Wikipedia talk:Article alerts

GANs not showing on WikiProject Sweden

I discovered the recently passed GANs for Astrid Lindgren and Basshunter through DYK. It turns out that alerts were properly given at the other wikiprojects listed on their talkpages, but for some reason there was no notice at WikiProject Sweden/Article alerts (archive). Is there a technical issue at play here? Thanks. Draken Bowser (talk) 13:02, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

That's because the project was only subscribed to Deletion sorting and all articles found in Category:WikiProject Sweden articles directly. I've fixed it. The functionality had been broken since 2021. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:35, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

What is the proper way to insert new items to the alerts section?

Hello,

I would like to ask two questions about the alerts section:

1. I understand that there is a bot running and updating the section automatically. Where can I see the criterions that must exist for the bot to insert items to the section? I would also like to ask what are the hours in which the bot runs.
2. Is it possible to insert items manually? if so, is there a specific structure that I must use?

HilbertSpaceExplorer (talk) 08:20, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

@HilbertSpaceExplorer: What is "the alerts section"? You should always state which page you are referring to. As for the second part of question 1, AAlertBot (talk · contribs) runs once a day, at 07:00 (UTC) - you can tell how long it typically runs by the history of User:AAlertBot/Status. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:59, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. I refer to the "alerts" in WikiProject Israel:

Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel/Article alerts

all the questions I asked refer to that page.

HilbertSpaceExplorer (talk) 10:22, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

As you can see in the main list, "WikiProject Israel" is subscribed via talk page banner Template:WikiProject Israel and to listings at delsort page Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Israel. So any page that has the banner or any page manually added to the delsorting would appear in the report. You cannot manually add the pages - generally, you have to tag them as belonging to the project with the banner. (Technically, you can change the report page, but the bot will overwrite and delete the entries anyway.) —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 15:20, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. Will adding the banner also insert the page to the correct place in the alerts section?

Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel/Article alerts

I don't understand for example, how can the bot decide if an article should be placed under "Requests for comments" or under "Requested moves" if the tagging is the same for both cases.

HilbertSpaceExplorer (talk) 17:55, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the page will get inserted to whichever section it belongs to. The banner on the talk page will let the bot know that this page belongs to the project. The actual section or workflow, like "Requests for comments" is decided by the specifics of that Wikipedia process. This gets complicated fast and there are full details at User:AAlertBot/Workflows. The short version is that each workflow has some way to find pages - from category (e.g. Category:Articles for deletion), from template (e.g. Template:Proposed deletion/dated), etc. So, for example, when the bot sees a page that has a Template:WikiProject Israel and Category:Articles for deletion, it knows it's a deletion discussion for the Israel project and will place it in the AfD section of the Israel alerts page. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 19:08, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Understood. I appreciate the detailed answer. Thank you again!

HilbertSpaceExplorer (talk) 22:05, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Pixar work group

It looks like article alerts haven't worked in the Pixar work group since 2011, but I'm not sure how to fix the issue. Anyone know what should be done? ZooBlazer 18:57, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

I re-added the subscription. Looks like it got removed here. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 09:36, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Hmm. The bot didn't deliver anything, and I believe it's because there are no changes since the last time it saw the data. The bot kind of ignores the fact that it hasn't actually written the previous data to the report. I guess one has to wait for anything to change before it writes something. I haven't really implemented any way to check the last delivery date. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 10:01, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Notice of minor change to Module:RfD

I trust that this edit to a template comment is not a breaking change. wbm1058 (talk) 03:25, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Shouldn't do anything. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:48, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: I can go further. Since the first letter of a page name is case-insensitive, not only does the change not break anything, it cannot break anything; and moreover is, other than the purely cosmetic change, completely pointless. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:31, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Redrose64, no, not pointless, or I wouldn't have made the change. The MediaWiki system may be case insensitive regarding the first letter, because it's been coded to be that way. However, the Lua Module:String is not case-insensitive with regards to the first character of the string passed into it. I had to make this edit to get Template:R from move/except to behave the way I wanted it to. – wbm1058 (talk) 00:06, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Proposed changes to RM templates

Would it affect AAlertsBot if some requested moves had a new parameter after the title(s)? For example:

---

Single-move RM

{{requested move/dated|NewTitle|protected=yes}}

---

Multi-move RM

{{requested move/dated|multiple=yes|current1=A|new1=B|current2=C|new2=D|protected=yes}}

---

I have drafted some changes to Module:Requested move and {{Requested move/dated}} so that {{subst:RM}} will automatically check current and proposed titles for page protection (admin or template-editor) and, if found, add a |protected= parameter to the resulting {{requested move/dated}} in new requested moves. See Template talk:Requested move#Detecting and showing page protection for more info and sandbox links.

I did a small test to see if this would cause any issue with AAlertBot by adding |protected=yes to one existing RM. The article alert was added as usual. SilverLocust 💬 20:53, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for mentioning this. It should not cause issues, no. When parsing templates, the bot generally looks for expected parameters and ignores everything else. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 21:30, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Updating the bot

I changed my name from User:Otuọcha to User:SafariScribe. I want it be updated in WP:WikiProject Nigeria. I did that here but was reverted by the bot obviously because it's not in the list. Pls update. Safari Scribe^{Edits! Talk!} 07:21, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

I set the pages your corrected above to re-retrieve on the next run. I'm not 100% sure it will do it correctly for closed pages, because this isn't really something the bot knows how to do. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 09:13, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

@SafariScribe: If a page is built by a bot (such as all of the Article Alerts reports) it's pointless editing them because on its next run the bot will always rebuild the page according to data that it retrieves from other pages. Therefore, you need to identify those other pages, amend those, and the bot will copy the information to the report on its next run. For example, the entry under Featured article candidates for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is built using info from Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie/archive1. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:12, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

@Redrose64 Thanks for the advice. I really thought as much! Safari Scribe^{Edits! Talk!} 13:16, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

"the bot will copy the information to the report on its next run" For Article Alerts, this is true only for data that the bot is going to re-retrieve. It doesn't recheck pages it has already seen if their status doesn't change and content isn't normally expected to change. For example, once an article is in AfD and the bot reads the nominator's information, it won't try to read it again - the nominator is "never" going to change. This is also because there would be many, many more pages to check each run and 99.9% of the time it's redundant. And it gets more and more expensive for things like revision history. Rarely, there is a bug or someone screws up a process and some pages have wrong data. More often, re-retrieving data actually breaks due to things like vandalism or conflicts with later process changes. So the bot will only re-retrieve pages if specifically prompted by User:AAlertBot/RegetPages. And pages that are closed can no longer retrieve some information at all. In archives, however, old entries won't be changed at all - so one can manually replace things there. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 13:49, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

AAlertBot has not updated pages since 9 April 2024

According to Special:Contributions/AAlertBot, the bot has not updated alert pages since 9 April 2024. Cunard (talk) 09:53, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

@Headbomb: —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 11:15, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

I came here to flag this as well... GiantSnowman 16:53, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Right, I got overwhelmed at work. I'll get on it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:41, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for fixing the bot! Cunard (talk) 05:08, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks guys. Is there any web location where the diagnostics output of the bot could be seen, so maybe it would encourage others to submit bug fixes? --Joy (talk) 07:42, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

There are internal log files, but they contain a massive amount of info and aren't online. There is Wikipedia:Article_alerts/Log mostly for on-Wiki things that may or may not need fixing. The Wikipedia:Article_alerts/Status page is where the active run is "recorded". Of course, if the bot crashes in some other way or can't post to wiki, there wouldn't be anything to see. I'm not sure what caused this run to fail (Headbomb would need to send me the log), but it was before it started processing and thus probably a network error. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 14:36, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Indeed this is likely a network error due a pending update on windows or somesuch. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:58, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Would be nice if the code and the logs were made available, so we don't run into a https://xkcd.com/2347/ situation :) --Joy (talk) 11:22, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, there's a pretty big bus factor here. That said, Headbomb does have the full code. And the code is "full" full, that is, the entire bot can be run with that code and doesn't really require anything you couldn't easily install. I have also been meaning to move towards open-sourcing it, but it needs several major things changed for that and I don't have that much time. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 12:00, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

The bot does not appear to have run today. Thryduulf (talk) 11:49, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. @Headbomb: No log page edit, so it crashed early/before doing anything? —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 19:08, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Power shortage during the night I think. I'll run now. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:19, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Question about why an article is showing up on alerts

Hello, I was curious if anyone could tell me why History of Wahhabism is showing up on Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries/Article alerts. The page doesn't seem to have the WPCountries template or Infobox country, which are the two items included in the alert. Some items from Wikipedia:WikiProject Former countries/Article alerts also end up on the Countries page, but it doesn't seem to have that banner either. Thanks very much, CMD (talk) 07:52, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

It is because it has an {{Infobox country}} in History_of_Wahhabism#Formation_of_Kingdom_of_Saudi_Arabia. (This isn't great, because infoboxes generally represent the subject and it helps catch articles that are likely missing otherwise. Granted, this is not likely true for countries infobox, because all are likely accounted for.) I suppose same is true for former countries looking at couple examples. Perhaps the subscription doesn't need the infobox? —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 09:07, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I've never seen Infobox country that truncated so I didn't recognise it. CMD (talk) 02:27, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

No alerts since 30 June 2024

@Headbomb bot status shows as crashed. Mackensen (talk) 12:02, 2 July 2024 (UTC)