Wikipedia:Bot requests

For the policy on bot requirements, see WP:BOTREQUIRE.

This is a page for requesting tasks to be done by bots per the bot policy. This is an appropriate place to put ideas for uncontroversial bot tasks, to get early feedback on ideas for bot tasks (controversial or not), and to seek bot operators for bot tasks. Consensus-building discussions requiring large community input (such as request for comments) should normally be held at WP:VPPROP or other relevant pages (such as a WikiProject's talk page).

You can check the "Commonly Requested Bots" box above to see if a suitable bot already exists for the task you have in mind. If you have a question about a particular bot, contact the bot operator directly via their talk page or the bot's talk page. If a bot is acting improperly, follow the guidance outlined in WP:BOTISSUE. For broader issues and general discussion about bots, see the bot noticeboard.

Before making a request, please see the list of frequently denied bots, either because they are too complicated to program, or do not have consensus from the Wikipedia community. If you are requesting that a template (such as a WikiProject banner) is added to all pages in a particular category, please be careful to check the category tree for any unwanted subcategories. It is best to give a complete list of categories that should be worked through individually, rather than one category to be analyzed recursively (see example difference).

Alternatives to bot requests

• WP:AWBREQ, for simple tasks that involve a handful of articles and/or only needs to be done once (e.g. adding a category to a few articles).
• WP:URLREQ, for tasks involving changing or updating URLs to prevent link rot (specialized bots deal with this).
• WP:SQLREQ, for tasks which might be solved with an SQL query (e.g. compiling a list of articles according to certain criteria).
• WP:TEMPREQ, to request a new template written in wiki code or Lua.
• WP:SCRIPTREQ, to request a new user script. Many useful scripts already exist, see Wikipedia:User scripts/List.
• WP:CITEBOTREQ, to request a new feature for WP:Citation bot, a user-initiated bot that fixes citations.

Note to bot operators: The {{BOTREQ}} template can be used to give common responses, and make it easier to keep track of the task's current status. If you complete a request, note that you did with {{BOTREQ|done}}, and archive the request after a few days (WP:1CA is useful here).

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Please add your bot requests to the bottom of this page.
Make a new request

#	Bot request	Status	💬	👥	🙋 Last editor	🕒 (UTC)	🤖 Last botop editor	🕒 (UTC)
1	Auto-WP:NAVNOREDIRECT	Not a good task for a bot.	10	5	Wikiwerner	2024-04-28 12:22	Primefac	2024-03-13 18:37
2	Automatic NOGALLERY keyword for categories containing non-free files (again)		14	7	Anomie	2024-06-23 11:50	Anomie	2024-06-23 11:50
3	Can we have an AIV feed a bot posts on IRC?		8	3	Legoktm	2024-06-21 18:24	Legoktm	2024-06-21 18:24
4	Bot to update match reports to cite template	BRFA filed	14	5	Yoblyblob	2024-06-20 21:21	Mdann52	2024-06-20 21:11
5	Bot to mass tag California State University sports seasons	Doing...	5	4	Frostly	2024-06-10 17:05	Headbomb	2024-06-09 17:28
6	Football league infoboxes		7	4	Bagumba	2024-04-25 13:43	Primefac	2024-04-25 12:01
7	Clear Category:Unlinked Wikidata redirects		7	4	Jlwoodwa	2024-06-21 06:41	DreamRimmer	2024-04-21 03:28
8	Find linkrot with a specific pattern		7	3	GreenC	2024-05-01 16:20
9	Fixing stub tag placement on new articles	Not a good task for a bot.	4	3	Headbomb	2024-05-19 20:17	Headbomb	2024-05-19 20:17
10	User:RetractionBot, v2	Y Done	8	5	Mdann52	2024-05-25 16:06	Mdann52	2024-05-25 16:06
11	Bot to change citations to list defined references	Not a good task for a bot.	3	2	Apoptheosis	2024-06-09 17:44	Headbomb	2024-06-09 16:56
12	Adding Facility IDs to AM/FM/LPFM station data	BRFA filed	10	3	Qwerfjkl	2024-06-12 14:29	Qwerfjkl	2024-06-12 14:29
13	Tagging women's basketball article talk pages with project tags		7	2	Hmlarson	2024-06-10 19:17	Mdann52	2024-06-10 19:15
14	Friendly support for Draft categories – feedback request		1	1	Mathglot	2024-06-10 19:40
15	'Literature of Kashmir'	Not a good task for a bot.	2	2	Usernamekiran	2024-06-11 07:37	Usernamekiran	2024-06-11 07:37
16	Adding links to previous TFDs		7	4	Qwerfjkl	2024-06-20 18:02	Qwerfjkl	2024-06-20 18:02
17	Bot that condenses identical references	Coding...	9	4	Acebulf	2024-06-19 03:07	Headbomb	2024-06-18 00:34
18	Convert external links within {{Music ratings}} to refs		2	2	Mdann52	2024-06-23 10:11	Mdann52	2024-06-23 10:11
19	Stat.kg ---> Stat.gov.kg		2	2	DreamRimmer	2024-06-23 09:21	DreamRimmer	2024-06-23 09:21

Legend
In the last hour
In the last day
In the last week
In the last month
More than one month
Manual settings
When exceptions occur, please check the setting first.

Unpolluting Category:Living people

Super-low priority task but I also suppose it's a pretty trivial thing to do for a bot. I'm trying to remove userspace pages that appear in Category:Living people (see Wikipedia:Database reports/Polluted categories). I'm searching for these pages by hand which is pretty inefficient since the density is maybe 1/800 so I'd be grateful if someone can automatically create a list. Pichpich (talk) 16:01, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

[1] (takes a minute or two) —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:07, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. (and why did I not think of that?) Pichpich (talk) 16:32, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

This is much faster. :) Tim1357 ^talk 04:15, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Category:Football biography using deprecated parameters

Hi guys, a long term aim of WP:FOOTBALL will be to empty Category:Football biography using deprecated parameters by converting a multitude of old infoboxes into the correct code found at {{Infobox football biography}}. However, with nearly 50,000 infoboxes to be converted, this will take a helluva long time - would it be possible for a bot to do this instead? Regards, GiantSnowman 18:28, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes Petrb (talk) 18:30, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

If that task doesn't need consensus I can start it soon. Petrb (talk) 18:31, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks - Magioladitis (talk · contribs) over at WP:BON says he has already prepared for this task, so you may want to liase with him. Regards, GiantSnowman 20:38, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi. It turned out I can't do it with my bot. I am OK with Petrb doing it. Thanks! -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:42, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SporkBot 3. I filed a bot request over a month ago. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 14:11, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Alteration of a template from "Wikisource1911Enc Citation" to "Cite EB1911"

I have need of a bot to make changes to about 1,000 pages. There is currently a template called {{Wikisource1911Enc Citation}} it needs converting to {{Cite EB1911|wstitle= for those entries with a parameter and {{Cite EB1911|wstitle={{subst:PAGENAME}}}} for those instances of the template without a parameter. -- PBS (talk) 14:29, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Have there been any discussions to form a consensus on whether these changes are needed/wanted? —SW— ^babble 17:01, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

{{Wikisource1911Enc Citation}} has been a redirect since August 2010 -- until recently to {{1911}}. But as after a discussion at Template talk:Cite EB1911, Template talk:Cite DNB#Unnamed parameter and Template talk:1911 it now redirects to {{Cite EB1911}}, all this changes is that articles that use the redirect "Wikisource1911Enc Citation" will in future be using the target of the redirect ({{Cite EB1911}}) directly with the correct parameters. So from the point of view of the readers of the article, the article will look identical. What it does is fix some of the errors reported in the hidden categories (and repairs the no parameter case that defaults to the article name that is currently not working correctly). -- PBS (talk) 09:17, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Ok if snotty wasn't about to do that I could, just let me know if it's still needed Petrb (talk) 13:34, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

If you already have a bot approved for this task, Petrb, go for it. Otherwise I can submit a BRFA. —SW— ^chatter 15:57, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I was told that I have to re send BRFA for every task, so I do Petrb (talk) 16:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

How long will it take to get approval and is anyone seeking such approval? -- PBS (talk) 12:24, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

BRFA filled so wait Petrb (talk) 11:05, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The request: BRFA Petan-Bot task8 -- PBS (talk) 11:18, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Articles containing links to the user space

Wikipedia:Database reports/Articles containing links to the user space remains populated, and judging from a spot-check of the formerly-listed articles, there is no bot removing these links. It may be that this is a task better suited to another mechanism (semi-automation), or that there are problems I have not foreseen, but I thought I'd raise the issue here as the existence of these links is an ongoing embarrassment and threat to the encyclopedia's integrity. Thoughts? Skomorokh 06:00, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

That list is updated weekly, I reprocess it into this list and manually remove them. tedder (talk) 09:30, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

In that case let me express my thanks, but isn't that laborious work for a human? Skomorokh 16:04, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Database reports/Unused non-free files backlog

Given the backlog at Wikipedia:Database reports/Unused non-free files, I'm asking for someone to: A) re-start the work that was being done by BetacommandBot (I think) for this -or- B) if someone would help me set up and get this started, I'd be happy to "adopt" this task. Skier Dude (talk) 04:02, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

What was the bot doing before? Can't find it's BRFA Noom _talk ^stalk 19:31, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Update Wayback Machine URLs

The Wayback Machine has been used to repair many dead links and now the old URLs are being redirected (sometimes slowly) so I am asking that bots making edits to check for old Wayback links and replace them.

• Wayback Machine Classic: http://web.archive.org/web/ → http://classic-web.archive.org/web/
• Wayback Machine Beta: http://replay.waybackmachine.org/ → http://replay.web.archive.org/

Thanks in advance. – Allen4names 13:57, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I might be able to help with this. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:19, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I hope so. This may not be urgent but there are a little less than 200,000 pages with such links. – Allen4names 22:32, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Do these links occur as bare urls, or inside templates, or using {{wayback}}, or a mixture of all of these? Should bare urls be converted to use {{wayback}} at the same time? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:13, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

In practice, they can occur in any place a regular url would. In theory, citations should have it in |archiveurl= and text references in {{Wayback}}. That's assuming they are used as archived versions and not direct links (by mistake or on purpose). Converting bare urls to {{Wayback}} would bring out the incorrect direct uses of archive urls. But it would also incorrectly convert text references using archive urls correctly. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:36, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

How soon are these expected to expire? I have a feeling Wayback isn't just going to drop the old urls and they'll work as redirects indefinitely. So I'm seeing this as a minor/general fix that can/should be done with other changes. Then again I'm speculating. What are the problems with leaving them for now? Might this be a WP:DONTFIXIT case for now? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:36, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

The Wayback Machine Classic is slow and the old links to Beta have been known to redirect slowly otherwise I would see no reason to update the links for now. – Allen4names 14:28, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

200,000 edits seems a bit much just to speed up some external links. Noom _talk ^stalk 19:27, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Feedback navigation links

Regarding Wikipedia:Requests for feedback/navigation, which is transcluded on WP:FEED,

Could someone possibly make a bot which automatically adds links each month, as I did manually here?

If you need more info, give me a shout. Cheers!  Chzz  ►  14:10, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Reposted, because this was archived with no response.  Chzz  ►  19:54, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Would this be done monthly or daily? LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 02:18, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I think monthly would be fine; the redlinks do no harm. Maybe add the next month just a couple of days before end-of-month.  Chzz  ►  03:42, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Femto Bot has a task like this. I could expand it a little. Rich Farmbrough, 20:52, 2 March 2011 (UTC).

Er, yes, please. Or whoever. I'm sorry; not sure if you need input from me at this stage, but...of course - my intention in posting here was asking if anyone could do it - because, I try to remember but sometimes forget. So, yes of course; if someone can arrange this - please do. Chzz  ►  06:45, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

BUMP Chzz  ►  06:22, 14 March 2011 (UTC) Rescued from the archive again  Chzz  ►  06:37, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

My bot can do it Petrb (talk) 07:50, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Has any progress been made on this? ^Avic_ennasis @ 05:02, 2 Nisan 5771 / 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Next month; bot wouldn't reinsert april again Petrb (talk) 06:10, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

OK. I've restored this from the archive (again), so we can see if it happens. Petrb, will it happen a few days before end-of-month, or bang on midnight, or what? Cheers,  Chzz  ►  22:51, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

When it's best? day before? Petrb (talk) 17:16, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Erp, sorry, didn't see this for a couple of days. Yes - today would be ideal, I think. And in general...well, a few days (3?) before the end of the month would do no harm, and possibly give a chance to spot/fix a problem. Thanks again,  Chzz  ►  12:06, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Great, it happened [2].

One small problem though - May has 31 days, not 30.  Chzz  ►  02:56, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Renaming of Category:Primera División de México seasons articles

I would like to have every article in this category that does not have the years in the front to have the years in the front as per the naming conventions for competitions. Thanks in advance. Digirami (talk) 20:31, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Is there some concensus for this? Petrb (talk) 07:43, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes. A conversation from two years ago at the appropriate wikiproject. The articles in this category are actually one of the few (if any) league competition seasons hasn't changed to the year-in-front format. Digirami (talk) 21:34, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

It's not the first time I request a bot for the same purpose. See Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 36#Renaming Primera Division Argentina season articles. Digirami (talk) 21:47, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Repairing named references without description

What happened to Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 17#Removal of data for a named reference? The suggestion was basically "We should have a bot that check for the removal of named refs and if that removal leaves any <ref name="aname" /> tags that subsequently break with "Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named facts_and_figures".". Mikael Häggström (talk) 15:19, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

There is a bot that does that, I cannot remember the name of it at the moment but it starts with A. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 15:20, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, we do have a bot for that. Can't remember what it start with but ends with "nomieBot". —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 15:50, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for completing the puzzle Mikael Häggström (talk) 17:49, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Automate submissions for Autopatrol right

Per this discussion at VPP, we'd like a bot to submit candidates to WP:RFP/A for the autopatrol right to help reduce the workload at WP:NPP. See also, this dicussion at VPP and this discussion at WT:DBR.

Svick has much of the work completed with his python script autopatrol_eligibles.py, which creates a list of potential users at Editors eligible for Autopatrol privilege on the 24th of each month. What is needed now is a bot to A) trim down the list using criteria below and B) submit the remaining users to WP:RFP/A.

Trimming list

Only users that would easily qualify should be submitted to WP:RFP/A, so users would be checked against these criteria and removed from the list. This may require several bots due to complexity.

• Remove users that are currently blocked — check Special:Blocklist/{{{username}}}
• Remove users that are retired — check for the strings {{retired}} or {{not here}} at user:{{{username}}} and user talk:{{{username}}}
• Remove users that have been denied in the last 60 days — check subdirectories of Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Denied for the string "Autopatrolled" and {{{username}}} on the same line
• Remove users with copyright violation warnings in their talk page histories in the last 60 days — check for the string "Notifying user of possible copyvio" from CorenSearchBot at {{fullurl:User_talk:{{{username}}}|limit=500&action=history}}
• Remove users with unsourced BLP warnings in their talk page histories in the last 60 days — check for the string "Automated Message: Unreferenced BLPs" from DASHBot at {{fullurl:User_talk:{{{username}}}|limit=500&action=history}}
• Remove users that have deleted articles in the last 60 days — check Special:DeletedContributions/{{{username}}} — this would require a WP:ADMINBOT this part is optional so I'm striking it. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 12:50, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

This bot or bots will run once a month on the 25th after the new month's report is generated.

Submitting candidates

Once the list at Editors eligible for Autopatrol privilege has been trimmed down, a bot would submit the remaning users to Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Autopatrolled with a note mentioning the number of article created and that it is a bot submission. Something like this {{subst:rfp|{{{username}}}|user has created # artciles. This is a bot submission}}. If the list is long, the bot may need to submitt a few users per day rather than all at once.

Is anybody willing to work on this? - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 02:26, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

No responses in almost a week. Do you require a Adminbot for this or will a normal one suffice? Noom _talk ^stalk 18:47, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

This should in no case be an adminbot. Human review is still required to give the flag out, the bot is designed only to bring the eligible candidates to admin attention. Courcelles 09:32, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I've been watching this request, I can write the (admin) bot, but it would have to be in my free time, so could take a while for me to get around to. The idea of having an admin bot is so that it can look at the users deleted contribs, not so it can automatically grant the right. I don't see it as being essential to check the deleted contribs however, and would prefer if someone else did the task (mostly because I don't really have the time to do it myself) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 09:56, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

┌────────────────────┘
@Noom, a normal bot is fine. The adminbot part is optional, so I struck it.
@Courcelles, I've struck the adminbot part.
@Kingpin, thanks for archiving all those old permission requests. I struck the adminbot part, but if you want to work on it later, don't let me stop you.

I think having individual bots for each task would make this whole thing a lot easier. I'd say the most important part is removing users from the list if they have copyvio notices and/or removing users that have been recently denied. I can do the other stuff manually, including submitting the users to WP:RFP/A. Thanks. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 12:50, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

If Kingpin would prefer, I've got some free time and can pick this task up. Noom _talk ^stalk 15:10, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely, please don't let me stop you from writing it up. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 15:20, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

That would be great, Noom. Thank you very much. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 18:14, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Do you want the bot to overwrite the untrimmed list with the new one? Also, if the list exceeds 5 users, how does a rate of 1 user per hour for submission rate? Noom _talk ^stalk 20:41, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, please, write the new/trimmed list over the existing/untrimmed list. Submitting one user per hour sounds great. Thanks very much for your help with this. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 22:00, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Checking users' contributions history

Hi all, I want a bot which can check the others bots or users' contributions . and give me list of the pages that

• users made it empty
• changed the redirect command to text
• changed page content to redirect
• find pages that specific user added some text or links (for example: www.sample.com ) to pages.

would you please help me for developing this bot.(if you can only develop the history checker part. I will do other parts).

I want this bot for

• users who adds some links in pages in long period and other users can't find s/he produces some spams
• bots that they changes many pages. and some of their changes aren't correct.

thank youReza1615 (talk) 11:20, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Why? —SW— ^prattle 15:15, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

(I was asked about this by Reza1615 on my own talk page)

I do not understand what you want to do. Please explain why this would help Wikipedia. We already have mechanisms to deal with empty pages and redirects amended (via the edit filter and other means). It sounds like you are trying to reinvent the wheel.

Please tell us what you want to do, instead of how to do it.  Chzz  ►  16:10, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

This may fall under the same umbrella as edit counter with additional info, such as breakdown by time/day, frequent articles/topics, etc.; that is, become a privacy concern. That's why it is an opt-in service. If you can provide a specific concern you have, then that's different. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 17:17, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Change all instances of "an historic" to "a historic"

It appears that Wikipedia has thousands upon thousands of articles that have the grammatically-incorrect phrase "an historic" instead of "a historic". It would take forever to change them all by hand and we need a bot for this task. "An historic" is simply incorrect because the "h" in "historic" is not silent, or if it is, it's only in minority dialects. Even A_and_an#Discrimination_between_a_and_an claims this is incorrect. Please make a bot to fix this! It should only be fixed in unquoted, non-title text, and only in article-space. Note that "an Historic" should still usually be changed because the indefinite article "an" is not part of a title. --Wykypydya (talk) 01:20, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

The article you linked to shows that both are acceptable: "Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage allows 'both a and an are used in writing a historic an historic'." – anna 01:41, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

The Oxford English Dictionary says that it should be "a historic" - with a very good explanation as to why. Also, if this is relatively simple as a find/replace task, my bot should be able to help out (I'm not sure if it can ignore titles - but should be able to). Perhaps we need a way of finding all pages with instances of "an historic"? My guess would be database report or something similar querying the DB? The Helpful One 01:45, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

This should be done, but by all means should not be done by a bot, for the same reasons typo-fixing bots are usually declined. This doesn't account for usage of "an historic" in quotations (and perhaps also debates about "a historic" vs. "an historic")! This should be done in AutoWikiBrowser rather than by a bot. — Preceding signed comment added by Cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 01:52, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

People have made arguments that "an" before a non-silent "h" or a weak "h" should be acceptable but it shouldn't be -- it looks and sounds ridiculous. I did a Google search and there are articles with these instances as far as the eye can see. Can a bot change only first-hand article text (that is not a quote or a title)? --Wykypydya (talk) 01:58, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

"An historic" is an ENGVAR issue; many educated speakers use it. For them, "historic" is simply an exception to the rule to use 'a' before an aspirated 'h' (assuming they have an aspirated 'h' in the word). The usage of 'an historic' is still around 25% for the 'an' version (on google); it's not at all rare. We don't need to have bots going around second-guessing ENGVAR issues. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:02, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Also, this particular disagreement dates back to at least 1884 [3]. No chance we are going to settle it here. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:04, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

• In reply to Wykypydya, bots can't detect whether or not text is quoted. But you can still fix this manually using AutoWikiBrowser, which will let you search for all instances of "an historic" in Wikipedia article space and fix them if they turn out not to be from quoted text.— Preceding signed comment added by Cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 02:09, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Using AWB to go around changing lots of articles from one English variant to another would certainly violate WP:ENGVAR. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:14, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
    • Okay, I see your point there. In my variation of English, the use of "an historic" is considered a grammatically incorrect. But since it is considered grammatically correct in other variations of English, it shouldn't be changed if it's grammatically correct in the variation of English the article's written in — Preceding signed comment added by Cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 07:06, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
      • Even in American English, the use of "an historic" is well established, although not the majority usage. The ratios on the corpus of contemporary American English [4] are close to the ratios we see on google. There's nothing grammatically incorrect about it in that dialect as a whole, unless you simply choose "correct" at whim. This is just another example where there is a natural variation in a language among educated speakers. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:43, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I do not think that this is not a job for a bot (or AWB). That there are "thousands upon thousands of articles" suggests that "An historic" is used by many editors, and so is a matter for consensus on the talk pages of the article involved. -- PBS (talk) 02:12, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Australian English uses an historic, so the bot will need to leave alone all articles written so, or it will create a real nuisance Crusoe8181 (talk) 04:27, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Citation needed. I'm a native speaker of Australian English and I don't believe that "an historic" is ever correct. - Richard Cavell (talk) 04:31, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I fully support this task and this bot proposal. My only caveat is that it should have a blacklist of articles that will not be edited, specifically those that might deliberately use the incorrect form (articles about grammar, A and an, etc.) - Richard Cavell (talk) 04:31, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

• But how would the bot account for quotations and WP:ENGVAR? — Preceding signed comment added by Cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 07:06, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

• Spelling bots are not allowed due to false positives. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:46, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
• Echo the above: definitely not a grammatical error. Even the BBC uses it. It's an WP:ENGVAR issue, and not one to be changed willy-nilly, let alone be addressed by a bot or AWB. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:03, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

• It has become clear from the remarks above having authoritative citations (as opposed to personal preference or opinion) that this is an WP:ENGVAR issue and seems inappropriate as the subject of a bot or a crusade. Don't we all have better things to do? hulmem (talk) 02:25, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

At the request of Richard Cavell (see above 04:31, 1 May), I've done some Googling. Like elsewhere usage in Australia is split. A Google search of Australian Government websites returns "About 196,000 results for "an historic" and About 235,000 results for "a historic". "an historic" usage [sic] in about 45% of pages. Here are two Australian examples from the web (on the first page of a Google search of the au domain) where the phrase "An historic" is used in the title:

• An Historic Opportunity, by NSWALC, March 29, 2011
• Lt Cdr Henry Stoker -- an Historic Journey by Dr Ian Chambers.
• In comparison A Google search of the UK government websites returns About 125,000 results for "An historic" and About 358,000 results for "a historic" ("an historic" is used in about 26% of pages).
• US government websites returns About 370,000 results for "an historic" and About 1,190,000 results "a historic" ("an historic" is used in about 24% of pages)

If anything "a historic" is over represented as a ratio on Wikiepdia About 7,960 results for "an historic" and About 34,800 results for "a historic" (an internal search of articles returns 5,070 for "An historic" and 22,424 for "A historic") so "an historic" is used in about 18% of article pages.-- PBS (talk) 09:04, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for all the opinions everyone! Thanks to Cymru.lass for mentioning AutoWikiBrowser; I have gone to that page and added a request to be able to use it for this purpose. (See Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage.) --Wykypydya (talk) 20:05, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

You cannot use AWB to go around violating WP:ENGVAR. That would be a violation of the AWB rules of use. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:20, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Empty Category tagging

There is a report here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_reports/Empty_categories which lists empty categories.

I feel this would be a perfect task for bot automated tagging.

Any thoughts?

On a related issue, a bot to automatically generate WP:TFD requests for unused templates (older than a month) could perhaps also be considered?

Sfan00 IMG (talk) 15:21, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

"Fixing" about 2600 redirects

Hi. If someone has a minute, can you run a bot to "fix" (normalize) these redirects? They're redirects in the form of #REDIRECT [[Foo|Bar]], which while valid, are rather silly and confusing. It should be a completely trivial bot task. The only thing you'd have to make sure of is that you don't clobber any section anchors. AWB might be sanest here, dunno. Anyway, if someone can fix these, that'd be awesome. Otherwise, I'll do it at some point. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:16, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd do it, but I'm sure somebody would bitch that they are simply "cosmetic changes" and get angry at me. --Closedmouth (talk) 04:25, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Could you generate the list again? I think most of them are now done. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 05:08, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

This thing with people complaining on "cosmetic changes" is becoming disruptive. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:40, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree. It is far too easy for habitual complainers to derail legitimate bot requests. —SW— ^squeal 15:39, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

But "fixing" these pages is no substitute for correcting the redirect parsing code that MZ is using. Somebody will always labeling redirects. — Dispenser 20:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It's somewhat debatable whether the current behavior is a feature or a bug. I took a different approach to the problem and just excluded redirects/fragments that contain "|" from being listed in the database report. That way I can still output a list of redirects that could... be improved (i.e., normalized). Ideally MediaWiki would have a sane input UI that would never allow this kind of thing (a create a redirect Special page or something), but until then, I think being able to periodically find and normalize these redirects is better than the alternative. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:39, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I need to remember to regenerate this list. I think I need to wait until a new dump is available, though. No idea when that will be.... --MZMcBride (talk) 07:39, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Category:Infobox person using deprecated parameters

In the frame of infobox person standardisation, WOSlinker added tracking categories to several infoboxes. Yobot started running to update/fix infobox parameters. This procedure enabled us to simplify the source code for several infoboxes and successfully merge some of them. Standardisation has the big benefit that everyone can add basic parameters to an infobox without having to consult the manual. This standardisation procedure has been discussed in Template_talk:Infobox_person/birth_death_params. Unfortunately, Yobot has been blocked since the task was considered by unapproved because Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Yobot 15 mentions only requests in this page. Would be OK to resume the task since I posted it here? -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:12, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I support this task. Having consistent field names is a definite benefit to WP. Once you are done with this one, you should look into the whole coordinates (latd, lat_d, lat_deg, lat_degrees, ...) soup. However, it looks like you will be busy for some time. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 00:12, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Seem fine to me - assuming that (as per my View in the discussion) no edits are made to replace deprecated parameters alone (without some substantive edit combined). Rd232 ^talk 02:46, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that Magioladitis indeed seeks the go-head to for a bot run comprising standalone edits serving this purpose alone. He's already been told that it's okay to combine them with visible changes, but he regards this as insufficient.

To be clear, I take no position on the matter other than stressing that this would constitute a special exception to the normal rules and therefore requires explicit consensus within the community. —David Levy 03:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh, well, I would oppose that, and I don't see any basis from the infobox discussion for community support for it. What's the rush? As I said there, standardise the parameters in the templates and documentation, leaving old parameters functioning but deprecated, and then use AWB and bots (combining with other edits) to slowly standardise parameter use. Rd232 ^talk 03:34, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I tried this approach with other stuff and the result is that the job was tripled for various reasons. For example editors not checking the manual but copying infoboxes from other pages (This is result of parameters not being easy to remember). One more thing is that I would like to avoid adding code in AWB that will be removed in some months or even worse remain there for years and then nobody will remember why is there. Hardcoding this stuff should be avoided. Another solution will be to add the extra code only to the bot but I am afraid we will end up to something like SmackBot's code which it does a lot of stuff (probably everything) but it turned to be very difficult to maintain or modify. If we just do it straightforward we will finish in a few days. I have general fixes turned on anyway so most probably other stuff will be done on the same time. So far, there were only problems with double runs because I haven't loaded the whole list of deprecated parameters or because some infoboxes had wrong parameters (for example infobox supports "birth_date" and "birthdate" and someone added "born") which maybe an editor's mistake or the result of a renaming between infoboxes with not compatible parameters. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:16, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Hm, OK. Can you estimate how many edits will be required, and how many of those might be "just the infobox" edits? There's also the issue that if we go down this road, we surely need to fully complete infobox standardisation first, to ensure that all parameters that might need changing get changed in one "big bang". OK, we don't need to standardise all infoboxes, but at least those for each type (eg people, places, other broad categories within which the standardisation is going to be done). Rd232 ^talk 20:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Also, a possible compromise would be to limit bot activity (in terms of infobox-only edits) to new articles, where an infobox might be copied wrongly, and the article won't be on many watchlists yet and anyway will be undergoing editing. Rd232 ^talk 20:36, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

OK. I think I can perform a dry run (i.e. without saving) and get this information. I wasn't planning to do all infoboxes! Only the those for persons and there aren't that many. I also didn't want to touch those for footballers since we still don't have a stable consensus. -- 20:50, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

So far the discussion seemed to be about birth/death dates.Surely there's other things that need standardising too (even leaving aside footballers, if they're tricky for some reason). Rd232 ^talk 20:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

On footballer infoboxes

User:Petan-Bot started some days ago to clean-up footballer infoboxes. This clean=up doesn't include the parameters we are discussing here. We could ask the owner to expand their work. The only problem I sense is that some people working on footballers had some disagrement on the "playername" to "name" change. We should first ask which parameters could be fixed in this case. Merging "cityofbirth" and "countryofbirth" to "birth_place" (same for "death_place") seems a good task for the particular infoboxes. -- Magioladitis (talk) 06:39, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

At Template talk:Infobox person/birth death params, it was only two people discussing this. They also weren't keen on merging city/countryofbirth into one field. We really need more input from others on these issues. -- WOSlinker (talk) 07:11, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Template:Talk header

This request is a more limited follow-up to this one several months ago. The usage instructions for Template:Talk header indicate:

In accordance with Wikipedia:Talk page layout, this template should not be added to otherwise empty talk pages.

In spite of this, there are about 3,000 pages (according to Catscan) which contain no content other than {{Talk header}} or one of its redirects. So, could a bot delete all talk-namespace pages (except user talk pages) which contain no content other than {{Talk header}} and have only one revision in the page history (the second criterion ensures that potentially useful page history is not deleted)? Thank you, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 23:55, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

What about using the list of such pages to simultaneously tag the articles for wikiprojects whilst removing talkheader? If the page is empty but for talkheader, it clearly lacks project tags. (That would be an AWB task, not bot.) Rd232 ^talk 02:00, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

That would, without a doubt, be a better approach, but is there an automated or semi-automated way of determining which WikiProject tag(s) to add to a particular page (I have been doing this type of replacement manually in those cases where the WikiProject is readily identifiable, but it is not always immediately clear)? -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 03:15, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I would think experienced editors like us would usually be able to figure out one or more relevant projects manually, with the entire project list (link not to hand but not hard to find) kept handy for reference. And if not, in some cases, well then just strip talkheader and don't worry about it. A lot slower process though than just stripping talkheader... PS in terms of automation, Category:Living people -> WPBIO springs to mind; beyond that, you'd have to start constructing a complex tree of category-> wikiproject (and that gets tricky with unexpected subcategories that don't really belong, as I found out once via Xenobot tagging I had to partially undo). That's possibly a worthwhile thing itself, to improve wikiproject tagging, but an undertaking so massive it may not be feasible. Rd232 ^talk 04:08, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

If anyone's feeling particularly delete happy, I've got a list of empty talk pages only edited by a human once (remember they're empty). — Dispenser 05:15, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I feel! -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:06, 6 May 2011 (UTC)