User talk:AnomieBOT

AnomieBOT problem

1) The BOT edited a page (William Pitt (1803 ship)) while I was still working on it. 2) It tried to remove references from templates. I overrode the BOT.Acad Ronin (talk) 18:29, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

WikiProjectTagger run for women's health

WikiProject Women's Health is ready for an inaugural WikiProjectTagger run. Project approval can be found at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women's Health#Scope. The categories we'd like to include are in the second collapsed box there: 'Final category list for bot run'. We'd like to have the article class auto-assessed. Thank you. gobonobo ^{+ c} 19:32, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Replied there. Anomie⚔ 12:45, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Mad props

		The Original Barnstar
		To my favourite bot --Haptic-feedback (talk) 21:24, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

what happened here?

I noted a change by User:AnomieBOT on the history of the Heather Barnett page: [[1]]. It is the edit made 17:45, 29 July 2015. What exactly did AnomieBOT do here? Greg Dahlen (talk) 18:01, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

As shown in the diff it dated the "Failed verification" tag which had been added 23 minutes before - Arjayay (talk) 18:22, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

How did it know to do that, Arjayay? Greg Dahlen (talk) 20:23, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Greg Dahlen - AFAIK it checks all recent edits, recognizes undated tags (Not just citation needed, but all other maintenance templates), and adds the date parameter. - Arjayay (talk) 20:30, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

It looks at categories. When a tag doesn't have a date, it winds up in one of the categories under Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month. Once the date is added that causes the template to put it in a dated subcategory. It mostly identifies the templates needing dating by using the list at WP:AWB/DT. Anomie⚔ 01:01, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Arjayay. Is AnomieBOT the only bot that does this, I think I may have seen at least one other bot name, B-bot? Any idea why a particular task would go to a particular bot? Greg Dahlen (talk) 20:34, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

SmackBot (talk · contribs) used to do this, as did Helpful Pixie Bot (talk · contribs). But both are now banned. There may be others which date maintenance tags. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:49, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Strange change to named references

I just noticed, that User:AnomieBOT has made this strange change to my page: [[2]]. Effectively for some reason it replaced my nice and compact named reverences with the full body of the reference, which makes my wikitext very cluttered and unreadable. What is the reason for such change? I consider this to be a very negative change.Ev2geny (talk) 14:05, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

This attempted fix removed the "can't have both" comment that was preventing the incorrectly-closed comment a few lines earlier from hiding the rest of the article, leading to this. Since that comment is now fixed, you should be able to revert the bot's edit without ill effect; unfortunately you'll have to do it manually since subsequent edits mean a simple undo won't work.

Also, BTW, it's not your page. Anomie⚔ 15:19, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

I also went ahead and adjusted the bot to not edit pages that end in an unclosed comment when that comment contains a <ref>, to try to avoid such things in the future. Anomie⚔ 15:19, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Archiving malfunction at WP:ITN/C?

The oldest day section of Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates is not archived. A newest day section is not added. Shall the bot be shut down and then fixed? --George Ho (talk) 03:27, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Task is stuck. Will restart. Anomie⚔ 22:52, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Bot breaking citations.

I've found it that it put randomly a .F2 in some links breaking it. Please test your bot better before releasing it. --Baldusi (talk) 06:55, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

I retract. I see where the bug is. I had made a typo and double slashed a reference that doesn't uses quotations (which I understand is perfectly legal not to quote the ref name). So it looked something like this ''<ref name=foo //>'' and your bot "corrected it" as ''<ref name="foo /"/>'', which the markup reads it as new reference named foo_.2F. I hope you can correct that bug.Baldusi (talk) 07:15, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Did this bug report included enough information to solve the bug?Baldusi (talk) 22:36, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Trans-Pacific Partnership

Hi Anomie⚔ . I am working on the references etc on this article and I was adding more content with page number citations from this reference. I wanted to change the ref name from <ref name="2005"> to <ref name="NZ_MFAT_2005">. I checked to see if there was any other citation using the former, and as there was not, I went ahead. The bot saw this as an error. I am working on that para now and didn't want this edit to look like an edit conflict. Can I go ahead now and rename it? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oceanflynn (talk • contribs) 13:50, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Feel free to override whatever the bot might do, if you can fix it in a better way. Without links to the specific diffs in question, I can't speak to the specific situation. Anomie⚔ 02:24, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Color Contrast issue at WP:BAG/Status

At WP:BAG/Status, blue is used as the background color for a completed trial (hex code #0000ff). When the default black is used in the foreground (hex code #000000), this creates a very difficult to see cell. The contrast ratio, as judged by this tool is only 2.44. This is not WCAG 2 AA or AAA compliant, which is generally desirable as per WP:CONTRAST. Is there any way that color could be changed somewhat? A possible replacement color that is AAA compliant would be #88AAFF, which produces more of a periwinkle (example). I'm not sure if this is a discussion I should take elsewhere, and if so, where it should go. If you think this is worth addressing on a relevant talk page before doing, could you suggest the best location to carry out that discussion? Thanks for your help! ~ Rob^Talk 18:03, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Colors munged. Anomie⚔ 02:23, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

template:+r

We need the bot to stop modifying template:+r. --Jax 0677 (talk) 03:28, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I see no way that should be happening in the first place, but I've added some code to double- and triple-check. Anomie⚔ 20:11, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

After further review, maybe it's coming from the bot trying to resolve 500 redirects at a time when it happened to get logged out (and therefore the limit is 50). Adjusted code to avoid that, too. Anomie⚔ 21:09, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Maybe fix instead of add?

Check this edit please. Maybe when finding something like "date-May 2015" change it to "date=May 2015"? -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:12, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

The problem is that "something like" is extremely vague. Is "date-" common enough to be worth checking for? Anomie⚔ 21:16, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Maintenance tags

Why is the bot's maintenance tag dater edit sometimes 20 minutes and sometimes 2 hours after the previous edit? GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 22:35, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

The bot has two arbitrary edit-count thresholds: under 1000 is considered "untrusted", over 2000 is considered "trusted", and in between is "neutral". Also all bots are "neutral", sysops and reviewers are "trusted", and IPs are "untrusted". If the most recent non-neutral is "untrusted" it waits longer to give human RC patrollers more of a chance to check for vandalism before the bot's edit gets in the way. "Trusted" exists in the hope that those users already checked for vandalism. Anomie⚔ 03:18, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Is your bot broken?

Your bot is rolling back actual edits and not vandalism. Mug_shot_publishing_industry[3] Mugshots⚔ 08:55, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @Mugshots: This is the AnomieBOT edit - all it did was add a missing |date= parameter. Are you thinking of this edit? It was made by Valereee (talk · contribs). --Redrose64 (talk) 22:05, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

No, this one. [4]. but, you're right it was Valereee (talk · contribs) who removed my sourced content. Thanks & sorry to bother you! Mugshots (talk) 22:13, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

@Mugshots: The edits that you link were made by Dsprc (talk · contribs) - it says so upper right; and they added content, none was removed. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:23, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm just learning all of this. I finally tracked it down. Here [5] is where Valereee (talk · contribs) deletes two states of legislation etc that I added. Thanks again! Mugshots (talk) 22:28, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thank you. FemtoTaz (talk) 02:20, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Misplaced comment (moved from top)

Don't know how to contact you but re Robbie Williams. Needs updating. Wasn't born in stoke on trent well he was but town is actually Burslem. Also Port Vale not in Stoke on Trent that's also in Burslem which is a town within the city of Stoke on Trent I know as I live in town by Robbie so please change as it's wrong. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.249.99.136 (talk) 09:19, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Your concerns would be better placed on the talk page of the article in question, or on the talk page of a human user involved in the article. Anomie⚔ 10:21, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

User:AnomieBOT/SPERTable not updating?

User:AnomieBOT/SPERTable last updated at 19.54 yesterday, 27 August - over 25 hours ago - as this page usually has about 42-45 updates/day I suspect something has broken, rather than that nobody has made a semi-protected edit request in the last 25 hours? - Arjayay (talk) 21:09, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

The other two - User:AnomieBOT/TPERTable and User:AnomieBOT/PERTable - are still updating. Arjayay - if you want an up-to-date list, at the top of User:AnomieBOT/SPERTable is a link semi-protected edit requests. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:01, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately I can't look into it now since Labs is down. Anomie⚔ 13:14, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Needed an update for gerrit:223440. Anomie⚔ 15:17, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Raptor Rocket Engine page, about rescuing removed refs to invalid links

Hi. On 20 August, I removed 3 references which had invalid links. I checked on the following references and found them to be redirected to hobbyspace.com/blog address:

"Long term SpaceX vehicle plans" - [6] -Retrieved 2009-07-13

"Notes: Space Access'11: Thurs. - Afternoon session - Part 2: SpaceX"- [7] RLV and Space Transport News. 2011-04-07. Retrieved 2011-04-08

"SpaceX Raptor LH2/LOX engine" - [8] RLV and Space Transport News. 2011-08-08. Retrieved 2011-08-09.

I followed up with HobbySpace publisher and editor Mr. Clark Lindsey about the links. He told me that old RLV News blog pages are no longer available for free. So Even if we put the new links, only people with a kind of subscription to NewSpaceGlobal.com will be able to access the pages. As a result of this investigation I wrote this explanation to the talk page and removed these 3 references. I put citation templates instead. But during the same day, 20 August; these 3 references are brought back by AnomieBOT. Please remove these references from Raptor rocket engine page. My Regards. --Guyver (talk) 12:17, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

You need to remove all copies of the named reference, not just the one containing the reference contents. Look for the in the references list when you preview your edit trying to remove the references. Anomie⚔ 23:39, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I will fix it as you instructed. --Guyver (talk) 10:02, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Replace the Portal:Current events transclusion with links in ITNCArchiver

On certain browsers such as Firefox, having 8 collapsible boxes makes jumping to sections unreliable. The browser scrolls down to the section before the boxes are collapsed and ends up being in the wrong location once the page has finished changing.

It has been proposed to replace the collapsed transclusions by simple links. I've done a few tests, which seems to fix the issue. Although not many users participated to the discussion, I'm assuming that it's because most of them don't care. I also don't think the P:CE sections are relevant to ITN/C.

Therefore, I'm proposing a change to ITNCArchiver.pm, where body on line 113 changes from:

"{{cot|[[Portal:Current events/$dt]]}}\n{|{{Portal:Current events/$dt}}\n{{cob}}\n----\n<!-- Insert new nominations below this line -->\n"

to

"{{right|''[[Portal:Current events/$dt|Current events]], [[Deaths_in_$y#$d|Recent deaths]]''}}\n<!-- Insert new nominations below this line -->\n\n"

In case I made a mistake while checking the variables:

• $dt should be today's date as "Y B d", appropriate for P:CE's subpages ("2015 September 1");
• $y should be the current year with 4 digits (2015); and
• $d should be the current day of the month without leading zeros.

This would give the following markup:

{{right|''[[Portal:Current events/2015 September 1|Current events]], [[Deaths_in_2015#1|Recent deaths]]''}}\n<!-- Insert new nominations below this line -->\n\n

and would look like this:

Current events, Recent deaths

I've removed the unnecessary horizontal rule and added a second newline at the end. This is because when the section is empty, the floating links will clip the horizontal rule below the previous day's header.

I've floated it to the right because 1) I don't think it's relevant to ITN/C, so it doesn't need to be prominent; and 2) I'm trying to cut down on vertical space because the page is long enough as it is. I've also added a link to the recent deaths page, because why not. It also makes it a bit clearer that these are links instead of just seeing a weird "Current events" on the right side.

I've linked to this discussion from the ITN/C talk page. Isa (talk) 16:47, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

It looks like keeping any of the collapsed sections is going to give issues on Firefox. Personally, when I encounter this issue I just Ctrl+L then hit Enter to get the browser to re-jump to the anchor. Anomie⚔ 23:45, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Since this doesn't seem to actually be fixing anything, I'm withdrawing the proposal. Isa (talk) 22:36, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Welcome template and article space

The bot messed up see this diff. An inexperienced editor, using a source called "The Most Strange Discoverie of the Three Witches of Warboys " by Anon (1593), made a number of edits to Henry Williams (alias Cromwell) which were not formatted correctly. Instead of using <ref>{{harvnb|Anon|1593}}</ref> the editor used <ref>{{Anon|1593}}</ref>. You need to alter your bot so that it does not add the {{Welcome}} template to anything outside the [[user talk:]] namespace so this type of error can not happen again. -- PBS (talk) 06:59, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

AnomieBOT never adds {{Welcome}}. As you noted, it was an inexperienced editor who did that. Anomie⚔ 11:34, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Bot not consistently removing flag icons

Hi Anomie,

Re. this edit, your bot removed the flag for India, which used the {{flag}} template, but left the one for Pakistan, which uses the {{PAK}} template. Is it too much to ask that the bot handle all flag icons equally? (I mean that as an honest question, though reading it back I can see it might sound snarky.) — kwami (talk) 06:04, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

It looks like User:SiBr4 recently moved a lot of templates like that from Category:Flag templates to Category:Flag template shorthands, so the bot didn't know they existed anymore. I've updated the bot to look in the new category so it will now find them again. (Yeah, that did sound snarky. I forgive you.) Anomie⚔ 11:58, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I meant, is it too much bother to add the coding for all those templates. They're the reason I don't just use AWB to do this. — kwami (talk) 21:27, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Archiving at WP:DSI

Hi, AnomieBOT seems to be missing a couple of closed AfDs quite regularly at WP:DSI, not sure why (I checked to see if this was closed properly and can't find anything wrong there), could you check please? —SpacemanSpiff 04:50, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

It was looking for transclusions of "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Foo", not realizing that "WP:Articles for deletion/Foo" was the same thing. Fixed. Anomie⚔ 17:54, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, the page spans fewer mouse scrolls now! —SpacemanSpiff 19:19, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Citation needed

Hi I recently requested for citation for Rabindranath Tagore & Bengalis. You edited both- thank you. Few hours ago though an editor dismissed our idea of requesting for citation.

I think it's a good thing that we seek for more citation not less to make our Wikipedia more reliable and scholarly.

What's your idea on this? If you think along the same line how can we explain other editors about the necessity of more citation?

I appreciate your cooperation. Thanks. Shoshanko (talk) 00:42, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

AnomieBOT is a computer program that, among other things, adds dates to various maintenance tags. As a computer program, it has no ideas. Anomie⚔ 12:41, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Category:Articles with unsourced statements from July 2,015

In these three edits:- [9] - [10] - [11] - when adding the date to a citation needed template AnomieBOT added Category:Articles with unsourced statements from July 2,015 to the articles as well.
This is a non-existant category - hence the redlink - and is not a standard category in the article's edit page, so cannot simply be deleted (I suspect it is a hidden category, but don't know how to find/delete those).
In all 3 cases this occurred after a previous CN tag date, leading to earlier bad categories, Category:Articles with unsourced statements from April 2,013 or Category:Articles with unsourced statements from August 2,014 had been deleted - twice deliberately, to try and overcome the problem, and once accidentally, as part of another edit.
I have just tried again at Chitral - in case this problem had been resolved - but along with dating the CN tag, AnomieBOT has added Category:Articles with unsourced statements from September 2,015 to the bottom of that page.
How can these "bad categories" be stopped from appearing in the three current articles? - and presumably several more dates in other, as yet unlocated, articles ? - Arjayay (talk) 14:34, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

The problem is that these fields that format the numbers with commas may not contain maintenance templates. Editors should use the corresponding field that's intended for citations, such as |population_footnotes= and |area_footnote=. Note also that trying to code all these parameter correspondences into AnomieBOT would probably be a losing battle. Anomie⚔ 20:52, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Sorry I have no idea what you are trying to say. Editors are not adding these categories - the bot is, and they are not categories that appear in the edit page, so cannot be deleted. I repeat my question "How can these "bad categories" be stopped from appearing" ? - Arjayay (talk) 20:20, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Editors are putting the maintenance templates into infobox fields that do not support such templates. Put the maintenance templates in the correct infobox fields instead (the same fields that would be used for the references).

The bot isn't adding any categories either, it's just applying the required date parameter to the maintenance templates that human editors have added. Anomie⚔ 22:56, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Incorrect "speedy" tag

AnomieBOT incorrectly tagged National Postcard Week as having been speedied, while it was actually relisted twice and deleted due to poor content. --Slashme (talk) 19:58, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

The closure at the top of the AfD you link says "The result was speedy delete", which is what AnomieBOT copies. Anomie⚔ 22:24, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Ref naming error

In this edit, AnomieBOT removed this (see near the bottom of the diff):

ref name=""rtbookreviews2006

It would be helpful to instead have it fix the typo by moving the ref name inside the quotes like this:

ref name="rtbookreviews2006"

This would be a nice fix if it could be implemented as I'm sure there are plenty of instances like this. Thanks for the hard work! ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 22:49, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your help at Lac-Mégantic rail disaster

		The Original Barnstar
		For keeping track of and rescuing refs as I split Lac-Mégantic rail disaster - Thank you! -- Badger151 (talk) 14:21, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

TagDater MIA?

I was lazy and didn't date a {{cn}}, but you weren't as quick as usual to tag it. So I checked and see the task is "job missing". Does your human need to intervene? Come to that, does anyone get an alert when that happens? David Brooks (talk) 23:51, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Restarted. No alert, but I check it at least every weekday morning. Anomie⚔ 01:00, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Minor barnstar
	For always cleaning up after me when I nuke articles and make them better. Buffaboy talk 00:51, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Incorrect peacock tag?

I just visited the Freedom of religion article and noticed the 'Peacock term' tag on the word 'fundamental' in the sentence "The freedom to leave or discontinue membership in a religion ... is also a fundamental part of religious freedom...". I think the tag was added by this bot. As I understand it, 'fundamental' is being used here in its literal sense, to describe an attribute of religious freedom which is required (i.e. if it's missing, then it's not religious freedom). As a general reader, I found the word helpful. In any case, I don't think it qualifies as a peacock term as described by the manual of style.

I was going to correct it myself on the page, but I'm not sure about the status of bot corrections - and whether bots simply reinstate their edits. In any case, if I'm right and the bot is being over-enthusiastic, then other pages may have been affected. Phil Smith (talk) 16:31, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

As noted in the edit notice for this page, AnomieBOT does not add maintenance tags to articles. It only dates tags added by other editors. In this case the tag was added by Mr. Guye in this edit. Anomie⚔ 01:08, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification (and apologies for missing the edit notice). I'll go ahead and correct it. Phil Smith (talk) 08:21, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you

I was not sure how to date the tag.--Crouchbk (talk) 00:35, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Technical Barnstar
	This bot is AMAZINGLY programmed! I just CANNOT believe that this is nearly flawless and has made many edits that no bot would do. I would, if I had bot rights, make a bot to regularly give an Original Barnstar to a random person once every 24 hours. OmegaBuddy13 (talk) 21:11, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Diplomacy
	Thankyou for your edits in this article. International Editor Shah (talk) 16:45, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Odd bot-deletion

Anomie, please have a look at this why your bot deleted Wikipedia:RCAPS (which I restored). Thanks, Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:43, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Because the wikitext was #REDIRECT[[#REDIRECT [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Common outcomes#Capitalization differences]]. Anomie⚔ 00:20, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

AnomieBOT is hiding valid text with needed ref fix

Hello, this page [[Michael Laucke]] has a broken named ref (ref name=":13") but AnomieBOT is wrapping a new ref around some needed body text when it fixes the ref. Here is the diff. The ref is definitely broken, but the BOT is not fixing it properly. Just so you know. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 05:25, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

The bot seems to be doing a decent job in that edit. Your "fix" a few edits earlier seems to have broken things. Anomie⚔ 00:27, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Notice of upcoming merge of WP:FFD and WP:NFCR into a new forum called Wikipedia:Files for discussion

@Anomie: There has been consensus to move Wikipedia:Files for deletion to Wikipedia:Files for discussion. Part of this consensus includes merging the functionality of Wikipedia:Non-free content review into this page. Consensus for this change can be found here (on WP:VPPROP). (This notice has been placed here instead of making an immediate change; this change directly affects AnomieBOT since it maintains Wikipedia:Files for deletion.) Steel1943 (talk) 22:28, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Sigh. I'll have to find time to look at exactly what needs changing. Anomie⚔ 22:27, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

@Anomie: I understand that reprogramming a bot's task takes time, but in the meantime, I was wondering if you may be able to answer this question so I can start doing some stuff behind the scenes without worry: If I were to rename Wikipedia:Files for deletion to Wikipedia:Files for discussion (the basepage, not discussing the daily subpages right now), will AnomieBOT place the daily entry transclusions on Wikipedia:Files for discussion or will it overwrite the leftover redirect at Wikipedia:Files for deletion? Steel1943 (talk) 22:44, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

At a glance, it looks like the bot will follow redirects if they exist. But it will still create the daily pages as subpages of Wikipedia:Files for deletion, even if that is a redirect. Anomie⚔ 22:55, 28 October 2015 (UTC)