarly to 404s. Certes (talk) 10:17, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
I come across them because I do a lot of manual link checking for soft-404s (essentially what these are). The pages and HTML change over time. Maybe we can start a project page off WP:LINKROT the purpose initially to record instances as they are encountered. Then we can determine how to best make matches, with keywords, or HTML patterns, or other ways. Worth noting they exist in the WaybackMachine also. And confirmed that Wayback does not do anything special to detect them. -- GreenC 14:32, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
I created WP:SQUATTERS. Please add new cases here. -- GreenC 16:20, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

User:RetractionBot, v2

Retraction Watch has made their database publicly available. See https://www.crossref.org/blog/news-crossref-and-retraction-watch/. In particular, you can download a CSV file here.

I would like for the bot to compare our citation templates ({{citation}}, {{cite xxx}}, {{doi}}, {{doi-inline}}, {{pmid}}) against the OriginalPaperDOI and OriginalPaperPubMedID columns of the database.

If the RetractionNature column list "Retraction" as the reason, add {{Retracted|doi=RetractionDOI|pmid=RetractionPubMedID|URLS ''Retraction Watch''}} as it applies.

If the RetractionNature column lists "Expression of concern" as the reason, instead , add {{Expression of Concern|doi=RetractionDOI|pmid=RetractionPubMedID|URLS ''Retraction Watch''}} as it applies.

If the RetractionNature column lists "Reinstatement" as the reason, remove {{Expression of Concern}}/{{Retracted}} entirely.

Lastly, if the DOI/PMID of {{Expression of Concern|doi=RetractionDOI|pmid=RetractionPubMedID|URLS ''Retraction Watch''}} now have a reason of 'Retraction', then change it to {{Retracted|doi=RetractionDOI|pmid=RetractionPubMedID|URLS ''Retraction Watch''}}

For example, if you find

  • ...Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.[1]
  1. ^ Restrepo-Arango, Marcos; Gutiérrez-Builes, Lina Andrea; Ríos-Osorio, Leonardo Alberto (April 2018). "Seguridad alimentaria en poblaciones indígenas y campesinas: una revisión sistemática". Ciência & Saúde Coletiva. 23 (4): 1169–1181. doi:10.1590/1413-81232018234.13882016. PMID 29694594.

change it to

  • ...Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.[1]
  1. ^ Restrepo-Arango, Marcos; Gutiérrez-Builes, Lina Andrea; Ríos-Osorio, Leonardo Alberto (April 2018). "Seguridad alimentaria en poblaciones indígenas y campesinas: una revisión sistemática". Ciência & Saúde Coletiva. 23 (4): 1169–1181. doi:10.1590/1413-81232018234.13882016. PMID 29694594. (Retracted, see doi:10.1590/1413-81232018241.32242011, PMID 30698268,  Retraction Watch. If this is an intentional citation to a retracted paper, please replace {{retracted|...}} with {{retracted|...|intentional=yes}}.)

The bot could run weekly (or maybe daily if it's a quick task?) in the Main/Draft spaces, possibly others, each time redownloading the CSV. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:42, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea. I don't think this comes up very often, so I doubt that we need daily runs.
Has anyone talked to @Samwalton9 about this? That bot hasn't run for years, and we would need to confirm that it still works and could be adapted to do this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:04, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
I agree it's a good idea. I've got some time this weekend, so happy to contact the bot op and have a look at recoding this up again. Looks like it was stopped over edit warring concerns, so there might well be more work to do before starting this up again (unless someone else is super keen to do this!). Cheers, Mdann52 (talk) 09:01, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
I've just responded to your email - very happy for someone else to take this up since I haven't made the time :) Sam Walton (talk) 09:34, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
Pardon the contentless metoo, but +1 to running it again. Perhaps even continuously? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:23, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
Coding... - I've gained access to the existing toollabs instance and am upgrading the code to use the new datasource Headbomb has linked above. I'm planning to run within the previous approval for now (ie just flagging up DOIs), but I'm also ingesting PMED ids as well and I'm happy to look at expanding this in due course.
I've got a few additional changes I want to make (mainly because pywikibot has several extra features over the last few years(!)), so I may not be fully happy with this for a few weeks.
I note the request to add the extra columns, I think that would require an addition/update to the BRFA. Certainly happy to consider this as a slower task.
@Headbomb: I note you've suggested a report in that original BRFA - are there any you would be interested in having? Happy to host some reports/data on toollabs if this is of interest. Mdann52 (talk) 14:02, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
Happy to have whatever tool helps with whatever! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:41, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
Y Done - coding complete and loaded on toollabs ready to go. Will be running this under supervision initially with fortnightly runs (just until I find a more reasonable way to finding the references).
I don't think this will require a BRFA as it's an existing tasks and the bot is still flagged, however will do the inital batches under supervision just in case. Mdann52 (talk) 16:06, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

'Literature of Kashmir'

The width of the birthplace section needs to be widened.

Some text seems to be oddly enlarged than the others needs to be fixed.

Musadiq Mushtaq (talk) 20:43, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

@Aatiq Ganai: Hello, this is Declined Not a good task for a bot. For this request, WP:TEAHOUSE would be better suited. —usernamekiran (talk) 07:37, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Replace banners of merged history WikiProjects

Resolved

There is a consensus to merge several inactive WikiProjects into Wikipedia:WikiProject History. To complete the merge, we need to replace all instances of the following banner templates with {{WikiProject History}}:

The former WikiProjects are not being converted into task forces, so all that is needed to replace one template with the other and carry over the quality and assessment ratings. Many pages will already have {{WikiProject History}}, in which case the other banner just needs to be removed. The task forces of the former WikiProjects are also not being preserved, so any parameters beyond the standard {{WPBannerMeta}} ones can simply be ignored or discarded.

Is there a bot that can help with this? After it is complete I will redirect the unused templates and delete the emptied categories. – Joe (talk) 13:26, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Joe, is there a reason the templates can't just be redirected, with duplicates being removed? Primefac (talk) 14:40, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
I don't know. It might be a little confusing that e.g. the source says {{WikiProject Dacia}} but displays history? And/or trip up scripts like WP:RATER? Honestly I'm only asking to do it this way around because of your comment here, but maybe I misunderstood. – Joe (talk) 14:49, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
A lot of templates have their redirects used mainly because it's a pain to go through and "fix" them all (NOTBROKEN etc) and as far as I am aware RATER goes off of the target template (even has an option to replace the redirect). I do agree there might be a small amount of initial confusion if someone looks at the code and doesn't see what they expect, but on the other hand those folks are most likely to notice that it's a redirect.
If we're just going with duplicates, there are only ~250 so I can run those through quickly. As far as my Petscan comment went, if you're looking for pages with two templates, and one of the templates is a redirect to the other, then all transclusions will be marked as "both templates" since the target template is also (technically) transcluded; that's why it's best to remove dupes before redirecting. Primefac (talk) 14:58, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Simpler is better. – Joe (talk) 15:07, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
Duplicates sorted, so you should be good to redirect the templates and G8 the cats. Primefac (talk) 15:19, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
Great, thanks a lot! – Joe (talk) 15:22, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Y Done (for the bot/table) Primefac (talk) 17:51, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Friendly support for Draft categories – feedback request

A bot currently removes categories from Drafts per WP:NODRAFTCAT, but there is a proposal to handle this in a more user-friendly way. Your feedback would be appreciated at User talk:DannyS712 bot#Task 3 – Draft categories. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:40, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Redundant (ironically, for the bot). Mdann52 (talk) 19:47, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Bot to change citations to list defined references

I'm writing this from the perspective of a new editor. I've been struggling a lot with the way citations are commonly inserted into articles, and I think it would be a good idea to automatically convert all articles to the list defined references citation standard.

As far as I understand this is only relevant for editors using the source edit mode (?). Here's my perspective: There's two main problems with the inline citation style. 1) It's very difficult to read the text and find the relevant positions in the article, since citations - especially several citations in a row - will create long breaks in the text. 2) The even bigger problem (especially for new editors) is that inserting an already existing citation (or citing something twice) becomes unnecessarily complicated. Finding the original citation in the text, inserting a name-tag, and then using that name-tag in the new citation is confusing and tedious. List-defined-references would alleviate all these problems and make the page source codes more readable and understandable.

I understand that while editing it can be tedious to go down to the ref list, edit that, and then go back to the position in the text. That's why I think a bot would be a good solution, that can clean up articles later without affecting the editors workflow. Apoptheosis (talk) 16:50, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Declined Not a good task for a bot. Touching references is one of the most contentious areas on Wikipedia, and changing the manner and style in which citation are done is both a violation of WP:CITEVAR and will never have consensus as as task. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:56, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, I should have figured this out earlier. Apoptheosis (talk) 17:44, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Bot to mass tag California State University sports seasons

Hi! This is my first request here, so please tell me if I did something wrong. As a part of the California State University task force, I'm looking to add {{WikiProject California|calstate=yes|calstate-importance=low}} to all of miscellaneous sports seasons' talk pages. The categories below contain the pages I'm looking to add the tag to, the bulk of the pages are from the football programs at each institution.

SammySpartan (talk) 17:32, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

With ~800 pages to deal with, this might be worth an AWBTASKS request, but that's mainly because by the time someone other than me puts through a BRFA it could probably be done there (not saying this isn't worth a bot task, just thinking about timing). Primefac (talk) 18:13, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
Doing... with JWB (non-bot). — Frostly (talk) 16:36, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
@Frostly: is this done? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:28, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
Headbomb, this is ongoing; some (but not all) of the categories have been completed. — Frostly (talk) 17:05, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/PearBOT 14 has expired as the operator is taking something of an indefinite hiatus from editing. Would anyone be interested in taking on this project? Primefac (talk) 00:24, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I'll take a look at this, but in the meantime anyone should know that they can take it up if they want to Rusty4321 talk contribs 04:26, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
I've also got time over the next few days to get this sorted - however I'll probably take a different approach to the previous BRFA to do this! Rusty, I'll drop you an email but if you're happy to give this a go, I'll hold off! Mdann52 (talk) 18:57, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
@Mdann52: Thanks for your email -- I'd be happy to give this a go and get some experience with pwb. I'd appreciate it if you'd point me in the right direction on coding a new approach to coding the bot. Rusty talk contribs 02:21, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
@Mdann52: Just curious, what approach(es) would you take to coding the bot? I have some ideas but I'm not quite sure what would be best. Rusty talk contribs 20:59, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
I don't like the use of the dictionary to read/write data into, and a database is probably a better way to store/manage the data. Thirdly, I wouldn't have a continuous edit mode, and just have a scan every 24 hours or so to pick up the new boxes. I haven't dived into the logs too deeply to pick up all the differences however, so I can't get any more particular on other changes I would make to how they are parsing things! Mdann52 (talk) 09:22, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
Mdann52, out of curiosity, why would you use a daily scan instead of monitoring the live event stream? — Qwerfjkltalk 18:02, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
@Qwerfjkl: partially personal preference (this isn't an urgent task, it doesn't really have an impact on anyone if there's a short delay, so I can't see the need for the extra resources that come out of scanning the RC feed), and the lack of changes. Yes, you could scan the page after each edit, but the majority of these won't be closes, and also it means that any malformed closes have time to be fixed before the next run.
However, my day job is in a field where I need to worry about performance, scheduling and resources, which isn't as much as a priority here! Mdann52 (talk)

Bot to update match reports to cite template

Per this discussion on WikiProject Football, it appears to be the best course of action to edit match report external links to full cited templates because of WP:LINKROT. I am making a request for a bot that could automatically do this, as there are many football pages that use the direct link system. An example of a page that does not is 2024 OFC Nations Cup qualification, while a major page that does use the direct link is the 2022 FIFA World Cup page. Yoblyblob (Talk) :) 13:01, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

@Yoblyblob: is there any further discussion apart from that? There doesn't really seem to be a consensus there for this change. Mdann52 (talk) 09:03, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
@Mdann52 no, but it does follow WP:LINKROT, but I could make another discussion for further consensus. Is the best place for that on the project page? Yoblyblob (Talk) :) 12:16, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
@Mdann52 update: Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Football#Match_report_discussion_style for a seemingly unopposed discussion. The linkrot policy seems to be the best argument here. Yoblyblob (Talk) :) 22:00, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
Archive link - Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Archive 165#Match report discussion style
Yoblyblob - happy to look at this, will be an AWB task but the wikitext has a few caveats. Coding... (for lack of a better option!). Mdann52 (talk) 18:04, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
BRFA filed Mdann52 (talk) 18:06, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Thank you so much! Yoblyblob (Talk) :) 18:47, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
I think it is actually poor form (directed at @Yoblyblob:) to start manually making edits that do this task in advance of a BOT that is going to perform this task, once created. Especially for current tournaments. And especially reverting WP:GOODFAITH edits consistent with most other match results which follow that format, reverting without any edit summary. Pretty poor form for that. It will just create unnecessarily arguments, such as currently at User talk:J man708. Once the BOT is functional, which I understand that it is not yet, the changes will just happen and people will get used to it (and not argue with the BOT). It hurts nothing to leave the edits (by @J man708:) alone for the time being. Imagine if you started doing this in the middle of a World Cup or CONMEBOL competition! I recommend @Yoblyblob: simply to wait for the BOT functionality to occur.Matilda Maniac (talk) 22:46, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
We have already had the discussion; there is no need to mention me twice Yoblyblob (Talk) :) 22:55, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
I really do not understand the need for this bot at all and even less so understand the need for the Match Report function to be changed from what it is. Using a archived match report link prevents linkrot, surely. - J man708 (talk) 00:40, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
I would argue rather strongly against that. There are plenty of gnomes who do the same things as bots do, and while waiting for a bot request to be actioned, why not manually clean up some of these things? If someone wants to spend their time making edits that might not be made for a while (BRFA is not always a fast process) then more power to 'em. I will, of course, support your statement that edit summaries are Good Things. Primefac (talk) 01:06, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
Not sure I said that from that positive perspective. For the avoidance of doubt, lack of edit summaries are Bad Things. Matilda Maniac (talk) 05:23, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
@J man708 and Matilda Maniac: happy to put the BRFA on hold if the discussion needs to be resumed. Just let me know. There's also the option of another template to wrap this in to avoid the Bare URL issue, but then this won't automatically be picked up by the various bots that deal with dead links and archiving. Mdann52 (talk) 21:11, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
Did not expect to see people against this, not sure how to get more participation in a discussion as the ones at WP Football were evidently too limited Yoblyblob (Talk) :) 21:21, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Can we have an AIV feed a bot posts on IRC?

I used to have one but then the toolserver changed and somehow an account isn't easy to come by, now (I posted before, but nothing came of it)... ~Lofty abyss 03:09, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

@Lofty: Hi. Do you have source code for it? Maybe I can do it. —usernamekiran (talk) 18:19, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
@Lofty abyss: lol. I pinged a different user in previous edit. —usernamekiran (talk) 19:53, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
No, I was hoping this page could be where bots are started from scratch, possibly, but I used some years ago, and on searching there seems to be several possibilities: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:IRC_RC_Bot https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:MediaWiki-Recent_Changes-IRCBot https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Administrator%27s_Handbook/Countervandalism_IRC_Bots
It's also, generally, what the cvn bots do already there, except this would need to be a more specific page that is watched. ~Lofty abyss 20:16, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
@Lofty abyss: your response reminded me, we have had this conversation before. I think User:Frostly was working on it. Maybe they have a partial code? —usernamekiran (talk) 11:27, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
Obviously, I can't reply for them, but isn't there some way to do this collaboratively, like on github? One person doing it might be a bit much... ~Lofty abyss 10:29, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
Just checking, but I don't suppose anything is going to happen on this front? ~Lofty abyss 18:17, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
@Lofty abyss: do you just want a bot that relays changes to the AIV wiki page? If so, you can use wm-bot for this. Also, getting a Toolforge account should be straightforward now, see the quickstart. If you end up making a membership request, please ping me and I can approve it for you. Legoktm (talk) 18:24, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Stat.kg ---> Stat.gov.kg

The URL scheme of the National Statistical Comitee of the Kyrgyz Republic changed from stat.kg to stat.gov.kg, everything else stayed the same. The website is often used as a reference, but the links to it don't work anymore (e.g. in Chaek: all the links lead to 404 not found) Is it possible that someone migrates the links? MarcelloIV (talk) _Stat.gov.kg" class="ext-discussiontools-init-timestamplink">09:10, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

You should make this request at WP:URLREQ. – DreamRimmer (talk) 09:21, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

A bot that looks through articles that contain {{music ratings}} to look for direct links and converts them into a basic citation. This could be very crude, perhaps put into a temporary category to run WP:CITEBOT on. (Example diff, and yes this was a long time ago) – The Sharpest Lives (💬•✏️•ℹ️) 02:31, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I can possibly do this following the footballbox task above. Unfortunately I've got 2 BRFAs open, so won't want to take anymore on until those are closed. Mdann52 (talk) 10:11, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Add constituency numbers to Indian assembly constituency boxes

I currently have the bot User:C1MM-bot which already adds image maps of assembly constituencies (previously uploaded) to Indian state assembly constituency page infoboxes. I would like to extend this to adding constituency numbers to those pages which don't have them in infoboxes already. Numbers are in the filename of the uploaded images and are from a reliable source, namely the eci.gov.in website. I would also like to add the total number of electors for the constituency with source. The bot is run one state at a time. C1MM (talk) 13:47, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

You would need consensus to do so and a new BRFA. Primefac (talk) 00:27, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
I just put in a BRFA request. If you have anything to say could you comment on it? C1MM (talk) 03:59, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Clear Category:Unlinked Wikidata redirects

Currently has 1,000 entries. {{Soft redirect with Wikidata item}} (or its redirect {{Wikidata item}}) or {{R with Wikidata item}} should be removed from each of them because it's untrue. * Pppery * it has begun... 02:46, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm about to submit a BRFA as soon as possible. – DreamRimmer (talk) 03:28, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
I don't know if just removing the template from each member of this category is ideal - I've worked through this backlog before, and (if I remember correctly) quite a number of the redirects in this category were intended to be linked to a Wikidata item, but for whatever reason weren't. My understanding of the point of this tracking category was to allow editors to go through and remove the rcat where there isn't a Wikidata item to link to, and to connect an item to the page where there is -- in at least some cases that I recall, the Q-identifier had already been passed as a parameter to the template, but the page just hadn't been properly linked to the Wikidata item. To take a random example from that category, {{Wikidata redirect|Q78588304}} was added to Hester Ford in this edit; but that redirect currently appears in the tracking category, as this connection was never made on Wikidata itself. Simply removing all the templates and losing this information isn't the best thing to do here, in my opinion. All the best, ‍—‍a smart kitten[meow] 16:12, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
You have a point if there is a QID that it may require manual review, but Wikidata redirect with no QID on an unlinked item has no useful information so can safely be removed. And I genuinely have no idea why i.e -ous should be linked to Wikidata - I couldn't find an item on it at all, so the tracking is useless. * Pppery * it has begun... 16:18, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
Regarding templates with no QIDs passed, there's the possibility that an editor found a matching item but didn't properly link it; in which case a redirect appearing in this category would signify that there may be an item that can be linked - albeit limited information, but info which an interested editor could use to search for an item on Wikidata with a potentially higher likelihood of success than if they'd just chosen an unlinked redirect at random. However, there's also the possibility that a bot on Wikidata created an item for a non-d:WD:N-passing soft redirect, a {{Wikidata redirect}} template was added during an AWB run on enwiki, and the Wikidata item was eventually deleted (resulting in the page appearing within this category); as I speculate may have happened with -ous. I don't have the capacity right now to look that deeply into these scenarios, though, so I'll stick with no formal opinion on the removal of templates without a QID. All the best, ‍—‍a smart kitten[meow] 16:35, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
Having thought about it some more, I'm feeling at least slightly opposed to removing QID-less templates - as, otherwise, an unnoticed vandal on Wikidata could disconnect an item and a redirect; and we'd be removing the flag on enwiki that could (in practice) be saying 'this page should be linked to an item on Wikidata, please reconnect it!'. There is a large backlog in this category (which, as with all backlogs, is less than ideal), but my thoughts are that the best course of action to clear that backlog wouldn't be to remove the rcat template from all the category's members; which might just have the result of keeping the same amount of work needed overall, but artificially reducing the backlog size. This seems like a maintenance category where manual review for each item is needed - on that note, I'll try and work through this category a bit myself today. All the best, ‍—‍a smart kitten[meow] 10:56, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Is there any way to see what Wikidata item a Wikipedia page used to be connected to? I know that some Wikidata changes show up in the logs here, but I'm not finding "connection/disconnection" in particular. jlwoodwa (talk) 06:41, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
I have a similar request: in all redirects connected to Wikidata, please add the QID to the template if it is not already present. This will simplify things in the future if someone removes this redirect from the Wikidata item or moves it to another item. Vandervalp (talk) 11:16, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
See also nl:Help:Helpdesk/Archief/jun_2024#Wikidata_op_redirects. Wikiwerner (talk) 14:04, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Fixing stub tag placement on new articles

Since correct placement of stub tags is impossible using the VisualEditor, I've seen a tendency for articles created using VE to exhibit a jumbled mess of stub templates, categories and reference tags at the bottom. This is actually already an AWB genfix, but I wonder if it would be appropriate to have a bot routinely monitor VE edits and implement just this fix, which shouldn't need human supervision. --Paul_012 (talk) 09:39, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Declined Not a good task for a bot.. Visually speaking there is no difference if a stub tag is placed before or after the categories, making it a cosmetic edit and a rather trivial one at that given that the wikitext is at the very bottom of the page. Primefac (talk) 11:14, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
The visible difference is that stub tags placed before categories will lead to stub categories appearing first, before the content categories. That's the only reason WP:LAYOUT puts them last. --Paul_012 (talk) 14:28, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
WP:LAYOUT is general guidance, enforcing that specific provision about stub template order is rather futile. Fine as part of other edits, but simply reordering the categories on its own serve very little purpose. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:17, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
To be fair to Paul_012, properly placed & spaced stub tags do render differently vs. improperly placed & spaced tags above the categories (assuming VE places < 2 blank lines above the stub templates; an example VE stub-edit would be useful), so edits fixing them are not cosmetic (though they're very minor if done in isolation). Per WP:STUBSPACING, "Leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it. (One blank line leaves the stub category notice butted up against any preceding navigation template; it takes two blank lines in the edited text to produce one blank line in the displayed text.)".   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  08:10, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Adding Facility IDs to AM/FM/LPFM station data

Hi! Would someone be able to help implement Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2024 May 26#Template:AMQ and Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2024 May 26#Template:FMQ? In a nutshell, this would entail finding {{AMQ|<callsign>}} and replacing it with {{FCC-LMS-Facility|<Facility ID>|<callsign>}} and friends. There is also Category:Pages using AM station data without facility ID, Category:Pages using FM station data without facility ID, and Category:Pages using LPFM station data without facility ID, which have a similar problem which need a similar solution: replacing e.g. {{AM station data|<callsign>}} with {{AM station data|<Facility ID>|<callsign>}}.

Luckily, Wikidata has the facility IDs, so it should be a (relatively) simple job. Thanks, HouseBlaster (talk · he/they) 02:27, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

@HouseBlaster: - Coding... - I'll try and pop something together over the next few days. I'm assuming the Wikidata IDs are to be relied on? Looking at some articles (such as d:Q6325806 and KBFL (AM), I'm wondering if it's worth a parallel task to sync the callsigns with Wikidata as well? (although having them as page titles may make this redundant Mdann52 (talk) 06:06, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Mdann52, I don't love relying on Wikidata, but the few that I spot-checked were okay and I doubt anyone will systematically check the thousands of transclusions. I will note that some articles use the templates with a parameter other than the page title. Up to you if you want to work on the parallel task. Thank you so much for taking this on! — HouseBlaster (talk · he/they) 16:36, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
@HouseBlaster: I did spot the Wikidata entries, however the FCC (suprisingly) seems to have a decent API that I can query by callsign, so I can probably get up-to-date data from there to base the callsigns off... this will take slightly longer to code, however this should avoid me having to rely on Wikidata. Give me a few weeks and I'll spin something up, unless this is super urgent, when I can just use WD. Mdann52 (talk) 16:44, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Mdann52, not urgent at all. I am shocked that the FCC has an API. If we can use that, I am all for it. Thank you so much :) — HouseBlaster (talk · he/they) 16:45, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
@HouseBlaster: - that new template will not work for Mexican stations (and some Canadian ones, as noted on the TfD), as the FCC has removed them from the database. I'm happy to remove the template from pages without FCC data, if this is inline with the deletion database?
The Mexican IFT have a similar database here, but this doesn't look like it's as easy to link through and the API is not published (it exists, but it's very difficult to use compared to the FCC one!), so that may be a future task. Mdann52 (talk) 05:48, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Mdann52, could you ping me when done so I can export the data to Wikidata? — Qwerfjkltalk 18:18, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
@Qwerfjkl: - I was actually debating uploading the data to wikidata as I go, especially as I'll be getting it from the source directly and there's a lot of fields in there that won't appear on enwiki... but if you prefer to sort afterwards I can cope with that! Mdann52 (talk) 19:29, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Mdann52, feel free to do it on your end if you want. I was going to use this tool for transferring the data. — Qwerfjkltalk 14:29, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
BRFA filed Mdann52 (talk) 09:27, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
@Houseblaster: - FYI, BRFA is approved. There's an issue with about 25% of the data (translators and low-power transmitters) which will require a more manual intervention to fetch the data, but I'm dealing with sourcing the data for this. Mdann52 (talk) 12:36, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
@HouseBlaster: - I'm going to mark this as Y Done. There's 50 instances of FMQ left, but these mainly appear to be instances of {{Radio translators}} with missing FCC IDs in the table. Hopefully that's at the level where you can handle this in the template. Mdann52 (talk) 05:23, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
Thank you so much!! I will try to get to those later today. HouseBlaster (talk · he/they) 12:42, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Remove new article comments

My insource:"articlespace" search is being flooded with irrelevant results. Please have a bot run once to delete comments like the following: 

<!--- Don't mess with this line! ---><!--- Write your article below this line --->
<!--- After listing your sources please cite them using inline citations and place them after the information they cite. Please see [[Wikipedia:REFB]] for instructions on how to add citations. --->
<!--- STOP! Be warned that by using this process instead of Articles for Creation, this article is subject to scrutiny. As an article in "mainspace", it will be DELETED if there are problems, not just declined. If you wish to use AfC, please return to the Wizard and continue from there. --->

142.113.140.146 (talk) 04:43, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

on its own, this will be a WP:COSMETICBOT, it could be done along with some other significant change. Also, a blanket removal of all the html/invisible comments wouldn't be advisable. A lot of them are useful. —usernamekiran (talk) 07:50, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
We should remove only the listed ones not all comments. How about we have the bot add a category during the removal? Clearly the authors weren't paying attention, so we would need to examine MOS compilance. We could send these to something like "Old" pages patrol. 142.113.140.146 (talk) 22:33, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Removing Template:midsize from infobox parameters (violation of MOS:SMALLFONT)

Resolved

moved from Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks, where nobody expressed interest.

When {{small}}, {{midsize}}, and other size-reducing templates are used inside infobox parameter values, it is almost always a violation of MOS:SMALLFONT, an accessibility guideline (exceptions are in enlarged parameters like |title=). I have found that an editor added {{midsize}} to {{Infobox judge}} parameter values in about 350 articles, and to {{infobox officeholder}} parameter values in as many as 960 articles. Is anyone available to tidy these up, like this? The fixes should be limited to infobox parameter values; uses in the body of the article are often acceptable. I expect that there will be another, similar request once those are cleared up and I can see where else {{midsize}} is being used. Thanks.

Since I'm posting this on Bot requests now, this might turn into a larger task. There are tens of thousands of uses of <small>...</small> and {{small}} in infobox template parameters, nearly all of which should be removed for accessibility compliance. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:04, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Jonesey95, I can't see a decent way to search for these, and {{small}} has too many transclusions to reasonably check all of them. Is there a better way? — Qwerfjkltalk 17:57, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
I'm not worried about {{small}} at this time. I put two search links for {{midsize}} in my post above. Will those work for you? – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:20, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Jonesey95, okay, I think I can do this, just a few things I need. What parameters should I avoid (such as title as you mention above), and which templates should I look for - is it just Infobox judge and infobox officeholder, or should I be thorough and use a recursive category search on Category:Infobox templates ? — Qwerfjkltalk 19:27, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
This is one of those rare times when it's easier to use a simple regex than mwparserfromhell.— Qwerfjkltalk 19:28, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Just those two infoboxes should handle nearly all of the problem transclusions. I can do others with my own regex and manual inspection; I just wasn't looking forward to doing 1,000 of them. I'm pretty sure that most or all of the offending transclusions are in |education=, so if you just made a pass through the pages replacing those, you might get them all. And I agree, a regex should be the easiest way to deal with this removal. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:48, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Jonesey95, does this edit look good A. Andrew Hauk (Diff ~1237033071)? I've just used the naive regex 
re.sub(r"\{\{ *midsize *\| *?(?:1 *=)?(.+?)\}\}", r"\1", str(educationvalue))
— Qwerfjkltalk 20:09, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Yes, that looks perfect. And you found one with {{nowrap}} in it, so we can be pretty sure that the regex won't mismatch braces. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:36, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Jonesey95, great, I've done the Infobox judge lot, and I'll take care of the other bunch tomorrow. Funnily enough I found this whilst looking through the edits. — Qwerfjkltalk 21:16, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Amusing and wrong-headed; I haven't looked to see if this editor caused us to end up here, since I usually prefer to fix problems rather than cast blame. Consensus is strongly against this single editor's opinion; I wonder if they took the time to ask at a MOS talk page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:53, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Jonesey95, okay, I've done the second lot of pages. — Qwerfjkltalk 11:26, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
That made a nice dent in the problem. It looks like Charles I. Dawson and other {{infobox judge}} instances were skipped because they have {{midsize}} in other parameters. It also looks like David Jackson Davis and some other pages using {{Infobox officeholder}} were skipped. I can do those manually, or if you want to take a look, that would be great. Thanks! – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:38, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Never mind; I had some time and went through the edge cases myself. Thanks so much for these thousand-plus edits. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:24, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Jonesey95, no problem. I just used a simple pywikibot script.
Code if anyone is interested:
import pywikibot
from pywikibot import pagegenerators

import mwparserfromhell, re

site=pywikibot.Site("wikipedia:en")
gen=pagegenerators.SearchPageGenerator('hastemplate:"infobox officeholder" hastemplate:midsize', site=site, namespaces=0)
for page in gen:
    print(page)
    code=mwparserfromhell.parse(page.text)
    templates=code.filter_templates()
    for template in templates:
        if template.name.matches("infobox officeholder"):
            if template.has("education"):
                educationvalue=template.get("education").value
                template.get("education").value = re.sub(r"\{\{ *midsize *\| *?(?:1 *=)?(.+?)\}\}", r"\1", str(educationvalue))
                break
    page.text=str(code)
    page.save("Per [[Wikipedia:Bot requests#Removing Template:midsize from infobox parameters (violation of MOS:SMALLFONT)]]")
— Qwerfjkltalk 08:15, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Change stadium to somerhing else in the template:Infobox Olympic games

This year in the 2024 Summer Olympics we have the problem that the Seine and Jardins du Trocadéro need to stand on that spot, but those are obviously no stadiums. Because of that i would change the template:Infobox Olympic games. I would change the word "stadium" to "place of celebration" or something similar, but then all the articles with that infobox needs to be changed, and that will obviously take way to long for a human. So that is why i am asking for a bot. Gilliebillie🤡 (talk) 17:58, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

@Gilliebillie: I see that you have posted on Template talk:Infobox Olympic games. Please gain consensus for your changes before requesting here. Rusty 🐈 18:04, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Well, @Rusty Cat, if i get ignored then i can not know if people agree. If someone disagrees then they need to let it know. Gilliebillie🤡 (talk) 18:12, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
@Gilliebillie: Why don't you ask on the wiki projects listed at the top of the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Infoboxes and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Olympics? Rusty 🐈 18:17, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
As mentioned above, our policy on bots requires that bots only perform tasks supported by community consensus. Needs wider discussion. Rusty Cat made some good suggestions for where to get that discussion going. Bsoyka (t • c • g) 18:20, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
Nevermind. You guys always make it way to hard. Gilliebillie🤡 (talk) 18:26, 28 July 2024 (UTC)
It's hard because changing things willy-nilly, Gilliebillie, is rarely a good idea. When things have been a certain way for a while, there is sometimes a good reason. So we discuss. (Sometimes there is not a good reason, and a quick discussion will usually determine that, and then the thing can be changed.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:57, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
You're not being ignored, three people have commented on your discussion at the template talk page. Primefac (talk) 13:48, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Tagging women's basketball article talk pages with project tags

I am requesting assistance tagging the talk pages of women's basketball articles with {{WikiProject Basketball|women=yes}} and {{WikiProject Women's sport|basketball=yes}} if not already tagged.

<removed long list of subcats, see history> Hmlarson (talk) 16:47, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

@Hmlarson: that's a lot of categories... Can the list be shortened and subcategories removed? Mdann52 (talk) 17:32, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
@Mdann52: What's the estimated # of categories that would be considered doable? Hmlarson (talk) 17:48, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Well, 200K of categories isn't going to be considered likely... but is this list just the subcategories of Category:Women's basketball? The ones I've dip sampled all appear to be a member of it. If so, please just say so and spare someone a lot of work! This will likely be a good WP:AWBTASKS however, if it's a straightforward addition of WP articles. If you clarify the cats I'll do some queries to work out exactly how many pages this will likely affect. Mdann52 (talk) 18:05, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Yes, subcats of Category:Women's basketball. Thank you @Mdann52:. Hmlarson (talk) 18:14, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
@Hmlarson: Looks like around 11k pages in those categories, including pages already in those taskforces. Can you just drop a curtosy message onto the Wikiproject talk pages and make sure they are happy with the articles being tagged, if you haven't checked with them already, just due to the amount of edits needed? Thanks, Mdann52 (talk) 19:15, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Yes. Already done. Hmlarson (talk) 19:17, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
@Hmlarson: I might be able to do that. I will look into it in a couple of days, and I will let you know. —usernamekiran (talk) 20:15, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
Usernamekiran, I have some code for this back from Task 26 that's pretty good at handling edge cases when it comes to managing talk pages (it did, after all, run on several million of them). That might help? — Qwerfjkltalk 21:03, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
@Hmlarson: Hi. Should only the article talkpages be tagged, or should the talkpages of images, categories, and templates be tagged as well? —usernamekiran (talk) 15:48, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
Good question. If it's not a headache to add categories and templates, it would be appreciated. If it's a lot more work for you, skip it. Thank you @Usernamekiran! Hmlarson (talk) 19:02, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
@Hmlarson: not difficult at all, all I've to do is add a few words to an existing line, along with the numbers of the namespaces that we want to edit. In our case 1, 7, 11, and 15. —usernamekiran (talk) 17:10, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
That's great. Thanks! Hmlarson (talk) 17:13, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
@Hmlarson: Hi. The bot is ready to go, just one question: if the {{WikiProject Women's sport has |wnba=yes then should we add |basketball=yes, and vice-versa? —usernamekiran (talk) 18:11, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
@Usernamekiran Sure. Thanks! Hmlarson (talk) 18:32, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Doing... @Hmlarson: the bot has been running for a few hours now. It should finish the task in two-three days from now. —usernamekiran (talk) 12:29, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! Appreciate your persistence with this. You rock. Hmlarson (talk) 13:42, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
Y Done @Hmlarson: my pleasure! —usernamekiran (talk) 16:55, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Removing spurious nobot notice

Resolved

So about a year ago in Special:Diff/1168683129 a call to {{bots|deny=PrimeBOT}} was added to {{Uw-coi}}, which I didn't realise at the time was added to over 5000 pages before the change was reverted (see this list). While I do realise that this is a relative drop in the bucket as far as "total number of userpages" goes, if there were to be any cleanup effort using my bot (especially if it involved cleanup of the uw-coi template) it would be completely hindered. If someone wouldn't mind removing all instances of this deny call on pages that subst'd uw-coi, I would appreciate it. Primefac (talk) 11:52, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

@Primefac,I can help with this if you're okay with it. – DreamRimmer (talk) 12:04, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
Thanks! Primefac (talk) 12:15, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
BRFA filed – DreamRimmer (talk) 12:55, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
Y Done Edits – DreamRimmer (talk) 04:26, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Convert Online Data to Bulleted Lists

This isn't as much a bot request as likely more a coding request, so if this isn't the right venue, please let me know. I am wondering if someone can pull out the underlying data at this source and fill in this User:Gonzo fan2007/AllTimeRoster. Basically, taking the all-time roster for the Green Bay Packers, splitting it up by the first letter of their last name, adding Wikilinks and making them a bulleted list. I've done a few of them as an example. I can disambiguate those that need it after the list is created. Can anyone help me out? Thanks! « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 20:20, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

If you're looking to make it a list, I would suggest just use Excel (or similar); once you have the table in the spreadsheet you can concat= everything with the formatting you want. Primefac (talk) 12:11, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
 Done Gonzo fan2007, I have saved these in my sandbox to avoid messing up your user page. Feel free to copy and paste from there. – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:38, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Primefac, wikitext is the extent of my coding or understanding of HTML. The way the Packers built there list, they basically broke it up into 74 small tables. So I was trying to avoid having to copy and paste 74 tables into one into Excel. I figured the underlying data existed for someone with more knowledge than me to pull down.
DreamRimmer, this is absolutely perfect! Thank you so much! I will let you know when I have finished copying everything over. Should be pretty quick. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 14:11, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Fair enough, twas just a suggestion in case someone else didn't get to it faster. Primefac (talk) 14:16, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Y Done thank you both for your input and help! « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 14:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Automatic NOGALLERY keyword for categories containing non-free files (again)

I'll raise this again, since last time the discussion fizzled out, and was archived without formal action from a BAG member.

The issue is that files in categories are displayed by default, and this violates WP:NFCC#9 if there are non-free files in the category. They have to be tagged with __NOGALLERY__ if you want to disable display of non-free files in a category. This is an urgent issue, as categories without this tag thatt contain non-free files are everywhere, and because we take copyright very seriously it cannot wait for a human user to find the category and add the __NOGALLERY__ tag, which is why this task requires a bot. Every other routine task involving non-free files, such removing instances without a valid fair use tag, is already handled by a bot.

The previous discussion stalled after a user objected and suggested adding a new feature to MediaWiki to disable category galleries by default, which is less convenient due to requiring WMF action, and it would create the opposite problem: we would need a bot to enable gallery mode on categories that contain only free files. Even though most files hosted locally are non-free, there is no reason why a bot couldn't handle the task of adding necessary __NOGALLERY__ tags at the required scale. Only one other person contributed to the discussion, who objected the suggestion for a new MediaWiki feature because it would hinder navigation of categories specifically for free files, and nothing else happened after that. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 05:58, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

User:JJMC89 has a bot that works with non-free images and might be interested in looking at this task. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:26, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: Should I contact JJMC89 (talk · contribs) via their user talk page? –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 17:28, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
It's worth a try. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:39, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
I'm aware I've been pinged, but I don't have time to look into this right now. Someone else can take this up, or I'll circle back when I have the time. — JJMC89 (T·C) 17:38, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
Here's the SQL query I ended up with:
MariaDB [enwiki_p]> select count(distinct cl2.cl_to) from categorylinks as cl1 join categorylinks as cl2 on cl1.cl_from=cl2.cl_from join page on page_title=cl2.cl_to left join page_props on page_id=pp_page and pp_propname="nogallery" where cl1.cl_to="All_non-free_media" and cl1.cl_type="file" and page_namespace=14 and pp_propname IS NULL;
+---------------------------+
| count(distinct cl2.cl_to) |
+---------------------------+
|                      5070 |
+---------------------------+
1 row in set (1 hour 35 min 26.445 sec)
So there are roughly 5,000 categories this applies to. I do think that we should make sure this bot also cleans up after itself, once a category no longer has any non-free files in it, the NOGALLERY switch should be removed. Creating a wrapper like {{non-free category gallery}} or something would make it explicit what the intention of the nogallery tag is so it can be safely removed once no longer necessary. Legoktm (talk) 17:32, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
I suppose so. We could also have a {{nobots}} for categories that should contain no non-free files, or are plausibly under WP:NFEXMP such as Category:Wikipedia non-free content criteria exemptions. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 02:57, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
I wonder whether a bot automatically adding __NOGALLERY__ really is the best idea in the first place, versus a report so humans can decide whether the best solution is to remove the non-free images instead. Anomie⚔ 20:21, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
You mean like automatically tagging categories with a tag for a tracking category titled Category:Wikipedia categories containing non-free files without NOGALLERY tag? Why? –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 21:33, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
Did you stop reading after the first half of the sentence? so humans can decide whether the best solution is to remove the non-free images instead. Although I was thinking more of Wikipedia:Database reports rather than a maintenance template and category. Anomie⚔ 11:50, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
I commented here hoping to just provide enough clues for someone else to pick up the task, but I suppose I can add another database report ;) Hopefully that provides enough data on whether this is suitable for an automated task or not. Legoktm (talk) 01:34, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
I've used your query and {{Database report}} and setup a report at User:WOSlinker/Categories containing non-free files without NOGALLERY with the first 1000 categories sorted by file count. -- WOSlinker (talk) 12:44, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
Most of the higher-listed items are image categories which shouldn't contain non-free files. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 19:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
At User:LaundryPizza03/NOGALLERY analysis I have compiled every 10th item on the list, and what I think should happen to them. The results:
  • NOGALLERY: 68/100
  • Remove files: 21/100
  • Shouldn't contain non-free files: 7/100
  • Uncertain: 4/100
It is possible that some of the categories will need CfD or migration of the files to a new file-specific category, but I didn't think that deeply. I note that we don't have clear guidelines on when files should be placed in content categories, if at all. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 20:57, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
Further discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Files_in_content_categories for this issue. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 06:37, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
In other words, a user at the other discussion has suggested that all content categories should admit, which should be easier to process by bot. That comes out to NOGALLERY for 88/100 categories in the above test (excluding one category that was deleted). –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 01:31, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
I'll again state that since by default, most of the files on en.wiki will be of the non-free type, it's seems that that requesting a new tag to add to pages where the gallery should be enabled is a better solution. First, this removes the issue presented here that non-free files are shown, and it also removes the need for a bot, database report, and editor time spent on fixing and maintaining this. There is also no rush on adding the new key to categories that are ok to be a gallery. Gonnym (talk) 11:42, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

It seems the obvious solution would be have a switch that can be applied at the file level that prevents that file being displayed in galleries (unless the category has an override switch?) that could be transcluded by the various non-free license templates. If this is not something that is currently technically possible, is there a phab task requesting it? Thryduulf (talk) 10:13, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

No, I don't think that is possible. Can't we focus on resolving this problem in the short-term? –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 01:28, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't understand why this is as urgent as you are making it? Surely it's better to do things the best way rather than get it done as quickly as possible? Thryduulf (talk) 01:51, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
To do so, one may have to ascribe the non free status directly into the file metadata rather than relying on the templates as a determinant. – robertsky (talk) 01:38, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
Why? Surely what matters is the file page metadata, which can be set by template in other situations. Thryduulf (talk) 01:54, 4 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't see any reason it wouldn't be possible for a magic word to be added that works as described. But it would need someone to implement the feature in MediaWiki, and I don't see a Phab task requesting it. Anomie⚔ 14:09, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Bot that condenses identical references

Sometimes a user generates citations that point to the same source, but in a separate ref tag (Statement 1<ref>Me!</ref> Statement 2! <ref>Me!</ref>), rather than using <ref name=me>Me!</ref> for the first call, and <ref name=me/> for subsequent ones. This results in a separate entry for each citation.

The easy case is to detect and fix exact copy-paste duplicates.

If you want to see how bad it can get, check out Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing (perma: [3]). That one generates the same citation in different ways.

I'd be happy with a bot that only fixes the first type, however, I'd be overjoyed with something that fixes both.

Acebulf (talk | contribs) 03:46, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm actually going to give this a spin myself. Coding... Acebulf (talk | contribs) 00:04, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
@Acebulf: WP:GENFIXES does at least some of this.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  00:21, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
Genfixes does this on the condition that named refs are used in the article. Doing it on a mass scale when named refs are not used might ruffle some feathers. Then again, it might not. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:34, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
I suspect that the condition reflected a time before the Visual Editor was a thing. On copy-pasting a reference, the visual editor already adds named references with the name being something like ":0". Acebulf (talk | contribs) 02:12, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
How will you know which pages to target? Also, dup refs may already have names, possibly different names. -- GreenC 01:07, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
So far I've been trying it with random articles, and duplicate references are present on about 2% of all pages with the easy case. At an edit per minute, that's roughly 3 months to do the entire encyclopedia. The scanning is getting me a few matches per minute, so this seems sustainable. Acebulf (talk | contribs) 02:36, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
OK. That's probably the only way. 2% is a lot, like over 100,000 pages. That many edits without a WP:BRFA will probably get noticed. By the time scanning/logging is done it could be approved. -- GreenC 15:21, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, I'll file it soon. Thanks for the help! Acebulf (talk | contribs) 03:07, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
@Acebulf: I wrote User:Polygnotus/DuplicateReferences, to make spotting them easier. I scraped the dump to find duplicate references. I have all articles with refs that are exact duplicates (there are far far more that are not exact duplicates but could be merged without loss of data) loaded into AWB (with a little module that fixes them and creates a name based on the domain, because the genfix only works in very specific conditions). Here are manual 100 test edits. I have also written some code that knows how and when to merge templates in more complicated cases (e.g. with |page= and |pages=, see Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Citing_multiple_pages_of_the_same_source).
I also have a script that merges Template:Harvard citation no brackets, see User:Polygnotus/DeDuplicateReferences.js.
I think the question is: "Are these edits significant enough on their own, or should they be combined with another improvement?".
I am not sure writing a bot would be the best approach; AWB can already partially do this task (e.g. DuplicateNamedReferences() and DuplicateUnnamedReferences() in /WikiFunctions/Parse/References.cs), probably better to just improve that.
AWB code says: Where an unnamed reference is a duplicate of another named reference, set the unnamed one to use the named ref
But, in addition to that it probably should check if 2 or more references are referencing the same URL(s), and then merge them if possible without human intervention (some template parameters can be merged like the name of the author, others cannot like a |quote=), and if not put them on a list.
I also just noticed that DuplicateUnnamedReferences() contains a comment that says: On en-wiki AWB is asked not to add named references to an article if there are none currently, as some users feel this is a change of citation style, so is against the WP:CITE "don't change established style" guidelines so we should probably get consensus to change that. Polygnotus (talk) 10:51, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
I think the list of todoes would be:
  • Get at least one of AWB devs (listed in infobox at WP:AWB) involved
  • Figure out how to deal with duplicated references.
  • Start RFC asking permission to deduplicate references
  • Write code for AWB and unit tests
  • Write documentation, update WP:DUPCITE
  • Release AWB update
Did I miss something? Polygnotus (talk) 12:30, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
There has been some previous discussion of this idea at Help talk:Footnotes/Archive 2#Mass merging of unnamed identical references and naming of those references. There a couple of issue with the idea, first is making sure not to create cite errors (a common issue with many of the automated tools that touch references) and rolling back of you do, and the second is that some duplicate references are required. That second issue is caused by transclusion, where multiple sections of the article are transcluded and so the reference must appear in full twice or cause errors in the article the content is transcluded to (these are usually marked by hidden comments outside the reference). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:48, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Change hyphens to en-dashes

Hyphens are commonly used instead of en dashes in short descriptions incorrectly. A quick database scan shows that there are at least 1000 articles19,800 here that needs this fix. -1ctinus📝🗨 20:16, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

While I could normally see this as a WP:CONTEXTBOT problem, I think limiting to short descriptions with four-digit ranges like the search would make this pretty clear-cut without (m)any false positives. If this gets consensus from the community, I would love to implement it. Bsoyka (t • c • g) 21:37, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
" think limiting to short descriptions with four-digit ranges like the search would make this pretty clear-cut" I should have specified that, but that is exactly how it would be implemented. I can’t think of any examples that would be a false positive. -1ctinus📝🗨 22:00, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
The only remotely conceivable example I can think of is if someone threw an ISSN in a short description, which I can literally never see happening. Bsoyka (t • c • g) 22:03, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
Is this actually an issue that needs fixing? Primefac (talk) 22:14, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
This would fix some compliance with MOS:DATERANGE, which explicitly says to use en dashes and not hyphens for date ranges. It technically wouldn't be a WP:COSMETICBOT task since it changes something visible to readers, but I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes controversial as it's admittedly a really minor fix. Curious to hear some other opinions/arguments one way or another. Bsoyka (t • c • g) 07:02, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
I've left a note soliciting input at WT:SD. — Qwerfjkltalk 09:09, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
Also, an interesting note that I came across at MOS:FAQ: Appropriate use of hyphens and dashes is as much a part of literate, easy-to-read writing as are correct spelling and capitalization. Bsoyka (t • c • g) 13:46, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
Really? If I saw that in an article I'd be tagging it with a citation needed template as soon as I saw it didn't have one. It's a small thing that matters hugely to a small number of people and essentially not at all to almost everybody else - no meanings are changed by using the "incorrect" short horizontal line. Feel free to make this change if you're doing something else to the article, but from my POV it's definitely not something that's worth the disruption to watchlists etc caused by doing it for the sake of doing it. Thryduulf (talk) 00:03, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
[S]mall things that matter hugely to a small number of people and essentially not at all to almost everybody else are so foundational to our project they might as well be WP:5P6 (no strong opinion on the bot request). Folly Mox (talk) 12:51, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
They are important, but they do not justify disrupting the encyclopaedia over. Thryduulf (talk) 12:52, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
What part of having a bot that does this, if it’s implemented correctly, is "disrupting the encyclopedia"? Do you not see copy editing in your watchlist non stop? -1ctinus📝🗨 13:12, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
Please see WP:COSMETICBOT for a full explanation of why mass trivial changes are disruptive. Additionally, copyediting by humans normally makes clear improvements to the page for the benefit of readers, something which marginally changing the length of a horizontal line does not typically do. Thryduulf (talk) 13:52, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
Agreed, Thryduulf. In case it feels like I'm trying to discredit your argument, please know that's not my intent, and I hold a deep respect for you. What I meant is that we Wikipedians are extremely fond of our chosen trivialities, and doing things almost no one else cares about is statistically close to 100% of our work.
On the subject at hand, WP:GENFIXES should already perform this substitution whenever anyone AWBs a relevant article. A bot seems like overkill, whether or not it technically violates WP:COSMETICBOT.
1ctinus, do you have a better idea of the problem scope than quarry:query/85225? That one throws a syntax error, returning zero rows. If it's only around a thousand articles, that kind of scope is amenable to human effort, but at least 1000 has a pretty fuzzy upper bound. Folly Mox (talk) 14:05, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
Here's the upper bound: 19,800. :) Here's why I don't want to use AWB to fix all these articles... -1ctinus📝🗨 15:05, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
Full support. I have corrected some pages with this problem in the short description. JacktheBrown (talk) 20:52, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Cyclones

Could there be a bot that automatically archives the IMD and JTWC ABPW and ABIO outlooks. That would be helpful for updating the cyclone pages as neither agency archives their outlooks. OhHaiMark (talk) 01:47, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

What's the copyright situation on Indian Government works? From memory, they aren't automatically public domain, so this would need to be done with care. Mdann52 (talk) 16:07, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Well, usually, IMD outlooks are archived for cyclone seasons like 2023, so I don't really think it's a problem as long as only those outlooks are archived. As for the JTWC, that's already public domain. OhHaiMark (talk) 22:21, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Draft Categories

Please can we have a bot that adds the often forgotten Draft Categories wrapper on User sandboxes and Drafts, so that User:Bearcat stops getting the abuse from their, somewhat heavy-handed, approach to 'fixing' this 'error'?

If not, is it possible for Category pages to just filter out Draft:, User: and Sandbox: pages ? Big Blue Cray(fish) Twins (talk) 19:12, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Isn't that the entire point of DannyS712 bot? (ping @User:DannyS712 for info). Mdann52 (talk) 19:36, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
Well, if it is, it isn't working .. Or at least not like Anomiebot does it's tasks (automatically)
You might want to look at User talk:Bearcat#Please stop removing Draft cats for an in-depth appraisal of the issue. Big Blue Cray(fish) Twins (talk) 19:43, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
Sorry, I needed to reset the password, should be running now DannyS712 (talk) 00:01, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
There is no requirement for draft cats to be in {{draft categories}}, but if they are not in that template then what should be done is to comment them out (e.g. [[:Category:Foo]]). Primefac (talk) 16:12, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Thank you @User:DannyS712 for restarting your bot. Does it remove the colons when it adds the 'draft categories' wrapper ? So that no further work is required when the Draft: makes it to the articlespace? Big Blue Cray(fish) Twins (talk) 07:06, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Nope --DannyS712 (talk) 07:30, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
  • Note that DannyS712 bot doesn't catch all categorized drafts. It looks in a specific category, Category:AfC submissions with categories, which doesn't automatically catch all uncategorized drafts across the board — it catches drafts that have both categories and an AFC submission template on them, but does not catch drafts that don't have an AFC submission template on them, so many categorized drafts never get touched by Danny's bot at all.
    What would help tremendously would be if {{Drafts moved from mainspace}} also worked like the AFC submission template — not all, certainly, but a lot of drafts end up in categories because somebody sandboxed a mainspace article without removing or disabling its categories in the process, so it would cut down considerably on draftnocat cleanup if that template could act like the AFC submission templates, by detecting that the page has categories on it and filing the page in Category:AfC submissions with categories so that Danny's bot could catch it. But the bot doesn't catch all categorized drafts across the board — it just catches ones where the categories coexist with an AFC submission template, and misses ones where they don't, so it doesn't solve the overall problem and still leaves many, many drafts for human editors to deal with. Bearcat (talk) 12:56, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
    Oh, dear. Looks like I've kicked a hornet's nest. But I'm not the sort of Wikipedia volunteer copy-editor to drop a hand grenade and run. So, let's have it out:
    @User:Primefac - Good work around. Or, as WP:USERNOCAT says, comment them out. So, three different ways to fix the same issue. Looks like we need a steer as to which is best, or a bot to fix it.... Tell me, how does a user check that the category they may want to use is not redlinked? (which is another fault that users find and fix rapidly)
    @User:DannyS712 - Can you reprogram your bot to address the improvements that Bearcat (expand scope of where the bot looks for work) and I (colons) have requested ?
    @User:Bearcat - You seem to spend quite a while fixing this oversight (don't want to call it an error, as such). Do you need to? Has a senior admin allocated you this task, or is it something you see, don't like, and choose to fix? You could be using your extensive Wiki volunteer experience to improving the encyclopaedia instead- that is why we volunteer, isn't it?

    Has anyone considered the second option from my original post? The way I see it is that Category: pages are a query. Not a page of prose maintained by a bot, or human, editor. The page the user sees is created when they request it. So, all we have to do is change that query to omit User:, Draft:, Sandbox: and other undesirable pages. What issues does having these pages show in Categories cause anyhow? We know that Danny's bot wasn't working for a while. Did Wikipedia crash? No. Did anyone (except Bearcat) even notice? What would happen if Bearcat stopped what they are doing - for a week? a year? a decade? What would Wikipedia look like then?
    Big Blue Cray(fish) Twins (talk) 10:34, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
    We don't have senior admins or a Sandbox: namespace, and shitting in other editors' gnome holes is considered poor form. All the best, Folly Mox (talk) 11:57, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
    It is an absolute hard rule that drafts are not allowed to be filed in mainspace categories next to real articles, per WP:DRAFTNOCAT. It's not a thing I personally don't like and go around imposing as a personal preference, it's an established consensus of the project — because drafts and userpages in categories impair the end user's experience by filling the categories with pages that shouldn't be in them, the removal of any drafts and userpages that do end up in categories is a thing that must happen. It does constitute improving the encyclopedia, and not doing it for a year would weaken the encyclopedia by filling categories with pages that shouldn't be in them.
    Again, it's an established rule of the project that drafts and userpages cannot be filed in mainspace categories next to real articles — so it's not a task that can just be ignored, and your failure to agree with the established project-wide consensus that it's important isn't relevant at all. Bearcat (talk) 14:30, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
    Thanks for your reply. It just strikes me that there must be an easier way - there is always more than one way to skin a cat! I am not wanting to change policy or denigrate anyone or what they do. I was attempting to improve the user experience of everyone who edits Wikipedia.

    I've had my say, made my case and it was rejected. My main concern was for your welfare. But if you are happy, then so am I.
    Happy Editing!
    Big Blue Cray(fish) Twins (talk) 17:56, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
    Oh, don't get me wrong, I'd dearly love nothing more than for Wikipedia to find some other way to make this a task that nobody ever actually had to worry about doing anymore. It ain't a thing I do because I think it's fun, it's a thing I do because it has to be done, and I'd love it if there were some foolproof way to keep drafts and userspace pages out of mainspace categories automatically. But the bot catches some categorized drafts while missing many others, and there doesn't appear to be a feasible way to make categories just automatically evict sandboxed content, so manual editing of draft and userpages when the reports run is the only option there is. Bearcat (talk) 04:24, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
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