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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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)
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)
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)
- Great, sounds like it's had enough eyes now, I'll try and start the bot up :) - Kingpin13 (talk) 09:34, 10 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(strike that, that's actually possible already). 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 Changing WikiEd so refs can either be viewed as one line or multi line depending on editor preference
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
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)
- 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)
- Since we had an ANI this week about a bot that was changing the reference style in articles and it was deemed entirely unreasonable to force one style type on anyone. Leave things as they are. The horizontal version reminds me far too much of trying to edit discussion boards that have http links left and right in that it's just a garble of text around the screen. If it's not broke, don't fix it. If it's part of style guidelines then take it over there. As for the statement above of "community split" on this matter, this discussion begs to differ... with a unanimous consensus minus one. Not every difference in opinion is particularly worth trying to "correct", especially to an initial minority view. View to self? Okay. Just don't force style on anyone. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 05:05, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
- Please read what has been written subsequently. What is currently being proposed is an addition to WikiEd that will allow people to see all edits as multi line rather than one line and vise versa. Thus all the editor who hate single line edits will no longer need to deal with them.
- Since most refs are over one line I though the multi line people would love this recommendation.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:36, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Such a bot is obviously not going to happen, and this is not the place to discuss changes to WikiEd (take that discussion to WP:WikiEd or WP:VPT). Anomie⚔ 12:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks already have as I mentioned above.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:32, 11 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)
- Pretty please with sugar? I had thought that someone could just pick up the script from the page linked above and run it? --Brad (talk) 15:34, 11 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)
- Since I put up this request the page was moved back despite the fact there was consensus to move here and here. There is one user who disagrees with the consensus and keeps moving the page. I think the bot request should be implemented as it is now impossible for an election to take place in 2009 and it must take place before June 2010, so the page will be moved to United Kingdom general election, 2010 and after next year the page title 'Next United Kingdom general election' will be need for the election after 2010. --Philip Stevens (talk) 08:08, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
- Update: The page has now moved back to United Kingdom general election, 2010 where it seems likely to remain. --Philip Stevens (talk) 20:14, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
BRFA filed Tim1357 (talk) 05:09, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks! --Philip Stevens (talk) 11:07, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Most popular related articles
During a #wikimedia-strategy brainstorming session, 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 publicizing 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)
- it would be possible, the best method would probably be a toolserver acc with a javascript function that retrieves the data from the toolserver once we set the rules for what is and is not related. βcommand 04:52, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
- Even better would be to have a statistics tab next to history. With graphs of metrics like readability, bytes size, html size, word count, number of references, incoming link count (backlinks), outgoing link count (links), traffic statistics, and possibly something like history flow. And maybe be able to compare to other pages. If the caching is done right it could be done on the toolserver. — Dispenser 05:41, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
- Perhaps 'related' is everything wikilinked and everything in the same categories? 99.62.186.125 (talk) 18:29, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
Touch Templates with /doc
Templates with a subpage /doc have Interwiki links not in the template itself, but included from the subpage. If you add an Interwiki the subpage a job is automatically added which purges the template. That means the rendered version is recreated and now conaints the interwikis.
But the database is not changed. If you make an sql query the results may be wrong. To change this you have to touch = null edit (=make an edit without changes) the template. Most of these templates are also edit protected.
So can an admin bot touch all pages which have a subpage in Category:Template documentation? This could be also done with a simple admin account, because it doesn't produce any visible edit. It would be very useful if this could be done e.g. one a month.
If you don't want to touch all pages: The API has the info when a page was touched last time (/page/@touched), so a touch is only need if the value is older than the revision of the subpage ref/@timestamp.
This is needed only for toolserver sql queries. API resturns correct results. Merlissimo 11:44, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
Not a good task for a bot. From your final sentence, this sounds like this isn't even an issue with Wikipedia, just the toolserver. Rather than having a bot going around making null edits, why not just fix the toolserver? Anomie⚔ 13:13, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
- The toolserver is only a replication of the wikimedia db server. Mediawiki should be fixed instead. But this is not done because of too many needed table locks which downgrades the performance of the db on every edit. But only 10000 more edits once a month does't hurt db (should not be done in mean time of course). The job queue is not the problem because mediawiki checks if something has changed (which is not on a null edit) before adding the subjobs for every page including the template. Merlissimo 14:39, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
- touch.py -ref:Template:Documentation would do this job. Merlissimo 14:50, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
- But if it works through the API (as you stated), then it wouldn't seem to be a problem with MediaWiki. Just a problem with however the toolserver is replicated. Otherwise link us to the bugzilla bug on this issue that is closed WONTFIX. Anomie⚔ 18:37, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
- The toolserver is only a replication of the wikimedia db server. Mediawiki should be fixed instead. But this is not done because of too many needed table locks which downgrades the performance of the db on every edit. But only 10000 more edits once a month does't hurt db (should not be done in mean time of course). The job queue is not the problem because mediawiki checks if something has changed (which is not on a null edit) before adding the subjobs for every page including the template. Merlissimo 14:39, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
Bot to clear Category:Biography articles with more than one work group needing priority parameter replacement
Back in October {{WPBiography}} was given an overhaul, and one of the changes made was the replacement of |priority= with specific parameters for each work group (because the main project itself does not assess articles for priority). A discussion on updating individual banners took place here, although not without a little drama. In short, there was some opposition to having a bot clear the 100,000 articles in Category:Biography articles needing priority parameter replacement, but I think it was generally agreed that the much smaller number of articles in Category:Biography articles with more than one work group needing priority parameter replacement should be dealt with.
The |priority= parameter in these banners should be removed and replaced with one specific to each work group used per T:WPBIO, e.g.
{{WPBiography|priority=Low|filmbio-work-group=yes|politician-work-group=yes}}
should be changed to
{{WPBiography|filmbio-work-group=yes|filmbio-priority=Low|politician-work-group=yes|politician-priority=Low}}
Thanks in advance. PC78 (talk) 12:24, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
Doing... as soon as I finish testing the code (I want to make sure it does {{WPBiography|a&e-work-group=yes|a&e-priority=foo|s&a-work-group=yes|s&a-priority=foo|living=no}} rather than {{WPBiography|a&e-work-group=yes|s&a-work-group=yes|living=no|a&e-priority=foo|s&a-priority=foo}}, and doesn't get weird with linebreaks either). Anomie⚔ 16:12, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
Bot work at WikiProject Albums
There is currently talk at the Albums WikiProject about a possible widespread change across all album articles, and we need some expert advice on what is possible to accomplish with bots. Please see #Implementation of consensus on album reviews for our discussion. Thanks —Akrabbimtalk 20:54, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
external linking
I'm sure this kind of bot already exists, so I apologise in advance for not taking this request directly to the right place. I'm looking not only for the technical tool but also the pointer to the place to get concensus on mass external linking. I would like to request a bot generate external links to as many of the items in this list that Wikipedia already has a direct equivalent for. The list is all the articles in the recently launched "Dictionary of Sydney" - the official online encyclopedia of Sydney. They are original research essays with footnotes and multimedia, many with direct correlation to our articles, and a large proportion are cc-by-sa licensed. (full disclosure, I was until recently employed at that organisation). Also available are "reference pages" (not the article, but a summary of all relevant data e.g. mapping) and for suburb articles there are also historical demographics information.
I think perhaps it needs to be a semi-automated bot because although many of the articles would have the same article name but they do not have the same scope (for example, the Dictionary of Sydney has an article "Chinese" but this only refers to the Sydney-Chinese history, not the global one).
I have placed an example external link at the WP article about they Sydney Suburb Surry Hills to demonstrate. It says:
- Reference, demographics and (cc-by-sa) essay at the Dictionary of Sydney
Is this appropriate and/or technically feasible for a (semi-autonomous) bot? Does such a bot already exist and are there any policy/voting/approvals that need to be undertaken to get the consensus for a mass-external linking?
Witty Lama 15:00, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
- Start a discussion at WP:Village pump (proposals), and link to it from WT:External links, Template:Cent, and WP:Australian Wikipedians' notice board. Anomie⚔ 15:22, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
- If you are asking to mass-add external links to wikipedia articles that link to that web site, you could run into major issues related to "do we trust this site so well that we are willing to blindly assume it's reliable," "gee, this looks like we are complicit in link-spam," and "does the proponent of the bot have a conflict of interest." The 3rd should be easy to deal with, the first can be dealt with by looking a a representative sample of entries. The third is a matter of perception of "playing favorites" and can't be dealt with easily. For this reason, you will have an uphill battle. Given the nature of the site and who is behind it though, your idea at least has a chance of going forward. If it were a commercial site or it did not appear to be a serious, well-respected non-profit then it likely wouldn't stand a chance. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:23, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
- What might be useful is a template to make it easier for editors to add links by hand. An advantage of a template is if the site you are linking to re-organizes, you just need to modify the template once. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:25, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
- Generates... links? If an author can't manage to do enough research to have had a few links-- if necessary at all-- I don't know how results generated by a bot would help in any way. We have regulations regarding external links and I'm not picturing a bot complying. Linkspam is bad enough on some popular topics already. An actual human being needs to look at an external link. If someone is too lazy for that, I'm not sure why they're spending their free time at Wikipedia in the first place. Finding "links" might as well mean finding more resources of entirely unknowns and-- well, more talk about be a waste of time. "No." External links are the one section of articles that rarely have any problem filling up.
- Oh, and "semi-automated link bot" = a search engine. We have that already. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 05:18, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
Locating a bot writer for an innovation
I am keen to locate a Wikipedian who might be prepared to develop a bot or script as an editing/gnoming aid that would highlight undesirable word repetitions in an article, thus flagging to editors where recasting may be required. Although the exact repetition of a word can add to the cohesion of a text, in many cases it is poor style (I catch myself doing it, especially when tired).
For example, I've just pointed this one out at WP:FAC:
"Activated for service in World War I, the division saw brief service in the conflict, but never fought as an entire division."
But the phenomenon occurs not just within a sentence; some words are prominent enough to be avoided even when they are paragraphs apart. It would need to avoid a white-list of a few hundred common grammatical words, of course (e.g., the, to, been, am). A more sophisticated version would do better, by matching the frequency of occurrence of each word in English (there's a publicly available list) with the distance between specific occurrences in a text; a simple algorithm would be required to balance commonness against distance, which would need to be tested). This would clearly be preferable, but might be a challenge to develop and might require too much grunt.
Does anyone know of someone who might be interested and capable? I'm a total bot dummy (Mac user) and have no experience in writing scripts. Tony (talk) 15:24, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
- I've just been playing around with this for a bit. It ignores words listed here, repeated words are coloured by how many times they are repeated. --Chris 08:34, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Bot to automatically apply the Oldprodfull template to talk pages
It seems that User:RockfangBot was was approved to add the {{oldprodfull}} template to the talk pages of articles, but encountered some difficulty and ceased to perform this task. A more recent and complicated request to go through article histories to find old prod templates was rejected/withdrawn as too difficult. My request is limited to detecting proposed deletions going forward.
I'd like to make the request again.
Some background; the proposed deletion process does not allow an article to be deleted by a second {{prod}} or {{prod-nn}} tag once a proposed deletion tag has been removed from an article. The oldprodfull template has fields for the dates of its application and removal, plus a field for any addition of the {{Prod-2}} tag. There are fields for the reason text given by the editor who proposes the deletion, and the editor who seconds the proposed deletion, but the removal of the tag would require grabbing text from the edit summary. There are also date fields for the events.
Now, my interest is not in a perfect filling in of all these optional fields. All I really want is a indication on the talk page that the article was deprodded, and the oldprodfull tag, the {{oldprod}} template or even just a note would be enough. There are some subtleties I would like, but don't require. It would be nice if the bot ignored articles that are or were already in an AFD discussion. It would be nice if the bot did not create talk pages, since articles that lack a talk page are generally young, and, given that they were prodded while lacking a talk page, likely to be deleted by some other method. Having the bot create a talk page will just annoy the admin who has to delete the article. It would be nice if the bot had a built-in delay of a few hours, perhaps even 24 hours, to allow comment, creation of a talk page, or further deletion action such as an AFD nomination. It would be nice if the bot could detect an old prod on an article that has just been recreated by an editor or restored by an admin.
Can this be done? Abductive (reasoning) 14:57, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
- Support - Can it be done? Probably, with good coding and flagging cases where the code got confused. If it can be done correctly I would support such a bot. I would recommend someone patrol the output for accuracy for the first few hundred edits. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:02, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
- Yes it can be done. I'm confident I could write code to do this, but as I've got a number of bot tasks which need working on, I'd be unwilling (atm) to go through another BRfA, or to run the bot (due to bandwidth). However, I'd be very happy to help someone write the bot (I'm only any good with .NET). Which way do people prefer that the bot looks for the articles? Through categories, as MacMedBot did, or something else? @davidwr that could be done with a bot trial, which also takes the workload off the bot-op. - Kingpin13 (talk) 15:54, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
- This bot has been on my agenda for a long time. Obviously, I haven't got to it (for a variety of reasons). However, I am currently on real world vacation and was actually planning on finally writing the code next week. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:50, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
- Sorry ThaddeusB. I noticed that there was activity on this front, and figured the time was ripe. Abductive (reasoning) 02:39, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
- No apology necessary. If someone else is chopping at the bit to do it, they should feel free to do it. I certainly have plenty to do... I just wanted to say, "yes, I am hoping to finally actually get it done, so no one should pressure themselves too much." --ThaddeusB (talk) 04:41, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
- Howdy. My bot didn't encounter any difficulty, it just got distracted. :) I was going to start it back up at one point, but then I noticed the withdrawn MacMedBot request. I had asked the operator to let me know if it got approved, but it never did. I used AWB to place a blank oldprodfull on talk pages, and then I'd manually go through and add info myself. If people want me to, I can start this up again until a normal bot gets approved.--Rockfang (talk) 00:49, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
- It's not such a crucial task that a person has to do it. I'll be happy to wait for a bot. Abductive (reasoning) 02:39, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Tag articles in Category:Music video games
Can I please get some bot help with tagging articles in Category:Music video games with {{WikiProject Music Video Games}}? The project is new, and it'll take a while for me to do the tagging by hand. Regards -- Sk8er5000 (talk) 22:58, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
- Never mind. Found a bot. -- Sk8er5000 (talk) 23:16, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Bot to notify maijor contributors that their BLP is unrefrenced.
Per the apparent concensus here and here, I made a bot that will notifies users of articles that are unrefrenced. The bot works like this: Find largest non-bot, non-annon, user with the most non-minor edits to an article, and add that article to the user's list. When the bot is done parsing all the unrefrenced BLPs, it adds a message to the users talk page:
Un-Referenced BLPs
Hello Bot requests! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot alerting you that 2 of the articles for which you are the largest contributor are Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons. If you were to add sources to these articles, it would greatly help us with the current 758 page backlog. Here are the articles, in no particular order :
- Foo Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
- Bar Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
-Thanks! DashBot
alternativley, as to not flood the user's talk page- if they have more then ten articles, it adds the first ten to the user page, and provides a link to a list of the rest: Example
Un-Referenced BLPs
Hello Bot requests! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot alerting you that 12 of the articles for which you are the largest contributor are Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons. If you were to add sources to these articles, it would greatly help us with the current 758 page backlog. Here are 10 of those articles, in no particular order (2 others):
- Foo Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
- Bar Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
- Foo Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
- Bar Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
- Foo Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
- [Bar]] Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
- Foo Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
- Bar Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
- Foo Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
- Bar Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
-Thanks! Dashbot
Tell me if I can change anything before I request approval. Tim1357 (talk) 17:48, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
- P.S. I need somewhere to direct all complaints about the bot. I don't want to get beaten. : )
- "Here are the articles, in no particular order" probably ought to either try to see if the plural and the extra clause is needed. "Un-Referenced" could be "Unreferenced". In addition, perhaps it could identify the article creator and notify them as well, provided their version of the article was not a redirect. Also, per discussion here, could it only notify users who have been active in the past 6 months? NW (Talk) 18:04, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
- Also, could you run this on a different bot account than your Dashbot? No sense delaying this if your bot gets blocked for another reason. Cheers, NW (Talk) 18:07, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
- I like it, but make it a stricter message. Emphasise that all BLPs MUST be referenced, that unreferenced biographies are likely to be deleted, etc. Ironholds (talk) 18:31, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
- Here is the template that the bot uses: User:Tim1357/temp. The count parameter is the number of articles to be included. More means that there is more then ten. I encourage you to tweak it all you want. I did a count and it seems around 23,000 users will be getting messages. I am not sure how to determine if a user has edited in the past six months, Ill try to find a way to figure that out. I will add article creators, but from what i read on WT:BLP, the idea was to notify the most common contributor. 67.142.130.12 (talk) 18:43, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
- I see little point notifying indef blocked users as they can't edit the articles. Nor do I see much point notifying people who have not edited in the last 6 months. I'm also concerned as to how we measure contributors, it would be a bit counterproductive if all our hugglers were to get such messages because their use of Rollback to revert vandalism on BLPs had made them a pages major contributor. ϢereSpielChequers
- Rollback is automatically marked as a minor edit, I believe. Perhaps there is some way to scan for "Undid", "Rvv", "Reverted", etc. in edit summaries and ignore them when counting up to the threshold? NW (Talk) 19:02, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
- Minor edits were not counted. I did a look through the users with the most pages, and it seems that bearcat and some unflagged bots who did not mark their edits as minor showed up. I added some lines to the code so that the bot does not send messages to users who have 'bot' on the end of their name. It would be a great help if someone could point me to a raw .txt file of all users that are indef blocked, because that would be much easier to code.Tim1357 (talk) 02:42, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
- It appears that editors which only added tags (such as the BLP unsourced tag) are going to get notices from the bot (why else is Fram on the list?). Perhaps there is a way to exclude edits that involve tagging the article for improvement? Otherwise, I think it's a great idea. Best regards. Jogurney (talk) 03:14, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
- Well Im dealing with a huge dataset here. It took me 3 days to generate this list (its still finishing). The only variable taken into account (right now) is the number of non-minor edits they made. If they made the most, then they were added. Hopefully they market their tagging edits as minor, and only tagged the article once. If that is the case, they should not appear on the list. If anyone wants a full list of user's to be messaged, send me an email and I'll generate one for you. Per the request of NW, I will go through and add the article's creators. Someone needs to change the template so it says "number" of the articles for which you are the largest contributor, or the creator are biographies... Thanks Tim1357 (talk) 03:42, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Remove Category:Wikipedia:Books from pages that manually include it
The {{saved book}} template has been updated to handle categorization automatically. Simply remove the category from the pages that have it "hardcoded" in them. Thanks. 05:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)