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).
| Legend |
|---|
|
|
|
|
|
| Manual settings |
| When exceptions occur, please check the setting first. |
| Bot-related archives (v·t·e) |
|---|
Disease box update bot
Hi All, I am Dr. Noa Rappaport, scientific leader of the MalaCards database of human diseases. Following a suggestion by Andrew Su (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Molecular_and_Cellular_Biology/Proposals#MalaCards_-_www.malacards.org) we were asked to write a bot that updates the disease box external references within disease entries in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ProteinBoxBot/Phase_3#Disease. We found it to be a non trivial task. Does anyone know of any such bot that exists or can help us write it ? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noa.rappaport (talk • contribs) 10:22, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
- How does the MalaCards disease name differ from the {{Infobox_disease/sandbox2}} disease name? Josh Parris 10:45, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
- Hi Josh, we can supply a mapping given a list of diseases, we also have cross references to most of the existing lists. Noa.rappaport (talk) 08:44, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
- Noa.rappaport, given this is a pretty major upgrade of the infobox, I think it would be a good idea to fill in the other fields at the same time. Are there lists of mappings available for the other fields? Josh Parris 08:45, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
- A brief investigation suggests this may be a ripe task for WP:wikidata Josh Parris 23:42, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
- If fact, the phase 2 data for Cystic fibrosis is at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q178194 - adding a record type for malacards and importing the appropriate data shouldn't be a problem. Where is your mapping data? For purposes of populating wikidata, the en.wikitionary name and the malacards number should be sufficient. Josh Parris 10:15, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
- Josh Parris - Great! Do you have an email address or ftp site I can send it to ?
- Is there a reason not to post it to User:Noa.rappaport/Malacard mappings? That way any interested party can do the translation. Josh Parris 21:12, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
- Josh Parris, I sent you the file but I can't seem to upload it because my account is not approved yet. Will appreciate your help with that. Noa.rappaport (talk) 15:19, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
- File is in place at User:Noa.rappaport/Malacard mappings. Noa.rappaport (talk) 08:11, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
- Is there a reason not to post it to User:Noa.rappaport/Malacard mappings? That way any interested party can do the translation. Josh Parris 21:12, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
- Josh Parris - Great! Do you have an email address or ftp site I can send it to ?
- Noa.rappaport, given this is a pretty major upgrade of the infobox, I think it would be a good idea to fill in the other fields at the same time. Are there lists of mappings available for the other fields? Josh Parris 08:45, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
- Hi Josh, we can supply a mapping given a list of diseases, we also have cross references to most of the existing lists. Noa.rappaport (talk) 08:44, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
Images lacking a US status indication
Tag all entries in - http://tools.wmflabs.org/betacommand-dev/reports/Media_lacking_US_status_indication.txt
for inclusion in Category:All media files lacking a US status indication to be created.
This can either be done by a bot, or by tweaking templates. I prefer a mass tag run by a bot. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 15:41, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
- Why wouldn't this category be populated by templates? What tag are you wanting? What makes these 6330 pages candidates for this category? Josh Parris 23:53, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
- The reason it's not populated by templates yet is because those templates need either to be tweaked accordingly or a new template created. A file should be in the new category if it's not in
- Category:All free media indicating it IS free in the US by Wikipedia rules (And can move to commons)
- Category:All free in US media indicating it is free only in the US and thus can move to commons.
- Category:All non-free media meaning it has a non-free aspect and thus can't be moved to commons. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 00:15, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
- I've also been advised it would be better to do this tracking with a bot, because of the overlaps created by various license templates.Sfan00 IMG (talk) 09:42, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
- Those categories are all directly below Category:Wikipedia copyright.
- Now that templates are scriptable, it might be doable just with template code - the upside of which is that there's no bot to fail or debug and it's constantly up-to-date. I suspect that there would be a timing/ordering problem. Can a Lua expert chime in here please? Josh Parris 05:47, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
- The reason it's not populated by templates yet is because those templates need either to be tweaked accordingly or a new template created. A file should be in the new category if it's not in
Small scale domain updates
Copying from myself at Wikipedia:VPT#Bulk_change_of_domain_in_external_URLs:
I probably have added 50-100+ external URLs to policy and discussion spaces that link back to a personal domain, where I host my academic writings and datasets relevant to Wikipedia and collaborative security. This domain has now changed, and while there is an HTTP redirect in place, administrative policies dictate that will not survive forever. The file paths are constant. This is a touch painstaking manually. Is there a way to automate this? If so, is that solution limited to en.wp or is this something that can be done for all WMF properties (I know I have links on Wikimania wikis and Metawiki, at minimum)?
I am looking to change everything of the form, http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~westand to http://www.andrew-g-west.com. Based on the request history here, it seems like some functionality is in place to take care of this? IOs it worth your troubles? Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 21:39, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
- I'd suggest Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks as somewhere where you'll find willing helpers. Josh Parris 04:40, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
Prod tagging compilation for statistical analysis
There is a sentiment among some users that PROD (not Sticky prod) is useless because anyone, including the creator, can simply remove the PROD tag. I've seen this expressed a few times recently in various fora. It can be pointed out that every week we successfully delete a few hundred pages through prod, so we know it works and they're not always removed, but it would be nice to see what the real statistics are – what percentage of taggings are successful and toher data about the process. To this end, I thought it would be a simple task to have a bot compile a list of prod taggings over some length of time, say one month. No human being could do this because they would miss all or many of the prods taggings that were placed and then removed within a short time, whereas a bot can simply, inhumanly, keep refreshing today's prod category, compare against a list its been compiling and add any new entry. That's the germ of the idea. A human at the end of the data gathering period can easily calculate a gross percentage of success by the number of red-linked and blue-linked and delve further to make sure deletions weren't by other methods but actual as a result of the prodding (if the bot couldn't do this as well). And there's lots of other data that could be gathered, which could be done through the bot if someone would be willing to set it up or by a human willing to spend the time, such as list how long after creation the prodding occurred, who removed, whether they were the creator, how long between tagging and removal, whether the creator was warned or not and I'm sure there are other interesting areas of inquiry I haven't thought of. Is this feasible? Feasible and easy? Feasible but too difficult to bother with? Anyone willing?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:21, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
- On a technical level, I see three approaches as being viable.
- Keep querying the system for current population of the category, as you've suggested. Note additions, and removals. Do an analysis of the revision history of noted pages to determine what happened. It'd be helpful if this was done by an adminbot, to look at the text of deleted pages.
- Pick a period of time, and pull up all the revisions, searching for the addition or removal of the category. That could be slow. On the other hand, it doesn't have to be done against live data, so it doesn't have to process data in realtime. Again, for deleted revisions you'd need an adminbot.
- Camp out on recent changes for a while and drink from that firehose. You could just watch for the addition of the category, watchlist pages that have the category added and watch for subsequent removal. If you looked for deletions and removals on recentchanges, you wouldn't need an adminbot.
- Each of these has their upsides and downsides. Josh Parris 05:03, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
Global search and replace to fix links to archived discussions.
Here's a bot that would be super-useful:
Search for links like the one at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Inline_Templates#Created Replace broken links links to since-archived discussions to the archived discussion: Replace
Presumably, we'll need pilot runs, big runs, and ongoing maintenance runs. Anyone up for it?--Elvey (talk) 01:19, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
Bad links on wiki due to SEFAdvance converting our site URL's from underscores to dashes.
I am the webmaster for SeacoastNH.com
The site is built in joomla and we use the extension SEFAdvance that used to use underscores (__) in links, but the new version doesn't allow underscores and instead uses dashes (-) in links.
Consequently many of the links and references on wiki that use the old underscored links now present 404 errors.
Could the bot go and find all links on wiki for seacoastnh.com that use underscores and convert them to dashes? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adcetera692 (talk • contribs) 15:29, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
- Someone could do this manually easily enough, there are only 29 pages in article space that link to that site and include underscores in the URL. Anomie⚔ 16:58, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
- 197th Field Artillery Regiment (United States)
- American Independence Museum
- Appledore Island
- Bahá'í Faith in Japan
- Donald Murray (writer)
- Exeter, New Hampshire
- Garrison Hill Park and Tower
- Gilman Garrison House
- Harriet Livermore
- History of New Hampshire
- HMS Drake (1777)
- John Paul Jones
- John Paul Jones House
- John Smith (explorer)
- John Sullivan House
- List of reported UFO sightings
- Martello tower
- Ogunquit, Maine
- Piscataqua River
- Piscataway, New Jersey
- Richard Arnold (general)
- Robert Rogers (soldier)
- Sally Wood
- Sir John Wentworth, 1st Baronet
- Tobias Lear
- Toby Gilmore
- Vampire
- Vampire folklore by region
- Wentworth by the Sea
Done by the requester on December 12. GoingBatty (talk) 03:55, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
Tagging pages for a new Taskforce
Following this WP:VPT talk, and tipped by Anomie (I guess Anomie picks up here).
The new taskforce is in WP:MEDICINE: Society_and_medicine.
From my talkpage [1]:
If I could magically use bots, I'd use a bot to tag every article with the taskforce:
- any article simultaneously under WP:BIO and WP:MED
- any article simultaneously under WP:COMPANIES and WP:MED
That should net the majority of the articles we wish to catch. --LT910001 (talk) 15:38, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
The bot edit, I suggest:
{{WikiProject Medicine|...|society=yes|society-imp=<TBD>}}- or
{{WPMED|...|society=yes|society-imp=<TBD>}}- with <TBD> = to be decided: "
???" or "mid", ask taskforce members.
- with <TBD> = to be decided: "
Please do not contact me in this, I am just a middle man for the taskforce @LT910001, Bluerasberry, and Jinkinson:. User:DePiep 14:18, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
- Requestors (LT910001—Bluerasberry—Jinkinson) So I understand the request,
- If a page that is tagged by WikiProject Medicine and
- Is tagged with WP BIO or WP Companies
- Alter the WikiProject Medicine tagging so that it has the society parameter
- Add the society importance parameter and set it to '???' to indicate that the society taskforce needs to make a determination about the importance
- If a page that is tagged by WikiProject Medicine and
- If this is the case, I think I can have something written up fairly quickly, to do this. Hasteur (talk) 14:57, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks and thanks so much to DePiep for navigating the hallowed recesses of Wiki to direct me here! I'll respond to any queries. For the first run, please set the importance to ???, as we may wish to triage the articles once they are added to the taskforce, and ??? importance will provide a way of doing this. Thanks! --LT910001 (talk) 15:15, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
- LT910001 That's a good point. If the page is already tagged for the society task force, the bot will move on to another page. I think that the initial tagging in to society should always be ??? so that the task force members make the determination. How often are you thinking that the bot should run? I could see a case of a once a month run (to pick up any old ones) and probably drop a notice on the WP Medicine talk page to announce that a new round of tagging has been completed and that the society task force should go through evaluating. This sound good? Hasteur (talk) 15:22, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
- That would be wonderful, and additionally would reduce the burden for article assessors. --LT910001 (talk) 15:36, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
- I just happened to come by, was nearby anyway. The once/month thing is a useful idea. Now could it be that the humans have thrown out of the taskforce a page X for good reason, and then the bot comes by and re-adds page X it with ???? (yes, four) Can you throw a page out by setting
|society=noand the bot understands? -DePiep (talk) 17:11, 13 December 2013 (UTC)- That's an excellent point. That would probably be handled in the early portion of the check (if the page qualifies) If the society parameter is already set, don't muck with it. This is why I like to hash out the task and get 90% of the use cases handled before the BRFA gets filed. Hasteur (talk) 17:28, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
- I just happened to come by, was nearby anyway. The once/month thing is a useful idea. Now could it be that the humans have thrown out of the taskforce a page X for good reason, and then the bot comes by and re-adds page X it with ???? (yes, four) Can you throw a page out by setting
- That would be wonderful, and additionally would reduce the burden for article assessors. --LT910001 (talk) 15:36, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
- LT910001 That's a good point. If the page is already tagged for the society task force, the bot will move on to another page. I think that the initial tagging in to society should always be ??? so that the task force members make the determination. How often are you thinking that the bot should run? I could see a case of a once a month run (to pick up any old ones) and probably drop a notice on the WP Medicine talk page to announce that a new round of tagging has been completed and that the society task force should go through evaluating. This sound good? Hasteur (talk) 15:22, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks and thanks so much to DePiep for navigating the hallowed recesses of Wiki to direct me here! I'll respond to any queries. For the first run, please set the importance to ???, as we may wish to triage the articles once they are added to the taskforce, and ??? importance will provide a way of doing this. Thanks! --LT910001 (talk) 15:15, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
There seems to be some interest from the other task forces in this bot, however I feel that it may be better to first get a functioning bot, and then add additional usage cases for the additional 10+ task-forces after it is functioning. If at a later date this could be expanded to multiple taskforces it would be extremely valuable for WPMED and I am sure many users would be very grateful. If I may add two additional cases, to a total of four:--LT910001 (talk) 01:54, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Question: is it possible to tag articles that have certain categories? I worry the difficulty with that may be that categories have a cascading structure and may be difficult to implement --LT910001 (talk) 01:54, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
- LT, this is a different approach. The first question could be handled this way: the bot looks all pages that have {{WPMED}} transcluded (the list Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:WikiProject Medicine). And so forth.
- What you ask now is that the bot goes to all the pages in a category (and its subcategories). That is different for the bot (maybe not to you), so I guess the bot operator would like clarity.
- As for the subcategories: if you ask it explicitly (in your second question here then), a bot might well be able to drill deeper. That way Category:Medicine_articles_by_quality "+ recursion" will list the pages you might expect. It may be called "depth", "recursion/recursive". So this is a phrasig of the question to check.
- What the bot actually can & will do, is up to the operator, not me. -DePiep (talk) 20:52, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Usage cases
Tagged under the 'society and medicine' task force:
- any article simultaneously under WP:BIO and WP:MED
- any article simultaneously under WP:COMPANIES and WP:MED
- any article simultaneously under WP:Organizations and WP:MED
- any article with the word 'charity' in the title. (unlike WP:BIO, articles about charities are not reliably tagged with other WPs)
en.wikipedia.org
This is actually two requests. In hundreds, perhaps thousands, of articles, en.wikipedia.org is used instead of Wikilinking. In others it is used as a reference.
Could a bot be programmed to replace en.wikipedia.org in the text body with the link that was intended, per WP:WIKILINK?
Separately, could a bot be programmed so that when there any en.wikipedia.org within <ref></ref>, the whole lot is replaced with {{cn}}, per WP:CIRCULAR? Simply south...... eating lexicological sandwiches for just 7 years 19:45, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
- Your second request is a bad idea as a general rule. It is certainly possible that articles that mention Wikipedia would have citations to en.wikipedia.org. And in these cases, the link should be an external link to mirrors will be linking to the right place. Anomie⚔ 20:09, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Age of Wushu
Hello Wiki, I'd like to request for a tutorial guide on "creating and configure a bot" for Age of Wushu. Eg; Harvest, mining or Kidnapping bot, and etc.