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	Automatic NOGALLERY keyword for categories containing non-free files (again)		20	9	Thryduulf	2024-08-03 10:13	Legoktm	2024-06-24 01:34
2	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
3	Bot to update match reports to cite template	BRFA filed	14	5	Yoblyblob	2024-06-20 21:21	Mdann52	2024-06-20 21:11
4	Bot to mass tag California State University sports seasons	Doing...	5	4	Frostly	2024-06-10 17:05	Headbomb	2024-06-09 17:28
5	Clear Category:Unlinked Wikidata redirects		9	6	Wikiwerner	2024-07-13 14:04	DreamRimmer	2024-04-21 03:28
6	Fixing stub tag placement on new articles	Not a good task for a bot.	5	4	Tom.Reding	2024-07-16 08:10	Tom.Reding	2024-07-16 08:10
7	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
8	Adding Facility IDs to AM/FM/LPFM station data	Y Done	13	3	HouseBlaster	2024-07-25 12:42	Mdann52	2024-07-25 05:23
9	Tagging women's basketball article talk pages with project tags	BRFA filed	15	4	Hmlarson	2024-07-18 17:13	Usernamekiran	2024-07-18 17:10
10	Adding links to previous TFDs		7	4	Qwerfjkl	2024-06-20 18:02	Qwerfjkl	2024-06-20 18:02
11	Bot that condenses identical references	Coding...	12	6	ActivelyDisinterested	2024-08-03 20:48	Headbomb	2024-06-18 00:34
12	Convert external links within {{Music ratings}} to refs		2	2	Mdann52	2024-06-23 10:11	Mdann52	2024-06-23 10:11
13	Stat.kg ---> Stat.gov.kg		2	2	DreamRimmer	2024-06-23 09:21	DreamRimmer	2024-06-23 09:21
14	Add constituency numbers to Indian assembly constituency boxes		3	2	C1MM	2024-06-25 03:59	Primefac	2024-06-25 00:27
15	Bot to remove template from articles it doesn't belong on?		3	3	Thryduulf	2024-08-03 10:22	Primefac	2024-07-24 20:15
16	One-off: Adding all module doc pages to Category:Module documentation pages		6	2	Nickps	2024-07-25 16:02	Primefac	2024-07-25 12:22
17	Draft Categories		7	4	DannyS712	2024-07-27 07:30	DannyS712	2024-07-27 07:30
18	Remove new article comments		3	2	142.113.140.146	2024-07-28 22:33	Usernamekiran	2024-07-27 07:50
19	Removing Template:midsize from infobox parameters (violation of MOS:SMALLFONT)	Resolved	14	2	Qwerfjkl	2024-07-29 08:15	Qwerfjkl	2024-07-29 08:15
20	Change stadium to somerhing else in the template:Infobox Olympic games	Needs wider discussion.	8	5	Jonesey95	2024-07-29 14:57	Primefac	2024-07-29 13:48
21	Change hyphens to en-dashes		16	7	1ctinus	2024-08-03 15:05	Qwerfjkl	2024-07-31 09:09
22	Consensus: Aldo, Giovanni e Giacomo		15	4	Bsoyka	2024-08-02 20:48	Qwerfjkl	2024-08-02 20:23

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Bot for creating name redirects

I very often come across situations like the one I just did at Vanessa C. Tyson, where the middle name (Catherine) is given right in bold at the start of the article but the redirect from Vanessa Catherine Tyson has not been created. Sometimes there are other variations of this situation, such as if the redirect from Vanessa Tyson hadn't been created, or if the page was located at "Vanessa Tyson" but the redirect from "Vanessa C. Tyson" wasn't created. I don't expect a bot to be able to fix all of these, as in some cases there could be disambiguation concerns, but for many many situations, it should be possible for the bot to determine that only one notable person has a name and create redirects accordingly. Could we do that, and have it tag with {{r from short name}} and {{r from long name}} as needed? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:31, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm just wondering: Why isn't there a semi-auto, human-in-the-loop system for tasks that might be sensitive to context and false positives like this? Having the bot find all the needed changes and apply them with approval would still save a ton of work from having humans do all the changes manually. Intralexical (talk) 12:28, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

We have WP:AWB and WP:JWB. They can accept or create a page list and suggest methodical changes to each page on the list. For example, I recently used JWB to change links to the ambiguous term Qu'Appelle. For the 90% about Regina—Qu'Appelle I just clicked Save; for the few exceptions I typed a better link in manually. Certes (talk) 12:45, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I think data quality is a big concern here. It's well documented that middle names, birthdates, etc will often get added to biographies with no sourcing (or unacceptable sourcing) and persist for a very long time. A lot of them will turn out to be completely bogus, too! On the other hand, I think the idea of automatic name redirects for biographies with middle names has some potential. For example, if Vanessa C. Tyson didn't exist, there was no disambig at Vanessa Tyson, and no other articles were titled "Vanessa * Tyson", it would be helpful to make the redirect (or at least flag it for creation). jp×g 22:54, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

That is how the Order of the Companions of OR Tambo in Gold became awarded to Joseph Sepp Bellend Blatter.[1] Thincat (talk) 20:20, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Quasi-arbitrary break

So with some generous help from Cryptic at the query request page, we now have a list of articles of people located at titles with a middle initial, but for whom there is no redirect from the title without an initial and for whom no one else shares their first and last name. See sample of results at this list. I'm struggling to find a way to go through that list to create the redirects with AWB, though—I'd need to start from the list of redlinks without the initial to create them, and doing that loses the information on what the middle initial is. So I'm thinking this might have to be done some other way. Would anyone who can code be interested in taking this up? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:41, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: I think I could do this. Here's my understanding of what should happen while iterating over some list of pages:

• Do some sanity checks (possibly):
  • Check that the title can be parsed as "[first] [initial]. [last]"
  • Check that "[first] [last]" does not exist (especially if some time has passed since generation of the list)
  • Perhaps check the defaultsort:
    • If it's of the form "[last], [first] [initial]", proceed
    • If it's of the form "[last], [first] [initial].", remove the period and proceed
    • If it's different, log it and don't create the redirect
    • If there is none, either proceed or just log it (to be determined based on how many of these should have redirects)
• If everything is fine, create a new redirect to that page, preferably with pre-determined rcat(s)

Does this seem correct? Tol (talk | contribs) @ 01:52, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

@Tol, yes, that sounds good! For rcats, I think {{R from short name}} is presumably the one (or maybe {{R from alternative name}}). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:11, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Alright; I'll work on it! I don't know if the redirects should have defaultsorts — I know redirects should have them if they are from a person's name to a page that includes or is related to that person, but I don't know about redirects from a different name (in this case, without the initial). And if there was a defaultsort, would it include the initial? Tol (talk | contribs) @ 19:26, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not overly familiar with defaultsorts. My understanding is that it's best when they are complete as possible, e.g. "Smith, Jane Quincy" rather than just "Smith, Jane Q.". This would help in the rare circumstance that multiple articles have the same "Smith, Jane Q..." defaultsort. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:31, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Agreed, but that makes it even more complicated. I don't think defaultsorts would be needed, because they wouldn't be redirects to a related topic (person to related topic) but rather alternative names, and so probably shouldn't be categorised. I don't know if sort order is needed in rcat categories. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 19:50, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Yep, doing the basics for defaultsort should be plenty good enough. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:09, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: The BRFA is here. I haven't transcluded it yet, because I'm still calculating the number of pages. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 03:44, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I transcluded the BRFA a few days ago. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 04:02, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Categorising redirects

Hi, I presume this has been requested previously, but is there any reason why a bot couldn't categorise redirects? I think at least {{R to diacritic}}/{{R from diacritic}} could be done, maybe {{R to section}} and {{R to anchor}}. Some more can also probably be used, but I can't think of them. ― Qwerfjkltalk 22:01, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Quite a few redirect templates could be added, preferably within {{Rcat shell}}. Others are tempting but probably best left to humans, e.g. deciding between {{R from other capitalisation}} and {{R from miscapitalisation}}. This does sound like a perennial request but I can't find previous discussions. WP:WikiProject Redirect may be more helpful. Certes (talk) 00:29, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: AWB's general fixes include a Redirect tagger which could be run as a bot. If you could point to a conversation where there in consensus to run it as a bot, I'd submit the BRFA. GoingBatty (talk) 15:27, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't recall such a conversation happening, but Paine Ellsworth is always my go-to person for institutional knowledge about redirect categorisation. Off the top of my head, I don't have any problem with a bot doing some categorisation - {{R to section}}, the diacritic ones and to/from ligature being examples of where human judgement is not really required. {{R from alternative language}} may be possible where the term is used inside an e.g. {{lang-de}} template at the target. {{R from unnecessary disambiguation}} could also be done where the redirect ends with a term in parenthesis and targets a page that is identically named other than that parenthetical (e.g. "Foo (bar)" → "Foo"). There may be others too, but that's the sort of thing that would be best left to a second discussion if there is consensus for the general principle here. Thryduulf (talk) 12:26, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, Thryduulf, for the ping. There is uncertainty regarding the use of bots to categorize redirects; however, I think it's a really grand idea! When I think of the enormity of the task to find and sort each and every redirect that already exists, as well as all the new redirects that are made everyday by editors who are unfamiliar with categorization and so leave it to someone else, the task really screams for bot involvement. Since I've never been involved with bot usage, and my experience only includes limited AWB usage, I really don't have the words to ask for a new bot or an existing bot to handle such a complicated task. Is there a bot that can sense diacritics? That could be either a "from" or "to" situation. Can a bot sense a redirect to a section? I honestly don't know the answer. I would hope the answer is "yes", because I don't know how much longer I'll be around to help with redirect categorization, which has been my pet project since even before I first registered. Yes, a bot would be a dream come true. I'm just not sure there's a bot that can do the job correctly. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 13:09, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

This seems like a good area for a bot. Howevever, there's one relevant issue that I can think of. A regular editor can move a page over a redirect only if that redirect has no more than a single edit in its history. This means that if all redirects out there got edited now (for rcats or for something else), then regular editors won't be able to perform moves over these redirects. This will incur some maintenance costs (more work for WP:RMT, more cleanup after cut-and-paste moves) and I really have no idea if they'll be outweighed by the benefits of having more thorough redirect categorisation. I imagine there should ultimately be a technical fix for the problem (like excluding bot edits from counting, and that's independently desirable because of the bots that fix double redirect). Regardless, that will obviously not be an issue for redirects that aren't suitable as article titles and so would never get moved over. – Uanfala (talk) 00:12, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Ideally, we should be allowed to move page A over page B with any number of revisions if all revisions of B are redirects to A, whether produced by bot or human, but that might require awkward software changes. Bonus points for allowing revisions of B which are redirects to C, where C also redirects to A, though that might be gamed. Certes (talk) 00:24, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

US Census Bot needed

I think we need a census bot for the US census, to allow for automated updates every 10 years, for all the census designated places in the US that are also in Wikipedia. I have no idea how to go about making any of that happen, but it is definitely something to consider doing, and while we're at it, we can figure out how to use reliable external sources for other population data that is periodically revised by the authoritative source that a bot can then go about and update the data in WP. Hires an editor (talk) 02:23, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

@Hires an editor: I suggest only approving a bot for each census, since a lot could change in the 10 years between censuses. GoingBatty (talk) 02:31, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Adding a category to 1000 sub-modules of Module:Adjacent stations

There are around 1000 sub-modules of Module:Adjacent stations which aren't categorized and should be added to Category:Rail transport succession modules (inside the Sandbox other template so only the module itself will be in the category). Could someone help me with a bot? Gonnym (talk) 10:38, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Just to double-check, the category would go on the /doc of each sub-module, wrapped in <includeonly>...</includeonly> tags, yes? Primefac (talk) 10:46, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I thought /doc part was clear. And yes, they are surrounded by includeonly tags, but more specicially with the {{Sandbox other}} as well. See the result of the create doc at Module:Adjacent stations/Echigo. Gonnym (talk) 10:49, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry, I totally misread your initial statement, asked a really dumb question, then realised my mistake and re-worded my reply in a subsequent edit. I can put through a BRFA. Primefac (talk) 10:53, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Happens to all of us :) and thanks! Gonnym (talk) 10:54, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Bot for linking redirects to Wikidata items

There are a large number of items on Wikidata which aren't notable enough to have a Wikipedia article in their own right, but are notable enough to be given a redirect here. Normally, I'd just do this from the Wikidata side, but the Mediawiki software treats redirect pages on other Wikis as their target when doing sitelinks. However, if a page is made into a redirect page after being connected to a Wikidata item, the Wikidata item will retain the original sitelink. This means that the current approved method for linking pre-existing redirect pages is a 3-stage process of (1) editing out the redirect on the target Wiki, (2) adding the sitelink to the Wikidata item, then (3) restoring the redirect. This is obviously very tedious.

The testbed I had in mind for this was the currently existing 6,400 redirect pages for each private use character in the Unicode block "Private Use Area" (e.g. , ,  etc.). They all redirect to Private Use Areas, and I imagine see almost no use. I'd also update them with Template:Wikidata redirect. I can see this having future application in certain lists, for example. --Theknightwho (talk) 06:33, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Fixing phab:T54564 would be a better solution, but it's been open for five years. Certes (talk) 12:31, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Way beyond my skillset, I'm afraid. One of my suggestions on the Village Pump recently turned out to be an idea that's been open since 2006, so I think there may be a bit of a backlog. Theknightwho (talk) 17:07, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

At the risk of being controversial, there's a real need for the WMF to divert 0.1% of the cash raised by their advert calendar to technical fixes and enhancements. Certes (talk) 22:47, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree. In any event, am I okay to get approval for this in the meantime? There's no net change from the WP side of things. Theknightwho (talk) 14:58, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Edit filtersBot for requested articles pages

• Task: Prevent (by denyingreverting the edit [or removing the offending links, though this might be more complex for little gain]) the addition of self-published and social media pages specifically to pages like Wikipedia:Requested articles/music/Performers, bands and songwriters (probably a good idea for every sub-page of Wikipedia:Requested articles). Examples of such sites include links to "bandcamp.com", instagram, facebook, any blog/wordpress/blogspot link, ...
• Reason: The criteria are very simple, in that, like every article on Wikipedia, requests for articles need to be accompanied with independent reliable sources. Social media/blogs/whatever are not independent reliable sources, and, while they might be useful for some stuff on the ultimate final article, they are simply useless fluff on the requests page.
• Diffs: Unnecessary, but here's an example of the kind of removal and waste of editor time that this creates.

• On another tangent, it might be simply a better idea to just get rid of the requested articles pages with more obvious potential for self-promotional attempts, but that's another issue, which I'm not willing to start exploring now. In the meantime, this would be a decent first step.

RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:12, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Filters run on every page so I don't think this is an appropriate use of the filter. Suggest using a bot to manage a single page. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:17, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: I don't know how efficient it is, but it is possible to specify page_title or page_prefixedtitle in a filter, i.e. pseudo-code:

if (page_prefixedtitle == "Requested articles") { //regex for links }

RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:27, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Yeah but it'll still run on every page. See top of page (Filters are applied to all edits. Problematic changes that apply to a single page are likely not suitable for an edit filter. Page protection may be more appropriate in such cases.). If we start doing requests for some pages we'll have no good reason to stop doing them for others, and it'll only get us closer to the limits. I think a bot to revert edits is more desirable for a use case like this. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:29, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: If you say so. My skills with bots are non-existent, so I assume there's also a noticeboard for bot requests somewhere, since I can't quite go to WP:BAG and ask them to create a bot, right? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:38, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Yup! WP:BOTREQ. It shouldn't be difficult to have a bot either listening to recent changes or checking the page at regular intervals. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:39, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Moved from WP:EFR

RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:42, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

This didn't get any response here on this page before getting archived the first time around. Hopefully someone notices? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 04:08, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

@Beetstra: Is this something your bot could handle, presumably starting with logging? Johnuniq (talk) 04:26, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

XLinkBot reverts those: social media in external links, I think bandcamp is one of them (see user:XLinkBot/RevertList), and blogs and similar are in the list of links that XLinkBot tries to detect as references and revert them as such (see User:XLinkBot/RevertReferencesList). I do see that a lot of these still come through though, and see even regulars adding linkfarms of social networking and even trying to defend it. XLinkBot is a nice warning system on newbies, but the rest still requires constant cleanup. Maybe an edit filter with category checking: if this is in category:X AND in category:Y then warn/block? Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:23, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

If you only want this to run on requested article pages: This could be done easily with a user script that is manually run by the user every once in awhile. I wrote a similar one last year called User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/RequestedArticleSifter.js, which deletes any bullet in Wikipedia:Requested articles/Business and economics/Companies that has less than 2 sources. Adapting it to delete any bullet that contains a blacklisted URL would be simple. Would just need the blacklist. I would support shutting down some of these spammy, unmaintained areas of WP:RA. I've thrown the idea out on a talk page or two, but the talk pages are inactive, and I didn't want to put in the effort/drama of an RFC/MFD. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:00, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

External links on Wikidata

Template:Sports links fetches and displays external links from Wikidata, which is very useful. However, it is underutilized: there are many sportspeople who have external links attached to their Wikidata items, but not the sports links template on their article, so readers are missing out on these links. E.g., George Simond has numerous IDs attached to his Wikidata item that weren't shown on his article until I added the template [2]. Likewise, there are many articles that have one or more site-specific external link templates in their external links sections, but more external links attached to their Wikidata items that would be shown if Template:Sports links was used instead. E.g., Gavorielle Marcu had one external link via Template:ATP on his page [3], but now has 3 after I replaced it with the sports links template [4].

The request is thus to have a bot that generates a list of all articles whose Wikidata items have one or more external IDs fetched by Template:Sports links, and then a) adds an "External links" section (if nonexistent) + Template:Sports links to articles without it, and b) replaces all the site-specific external link templates with Template:Sports links once their data has been imported to Wikidata. Sod25k (talk) 14:39, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Please don't. There are enough issues with this template (see Template talk:Sports links#Questions for a sample of the current issues) that this shouldn't be mass-added or bot-added anywhere. Perhaps an RfC to decide which links to include (if any) should be held first? This template is now used on some 36,000 articles, this proposal would increase this to, what, 10 times as much perhaps? Fram (talk) 15:26, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Have responded to your concerns there, which can be easily resolved by removing the problematic IDs from the list the template fetches. Given it's already heavily used, we should be judicious about which IDs it fetches anyway. Sod25k (talk) 15:50, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

It can be "easily solved" when people actually check and discuss which links to add, and watch the template talk page to solve issues. I looked at some of the links, I have no idea if many of the others I didn't look at are any better. It looks as if the template is used on tens of thousands of pages, but hardly anyone actually cares about these links, as no one else noticed e.g. the ones not working. If so, why would we add it to many more articles? Fram (talk) 16:13, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

The properties you found with broken links - Mackolik.com player ID (P2458), ForaDeJogo player ID (archived) (P3046) & ForaDeJogo manager ID (archived) (P3661) - are used on a combined 6,052 items on Wikidata. However, of the 36,722 articles that transclude {{Sports links}}, only 19 have items with these properties and therefore have them shown with the template, with a median 1 pageview per day. The probability therefore that those specific links a) will be clicked b) by an editor that c) is competent enough to know where/how to ask for the issue to be looked at and d) cares enough to do it, is very low, and so that no one raised those broken links before you doesn't reflect on the overall utility of the template or interest in external sports links across Wikipedia. If the template was used on every sportsperson's article as proposed, I'm sure any new issues that cropped up would be found very quickly. I do agree that the list of properties, originally copied from the Norwegian Wikipedia, should be checked over again. Probably all those that are important enough to have a site-specific template made for them are fine as a start. Sod25k (talk) 17:45, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:LINKFARM is policy. Any bot that indiscriminately adds external links will be blocked. Johnuniq (talk) 22:46, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

The idea is little different to KasparBot 2 & KasparBot, which added {{Authority control}} to pages without it and replaced {{Authority control|id_1=X|id_2=Y|...}} with {{Authority control}} after migrating the IDs to Wikidata. Was that indiscriminately add[ing] external links in your book? Sod25k (talk) 23:35, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

That's known as an other stuff argument which is not persuasive at Wikipedia. Further, adding more external links because some other external links exist is the opposite of what is at WP:EL. Johnuniq (talk) 04:13, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:Otherstuff is for deletion of articles/article content and so not relevant to bots, which are all explicitly approved by the community prior to being run and thus each set a precedent for what the community finds acceptable, but yes, each bot task needs to be considered on its merits. Given 36k pages already use the template (presumably added semi-automatically), with very little feedback one way or the other, this idea appears in practice to be less controversial than it is being made out to be. Again, if there are specific IDs that are deemed not useful, they can be easily be removed from the template (or rather, module). Sod25k (talk) 05:51, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Bot to correct miscategorized sortname redirects.

We generally have sortname redirects such that, e.g., Lincoln, Abraham redirects to Abraham Lincoln. These are categorized with a template like {{R from sort name|L|A}}, which automatically shorts the redirects into categories for sort names starting with "L", and sort names for articles starting with "A".

There are two issues.

First, there is a set of categories for ambiguous sort names, such as Johnson, Bob, redirecting to the disambiguation page Bob Johnson, which would be categorized with the template {{R from ambiguous sort name|J|B}}. Sometimes editors leave out the "ambiguous", or the character of the target page changes so that it was once a specific person, but is now a disambiguation page (or vice versa). It would be useful to have a bot parse the set of sortname redirects to add or remove "ambiguous" as needed.

Second, sometimes the sortkeys get mixed up (i.e., if an editor were to accidentally put {{R from sort name|A|L}} on Lincoln, Abraham). It would be useful to have a bot fix these as well. BD2412 T 21:47, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Notified Wikipedia talk:Redirect and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Redirect. ― Qwerfjkltalk 22:03, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Why do we have separate categories for each letter of the alphabet? A sort name with a given letter of the alphabet is not a defining characteristic, and I cannot imagine why they would need to be diffused. It can't be for size issues, Category:Redirects from moves has 1.8 million redirects in it. I say upmerge each of those single letter categories and save the maintenance burden. A bot run can change the sort keys to the format {{R from sort name|Abraham Lincoln|Lincoln Abraham}} would allow for proper categorization in both the sort name and sort name by article title categories without having to have 26 child categories, allowing for easier navigation. -- Tavix ^(talk) 02:59, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

@Tavix: These are useful to editors who maintain sortname redirects, and require certain nuances that may not be apparent to editors not working in that area. Unlike redirects signifying a page move, which have no commonality other than the move itself (these are automatically generated and give no indication why a move was carried out), merging hundreds of thousands of sort name redirects into a single category would destroy their navigability as sets of names. Specifically, it would mean vastly more loading time to isolate a set of names under a single letter (because programs like AWB would have to load all of the hundreds of thousands of names each time before any parsing could be done). Also, sortnames by target article title can not be merged because we would end up with a category identical to the first—just a list of all the sortname redirects, with no actual parsing. Bear in mind that these are hidden maintenence categories, rather than content categories, per WP:PROJCATS, so "defining characteristic" is not really an applicable concept. BD2412 T 19:27, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Note, also that these are not DEFAULTSORT templates; changing the sort keys to the format {{R from sort name|Abraham Lincoln|Lincoln Abraham}}would make the template try to sort these into a nonexistent Category:Redirects from sort names, A‎braham Lincoln and Category:Redirects from sort names by article title, Lincoln Abraham. BD2412 T 20:14, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Maybe I'm confused why you would need a letter isolated in order to accomplish maintenance? I can only see benefits to maintenance on all sortnames or a single name. If the former, a single category offers much easier maintenance over 26 categories. An AWB run would only need to load one category over 26, which seems like less load time overall. For a single name, if I want to isolate it now, the URL can be hacked to show there are ten redirects with surname Lincoln and I can grab those names and go from there. Navigation is much easier as well: for example, Template:Large category TOC can be employed to easily jump to whichever name you want to isolate, and it wouldn't have to be a name beginning with the same letter. As far as the sort keys, I am suggesting that by updating the template to sort it like DEFAULTSORT (although I don't think it would be called that since there would be two "defaults", one for each parameter), the overall membership of each category would be the same, but they would obviously be sorted differently (one by surname, the other by given name). -- Tavix ^(talk) 21:32, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

You can still do a recursive search of the current category tree, which yields the full set without disturbing the subcategory structure. Suppose, however, that I want to isolate all sortname redirects for which the redirect target has the given named Martin, while excluding cases where Martin is present in the title as a surname or middle name? Being able to start with names sorted into the Category:Redirects from sort names by article title, M makes this much easier. A separate category structure that uses a DEFAULTSORT derived from the name itself could be implemented alongside the existing structure, but that can be done while leaving the existing structure in place. BD2412 T 22:37, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Huh, I had no idea {{R from sort name}} had parameters. For that matter, I didn't know about {{R from ambiguous sort name}}. Correcting one to the other sounds like a good task for a bot, and if the redirect targets a disambiguation page, easy enough. What if it targets a set-index article, though (usually an anthroponymy page)?

Regarding the second issue, how would the bot know if the sortkeys were mixed up? Easy enough for most Western-style names, though offhand I don't know how often we use these templates for other names. --BDD (talk) 15:35, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

@BDD: The sortkeys are fairly straightforward in that the first is supposed to match the first letter of the redirect, and the second is supposed to match the title of the target article. For example, the sortname for Xi Jinping is literally Xi, Jinping, and should be sorted into "X" for both parameters (I just fixed this one, because the "article title" parameter was set to J, which is obviously not the first letter of the article title). Unfortunately, the various peculiarites of human names make it so that we can't have bots create sortnames in the first place, but they can fix these rule-bound parameters. As far as I know, set indexes for full human names are rare enough that I don't worry about them. If there were enough, it might be worth making a rule to sort them into the ambiguous categories (which would not have the same external effect as tagging them as actual disambiguation pages), so that it is clear that these are not redirects to specific individuals. BD2412 T 19:48, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! Duh, now that I think about it, a set-index article about a full name would be quite rare. --BDD (talk) 20:24, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

We do have pages for people with names like Abdul Malik or Anne-Marie (given name), where the double-barrelled name could be mistaken for a given name and surname, but there is nothing to sort in those cases. I note that Mary Ann is a disambiguation page, and a bit of a mess. BD2412 T 20:30, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Putting aside philosophical questions of how sortname redirects should be categorized, I'd really rather not have to hand-fix the ambiguous ones, but I can do so if nothing is forthcoming from this request. BD2412 T 04:54, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412, would it be possible to code some of this function into the template itself? I think the Template:R from sort name categorisation could be easily done using a module. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 05:38, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

It is possible that the alphabetical issues could be done this way, since the page basically knows its own name and knows the name of the target at which it is pointed. My primary concern, actually, is making sure ambiguous target pages are categorized as ambiguous sortnames (and unambiguous target pages are categorized as regular sortnames). This gets complicated by the fact that sometimes the nature of the target gets changed over time. I don't know that the module can recognize that characteristic. BD2412 T 05:42, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412: Hmm. I agree — I don't know of a way to figure out if a page is a disambiguation page. I have an idea, but it's a little complicated. I'll test it now and get back to you. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 21:59, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

If a list can be generated of sortname redirects targeting disambiguation pages, that should be enough to go on for the project. BD2412 T 22:03, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@Tol: All disambiguation pages are in Category:All article disambiguation pages. People's names would be in Category:Human name disambiguation pages. Hope this helps! GoingBatty (talk) 22:20, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@GoingBatty, I know — however, I don't know of any easy way to check categorisation in a module. I'm using the presence of the __DISAMBIG__ magic word in the wikitext to determine if it's a disambiguation page. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 00:35, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Alright, @BD2412. Template:R from sort name/sandbox uses Module:R from sort name to automatically determine whether the redirect is to a disambiguation page, choose the correct template, and categorise the redirect. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 04:46, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@Tol: Is this automatic? In other words, the existing {{R from sort name}} operation is changed to this, and it will automagically sort out all of the existing disambiguation pages into the {{R from ambiguous sort name}} categories? Do the existing {{R from ambiguous sort name}} templates need to be switched out for {{R from sort name}}? That would not be a problem, mind you. BD2412 T 05:02, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412: Yes, this should sort all redirects to disambiguation pages into ambiguous sort name categories. I would prefer if Template:R from ambiguous sort name was moved over Template:R from sort name/ambiguous (because, were this to be implemented, it would be 'part of' Template:R from sort name) and then redirected to Template:R from sort name to let it do the automatic detection. This would probably need a TfD or some wider discussion, perhaps at WikiProject Redirect. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 15:53, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@Tol: I went ahead and swapped Template:R from ambiguous sort name with Template:R from sort name/ambiguous. I created it, I can pull it assunder. BD2412 T 16:08, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412: Alright then. (Just so you know, you didn't need to swap them — because Template:R from sort name/ambiguous was a single-revision redirect to Template:R from ambiguous sort name, the latter can be moved over the former, deleting the redirect, by any (autoconfirmed?) user.) I've been testing edge cases, and I just noticed that the module doesn't take care of non-standard letters (such as in Álvarez, Antonio, which it categorises in Category:Redirects from ambiguous sort names, Á). I don't know if this can be handled automatically, but I'll try. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 16:45, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

There are, fortunately, a finite number of those that come up. If there's a list, I can just redirect the category names. BD2412 T 16:49, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

It was no problem, @BD2412. I used Module:Latin to remove diacritics, and now it works as it should. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 17:16, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I confer upon you the rank of master. BD2412 T 18:05, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

BD2412: Haha, thanks. I don't see any other problems, and plan to update Template:R from sort name from the sandbox after I've done a check to make sure that all titles will be correctly categorised. Do you have any objections to updating the template? Tol (talk | contribs) @ 21:20, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

No objection, let's do it. To be clear, should existing instances of {{R from ambiguous sort name}} be replaced with {{R from sort name}}? BD2412 T 23:48, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412: I was thinking to redirect Template:R from ambiguous sort name to Template:R from sort name, so that all current and future transclusions are redirected and automatically taken care of. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 00:06, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

That would be the simpler solution, I imagine. BD2412 T 00:57, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

BD2412: My bot has just checked and found these problematic redirects:

1. Richter, David → 2020 United States House of Representatives elections in New Jersey#District 3
2. 'Abd al-Wahhab, Muhammad → Muhammad 'Abd al-Wahhab
3. Yankovic, "Weird Al" → "Weird Al" Yankovic
4. Гольдфарб, Вениамин Иосифович → Veniamin Iosifovich Goldfarb
5. Mechtel, Matthew → 2006 United States House of Representatives election in North Dakota
6. Blenkinsop, Christopher → 17 Hippies
7. Burkhalter, John → 2014 Arkansas elections#Lieutenant Governor
8. 4400, The → The 4400
9. Johnson, Angela → 1993 Iowa murders
10. Reed, Christopher → 2008 United States Senate election in Iowa
11. Adams, Dirk → 2014 United States Senate election in Montana
12. Ardini, Robert → 2016 United States House of Representatives elections in New York#District 12
13. Whitney, Mark → 2020 Libertarian Party presidential primaries
14. Snitker, Alexander → 2010 United States Senate election in Florida

They all are due to either quotation marks / apostrophes or numbers. I can check for quotation marks at the beginning and remove them, but how should numbers be dealt with? Tol (talk | contribs) @ 02:44, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

"The 4400" is technically fine because it is removing a preceding "The" (though most sortnames that I deal with are for human names, not works). Many of these—Richter, David → 2020 United States House of Representatives elections in New Jersey#District 3, Гольдфарб, Вениамин Иосифович → Veniamin Iosifovich Goldfarb, Mechtel, Matthew → 2006 United States House of Representatives election in North Dakota, Blenkinsop, Christopher → 17 Hippies, Burkhalter, John → 2014 Arkansas elections#Lieutenant Governor, Johnson, Angela → 1993 Iowa murders—are not sort names at all, and should not be categorized as sort names. It looks like these generally arise as artifacts of article deletions or page moves. Some, like "Angela Johnson" and "Christopher Reed", are problematic because there are other topics that could be primary topics of the term (there is an Angela Johnson (disambiguation) and a Christopher Reed (American football)). I suppose it is a good thing to catch these, because they are wrong and need fixing one way or another, so I think the thing to do is generate a complete list of issues like these, and I will go through them by hand. BD2412 T 03:02, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412, that was the complete list. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 22:07, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Good, I'll take care of these, then. BD2412 T 23:46, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Alright! Thanks for your help with this. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 00:32, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Use a bot to patrol some pages

As autopatrol has been removed from +sysop, I'd like to propose a bot that automatically marks pages as patrolled when a sysop/CU/clerk marks a user as a sock. If feasible, patrol SPI cases, RfD, MfD, etc. after they're closed. --Minorax^«¦talk¦» 05:21, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

NPPs usually focus on mainspace. We don't usually patrol other namespaces. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:05, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Null edit monthly subpages of Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log

A bot should null edit all monthly subpages of Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log so that their lists of transcluded pages under "Page properties" on the "action=info" page and "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page (help):" on the "action=edit" page are up-to-date and include other pages (including the daily subpages) besides Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/Header. This should be a one-time run. Once the one-time run is done, the same bot should then start null editing the previous month's deletion review subpage at the beginning of every new month. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 01:41, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@GeoffreyT2000: I'm sorry, but I don't see why this is needed. Could you explain? Thanks. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 02:25, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2021_December&action=edit and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2021_November&action=edit, and you will see why null editing is needed. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 02:33, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@GeoffreyT2000: So it's because the pages are generated beforehand using IFEXIST and so (by virtue of not being edited or purged) don't get their transcluded templates updated, right? I can do this. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 02:37, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Would a bot that purges pages instead of null editing them work here? –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:44, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: See mw:Manual:Purge#Null edits. A regular purge doesn't update link tables, but a null edit does. One can still purge a page and force it to update link tables via the API, though. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 02:49, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

 Done. I've purged all subpages of Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log, and will set up a bot task to purge each month's deletion review subpage on the first of the next month. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 03:43, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I've set up the bot task, TolBot Task 12. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 19:07, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

You can paste a long list of page names into User:ProcBot/PurgeList, and generate the list using copy+paste or whatever. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 02:43, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Missing Redirects Project

Moved from Wikipedia:Request a query § Missing Redirects Project

 –  ― Qwerfjkltalk 17:57, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi, would someone be able to run this? John of Reading helpfully directed me here. ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:02, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Courtesy link: [5]. Doesn't work if I just click it, worked when I copy pasted the URL into the URL bar though. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:26, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Strange - it worked when I clicked it (just downloaded the files). ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:27, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

This appears to be a whole PHP bot run locally through CLI. There's about 3000 lines of PHP code spread across 10 files. Plus some .sql and .sh files. Judging from this custom SQL table named never_link_to, it also appears to run its own local SQL database. The readme file isn't great, I think it'd take a decent amount of time to comprehend this. And based on one of the comments you linked, this program may also need updating to work with the modern MediaWiki database structure. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:41, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

What is the gist of the request? What kinds of redirects are sought to be made here? BD2412 T 15:40, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412: The main page is User:Nickj/Redirects. In short, the query should provide a list of redirects that could possibly created, taken from piped links. It shouldn't make the redirects themselves; these require human supervision. ― Qwerfjkltalk 16:19, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, I see what you mean. If someone generates the list, I'll be glad to work on it. BD2412 T 16:40, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Help with a bot task

I suppose this is more asking for help with a bot task over requesting a bot be written, but I've started a thread at WT:AWB/Tasks that could use some input from botops (if AWB module coding is your thing). Feel free to remove this if it's too far out-of-scope. Primefac (talk) 21:00, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Add a template for partial redirection

I wish there was a robot that could take all redirect page contains #REDIRECT[[Wikipedia: or with similar code then add {{R to project namespace}} to these pages.--Q28 (talk) 06:44, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Q28. Looks like there are 199,154 pages that would need this change. If the goal is to do one bot run to fix everything, it'd be pretty easy to code some RegEx's in an AutoWikiBrowser bot to knock these out. It's a huge number of affected articles though. I'd be willing to file a BRFA for it if there's support. Any concerns about consensus? Have you run the idea by Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Redirect or similar? –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:17, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

You can also exclude members of Category:Redirects to project space, but that only takes out another 11,000. Certes (talk) 14:39, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I think there is a bot request that wanted to handle these automatically with {{Redirect category shell}}. Not sure what the status of that request is. Gonnym (talk) 12:58, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: I have no worries about consensus. Also, this job should only be run once because after running, it don't need to run it again for a long time.--28 (talk) 03:53, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Removing Template:WikiProject Republika Srpska from talk pages

Hi, Wikipedia:WikiProject Republika Srpska was deleted as a result of Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Republika Srpska (2nd nomination). However, its WikiProject banner {{WikiProject Republika Srpska}} needs to be removed from all talk pages so it can also be deleted. The template is transcluded nearly 1,200 times. ✗plicit 12:55, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

While I'm here, I also just found Wikipedia:WikiProject Republika Srpska/Invite. This invitation is trancluded on user talk pages, but should be substituted instead. ✗plicit 13:04, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

 Done. Primefac (talk) 14:32, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Bot to update adopters list

We need some sort of bot to update the adopters list at WP:ADOPT. Theo's Little Bot used to do this but the bot operator has gone inactive and the bot itself has been deactivated. —GMX^{(on the go!)} 17:49, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Courtesy link to source code: here. I could probably have a go at running this on Toolforge. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 18:41, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Bot that removes overlinked nationalities

This is a serious problem on Wikipedia. It was literally everywhere back in the infancy of Wikipedia, so it's not surprising that they are still there. (I have a grudge with Asher for reverting this edit where I was just removing such a link. We seriously need a bot to remove them. --2A01:36D:1200:4D41:D9E6:E7D4:9D38:6C3C (talk) 11:27, 14 January 2022 (UTC)