Wikipedia:Bot requests
| Commonly Requested Bots |  |
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).
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| Bot-related archives (v·t·e) |
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Bot to shut off bots
The emergency shut-off feature of many bots is very nice, but it would be a lot more useful if established users could push the button.
A bot which monitored such pushes by non-admins and checked them against a whitelist and blacklist and, if the user was allowed, shut off the bot would help. The whitelist could be something as simple as autoconfirmed or a specific whitelist of people who have asked to be put on it. The blacklist would probably be blocked users + those who had misused the tool in the past.
The only reason not to do this is if it's not worth the effort, i.e. if there are enough admins to do the job that more eyes won't help much. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 05:48, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
- Have there been many (any?) instances where this would have been necessary? I haven't heard about bots rampaging all over the place other than very occasionally. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 06:15, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
- That's part of why I asked the question - to get some idea if this is an issue or not. I do know of cases of rampaging bots, but they are usually rampaging during initial testing and turned off by the operator quickly. But, as Mystery Bob reminds us all, robots are our friends and occasionally they do go south. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 13:46, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
- I don't know if this may be what you are looking for, but... a lot of bots seem to have a shut-off feature that is activated whenever someone edits the bot's user talk page. –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 18:03, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
- Or some other page dedicated to that purpose. Anomie⚔ 20:08, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
- From my limited experience, making a shutoff button to stop the bot is easy. It should be up the the bot's creator to do that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tim1357 (talk • contribs) 18:55, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
- Or some other page dedicated to that purpose. Anomie⚔ 20:08, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
- I don't know if this may be what you are looking for, but... a lot of bots seem to have a shut-off feature that is activated whenever someone edits the bot's user talk page. –BLACK FALCON (TALK) 18:03, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
{{Coord}} templates with a field equal to "city"
I recently discovered that there are over 10,000 {{Coord}} instances that have "city" as one of their parameters. According to the template documentation, these should be changed to "type:city". Anyboty want to take on this project? I'm thinking we should start by doing article space only--no talk pages, user pages, or other namespaces. And don't bother trying to parse {{Coord}} parameters such as {{Coord|1|2|region:AU_city}}, just look for the exact string as one parameter. --Stepheng3 (talk) 21:08, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
- I start them now -- maelgwn - talk 01:58, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
- These come from the Rambot articles, which still needs to be fixed. The Coordinates are duplicated twice in the geography section (SAMPLE:
CITY is located at {{coord|LAT|LON|PARAMETER INFORMATION}} (LAT, LON).{{GR|1}}) these should be removed and the infobox updated with the high precision coordinates if no infobox added {{coord}} to the end of the article. There are probably some other things that should be done. At present there are 20984 listed from my error log. — Dispenser 17:41, 29 November 2009 (UTC)- Ok, the job has been stopped for now. Do you have a list of things that should be done? (And relevant discussion ... ?) -- maelgwn - talk 01:16, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
- Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates/Archive 25#Coordinates in US cities articles: where to display. If you need help you can usually find me in the Toolserver IRC channel. — Dispenser 22:07, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
- Dispenser, that's a complicated discussion which is only tangentially related to my request. I'd like to avoid making perfection the enemy of the good. A bot that could clean up duplicated geocoordinates in city articles would be marvelous; what I'm asking for is much simpler, but can be done right now. If you're objecting, please withdraw your objection. If not, please create a separate bot request clearly explaining all other the things you'd like done to the Rambot articles and let Maelgwn get on with my request. --Stepheng3 (talk) 00:34, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
- Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates/Archive 25#Coordinates in US cities articles: where to display. If you need help you can usually find me in the Toolserver IRC channel. — Dispenser 22:07, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
- Ok, the job has been stopped for now. Do you have a list of things that should be done? (And relevant discussion ... ?) -- maelgwn - talk 01:16, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Replace hyphens with en dashes in templates
There are many templates for various sports-related articles that have content that should use en dashes instead of hyphens as per WP:DASH. Unfortunately, many editors are not aware of this and use hyphens. Obviously, going through and replacing all instances of hyphens with en dashes is not practical as the bot would have to understand the context. However, for some of these templates, I believe that if we can specify which parameters should always have en dashes, then a bot can be programmed to ensure en dashes are always used. I have gone through many sports-related template and documented parameters that, I believe, should always have en dashes. A lot of these parameters, also contain text but I could not identify a situation where a hyphen would be used. Most of these are parameters that have scores, win-loss records or year ranges. Obviously, the first run of the bot will make a lot of changes. However, after that, I think a monthly run of the bot would suffice. If there is sufficient support for this bot, I will also ask various WikiProjects to add to the list if they have additional templates I may have missed (I'm almost positive I did not get them all). However, I think if this does become a bot, the bot operator needs to make it easy for him/herself to add and remove templates and parameters.
This concept could even be applied to templates outside the realm of sports and used in templates where year ranges are specified and other scenarios. Thoughts?—NMajdan•talk 20:54, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
- Template:Infobox NFLactive should be included on that list.--Giants27(Contribs|WP:CFL) 20:01, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
- Looking at that template, the
pastteams,teams,pastcoaching, andpastadminparameters contain a team name followed by a year range, which should have an en dash. I can't think of a team that has a hyphen in the name, so I can't think of a scenario where a hyphen would be used in those parameters. I will add this template above. Thanks for the addition.—NMajdan•talk 20:22, 1 December 2009 (UTC)- Well all of the players (see Drew Brees for example) have a year thing like (2000–present) and the like where the use of hyphens and en dashes is still widespread.--Giants27(Contribs|WP:CFL) 22:01, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
- I have begun adding non-sports template with parameters that could use hyphens.—NMajdan•talk 13:27, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
- Looking at that template, the
I hope the number of templates that would be included in this bot emphasizes it's potential worth.—NMajdan•talk 16:03, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
- Any takers?—NMajdan•talk 19:54, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Sometimes editors specify dates in the YYYY-MM-DD format (for example, today is 2009-12-04). Changing from hyphens to n dashes should not occur for any such date. Also, if you stick to sports, you are probably safe, but if you extend your reach to other fields, like military conflicts, you might run into unusual calendars (Roman Republic, China, etc.) We cannot be sure the name of such a calendar will not contain a hyphen. --Jc3s5h (talk) 20:13, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- I'm sure logic could be added to the bot to check for the mask ####-##-## and skip those. Regarding different calendars, that is something I have not investigated. I am not familiar with other calendars and their use of hyphens.—NMajdan•talk 20:50, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- That is a lot of regular expression! also, you'd have to find all the redirects for those templates. Im not good with regex, and there is probably some really easy way to do it, but i just don't know it. Ill play arround with it, but i cant promise anything. Tim1357 (talk) 05:03, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
- The date isn't hard: \d\d\d\d\-\d\d\-\d\d.. Okay, it's the inverse of that. tedder (talk) 07:44, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
- I would think you could store the template names and corresponding parameters in an XML file that the bot would read. This would also make it easier to add additional templates in the future. Also, while I've never created a bot, I would think there is already some function that exists that can grab all the redirects for a given template.—NMajdan•talk 16:17, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
- Why on earth does it matter whether one uses a hyphen or an en-dash? They are almost impossible to tell apart on the screen anyway. This seems to me to be a solution looking for a problem. -- Alarics (talk) 23:10, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
- Its a MoS requirement. So, we follow it.—NMajdan•talk 01:55, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
- Why on earth does it matter whether one uses a hyphen or an en-dash? They are almost impossible to tell apart on the screen anyway. This seems to me to be a solution looking for a problem. -- Alarics (talk) 23:10, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
ArbCom election bots
The voting stage of the December 2009 Arbitration Committee Elections is underway, and could use some automated help. There is a list of votes cast, but an alphabetical, annotate-able on-wiki version is desired at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2009/Voter log. If a bot could scrape the content of the former and dump it alphabetically to the latter without overwriting notes or strikes, that would be wonderful. Skomorokh 02:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
- I'll take a look at this one. Just a couple of questions: Is there any better way to access that list than scraping it off the Web page-by-page? And where does the "disenfranchised voters" list come from? rspεεr (talk) 04:57, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
- Update: I got the scraping done, and put up the results manually to start with. Now I just need to do the fiddly part of avoiding edit conflicts and leaving people's comments alone. rspεεr (talk) 06:29, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
- All done but the actual editing, but the BAG hasn't said anything about my bot request yet. rspεεr (talk) 19:55, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks very much Rspeer! It looks great so far, now just have to get people to use it. The "disenfranchised" list is to be taken by comparing a list of anyone who has signed a subpage of Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2009/Comments with the voter log; anyone on the former list but not on the latter should be suspected of being disenfranchised. Mahalo, Skomorokh 20:54, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
- I'm not sure "disenfranchised" is the right word for that. They're more likely to be "confused voters" who should be notified by the second bot you describe below. rspεεr (talk) 22:33, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Secondly, this year voting will be done by secret ballot using SecurePoll: Special:SecurePoll/vote/80. This is a change from previous years, where editors cast a public vote in the form of a comment at the /Vote subpage of the election main page. These /Vote pages have been moved to /Comments, but are still open for those who want to make their votes public to do so. There is a concern that some editors might not know that they need to vote using the SecurePoll, and so it's been suggested that a bot notify everyone who has left a comment about a candidate but is not in the voter log, reminding them to use the secret ballot.
I don't expect that these are difficult-to-implement, but time is of the essence, so any help appreciated. Skomorokh 02:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
MIT OCW linking
Hello,
Recently I removed a large quantity of, what I belive to be spam, from some articles from an aggregation service. There was mixed reaction, however there was relatively good consensus for the linked content to be re-found from the upstream providers and linked to directly.
Specifically the problem is this: Special:Contributions/EconoPhysicist and Special:Contributions/124Nick have created a large amount of links to video lectures on topics throught wikipedia. The content itself is good, however I assert that the aggregator was (1) simply spamming and is (2) using the videos in violation of their CC-Non-commerical licences (discussion is on my talk page). I removed these links, which took me several days, and recieved mixed response for work. A good suggestion for all was to remap the links directly to the upstream content, if the information from the contributions of EconoPhysicist and 124Nick could be harnessed to locate the upstream content.
I am unsure how this relinking could be done, but as the aggregator was essentially leeching content from MIT OpenCourseWare and UC Berkeley content, it could potentially be that one can find the upstream videos from OCW and UCB and re-insert the links to the upstream content.
Now I have no suggestions, but have not undertaken a full analysis, of how one might go about this. However if a unique identification method can be found, or a semi-assisted method (video title + search?) to find this mapping, then perhaps this could be achieved. If anyone has any good ideas, or is interested in implementing this, please let me know! User A1 (talk) 09:55, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Add single reference to about 1400 articles
Each Ohio township article (see Category:Townships in Ohio) has a "Name and history" or "Name" section that includes a statement about the frequency of the township's name: depending on how many other Ohio townships have the same name, it either links to a list of other Ohio townships with the same name, links directly to one or two other townships with the same name, or notes that the township's name is unique. When I added these sections to the township articles in 2007, I used this US Census Bureau website as my source, but I didn't cite any sources in the "Name and history" section. Could a bot go around and add a citation to all of these sections? Please know that some of these sections already have references for other information; for example, Range Township, Madison County, Ohio includes a referenced statement about the township's population in 1854. The citation could be something along the lines of:
<ref>[http://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/general_ref/cousub_outline/cen2k_pgsz/oh_cosub.pdf Detailed map of Ohio], [[United States Census Bureau]], 2000. Accessed 2007-02-16.</ref>
I've selected 16 February 2007 as the access date because I always worked from a copy that I downloaded from the Census Bureau website on 16 February 2007. Nyttend (talk) 05:12, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
- May I suggest that this reference be created via a citation template? Maybe something like this:
- "Detailed map of Ohio" (PDF). United States Census Bureau. 2000. Retrieved 2007-02-16.--Blargh29 (talk) 06:06, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
- I've never used the citation templates much because I don't understand them entirely [embarrassed]; so thanks for producing a better format than I'd suggested. Nyttend (talk) 23:55, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
- "Detailed map of Ohio" (PDF). United States Census Bureau. 2000. Retrieved 2007-02-16.--Blargh29 (talk) 06:06, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Navigating daily FfD pages
On November 12th, I made a post on Wikipedia talk:Files for deletion asking for peoples opinion. It is still unanswered. Seeking more input, I went to Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) and asked for more input. It got archived with no reply. I figured per WP:SILENCE (an essay) I had consensus, so I went to User talk:Schutz and asked him a question. Still no response. So now I am here. Would someone be willing to create a bot put a date navigation box on the bottom of each daily page similar to the one currently used on the top? Or maybe add it to a bot that does something similar?--Rockfang (talk) 10:25, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
- The problem with trying to put a navigation template at the bottom of the page is that it doesn't work well with using the "new section" feature to add new nominations: the bot would have to edit after every nomination to move the template back to the bottom of the page. It might also confuse people editing the last nomination on the page. Anomie⚔ 13:57, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
- Thank you for replying. Regarding your first point, here I suggested that a bot would, after a new day is created, (not necessarily by the same bot) add the navigation template to the old "current" day. On your second point, some short commented out text could possibly be added near the navigation template to lower the amount of confusion. I think that confusion might be minimal. One option would be to add the template for a few days and just watch to see if there are any mess ups because of the template. If there are too many, we could just stop adding the template to pages.--Rockfang (talk) 20:59, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Would anyone be willing to start this?--Rockfang (talk) 01:17, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
- To keep things neat, id ask the bot that creates the new FfD pages to do this. (User:Zorglbot). Just to clarify, would the template go on the bottom of each page after a new page has been created? Tim1357 (talk) 04:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
- I have already asked that bot's operator here. That link answers your question as well.--Rockfang (talk) 04:41, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
- I maintain that this task is good for that bot. If you want, I could add a nav box to all of the old old daily pages, but i think, for a daily task, zorgbot should do it.Tim1357 (talk) 22:53, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
- You don't have to do current pages if you don't want to. No biggie. I think I might email the bot's operator in an attempt to contact him/her.--Rockfang (talk) 23:04, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
- Well, if you cant find him/her leave me a message on my talk page. Its actually pretty easy (i think its like two lines of code that I would have to write from scratch?) so i could write it pretty quickly. Good Luck! Tim1357 (talk) 00:52, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
- You don't have to do current pages if you don't want to. No biggie. I think I might email the bot's operator in an attempt to contact him/her.--Rockfang (talk) 23:04, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
- I maintain that this task is good for that bot. If you want, I could add a nav box to all of the old old daily pages, but i think, for a daily task, zorgbot should do it.Tim1357 (talk) 22:53, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
- I have already asked that bot's operator here. That link answers your question as well.--Rockfang (talk) 04:41, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
Getting links from web.archive.org
Is it possible for bots to harvest urls from http://web.archive.org and update articles accordingly? I have noticed that a large chunk of the domain sclegacy.com is no longer active and a ton of StarCraft-related articles use those links all the time. All the links are broken, but all that I have checked so far have archived versions on webarchive. I know how to do the simple text replacements in the articles (using pywikipediabot) to add archive urls, but I don't know how the bot actually finds those urls...I assume it might be possible, given that there are bots that do similar tasks (like auto-generated titles for bare urls). If anyone is interested in making such a bot, or could show me where there's information on how to harvest urls like that, I would greatly appreciate it.
While my intention right now is just to fix the links in a particular set of articles, I assume such a bot could later be generalized to work on many article that need massive link updating. (I checked Wikipedia:Bots/Status and did not see any such bot already active.) rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 18:19, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
- It's possible. Everything is possible if you know Python.(almost)
- I guess that the hardest issue is how to determine if a link is dead or not. (temporary resolution issues? outdated dns? etc, etc...)
- Have fun.
- NicDumZ ~ 06:21, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
- For this particular job I could just tell it to only do links from that one domain that I know is dead.
- Do you know which script I would use (or adapt) to get the external information? I know basic Python but I don't really know anything about how bots actually work (I have User:ZhBot another bot but it basically just uses replace.py and I leave it at that). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 06:51, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
- For every domain you have at least to check the archive to get a working snapshot date. The last saved copy of a website could also contain "website closed" pages. Perhaps you should ask User:DeadLinkBOT.
- The url of wayback ist quite simple: http://web.archive.org/web/<snapshotdate>/<original url> . If a page hasn't changed since a previous snapshots the url redirects to that version. So you can use the same snapshotdate for all pages. Merlissimo 18:50, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
- Actually, I brought this up a few months back and ThaddeusB agreed to add it to his to-do list. Right now, I am working on the bot as-well. I have made it so that It looks for the closest archive date to the access-date and then returns it. I need some help with the regex to return the contents of a {{citeweb}} template, so that it can retrieve the access-date. If anybody here can help, it would be awesome. Hopefully, in the future, the bot won't need an accessdate, and can use wikiblame to return the original access-date. Tim1357 (talk) 12:23, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Just spent some time coding the bot. Im going to file a BRFA to see if this kind of thing would make it. I added code so that the bot gets the accessdate from wikiblame when no accessdate parameter can be found that is associated to the dead link. Tim1357 (talk) 23:29, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
BRFA filed here Tim1357 (talk) 05:58, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
WikiProject tagging for Wikipedia:WikiProject Pennsylvania
I would like to request a bot to tag all articles, categories, and templates, within Category:Pennsylvania and its sub-categories with the {{WikiProject Pennsylvania}} project tag. I have checked that category, and all of the sub-categories seem appropriate. Thank you! --Blargh29 (talk) 07:00, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
- I should be able to get this done with my bot if you like. But I'd prefer to wait a few days for some input from the project. Hope that's okay, - Kingpin13 (talk) 07:52, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
- I'm not sure whether by "and its sub-categories" you mean just the first level of subcats or you want to include all the subcats of those subcats (and so on). If the latter, you should probably check again: for example, Category:Cincinnati Bearcats football coaches is in there via Category:Cincinnati, Ohio, which is in Category:Settlements on the Ohio River, which is in Category:Ohio River, which of course is in Category:Rivers of Pennsylvania (which is ultimately under Category:Geography of Pennsylvania). If you want, I can provide a list of all 6183 categories under Category:Pennsylvania for review. Anomie⚔ 14:34, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks! I was thinking that it should include all sub-cats, all the way down. I didn't realize that there were 6k of them, so maybe I ought to take a closer look at them. Can you produce a list of all of these? --Blargh29 (talk) 16:34, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
- Done, at User:Blargh29/Subcats of Category:Pennsylvania. With a list like this, I usually recommend that multiple members of the project look it over before anyone starts using it for tagging. Anomie⚔ 21:47, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
- Wow! Ok, so how should I designate which ones are relevant? Just delete them from that sub-page?--Blargh29 (talk) 00:08, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
- Delete all the ones that are not relevant, leaving only the relevant ones. Or you could move the relevant ones to a separate page, if you'd rather do it that way. The important part is that you end up with a list of categories Kingpin should process. Anomie⚔ 02:25, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
- Done! User:Blargh29/Subcats of Category:Pennsylvania. Just to be safe, I removed all sports teams and college-related categories, because those categories are filled with non-pertinent articles, like faculty, alumni, players, and coaches. --Blargh29 (talk) 06:21, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
- Delete all the ones that are not relevant, leaving only the relevant ones. Or you could move the relevant ones to a separate page, if you'd rather do it that way. The important part is that you end up with a list of categories Kingpin should process. Anomie⚔ 02:25, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
- Wow! Ok, so how should I designate which ones are relevant? Just delete them from that sub-page?--Blargh29 (talk) 00:08, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
- Done, at User:Blargh29/Subcats of Category:Pennsylvania. With a list like this, I usually recommend that multiple members of the project look it over before anyone starts using it for tagging. Anomie⚔ 21:47, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks! I was thinking that it should include all sub-cats, all the way down. I didn't realize that there were 6k of them, so maybe I ought to take a closer look at them. Can you produce a list of all of these? --Blargh29 (talk) 16:34, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
- Two WP:PENNA editors (User:Ruhrfisch & User:Niagara) have looked over the list and made suggestions. Thanks.-Blargh29 (talk) 05:10, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
DYK admin bot
Yes, I know there is DYKadminBot (talk · contribs) already to automatically update the DYK template and hand out credits. But the bot tends to go MIA from time to time (for example it's gone for 2 days now) and its operator nixeagle (talk · contribs) is too inactive these days unfortunately. So I thought I might ask here whether someone got the time and is willing to write a replacement bot or fix the code (apparently Ameliorate! hoped for this to happen) and run it themselves. Regards SoWhy 13:43, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
- Another idea would be to run a backup bot that could be activated by making an edit to it's userspace and which would then run once and then turn itself off again, for those times were the main bot is MIA. Such a set up could be done using a very slightly modified version of the code I think and not need much coding, just someone willing to run the bot (maybe someone who already runs a bot could do so? - in this hypothetical scenario the workload for this kind of bot would consist of checking periodically if a run was requested and to run if so, maybe once every few days/weeks, depending on the current bot). Any takers? Regards SoWhy 15:52, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- I'll look over the code and see if I can make sense of "the mess." :) At the very least, I could easily run a "back-up" copy of the bot when the main one is down. --ThaddeusB (talk) 22:39, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Sorry for butting in and posting naive comments:
- The major problem with DYKadminBot (talk · contribs) is regular crashes of its "autonomous" wake-up timing, rather than its code per se; the crashes are partly related to the dependence of the bot on the toolserver.
- As I understand the idea of the requested additional bot, it should perform a single update upon a command by an admin - it doesn't need to run continuously. It should have admin privileges and several admins should have access to its startup or its wakeup trigger. It should not interfere with the DYKadminBot (unless DYKadminBot is banned :-). The DYK admins don't need to change the bot, but it would be nice to give them an option to alter one parameter, namely the shift of the DYK timer, which is usually 6 hrs, but might be 8 hrs. Cheers. Materialscientist (talk) 02:34, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
- Yes, the idea of the backup bot would be to have a second bot with the same code (or almost the same since it needs some routine to check whether it has been requested) that can be activated manually if needed. DYK is a large and annoying task to update manually and I think every admin at DYK would be happy if they could simply switch a bot on that does it for them.
- As for the timer, if we can get nixeagle to change the code in a way that the timer can be changed with a variable in the bot's userspace, it would be good. The backup bot would need a similar feature then to check if the update time has come and gone (to ensure that a manual update request does not run if the main bot has done the update). Regards SoWhy 13:59, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
Bot from changing multi line refs to one line refs
Currently many refs are spread over 10 - 15 lines of text. Is there a bot that could put the ref all on one line to make editing easier? For example this:
{{Cite journal
| last =
| first =
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title =
| journal =
| volume =
| issue =
| pages =
| publisher =
| location =
| date =
| url =
| issn =
| doi =
| id =
| accessdate = }}
to this
{{cite journal| author = | title = | journal = | volume = | issue = | pages = | year = | pmid = | doi = | month =| issn =}}
On highly referenced pages it is hard to find the text between the citations in the first example and much easier in the second. Thanks.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:12, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- Bots that muck with the way references have been formatted in an article are typically not well-received... –xenotalk 15:45, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- I end up doing lots of this by hand and have received no complaints. How they are formatted depends on the tool used to generate them. If using diberri's tool we end up with one line. If using the template example here [1] one end up with many lines. If not here were should I bring this discussion? Thanks.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:51, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- Well you should move this section to WP:BOTREQ first... And then if there's an interested botop they'll file a BRFA and probably have to find consensus somewhere... Not sure... Maybe WT:REF. –xenotalk 15:58, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- Discussion moved from WT:BAG. –xenotalk 16:00, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- There is probably a userscript that can help you to do this, as well. –xenotalk 16:01, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- Personally, I like the expanded format (and obviously some others do, because someone must create refs that way), but I think it might make more sense to use the expanded format in conjunction with WP:LDR so that the bulk of the ref content isn't interrupting the flow of the page text. Dragons flight (talk) 16:04, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- Hence my comment about LDR. If you are going to be mucking about with references, I'd rather see them moved via LDR than collapsed. And let's be honest, collapsing them in place still leaves wikitext that is hard to read. Dragons flight (talk) 16:18, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- Is there a bot that implements LDR? Is there a page that has this implimented?Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- "Is there a page that has this implimented?" Here are two examples of articles that use the LDR model, List of computer science conferences and Josh Ohl. Peachey88 (Talk Page · Contribs) 23:48, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- Is there a bot that implements LDR? Is there a page that has this implimented?Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
(Unindent) The vertical format makes it easier to tell where the citation ends, so I would not support the requested bot. --Jc3s5h (talk) 16:56, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- If you want a script that toggles between the two formats, it would be pretty easy to code up. We do much more complicated (but less controversial) changes with WP:AutoEd. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 17:25, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- That would be a wonderful idea. Than each editor can get the format that they wish and all would be happy. Plastikspork how would one go about generating something like that? ie how would one combine it into the autoed tool bar?Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:00, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- No the single-line version is horrible. You can't see if the reference is complete, what's missing, and easily compare their style. If you don't want to see the refs, then just click on "toggle [REF] and [TEMPL] hiding" in the editing toolbar (in wiki-ed). Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 21:04, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- I wish to see the ref but just on one line. Now if this can be easily done so that everyone can see what they want then what is the issue?Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:45, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- To clarify, that was a reply to the orignal post, and not to your 18:00, 4 December 2009 (UTC) post. Sorry for the confusion. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 21:56, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- I wish to see the ref but just on one line. Now if this can be easily done so that everyone can see what they want then what is the issue?Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:45, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- No worries. Plastik has suggested something better than what I initially wished for.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Do you want to actually want to reformat the reference (i.e., perform an edit), or just have it rendered on one line when you look at it (i.e., no edit, just for your own personal view)? With WP:AutoEd, we actual change the contents of the edit box. In Wikipedia:WikiEd, it can perform visual transformations which do not actually change the contents of the edit box. For example, hiding the ref templates as Headbomb alluded to. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 23:50, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
- Just reformats for my own view ( and who ever else wishes to see it like this ) which would mean that those who did not, would not have to see it this way. Lots of pages have the refs on one line so if we had a way to view it multiline that would make Headbomb happy to. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:56, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
May I suggest that a tool that does this in a semi-automated way may be better received by the community when used by someone who is careful? I agree that multi-line references are a bother, and unless someone is objecting to it they should be put into a single line. Chillum 00:14, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
- "unless someone is objecting"... Well, several people are objecting. I am objecting, for one. I much prefer the multiline format, for ease of seeing what is going on. And from the above, it appears that Headbomb and Dragons flight and Jc3s5h take the same view. I cannot imagine why anyone thinks the single-line format is easier to edit. For me it is a nightmare. -- Alarics (talk) 23:17, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
- Yes it looks like the community is split over which format they prefer. Thus same pages on single line and some are muiti line and no one is completely happy. As was stated above it might not be difficult to allow people to select how they wish to see / render references using wiki ed.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:51, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
- I vehemently detest the horizontal version. It's ugly, and makes it very difficult to tell where the citation ends and the text begins. Where there are many of them in a single paragraph, the page (or section) becomes almost impossible to edit. Furthermore, the vertical format makes it much easier to find a given parameter, and to check the correct completion of the template. I very strongly oppose the use of such a bot.
- Having said that, I think it is preferable to move citations into a "bibliography" or "references" section, so that the text need only contain "author name, year, page number" refs (and can drastically reduce the number of template calls where there are multiple references to the same book), or failing that, to use list-defined references. --NSH001 (talk) 00:13, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
- Yes, it appears as though the solution is something ala WikiEd. There will never be agreement, even for something as simple as how to "indent code". The best solution is to allow everyone "view the code" how the wish, and not impose a format on anyone (if possible). I would say this discussion can be closed and moved to the "feature request" page for WikiEd. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 00:33, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
Agree with PS will move the discussion.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:35, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
Ship categories by year
I'm requesting if anyone could run User:Sambot/Code/Ships? Sam Korn (talk · contribs) hasn't been editing lately so I thought I should ask here instead. The object of the script is to add a ships by year category to articles that contain an infobox with a certain parameter within the infobox that contains a year. --Brad (talk) 16:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Change UK election links
Would it be possible for a bot to change all the links for Next United Kingdom general election and Next UK general election to United Kingdom general election, 2010. The page was recently moved and after next year the current redirect Next United Kingdom general election will be needed for the election after next. I hope this makes sense. Thank you. --Philip Stevens (talk) 06:31, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
- Sounds ok to me. Do you have consensus somewhere that I can point to in the BRFA? Maybe it's common sense. Tim1357 (talk) 22:55, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
Wikimedia-strategy brainstorming session idea:
Regarding http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Question_of_the_week (which is currently "What changes to Wikimedia's technology would enable a friendlier and more welcoming environment?") it was suggested that the main issues could be addressed thusly:
[20:20] <jimmyps> we could address the first two (tallest) bars on
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:091207_QOTW.png
simply by publicising statistics from http://stats.grok.se
[20:21] <eekim> jimmyps: the key question is, how would you publicize it,
and how would you measure if you were being effective?
[20:22] <jimmyps> eekim: easy, for each article find the top 10 articles
also in its categories and list them in order on the
sidebar after the interwikis with "x,xxx views/month"
right-justified on every other line after each of the 10
[20:23] <jimmyps> that would indicate to people the most popular subjects
that they are also interested in
[20:23] <jimmyps> this could be done in batch mode
[20:25] <jimmyps> does anyone disagree that listing the most popular
"related articles" with their viewership counts on the
sidebar after the interwikis would address the largest
leftmost two bars on
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:091207_QOTW.png ?
(no disagreements were forthcoming)
Would someone who understands what is and is not possible with bots and MediaWiki please comment on the feasibility of this proposal? Thank you. 99.62.186.125 (talk) 04:49, 9 December 2009 (UTC)