User talk:Yobot

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	good work! Chocgirl (talk) 12:35, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	good work! Chocgirl (talk) 12:35, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!!!!!!!!!! -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:17, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Bill Smith (fell runner)

Resolved

Please check and tweak. Thanks. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 20:33, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Done. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:33, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Esther Anderson's birth date

Hi Yobot, I am amazed by this mechanism. Thanks for your contribution to Esther's entry. I have been trying to correct Esther's date of birth, day, month and year -she was born in 1943. Esther Anderson, in fact, would prefer her date of birth not to appear in Wikipedia. Could you advice me on this? One love Gian — Preceding unsigned comment added by Giangodoy (talk • contribs) 02:53, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I think she is covered by WP:BLP. You could start a discussion in tlak page and ask the birth date to be removed. Then all revisions that have the birth date can also be deleted to protect the person from revealing sensitive personal data. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:36, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I think that yobot malfunctioned

Resolved

I think that yobot malfunctioned with this edit [1]. It added a recently-removed top level (wikify) tag back on. This is just FYI, not an issue with me. North8000 (talk) 23:34, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

The page is not wikified. It lacks internal links. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:45, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Refs section damage

Hi, the bot broke the references section with this edit. The article uses list-defined references, in which the <ref>...</ref> elements are enclosed by a <references>...</references> pair. In this case the closing </references> was missing, but instead of adding it, the bot changed the opening <references> into a single <references />, which broke the entire refs section. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:20, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing it. I'll report the bug. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:42, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

rev 7938 will get us on step closer to solve this problem. -- Yobot (talk) 17:56, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification

Resolved

Hi. When you recently edited 2006–07 Livingston F.C. season, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Mike McCurry (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:09, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Improper move of category

Hi, with this edit, Yobot broke a citation. The article was using {{citation/core}} directly (probably as a result of an incorrect substitution of {{citation}}), for which the parameters are mostly propercased, i.e. |Surname1= etc. Yobot has lowercased all these, and so they are no longer recognised. Whilst doing this, it also moved a category from inside an {{#if:}} construct to the bottom of the page. As a result, the category, previously conditional, became unconditional, and so the page was incorrectly categorised. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:16, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Grammatical error

Resolved

Here you introduced a grammatical error into the article Private Stock (malt liquor) by adding a full stop after a quote even though there was already a full stop on the left of the quotation mark. Despite this being the only change to the article, you claimed in your edit summary to have made more than 61 corrections. Please explain yourself. (WP Editor 2011 (talk) 14:18, 17 January 2012 (UTC))

Yobot didn't add any full stop. It only moved the existing one before the references. Thus, it didn't introduce any error but it made the pre-existed error visible. 61 is the number of the error fixed in the list of WP:CHECKWIKI. Yobot didn't fix 61 errors but error number 61. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:43, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Unneccessary de-shortcut edit

I saw that your bot changed the {{commonscat}} to {{commons category}} and IMHO entirely unneccessary but simply increase the history of minor bot edit. To my knowledge there's no policy or guideline discourage the use of template shortcut (or any redirect link), point me one if I was wrong. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 02:38, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Agree, see WP:NOTBROKEN. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:50, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Edits like [2], where no other changes are made, are completely unnecessary and violate the rules of AWB. Please fix the bot before continuing, or it will have to be blocked as malfunctioning.  An optimist on the run! 17:24, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I have already de:Benutzer_Diskussion:Stefan_Kühn/Check_Wikipedia#Obtain_all_queries_of_an_error asked for newest database dump. Thinking of other ways to reduce the problem. Creating skip conditions for such a small portion of pages whose rendered version is not affected will slow us down and needs extra programming work which I can't do at the moment. I am less than 1000 pages before I narrow my current list to zero. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:44, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

If your bot cannot handle the problem, it shouldn't be running.  An optimist on the run! 17:47, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Blocked, for [3]. I suggest fixing your bot, then going back for reapproval, as I see it has already been blocked multiple times for the same offence.  An optimist on the run! 17:51, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

We discussed this before. I hope you get some time to read the previous discussions. How exactly you suggest that this edit is excluded from being saved and why you think it should be excluded? -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:53, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

More: Do you have a method that I get latest dumps from the toolserver?-- Yobot (talk) 17:55, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I 'll satisfy your impatience to fix this problem by doing the remaining 990 pages manually and checking each page separately. Thanks. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:00, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:AWB#Rules of use #4: "Avoid making insignificant or inconsequential edits such as only adding or removing some white space, moving a stub tag, converting some HTML to Unicode, removing underscores from piped links, bypassing a redirect [my emphasis], or something equally trivial". To put you bot into context, I ran AWB manually last night on all items in my watchlist. I set it to skip minor changes only. Hence all the pages in my watchlist should have not needed any further AWB fixes. Yet since I ran that, Yobot has made insignificant changes to four of those articles.  An optimist on the run! 18:01, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I recall very well why made these rules... because they are bots doing these edits so no editors are needed to do them. anyway, if you can suggest any ways to help making skip conditions for these things you are welcome to comment here or in awb's page. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:04, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

The days these rules were written bots like SmackBot were running 24-7 around the database touching every possible article and we haven't implemented the redirect skipping as part of awb's work. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:06, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

If you feel the block is unfair, request an ublock with {{unblock}}. If you feel the AWB rules are out of date, I suggest you gain consensus to change them before making further use of the tool.  An optimist on the run! 18:39, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I find it completely unfair that I try to reduce/fix this problem by leaving comments in two languages, update awb's source code, write scripts and all you did is to just block my bot to prevent further improvements because you found 4 pages in your watchlist with "insignificant edits". The backlog reached 110,000 pages in less than 3 months because I get little help by individual editors. There is only 1 bot right now doing general maintance and you prefer to block it instead of letting it run and fix the problems as they occur. I hope you noticed that I didn't just ignore the above comments as I never ignore any of the messages left on my bot's page nor my page. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:45, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

That's 4 pages out of about 200 - expanding this up means your bot is making unnecessary edits to 2% of articles, a very large number. You ignored the comments from Sameboat and Redrose above, and told me you intended to carry on regardless of my warning https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AYobot&action=historysubmit&diff=473547177&oldid=473546237]. You proceeded to do so, hence the block. There is no need to replace {{Commonscat}} with {{Commons category}} unless it is part of a significant change. As I'm sure you're aware, there's a skip option in AWB which allows you to ignore insignificant changes.  An optimist on the run! 19:01, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I also think this is a pretty weak reason to block the bot. With the backlog as high as it is a few minor edits are going to be done just because it takes more time to factor out the 1% than to just let them be done. Lets be clear these are not errors and they are making improvements to the articles, though be them small improvements. Also, running AWB against your watchlist doesn't mean much without context, how many articles is that, 200, 1000? Also, most people monitor their watchlists fairly closely and routinely go through the articles in them so its not a huge surprise that you didn't find anything. Try running it against one of the Checklist categories instead and see if you catch anything that way. --Kumioko (talk) 20:24, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

It's also still the case that nobody can tell what the bot was trying to do with edits like [4] because of the vague edit summary. At the very least it would be easy to turn off general fixes altogether, so that no change at all is made if whatever problem is being addressed has already been fixed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:39, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I think that the description is as clear as it needs to be. It provides a link to the Checkwiki error description and links to the AWB general fixes. I don't think its reasonable to have to variably define the minutea of every edit. There are simply too many variations of edit that are beign done within the general fixes. If we were to define every one we would have people complaining because we were filling up and trailing out the end of the edit summary. IMO, if someone wonders what the checkwiki errors are or the AWB general fixes all they need do is check the link. Of course thats just my opinion and I can't speak for Magio.--Kumioko (talk) 20:58, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll try to explain myself a bit more. I never ignored any comments on my talk page. The discussion in the German wikipedia with the person who takes care for CHECKWIKI globally proves exactly that. I left them some comments in the past. after the comments above I went the discussion further and at the same time I am trying ot get some limited access to the toolserver. Having access there will prevent Yobot from working with outdated lists. This will solve the problems CBM and more others are complaining for. I have much more ideas for improving this but I would like to wait until Wikimania this summer so I have time to discuss my ideas with other editors in person.

On the customised edit summaries: This is difficult for me to do at the moment. I would like to do it but this would mean that I had to load each function of awb, add edit summaries with if...then conditions and keep this thing up-to-date each time the built-in function changes. This caused many bugs in the past while something similar was done by SmackBot in the past. I would prefer if my changes were done in the built-in code so people could run awb without my intervention and the process could continue even if I leave the project at some point. I am trying to publish parts of my scripts so the process is independent from me and is inherited to the project. We have seen wonderful scripts in the past from people who left Wikipedia and now these scripts can't be found.

It's true that right now when I add the number of the error fixed I work the other way round: I load the list of that given error and I expect that is the error which is being fixed. It's in my plans to improve this.

We can disagree for having 1-2% of pages with insignificant edits but I hope nobody can accuse me for not improving awb's functionality and trying to reduce this percentage. I never encouraged mass editing for insignificant purposes only but at the same point never reached the other side of expecting all edits to add/remove content. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:23, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

By 2% of articles, I mean 2% of articles on Wikipedia, not 2% of the articles your bot is editing. As far as I can tell, 100% of the bots edits are to change the Commonscat template. Yes, it might do some fixes as well, but that seems to be a side effect. Can you point to any discussion that {{Commonscat}} is deprecated? If it isn't, why change it?  An optimist on the run! 21:36, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't deprecate anything. Probably someone added Commoncat in the Redirect templates list. Not me for sure. I loaded all lists I have available to save some of my time. I also noticed that all pages contain Commoncat. I'll reload the lists based on checkwiki error 61. This is the error I am trying to fix. Sorry if I gave the impression I am doing something else. I removed all items from my list and I'll try to load them again. If you noticed from the discussion on the German wikipedia I can only obtain 500 entries per page and load each page manually. for obtaining 100,000 pages I had to load 2,000 manually! It took me more than a day. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:44, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I asked to receive the list by e-mail to save some time. after I receive this list can we please close this as "resolved" and suspend the whole reconstruction thing for Spring when I'll have more time to work on the project? -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:46, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

(ec)With all do respect Optimist on the run, according to the last 25 edits your statement seems to be a bit of an exaggeration. I just looked through the last 25 edits or so and with the exception of 2 all fixed citations, dates or punctuation. Also, you are correct Magio the Commonscat was added to the Template redirects list. I think you should just take it off, its not really a big deal anyway. --Kumioko (talk) 21:49, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

It's interesting if you check the edit history. I am only removing stuff from this list. :) -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:00, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, but you're not answering the question. Please explain, for the benefit of those of us who don't speak German, or examine data dumps, or do anything technical, why it's necessary to make multiple edits replacing a template redirect? Please note, it's now late here, I'm tired and going to bed. If an uninvolved admin feels they want to reverse the block, feel free to do so without discussion from me.  An optimist on the run! 23:14, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

It's late here too. My intention was not to only replace a redirect. My intention was to fix punctuation. My list was outdated/wrong due to technical difficulties which I am trying to overcome in cooperation with other members of the community. Now I have a new list with fewer items and with less items with no actual errors to be fixed. My aim is to get the full list of pages with a certain error and with no bypass-redirect-only items inside. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:27, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I emptied the old list. Now waiting for the new list. This problem should be set as "Resolved". -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:57, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

I've raised a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval#Yobot blocked to get feedback about how this should be carried forward. Feel free to make comments there.  An optimist on the run! 21:41, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:59, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect edit in 2010 for http:BL

Resolved

Maybe already fixed, dating back to 15:38, 8 December 2010: [5]

http:BL was AFAICT supposed to be a red link (the service is actually called http:BL, for blacklist, see Project Honeypot; just nobody has written an article yet?). Yobot changed this to http://BL, which isn't a sensible link. Maybe just apply this fix rule when there is at least a dot in the link, or the link equals http://localhost ?

Of course this could be resolved already, as this was over a year ago. --Chire (talk) 13:32, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

A useful trick with this sort of thing (very rare false positives) is to use the {{Sic}} template. In this case the bot should probably not add the // because of the [<nowiki.>[ preceding it. (One "[" being a good hint to add it, zero, not so clear.) Rich Farmbrough, 23:29, 28 January 2012 (UTC).

Nice trick. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:38, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Seriously?

We both know you shouldn't be making cosmetic changes like this as the only change. -DJSasso (talk) 20:32, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I am fixing the infoboxes to be all of the same format. anyway if you want me to change it only if parameters are changed I a good with it. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:33, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Set to "skip if no replacement". -- Yobot (talk) 20:34, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

This edit [6] does not match any checkwiki error, and the edit summary still is not saying which error is supposed to have been fixed. The "skip on minor edit" option also seems to be turned off. In general, if the bot believes it fixed an error once, the bot should not repeat the edit to the same page for the same reason; if the error was not fixed, the reason needs to be determined manually. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:12, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

There are a few articles that keep coming to the checkwiki lists and I don't know why. There is a math page that does that too (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Admissible_rule&action=history). I don't know how to control this. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:19, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I can fix and locate things where the bot does a second minor edit like I did in rev 7966 and [7] (bug report) or [8] (self-notes. It's true I reload the save list to catch things like these but I didn't expect a minor edit which would be reverted. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:24, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

You should be able to tell which checkwiki rule the article is listed on (since you have the lists) and then try to figure out why the article is tripping that rule. The edit summary doesn't give anyone else a sense of what rule is being tripped. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:33, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

It is supposed to be error 61 (punctuation after ref). I got this from other pages in the same list I fixed just right now to determine the error number (ex: [9]). But this is not easy every time. If the list of an error has very few items I load multiple lists to save time. Some checkwiki errors have very few items during the week. In the past I tried to group the errors by type (for example: wrong interwiki position, unbalanced brackets, etc.) but then I had to keep a text file with various edit summaries etc. I have also asked for autogenerated edit summary. This is not possible right now in awb. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:49, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I guess there is no way to run checkwiki against a specific page after editing it to see if the problem has been fixed. I don't see the ref problem on that page, although there are two references without a space between them - does that cause problems anywhere? — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:54, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Refs without space between is fine. I now checked the lists of checkwiki errors I loaded but the page is not there anymore. This happens because after I edited the pages for the first time I removed from the list. Maybe I have to make a list of "mysterious pages" and report them to CHECKWIKI and ask why they keep relisted. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:02, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

There is a practical problem: I load lists every day manually. Usually tenths of lists. Usually thousands of pages are loaded. I do many checks during the day to check if the edits are good, I keep reporting bugs and keep notes but I can't do that for every page. I hope this is understandable and expected. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:09, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I noticed you put a "nobots" on one of the pages, which I thought was very gracious. But it seems like Yobot doesn't pay attention: [10]. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:35, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the report. I 'll investigate what is wrong. Either AWB's code does not support this redirect of "Bots" or I used the wrong syntax in the template. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:38, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Moreover, I still don't understand why this page is keeps popping up in the toolserver. I must have remove it more than 10 times already! -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:40, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Still? -DJSasso (talk) 19:30, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I loaded mixed lists to check awb's speed under https. rev 8003. We are testing speed and need some simple edits. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:33, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Problem edit

Resolved

Hi, unsure what is going on with this edit. You appear to have placed a birth name in the birth date parameter. Keith D (talk) 21:26, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Very rare bug. I'll check most of my edits after bot is done. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:27, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Problem fixed for this page and I checked hundreds of pages for similar problems. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:09, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Misleading edit summary

Resolved

Hi, this edit summary is totally misleading. There have been no changes to infoboxes - all that has happened is the change of {{unreferenced}} to {{BLP unsourced}}, plus removal of a superfluous blank line. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:51, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

The parameters were found but failed to be fixed. I am now running on the parameters failed to be fixed on the first two runs. Maybe I should disactivate general fixes for this run. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:52, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Task completed after edit summary updated. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:10, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Mistagged lists

Resolved

Hi, some lists are being mis-tagged as (dead end) and possibly (wikify) as past of the WP:CHECKWIKI error fixes. Sarahj2107 (talk) 20:40, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Do you have any examples? For you information: For future contact please use my talk page not the bot talk page. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:51, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

440s ‎ 290s 270s ‎ ‎ 1590s ‎ 1450s ‎ 1440s ‎ 1370s ‎ 1330s ‎ 1320s. Sarahj2107 (talk) 21:08, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:30, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

All tags have been removed. I think we need some policy for these pages and then make expectional rules. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:40, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Pointless null edits

Resolved

Please stop Without having looked at any documentation or the bot's other edits, this is pointless. Please amend it so that it makes more meaningful edits. If I'm mistaken, I apologize for stopping it--please correct me on my talk. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:07, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

This is definitely a null edit, just deleting a space after the end of a paragraph. [11], with no visual effect (it's difficult to see even in the diff, I need to select the space).--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 19:13, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I see. Thanks for reporting but better report in my talk page so I can fix settings without having to restart the bot. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:16, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

This kind of problems have been fixed in AWB rev8052. Now AWB provides a new skip condition "skip if only cosmetic changes" that checks the page and if the html outcome is the same then the page is skipped. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:42, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Page blanking

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Dawkins&action=historysubmit&diff=481041862&oldid=480810991 Abhishikt (talk) 18:44, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

This bot recently blanked the Evolution page. I am assuming this is just a glitch. danielkueh (talk) 00:13, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Don’t replace double hyphens in Ada, SQL, and VHDL source code.

Double hyphens have a specific meaning in some programming languages (at least Ada, SQL, and VHDL), replacing them with m-dashes breaks the code: [12]. Maybe skip <syntaxhighlight> and related sections entirely; the rules of typesetting may not apply inside. Rathgemz (talk) 14:28, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Another pointless edit

Resolved

In this edit the bot has done nothing except rearrange the interwiki links out of alphabetical order, with a misleading edit summary as it's fixed no errors and done no general fixes.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:20, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Interwikis are not ordered in alphabetical order but in alphabetical order based on local language. This edit fixes a previous problem caused by awb. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:22, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I see, and my Japanese is good enough I can see why it's there ('nihongo'). It's something I've noticed before, bots seemingly arbitrarily re-arranging these links as they add or change other entries, so I assumed Yobot was doing the same. It could be though they're all using the same scheme which I wasn't aware of. And yes, it's visible so not pointless, so I withdraw that implication.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:28, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

I am confused with the interwiki order myself. The interwiki list is updated very often causing confusions. Thanks for contacting. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:30, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Pointless edits

Yobot is editing a lot recently, and thus covers up previous edits. It saves a lot of pointless edits, for which regular editors have been blocked in the past. I'll try to sort them by groups:

1. [13] [14]
2. There are many bots/scripts which fix dashes as an aside; I believe this bot should not commit edits to fix a single hyphen. [15] [16]
   or to relocate a single punctuation mark (,;.) before a reference (there are many edits on that).
3. [17] [18] [19]
4. [20]
5. [21]

? Materialscientist (talk) 04:04, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

This is a sign that database dump is old. I created the list by using the latest db dump. I now added some conditions for whitespace but I don't have any control on the others. I can just abandon this list and wait for the next dump. -- Yobot (talk) 15:45, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I see. This would explain No 1, what about 2-5? Materialscientist (talk) 01:47, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Just to give you an example of why this thread. This edit covered up vandalism, which was only noticed days later because a friendly IP complained about garbled text. All those "errors" which the bot fixes sometimes recently are negligible compared to such nuisance. "Refs after puncutation" is not an error, but a minor fix which should be done as an aside, not as a major target. Materialscientist (talk) 05:42, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Who defined this as "minor" fix? When I print a Wikipedia article, especially an a-class one, I want it to be perfect. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:08, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Several editors have disagreed with you on that on this talk page, thus please reconsider. "I want" is not a justification for a bot run. Materialscientist (talk) 23:58, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

On 2: Which bot does mdash fixing? Can you please write me? I would like to contact their owner for cooperation. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:10, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Citation bot fixes dashes in references, and many users apply a dash fixing script. This doesn't guarantees replacement of all range dashes, yet I see no reason for dash fixing as a primary bot task. Can you link to a discussion on this (dash fixing as a primary bot task)? Materialscientist (talk) 23:58, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

I have seen numerous trivial edits by Yobot over the last week or two of which [22] and [23] are only the most recent. I see at least two other editors have asked you to desist and this is not the first time this has come up with your bot. This plays utter havoc with people's watchlists, especially those of us who have large ones. Yobot blocked until you indicate this is fixed. SpinningSpark 20:18, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Fix only whitespace has been fixed hours ago. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:19, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Hm... it hasn't. Every time I load a new version of awb I have to recheck the box. I've done it now again. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:20, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Whitespaces might be a matter of database delays, which are severe these days, but how about such edits? [24] Materialscientist (talk) 23:02, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Or these [25]. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:45, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Whitespace only fixes stopped a day ago. I wrote above that Bypass redirects only edits haven't be fixed yet. There is a pending request on awb's feature requests page. The program is open source I would like to see someone fixing the problem described here. I can only "fix" the bug be blanking the Template redirects page before resuming Yobot. Would this be satisfactory? -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:41, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I;'ve no idea what that means. Anything which results in edits that make no difference to the visible article or the functioning of Wikipedia is not acceptable. SpinningSpark 19:31, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Stop editing now

Resolved

Stop editing, and discuss your edits, here and on the operator's talk page. Josh Parris 00:13, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

FYI, replication lag [26] keeps growing, thus I won't rely on database scans. Materialscientist (talk) 01:18, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Info: Yobot stop at 23:02 yesterday more than 1 hour before this request. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:38, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

STOP EDITING! Josh Parris 22:56, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Josh Parris. I don't understand your messages. I stopped editing the list that was causing the problem 1 hour before your message and your 2nd message was at 22:56, this is an hour after my last edit in a new list (less than 500 edits) that was flawless (no whitespace only, no bypass only edits). Can you please explain? -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:47, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Bannershell

Why is the bot adding bannershell on pages with only 2 project banners?

The template clearly shows: "used when more than two and fewer than six banners" ... "assessment bots may change shell templates per this usage guideline"

Thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 02:43, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

OK, my mistake, the bot simply changed the shell, rather than adding it.

As a thought, perhaps it could remove it when < 3 banners are there? Chaosdruid (talk) 02:48, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Fixing redirects to templates

Could you please explain why the bot saves such edits [27] [28] [29]. Materialscientist (talk) 23:54, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Moving categories at the bottom is a proper CHECKWIKKI task. Persondata is placed before categories. Unless you think it should be randomly put in the code. The first edit shouldn't be done. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:45, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

It's placed outside of the article body, not "randomly put in the code". Why such shuffling is a "proper CHECKWIKKI task" and why does it warrant saving an edit? Materialscientist (talk) 07:51, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

So you agree that categories should be placed outside the article body even if this doesn't change the rendered output? -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:17, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

An exaple of what I am talkin about is this where the category was in the middle of a paragraph. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:10, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Please fix this behaviour

Those are not allowed per WP:COSMETICBOT. You know this. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:54, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Separately, the edit summary of "clean up" cannot possibly be an approved bot task. Which approved task is the bot supposed to be running? — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:00, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

It's CHECKWIKI error fixing. Check User_talk:Magioladitis#AWB_revision_8039. There is a new skip condition called "Skip if cosmetic changes only" now in AWB. The edit you are showing me changes the rendered output since the categories are rendered in a different order. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:11, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Btw, WP:STUB reads: per the manual of style, the stub template is placed at the end of the article, after the External links section, any navigation templates, and the category tags, so that the stub category will appear after all article content but before any interlanguage links.. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:22, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

The edit summary is a problem caused by me not running from my laptop which is for service these days. I'll fix this in the next run. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:12, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Do you have a bot request approved to fix that WP:STUB problem? It seems like the sort of thing that BAG would not approve. Similarly, "changing the order of the categories" does not seem like the sort of change that BAG would approve. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:41, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I am only saying that this is not a big deal. There are bigger things to fix in the code right now. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:28, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Why not just stop running the bot until the code is fixed? Actually most of the issues seem to be with the CHECKWIKI task in particular, so why not just stop that task until the code is fixed? CHECKWIKI is pretty much the epitome of a low-priority bot task. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:34, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

The edits done right now will be done at some point anyway. I don't understand the "make less edits" thing. At some level it also contradicts the "do less in 1 edit" thing too. 99.9% of the pages are in good shape jsut because many editors do CHECKWIKI fixing. Yobot does it faster and by disturbung the watchlists less (Imagne if you have to control tenths of non-bot editors doing similar tasks). Keep in mind AWB is not the only tool around. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:40, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Actually, that change got through because it does technically speaking alter the rendering of the page, though not in a way you can actually see. I've tried to make an allowance for this in r8050, which would deny the edit linked at least. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 16:24, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Incidentally, are you making use of the general-fix-related skip options? - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 16:34, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I use "skip if only whitespace/casing/cosmetic changes". -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:33, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Note: that is a perfectly good minor edit.

• Categories: Particle physics stubs Monte Carlo particle physics software Computational physics Physics software

is just wrong. YOBOT fixed the error. Fixing errors is good. I don't know if Yobot is technically permitted this edit, but opposing it is churlish, and a disservice to readers. Rich Farmbrough, 19:04, 2 May 2012 (UTC).

Although not strictly following page layout guidelines, this is not an "error". It is exactly what is meant by a cosmetic change - it makes no difference at all to page rendering or function. There are thousands of pages on my watchlist. Every time Yobot runs, my watchlist is filled with hundreds of such edits. This bogs down watchlist processing and inevitably much more important things are sometimes missed. SpinningSpark 22:05, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The edit you are showing us changes the rendered output since the categories are rendered in a different order. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:37, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Clarke County

Resolved

Hi there. Why'd the bot do this? 28bytes (talk) 03:51, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Because for a long while its operator was operating without the appropriate skip controls set on, believing such changes were appropriate. That change is from 26 March. Magioladitis gives the impression of understanding the community no longer wants editing like that, and the devs of AWB have made changes to allow users to disable non-rendering changes. Magioladitis now has a recent version of AWB. You shouldn't see changes like that from here on out, but feel free to report them if you do. Josh Parris 05:25, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

This kind of problems have been fixed in AWB rev8052. Now AWB provides a new skip condition "skip if only cosmetic changes" that checks the page and if the html outcome is the same then the page is skipped. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:43, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Blocked

Despite all previous comments and assurances, the bot keeps saving edits like [30] [31]. I also believe edits like [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] are violations of WP:COSMETICBOT, and I only went through a few dozen of recent edits. On range dashes: user:RjwilmsiBot and User:Rjwilmsi are fixing them. Materialscientist (talk) 23:53, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

I think this time Yobot should stay blocked until the issue has been discussed at a wider forum even if Magioladitis gives us assurances it has been fixed. This has been going on for a very long time and there has been numerous blocks on the account, but the problem still keeps repeating. SpinningSpark 00:26, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, the problem keeps repeating because it's very difficult to stop it occuring once or twice when you're making thousands of edits. Anyhow, even I (as a bot operator and AWB developer) don't understand the first two diffs, because they're clearly just whitespace changes, which should be really easy to filter out via a checkbox in AWB. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 09:40, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

It's not just one or two, and if it is as easy as a checkbox to stop then there is no excuse for the repeated violations. I am frequently seeing Yobot running through my watchlist with a string of useless cosmetic edits. SpinningSpark 11:31, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Re the block notice: it is actually somewhat difficult to tell which edits are permitted because AWB performs such a large number of changes and because the "CHECKWIKI" edit summary is so vague. But of the diffs linked above, these are certainly not approved: [39] [40] [41].

The full list of CHECKWIKI fixes is at [42]. For example, although moving interwikis to the end is a violation of COSMETICBOT, it is also a CHECKWIKI fix (see 51 and 53). BAG approved a very open-ended request for CHECKWIKI edits, so it could be argued that those changes, although they are not needed, are approved as part of CHECKWIKIing. Similarly, replacing HTML <I></I> with wiki code is a CHECKWIKI fix. I think it would be better for BAG to revisit that bot request and limit it to only certain tasks that are unambiguously not cosmetic changes.

However, even if we ignore changes that are CHECKWIKI fixes, the bot is still making unapproved edits, like the ones linked in my first paragraph, and it has been making such edits chronically. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:33, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

@Jarry: The first two reported by CBM and MaterialScientist is my fault. I accidentally reloaded the list of pages skipped by the skip condition you created. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:58, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

@MaterialScientist: What is the problem with [43]? -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:59, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

@Carl and as a general comment too: I tried this time to load each error separately and tried to check whether each error is skipped or fixed by the new filter. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:02, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Error 38: It turns that italics in wikicode and italics in html code are rendered differently. I had the skip condition turned on. Everyone is welcome to check by claim. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:05, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

@Spinningspark: The problem on whitespace only fix is now fixed after Jarry's contributions. The two edits reported are my fault done manually. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:07, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Percentage of pages skipped has increased a lot after the latest skipping condition preventing most of the edits that do nothing. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:28, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

The problem lies with cosmetic changes spamming watchlists. I do believe edits moving categories from above to below interwiki should not be saved on their own, but only if combined with more serious fixes (same for many other Yobot fixes). The second part is changing "External link" to "External links", which can be understood bot-wise (programmed task), but not human-wise (there is only one link there, thus the change should not be made). I find the comment by Carl most constructive, i.e. rerun of the bot approval request, clearly specifying the tasks. The current operation state of Yobot is criticized by too many editors and too often. Materialscientist (talk) 12:14, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Replied to your talk page on the second issue based on Wikipedia:External_links#External_links_section. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:17, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Ok, stricked out (Magioladitis, please don't misunderstand - that change might be valid, but again, only as an addendum to a major correction, I believe). Materialscientist (talk) 22:44, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

I would still argue that this is a superfluous cosmetic change. It might be in the guidelines, but it is unnecessary for a bot to go round fixing it, it's just not that important. Moving interwikis to the end is also in the guidelines (WP:ORDER), but is still considered cosmetic. SpinningSpark 15:20, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Each of the error fixes has very few pages per week (except error 61 that has ~500 pages per 3-4 days). I think the bot gives the impression of doing many edits because of the multiple tasks (more than 30 error fixes). Check User:Magioladitis/AWB and CHECKWIKI -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:20, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Not an argument. Materialscientist (talk) 12:24, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Somehow it is. One of the reasons I haven't been editing, apart from real life engagements, was that some other editors were fixing some of the CHECKWIKI errors manually or by using scripts like AutoEd. Yobot replaces this job by doing almost everything by its own. Advantage: All edits can be seen in a single account and easily get spotted. Disadvantage: It gives the impression that all the boring edits are done by a single person. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:09, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

I think Yobot should be judged after you see edits with new skip condition ("skip if only cosmetic changes") and this skip condition is improved not not by judging the edits that happened before. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:34, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, we get this response every time you are challenged, that the problem is said to be fixed, but things just don't improve. I think it is now time that the terms of the bot approval were revisited. SpinningSpark 15:20, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

a) Are you aware of the new "skip if onyl cosmetic changes" condition created by Jarry?

b) My pleasure to start a discussion of what a cosmetic change is because there seems to be a misunderstanding and a try to put as much edits under the blanket of "cosmetic changes" and this is proven by th discussion already. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:23, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

On "external link"->"external links": The change changes what the page looks like and it is important in printed versions of the pages since we would like all page be closer to perfection whn they are printed. I don't understand why someone to think that other editors are not allowed to fix this.

The whole discussion here is on a wrong base. There are four categories of Yobot's edits that cause controversy:

1. Whitespace/casing changes that are widely considered as "cosmetic" (I am not going to discuss the reason we end up forming this kind of definitions because it's out of the scope of this discussion till now). This category can be avoided by certain skip conditions, sometimes I do mistakes due to the number of conditions I have to keep in mind and by the fact my hard disc crashed twice this year.
2. Changes of style where there is no formed consensus for them. (AWB reduced this kind of edits almost to zero).
3. Changes described in the Manual fo Style but don't change the visual result (example: moving interwikis or categories at the bottom). The "skip if only cosmestic changes" reduces the problem but there is still a place to discuss if we would like to discontinue some of the CHECKWIKI error fixes
4. Changes described in the Manual fo Style and change the visual result (like the "external link"->"external links" change). There is no consensus that exactly states which of these changes are "cosmetic" and blocking/stopping is not based on consensus or some guideline but on impression. we could ofcourse try and form a consensus for that too.

I think the discussion should be divived in 4 parts instead of me trying to reply in all of these cases and keep getting blocked for a mixture of edits caused by bugs, human errors or by wrong administrator's judge. Each case can be dealt in a different way. A discussion which will try to overcome the problems alltogether will be unproductive. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:01, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

And there is one more thing to be discussed: Which edits of those described aive are allowed to editors and not to bots and mainly why? -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:25, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

In general, individual editors are allowed to make cosmetic changes to specific articles they are working on. The principle is that someone can prune the shrubs at their own house however they want, but shouldn't go around pruning all the shrubs on the block to match unless the neighborhood has actually agreed on it. As the number of articles affected by a task increases, the level of community approval needed beforehand also increases, regardless of whether the edits will be done by a bot or manually. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:30, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

So I guess all the changes described in the Manual of Style are allowed to editors. Edits that are not allowed in mass scale are edits that there is no formed consensus or there is a consensus on the opposite of what these edits do. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:37, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I just noticed this discussion and thought I would levy my unsolicited opinion. I think that far far too much time is spent on Wikipedia arguing about trivial edits. A bot or editor did a trivial edit, so what. Before my dad died he had a saying, "If you mind the pennies the dollars will mind themselves". This bot minds the pennies and eventhough some editors don't like these trivial edits being done, they do incrementally improve the pedia. Additionally, most of these edits make changes that follow the MOS, so if you don't like what the MOS says, I recommend you start a discussion to change it, not badger the operator of the bot thats doing the work. If the MOS gets chanegd to say that X edit is no longer the standard then AWB and whatever else can be changed.
@the editors arguing about cluttering their watchlists. This is a BS argument. Filling another users watchlists with edits should never ever be a reason to stop a bot or editor from editing. I personally find it quite satisfying that edits are being made to the items on my watchlist, even the little edits like this add up and over time I have seen noticiable differences in the articles development just from bots doing little things over time.
@CBM, to say that an editor can make a cosmetic changes but a bot cannot is both absurd and in contrast to what you have said in other discussions. In fact I believe you stated repeatedly that doing this with a bot was preferred because the users with the affected articles on their watchlists can hide bot edits. I also noticed something else that I find troubling. It seems like a large percentage of the editors on the list of most active editors are being systematically attacked and run off. Often times by editors who do very few "edits" (although they might be active bot operators or admins they do few edits). Several have already left, Rich is in Arbitration, Yobot and Magio are the current targets and I suspect others will be targetted next. There seems to be a general unfriendliness towards anyone who expends a large amount of effort in large scale editing. Almost as though the community felt like they were being left out or needed to defend why they didn't do more. In general I think too much time is wasted on these discussions. 138.162.8.57 (talk) 20:07, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Going forward!

I see a few issues here, though I have my own opinions on them, I set them aside in the hope that we can move forward.

1. Non-rendering changes. These should be fixed by the new filter, with the exception of the HTML italics (and possibly analogous bolding). There may be other edge cases that we should know about, but this is new software so a sensible approach is needed. Note that HTML italics and bolding have been deprecated for around a decade.
2. Reference ordering. I think this is widely accepted, it's a built-in fix for AWB and discussions have favoured it. To object to this it would have to be shown that consensus has changed.
3. Having the checkbox unchecked so that two whitespace edits get made is an error, but not really significant.
4. There is no reason that ongoing discussion with AWB users and developers, the bot community and the wider community cannot be engaged in, to modify the requirements and build skip options appropriately. Initiating that discussion is the responsibility of those who want to see consensus changed.

Any reason not to unblock? Rich Farmbrough, 09:09, 2 May 2012 (UTC).

On 3: Maybe, but as it is being repeated, the trust to the operator is wearing out. I do agree with Carl above, and nothing has been done since to address that - currently the operator can set up Yobot to implement any checkwiki or AWB fixes in unattended mode. We believe that some of those tasks violate WP:Cosmeticbot and suggest to rerun the bot approval, to clearly specify and revise the bot tasks. Materialscientist (talk) 09:47, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I support Materialscientist on this. A tighter bot approval is needed, or at least a debate on whether it should be tighter. Either way, a new submission is needed. SpinningSpark 11:38, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

OK so there are 92 Checkwiki items. Looking at the list, of those YoBot currently tackles 52, which do you think should be deactivated? 81.178.144.101 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:52, 6 May 2012 (UTC).

I think it is for Magioladitis to list the ones he wants and make the case for them. SpinningSpark 11:49, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

There is an ongoing discussion in Wikipedia:Bot_owners'_noticeboard#CHECKWIKI_errors_needs_to_be_fixed. I think the most important fix is error 61 (ref after punctuation) which is important if we want articles to reach A-rating. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:22, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

As far as I know, only Military History has any sort of fixed review process for A rating. Other projects just treat it like any other rating; an editor could certainly promote an article to A-class without checking whether all the punctuation is correct. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:57, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

What about FA-class then? We should treat pages as we want them to be perfect from every possible aspect. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:21, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Sort key for Asian names

In case Yobot gets approved again, please fix the DEFAULTSORT that it picks for Asian names; this was wrong. There were two clues that it could have used to determine the family name: the {{Chinese name}} template, and the 'Listas' parameter on the talk page, which is used by Defaultsortbot e.g. here. (I looked through the archive in case this issue had come up already, but didn't see it.) – Fayenatic L (talk) 16:47, 28 April 2012 (UTC)