Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 13

Archive 10

Archive 11

Archive 12

Archive 13

Archive 14

Archive 15

→

Archive 20

Could I get a small bot made please?

Hi. My name is Dreamafter, and I woould like a small bot made to help me with my WikiProject. I would like it to check through users contribs, back two months, and see if they have made a contrib for the Project. If taught how, I myself would supervise it. Dreamy ^\*/_!$! 02:16, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I may be able to add this to my todo list and write it. β^_command 02:24, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Trivia

Forgive me if this has already been proposed, but would it be possible to get a bot to automatically add {{Trivia}} directly beneath the heading of any section of any mainspace article that is literally called Trivia, presuming that {{Trivia}} or {{Trivia small}} are not already found on the page? ~ JohnnyMrNinja 06:14, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Android Mouse Bot 3 does this, but it doesn't look like it's edited in awhile. You might wish to ask Android Mouse about it. -- JLaTondre 11:38, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd be happy to start Android Mouse Bot 3 back up again, but I won't be happy with all the angry complaints that it will generate. See some of the discussions it generated here, which is why I don't think it currently has enough conesnsus to run again. Maybe sometime in the distant future, maybe. --Android Mouse 00:00, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

My Bot

CiterBot is going to me my bot. This bot can can cite any article wherever it needs to be cited! For example, if my bot spots an article with {{unreferenced}}, it automatically adds a "doesn't cite its references or sources" template to the article or section. --  PNiddy  Go!  0 15:36, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

... why have the redundancy? — madman bum and angel 16:09, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

The citation needed tag is for individual sentences - it would be impossible for a bot to detect exactly which sentences needed the tag. The redundancy is unneeded otherwise. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 21:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't get this - are you wanting someone to write a bot for this purpose, write you a bot, or are you wanting to write/run a bot? If you are wanting someone to write you a bot, I could possibly do something for you. Not this task, but a simpler task, like substituting templates. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 21:48, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I object to this idea, oftentimes the unreferenced tag is used for only one sentence and doesn't mean the whole article or section needs a citation. No need for redundancy in taggings, articles can get cluttered in tags very quickly. --Android Mouse 23:52, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Note: PNiddy just updated this section, naturally not responding to the inquiries, but it's better now:

if my bot spots an article with {{unreferenced}}, it automatically adds a "doesn't cite its references or sources" template to the article or section.

That's exactly the content of {{unreferenced}}. So, if it {{unreferenced}} is transcluded, it'll add another one, apparently. — madman bum and angel 20:11, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Update current-event portal page headers

hCalendar microformat mark-up has been added to Portal:Current events/DateHeader2. This is used on Portal:Current events pages dated on and after 1 July 2006. Please can someone add it to the Current events listings prior to that date? Thank you. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 15:27, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Nudge. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 09:38, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

UK road junction pages (~24x) - complex changes

Please could someone make the changes detailed at Talk:List of road junctions in the United Kingdom/BOTREQ? Thank you. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 17:07, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a consensus anywhere that such a change should be done. Perhaps talk a bit then come back? —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 15:50, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe that's necessary. I just created the pages concerned, by splitting (with consensus!) one very long one; and the first half of the proposed changes (I've just re-ordered them) will complete that task - the very first one is a most-needed bug-fix.

The changes to add hcard microformats are uncontroversial, and have plenty of precedent, not least in the completed requests. above. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 19:45, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Nudge. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 09:38, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Eurovision Articles

I need a bot to remove any instance of the {{European Union}} template from the talk pages of all articles in Category:Eurovision songs and its various layers of sub-categories. The template was originally put there by Alphachimp's bot Alphachimpbot at the request of a now banned user Parker007. My (now archived) discussions with Alphachimp can be read User talk:Alphachimp/Archive 14#BOT gone crazy ... must be destroyed!!!!! and User talk:Alphachimp/Archive 14#Further to Eurovision articles discussion.

The Eurovision Song Contest has no connection with the European Union and, in any case, falls well outside the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject European Union. (See the scope statement on the mainpage and this discussion on the talk page. You might also read the page on the European Broadcasting Union which runs the Eurovision Song Contest.)

I found it difficult to convince Alphachimp to undo these changes. He is also currently on an Wikibreak and unlikely in the position to run his bot.

If anyone wants to they might also add the {{Eurovision}} template to the articles in the Category:Eurovision songs category that don't have it already, as this would be the approtiate WikiProject. Caveat lector 12:21, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

HermesBot doing it. ~ Wikihermit 17:08, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Cheers! Caveat lector 17:45, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

 Not done I'm having problems running it, I can't do it, sorry. ~ Wikihermit 22:10, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

MetsBot to the rescue!! :-) —METS501 (talk) 18:48, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

 Done Should be done now. —METS501 (talk) 04:12, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! That was much quicker than doing it myself. Caveat lector 17:13, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Search/replace bot request with some complicated parsing.

Problem statement:

1. Between four and five hundred articles dealing with Polish politicians wikilink to a redirect.

2. These same articles also do not utilize the {{DEFAULTSORT:Last, First}} template.

These articles can be seen here. An example edit to fix items can be seen here.

What the perl script needs to do:

1. Replace [[Members of Polish Sejm 2005-2009|member of Sejm 2005-2009]] with [[List of Sejm members (2005–2009)|member of Sejm 2005-2009]].

2. Replace [[Members of Polish Sejm 2005-2009]] with [[List of Sejm members (2005–2009)|Members of Polish Sejm 2005-2009]].

3. Add {{DEFAULTSORT:Last, First}} where "Last, First" can be found in the after the first category "|", e.g., [[Category:Members of Polish Sejm 2005-2009|Bosak, Krzysztof]] Last=Bosak and First = Krzysztof.

4. Replace all occurances of [[Category:*|Last, First]] with [[Category:*]].

Hopefully I've specified this in sufficient detail. I know a little Perl (well, I knew a little perl, and I have a Perl book) so if somebody wants to collaborate on this (mentor me), I am game. Thanks. TableManners 06:24, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Normally, replacing redirects with piped wikilinks is not the most productive action, but since other useful standardization changes are being made, that shouldn't be too much of a problem at all. Alas, I do not know Perl. This is probably possible with AWB, by the way, if it supports regexen. Gracenotes^T § 05:11, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Do you write, create, or control bots? TableManners 06:45, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Redirect#Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 07:23, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

My point was that there's no reason not the fix links to redirects. The benefits of piped links are often dwarfed by the cost of replacing them. But in this case, we're sending an HTTP request anyway, so fixing it should be fine. TableManners: I do write HTTP bots (and have written a basic framework, although I've never used it for an actual bot; but see test edit), but in Java, not Perl. In your case, there's no need to invent the wheel—AWB has this functionality. Gracenotes^T § 19:14, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks JohnnyMrNinja, it did seem to be a pointless task I was doing anyway. TableManners 03:15, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Grace, thanks. I assumed the bots were written in Perl. I have no bot experience here on WP. What is AWB? Is that something I can use directly? Thanks again. TableManners 03:15, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Category bot for the Scots Wikipedia

Can a bot operator please make a bot for our Wikipedia, that will add pages to categories automatically? Thanks in advance. WeBuriedOurSecretsInTheGarden 17:02, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

How would it determine this? Wow, I never realized the Gaelic language had so many similarities to English. --Android Mouse 18:03, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Scottish Gaelic and the Scots language are (completely) different. I'd have the same question though. So far as I know, no bot on en: does this, other than in special cases like replicating information already present in infoboxes, etc. Alai 02:43, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

You may want to take a look at AutoWikiBrowser. —METS501 (talk) 01:24, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Auto-Sign/Spell check (semi)bot

I'd like to request help creating a semi-bot that auto-signs unsigned comments and does spell check please. It's realy annoying to see unsigned messages and incorrectly spelled words, and it'd be hard to find all of those type of things myself. If we already have a large number of these, or it'd be too much of a hastle then please just delete my comment. Thanks.

Please don't hesitate to contact me for any reason on my talk page. Or if you think that another bot/semibot is needed and you don't think the type of semi-bot I requested is necissary, then I'll do my best to help to.--Kkrouni/Ккроунл/ΚκρΩυνι 00:02, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

We have a bot to sign unsigned posts, namely SineBot. A bot which edited other's comments on talk pages is almost definitely denied by principal, and this case would certainly be no exception. —METS501 (talk) 04:12, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Also, many words are intentionally not spelled as EnglishTypeWords for whatever reason, and many titles of things are not real words (what would a spell-check do to Disgaea?). Although, the creation of a Jerkbot that automatically adds "Learn how to spell, looser!" to a user's talk page may be helpful. Or perhaps, in the broader scale, a tag of "Your last edit to article was automatically reverted, as it seems to have sucked. If your edit was made in good faith, it doesn't matter, as it still sucked." *sigh* It's just a dream I have. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 05:25, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh well. Thanks for your time then!--Kkrouni/Ккроунл/ΚκρΩυνι 12:58, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Not to pile on, but I'm surprised that no one has mentioned User:TypoBot, User:SpellCheckerBot, User talk:Rambot, and User:Mboverload/RegExTypoFix. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 12:21, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikilink fixer or flagger for "cameo appearances"

There are many, many articles that mention a cameo appearance for an actor or actress. It links to cameo. However, the right link should be for cameo appearance.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere/Cameo&limit=500&from=0 for a big list of people who have the incorrect link.

In my mind, I think I know how a robot to fix this would work. It would basically operate like:

• Scan articles in list.
• IF an article includes the word "actor" or "actress", AND it has the wikilink cameo, THEN:
  • flag the article for human editing with a temporary category tag, or
  • change the wikilink for [[cameo]] to [[cameo appearance|cameo]].

Does anyone know if any bot like this exists or can be modified to do this simple task? (Or if anyone is willing to manually edit these?).

An artistic cameo is much different than a film cameo, so I do not think flagging or changing actor/actress articles will create editing errors.

Let me know what you think or to point me in a good direction. Guroadrunner 10:09, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Well I got started on these - they have to be done assisted so it will take me a while. If your lucky i'll finish them in the next couple of days. :: maelgwn - talk 11:59, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for setting up Maelgwnbot to do this - it looks like you've fixed hundreds of these in seconds, and that you're working with two parameters: whether the article text should read cameo appearance or cameo with wikilinks to cameo appearance. This is much appreciated! Guroadrunner 06:13, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

 Done :: maelgwn - talk 12:46, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

This isn't a bot request, it's a thank you to all the people who run bots because the bots do great things. There is one bot in particular that made me happy just now: the one that adds comments to section headers when they're link targets. But you are all deserving of great thanks, praise, and this picture of a chocolate-chip cookie. ←Ben^B4 03:59, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Standardise coordinates entry for two templates

{{Infobox City PT}} and {{Infobox City Estonia}} have coordinates entered in a manner unlike any other templates; requiring each value to be typed twice. I have now added to each of those templates the option to use a more standard entry, using {{coord}}, and would like someone, please, to change the existing entries, as in this example edit. Thank you. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 07:51, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Special:Unusedcategories

Right now, Special:Unusedcategories is essentially useless as a tool for clearing out categories elligible for C1. Half of the entries are category redirects (using {{categoryredirect}}, which is necessary until Bug 3311 is fixed), which makes combing the list for C1's neigh impossible. If we could get a bot to patrol that specialpage and then nominate (after 4 days) listings that are not redirects and should be deleted, that'd be great. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 16:20, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Note: We'd need a whitelist, as some categories (wikipedians looking for help) can be empty for days on end and should obviously be skipped as we don't want to delete a useful maintenance category like that. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 16:21, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm working on this with toolserver at the moment. --ST47Talk·Desk 16:23, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

This would take too long to run on toolserver, might as well have someone use a traditional bot. --ST47Talk·Desk 18:09, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I can do this very easily, /me goes to write bot. β^_command 21:51, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Co-op Bot algorithm

I would like to resubmit my idea for a bot that would find words for the Wiktionary (it could find words for any language wiktionary), the original discussion is here, I have since created a page for the algorithm (which, I might add, is more complete and well-written than the original).

Let me make clear that I do not plan on creating this bot because a) I'm not experienced enough with bots and b) I'm too busy.

Please note that this bot just creates a list of words that it thinks can be used in the Wiktionary, and it is up to a particular editor to actually create a page for that word. Also, the algorithm is designed to cancel out misspellings so there wouldn't be much problems there. Finally, "Delete words who's frequency changed significantly from each word's estimate" could mean delete words who's frequency change is approximately the same as known misspellings in it's database or an amount set by the person who runs the bot.

Jeffrey.Kleykamp 01:55, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

And which articles do you propose it scans? --Android Mouse 02:03, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Darn, I thought I covered everything. I, theoretically, want it to scan every article using the enwiki dumps, however, it could also just scan certain articles like featured articles but that could/would weaken it significantly. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 02:12, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Is anyone creating/considering this bot? Jeffrey.Kleykamp 16:32, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Jeffrey - I read the original discussion, and it seemed to be fairly clearly noted that (a) this was a project that could potentially benefit Wiktionary, not Wikipedia (so, to be a bit blunt, you're posting to the wrong place), and (b) that the Wiktionary folks probably wouldn't be interested (so, to be blunt, even if there was someone here that wanted to help out Wiktionary, he/she probably wouldn't code this bot because the Wiktionary folks wouldn't want it). In short, it appears that this idea isn't going anywhere. I know you're put a lot of thought into it, and I hope you can come up with other ideas that are better received. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:27, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Tagging chess articles as in the scope of the WikiProject Chess

Hello, there is a Category:Chess and there is a WikiProject Chess, so obviously we would like to mark all articles in this Category (and in the corresponding subcategories) as part of the scope of the corresponding WikiProject. This is very similar to Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 12#WikiProject Rugby league tabbing.

So that would mean something like:
FOR each article in the Category:Chess and its subcategories DO

• check if there is already the {{Chess-WikiProject|importance=|class=}}, possibly just by detecting the sequence {{Chess-WikiProject tag
  • if YES do nothing
  • if NO put the {{Chess-WikiProject|importance=|class=}} tag

END FOR

Would it be authorised/possible/not-too-burdensome ? Thanks in advance! SyG 12:57, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I'll do it. ~ Wikihermit 20:01, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Maybe not. There is 3860 something articles to tag. I could do it easily, but I don't want to spam a bunch of pages without community support. ~ Wikihermit 20:09, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I understand your concern. What could I do to prove community support ? For example, should I ask the people from the WikiProject Chess to put a message here saying they agree ? SyG 20:40, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Sure, but I don't feel comfortable tagging 3000+ articles with one person's request. ~ Wikihermit 21:42, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I did the rugby tagging and Ill do this tagging too. Wikihermit does your bot support {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}? β^_command 21:50, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Please look over these cats and make sure that they all need tagged.

Category list. Select [show] to expand.

Category:Chess and mathematics
Category:Chess automatons
Category:Chess by country
Category:Chess checkmates
Category:Chess clubs
Category:Chess competitions
Category:Chess endgames
Category:Chess games
Category:Chess history
Category:Chess images
Category:Chess notation
Category:Chess openings
Category:Chess organizations
Category:Chess pieces
Category:Chess players
Category:Chess problems
Category:Chess publications
Category:Chess rules
Category:Chess sets
Category:Chess strategy
Category:Chess stubs
Category:Chess tactics
Category:Chess terms
Category:Chess titles
Category:Chess traps
Category:Chess variants
Category:Chess websites
Category:Computer chess
Category:Films about chess
Category:WikiProject Chess
Category:Years in chess

All these categories sound very chess-related, so I would say all of them should be included. And I have asked (here) people if they have reasons to oppose to such a move (for my part I do not see any, but who knows). SyG 06:49, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject EchoBot

Can someone make a bot which finds FA articles on other Wikipedia languages? The request is in response to this. Thanks. Miranda 17:49, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Not unless there's a way to identify FAs in other wikis (that works in all wikis). --ST47Talk·Desk 15:33, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Convert dates for album, single and film release dates

The templates {{Infobox Album}}, {{Infobox Single}} and {{Infobox Film}} now have hCalendar mark-up. A bot is needed, to convert the release dates from normal wiki-linked dates to {{Start date}} (which outputs an ISO8601 format date, wrapped in class="dtstart", hidden by CSS but designed to degrade gracefully) on each occurrence; but only if the full date is provided, not there is only a year or year and month pair. If more than one date exists, only the first (earliest) should be converted. Date/ month order should be preserved, by use of the "df" flag, in the date template. Examples of the date template in use are at The Dark Side of the Moon, I Want to Hold Your Hand and The Piano respectively. Thank you. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 15:54, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

• Also the dates on Splashdown (spacecraft landing), please - I'll add hCalendar mark-up when that's done. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 21:28, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

• Also Airdate for {{Infobox Television episode}}. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 11:20, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

• Also {{Infobox civilian attack}}. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 20:03, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

• Also {{tl|Infobox VG)) Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 18:12, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Can you give us a sample of an edit that would need to be made? I'm a bit confused trying to follow what you're saying. Thanks. —METS501 (talk) 19:56, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Please see my recent edits to the example pages given above.

Changes to {{Start date}} now allow for year-only and year-month dates (e.g "October 1977"). Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 21:14, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I might poke at it, see how bad I can break things. Q ^{T C} 01:26, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Any joy? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 21:40, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Haven't had a chance to fully look at it yet, the sheer number of possible combinations are making finding that needs changed problematic. Q ^{T C} 22:17, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps you coudl start by doing a pass for one, common format (say [[DD MMMM]], [[YYYY]]), then another (say [[MMMM DD]], [[YYYY]]), and so on? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 14:03, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Infobox Biography to Infobox Person cleanup

{{Infobox Biography}} has been redirected to {{Infobox Person}}. Per consensus at Template talk:Infobox Person#Conclusion and Template talk:Infobox Person#Redirects completed, it would be a good idea for the legacy property names and instances of the former to be changes to match the latter (which currently recognises both alternatives) (or is that a job for "smackbot"?). Thank you. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 12:09, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

You should probably spell out exactly which parameters should be changed to which parameters, for those not familiar with the templates. — madman bum and angel 16:55, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

It's already done, in neat tabular form, in the above discussion,. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 19:20, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I still can't see the problem. All fields in Infobox Biography seem to exist in Infobox Person (according to Template_talk:Infobox_Person#Comparison table). What is the problem with having multiple names for the same field? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. :: maelgwn - talk 23:34, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Once the clean-up is done, the remaining template can be simplified, for ease of future editing. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 21:44, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok ive filed a Bot Request :: maelgwn - talk 09:39, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Good luck! Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 11:27, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

We're moving now. Working through all the instances of Infobox Biography first. I let you know when you can clean-up the template a bit. :: maelgwn - talk 11:33, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

 Not done Sorry i've run out of bandwidth so I can't finish it. If you're patient I will finish when I get a toolserver account. :: maelgwn - talk 13:28, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your help, anyway. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 14:17, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Can anyone else assist, please? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 10:56, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Video game release dates request

As discussed here, could someone please create a bot to search articles using the Template:Infobox VG and add those that include the dates 31 December or 1 January to Category:Video games with suspected incorrect release dates? Cheers, Miremare 17:30, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Why not just use a #if in the template? --ST47Talk·Desk 14:35, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

What would that do? Miremare 15:17, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

It would put any pages with a certain parameter in a category. --ST47Talk·Desk 15:27, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Aha! OK, thanks! Miremare 15:40, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Apparently that doesn't work, according to the discussion here: Template talk:Infobox CVG (scroll to the bottom of the talk page, the entry titled {{editprotected}}, can't link directly to it!). Anyone up for making that bot after all? :) Miremare 23:13, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I could do it with AWB. Q ^{T C} 11:07, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Nudge Q ^{T C} 11:19, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Great, thanks! Can you start right away or is there anything else you need to know first? Miremare 17:49, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Not unless you can think of any dates I need to check for besides December 31, 31 December, January 1, 1 January. Q ^{T C} 08:38, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

No, that's it. Cheers, Miremare 14:54, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

 Done Can find the log here Q ^{T C} 05:58, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Bot to 'snap' links to redirects?

Would it be possible to have a wikibot that seeks out links in articles that point to redirect pages and changes them to point directly to the appropriate page? I've run across numerous links in articles that point to a redirect page; sometimes the redirect page will have dozens of articles linking to it. I'm actually kind of surprised there isn't such a bot already. FredMSloniker 18:20, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Redirect#Don.27t_fix_links_to_redirects_that_aren.27t_broken --ST47Talk·Desk 18:48, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, precisely -- and there may even be legitimate reasons to link through a redirect rather than directly (for example when there is potential for the redirect to become an article of its own). older ≠ wiser 12:11, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Bot to identify recreated pages

I think we could create a bot that would identify pages that have previously been deleted under the same title. It could list the page on a repository of its own userpage (e.g., in the vein of User:AlexNewArtBot/COISearchResult ), as there would be false positives. It would not include pages that have been undeleted by an administrator. I think this would weed out a ridiculous amount of recreated pages. The Evil Spartan 18:23, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

I think there would be too many false positives. --Boricuaeddie 18:26, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

To fix userpage

Mr Richardson 15:05, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry; can you be more specific regarding the requested function? — madman bum and angel 16:05, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Bot to replace {{Infobox Band}} with {{Infobox musical artist}}

The former template is deprecated and the latter is the standard. FMAFan1990 06:28, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I'll see if I can do this. — E ^talk_bots 06:31, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm starting this task when I get approved with AWB. — E ^talk_bots 10:05, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Bot to replace {{Koreanname}} with {{Infobox Korean name}}

Per discussion on its talk page, {{Koreanname}} was moved to {{Infobox Korean name}} to make it less ambiguous with {{Korean name}}, which is something else entirely. Would it be possible to have a bot update articles using {{Koreanname}} (and the redirects {{Koreanname hanja noimage}}, {{Koreanname noimage}} and {{Koreanname image}}) so that they use the new template name? Thanks in advance. PC78 08:25, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm on it, shouldn't take long. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 15:13, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Made 1397 edits, skipped 678. I'll look into it later. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 18:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Cheers! I've finished off two of the redirects myself. PC78 19:27, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Finished another redirect, had some errors, but fixing manually. Working on the remainder of {{Koreanname}} now. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 20:17, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

About a dozen or so articles were changed to {{Korean name}} by mistake. I think I've caught them all though. PC78 21:16, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Y Done. 11 transclusions remain, but those can be done by hand.

Thanks a lot! PC78 16:13, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

New Signature Bot

A bot that could change any old signatures to the user's new name/signature would be good. I had my name changed today, but I have many comments in talk pages, etc. that still include my old name. Here is an example of what the bot could do:

• X360 09:40, 21 August 2007 (UTC) to Hayden120 09:40, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Hayden120 09:40, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

This doesn't sound to hard, but what's wrong with the redirect? --Chris  G  10:02, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

There should be no bot to do this. The redirect is to be used. I went through change of username, it took me a while too. Why not change your signature to "X360 is now known as Hayden120". — E ^talk_bots 10:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

If I change my signature, that won't change my previously signed comments will it? I thought some people might get confused when they look at the edit history of a page, then look at the discussion and see a different name talking about previous edits. Hayden120 11:55, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that some discussions might include direct references to your name, such as "per X360" or "X360 is right with these". Changing your signature straight over could lead to confusion. violet/riga (t) 11:59, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Per WP:REDIRECT, you'll never get a bot approved to do this, even if you manage to find someone who might be willing to do it. We've been through this before with another user, which involved a couple of BRFAs and a post to ANI before it finally died down. I'm afraid that you'll just have to make do with the redirect - it's not exactly hard for someone to click on the link to find out who you now are (and if it's really such a big problem for you, I'd tentatively say that a user rename was a bad idea...) Martinp23 12:12, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok, fair enough. I understand your points; the redirect is fine. Thanks. -- Hayden120 12:25, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Stub sorting bot

How would people feel about a bot that did the following (reiterating from my above post under Assessment bot),

1. Assessed unassessed articles as Stubs when their size is below a certain (TBD) limit
2. Placed {{stub}} templates on articles that meet the same size requirement and do not belong to a WikiProject
3. Added generic WikiProject-specific stub templates (like {{disney-stub}} or {{plant-stub}}) based on which WikiProjects are listed on the Talk page. This would be for any article assessed as Stub (regardless of size or who assessed it)

Does this sound doable and/or reasonable? It would be a great help to WP:Stub sorting, and it would help bring these stubs to the people who would expand them. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 05:06, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

This is certainly possible. We'd have to ignore redirects but process every other page in the article namespace, I can get a list from Special:Allpages, check length, and if there isn't a stub tag, check the talk page for a wikiproject. One thing I would need is to get a list of wikiprojects and corresponding stub types. --ST47Talk·Desk 15:37, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. I would gladly root out stub types for each (perhaps others at WP:Stub sorting will help), but it will take some time. How should this be formatted? ~ JohnnyMrNinja 07:35, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

My bot's doing a more limited version of the first part of this (using a size threshold of 100 words, FWIW), but only for uncategorised articles. That's partly as the starting point for that task was "get all articles categorised, by hook or by crook", but also because it's a "safer" task than the more general one: if a mainspace page isn't categorised at all, and isn't a well-formed redirect, then it certainly needs some sort of cleanup, so the worst that'll happen is it that it won't get the optimum tag. (Untagged disambig gets tagged as a stub, stub gets tagged as an uncategorised article, etc.) Doing this for every article under a certain threshold risks getting into slomo revert wars, with tags being repeatedly added by bot, and removed by humans, or the humans otherwise getting annoyed at the "erroneous" addition of stub tags. Obviously, though, this does miss some clear-cut stubs, that for some reason are categorised but not stub-tagged. That aspect is hopefully much smaller in scope, though, and may be better done on a human-assisted basis (say, a db-generated list of candidates, and processing via AWB).

The second aspect has some additional complications. Firstly, the WP1.0ish people have never made entirely clear what their criteria for something being a "stub class article" are. You might think that's the same as a "stub" (and obviously huge numbers of these are first tagged as stubs, then then "auto-assessed" on that basis as being SCAs), but it one point it was asserted that an article could be "longer than a stub, but still of stub quality". So it might be better to either a) get this distinction (or lack thereof) clarified once and for all (good luck with that!), or b) do this with a size threshold. There's also the issue of multiple wikiproject tags; in theory that could result in quite an excessive number of stub tags being applied. (Hopefully very large numbers of project tags will be less common on stubs than on certain longer articles, though.) Again, it would be interesting to get an idea of the size of this task, to see whether potentially-unreliable or unstable automation is really required. (I'd guess that there were more such articles where a stub stub had been applied and then removed, than never had one, so the question is, how often would this lead to tag-pong?) Alai 13:23, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

OK... well, #3 can be handled without worrying about dab pages because dab pages shouldn't belong to the wikiprojects.

As far as the size constrictions including dab pages, any suggestions? Perhaps excluding pages that are formatted like dab pages, or just any page that is primarily composed of bulleted lists? That would be safe right? ~ JohnnyMrNinja 16:55, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

And about the two types of stubs, I have brought it up at the village pump. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 17:06, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Assessment bot

After attempting to asses a large number of un-assessed articles for various WikiProjects (WikiProject Biography and WikiProject District of Columbia for example have 70130 and 5137 respectively), I realized that a huge majority of those articles fall under multiple projects and alot of those have already been assessed in one of those projects but not the others. So, my suggestion for a bot is for it to search talk pages for a pre-existing assessment and then add the same assessment to the other project tags on the same talk page. Seems pretty simple to me, and it would alleviate alot of assessment backlogs on pretty much every WikiProject. Hope someone can help me out here. Thanks! Drewcifer3000 03:58, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

its a simple task for BCBot, but the thing is different WikiProjects have different scales. if there are two projects that have the same scale and there is consensus for doing this I can have BCBot start working on this PDQ. β^_command 04:01, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. That's a good point. Well, in my experience, the majority of articles which are unassessed are almost always either Stub or Start classes. If an editor put any time or effort into an article to get it to B or above, they would've taken the time to assess it themselves 9 times out of 10. So, basically a lack of assessment is a pretty good indication of its assessment level in the first place. And, as far as I can tell, Stub and Start classes are pretty much the same across any type of article or project. A Stub assessment is based mainly on its size (or lack thereof), and a Start assessment basically means "better than a stub." So various WikiProjects would assess a Stub/Start article exactly the same, regardless of the type of WikiProject it is, right? So what if this proposed bot only copy/pastes Stub/Start assessments, since B and above is an admittedly more complex task and different among various WikiProjects. Even if it concentrated only on Stub/Start assessments, such a bot would still DRASTICALLY alleviate alot of assessment backlogs. Thanks again! Drewcifer3000 04:22, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree that a stub is a stub for all projects and probably true for start class as well. Saying that, when I work significantly on an article I normally wait for someone else to change the assessment. I would support a bot that only did stub/start. :: maelgwn - talk 04:50, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

If you find two wikiprojects that have similar ill start out looking into this. β^_command 06:45, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, like I said, I'm pretty sure every project has basically the same descriptions of Stub and Start classes. For instance, WikiProject Biography and WikiProject District of Columbia all have virtually identical language. Not only that, but I've noticed a great deal of WikiProjects use the Wikipedia 1.0 Assessment scale (172 WikiProjects total including the much backlogged WikiProject Biography, a category of which can be found here). So if nothing else, I suppose it would be simple to incorporate all 172 of those WikiProjects into the scope of such a bot. And, the added bonus of that might be that since they all use the same identical assessment scale for all levels Stub though FA, the bot could be expanded beyond just Stub/Start classes. I think using that category of Projects would make a wonderfully robust and useful bot, rather than just doing the stub/start class thingie I mentioned above. Drewcifer3000 19:09, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

/me slaps forehead. "class=" != "quality=" I could do the class assessment if users wanted, but we would need to start out on a small scale to get things going. β^_command 23:40, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry if I was being unclear with my language earlier. Hopefully everything makes sense now. If you want to start slow, I'd recommend Wikipedia:WikiProject Education. It has about 530 unassessed articles, about 1/4 of which have already been assessed for another project. Drewcifer3000 03:27, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Its clear, Id work off template inclusion. (the category system is shit and its useless for working with bots) Im going to think about this and ill start coding as soon as my move to commons bot is operational. β^_command 03:33, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Just thinking about this some more.

• Obviously FA is FA so all templates should have FA, tho I doubt there are any that need fixing. *GA is also GA, so cases where an article is rated GA and their is a lower rating on a template could be fixed, but if it is rated A in one project it should be left alone.
• Start and stub are the same in all cases, so they could be matched.
• I would see what the community response after the bot is operating as to whether rating's should be matched at other levels.

maelgwn - talk 03:38, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

So basically what you're saying is that only the A rating is specific to various projects and that it might not necessarily translate the same across projects? What about B?Drewcifer3000 03:45, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

A and anything lower could be mixed. B and anything lower could be mixed and with A. I started thinking this could be extended to those which already have some assessment that is clearly wrong. :: maelgwn - talk 11:18, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Of course Ill crosspost and cross my T's and dot my I's and get a green light. β^_command 03:41, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok, awesome. Let me know when you have time to get a prototype or something up and running. I can't wait to see it in action. Thanks again! Drewcifer3000 03:38, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

So far it seems a great idea, but I do some thoughts on how this bot could be of great help to WP:Stub sorting:

• Articles beneath a certain size could be easily classified as stubs, although I'm not sure what a safe cutoff is (surely under a paragraph). Classifying exceptionally stubby stubs (in addition to the functions listed above) would be very helpful.
• Many articles that are classified as Stubs do not have an appropriate stub template anywhere on the article itself. As most WPs have stub templates, it should an easy matter to add an appropriate generic stub template ({{video-game-stub}}, {{Disney-stub}}, etc. ) to the bottom of the article, which would greatly help in stub sorting.

Also, the bot should definitely leave a comment on the article's talk page, something like "This article has been automatically assessed for Wikiproject blahblah by BCbot, to match the existing assessment by WikiProject other. If you feel this assessment to be inaccurate, please adjust the assessment appropriately, or discuss it on the project's talk page. Please do not revert the assessment to Unassessed, as it will likely be automatically assessed again." ~ JohnnyMrNinja 04:53, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

That last thing about adding a message on the talk page sounds, to me, like a great idea, the others sound good too... Jeffrey.Kleykamp 05:00, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Im not comfortable with sub sorting. β^_command 16:08, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

K, I've made a separate request below at Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 40#Stub sorting bot. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 05:08, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Ive gotten a start on the bot for auto assessing, Ill start beta testing within a week. β^_command 19:06, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Awesome! Drewcifer3000 05:15, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia's most unusual contributor

Odd request this one, and more interesting and celebratory than productive. I'd like to see a bot go through all the Wikipedia:Unusual articles and list the creator of each article. It would be interesting to see who is Wikipedia's most unusual contributor. violet/riga (t) 17:24, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I believe I have it worked out for you, check User:Arkyan/Strangelist. The script wound up lumping all IP edits together so I just left them out. I can't vouch for 100% accuracy but I believe I have it correct :) ɑʀкʏɑɴ 04:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for having a look at this. I'm not sure what's going on with that list - we certainly haven't got thousands of UAs so it's odd that it is reporting that so many have been created. violet/riga (t) 09:04, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I feel positively stupid - I missed the part where you said "creator" and went just on number of edits :( Give me a little bit and I'll re-do the list by creators, not contributors. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 15:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay, by number of unusual articles created, the list is a lot less interesting - only 2 editors have created more than one of the unusual articles. Those editors are User:Mintguy with 2 (Fucking, Austria and Sedlec Ossuary) and User:Grutness with 3 (Baldwin Street, Dunedin, Cardrona Bra Fence and Fallen Monument Park). Let me know if you're interested in the full list of people who have created at least 1 "unusual article". ɑʀкʏɑɴ 15:27, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

There's still something not working there - perhaps it's only worked for the first section (places). I know I've started at least half a dozen of the articles. Thanks for your continued efforts. violet/riga (t) 15:33, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Once again you are correct! I overlooked something that was causing the script to ignore a lot of the articles. Fortunately that's been cured and the script is now processing once more. I'll be a little occupied so it'll be a little bit yet till the results are in, but I should have them for you within a couple hours - hopefully with no further issues this time :) ɑʀкʏɑɴ 17:03, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) I believe I have finally got it correct th is time. According to the results, you are indeed the most unusual contributor. Congrats :) ɑʀкʏɑɴ 19:00, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Would it be possible to make it list the strange articles they have created next to their name? Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 01:43, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

It would. I'll take a look at it in the morning and see what I can come up with for you. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 05:54, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

There. Is that what you were looking for? ɑʀкʏɑɴ 18:44, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Yep, that's exactly what I was looking for :-) Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 23:28, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Bot to fix Baseball Hall of Fame links

Currently, every instance of the template {{bbhof}} that uses an "id=" parameter links only to the main page of the Baseball Hall of Fame database. If a bot could run to remove that parameter, these would link directly to that player's page in the database. See this diff for an example of the appropriate edit. HokieRNB 13:49, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Sure. ~ Wikihermit 15:05, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

No need. I replaced the id parameter in the template. —METS501 (talk) 19:33, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

It was the template? Oh, I thought it had been substed. ~ Wikihermit 20:21, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

ISP bot

Why not have bot which checks for edits by new anon accounts, performs a WHOIS lookup and, if appropriate, adds {{ISP}} to the user- ad talk- pages? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 09:30, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, sounds like a good idea. The only issue is the identifying of ISP's, there are a lot of ISPs, and you could not get them all, but I assume it wouldnt be too difficult to get all the main ones. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 10:30, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I think WHOIS has something about having to pay for using it service with automated tools. --Chris  G  12:44, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

WHOIS is not a centrally administered service so any charges would either be through a middleman or would vary between registrar/whois service. I'm sure it's also regulated by IANA/ICANN. If memory serves then the main reason that WHOIS services limit usage is because of bots harvesting addresses for spam and this proposal is within the intended uses. Another option (possibly in combination with whois) is reverse dns information. I'm planning on doing some bot work and will consider this proposal. --Jeremyb 16:20, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Web-based frontends to WHOIS are often restricted, but as far as I know, ARIN and the other registries do not restrict true access to whois (that is, port 43). It's an easy service to access. — madman bum and angel 20:07, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I may write this - seems like a good idea. Give me a week or so. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 23:28, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I am a bit to busy at the moment - best for someone else to do. Sorry! Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 04:27, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Isn't this template for ISPs like AOL which have proxy servers serving requests? AFAIK doing a whois will only tell you who owns that netblock, it'll take some research to figure out if they do proxy requests. Something which I don't think a bot would be suited for. Q ^{T C} 07:00, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

This isn't used to detect open proxies; bots aren't allowed to do that. Presumably, it'd simply note that the IP address is used by an ISP. I wish I could help, but I'm moving and can't work on new tasks right now. — madman bum and angel 15:27, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Then {{ISP}} is the wrong template, as there is no way to tell automatically whether the IP space is dynamic or static. Q ^{T C} 07:38, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

This also might have unforeseen consequences. Consider, almost all major ISPs have a class b (123.45.0.0/16). Imagine, alone, what that would entail when it comes to dynamic IP addresses editing on wikipedia-- possibly 65,000 edits. That, alone, is fine, but consider, many of those would be pagecreates and might not be needed for any other reason. Thus, the page sits around being useless just because of one edit. Then, multiply that by the other major ISPs. Over time as more and more IPs edit, it will bog down the database. As IPv6 becomes popular, there are even more ip addresses to account for. The better solution is some sort of extension-- not a bot-- unless, for example, the bot were to make edits to pages like AIV when vandals are reported to quickly add whois info. But, yet again, that's what the WHOIS button is for. Another option is to auto-whois when someone adds a vandalism warning to an anon's user page. --slakr 03:43, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm intrigued. And bored. I'll try to see if I can come up with something to do this... JoshEdgar 02:18, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Replacement bots

In a decision completely against the spirit of wikipedia and the open source community, Android Mouse, sockpuppeteer and former bot operator, has pulled the code for his 'open source' bots and refuses to send them via email. As such, we need replacement bots up. The necessary bots are: --ST47Talk·Desk 12:11, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Speedy notifier

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Android Mouse Bot 2

I'll take this one. --ST47Talk·Desk 12:11, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I think I've got a copy of the source for this one, I picked it up when I was working on Speedy Deletion Bot. Who here likes using C ? --Chris  G  01:23, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

ST47 has already been approved for trial for this one. — madman bum and angel 02:32, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Also ST47, Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Grim Reaper Bot. ~ Wikihermit 04:22, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Trivia tagging

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Android Mouse Bot 3

I question the need for this one. Gimmetrow 12:27, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok, sure. Not a big deal, I'm more concerned about the next one. --ST47Talk·Desk 12:52, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I could do it easily I believe. I'm not taking it for sure, but I will write up a source and if it's any good I'll make a BRFA. ~ Wikihermit 04:16, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I wonder whether this task is needed at all. Trivia sections are to be avoided, but that doesn't mean every one needs a cleanup/category tag. Even WP:TRIV notes that "lists of miscellaneous information can be useful for developing a new article" and "a selectively-populated list with a narrow theme is not trivia, and can be the best way to present some information -- for example, a list of unobvious pop-culture references made by a television episode." Gimmetrow 04:22, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Such sections wouldn't be touched. Also, a more helpful version of the {{trivia}} tag is being discussed on the template's talk page. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 05:19, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I could take it category by category instead of randomly tagging articles. ~ Wikihermit 15:05, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Internal link rot

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Android Mouse Bot 4

It's possible. If no one else takes it, I will. — madman bum and angel 13:42, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Where does Android Mouse say that he is not coming back? This seems a bit hasty to me, he will still be around in the future. :: maelgwn - talk 12:58, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

He did leave a "Bye," on User:Neil Larson. But I do agree that this seems premature. No administrator wants to block him; as long as he doesn't use sockpuppets, I think everyone's fine with him. — madman bum and angel 13:41, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd spoken with him via email and he stated that he would not return. --ST47Talk·Desk 14:34, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

That's unfortunate.  :( — madman bum and angel 14:44, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Willing to start coding and host an SVN repository on the toolserver. I'll crack my knuckles and dive into it tomorrow evening. Any help welcome, and I'm aiming to use perl :) --Auto ^{(talk / contribs)} 21:39, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I could probably help ya poke at it. Q ^{T C} 10:32, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

It seems that the SVN access on the toolserver is just... a mess. I can get to it with no problem, but the non-ssh access methods appear to be down. Looks like I'm in it on my own for the now. Anyway, the current plan is to load all revisions from the last cached edit to the current edit into a db cache of sections. Then go through every linked page, check the anchors, and find the most recent if they're not on the current. I'll make use of the toolserver SQL db for the cache. --Auto ^{(talk / contribs)} 02:40, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

[1] --ST47Talk·Desk 11:56, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Anchor Link Bot

I have source code for thisl, I think it might've been debugged a little since my version and it is non urgent, but if somebody wants it I can email it :: maelgwn - talk 09:41, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

If you could send it to me, that'd be great. — madman bum and angel 15:25, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

DinoSizedBot

Over at WP:DINO, we were getting kind of used to having AndroidMouse's DinoSizedBot updating our internal list of article sizes. Since you were already discussing AndroidMouse's bots here, I was wondering what the options concerning this bot would be. Thanks in advance - J. Spencer 02:55, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

if you define exactly what you want the bot to do and how it should do it I can code up a quick script to do this. β^_command 05:07, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Now that I sit down to write about it, what DinoSizedBot did seems fairly complicated for a simple task. The bot should run once a day and find the sizes of articles in kb, then produce an ordered list. The articles searched would be everything under Category:Dinosaurs except for Category:Fictional dinosaurs. DinoSizedBot was set up to automatically remove its duplicates (due to articles being in more than one category), and also to add tags for featured and good articles, as seen in its sandbox which was transcluded to the list page. Too bad we can't just transfer ownership. J. Spencer 23:26, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

that sounds fairly simple, how do you want that list sorted and what is a quick way of finding FA and GA's that are in that list? do you want those in Kb or b as b is what it currently is in. β^_command 00:15, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

It should be sorted from greatest to least, with the sizes in b as it is now. Category:Birds and Category:Jurassic Park species were also excluded. DinoSizedBot was picking up GA status from the talk page (as discussed here), and FA from the template on the articles themselves. Thank you very much! J. Spencer 01:26, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

what is the FA template? /me should have a simi working version within a week. β^_command 01:40, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Beta, by the "FA template" I'm sure is meant {{featured article}}. However, there is a redirect from {{featuredarticle}}, and a small number of featured articles do not have either template. Although none of those lacking the template seem to be dino-related, it's worth knowing. Personally, I would check the talk page and look for Category:Wikipedia featured articles, which will be present on the talk page of all featured articles, excepting periods of vandalism, just as Category:Wikipedia good articles will be present on the talk page of all good articles, excepting periods of vandalism. Or, even better if you want to reduce page loads, load Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles once for the script, resolve any redirects, and use that to verify FA or GA status. Gimmetrow 01:57, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Fill in a parameter for articles with the WP:BIO box

Request closed by nominator/discussion - see below discussion to see why this won't work. Guroadrunner 11:26, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

There's a big list of articles that need a parameter filled in. See this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Biography_articles_without_listas_parameter What needs to be done is the WP:BIO box needs the parameter "listas" to be filled in.

It looks like 95 percent of these entries (everything from "A" to "Z") will need to be manually filled in - that's okay. However, I've scanned through the entries between "1" and "?" and they can be automatically done with a robot.

Here's what I'm looking for the robot to do, in laymen's terms: Take these category entries, and within the WP:BIO box add or replace "listas = " with "listas = (the pagename)"

This would be coded something like:

IF entry in category is categorized under "1", "2", "3" ... to "9" or "?",

THEN seek text "{{WPBiography",

AND replace that with text "{{WPBiography|listas = %PAGENAME|"

WHEREAS variable %PAGENAME is the article name.

Is setting a robot to do this a possibility? I've overviewed all of the entries involved, and this will streamline the process correctly.

Let me know. Thank you in advance. Guroadrunner 08:28, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

---

can you explain your categorization please as "1","2".... doesnt help. β^_command 14:26, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I think he's referring to the page title, ie: Articles that start with 1-? Q ^{T C} 21:38, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

---

• Ack! No. No. This is already under control. :-) The listas parameter (which is on the talk page) should merely be what the DEFAULTSORT value is on the article (if that exists). It is not meant to be PAGENAME, as these are biographical articles. There are already efforts underway to standardise sortkey stuff on biographical articles. See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot XIII (currently adding DEFAULTSORT to people stubs) and Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Polbot 3 and User talk:Carcharoth/Polbot3 trial run. And anyway, the 1-9 and ? categorisation at Category:Biography articles without listas parameter is correct, as those are the names of the people/music bands. Guroadrunner's suggested categorisation would mess things up. Please don't do this. Carcharoth 00:35, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

---

How would it mess it up? Here's an example of what I did/want:

I manually went to 13th Floor Elevators. I went into the talk page. I changed

{{WPBiography|listas=|musician-work-group=yes}}

to

{{WPBiography|listas=13th Floor Elevators|musician-work-group=yes}}

and it now has a listas parameter and is removed from the list.

I want a bot to do this for add listas parameters for everything between "1" and "9" and also "?" What's the problem? Guroadrunner 01:18, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

---

OK, now I understand we have bots trying to tackle this. Is it possible to have a minor job batch for everything between 1 and 9 to automatically copy and paste the names in? The names are correct for listas purposes. Guroadrunner 01:26, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Most of those are music groups. It is debatable whether those need a listas parameter. The listas parameter is intended to apply to articles about a single person, not to articles about groups of people. {{WPBiography}} should incorporate a "group" parameter for "biography of a group" articles, but this hasn't been done yet. When it has, it will be possible to rejig the template to remove the group articles from the "without listas" category. By all means go through the 1-9 list and manually do this with AWB, but at the moment the list is not clean enough to warrant using bots as it can't tell which are group articles and which are individuals. Carcharoth 13:01, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah. Understandable. I will consider doing this manually (I've thought about doing that from the start), but no guarantees as it sounds like things may be redone soon anyway, so I might need to cool my jets and take a wait-and-see approach. Guroadrunner 11:25, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup condensation

Some articles have several cleanup tags that could be easily condensed into the single template {{Articleissues}}. Having multiple templates at the top of the page can make it difficult to read, which is the whole reason why Articleissues exists. I'd like to suggest a bot that can scan through pages in cleanup categories and:

• If the article has three or more cleanup templates, replace them with {{Articleissues}} and the proper parameters.
• Add dates to those parameters, if none already exist (I know Smackbot already does this, but it may not respond to or properly handle Articleissues)
• Scan for pages that already use Articleissues and replace that template with the basic cleanup templates if there are less than three parameters included.
• Date those with the existing dates so that Smackbot has less to worry about.

I can help specify which templates correspond to which parameters (and add more if necessary) if this is a possibility. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 22:40, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

There is already a bot performing the changing to articleissues task. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 23:44, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah, ok, thanks. Didn't notice it on the list. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 01:31, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

GA/R notification

When an article is listed at WP:GA/R, the nominator leaves a message on the article talk page. I'm wanting to know if a bot could leave an automated message on the article talk page as well as the talk pages of any Wikiprojects for which there are banners on the page. Lara♥Love 16:49, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Leaving a comment on the article's talk page would be easy. Leaving it on the WikiProjects' talk pages? Not so much... — madman bum and angel 17:36, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Not so much easy... but it can be done; Or not so much easy... therefore, not gonna happen? Either way, are you willing to take on the task? Lara♥Love 00:57, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd say the WikiProject notification cannot be done, unless there's something I'm overlooking. I mean, without some rudimentary AI, how do you get Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films from {{Films}}? The bot is possible, but as noted on my user page and user talk page, I'm on a semi-wikibreak. I'm editing very little, and I'm not taking any bot requests at this time; this is a very, very busy month for me. Can it wait until September? If not, perhaps another bot operator will be interested. — madman bum and angel 01:58, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

It can wait. If someone is interested in creating it now, I certainly won't object. But I won't be freaking out if I have to wait for you to do it next month. Lara♥Love 06:53, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Substituting images on different projects

Can a bot go through different projects (languages) and substitute Image:Kyokpae_banner.png to Image:Qxz-ad39.png. (see this for more info). Miranda 21:44, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I'll do it for the English Wikipedia, the others, no. ~ Wikihermit 23:09, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Can't it be changed in the template? ~ Wikihermit 23:11, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

No, I am doing it via AWB now. Miranda 00:01, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

 Done with AWB, but someone needs to change User:Marine_69-71 please because it's fully protected. Miranda 00:07, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Just leave him a note on his talk page to ask him to do it himself. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 02:12, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Old untranscluded template

Could somebody make a list of all old (not edited for > 6 months, maybe split the list up into graduations) of non-transcluded templates for the purposes of delete old unused templates. Or if somebody can tell me how to make this list using my tool server account that would also be fine. —Dispenser 01:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

ask gmaxwell about a MySQL command that can get you that data. β^_command 01:42, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

If you're interested in pruning unused templates, talk to MZMcBride (talk · contribs). I made a list for him a bit back of all templates which were transcluded on 0 pages. It was six pages, and that was only A-J or so if I recall, so it should give you plenty of raw material. — madman bum and angel 01:55, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

It was these:

—METS501 (talk) 14:18, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Relocation of misplaced trivia template transclusions

There is widespread agreement that Template:Trivia should appear in the section to which it applies, but it's been placed at the tops of small number of articles. I'm requesting that a bot check all of the articles in which the template is transcluded and remove the transclusions appearing in section 0. In most cases, it could simultaneously relocate the transclusion (including the date parameter) to a section titled Trivia. The remaining articles (the minority containing trivia sections with different titles) should be added to list (to enable manual insertion). —David Levy 19:29, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

G'day !

From talk page:

I wonder if you could inform us if there is any bot which can help us to make an automatic to-do list of all articles mentioning "discovered in", "created by", "descending from", "first coined", "first discovered", "has its origins", "was created", "was founded" or "by first time" without been followed by a citations or reference. It is for WP:TIMETRACE. We will appreciate very much any help with this. Thank you Daoken 21:52, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Shortcut tagging

If someone's bored and looking for a bot task to tackle, it might be a good task to search the DB dump Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Shortcut for transclusions of the {{shortcut}} template, and ensure all redirects listed are tagged as {{R from shortcut}} per Wikipedia:Shortcut. One could also check to ensure the redirects exist and that they do point at the page listing them as a shortcut... just a thought. BigNate37_(T) 16:38, 22 August 2007 (UTC) (edited 17:27, 23 August 2007 (UTC))

Getting to it. —METS501 (talk) 01:48, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

And maybe one adding them to/creating the shortcut box with shortcuts found from the Whattranscludeshere of R from shortcut? Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 02:05, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Maybe, but that's a different task altogether and not one that my bot is going to be doing :-) —METS501 (talk) 02:16, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I know, i'm just suggesting related tasks. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 04:37, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

You know, I thought of suggesting that and at the time I thought of a good reason why that shouldn't be automated. Some pages have a whole host of shortcuts, and we wouldn't want something like Wp:AFD being listed when it's a typo of WP:AFD. There's a lot more logic involved in deciding whether an {{R from shortcut}} should be added to a {{shortcut}} tag than there is in the converse. BigNate37_(T) 05:44, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Query

Not a request, just a query to save a significant amount effort and space. Regarding the "What links here" pages, are new links always added at the end of the list?

Thanks

Verisimilus T 12:38, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

The Help Desk is that-a-way. --Boricuaeddie 12:58, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

• I think that the answer is yes, but it would be better asked at the Village Pump (WP:VPT) than at the help desk. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 14:08, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Verisimilus T 21:01, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Navbox and series-box propagator

It would be really handy if, when a navbox was created or substantially changed, a bot could come along and propagate it to all the pages it linked to. Although this could be done with a page for requested propagations, I think the easiest way would be to use HTML comments or empty templates.

When a template needed to be propagated, the editor would create a particular HTML comment. The bot would search the template namespace for this comment nightly. When it found the comment on template X, it would check each page X linked to (except itself and its own talk page) for a transclusion of X, and add one if not already present. When done, it would remove the comment-command from the template.

A suggested list of commands:

<!--PropagateBottom-->

Propagate this template. When adding transclusions, put them just before the category and interlanguage links (or at the bottom if neither of these are present).

<!--PropagateTop-->

Propagate this template. When adding transclusions, put them just after the cleanup tags (or at the top if no cleanup tags are present).

<!--Depropagate-->

Remove all transclusions of this template from pages that it links to. Useful if the template is about to be deleted, or if many of the transclusions are in the wrong places. If both propagate and depropagate commands are on the same template, the deprop is executed first.

<!--DepropagateOld:[OLDID]-->

Remove all transclusions of this template from pages that an old version linked to. Useful if a large number of links have been removed. If both propagate and depropagate commands are on the same template, the deprop is executed first.

<!--NoPropagate:[PAGENAME]-->

Do not automatically transclude a particular template onto this page or remove an existing transclusion of it.

<!--NoPropagateAny-->

Do not automatically transclude any templates onto this page or remove any existing transclusions.

<!--PropagateBottomRegularly-->

Each night, check for removed links since the previous night, remove transclusions on no-longer-linked pages, and then execute a PropagateBottom.

<!--PropagateTopRegularly-->

As above, but execute a PropagateTop instead.

The first four commands would be removed when completed; the last four would not. NeonMerlin 17:29, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Image categorisation

A bot is requested to recategorise any images categorised in article categories. For example, it would recategorise images appearing in "Category:llama" to "Category:llama images|{{PAGENAME}}", and mark "Category:llama images" as a subcategory of "Category:llama".

Thanks,

Verisimilus T 17:58, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Can you point to a discussion with consensus or a guideline to back this up? Thanks. —METS501 (talk) 21:41, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

It was only a short one: between myself and Firsfon. Seemed to make sense, though, and not sure what a suitable platform would be for a larger discussion.

Verisimilus T

Wikipedia:Moving images to the Commons and commons:Commons:Categories are more suitable for images. Non-free images don't need to be categorised since they can't be used anywhere else anyway. There are however images on Commons that are used in Wikipedia articles but aren't categorised, so people are welcome to use CommonSense. --Para 22:10, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Given that many images are uploaded onto Wikipedia, for convenience, out of ignorance of Commons, or for other reasons, could a bot be made to move appropriate images — i.e. those where the license permits it — onto the Commons? I'm sure the bot could use what-links-here and other clues to generate a few category suggestions on CommonSense, and use the ones common to all algorithms? Verisimilus T 08:30, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Broken redirects

Would it be possible to have an API, a bot, a toolserver account, or some other sort of magic generate a list of all broken redirects on en.wiki? The Special page is restricted to 1,000 entries, and there seem to be a lot of dead redirects, some of which are kind of old. With the list, I could probably zap them pretty quickly. Cheers. --MZMcBride 18:02, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

A list for namespaces 0 and 1 is at the not-so-aptly-named page User:ST47/DBLRDR. Running in user namespace gave me lots of inter-wiki malformed redirects, I can run it against wikipedia/image/template/category if you'd like. --ST47Talk·Desk 14:20, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

NS 0 and 1 are done, except a few false positives, I'm going to expand to all namespaces except user. --ST47Talk·Desk 14:47, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

And it's clear, excpet a few false positives. Do you want the user: list? --ST47Talk·Desk 14:52, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

You ran a search through all namespaces except User? I'm really focused on the Template and Template talk namespaces, but I'd be willing to help clean up any namespace. Here's an example of a double redirect that's been around for about a week: Template:LOPBN entry. Is the query going through dumps or the live site? Because while that double redirect is fairly recent, I've tripped across others that are much older. Cheers. --MZMcBride 20:13, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this: The problem is that the 'redirect' table I'm using is fairly recent, I'm going to try using the 'page' and 'pagelinks' tables. --ST47Talk·Desk 19:48, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I decided to steal the old query from mediawiki 1.8, I'll run it now. --ST47Talk·Desk 22:20, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Might or might not be helpful, but User:SXT40/BRedir is updated every 24h, and, pares the list down to only the ones that are likely actually broken... :) --SXT4^{$\color {Red}\oplus$} 10:06, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/User_names#Category_question

Could someone take a look at the dicussion there? Category:Usernames editors have expressed concern over is full of user talk pages of usernames other users have "Expressed concern about". Should a bot go through it and clean it out? ~ Wikihermit 02:15, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject archival

I would like to request a bot to run through Category:WikiProjects once per week or per month, find any wikiprojects that are inactive (defined as "no edits to the project page or its talk page for a month") and marking them as such (by removing them from the category, and adding {{inactive}} to the top). This work was previously done by AllyUnion's User:Kurando-san bot, but it appears to have been offline for several months. >Radiant< 10:31, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 03:43, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Rugby league (State of Origin task force)

This new task force needs a bit of tagging of articles, I have outlined the below, it should be easily to follow. A bot would speeden up the process. All of the following needs to be placed in the template {{WikiProject Rugby league}} (which is on talk pages)as new parameters. The following should be done in order, though note my added note at the bottom.

---

---

• Pages in the category Category:Queensland Rugby League State of Origin players need to have the following parameters added to the {{WikiProject Rugby league}}:
  • |state-of-origin=yes|state-of-origin-importance=low|state-of-origin-team=qld
    •  Done See User:BoricuaBot/Logs#Pages_editing_while_fulfilling_User:BoricuaBot.2FTasks.23WikiProject_Rugby_league:State_of_Origin_Task_Force. --Boricuaeddie 18:39, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
• Pages in the category Category:New South Wales Rugby League State of Origin players need to have the following parameters added to the {{WikiProject Rugby league}}:
  • |state-of-origin=yes|state-of-origin-importance=low|state-of-origin-team=nsw
    •  Done --Boricuaeddie 20:18, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
• Pages in the category Category:Queensland Rugby League State of Origin captains need to overide the importance code so overide the state-of-origin-importance=low to
  • |state-of-origin-importance=mid
    •  Done --Boricuaeddie 20:34, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
• Pages in the category Category:New South Wales Rugby League State of Origin captains need to overide the importance code so overide the state-of-origin-importance=low to
  • |state-of-origin-importance=mid
    •  Done --Boricuaeddie 21:06, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
• Pages in the category Category:Queensland Rugby League State of Origin coaches need to overide (and in some cases add) the following
  • |state-of-origin=yes|state-of-origin-importance=mid|state-of-origin-team=qld
• Pages in the category Category:New South Wales Rugby League State of Origin coaches need to overide (and in some cases add) the following
  • |state-of-origin=yes|state-of-origin-importance=mid|state-of-origin-team=nsw
• Finally add the following to articles in the category Category:Rugby League State of Origin (However don't overide if already placed)
  • |state-of-origin=yes|state-of-origin-importance=|state-of-origin-team=

---

---

If a page in the category dosen't have the template {{WikiProject Rugby league}} on its talk page. Notify me on the talk page User talk:SpecialWindler. Don't add it if it's there, just notify me of the article in question. The template {{WikiProject Rugby league}} should be on the talk pages of the articles in the categories. SpecialWindler talk 00:07, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean like this? --Boricuaeddie 18:12, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. Hope you do the rest. SpecialWindler talk 21:32, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Keeping this discussion alive. SpecialWindler talk 06:21, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Updating of taxoboxes to current template

The template "{{taxobox begin}}" and associated templates are still used in around 250 articles, and need updating to use the current {{taxobox}}. It'd be greatly appreciated if someone would create a bot to complete this task. Many thanks, Verisimilus T 20:16, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Can you provide more details. As in specifically what needs replacing... :: maelgwn - talk 08:15, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Here's an edit I did manually which displays the replacement requested. Thanks, Verisimilus T 09:08, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Are there any other fields that will need doing as well? :: maelgwn - talk 10:19, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes. I think that if the bot could probably replace Taxobox_(\w*)_entry with | $1 = , that would solve most of it. There may also be Taxobox_(\w*_authority) used in some articles.

If some information is lost, at the end of the day, whilst a great shame, it's more important to get everything up to the current template. A bot may not be the most appropriate method, but encouraging editors to do it by hand is forbidden, and I don't have the time to do them all myself!

Many thanks, Verisimilus T 08:36, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

PockBot

I found this bot very useful, but has not been working since May this year (see contributions). The purpose of the bot was to create a list (of a category) and what they were rated (A,B,Start,Stub,FA eg.). You can see the user page on User:PockBot for a good description.

Unfortenely, PockBot no longer works when I try to work it and the creator who made it, no longer edits Wikipedia. (User:PocklingtonDan) So I'm requesting a clone be made.

Luckily for you PocklingtonDan left SourceCode behind, whcih can be found here (User:PockBot/SourceCode) and written in Perl. PockingtonDan states (on the User:PockBot page) that we can modify/create it as we wish. Presuming the SourceCode is the same as the bot's programming, then the mistake, of why it dosen't work anymore, won't be fixed. SpecialWindler talk 08:02, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm looking into this, just got to track down some hosting. If anyone here has a toolsever account it would be easier for them to host it but I've found a few interesting websites. --Chris  G  10:15, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok it looks Like I'm going to host it on [2] and if necessary I will move it to the tool sever. --Chris  G  10:21, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

if needbe i can lob it on the toolserver. β^_command 19:50, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Interesting code, but I dont think a CGI is the way to go here, if you dont mind I'm going to look at it as well, rewriting it into a more suitable format, and getting rid of as much scraping as I can. Q ^{T C} 05:09, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Be my guest, tell me how well you go and if you need any help. --Chris  G  08:54, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Removal of inappropriate templates e.g. "Under construction" "Inuse"

This topic has cropped up again. I have just done another purge of templates on articles that have days of inactivity. Unfortunately, some people simply put them back on again. It may be a form of ownership. I do not think anyone should use these templates unless a serious edit conflict is likely (e.g. during a few minutes of serious editing). Leaving them on the page for weeks is just wrong.

Could we have something (like Shadowbot, Werdnabot, MiszaBot perhaps) that will automatically remove templates after a period of inactivity? Lightmouse 20:53, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Remove those template, sure. I'll work up something. ~ Wikihermit 02:15, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

My bot, JL-Bot, already does this (it removes them after 7 days). Redundancy never hurts, but I'm currently staying relatively on top of it by running once or twice a week. If I'm missing something please let me know, but I don't think another bot is needed unless it's a problem that intrigues you. -- JLaTondre 01:45, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

An example of the psychology we are dealing with is: List of Washington Capitals players. Your bot removed the flag on 10 August after 10 days of inactivity but an editor simply put it back on within 6 hours stating "still undercontruction just got a little sidetracked". It has remained there for 19 days with inactivity gaps of 12 days.

I am very grateful to know that you are doing this. Could your bot be automated to run once per day? I am sure that there are other bots that are effectively permanently on. Thanks. Lightmouse 17:54, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I didn't catch that particular gap as I was out of town for a bit. That is an infrequent occurrence for me. The bot could run automated if I had a server account, but I'm not sure it's pressing enough to need one. At the moment, there are 99 articles with one of the applicable tags. Of those, 3 are at day 6, 10 at day 5, and 11 at day 4. We're not talking about significant numbers of articles if I skip a day or two.

It should be noted that a bot removing the template doesn't solve the underlying problem of people misunderstanding the purpose of these tags. -- JLaTondre 22:57, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Your statistics are interesting. I had thought it was worse. Furthermore, your note that people misunderstand the purpose is spot on. I appreciate what you are doing. Lightmouse 16:24, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

JetBot

I was thinking maybe we could have a bot that scans the words and links of new pages. and if it detects a violation of policy (such as having nonsense or spam in the page) it puts a "db" tag on the page. Cheers,JetLover 03:41, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I kind of like this, but what safeguards would there be for the taggings? Guroadrunner 11:57, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

If an article contains less than four words, it adds db-nocontext, if there are several defammatory phrases such as "asshole" or "dork" it adds db-attack, if it has nonsense words like poopy, it adds db-nonsense. Cheers,JetLover 00:50, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

How is the bot going to identify when the nonsense is not the result of a recent not yet reverted vandalism? KTC 15:29, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

And also while the usage of those words in an Encyclopedic article are very limited, there are some valid usages. This also sounds similar to other existing bots, ClueBot for example. Want to say BetacommandBot did something similar, but I'm not sure. Q ^{T C} 02:38, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Empty pages

Would it be possible to have an API, a bot, a toolserver account, or some other sort of magic generate a list of all empty pages in the (Main) Template namespaces on en.wiki? (And other namespaces as well if you find it prudent.) As I've been cleaning out the Template namespace, I've run across quite a few templates that are entirely blank, i.e., their code has been cleared and the page now qualifies for WP:CSD#G7. With the list, I could zap the empty pages in both the (Main) namespace and the Template namespace and further my efforts to clean out some of the clutter. Cheers. --MZMcBride 20:27, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Empty pages in the main namespace are already captured at Special:Shortpages. -- JLaTondre 21:51, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

What about the other namespaces? --MZMcBride 23:25, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

It's a simple task if you have a toolserver account. Simply use a query like SELECT page_namespace, page_title, page_len FROM page WHERE page_len < 50 ORDER BY page_len ASC LIMIT 100;. I'll write a script and put it at [3] with a list of short pages by namespace later today. --Erwin85 07:58, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Done. --Erwin85 10:49, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Simply incredible; it runs so quickly. Thank you very much. Cheers. --MZMcBride 16:32, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Fossil range adder to taxoboxes

Hello,

This might be a tough ask but with a little ingenuity it should be possible!

Is there any chance that the new {{fossil range}} template could be added to the fossil_range parameter of taxoboxes, as at Velociraptor? The dates that periods start and end could probably be scraped from this table and applied to whatever's in that field with a minimum of effort.

Many thanks!

Verisimilus T 22:37, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Use correct Romanian Diacritics

The Romanian language uses 5 diacritical signs: ă, â, î, ș and ț (and their uppercase variants). Due to an erronuous implementation the default Romanian keyboard for Windows versions prior to Vista the letters ș, Ș, ț and Ț are replaced with some incorrect characters ş, Ş, ţ and Ţ (notice that the correct characters use a comma bellow and the incorrect ones use a cedilla). Vista default keyboard inserts the correct characters and so does the Apple Romanian keyboard and the default keyboard configurations for X (Linux/BSD).

Because of the incorrect way in which 2000, XP, 2003 enter characters, many Romanian-related articles in Wikipedia use these incorrect characters. A bot that searches for these letters inside words and replaces them with the correct versions would be a nice correcting feature of Wikipedia and would help bring the standard more into use. This bot should search for these characters inside of words because the cedilla based ones may be correctly used as characters (not part of words) in some articles (e.g. an article which talks about the incorect way in which XP enters Romanina characters, or even this page). —Preceding unsigned comment added by GringoCroco (talk • contribs) 22:48, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Metric units

This was previously requested here, but I'd like to second the request since it appears not to be implemented. Since almost all of the world uses metric units, a bot that states non-metric measurements in metric terms (perhaps in parentheses, like with the convert template) would be very helpful. Many articles that relate, for example, to the United States (my country) would be more informative to metric-using readers if miles were expressed in kilometers, acres in hectares, etc. Even a bot that focused on converting one unit, like miles, could improve a lot of articles. Michael Patrick 19:43, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

My monobook script does a lot of that. Feel free to copy and use it. Lightmouse 20:36, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

That script looks handy. Unfortunately I don't have the training. Michael Patrick 21:22, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I will look into this one :: maelgwn - talk 10:53, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

N Not done turns out to be a little hard for me :: maelgwn - talk 13:04, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I have a script adds metric units one article at a time. All editors are free to use it or copy the code. It is in my monobook.
Lightmouse 18:24, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Adding Portal:British Army boxes to every page in Category:British Army

I have created a British Army portal. Unfortunately, all the pages associated to the British Army (every page included within Category:British Army) need the following box added to every page: {{Portal|British Army|Flag of the British Army.svg|65}}. The box needs to go under the See Also section. If anyone can create a bot that could do this task for me, I would appreciate it. Jhfireboy Talk 23:13, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Is their consensus for this job? (I guess it is kinda trivial but still ...) Also it looks like your portal needs some more development before it should be publicised this much. :: maelgwn - talk 04:03, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Currently I am the only member of this Portal. Therefore consensus is not an issue. Secondly, I am currently in the process of updating it and by midnight tonight (BST) I will have completed it. Jhfireboy Talk 15:55, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

The portal has been fully completed. If there is any reason why a bot should not be created please inform me. Jhfireboy Talk 18:26, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

{{Fn}} and {{Fnb}} → {{Ref}} and {{Note}}

A bot to change {{Fn}} and {{Fnb}} to {{Ref}} and {{Note}}. Wikipedian 14:25, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

This should be easy with php. I will do it. Alpta 20:33, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Wikipedian 13:52, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Bot to categorise good articles (via the topic= parameter)

A task force was recently set up to categorise GAs (using the topic= parameter in {{GA}}). It was then proposed that a bot do the job, by checking which section of WP:GA the article is listed in, and changing the parameter on the article's talk page accordingly.

If someone thinks they can do this, and would like to do this, please respond on the talk page, here, and we can give you the details and sort things out. Thanks in advance, Giggy _U^CP 06:48, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Left a message on WikiProject Good article's talk page. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 02:37, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

 Done — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 07:11, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

"Due to the fact that" => "Because"

I would love it if a bot could replace the former hackneyed expression with the latter, simpler one. Building my own bot might be an interesting project, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort. Surely we have an existing style-bot that can have this added to its repertoire? Please advise. Josephgrossberg 14:46, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

How would you ensure that no quoted text was changed? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 20:02, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I object to this idea. Sometimes saying "due to the fact that" avoids repitition if "because" has been used previously. It's a matter of preference-- there's no pressing reason why this would need to be done. --Android Mouse 21:17, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm afraid I have to object to this as well. I don't feel its an appropriate bot task (and, as a matter of fact, I wouldn't really be comfortable with just RegExTypofixing this either) and, as hackneyed as it may be, 'due to the fact' is still proper English. The 'comprises of' thing we've been debating since, well, what feels like the beginning of time is one thing but, personally, I feel that this is really pushing it. -- S ^up? 21:46, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Properly done, a bot could do this task (ignoring anything in quotes or the cquote/blockquote templates/htmltags, but its simply not a suitable task for a bot. The bot would not know the stylistic concerns. I just don't think this is a good task. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 15:47, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Agree 100% not suitable work for a bot, could change tone of articles, likely to hit false positives on quoted text. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:25, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Isn't this the sort of thing that AutoWikiBrowser was designed for? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 12:26, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Noooo. AWB is for handling simple repetitive tasks, not for automatic (or even manual) copyediting. MaxSem 10:39, 31 August 2007 (UTC)