Wikipedia talk:Article alerts/Bugs

Use this page to report bugs in the reports, such as articles not picked up by ArticleAlertbot, removal of articles before the time limit, report containing redlinks to discussions/reviews/etc... Note that redlinks are common and normal in the PROD and AfD processes, as these are about deleting pages. In those cases, please make sure that your are reporting a redlink bug because the link is wrong, rather than the page being deleted. See How to Report Bugs Effectively for advice on how to write bug reports.

Please use this link to file a new bug report.

/Archive/Fixed
/Archive/Not a bug (or things that won't be fixed due to restrictions)

Known problems and restrictions

Nominators are sometimes reported incorrectly

For several workflow types, the bot reports who nominated the article (e.g. for deletion). This occasionally produces wrong results. Namely, for efficiency reasons, the bot does not analyze the full article history, but relies on timestamps that the MediaWiki software records when an article is added to a category. Unfortunately these are not 100% reliable, but are sometimes triggered by an "innocent" subsequent edit, so that the later editor is incorrectly reported as nominator. A similar effect may be seen if the nomination template is removed and then re-added, e.g., in cases of vandalism.

Good article nominations

• In some cases, the link to the discussion page is no longer shown when a GAC is closed. This may be a temporary problem. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:59, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Unreported deletion

Status	Verified
Description	Why was Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Clare Butterfield not reported?
Type	Overlooked page
Link to bug	Please link to the edit(s) that cause the bug(s).
Report by	TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 02:32, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Was the article tagged by your project's banner? Also if the article got nominated/deleted before the bot ran, then I'm pretty sure it won't show up, as the bot never saw the article enter or exit AfD.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 02:57, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

According to today's diff it was formerly tagged by our project before AfD close and deletion.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 06:56, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

It seems that the AfD was reported on nomination, but dropped from the list on closure. Probably a duplicate of the bug reported below. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:06, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

AfD discussion result not reported in the case of a redirect

Status	Verified
Description	Article was redirected, AABot simply removed the entry rather than report the result as "redirect"
Type	Overlooked page
Link to bug	[1]
Report by	Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 05:00, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Confirmed - this seems to be a bug; but I haven't found he reason yet. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:01, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Requested Moves

Status	Confirmed
Description	If a requested move template exists while an article is moved to the suggested location the workflow then gets changed from "requested move A->B" to "requested move B->B" instead of marking it as done. If subsequently the template gets removed it marks the move as not done.
Type	Other
Link to bug	Loreley->Lorelei Port Talbot Docks movedPort of Port Talbot supposedly not done
Report by	Agathoclea (talk) 09:37, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's indeed the way the bot behaves. However, I'm a bit confused: Shouldn't the tag be removed when the proposed page move is actually done? --B. Wolterding (talk) 21:14, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I would say - move first then remove the tag. Then the bug can still appear even if the mover does not forget if the bot runs between the two edits. I think though that a lot of movers do forget to remove the tag, which is something we can catch if source = target. Agathoclea (talk) 23:06, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Error for the Wikipedia:WikiProject Bahá'í Faith alerts.

Status	Fixed (needs testing)
Description	The alert reports doesn't work. Probably due to the funky diacritics or ampersand.
Type	Other
Link to bug	[2]
Report by	Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 06:15, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, most probably a bug related to the diacritics. Haven't found it yet, though. --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:20, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Same thing seems to be happening with WikiProject Pokémon.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 04:13, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

This is definitely related to the international characters, but seems a very weird error. Actually, on my local PC, everything works fine for these projects. The bug is probably related to the slightly different character encoding on the tool server. I have attempted a fix in the code; but we need to see what the effect is, next time the code is rolled out. --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:04, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

FPC discussion incorrectly reported

Status	Confirmed
Description	The bot reported that a featured picture candidate had not been promoted, when in fact it had.
Type	Other
Link to bug	([3])
Report by	— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:22, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Confirmed - this is a bug. I'm not sure about the technical reason at the moment. As FPC has been tested only very little (there are very few examples), it might be that this fails in all cases. Does anybody know of other FP candidates that have appeared on an article alerts list? --B. Wolterding (talk) 21:14, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Adds a alert, then almost immediately removes it

Status	New
Description	It places a Requested move, and less than half an hour later removes it.
Type	Other
Link to bug	[4]
Report by	The Windler talk  01:50, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

I was about to report the same (for a GAN though) ([5] and [6]) for WP:PHYS. I doubt it's a real bug (and if it is, a pretty mild one), especially since there was talk of bringing that article to GA, so it's possible that the bot simply ran twice and on the second run, the RM/GAN were withdrawn. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 03:22, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Categories after redirects

Status	Fixed (to be rolled out)
Description	When a prod gets redirected but a category placed it includes the category in the article alert page. In case of the diff now the article alerts page is part of the Category:Towers in Germany
Type	Other
Link to bug	[7]
Report by	Agathoclea (talk) 03:21, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

This happens when there is no line break after the redirect specification. Needs to be fixed in the bot. Unfortunately the category will now stay in the article alerts page until the item expires. --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:23, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I believe the linebreak would not categorize the redirect - at least I had problems in the past and seem to remember that it has to be on one line. Most likely why we do not see that many categorized redirects about. In this particular case it was a save from prod where the article would not show notability any time soon but would be a plausible searchterm which would be covered at the target. Agathoclea (talk) 21:41, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Problem in the code should be fixed now. --B. Wolterding (talk) 20:11, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Bad link for a RFC

Status	New
Description	link to an RFC article has !! and doesn't close the link. Diff shows human-edited change being replaced by bot
Type	other
Link to bug	http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Oregon/Article_alerts&curid=22042256&diff=288170452&oldid=287768730
Report by	tedder (talk) 00:49, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Moved from another section

This isn't exactly a bug, but one of the RfCs on this page won't render correctly. I tried fixing the heading of the RfC, but that didn't seem to work. Can someone take a look? Thanks! Katr67 (talk) 03:13, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

No, it's a bug. It happened in the past and was fixed, so I wonder what caused it this time.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 04:04, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I made a temporary fix. The entry is displayed correctly for now, but that'll be overturned by on the next run (unless the bot is fixed before).Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 04:07, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, for looking into it. I thought the RfC was set up incorrectly and that's what had done it. Don't worry about the temp fix. It's kind of useless to fix it every time. Believe me, I tried. :) Katr67 (talk) 00:47, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Bot seems to be travelling backwards in time.

Status	Confirmed
Description	Bot reports the removal of a PROD /opening of a Peer Review [8], then follows up with the nomination [9] and removed the Peer Review.
Type	Other
Link to bug	See above.
Report by	Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 04:10, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I am experiencing the same problem at WP:CHICAGO.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 04:12, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Hm. It seems to me that the bot generated its usual report on 5 May (into its internal cache), but did not write it to the wiki due to some technical problem. (Maybe the wiki servers were down or too slow at that time.) The cached report was then written in the next run, together with that of 6 May, but unfortunately they were written in the wrong order. Did this happen more often, or only on May 6? --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:22, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Lists a responder as the AFD nominator (6 May 2009)

Status	Won't be fixed
Description	Lists a responder as the AFD nominator
Type	"Other"
Link to bug	[10] lists me as the nominator of an AFD, but I was just a responder (and a speedy keep response at that!)
Report by	The-Pope (talk) 12:51, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the bot got that wrong; unfortunately this is one of the situations that is very hard to catch. You edited Wade Thompson shortly after the AfD tag was put on the article. The bot doesn't analyze the actual article history - this would be not efficient enough - but it relies on a certain timestamp that the MediaWiki software records when the the article is put into a category (here: Category:Articles for deletion). Apparently the timestamp was updated when you edited. This shouldn't have happened, but apparently it did. Unfortunately I don't see a reasonable way of working around this; inaccuracies like this will always happen. I'll add it to the list of "known restrictions" above. --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:30, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Anime and manga/Assessment/Article alerts does not implement |discussions=2 correctly.

Status	Fixed
Description	Wikipedia:WikiProject Anime and manga/Assessment/Article alerts does not implement |discussions=2 correctly (whereas Wikipedia:WikiProject Japan/Assessment/Article alerts, which uses the same parameters does). Template calls are identical: {{ArticleAlertbotSubscription|workflows=GTC, FLC, FAC, GA_NOM, FTC, PEERREV, RFC|banner=WikiProject Anime and manga|abbreviate=0|discussions=2|archivetime=2}}* {{ArticleAlertbotSubscription|workflows=GTC, FLC, FAC, GA_NOM, FTC, PEERREV, RFC|banner=WikiProject Japan|abbreviate=0|discussions=2|archivetime=2}} *: |archivetime=2 has been removed since.
Type	Other
Link to bug	All (Sample: diff)
Report by	G.A.Stalk 11:07, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

First, I hope I have fixed this now and the next bot run will produce the correct results (current setting is discussions=1 but you can change this). Second, the underlying technical problem is this: Due to the way the bot reads the subscription parameters (namely, via the category sortkey), there is an upper limit for the length of all parameters combined (approx. 70 characters). It appears that this was exceeded here. By "saving" a few characters by deleting whitespace, I was able to fix it. However, in the long run, it may be necessary to modify the way the bot handles its parameters. --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:01, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that did the trick. A note on the subscription page should help; you could also consider abbreviating the subscriptions in the short term. G.A.S^talk 20:12, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Not quite a bug but...

Status	Outdated
Description	The bot report page always lists Wikipedia:WikiProject Pornography/Article alerts as a problematic report, but as far as I can see, there's nothing wrong with it. What gives?
Type	Other
Link to bug	[11]
Report by	Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 03:46, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Seems that this problem no longer exists - and there's not much to be analysed without the bot logs. (Sorry, I was too late here.) --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:03, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Using wrong banner

Status	Not a bug
Description	Looks for default banner name ({{WikiProject Films}}) rather than one set by banner= ({{Film}}).
Type	Other
Link to bug	[12]
Report by	LegoKontribsTalkM 01:30, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

The subscription banner used twice. One of the two banners didn't have banner=film in it, so it caused a conflict. I've fixed it by removing the duplicate subscription. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 05:33, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK isn't dropped after a template is removed

Status	Not a bug
Description	I removed the physics template from Toothpaste tube theory, but the physics alerts keep displaying the DYK.
Type	Other
Link to bug	Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Article alerts; [13]
Report by	Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 15:32, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

This is expected behaviour - the DYK item is considered "closed" and thus never modified, regardless what happens with the actual article. It's an archive of past messages. --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:06, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

CFD not showing up at WP:PHILO

Status	Not a bug
Description	There have been a few Categories up for discussion that have not made it to the A.A. list for WikiProject Philosophy (Category:Abstract objects most recently. There are two new ones that haven't showed up either, but it still may be too soon?
Type	Overlooked page
Link to bug	n/a
Report by	Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 18:32, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

The bot currently only covers Categories for Deletion. It appears that those categories, at least Category:Abstract objects, were considered for renaming rather than deletion. So, it's not a bug, but might be a Feature request. --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:12, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Bot drops a bunch of alerts at WP:FLUID

Status	Confirmed
Description	Bot drops a bunch of alerts at WP:FLUID. Upon snooping around, I suspect that this is a taskforce-specific problems, as there were similar droppings of articles in all the physics taskforces, but none on the main project alerts.
Type	Other
Link to bug	[14]
Report by	Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:57, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, indeed some strange behaviour. Some of these entries were re-added in the next bot run. Maybe something related to the toolserver database state on that particular date. Did someone notice any examples at other points of time? --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:15, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Incorrectly labeling AFD deleted articles as kept and giving wrong nominators

Status	New
Description	This bot has been labeling Xero (album) as kept per a deletion discussion when it was really deleted. Also, it is giving wrong nominator names for deletion discussions. Here's yet another error: * 30 Jun 2009 – Baxter (album) (talk) nominated for deletion by TenPoundHammer; see discussion. It links to the album page but the artist deletion discussion and labels TenPoundHammer as nominator when I nominated it for deletion.
Type	Other
Link to bug	[15]
Report by	Timmeh 18:15, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

See known problems for the wrong nominator part. The bad report is indeed a bug.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 18:27, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Rename work flow + overlooked page

Status	Not a bug
Description	Bringing this from Wikipedia_talk:Article_alerts/Subscribing#CFDEL, which was back in May but never got over here to the Bugs page: I see that one of the workflows is Categories for Deletion however I'd suggest renaming that to Categories for Discussion since that's what it is. Secondly, Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 19#Category:LGBT issues and religion, 3 days old now, never was listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studies/Article alerts even though the subscription parameter we have set is |workflows=ALL,!NEWS.
Type	Other + Overlooked page
Link to bug	Haven't a clue which edit(s) cause the bug(s)
Report by	- ALLST✰R▼echo wuz here 03:54, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

That's in fact expected behaviour. The bot currently covers Categories for deletion only, i.e., everything listed in Category:Categories for deletion. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:52, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Kept Afd article listed as deleted

Status	New
Description	Wikipedia:WikiProject Michael Jackson showing Debbie Rowe as deleted via its Afd but the result was actually Keep.
Type	Other
Link to bug	[16]
Report by	- ALLST✰R▼echo wuz here 10:50, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect reporting of move proposals

Status	New
Description	The bot has reported two move proposals on WP:INAA, both of which ended in a consensus to move, as not moved.
Type	Other
Link to bug	See this (discussion) and this (discussion)).
Report by	SBC-YPR (talk) 14:25, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Signpost stopped at 15 June

Status	Not a bug
Description	On Wikipedia:WikiProject_Egypt the last reported new edition of Signpost is 15 June which should be 25 July as of now.
Type	Other
Link to bug	Please link to the edit(s) that cause the bug(s).
Report by	Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 22:14, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

That's a manually updated thing. If you notice it falls behind, feel free to edit Wikipedia:Article alerts/News. I'll try to update it soon.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 22:32, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

On this day not reported

Status	New
Description	On this day of Revolution Day was not reported for Wikipedia:WikiProject Egypt. Does this has something to do with that it isn't assessed ?
Type	Other
Link to bug	Please link to the edit(s) that cause the bug(s).
Report by	Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 00:12, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Probably due to some lag in the categories. Wait until the next update. If it's not there, then it's a bug.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 04:08, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Peer review inlining

Status	Fixed
Description	On the peer review entries it appears to inline most of the text of the peer review rather than allow it to be collapsed/hidden with the header banner for the review. This is an old one that I have just spotted, but still appears in the latest report so may be a feature.
Type	Transclusion
Link to bug	this shows addition of a peer review for York
Report by	Keith D (talk) 10:09, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

This is a bug, not a feature - but not necessarily in the bot; it's rather related to the collapsible section mechanism I think. I quite clueless here, will refer this to the village pump. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:35, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Fixed by Anomie, the bug was in Template:PR/header. --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:21, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

no updates for WikiProject Oregon since May (restored banner on Aug 1)

Status	Resolved
Description	Article Alerts has ignored project- why? The banner was accidentally removed, but I added it back on 1 August 2009, and the last update was in May.
Type	Other
Link to bug	re-enabling
Report by	tedder (talk) 06:45, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Probably related to a temporary outage of the bot - meanwhile it's working again. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:05, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Same applies to the following report from WP Chicago:

Status	Resolved
Description	Wikipedia:WikiProject Chicago/Article alerts‎ not updated since July
Type	Other
Link to bug	Please link to the edit(s) that cause the bug(s).
Report by	TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 00:45, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Jesús Rosendo was reported as deleted, but the result of the discussion was keep (WikiProject Cycling)

Status	Confirmed
Description	In the WikiProject Cycling article alerts, on 17 August 2009, the Jesús Rosendo article was listed as having been deleted. The discussion on the page however had as conclusion keep, and the article still exists
Type	Other
Link to bug	[17]
Report by	EdgeNavidad (talk) 10:31, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's a bug - probably related to the diacritics in the article title. Haven't found the solution yet. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:08, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

University of Chicago WP:GAR review is being overlooked

Status	Confirmed
Description	University of Chicago is under a WP:GAR review
Type	Overlooked page
Link to bug	diff
Report by	TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 01:16, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, seems to be a bug - reason yet unknown. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:14, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Second article never appeared at WP:CHIAA: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. Is it the Chicago template which has a few redirects? Is it possible that the redirects are not showing up?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 23:10, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

No, I don't think this has to do with redirects - so far, the bot has always worked fine with template redirects. --B. Wolterding (talk) 23:50, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that the problem is related to the behaviour of {{GAR/link}}. When the request is put "on hold" (like apparently the one for Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago was), it removes the article from Category:Good article reassessment nominees. This is very unfortunate, since the bot can then no longer find the article. --B. Wolterding (talk) 23:56, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Templates for deletion -> Templates for discussion

Status	Not a bug
Description	Wikipedia:Templates for deletion has been moved to Wikipedia:Templates for discussion, which could be the source of errors with reports involving templates.
Type	Other
Link to bug	[18]
Report by	Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 20:37, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

No, the renaming doesn't affect the bot. The bot evaluates Category:Templates for deletion which still has its old name. The wrong reports seem to be due to the fact that the actual templates were deleted only on Oct 18, while the discussion was closed (and, probably, the deletion template removed) on Oct 15. --B. Wolterding (talk) 15:59, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Okay, it could be that there was a user sticking all the {{tfd}} templates inside of <noinclude>...</noinclude> tags at around that point in time as well (in an effort to find unlisted stale tfds). I will be sure to let you know if I notice that the Category has been moved. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 19:28, 18 October 2009 (UTC)