Wikipedia:Bot requests

This is a page for requesting work to be done by bots per the bot policy. This is an appropriate place to simply put ideas for bots. If you need a piece of software written for a specific article you may get a faster response time at the computer help desk. You might also check Wikipedia:Bot policy to see if the bot you are looking for already exists. There are also quite a few "frequently denied requests", for various reasons, such as a welcoming bot, as it would de-humanize the process, and an anti-vandalism bot, as several already exist. If you want to request a bot to populate a category for a wikiproject, please create a full list of categories to be used, as most bot operators who can complete this task will not go into all subcategories, as some members may be irrelevant to your project. Also note that if you are requesting that an operator change or add a function to an existing bot, you should ask on that editor's talkpage.

If you have a question about a certain bot, it should be directed to the bot owner's talk page or to the Bot Owners' Noticeboard. If a bot is acting improperly, a note about that should be posted to the owner's talk page, to the Administrators' Noticeboard, or to AIV, depending on severity (ongoing vandalism to AIV). A link to such a posting may be posted at the Bot Owners' Noticeboard.

Please add your bot requests to the bottom of this page.

If you are a bot operator and you complete a request, note what you did, and archive it. Requests that are no longer relevant should also be archived in a timely fashion.

See also: Wikipedia:Bot policy and Wikipedia:Bots/Frequently denied bots, to make sure your idea is not listed.

Template in search of a bot

Hello, fellow editors ... I have created a template that I'm using by hand now, but I think that several bots could use it as well ... please see this talk page and tell me what you think of my newly created {{Oldprodfull}} ... would you use it, or update it if you encountered it?

Although it has 9 parameters, all of them are optional, and it "does the Right Thing" for display based on the input ... three user-ids (PROD, 2nd, and DECLINE) plus DATE and REASON for each of the three ... the idea is to insert the "boilerplate" with a PROD, and then the 2nd or declining editor add their own id, date, and reason.

Many editors do not even know that {{Prod-2}} exists, but this template will help document declined PRODs so that they won't get PRODed again after they have already been contested.

On a related matter, what are your thoughts on my proposed WP:FLAG-BIO and other flag templates?

Happy Editing! — 72.75.72.63 (talk · contribs) _{21:01, 11 February 2008 (UTC)}

• D'oh! ... I forgot that (a) Some Other Editors totally ignore messages from anonymous-IP accounts, while (b) others simply fail to comprehend the prominently displayed {{User Alternate Acct}} userbox. <Heavy sigh!> — The Bipolar Anon-IP Gnome (talk) _{01:31, 12 February 2008 (UTC)}

• FWIW I support this idea. In theory a bot could scan the cat of Proposed deletions and then add this to the talk page. It can scanned supported proposed deletions and add the Prod2 comment. Then it could wait say 6 days and if the tag is still there (meaning the prod was declined), it can add the declined variable. Given the standard formatting of a prod template, it shouldn't be too hard to scan the history and pick up which editor added it. And of course, most prod's aren't super active pages like George W. Bush. MBisanz ^talk 01:19, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Well, it's been nearly a fortnight, and no one else has expressed any interest in Template:Oldprodfull, or in modifying a bot to use it. <Heavy sigh!> Anywho, since my IP has changed again, I guess that it's time for me to MOVE ON. Happy Editing! — 141.156.217.11 (talk · contribs) _{20:50, 22 February 2008 (UTC)}
• Perhaps a bit late, but I have been looking for a bot project, and this certainly seems worthwhile - there have been a few instances where I have recommended deletion and then realised that the tags have already been removed. As my first bot it would take a while to develop, but I'm willing to take the time... - Fritzpoll (talk) 22:31, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Great, I know nothing of coding, but I'll help in any way I can (sorting, testing, reviewing, etc). Anon/Bipolar seems to know wiki-markup coding and might be willing to help. MBisanz ^talk 22:35, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Well, I can code, but I've never tried to interact with Wikipedia before - I'll check out some of the pages at the top and see what I can fathom out - your help would be much appreciated - Fritzpoll (talk) 22:37, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Thnx! Lemme know if I can be any help ... I've been "pushing bits" since '76, and this might fill some of my "recreational computing" needs. :-) Happy Editing! — 141.156.217.11 (talk · contribs) _{00:40, 2 March 2008 (UTC)}

Orphaned fairuse images bot

A bot that would check if images in the category (and subcategories) are still orphaned, if they are not orphaned removed them from category. NanohaA'sYuri^{Talk, My master} 18:31, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm looking into this. --Erwin85 (talk) 17:04, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I've set up a bot to do this. It gets a list of images in Category:All_orphaned_fairuse_images that are used and removes Template:Di-orphaned fair use from those images. It uses the toolserver database to get that list. I've run some test edits. Any suggestions? If not, I'll request approval to run this bot. How often do you want it to run? Daily, weekly etc.? --Erwin85 (talk) 17:41, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't need to be run that often, probably daily. Also from its edits, I can see that it seems to be working fine, and there are no problems that I think need to be addressed. I think it should be ok to go ahead with the approval process. Vivio Testarossa^{Talk Who} 05:42, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Request for template posting bot

Hi guys, I need the help from a bot and operator that can post templates on User talk pages - it'll be like a copy paste job thanks. The code will be the following

{| class="{{#ifeq:{{{nested|}}}|yes|collapsible collapsed messagebox nested-talk|{{#ifeq:{{{small|}}}|yes|messagebox small-talk|messagebox standard-talk}}}}" |- {{#ifeq:{{{nested|}}}|yes| ! colspan="2" style="text-align: center" {{!}} {{#if:{{{class|}}}|     (Rated {{{class}}}-Class)}} }} |- |align="center"|Hi, seeing from your recent contributions you have been fairly interested in the works of Raymond E. Feist. I am currently considering about starting a brand new Wiki-project (or maybe a task force) and will need your help – if you are interested could you please sign at [[WP:COUNCIL/P]]. Thanks very much ~~~~ |}

it'll show this:

Hi, seeing from your recent contributions you have been fairly interested in the works of Raymond E. Feist. I am currently considering about starting a brand new Wiki-project (or maybe a task force) and will need your help – if you are interested could you please sign at WP:COUNCIL/P. Thanks very much Fattyjwoods (Push my button) 06:53, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I can't copy and paste it one by one because it'll take me for ages so I need your help! The user talk pages are listed below.

• User talk: T@nn
• User talk: Hmoul
• User talk: Thekyle55
• User talk: Franczeska
• User talk: 195.93.21.40
• User talk: 192.251.125.85
• User talk: 203.27.91.196
• User talk: 210.49.18.252
• User talk: Nimmy
• User talk: Elminster
• User talk: 210.49.18.252
• User talk: 24.72.109.227
• User talk: Arthais
• User talk: 60.231.90.214
• User talk: 68.239.101.122
• User talk: TamhasArthur
• User talk: FrozenPurpleCube
• User talk: 74.78.246.242
• User talk: Ostaf
• User talk: Mike Peel
• User talk: Painbearer
• User talk: TalwinHawkins
• User talk: 86.149.101.127
• User talk: Francs2000
• User talk: QuentinGeorge
• User talk: 203.171.122.242
• User talk: Gwern
• User talk: Alensha
• User talk: Ishmayl
• User talk: Shadow Dancer 994
• User talk: Salters
• User talk: Tony Sidaway

and as a token of thanks Ill give the helper a barnstar or something. Thanks PS there might be some more coming along Fattyjwoods ^{(Push my button)} 06:52, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

That really wouldn't be that difficult to do by hand, in my opinion... SQL^{Query me!} 02:45, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Alright then ill see if I can do it by hand Fattyjwoods ^{(Push my button)} 02:53, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

DON'T. Bad idea! CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 02:03, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Meh, nevermind :P CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 02:04, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Find articles with See also, References in incorrect order

There are many articles that have a wrong layout of sections, See also, Notes, References, External Links.

The manual of style says, "The standard order for optional appendix sections at the end of an article is See also, Notes (or Footnotes), References, Further reading (or Bibliography), and External links; the order of Notes and References can be reversed. See also is an exception to the point above that wording comprises nouns and noun phrases."[1]

I've been correcting these as I find them, but it'd be nice if a bot could list all the ones needing changes. This might be as simple as searching with a sophisticated regular expression, but I'm not sure. Mahanga^Talk 03:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I really dont think there's a reliable way to search for something like this. Q ^{T C} 06:37, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

It's possible to run though a database dump and generate a list of articles where the sections don't match some specified sequence. However, the quote above doesn't seem to be in WP:GTL. In fact, it's not uncommon to find the external links before "see also" or "notes". You're wecome to change them to the "preferred" order if you're editing an article, but it's not necessarily "wrong" as it is. Gimmetrow 07:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

WP:GTL lists the sections in the order shown above, then says Although the preferred order is as above, it is permissible to change the sequence of these ending sections if there is good reason to do so. I'm not really sure what a "good reason" would be.

I personally support the idea of more standardization when there isn't any good argument against it (and I see none here). So I agree that getting a bot to do a database seach for non-standard layout, and listing articles where that is the case, would be good, assuming that there are editors actually willing to do the manual fixes as needed. Perhaps the bot could do one letter of the alphabet at a time, not doing the next one until editors have done cleanup on the prior results? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:56, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Ive been playing with sections, it might be possible to have a bot do all the work in regard to this. β^_command 15:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, beta, it would be easy for a bot to grab the sections and rearrange them, if they use any of the standard variant names. But this is a MoS issue, and it's generally not a good idea for bots to impose MoS. Gimmetrow 17:46, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I think I have a working script. β^_command 17:47, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Don't do it, beta. This is not a task for an automated bot, and it will draw complaints, even if it handles all the standard section variants correctly. Gimmetrow 18:01, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Beta, I would like to examine your code for this task before you run it. Would that be possible? Gimmetrow 21:52, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

True, but how recent is the last DB dump? And those are rather large Q ^{T C} 09:35, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Unless the MOS is changed to make the layout order mandatory and simply not preferred, this is a bad idea for a bot. Bots should never override writers' preferences. If the desire is to make this layout the mandatory one, then that should be discussed at the MOS and consensus sought for that change. A bot should not be used to bypass established procedures for seeking consensus for changes in our guidelines. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:49, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

The original request was for a bot to create a list, not for a bot to make the actual changes. I hope we can start with a bot-generated list, and then perhaps after a while, if human editors haven't run into any resistance in making changes based on that list, we might revisit the issue of bot-made changes to articles.

And there certainly is no reason for a human editor to have to ask permission to make changes that follow the preferred/suggested specifications at two separate guideline pages, are there? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:52, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, there are editors who prefer "see also" last on the page. If you're going to be doing these edits in large quantity, you might want to start a discussion at WP:GTL to see how people think. Gimmetrow 18:01, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I read too fast. I agree simply identifying them for human editors would be fine. From a non-bot point of view, I do think Gimmetrow's suggestion is a good one. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:53, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I've started a new discussion at WP:Layout. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mahanga (talk • contribs) 20:51, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd be fine with a bot moving "see also" to the beginning and "external links" to the end, so long as it didn't touch the other sections. The naming of the other sections is much less consistent across the encyclopedia and in any case there is no real consensus about what their order should be. Christopher Parham (talk) 00:33, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Bot to remove deleted user categories from user pages

It would be helpful to have a bot that would periodically go through all UCFD'd user categories and delete any members from them. This would speed up the WP:UCFD process in that editors wouldn't manually have to remove pages from the category (sometimes a tedious process requiring over 100 removals). As you can see here, there are several categories that have members in them that still need emptying, even from a long time ago. This would also help for those who re-add the category to their page after it has been deleted, as such actions disrupt Special:Wantedcategories in making it seem like the category should be recreated (which has happened several times before). There could be a fully-protected subpage in which admins could add user categories (along with a link to the UCFD or DRV authorizing deletion) which the bot would go through and see if anyone has on their userpage. If a userpage was protected, it would simply skip it and retry the next time it ran. VegaDark (talk) 16:32, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

What's wrong with Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working/User? Bencherlite^Talk 22:43, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

As in a bot could use that instead of a subpage? True, but some of the pages listed there need to only be depopulated of individual users (while still allowing subcategories). Additionally, using that would mean users having to manually add already-deleted categories that have been repopulated, whereas a subpage would permanently have every category that needs to stay empty, saving lots of work. There are many hundreds (if not thousands) of user categories that have been deleted, and it would be a lot less work to list them all on one page and have the bot patrol it than it would be to manually patrol them all and then list them there if they need users removed. VegaDark (talk) 23:40, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you mean now - I didn't realise that you wanted a recurring sweep of deleted categories to keep them empty. I'll shut up now! Bencherlite^Talk 23:43, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

If this is done, it should a) stay in article space, and/or b) follow {{nobots}} convention. Just my $0.02us.  :) -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 05:17, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

• There was already a bot running around doing this. Is it dead? Anyway, fine with me as long as it stays off of my userpages. I've got some deleted cats that I won't left on my user pages and don't want some rogue bot coming around removing them. This has been discussed before and the consensus was that there's no harm in having deleted cats on your page nor is there policy preventing it. - ✰ALLSTAR✰ ^echo 05:31, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I particpated in that discussion, and I wouldn't go so far as to say that was the consensus. In fact, I was one of the people who said I didn't see the harm in it, but I have since changed my mind after realizing that it is disruptively adding the categories to Special:Wantedcategories. In either case, people who don't want categories removed from their page can add {{nobots}} to their page as suggested above. And as far as I know, there was never a bot doing this that I know of, at least not for user categories. VegaDark (talk) 07:08, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
    • There was a bot doing it because I had an issue with one a couple months back. {{nobots}} is useless because not all bots use it and you don't know which bots do and which bots perform this function to add them to the allow list. - ✰ALLSTAR✰ ^echo 22:34, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
      • Due to the fact that the bot in question would be editing people's userpages in a way that is known to be against some people's wishes, I would imagine it would have to be {{nobots}} compliant to be tolerated. In any case, if you add {{nobots}}, no bot compliant with the tag will edit your page. You don't have to know which bot it is that would be removing categories.--Dycedarg ж 22:47, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
        • If you just add {{nobots}}, it will block all bots that observe the nobots tag, including some you don't mind doing things such as Sinebot. If you add {{bots|allow=<botlist>}} instead, you can show which bots to allow and it will allow those and block the others - this is what you would use to allow SineBot but block CatDeletedBot - if the bots observe the bots tag. This is why I said it's useless without knowing which bots perform which tasks. Read the documentation at {{nobots}}. - ✰ALLSTAR✰ ^echo 14:26, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
          • I am perfectly aware of the functionality of that and related templates; I run bots that follow them after all. I simply don't think that the majority of bots that edit userpages are particularly essential; SineBot would be an exception but it only edits user talk pages not user pages and that's where most people keep their categories (you included until recently). In any case, in my opinion you can either watch this page and see what the person who fulfills the request (if anyone does) calls the bot or wait until it edits your page and deletes your categories and then you'll know what it's called.--Dycedarg ж 01:07, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
            • BetacommandBot is the bot I was talking about earlier that removes cats. It just removed a cat from me and User:SatyrTN. - ✰ALLSTAR✰ ^echo 04:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
              • That bot did in fact make a few recent removals (of all redlinks, not just user categories), which has been brought up in a recent AN/I thread as apparently not being approved. I am proposing a bot be specifically approved for this function, and make the bot be nobots compliant (which apparently BCB isn't right now). Additionally, it wouldn't remove pages from all red links, only UCFD'd and DRV-endorsed ones. VegaDark (talk) 21:38, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Creating a bunch of redirects that are shortcuts

The Editor's index to Wikipedia has a large number of internal anchors (using "span id") so that links can be made to any major topic on the page, rather than to the index as a whole. (With the index being over 3000 lines, a link to just the index page, when answering a specific question, isn't that helpful). These anchors have been hidden; I'd like to make them explicit by using shortcuts.

My plan is to add the shortcuts to the Index page myself (I've done this for major topics starting with "A", as a demo/pilot), but I'd like to get a bot to actually create the redirect pages for these shortcuts. There will be a hundred or two of these. (Details of this idea are discussed at Wikipedia talk:Editor's index to Wikipedia#Proposed approach.)

The only thing that's perhaps a bit unusual is that the proposed shortcuts use the pseudo-namespace "EIW"; this was discussed at Wikipedia talk:Namespace#Procedure for creating a new pseudo-namespace?, and - after a bit of clarification - I believe there was no opposition to this. But I'm going to post a note regarding this proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), so that if there are concerns or alternatives, they can be mentioned (here, preferably).

So, to return to the main question - would someone have a bot that can create these redirects? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:05, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

A bot to create them should be easy. I'd recommend that you (if you haven't already done so) paste a note at the WP:Redirect and WP:RFD talk pages regarding your suggestion. Cross namespace redirects (even pseudo-namespace like CAT:) have been contentious in the past. Posting at those two pages might alleviate someone nominating them for deletion. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:02, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for the suggestion. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:53, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Daily bot for WP:GL/IMPROVE to mark requests as stale

A request for the random tasks bots out there. I would like a bot that can go through the requests at the above page and if there has been no activity in each section in the last 10 days, add the following to the top of the section: {{Stale|1={{subst:plain now}}}} or {{Stale|1=~~~~}}. Thanks.↔NMajdan•talk 20:10, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Anyone?↔NMajdan•talk 18:45, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Category intersection

I have a quick favor to ask someone with an idle bot. I would like to get a list of the articles in both Category:Baseball players and one of two major maintenance categories, namely Category:All articles lacking sources and Category:All articles with unsourced statements. If the results of the searches could be posted to my userspace, that would be awesome. Thanks, Caknuck (talk) 20:24, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Could you just use CatScan? (I'm getting an error message at the moment when I look at the page - too many users? - but my sense is that this is fairly uncommon.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:57, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I knew the tool was out there, but I wasn't sure what the name was. Thanks, Caknuck (talk) 22:48, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Ohio article counter bot

I would like something similar to MathBot. All I need it to do is count all Ohio related articles once a week or so. These articles would be found under Category:Ohio and its subcategories. Could this be possible?

Many thanks! §tepshep • ¡Talk to me! 01:17, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

If you want I can set up something like WP:BABS or WP:BABS for you β^_command 15:31, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• Sorry, I was looking for a bot that just makes one number. Similar to this page:here.

Not too hard to do, I'll whip something up. Q ^{T C} 09:39, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• OverlordQ, thanks!! §tepshep • ¡Talk to me! 04:17, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

If you want, you can use User:Erwin85/CatCount. It runs every day at noon and uses the toolserver's database to count the number of articles. --Erwin85 (talk) 15:59, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• This is nice, but I was looking just for one set number of the total, not broken up. Thanks though! §tepshep • ¡Talk to me! 01:38, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

A StatusBot-For members of the Counter Vandalism Unit

• Hello, we have tried to find a copy of the StatusBot source code, tried everything, to no avail. CVU's effective operation relies on StatusBot, without it, our Task Force members list will not be up to date, which can cause problems, in the event of high-level vandalism. We're seeking a clone, similar to StatusBot. As soon as possible. Thanks. Steve Crossin (talk) 15:03, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
  • You might want to check User:Chris G Bot 3 and/or User:EBot IV. As for tried everything, please note that the Editor's index can often be of assistance. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:24, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Bot to help with banned user StealBoy

I'm wondering whether a bot could help me in identifying new sockpuppets of StealBoy (talk · contribs). As some of you may know, this troll is incredibly persistent and has been creating hoax articles for over a year, possibly more. The list of his sockpuppets is too long to list and in fact, no admins really take the time to put the new puppets in the corresponding category, if only for WP:DENY reasons. Periodically, his semi-static IP is blocked for months and he returns once he gets a new IP. However, this guy has patterns which are very easy to spot: he creates only TV or film related hoaxes, almost invariably in the same time range, new puppets created have names with easy to identify patterns, anon edits are used to create links to the hoax articles and these links are always added to one of roughly twenty or so articles. So I was wondering if one of the tech-savy people here could periodically generate a list of suspicious edits/usernames. I do this manually from time to time by going through the list of new film-related articles and by spotting the IPs from a certain range on the aboved mentioned articles. If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to discuss privately the name patterns, IP range, articles which are usually vandalized and so on. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 16:57, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

bare footnotes

How can I run a bot to fix the many bare URLs in Antipsychiatry's footnotes? —Cesar Tort 23:33, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll write a script to do it. Mønobi 03:38, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! —Cesar Tort 03:59, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I've actually ported the part of the pywikipedia bot collection online. The reflinks.py script isn't synced up since I haven't had the time to merge my changes. — Dispenser 04:12, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Well I'll run a script to create titles for the urls directly ;). Mønobi 04:26, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks again. When will you run a program? —Cesar Tort 04:02, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

ASAP. Mønobi 22:27, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Missing settlements

Hi. I don't know how many people are aware but we are missing vast amounts of articles on towns and villages , and I mean VAST in a serious way -particularly on countries in the developing world, notably Latin America, Asia and Africa which comprises at least 85% of the world land cover. Given the enormous size and organization of wikipedia already, I would have thought that it was be an important goal for wikipedia to begin to address uneven coverage gegraphically and try to create an even coverage of the world like a neutral encyclopedia should, at least articles with a locator map and some basic details for starters as a reference point. I do a lot of work adding new articles on settlements using the same sources each time. I am certain a bot could be programmed to blue link articles on places by country and give the encyclopedia something of enormous benefit for people to try to work on. Given the sheer amount missing by now I;d be expecting wikipedia to be drilling bots to create these articles on a daily basis, but bots rarely seem to be taken to their full advantage and used to generate new articles, with the exception of the polbot and gene bots which run from time to time. Could somebody please explain how this could be done? ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 20:12, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Back in the day Ram-Man got some huge repository of info on U.S. places and had Ram-Bot create all the pages and put the info in. Really we'd need some list of notable places, like a gazzetter of South America or something. Then a bot could create simple stubs from it, adding pretty things like Cats and Infoboxes. I don't know where such a database is, but I'd suggest the federal government or the UN might have one in English. It would also need to have a human follow-up afterwards for the duplicates that would be created from different naming conventions. But it should be possible to code, if you can find the sources and a free-bot lying around. MBisanz ^talk 20:17, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Well the nearest thing I;ve found is the list at MSN Encarta.e.g Nigeria which lists towns and villages by country but it isn't a proper source. Now I am aware that some of the place names are slightly differnetly transliterated or dated in places, I remember Darwinek discussing this, but when I've been creating articles I've been checking at least three or four others websites such as maplandia, google maps etc to try to get some authority that they are accurate names and I have to say that 99% of what I;ve come across seems to give some standard assertion that it is very accurate. I;m not certain if every places will meet everybody's notability requirements but they are all populated settlements which I believe the vast majority of could be written into informative articles. I think it would strengthen the encyclopedia considerably to begin to address the uneven coverage geographically. Maplandia for me appears to be the best geo site but because of huge uneveness in knowledge often accurate population data isn't available for the undeveloped countries. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 20:25, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Well the ENcarta link is difficult, only that it would be hard for a bot to parse the 60 entry sublists and that there is no commentary on the cities on the maps (X is a city in province Q of Nigeria" I feel like the UN cartagraphic division must have lists of cities. MBisanz ^talk 20:32, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I;ve been trying to find a detailed list for each country in a long list with some basic data but I haven't found one. All I;ve found is world gazateer.com which lists probably 50 biggest cities in a country but isn't quite as full as I;d like it to be ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 20:39, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

For Nigeria, Nigeria Direct has information which might be at least a start. I'm thinking that the best places to go for such information would be the web pages of each individual country myself. John Carter (talk) 20:41, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

John's right that ideally countries should have government sources. But does anyone here think Uganda or Burma has a website listing their major cities in English? It might work for some of the larger nations, like S. America (I'd expect Brazil and Argentina to have them) and what not, but Africa and East Asia will probably be deadends. http://www.un.org/depts/dhl/maplib/maplib.htm says it has 3000 gazzetters. I'm wondering if they could send a bibliography of them or if any are digitized. Also, there is the issue that China had at last count, around 980,000 good sized towns. Even if we could get a listing for them, do we really want to increase the size of Wikipedia by 50% at once? MBisanz ^talk 20:53, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Mmm I don;t know it is potentially problematic due to the deficiencies in avilability of government sources for poorer parts of the world which is a great shame, but it is inevitable that the encyclopedia as it is will easily double in size anyway, and likely to be increasingly filled by articles which aren't considered traditionally encyclopedic. I remember several people saying "real world content is what this encyclopedia needs" which I fully agree with ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 21:02, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Yea, I was thinking more of every third Random Page being a Chinese stub. Not a reason to not add them in, maybe just a reason to spread it around to smaller countries first. I'll take a look tonight as to what resources I can find. MBisanz ^talk 21:11, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

OK. Its just I feel places form a backbone to the encyclopedia and while hundreds of topcis are equally important many articles are based around a location in the world whether its people, landmarks or whatever. Even films and books are based in a place. I just feel that it is more powerful not to ignore that these places exist and begin to construct the best coverage of the world on one site the best we can. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 21:28, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you regarding the importance of having a good coverage of settlements, but I'm concerned that a bot is not the right way to do it. First, there is the issue that an article about a settlement may already exist under another name. Second, there is the issue of quantity vs. quality. Having thousands of new articles that no one watchlists, maintains, and improves may not be entirely a good thing. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:52, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Pretty much every country in the world – apart from countries like Somalia or Democratic Republic of the Congo, which have more urgent things to take care – have a statistical agency, whose purpose is to provide geographic, demographic or economical data for other government organizations. The use of government data is strongly preferred to Encarta or other outside sources. The problem with using the data from Encarta (or similar lists) is that we don't know what they include and what is missing. In other words, we will end up with a huge disorganized pile of blue links. For example, Madagascar has about 150 places called Ambodimanga... without accurate coordinates nobody would ever be able to figure out what is what, or even what they are (villages, communes...). I'm all for expanding the geographic coverage of Wikipedia, but it needs to be done systematically, hierarchically and complete for whatever administrative level we are talking about (counties, departements, communes, munincipalities etc). My understanding is that such a data exists for most (perhaps almost all) of the developing countries, and increasingly in electronic format. The data may not be available publicly on-line, but I would assume if we were to ask the relevant agencies for it, they would probably give it. – Sadalmelik (talk) 21:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Spelling bot?

I can't seem to find one. I think a bot that auto corrects commonly misspelled words would be wonderful. I searched and found over 90,000* occurrences of "occured" in the article name space. (It's spelled occurred FYI.) I would be willing to be responsible for maintaining a list of words, and I do work as a programmer, but actually doing it on wikipedia is daunting. (Perhaps because I haven't looked into it enough). Mainly I think I don't know enough about "web friendly" languages. *(ok, it's actually lower, wiki search automatically looks for commonly misspelled words, but there are still a lot of "occurences") Bassg☢☢nist^Talk/_Contribs 17:24, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that automatic spell-checking bots are usually denied. The reason being that it is very hard for an automated process to judge whether that specific instance is intentionally misspelled or not. For example, if, in an article about spelling, they used occured as an example, the bot would fix it and it wouldn't make much sense any more. Same thing for any article that was either pointing out the misspelling, or where a word was intentionally misspelled. See WP:BFDB for more information. -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 17:36, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh drat, didn't see that page. Makes a lot of sense now that I think about it...sorry! Bassg☢☢nist^Talk/_Contribs 20:00, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Rechristen -> rename

Can anyone help replace instances of Christian name -> forename, christen -> name, etc.? --kylet (talk) 16:18, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I am not aware of any consensus that this is universal, approved or even necessary. Why do you want to make these replacements? Happy‑melon 19:17, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

A talk page archiving bot

I would like to put in a request to a talk page archiving bot with a similar syntax to User:MercuryBot, or at least the source code so I can run my own copy of the bot. Thanks, Nol888_(Talk)^(Review) 02:21, 6 March 2008 (UTC)