Wikipedia:Bot requests

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Commonly Requested Bots

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This is a page for requesting tasks to be done by bots per the bot policy. This is an appropriate place to put ideas for uncontroversial bot tasks, to get early feedback on ideas for bot tasks (controversial or not), and to seek bot operators for bot tasks. Consensus-building discussions requiring large community input (such as request for comments) should normally be held at WP:VPPROP or other relevant pages (such as a WikiProject's talk page).

You can check the "Commonly Requested Bots" box above to see if a suitable bot already exists for the task you have in mind. If you have a question about a particular bot, contact the bot operator directly via their talk page or the bot's talk page. If a bot is acting improperly, follow the guidance outlined in WP:BOTISSUE. For broader issues and general discussion about bots, see the bot noticeboard.

Before making a request, please see the list of frequently denied bots, either because they are too complicated to program, or do not have consensus from the Wikipedia community. If you are requesting that a template (such as a WikiProject banner) is added to all pages in a particular category, please be careful to check the category tree for any unwanted subcategories. It is best to give a complete list of categories that should be worked through individually, rather than one category to be analyzed recursively (see example difference).

Alternatives to bot requests

WP:AWBREQ, for simple tasks that involve a handful of articles and/or only needs to be done once (e.g. adding a category to a few articles).
WP:URLREQ, for tasks involving changing or updating URLs to prevent link rot (specialized bots deal with this).
WP:SQLREQ, for tasks which might be solved with an SQL query (e.g. compiling a list of articles according to certain criteria).
WP:TEMPREQ, to request a new template written in wiki code or Lua.
WP:SCRIPTREQ, to request a new user script. Many useful scripts already exist, see Wikipedia:User scripts/List.
WP:CITEBOTREQ, to request a new feature for WP:Citation bot, a user-initiated bot that fixes citations.

Note to bot operators: The {{BOTREQ}} template can be used to give common responses, and make it easier to keep track of the task's current status. If you complete a request, note that you did with {{BOTREQ|done}}, and archive the request after a few days (WP:1CA is useful here).

Please add your bot requests to the bottom of this page.
Make a new request

#	Bot request	Status	💬	👥	🙋 Last editor	🕒 (UTC)	🤖 Last botop editor	🕒 (UTC)
1	Implementing the outcome of Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television)#Follow-up RfC on TV season article titles	BRFA filed	18	9	Wikiwerner	2024-04-20 17:49	Primefac	2024-03-27 12:55
2	Auto-WP:NAVNOREDIRECT	Not a good task for a bot.	10	5	Wikiwerner	2024-04-28 12:22	Primefac	2024-03-13 18:37
3	Automatic NOGALLERY keyword for categories containing non-free files (again)		9	5	Wikiwerner	2024-05-15 18:43	Usernamekiran	2024-04-13 02:17
4	Automatically replace superscripts with sup and sub tags		5	3	Qwerfjkl	2024-04-06 19:54	Qwerfjkl	2024-04-06 19:54
5	Long-dash URL		1	1	GreenC	2024-04-08 22:16
6	Can we have an AIV feed a bot posts on IRC?		6	2	Lofty abyss	2024-04-29 10:29	Usernamekiran	2024-04-15 11:27
7	Bot to sync talk page redirects with their corresponding page		10	5	Anomie	2024-04-17 11:40	Anomie	2024-04-17 11:40
8	Bot to update match reports to cite template		4	2	Yoblyblob	2024-05-25 22:00	Mdann52	2024-05-21 09:03
9	Bot to mass tag California State University sports seasons	Doing...	3	3	Frostly	2024-05-24 16:36	Primefac	2024-04-19 18:13
10	Football league infoboxes		7	4	Bagumba	2024-04-25 13:43	Primefac	2024-04-25 12:01
11	Clear Category:Unlinked Wikidata redirects		6	3	A smart kitten	2024-04-23 10:56	DreamRimmer	2024-04-21 03:28
12	Find linkrot with a specific pattern		7	3	GreenC	2024-05-01 16:20
13	Fixing stub tag placement on new articles	Not a good task for a bot.	4	3	Headbomb	2024-05-19 20:17	Headbomb	2024-05-19 20:17
14	User:RetractionBot, v2	Y Done	8	5	Mdann52	2024-05-25 16:06	Mdann52	2024-05-25 16:06

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Featured topic bot

Hi all, the WP:Featured and good topic candidates promotion/demotion/addition process is extremely tedious to do by hand, and having a bot help out (akin to the FAC and FLC bot) would do wonders. Unfortunately, this would have to be a rather intricate bot—see User:Aza24/FTC/Promote Instructions for an idea of the promotion process—so I don't know if many would be willing to take it up. But regardless, such a bot is long over due, and its absence has resulted in myself, Sturmvogel 66 and GamerPro64 occasionally delaying the promotion process, simply because of the discouraging and time consuming manual input needed. I can certainly provide further information on the processes were someone to be interested. Aza24 (talk) 01:14, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Doing... Aza24, hello friend. I started on this one tonight. You're right, this is quite complicated. Hopefully I am disciplined enough to complete this one. Feel free to ping me every once in awhile to keep me on task! I may ask you some questions once I get a little farther along. Code so far: task2-promote-topics.php –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:10, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a way to determine whether an article is a featured topic nominee vs a good topic nominee, purely from its nomination page? Example: Wikipedia:Featured and good topic candidates/Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy/archive1 –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:36, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A topic has to be at least 50% to be considered Featured. I guess that would be hard to figure out for a bot, right? GamerPro64 02:08, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for taking this up Novem! Yeah, Gamer's comment is the only way to tell—though we could probably add a parameter to the template if that won't work? Aza24 (talk) 05:26, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Aza24, GamerPro64. Thanks for explaining how that works. I'll make a note. Work is slow but progressing. Link to GitHub. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:29, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Novem Linguae, just wanted to check in, any progress with this? The main thing needed is automatically updating the talk pages and creating Template:Featuredtopictalk—the category stuff isn't a huge deal, and we can definitely update a page like Wikipedia:Featured Topics by hand. Aza24 (talk) 14:49, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Aza24, hey there, thanks for checking in. I got pretty busy with other wiki projects, but I'll try to take another look at this soon. The simplified requirements are a good idea. We can always add more features later. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:43, 28 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Aza24, alright, I started a rewrite of the bot tonight that will just update article talk pages. We'll start simple, then add features later. 1) I spot checked a few article talk pages, I didn't see any "FTC/GTC nomination templates" as mentioned in step 4a of the promote instructions. Can you link me to a talk page that has this? 2) The next time you have an article to promote, can you ping me and I'll do the whole promote instructions for it manually, so I can learn more about how it works? Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:18, 30 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Also, are there any other {{icon}}s used in the topic box besides FA, GA, FL? –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:31, 3 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Aza24, GamerPro64, and Sturmvogel 66:. Alright, I'm making good progress now. The bot does step 2 and most of step 3 of your checklist. I'll keep adding steps, and I think we can BRFA in a week or two. Here's some screenshots. [1]. For the trigger, I plan to have it listen for the template {{User:NovemBot/Promote}} placed on topic candidate discussion pages. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:57, 6 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Great to hear; apologies on my slow responses. There shouldn't be any icons other than the three you've listed. The nomination templates have slowly become out of use, but see Talk:1998 FA Charity Shield for a current one—I almost wonder if they're needed at all. I will try and ping sometime this weekend when I promote another. My work has just slowed down after yesterday, so I should have more time to help with this. Aza24 (talk) 21:15, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Aza24, things are going well. The bot now does steps 2-5 and step 9. Next round of questions:

are topic page names always the same as the lead article's name?
If a talk page is missing an {{Article history}} template, what other templates that need to be converted are likely to be present? {{GA}}... any others?
Is there a way to figure out what topic type a Featured Topic should go in on the Wikipedia:Featured topics page?
Is there a way to figure out what topic type a Good Topic should go in on the Wikipedia:Good topics page? {{article history|topic=}} looked promising, but it appears to use different topic types. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Good_articles/Project_quality_task_force#Good_article_topic_values
Is there ever a situation where archive2, archive3, etc. are used?

–Novem Linguae (talk) 23:50, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Responding in order:

No, see Wikipedia:Featured topics/Operas by Claudio Monteverdi (Operas by Claudio Monteverdi vs List of operas by Claudio Monteverdi) or for any overviews such as Wikipedia:Featured topics/Overview of Harry Styles.
GA and (sometimes) PR are usually the big ones; DYK and OTD frequently exist on talk pages without being connected already, so they aren't as pressing
Well this is the kind of thing that can probably be best done manually. I'm left thinking of FAC and FLC where they put down the promotion template and then manually update the FA/FL page and add the articles to the "Going-ons" page or whatever. I would think there is currently no way a bot could figure out where to put the topic on the page.
see above (I think)
Not sure I 100% understand which archive we're talking about. With the candidate pages (e.g. Wikipedia:Featured and good topic candidates/Black Mirror/archive1) there are sometimes archive2 when stuff is delisted and then renominated. Aza24 (talk) 06:59, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Automatic lists of images in rejected or deleted drafts

When a draft is deleted images uploaded to Commons are not always checked and might be left to languish. Even if the images are acceptable they may be uncategorized.

To help with this I would request to have a bot automatically create a list of images in rejected (or deleted, if possible) drafts, with the following conditions:

Add to list if a rejected or deleted draft contains images that were uploaded by the draft creator.

Optional features:

Limit to new users (account less than 100 days old; it may take a while before a draft is checked).
If the image is already marked for deletion, include it in the list but mark it in someway.
If the uploader has previously deleted images highlight other images as possibly problematic.

I am bringing this here after comments in Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Automatic lists of images in rejected or deleted drafts MKFI (talk) 19:54, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@MKFI: I put together a PAWS notebook to examine the feasibility of implementing this as a tool.

There is a rough specimen page at User:William Avery/Draft image examples, which was created using the following selection criteria, which would be user inputs in an actual tool:

Draft was rejected in the last 30 days
Draft was created less that 100 days after the user registered. (Does this make more sense than the current age of the account?)

Is this something like the data you are looking for?

Showing which images are marked for deletion and whether the user has had images deleted would be fairly straightforward additions. I haven't done anything concerning deleted drafts, and they present some problems, as the database no longer contains a link between the draft page and the image. One could show the images most recently uploaded by the user who created the deleted draft, and which are not used in draft or main space. William Avery (talk) 09:31, 22 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I imagine any of the information output at commons:User:OgreBot/Uploads by new users/2020 December 23 15:00 would be useful. William Avery (talk) 09:38, 22 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@William Avery: very nice, thank you. The 30 days rejected and 100 days after registered are good limits. I believe that will be enough so that it's not needed to check deleted drafts.

Perhaps the images could be a little smaller to condense the page a bit. It would also be nice to mark images if they have an OTRS ticket.

Sadly, OgreBot is no longer active which is one the main reasons I am asking for this. MKFI (talk) 13:17, 22 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@MKFI: - I have deployed a tool at https://heber.toolforge.org. It's a pretty basic list at the moment. I will add image information in Ogre and OTRS tagging, and improve it as I'm able. I also need to implement a regular scheduled job to keep it up to date. William Avery (talk) 18:54, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@William Avery: excellent, thank you. If you add scheduled job is it possible to archive earlier results? MKFI (talk) 19:08, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@MKFI: Sorry for the late reply, I've had domestic obligations, and trips to the beach. I am hoping to make a few further improvements next week: more of the information shown on the Magog the Ogre pages and indications of whether drafts and images have been deleted. The scheduled jobs should just be adding records to the tools database, and anything you see today should be there for good. William Avery (talk) 19:32, 17 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@William Avery: please don't feel pressurized to hurry, the report has been very useful already in spotting image copyright violations. Thank you once again for making it. MKFI (talk) 18:50, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A bot to help maintain and identify inspiration articles

At the idea lab a while back, I floated the idea of identifying inspiration articles for a given page, GAs or FAs on similar topics that could serve as inspiration for helping get that page to a higher level, and got some positive feedback. Following some additional discussion on Discord the other day, I've created {{Inspiration page}}. I'd like bot (or maybe tool) help for two things:

Maintenance, such that if an article is demoted, any pages using it have their banner removed.
Identifying new pages where it would be helpful to add the banner. This could possibly be done by searching for pages that share a substantial number of categories/wikiprojects, but where one is FA and the other is C-class or below.

Let me know if this sounds feasible! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:12, 18 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Task 1 is fairly trivial, and can be done with even something like AWB. Task 2 is slightly more difficult. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk, FAQ, contribs)} 02:16, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Red links to AfD deleted subjects

The bot action would be to check the 'what links here' page of articles that have been deleted by WP:AfD (and are still deleted) and report/list any with links to main space articles. And provide/update a list to the project Wikipedia:WikiProject Red Link Recovery

There should not be any redlinks to articles that have been deleted by the AfD process, C.1. "If the article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a candidate for AfD."

People would go through the list and make decisions about how to fix, maybe it should a redirect, maybe the redlinks need to be unlinked, maybe something else...

This is discussed on the project page A bot seems like the best solution.

Because there are several avenues that these might get addressed, it seems like the best solution would something that updates regularly, so corrected subjects fall of the list, and new subjects get added.

Jeepday (talk) 15:37, 22 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I can have a go at this. Pi (Talk to me!) 14:41, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Coding... Made some progress, should get it finished over the weekend Pi (Talk to me!) 22:41, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Just because an AFD has closed as delete one should not assume that all consequent redlinks should be unlinked, for example they may point to a different potential topic of the same name. Surely delinking is a choice for the closing admin? Ϣere SpielChequers 13:12, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, Pi, save your effort for something else, I doubt this would pass a BRFA without a pretty strong consensus and more specifics. Primefac (talk) 13:48, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

WereSpielChequers & Primefac We are asking for a bot to identify where the red links exist for articles deleted by AfD. Not to automatically remove the links. A person needs to decided what to do with the links. It might need a redirect that was not added, it might need a stub built, it might need to unlinked. Jeepday (talk) 13:12, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Do you just want a list to be posted to the WikiProject page with the recently AfDd pages, and the pages that link in? Pi (Talk to me!) 16:13, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be useful and feasible to list redlinks to redirects which used to target the deleted page? I'm thinking of an AfD for Joe Busker, where List of kazoo players links to ex-page Joseph Busker, a redirect deleted per G8. I expect it would require collection in advance of deletion while the targets are still known, and might be too much work. Certes (talk) 17:04, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I misunderstood. If you're just creating a list, then go for it. Primefac (talk) 19:36, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pi We would want more then recent, as there are likely years of old things that need to be looked at. I am not sure, what the best solution is for listing, but maybe adding a sub page to the project or something. The bot would want to rerun periodically. Either remove things that no longer meet criteria, or scrap the old list and make a new one.

* My logic runs something like this

* Check AfD deletes

* If deleted by AfD AND the article is still deleted; Continue else check next AfD

* Check what 'links here' for the article deleted by AfD, if there is links to any main space pages (there will always be links to the AfD and other stuff); add to list, else check next AfD

* Check next AfD

That is what I am thinking, does it make sense? Jeepday (talk) 14:41, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Certes That might be difficult to code. I would hope/expect that the person addressing redlinks would see the incoming redirect and address it. But if Joseph Busker was not addressed by the AfD, and if Joe Busker was not a Kazoo player, it is probably best to just ignore Joseph Busker. Each will have to be addressed uniquely. Jeepday (talk) 14:41, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've done some work on this and I think I've got there in principle. Can you have a look at this User:Pi/Sandbox/Bot for an idea of what the output could be.

I am aware that quite a lot of the links in are from templates. I'm going to make a change to it so that it lists templates separately instead of listing all the pages containing that template.
I have only made the bot look at the last couple of weeks of RFAs, but I will also be able to import the historic data. I think running it daily would work in the future.
Can you have a think about whether this is what you want, and give any feedback. I'm actually going on holiday tomorrow, walking through some hills so I won't be able to work on this until I get home on Friday (16th), but I'll be on my phone so I can respond here. Pi (Talk to me!) 00:43, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pi that looks very good. I think you have everything I was looking for. Jeepday (talk) 13:16, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Great, I'm just going to make the code a bit more robust (error handing etc) and fix the template thing. Hopefully I'll be able to put in a bot request in the next couple of days. Pi (Talk to me!) 22:05, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Legally mandated deletion of all online news content by German state broadcasters

All German state broadcasters have to follow a 2009 law that they need to delete all online content after a year, so as not to "disadvantage" commercial news corporations. ("12. Rundfunkänderungsstaatsvertrag" [de], 1 June 2009)
This has big consequences for Wikipedia when they cite news from German state broadcasters: It means legally mandated automatic link rot for such sources. I suggest a bot that recognizes when such a broadcaster is cited and automatically requests a save point from the Internet Archive, then links the save point in the ref.

Also see the Depublication [de]: The whole German article is about this novel concept brought up the 2009 law.--ΟΥΤΙΣ (talk) 00:26, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Do we have a way to find and recognize all of these sources? Are we just searching for certain URL prefixes? HighInBC ^{Need help? Just ask.} 00:28, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would guess, anything from the websites of the broadcasters on that list? DS (talk) 00:46, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This sounds like something that either GreenC or Cyberpower678 would best be able to get their archiving bots to work. Primefac (talk) 01:14, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Agree 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk, FAQ, contribs | please use {{ping}} on reply)} 01:20, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the friendly reception of my idea, so far. It just came to my mind that well known news magazines like Tagesschau that have their own, independent websites (tagesschau.de) should also be scanned for, as their online news content regularly gets deleted per that law, too. I'm not sure how many else there are, but there may be quite a number. Will look to create a list of those tomorrow. --ΟΥΤΙΣ (talk) 01:41, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I could also email ARD and ZDF (which serve as umbrella organisations for smaller affiliates, and should cover most if not all public broadcasters in Germany) and ask them to provide a list.
Another thought: Since the 2009 law realized a EU policy, this affects Austrian state broadcasters, too. Although I think I read that ORF tends to ignore its online implementation. (Not sure about that last part.) --ΟΥΤΙΣ (talk) 01:48, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

How is it being handled at dewiki? -- GreenC 02:43, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@GreenC: I'm still looking a bit, but it looks like this was touched on back in 2010, at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots/Anfragen/Archiv/2010-2#tagesschau.de_et_al_–_Inhalte_"verschwinden"_→_Webcite?, and "tagesschau.de"_etc. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fragen_zur_Wikipedia/Archiv/2010/Woche_43#Neuerdings_viele_tote_Links_durch_"tagesschau.de"_etc.. ^{!ɘM γɿɘυϘ}⅃ϘƧ 04:11, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, my understanding is that behind the scenes, any time we add an external link to WP, there are automatic processes that automatically call to Internet Archive and make sure the link is archived, and then User:InternetArchiveBot can then use this information to populate archive links. In other words, we technically need to do nothing. --Masem (t) 04:46, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure this is working reliably, Masem?

The immediate cause for my proposal was that I discovered a "lost" 2019 WDR article from this April 2020 edit.

In this specific case a save point was generated at the Internet Archive in March 2021, but the only thing archived there is an error message citing the 2009 law mandating the article's removal.

Thank you SQL, for digging out those old German bot discussions.

My translation of the gist of your two links: Croesch (talk · contribs) had a working bot in 2010 that linked affected online articles to their archived version on the archive depub.org.

An option to also offer archival at the Internet Archive was suggested, but never realized. When depub.org shut down at the end of 2010, the project was dead and not revived thereafter. (At least there is nothing new in your two links, after 2010.) --ΟΥΤΙΣ (talk) 07:40, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You can read more at WP:PLRT, and as that page states "(nb. in practice not every link is getting saved for various reasons)." Whether that case for that German work was exceptional, or represents a situation across all German works, I don't know. --Masem (t) 13:05, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to find out if this does substantially affect English Wikipedia, after all, or not.

You could use a bot/script to find answers for the following questions:

How many referenced news articles (from the above list of German public broadcasters) older than a year have not been linked along with an archived version? These are probably all dead by now.
How many referenced news articles (from the above list of German public broadcasters) older than a year have been linked along with an archived version? These should all be considered save except for those in the following question.
Within these cases: In how many of these is the time span between publication and archival greater than one year? These would all likely have archived an error message, like in my above example.

With these numbers you could judge whether a substantial problem exists with such references at this time, or not.

Could someone code a small bot/script that pulls this data from the servers using SQL and does the described analysis? (I could to it myself, I suppose but I haven't done such queries on WP data and would need someone to guide me.) --ΟΥΤΙΣ (talk) 15:46, 4 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unknown Infobox parameters

Hi there, I've been occasionally trying to chip away at the articles in the Category:Infoboxes with unknown parameters. Some of these categories are... beefy to say the least, some of the standouts are Film with 11.2k, German location with 9.8k, Officeholder with 3.5k, Organisation with 3k, Scientist with 7.4k, Settlement with 10.5k and Sportsperson with 3.7k. Currently, the only way to really tell which parameter is causing the issue is to attempt to edit the article and either check the infobox parameters or save the preview so it appears at the top of the page. You are at least given an idea of what to look for by the sortkey it appears under in the category, but I don't think this works when there are multiple errors properly, which results in having to consult the preview regardless. I'm not certain but I feel like a lot of these ones especially are either deprecated parameters that PrimeBOT might be able to handle or simple misspellings or other issues that could be handled with AWB or other similar tools, such as missing underscores and dashes and alt test and image sizes being separated with a pipe.

Since this requires information to be grabbed, it seemed like a bit more than an SQL query would be necessary, I was thinking of some sort of bot that could generate a report maybe that could be linked to from the category page. I'm not thinking anything too complicated (in my uneducated opinion, I think), just something that lists the page in the left column and the broken parameter in the right, you could sort both columns (so by article title or broken parameter), and this would make it much easier to visibly see where there is a great amount of overlap in broken parameters to more speedily clear out these categories.

I hope that makes sense, but it would hopefully assist the relevant WikiProjects in being able to clean up their respective articles as well, and potentially allow for these parameters to be either added in as aliases or if there is significant usage within a template, maybe even have an underused parameter modified to call an already existing name used in the majority. Thank you if anyone is willing or able to help out! --Lightlowemon (talk) 12:22, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Lightlowemon: While a bot report wouldn't necessarily be bad, it actually is possible to do almost what you want with an SQL query. Most of the infobox-bad-parameter tracking categories are configured to use the first bad parameter as the sort key, so something like quarry:query/37156 works. If there are multiple bad parameters on the same page, however, this method will underestimate the issue. Vahurzpu (talk) 12:57, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Vahurzpu: Huh, that is pretty much what I was looking for, I wasn't sure an SQL query would show me what I was after, looking at the example you used which can't show multiple parameters, it seems several of the parameters you selected not to show were used on the remaining pages not listed, which would shed the light I was looking for. CO-OP (podcast) for example has atom, width, audio_format, rss_other and atom_other parameters, all of which will call the error category. It's good that most of this documentation on the talk page shows most of their removals (better listed on the main page or the category page IMO, for purposes like this), but like you identified it can underestimate the issues. This is helpful all the same though and a useful interim at least for now while I conquer the smaller categories, thank you. --Lightlowemon (talk) 13:25, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Lightlowemon: You may also be interested in User:PrimeHunter/Sortkeys.js which only requires a click on a category page. It would be more useful if it could display the sort keys next to the links on the category page but my JavaScript is extremely limited. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:14, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The monthly report linked from the Template Data section in the documentation can also be helpful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:46, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter:, the script works very similarly to the quarry query, in that it only shows one of the broken parameters, I've added it still though as it'll be good for the short ones , many thanks. @Jonesey95:, the Template Data report is actually super helpful and captures all those multiple cases as well as tells you how many are present which is what I was looking for, admittedly some templates seem to not quite be documented properly, but hopefully, I can fix that stuff as I go (Basketball Player and German Place were the two large ones I checked). Thank you everyone for your help and suggestions!

@Primefac: Would you be willing to run PrimeBOT over these infoboxes? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 18:10, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As always, if I'm given a template and a list of parameters that need culling (the more specific the better) then I am happy to do so. Best place for such things is my userpage. Primefac (talk) 22:14, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Lightlowemon: Would you be willing to provide this information to @Primefac: on their talk page? GoingBatty (talk) 04:02, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As I find them I can send them over, thanks to you both. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lightlowemon (talk • contribs) 08:37, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ISBN hyphenation

This is a pretty minor task, but throwing it out here, as it'd be very doable via bot. There are many ISBNs on Wikipedia that lack proper hyphenation. https://www.isbn.org/ISBN_converter always knows how to fix them, but it'd be nice to have a bot on-wiki do it instead. Whether or not we'd also want to switch to using a non-breaking hyphen at the same time is something to consider, given that it doesn't seem we'll be able to use a no-wrap to prevent unwanted line breaks. Alternatively, if this is too cosmetic, we could find a way to add it to the WP:GENFIX set. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:41, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there is consensus for such a mass change. Also, if you don't want ISBNs to wrap, why would you add hyphens to them? Non-breaking hyphens will probably break the validation scheme: ISBN 123456789X, ISBN 123‑456789X Parameter error in {{ISBN}}: invalid character. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:24, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It seems it's the validation scheme that's broken, then, as formally ISBNs are supposed to be hyphenated. The scheme allows for hyphen-minus (as in ISBN 123-456789X), but not genuine hyphens or non-breaking hyphens. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:00, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The hyphen-minus is one variety of "genuine hyphen", whatever that means. It's the one on the keyboard, which is why it is used in ISBNs, hyphenated words, and other normal typing. See its description on the page you linked above. If you think that something is wrong with ISBN validation, I suggest Template talk:ISBN as a forum, not the bot requests page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:12, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What would be the benefit, here, other than conforming to the International ISBN Agency's formal recommendations? Do you think that this increases readability?

When working with citations in the past, I have always given numbers without hyphens. Reasoning that a pure number is hard to misunderstand by man and machine alike, while hyphens add an (unneeded) extra level of information and possible misunderstanding. --ΟΥΤΙΣ (talk) 16:01, 4 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well if ISBNs are meant to be used in reference, I believe all print books are hyphenated, so it would make sense to follow that here. I think most online databases stick to hyphenation as well. Perhaps something about this script could be altered to a bot—albeit probably without the "Convert ISBN10 to ISBN13" function. Aza24 (talk) 16:09, 4 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Courtesy pinging creator of script AntiCompositeNumber. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:08, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not really a great task for a bot, at least without broader consensus first. Currently there is no consensus as to whether ISBNs should be hypehnated, only that it should generally be done consistently within an article. On the technical side, it wouldn't be difficult to turn hyphenator into a bot. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 01:39, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note that the how-to guide Wikipedia:ISBN#Types states "Use hyphens if they are included, as they divide the number into meaningful parts". GoingBatty (talk) 03:48, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Restoring redirects to recreated pages

A fairly common phenomenon occurs where a page is deleted, then all the redirects to it are deleted per WP:G8, then the page is recreated but the redirects to it are lost. Could we get a bot that looks at recently recreated pages and restores the incoming redirects to them? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:12, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Sdkb: WP:BOTREQ is over that way. I don't see any policy problems on something like this, though it may have a large technical hurdle (specifically that a page has no easy way to show "what used to link here"). — xaosflux ^Talk 11:12, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, I thought I was posting at BOTREQ for some reason; thanks for doing the move, Xaosflux/Headbomb. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:21, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Off the top of my head... It would need to be an adminbot, of course. The bot would probably need to watch for G8 deletions of redirects to maintain a database of deleted redirect → former target to be able to identify needed undeletions in the first place. The bot should probably also be prepared to avoid undeleting revisions from a previous deletion (e.g. if the history was "attack page → delete → redirect → G8", or "redirect → attack page → selective delete to restore the redirect → G8"), and should make sure the undeleted redirect isn't still tagged with {{db-redirnone}} or the like. Maybe only undelete revisions that begin with #REDIRECT? That would lose legitimate pre-deletion content though, is that ok? Should there be a time limit, e.g. if the redirects were deleted 10 years ago should they still be undeleted? Is there any discussion elsewhere of the problem, particularly from admins who normally handle this sort of undeletion manually? Anomie ⚔ 12:02, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To answer your last question, I discussed the instance that prompted this proposal briefly with @Liz, who I know does a lot of work with deletion. I also just added invite notices to WT:Deletion policy, WT:Deletion process, and WT:REFUND; hopefully that'll draw over some editors who have relevant thoughts. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:06, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A related point: I have seen articles overwritten by a redirect to an unrelated target at AfD, as a way to make the article disappear per G8 when the target gets deleted. I occasionally check manually for new cases. (Current results are all good-faith false positives.) The bot proposed above might end up collecting the information required to automate that check. Certes (talk) 12:26, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is it not very context-dependent? Creating a page at the same name as a previously-deleted page is no guarantee that the topic is the same (for instance, biographies of homonyms) or that the redirects are still appropriate. That is probably a small proportion of cases, but that would be pretty bad, whereas the restoration of redirects is "only" a convenience, so even a low probability of failure can tip the risk/benefit ratio into the red. (It would be interesting to have numbers on this but I am not sure there is a practical way to obtain them.)

Adding in the concerns that Anomie raised about page history (I am not qualified to say if those are insurmountable or merely a pain to code around), I would suggest to make it semi-automated instead. The backend that generates the list of redirects to restore is the same, but actually restoring them requires human intervention. This could be either an additional popup in the undeletion process, which gives a "list of possible redirects" with a choice restore/do not restore/view history for each item and/or a "global restore" button (for a contested PROD, for instance), or simply a post to the talk page of the recreated article with "I am a bot, I found the following possible redirects". Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 17:46, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Tigraan, good points. We should distinguish between undeletions (where an admin restores a page with its past revisions) and recreations (where any user begins a page at the same title as a page that was deleted in the past). For recreations, there is indeed the homonym problem, so I like your suggestion of a semi-automated process of some sort, but we should be safe for undeletions to make it fully automatic. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:42, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For anything automated (and maybe semi-automated?) it would be useful if the bot kept a log for humans to check. It would only need to list the target page and a link to whatlinkshere with links and transclusions hidden. Maybe also a number of redirects restored, so perhaps looking something like

16 July 2021

Redirect undeletion bot automatically restored 4 redirects to Foo (show redirects)
Thryduulf semi-automatically restored 2 redirects to Bar (show redirects)

I'll drop notes about this discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Redirect an Wikipedia talk:Redirects for discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 01:42, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This will be so useful! If I'm not mistaken, redirects also get wiped out upon draftication, which happens quite often. I hope this is easy to code, but – as pointed out by Tigraan – the product will need to be at most a semi-automated process. – Uanfala (talk) 00:45, 18 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This would be very useful... except in the cases where it isn't so useful (ie where the new article is not a re-creation of the previous one, but an article on a topic which shares the title, for which some redirects may still be valid but others not - suppose the deleted article was for singer "Jane Mary Xyz", and the new one is for politician "Jane Mary Xyz", then the rd from her short name "Jane Xyz" would still be useful but not the ones from her married name "Jane Abc" or "Jane Mary Abc"). That's to say, yes, very useful to rescue and display the list of previous redirects, but they would need to be checked by an editor before being re-created. So, create them commented out at foot of the new page, or list them on the talk page, so that the person creating the new article can see them and they or someone else can easily check and decide which ones are still useful. As someone who often creates a lot of redirects from variations of someone's name I hate to see all that work disappear if the article is deleted or, worse in some ways, if it's draftified and will eventually be reinstated. Even where the new article is on the same topic, some of the redirects may no longer be valid because a new article may have been created in the interim, or a new link made which is not intended for this article, or a dab page may have been created, etc. But, in principle, Yes, Please. PamD 16:14, 24 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

FfD notices on article talk pages

Pinging User:Marchjuly. We had a short discussion at Wikipedia talk:Files for discussion#Notifying uploaders about a bot that could leave FfD notices on the talk pages of all articles that use the nominated image. I believe there is already a bot like this for when Commons files are nominated for deletion (which bot is this, by the way?), and having one for local files would be beneficial for all the same reasons (more participation at FfD, having a record in the article talk history, and general notification and discussion transparency purposes). — Goszei (talk) 23:31, 2 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Goszei Can you create a template message first that the bot can place on the talk page? I believe there is already a bot like this for when Commons files are nominated for deletion (which bot is this, by the way?) That's Community Tech Bot [2] – SD0001 (talk) 15:47, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If a bot can be created for this, then that would be great. However, it probably would be a good idea to make sure there are no unexpected issue (e.g. conflicts) with other bots going around patrolling file use. Perhaps, Fastily and JJMC89, who both operate bots working in the file namespace, can see if this could be made to work for FFD. AS for the wording of the template, perhaps something similar to {{Missing rationale2}} or {{Ffd notice}} could work for the notification message? -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:58, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think that {{Ffd notice}} can be modified by replacing the phrase "A file that you uploaded or altered" with "A file used in this article". Maybe a switch case can be added, and the bot can use the activating parameter when doing subst. — Goszei (talk) 22:05, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds fine, but I don’t know much about how bots work. One thing to consider here is that only the notification of the file’s uploader seems to be required when it comes to FDD. Templates like {{ffdc}} can be used in articles, but they seem to be optional. — Marchjuly (talk) 23:18, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not a good task for a bot IMO. Given how little traffic the majority of article talk pages get, I think this would clutter these pages up with (unread) bot spam; if you're a new(-ish) contributor who's stumbled across an article talk page for the first time only to find it filled with deletion warnings, that's a terrible user experience. However, I could see this being useful at the WikiProject level (as an opt-in only service). Also noting for the record that FastilyBot automatically notifies uploaders (if they haven't explicitly opted out) of FfD & dated-CSD tags. -FASTILY 22:14, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well, even if a talk page gets little traffic it's on the watchlist of people who have the article watchlisted (& are presumably interested in knowing if one of the images will go away). That said, I think tagging the images in the article with {{ffdc}} is IMO better. Perhaps also having a bot that removes these tags once a FFD is closed? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:10, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Mentioned this above, I think the drawbacks of leaving bot spam on individual talk pages outweigh any (perceived) benefits. Also, adding {{FFDC}} is non-trivial from a programming perspective. Media files can be displayed/embedded in a variety of ways (e.g. infoboxes, galleries, thumbnails, other templates I'm not thinking of) and adding {{FFDC}} as a caption in the correct location for each of these scenarios could be extremely tricky for a bot. To be clear, I don't think this would be a bad thing to have, but I do believe the reward to effort ratio is very low. OTOH, removing {{FFDC}} when FfD's are closed is much more straightforward. If there's consensus for it, I can build it. -FASTILY 21:54, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As pointed out by Fastily, adding the ffdc template can be tricky. Many images whihc end up at FFD don't have captions; so, the person adding the template actually needs to add a |caption= or do some other tweak to the file's syntax to add the ffdc template. I also have noticed that ffdc template are sometimes removed by editors who don't think the file should be deleted; they seem to misunderstand the purpose of the template and mistake it for a speedy deletion template of sort. I never really considered any possible article talk page spamming effect about might have, but that does seem like valid point now that it's been made. I can see how not only new editors, but even long-term but not very experienced editors (i.e. long-term SPAs) might be find the templates "shocking" in some way. Maybe adding them to a WikiProject talk page would be better as well since the editors of a WikiProject are less likely to be shocked by such template. Even better might be to figure out a way to incorporate WP:DELSORT into FFD discussion since many WikiProjects already have "alert pages" where their members can find out about things like PRODs, SPEEDYS and XFDs.

There's always going to be people unhappy when a file is deleted; so, there's no way around that. Many times, though, these people claim they weren't properly notified at all or not in enough time to do something about it, and there might be some way to help mitigate that. I'm also a little concerned about comments such as this where some editors nominating files for FFD might be relying too heavily on bots for things like notifications. For example, the wording of {{FFD}} states as follows: Please consider notifying the uploader by placing {{subst:ffd notice|1=Ffd}} on their talk page(s). That, however, seems a bit inconsistent with the instructions given in the "Give due notice" section at the top of the main FFD page and this might be causing some confusion. I don't use scripts, etc. whenever I start an FFD and do everything manually; this is a bit more time intensive perhaps, but I think it also might lead to less mistakes because you have to check off a mental list of items before the nomination is complete. Those who do rely on scripts or bots to do this type of thing though, might set the bot up to do only the bare minimum that is required; they're not wrong per se, but the automation might cause some things to be left out that probably shouldn't be left out. So, before any new bot is created and starts doing stuff, it might be better to figure out exactly what a human editor should be required to do first. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:44, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't almost all non-free files only used on one or two pages? Also, FfD noms are rather rare occurrences in the first place. I don't think the valid concern about talk page spam outweighs the need here for due notification, considering firstly the rareness and secondly that deletion-related things should always have plenty of notification. — Goszei (talk) 00:53, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you could elaborate on why notifications at the WikiProject level (which are usually heavily watched, mind you) are insufficient? (and by the way we do have an existing solution for this) While I think our notification system could always use improvements, I do think that carpet-bombing individual talk pages with bot spam is a grossly inappropriate solution to this problem. -FASTILY 01:34, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think funnelling notifications for rare noms at hundreds/thousands of articles under a WikiProject would be more likely to create spam than the same rare notifications at individual talk pages. If a given article was under many WikiProjects, even more so. It also doesn't seem like the right level of notification; for example, it would be overkill to notify the Music project about any given album cover being nommed for deletion. The people watching the album's article would care a lot more (also, those article watchers may not be watching the WP Music talk page). — Goszei (talk) 01:42, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'd note the dab bot that seems to frequently spam talk pages, so I agree having them stick around isn't great. If this is done I'd advise bot removal of tags after discussion closure. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:54, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Remove stale "references needed" tag

As a former volunteer / current user, I periodically come across articles with years old {{refimprove}} templates. (e.g. example). I just remove them if it's obvious reference have been added since the tagging. Seems like a bot could do that, based on whatever criteria the community agrees on. NE Ent 12:39, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@NE Ent: What criteria do you think a bot could use to determine if there are now sufficient references to remove {{refimprove}} (which now redirects to {{more citations needed}})? GoingBatty (talk) 14:53, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tag more than five years old and at least three references added since tag placed. NE Ent 10:47, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not a good task for a bot. It'd be very difficult to determine when sufficient citations have been added. Human editors who address issues from tags should be removing them. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:14, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- ~~That's based on a theoretical wikipedia where there are sufficient human editors to perform such a task. If a bot can add the tag [3], a bot can remove it, no?>~~ NE Ent 10:47, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  NE Ent It didn't add it, just added the date to it for proper sorting after a human added it. --Trialpears (talk) 11:55, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - Oops. Never Mind NE Ent 11:40, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If there's no interest in auto removing the tag, perhaps a bot could post a notice on the original posters talk page asking them to review the page? NE Ent 11:40, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On a slightly related note, do we have a bot that removes ^{[citation needed]} tags that are directly placed next to sources? So, ^[1]^{[citation needed]} would never be a thing? I can't say I've seen it much, but that is related to this point. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:19, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have seen more in the reverse order of ^{[citation needed]}^[2]. Keith D (talk) 20:09, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, I have also seen this - but it's clearly not true. Maybe ^{[unreliable source?]} or the reference doesn't cover the content, but it's never true that a reference is required when a reference is there. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:30, 23 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Ref 1
^ Ref 2

Bilateral relations SD's

In 2019, the ~6,000 articles on bilateral relations were given short descriptions in the format of "Diplomatic relations between the French Republic and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan", with full country names, by Task 4 of User:DannyS712's User:DannyS712 bot (BRFA here). These are way over the 40-character instruction in WP:SDFORMAT, for little utility in information conveyed. I propose that another task be run where the SD's are all removed, so that an automatic short description like "Bilateral relations" can be added to Template:Infobox bilateral relations. — Goszei (talk) 23:45, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. If you need somebody to do a quick bot run once you have consensus, let me know if I can help. MichaelMaggs (talk) 03:57, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I’d be happy to take on this task with an AWB bot. I’ll see if consensus can be reached through a BRFA. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk, FAQ, contribs | please use {{ping}} on reply)} 18:43, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The trickiness of fixing this is part of why I think it's a lot better to generate automatic short descriptions through infoboxes than enter them individually via AWB or a bot or something else. See also don't repeat yourself. Looking at some of the current examples, Diplomatic relations between the French Republic and the Republic of Iraq (73 characters) at France–Iraq relations is definitely way too wordy. I'm not super keen on "bilateral relations", as many people don't know what "bilateral" means, and there's no indication that what we're talking about is diplomatic relations, not some other type, which is the only way I could really see these titles needing any clarification. Something like Bilateral diplomatic relations (30 characters) might be good. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:23, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:MichaelMaggs User:EpicPupper It seems like there is consensus for this (I notified WikiProject International relations about this discussion one week ago, and Wikipedia talk:Short description two weeks ago). I will let you two to sort out who should do the bot run. — Goszei (talk) 03:32, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

EpicPupper, I won't have a lot of free time over the next couple of weeks, so happy to leave the task to you. MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:08, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I have added an automatic short description of "Bilateral diplomatic relations" to Infobox bilateral relations in this diff: Special:Diff/1034308039. — Goszei (talk) 03:55, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I will be willing to do this one if no one does. – Ammarpad (talk) 13:51, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If they're all transcluding {{infobox bilateral relations}} and just need the shortdesc replaced with an auto-shortdesc (i.e. removed), my bot can handle it. Primefac (talk) 17:13, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. Something already approved seems better than opening a new BRFA. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk, FAQ, contribs} 18:30, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Primefac That sounds like it will do the job. — Goszei (talk) 19:18, 19 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Y Done Just noting that PrimeBOT took care of this task circa July 24. Thanks to Primefac. — Goszei (talk) 01:30, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Film infobox order change

Template talk:Infobox film#Request for comments has been closed as consensus to reorder the fields like this:

Before

After

...
|director=
|producer=
|writer=
|screenplay=
|story=
|based_on=
|starring=
|narrator=
|music=
|cinematography=
|editing=
...

...
|director=
|writer=
|screenplay=
|story=
|based_on=
|producer=
|starring=
|narrator=
|cinematography=
|editing=
|music=
...

(See testcases for rendered examples.)

This means not just does the template need to be changed but in any article where a person notable enough to be linked appears in both |producer= and any of |writer/screenplay/story/based_on=, or in both |music= and |cinematography= or |editing=, the linked and unliked occurrences will need to be swapped. So we need a bot to make changes like these:

Article

Before

After

Good Night, and Good Luck

| producer       = [[Grant Heslov]]
| writer         = {{unbulleted list|George Clooney|Grant Heslov}}

| writer         = {{unbulleted list|George Clooney|[[Grant Heslov]]}}
| producer       = Grant Heslov

The Usual Suspects

| music = [[John Ottman]]
| cinematography = [[Newton Thomas Sigel]]
| editing = John Ottman

| cinematography = [[Newton Thomas Sigel]]
| editing = [[John Ottman]]
| music = John Ottman

CirrusSearch's regex engine doesn't seem to support back references to capturing groups, so I don't know how many articles need fixing. I don't think we need to simply reorder the parameters in articles that don't require moving links, as that would be purely cosmetic, though I could see an argument either way. The link might not always be a plain wikilink but could be {{ill}} etc. Also some articles must have refs or footnotes in relevant arguments, which could be a nuisance in figuring out what needs to be done.

To minimize disruption, I plan not to implement the changes to the template until a bot is ready to take on this task. Nardog (talk) 22:09, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

First, I would say that reordering the parameters in the infobox, regardless of whether there are any other changes, is pointless (as seen in the testcases, order of input does not affect order of output). Second, I think it would be reasonable to figure out what sort of scope this task would require; if <0.5% of the (currently) 146 264 transclusions need a "wikilink fix" it could be done manually with AWB. If it's more, then we're in bot territory and I should be able to handle it.

In other words, can we either pull 200 pages at random to check for this issue (if 1 or more need fixing, chances are reasonable that we're in "bot territory") or set up a tracking category to compare these parameters? Primefac (talk) 01:38, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Primefac: order of input does not affect order of output Of course. I was just using the parameters rather than the labels for the sake of explanation. (But as I said above, an argument could be made that reordering the input even if it doesn't change the output would prevent editors from accidentally linking the wrong occurrences of names and thus producing more instances of what we're trying to fix. I guess the sheer number of the transclusions makes a compelling case against making such cosmetic changes, though.)

I took the first 25,000 transclusions on WhatLinksHere (AWB limit; so it's skewed to older articles), randomized the list, and tested the first 200. 12 of them required moving a link from |producer= to |writer= etc. (none involved |music=). So, though the samples may not be completely representative, we can expect ~6%, or ~8,776, of the articles with the infobox would require moving a link. I can set up a tracking category, or is it better for the bot to go through them one by one? Nardog (talk) 11:19, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The bot can pull up the list of all 146k transclusions, but if we're only looking at (rounding up) ~10% I'm not really keen on running through 130k pages that don't actually need changes (and I doubt anyone else would be either) so a tracking cat would definitely be helpful. If you need assistance with that implementation let me know. Primefac (talk) 12:11, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Primefac: Alright, see Special:Diff/1027952498/1033077990 and Module:Infobox film/track and let me know if you think this is the right approach. Basically, the module enumerates all links in |producer(s)= or |music= and see if the same phrases appear in |writer= etc. Admittedly I imagine it'll turn up a lot of false positives, but I haven't got a better idea. Nardog (talk) 13:29, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Looks fine to me. Personally, I think you should update the infobox with the new code before the links are swapped, because there is little point in making one change to add tracking and then later a second change for the more substantive parameter-moving. Primefac (talk) 13:47, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Done. My idea was to update the template right before the bot operation began, but with the tracking category I agree it makes more sense to do it now. Nardog (talk) 14:37, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. With as many transclusions as exists, it will probably take the better part of a week to trickle everything down through the caches, but then again it will probably take me that long to find enough time to code it up. Primefac (talk) 14:50, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Primefac: So I just went ahead and semi-manually cleaned up the category (I hope it didn't upset your workflow ;)). Excluding existing DUPLINKs from the detection brought down the number from ~2,500 to ~1,500, which made it more manageable.

PrimeBOT's operation last month left hundreds of errors like [[[[Mexico]] City]], West [[German language|German]]y, <ref name="[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]">, |name=[[Bruce Lee]]: A Warrior's Journey, which I fixed as far as I could find. FWIW I just left comments, refs, and non-personal parameters (|name=, |caption=, |distributor=, |released=, etc.) alone, which was enough to avoid most of these. Nardog (talk) 10:42, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies for the lack of update, and the massive cleanup needed for this. As mentioned, there were a ton of issues with this task, and I could not find a way to effectively deal with the request while also avoiding the false positives, mistakes, and editing-of-comments issues presented here and at my talk, so I've canned the project. Basically, it's too much of a CONTEXT issue to reasonably have a bot do it, so the changes will need to be done manually. Primefac (talk) 15:03, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Automatically setup archiving

I frequently come across pages that have dozens of sections, many of them from years ago, and many of them being bot-posted "External links modified" sections. I think very long talk pages, especially when most the content is not very relevant, makes them less usable. Most new users won't know how to setup bot archiving. Would it be reasonable for a bot to automatically setup archiving on pages that meet a certain criteria (length/age related), using a standard configuration with the default age depending on how active the talk page tends to be? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:16, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is more of a fact-finding than any sort of "not enough of an issue" question, but do we have any metrics on talk page lengths, similar to Special:LongPages (would LongPages show a Talk page if it were large enough?)? I think >100k would be an issue, for example. Primefac (talk) 17:28, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Per quarry:query/56718, there are 2,520 talk pages that exceed that threshold. The very top ones seem to just be extraordinarily active talk pages rather than unarchived ones (for instance, Talk:Investigations into the origin of COVID-19 is #2 at the moment), but going down a bit further gives some where no one bothered to set up archiving. Vahurzpu (talk) 18:11, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

So I suppose we would take that list, remove any that are calling either {{User:MiszaBot/config}} or whatever ClueBot's template is, and then have a grand old debate about which bot, which timeframe, how many threads (i.e. how every parameter should be set) and then implement? Then I guess we just go through and see what's left in that quarry (e.g. Talk:Piracy, which is now 178k smaller due to the removal of an article) and potentially clean them up too. Primefac (talk) 18:40, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

quarry:query/56719 filters to pages that don't have either of the common automatic archiving templates. 2,397 of those. Vahurzpu (talk) 19:36, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nice. Standard "default" settings are 6 months (180 days), archiving 2+ and keeping at least 4, at least for the MiszaBot settings (and yes, I know it has a new bot name, but lowercasesigmabot II is just too damn long). I have always found that bot to be more user-friendly than ClueBot's let's-calculate-days-in-minutes nonsense.

From a BAG perspective, I don't really see anyone complaining about this sort of task, other than my perennial opposition to the fact that auto archiving messes with notifications. Primefac (talk) 20:06, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A note regarding "External links modified" sections. Those sections can be deleted per the note in the message itself. Gonnym (talk) 18:38, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Just noting that I have plans on making an archiving bot that is a lot more user friendly and solves problems with current bots. This would involve getting consensus for default configurations just like would be required for this bot. If a discussion is started on that topic I feel it should be applicable for both bots. Also (unfinished) plans can be found at User:Trialpears/Archiving manifesto. --Trialpears (talk) 22:04, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Trialpears, if you want assistance with this or a co-maintainer - ping me :) firefly ( t · c ) 22:09, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I will take you up on that! This will definitely be a task that benefits from 2 maintainers. --Trialpears (talk) 22:13, 11 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Extra line breaks at the end of sections

I pretty frequently come across instances where there are too many line breaks at the end of a section in an article, creating an extra space. This seems like something a bot could pick up fairly easily, although I'm sure there are some exceptions/edge cases that'd throw it off if we're not careful. Would anyone be interested in putting together a bot to address these? I'm sure there are thousands and thousands of them. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:35, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

How serious of an issue is an extra line or two? I feel like "fixing whitespace issues" is on the list of things that, while not technically cosmetic, is still problematic. Primefac (talk) 10:17, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Could tackle this on a smaller scale using a user script. When you see it, you click a button, and it fixes it. My DraftCleaner script does this. The code for it is really simple, wikicode = wikicode.replace(/\n{3,}/gm, "\n\n");. If interested, give me a ping and I can make a custom user script that does this. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:30, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Gap in RPP archive

The new WP:RPP permanent archive has a missing page for requests filed in October 2013: Wikipedia:Requests for page protection/Archive/2013/10. –LaundryPizza03 (d c̄) 18:21, 17 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Automatically create ending with“Archipelago”redirects for ending with“islands”class entries

I found that some of the islands artical did not create corresponding archipelago variants. Robots can automatically identify and create them.--q28 (talk) 01:35, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

According to incomplete statistics, at least 1000 redirects (exact amount depends on how it is determined) have not been created, so they are considered batch work and should be completed by robots.--q28 (talk) 01:36, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is worth noting that this is not only limited to the geography, it also applicable to foreign cartoons. According to the translator's preferences, some people use archipelago, and some use islands.--q28 (talk) 01:41, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is there really a one-to-one correspondence? For example, the Duke of York Archipelago is thousands of miles from the Duke of York Islands, and British Archipelago correctly redirects to British Isles rather than British Islands. Certes (talk) 02:15, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Vital people

I would like a bot that maintains the vital people here just like there is one for vital articles. I would like the bot's tasks to be the same as vital articles here and would like to make sure there are no duplicates in the vital people. Pinging Kanashimi, the bot operator for vital articles, if they could do the same thing for vital people. Interstellarity (talk) 20:29, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I am a bit busy these days. Please ping me if I miss something. Is the vital peoples using the same class mark listed in Category:Wikipedia vital articles by class? Kanashimi (talk) 22:44, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Kanashimi: Yes, that's correct. Interstellarity (talk) 23:28, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Interstellarity

BRFA filed Kanashimi (talk) 05:54, 8 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bulk editing of citation links

Hello! I have noticed that most of the articles in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:National_Register_of_Historic_Places_in_Virginia link to an old page on the Virginia Department of Historic Resources website (http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/register_counties_cities.htm) that isn't actually informative (and if it was useful at one point, the archivebot doesn't have it).

Ideally, these links would point directly to the listing's page on the Virginia Landmarks Register website. These pages conveniently use the VLR number in the URL. (For example, for the listing https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/014-0041/, "014-0041" is the VLR number.) The vast majority of these pages also have a NRHP Infobox, which usually includes the VLR number as "designated_other1_number =".

Is there a way for a bot/script to crawl instances of the URL: "http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/registers/register_counties_cities.htm" and change it to "https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/{value of "designated_other1_number" in the page's Infobox}/"?

I've been doing this manually and I just realized that A) there are thousands of these and it's going to take me forever, and B) a robot could probably do this.

Thanks! Niftysquirrel (talk) 14:27, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Niftysquirrel I can have a go at this and try. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk, FAQ, contribs)} 02:15, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Edit filtersBot for requested articles pages

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moved from WP:EFR

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

Sister project templates and Wikidata synchronization

I propose a bot to automatically or semi-automatically parse the various "Sister project" templates across all of the different WMF projects, and synchronize their parameters with Wikidata.

Examples of these templates:

Wikisource:Template:Plain_sister

Wikipedia:Template_index/Sister_projects

Template:Sister_project

Template:Sister_project_links

Wikiquote:Template:Sister_project_links

Metawiki:Templates_for_linking_to_sister_projects

In its most basic form, I think this bot could just parse Wikitext for templates that imply a direct equivalency between two sister project pages, and then add those to their Wikidata entries, with human approval, if they're not already documented. I think this behaviour should be fairly uncontroversial.

In more advanced forms, I think complete two-way synchronization and some degree of semantic behaviour could potentially be useful too. For example, a template on a Wikisource page could be used to automatically populate its Wikidata entry, and that information could then in turn be used to automatically add Template:Wikisource or similar to Wikipedia pages that don't already have it. And to take things even further, you could also E.G. treat links to Wikisource author pages and Wikisource works differently, possibly to the extent of automatically adding "instance of: writer" to Wikidata entries if they're treated as authors in the Wikitext but not currently subclassed as them on Wikidata.

These more advanced forms may require further discussion and consensus. Depending on accuracy, it might be worth keeping a human in the loop for all wiki content changes.

On technical terms, I suggest that the model for parsing these templates into structured data relationships (and the model for vice versa) be kept separate from the code that then applies edits based on those relationships.

Intralexical (talk) 17:03, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Maybe it is worth to create a mechanism like interlanguage links? Kanashimi (talk) 06:50, 8 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Kanashimi: Hm, as far as I can tell, inter-language links also use Wikidata? That's where it takes me when I click the "Edit links" button, anyway. So the only thing that would be needed to do the same with inter-projects links would be to expose the right already-existing Wikidata fields, either through a template or in the sidebar. (Would changing the sidebar require sysop or WMF involvement? That's the main reason I restricted my pitch to stuff regular users can do.)

In any case, the current "Sister Project" templates represent a lot of data that's not quite structured, but should be easy enough to parse into queryable form. And I think some of the sister projects can probably benefit from that information being organized and exposed more consistently. Intralexical (talk) 16:12, 8 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we can let the templates using wikidata, and migrating target to wikidata one by one. So people will know where to modify the link. Kanashimi (talk) 22:24, 8 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That could work. But it'd only make sense if we replaced all the different templates with Template:Sister project links, and we'd have to figure out what to do for templates with extra semantic implications like Template:Wikisource author. Intralexical (talk) 12:24, 9 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bot for creating name redirects

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

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

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

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

Post-Move Bot

A helpful message is shown after moving a page:

This section in a nutshell:

Fix double redirects resulting from the move (handy link)
For any non-free media on the page, check their fair use rationale and update the links to the new title.
For any navboxes pointing to the old page, fix the links to point to the new title.
Make appropriate DISPLAYTITLE, DEFAULTSORT, lead, and hatnote corrections to the moved or affected pages as needed.
If the old title becomes a disambiguation page, or points to a disambig page, disambiguate incoming links.
Update the talk page. If the page is automatically archived, the archiving bot settings need to be updated.
Ask for technical assistance or expertise where needed.

WP:POSTMOVE

It seems like a lot of this could be be automated fairly straightforwardly.

It was pointed out on the Teahouse that Wikipedia:Double_redirects do get fixed by a bot, but the fair use rationales, navboxes, etc. also seem unnecessary to fix manually.

Intralexical (talk) 13:03, 9 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Although some of these tasks definitely look doable, there might be some WP:CONTEXTBOT issues. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk, FAQ, contribs)} 02:09, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Categorization/listification for biographies of mononymous people

Background

This is a combination of bot request and request for guidance/assistance on categories/lists/templates.

I created and maintain List of legally mononymous people; see Mononymous person & WP:MONONYM.

I believe it's gotten a bit unwieldy and underinclusive — and that it perpetuates common misconceptions about "legal names". I had initially named it as a contrast to the pre-existing "stage names" and "pseudonyms" lists, which I now believe was a mistake.

I would like to merge it with List of one-word stage names and the mononyms in List of pseudonyms, include the many other mononymous people (e.g. Burmese, royal, pre-modern, etc).

I believe it needs to be converted into something that tracks bio pages more flexibly and automatically, based on a category or template in the bio page itself, rather than through a manual list. I don't know how to do that, which is why I'm requesting help.

Subtypes

I would like the result to differentiate (e.g. by subcategorization or list filter/sort) name-related properties, e.g.:

primarity

full (i.e. "legal name" or exclusive common-law name, e.g. U Thant; n.b. U is a title, not a name)
contextual (i.e. nickname, stage name, pseudonym, penname, etc., e.g. Prince, Notch, Lula)

n.b. someone may have multiple primary and/or secondary names, whether by language/culture (e.g. Gandalf aka Tharkûn/Mithrandir/…), special context (e.g. Malcolm X aka el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz), legal issues (e.g. trans people whose government has not yet recognized their name change), etc.

reason for mononymy

pre-modern (i.e. before surnames were a thing, e.g. Plato)
ecclesiastical or monastic (e.g. Ramdev), which will often be a parallel name (e.g. Mother Teresa aka Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu)

royalty (e.g. Naruhito or William the Conqueror)

name change (e.g. Quinn or Teller)

former name (e.g. DotComGuy who then changed back to Mitch Maddox)

cultural source, were applicable (e.g. Burmese, Indonesian, etc.)
personhood

real person
fictional person
collective emulating a single person (e.g. Publius)

Ideally, I would like the resulting page to include thumbnail-bio info, e.g. (if applicable):

name
title
former name
birth year
death year
concise description of the person

That part isn't obligatory; e.g. it may not be feasible if the result is a category page.

Possible methods

I believe this means some combination of

adding a mononym hatnote template with appropriate parameters
transcluding a mononym template/category via infoboxes or name hatnotes where sensible
bot scraping biography articles (once ever per article) to insert a mononym template/category where it seems likely, with some sort of bot-added tentative status indication
bot monitoring and scraping articles with the mononym template/category to synchronize the relevant fields (name, year of birth/death, name at birth, concise summary) in case they change — whether by article improvement, WP:BLPPRIVACY, or a [[WP::BLP]] name change postdating the article's creation
bot creating/updating a resulting category page or list

I am not familiar with how WP handles such things, so another solution might well be better. Please take the technical parts above just as suggestions. I don't particularly care if e.g. the result is a category page vs a list.

My request is just that it should be automatic based on something on the article page, be easily filtered by type, and have a nicely usable result.

Usable source data

If the infobox lists a full name, title-excluding field with one name, then they're probably mononymous.

Pages with a single name in the WP:NCP#"X of Y" format will usually be mononyms, especially if royalty or pre-modern.

Pages with Template:Singaporean name with parameter 3 only (1 & 2 blank) should indicate a mononym.

Most pages with Template:Burmese name are mononyms, but one would need to check by deleting all honorifics (wiktionary list) from the person's name. This should use the Burmese text, since ဦး is a title but ဥ is a name, and both are transliterated as "U"; e.g. in U Kyin U (not a mononym), the first U is a title, and the last is a name.

As I suggested above, a bot adding a mononym marker to these pages should do so in a way that's marked as bot-added / tentative. There will of course be false positives and false negatives as always. This is simply a suggestion for doing a bootstrapping pass and extracting the basic info.

Discussion

I previously asked for help re Burmese names, but got no responses: 1, 2, 3, 4. Volteer1 recently suggested that bots might be an effective approach.

So… any suggestions for how this could best be achieved? Sai ¿?✍ 17:15, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Selective spelling change in court infobox template

Moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Templates

Convert template

Are there any existing bots that convert manually typed data to use {{Convert}}, like distance, temperature, among others? -- DaxServer (talk) 11:46, 20 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Don't think so, but what kinds of edits are you thinking (can you make a sample edit by hand for example)? It sounds like it would be a WP:CONTEXTBOT issue and could only be semi-automated (eg using an AWB Module) at best. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:31, 20 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have a couple of regexes in AWB which I ran last week on maybe 10-20 pages, couldn't remember exactly. (Couple of examples: [4], [5], manual search). These are the regexes I used, albeit incomplete:

Distance: (\d+(?:\.\d+)?)(?: |\s)?km(?!<sup>|2)(?:\s$\d+(?:\.\d+)?\smi$)? would be replaced with {{convert|$1|km|abbr=on}}
Temperature: (\d+(?:.\d+)?)(?: |\s)?°C(?:\s$\d+(?:\.\d+)? °F$) would be replaced with {{convert|$1|C}}
Rainfall: (\d+(?:.\d+)?)(?: |\s)?millimetres(?:\s$\d+(?:\.\d+)? in$)? would be replaced with {{convert|$1|mm|abbr=on}}

I chose the abbr=on because when I edit the articles [manually], I choose to go abbreviated. I ran only on Indian places and thus the regex is developed for km->mi and C->F and not the opposite. I don't know how to build AWB modules, but can develop a Pywikibot script and file for a supervised BRFA (already have two pending). -- DaxServer (talk) 16:43, 20 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Adding url template to bare infobox websites

When I find bare url's in infobox "website" fields, I always wrap it with the url template (example diff: Special:Diff/1039831301). I do this for two reasons: (1) the infobox width is often unnaturally expanded with long links because bare url's don't wrap, and (2) the template strips the display of http://, which looks better. I considered a possible fix in the code of the infoboxes themselves, but I believe that wouldn't work if two websites were added, or if there is already a url template/other template being used. I believe use of the url template in this field is already fairly widespread and common. — Goszei (talk) 01:19, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Goszei: When a bot operator files a bot request, they have to demonstrate that there is consensus for the bot task. Could you please point to a conversation that shows the consensus (besides Template:URL)? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 05:19, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We could try building a consensus here, I suppose. I have placed a pointer to this thread from Template talk:URL and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Microformats. — Goszei (talk) 06:22, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This seems smart to me. jp×g 12:23, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

AFAIK the {{url}} template is not supported by the archive bots (please correct if wrong). Thus once the link dies - all links die - it will become link rot requiring manual fix. Which is fine, want to include the risks. No guarantee bots will ever support these templates, there are thousands of specialized templates it is not feasible to program for each. The more we use them, the more link rot seeps in over time. I suppose if there are so many {{url}} the sheer magnitude could put pressure on the bot authors to do something, but it would also require modifications to the Lua code probably, consensus on how it works. As it is, bare URLs are supported by most bots and tools. -- GreenC 15:19, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Template:URL states this template is used "on approximately 328,000 pages, or roughly 1% of all pages". GoingBatty (talk) 16:02, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for a bot (crosspost)

There is a discussion over at WT:WPT looking for a bot to add/split some WPBS banner templates. I feel like such a bot already exists, so before I put in my own BRFA I figured I'd post here and hopefully find someone who remembers which bot that is (because at the moment I am coming up completely blank). Please reply there to avoid too much decentralisation. Thanks! Primefac (talk) 14:58, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Primefac: User:Yobot#WikiProject tagging used to add WikiProject templates, but hasn't edited since January. Maybe that's what you were remembering? GoingBatty (talk) 15:52, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Archiving of links used as source

Hello! I discovered that the Shoki Wiki is dead. We use quite a few links from that site for the translated text of Samguk sagi, as a source for Korean kings, like in Jinsa of Baekje. The links have a format of http://nihonshoki.wikidot.com/ss-23 where ss is samguk sagi and 23 is the number of the scroll. Some 60 pages link to various scrolls, and it would be just too much manual work to correct the links with the archive links. Anyone could do this with an archivebot? Thanks a lot. Xia ^{talk to me} 18:01, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes sure. The IABot is currently down due to a DB problem, and WaybackMedic is down due to Webcitation.org giving it trouble - but can get to it once things are working again. -- GreenC 18:22, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Xia ^{talk to me} 18:55, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Redlinked biographies that are potentially notable?

Hi folks, not sure if this is a practical request, thought I'd ask anyway. The Science Fiction Encyclopedia has approximately 12,000 entries on people, most of whom are likely notable. As I discovered when writing Sarah LeFanu, at least some of them do not have Wikipedia articles. Is it practical for a bot to trawl through this list, check whether Wikipedia has an article on each entry, and save the entry to a list if it doesn't? Vanamonde (Talk) 07:33, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I usually deal with this sort of thing in one of two ways:

Format a list (Aaargh, Calvin → *[[Calvin Aaargh]]) and view it in a sandbox; grab the source HTML and filter on class="new" or "(page does not exist)" (either works)
Paste the list into PetScan (tab "Other sources", section "Manual list"), set Wiki to enwiki and list pages which do exist, then find the difference.

I expect you're aware of the usual traps, such as people listed under a different name (Dr Acula is Forrest J Ackerman) and non-writers with similar names (John Peel isn't John Peel (writer)). Certes (talk) 12:31, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Another possibility would be to use Wikidata. Encyclopedia of Science Fiction ID (P5357) links Wikidata items to their associated entries; you can use this query to find items linked to an ID with no page on enwiki. Wikidata doesn't yet have complete coverage of the encyclopedia; that is tracked by mixnmatch:1330. This should help deal with the issue of mismatched names. Vahurzpu (talk) 13:00, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That, especially the unmatched list, sounds much more reliable than my suggestions. Certes (talk) 13:11, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, both; all those methods seem quite straightforward, and I did not know of any of them. Vanamonde (Talk) 13:24, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Ref 1

[2] Ref 2

[1]

[2]

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