User talk:AnomieBOT

Sleeping

AnomieBOT has been sleeping now for about 14 hours. Laziness! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:59, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Looks like I used a new Perl feature in code I pushed last night, that needed a "use feature" to work with the version of Perl on Toolforge. Anomie⚔ 16:34, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Same for AnomieBOT III. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:40, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

While AnomieBOT III was affected by the same thing, it also looks like it just hasn't had any broken redirects to delete so far today. Anomie⚔ 21:18, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Well, it's gone from updating roughly every 6 hours to not updating in 2 days. Although the number of broken redirects varies (it's typically dependent on AfD closures), I've never seen it go this long without posting some broken redirects in main, talk, draft, user, category or template space. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 14:34, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Looks like phab:T262239. Anomie⚔ 18:25, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

That case was closed as resolved and broken redirects were updated for a couple days but the bot has gone back to sleep and I don't see a new ticket. Maybe some 2-3 day database lag? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:03, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Looks like there's actual lag now, per https://replag.toolforge.org/. Anomie⚔ 19:25, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

There's been a non-insignificant replag since 7 September. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:35, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

FFD configuration

Hello!

When files that subject of an FFD get moved to Commons and consequently locally deleted per WP:CSD#F8 your bot closes these FFDs as deleted, but I think they rather should be closed as kept and moved to Commons. Do you agree?Jonteemil (talk) 13:19, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Seems too much effort to determine the difference between "FFD filed, then someone uploaded to Commons and it was deleted locally" and "Someone uploaded to Commons, then an FFD was filed and it was deleted locally" when the end result is exactly the same. The bot does note in its close when the deletion resulted in a Commons file at the same name being visible. Anomie⚔ 19:22, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Added inappropriate references

The bot added legal complaints from the person’s lawyer as the source for factual statements in the article. Legal complaints aren’t reliable sources in most cases. I just removed those a few hours ago per Wikipedia policy.

I don’t understand why your bot would insert inappropriate references that had just been removed without a word to the person who just removed them?

The article is Jill Kelley.

Fat Irish Guy (talk) 19:58, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

@Fat Irish Guy: Please check the page history, your removals were incomplete and left big red error messages. AnomieBOT was merely fixing the error messages. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:53, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

I will. Thanks.

So the bot searches out red links and attempts to clean them up? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fat Irish Guy (talk • contribs) 00:21, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

I think we’d have all been better served if it had marked and notified the editor instead of revert the whole thing. JMO

Fat Irish Guy (talk) 00:52, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

No red links were involved, I wrote "big red error messages" and that is what may be seen at this version, there are two of them, nos. 11 & 38. The bot also did not carry out any reversion. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:17, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

WikiProject tagging

Hi there, need help tagging talk pages in Category:Phoenicia and all its subcats with Template:WikiProject Phoenicia. Members did not oppose.
Please just tag, don't assess with the wikiprojects WPBanner, assessment will be made by the project members.
I have also been using Template:PHOA in lieu of the WPBanner tag, please replace these with the WP tag.
The project overlaps often with WP:Ancient Near East and WP:Lebanon, if we need individual WP member clearance I would like to forgo tagging articles related to other wikiprojects. Thank you for your assistance. ~ Elias Z. (talkallam) 10:57, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Remove templates when archiving ITN/C

The bot archives WP:ITNC but we're hitting the WP:TLIMIT on the archived discussions. I'm wondering if the bot could strip out the cot/cob at the start of every day to get our overall template count down. The content is useful in the main discussion but has limited value I think in the archive. Alternatively a subst on those templates would get us under the tlimit and preserve the content. I'm relying on the ITN Template to do some analytics hacks so please don't subst that one. --LaserLegs (talk) 22:18, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

My Perl sucks but if the bot is open source I can do a PR --LaserLegs (talk) 22:18, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

@LaserLegs: The bot is open source, but it's not currently on Github or any place that does pull requests.

It's not the template count that's the problem, and removing the {{cot}} and {{cob}} isn't enough to make a difference for e.g. Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates/August 2020. Your test is still broken starting from "(Posted) RD: Sixto Brillantes".

The limit being hit is the post-expand include size. On the August 2020 page, all the {{cot}} and {{cob}} combined contribute just 16,708 (0.8%); the transclusions of the portal pages contribute 1,181,313 (56%); all the {{ITN candidate}} contribute 1,777,757 (85%); and all the rest of the templates on the page contribute 137,017 (6.5%). So you'd probably do better to be looking at {{ITN candidate}} and {{ITN candidate/user}}. You may find Help:Substitution#Recursive substitution helpful if you want to go the subst route there, although I find that just removing the long "give credit" link from {{ITN candidate/user}} seems enough to bring August 2020 under the limit. Anomie⚔ 03:00, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

@Stephen: moving the discussion here so we don't have to cross-post. Thoughts on the above from Anomie? --LaserLegs (talk) 21:07, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Anomie for the clarification. LaserLegs, it’s your call how you tackle this as you’re the one who will be putting the work in. Can you able to run some tests to work out the best approach? Especially given that our ITN templates generate further templates (ITNC/user) a dual pass approach might be needed to strip them all out. Stephen 23:29, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

So when I blindly /{{ITN candidate/{{subst:ITN candidate/ on Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidates/August_2020 it starts printing the contents of the template (lots of #if) around the 10th. I tried to clone the archive to a userpage to hack on it and I got hit with a "deprecated source" error :p. Still working on this anyway. --LaserLegs (talk) 11:47, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Bot appears to be down

Anomie, the bot does not appear to have edited for over 22 hours. Does it need a cookie? – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:52, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. It seems something on Toolforge caused all the bot's processes to hang. I've restarted them all now. Anomie⚔ 16:13, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

OrphanReferenceFixer: Blacklisted orphaned reference in Siliguri

When trying to fix orphaned refs in Siliguri, MediaWiki's spam blacklist complained about census2011.co.in. This probably means someone didn't properly clean up after themselves when blacklisting the link and removing existing uses, but a human needs to double-check it. The attempted changes were:

• Siliguri revision 982158107:
  • Rescued "censusindia2" from rev 982137063
    Removed in revision 982139691 by Nagrika1 (talk • contribs • logs) with comment "/* Demographics */" (removed 146/86287 bytes, 0%)

You might also use {{subst:User:Anomie/uw-orphans|1=rm diff|2=fix diff}} to let the remover know, if their edit summary indicates they were specifically removing the blacklisted ref. When you have fixed this issue, please change the section title (e.g. append " - Fixed") or remove this section completely. I will repost the notice if the page is still broken or is re-broken. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 14:14, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Hurricane Delta Sources

Hiya,

Thanks for editing my additions to the Hurricane Delta lead; I notice you've marked one of the sources as unreliable. I wanted to have a discussion about this - Levi Cowan who is the author of the tweet the source refers to, is a meteorologist supporting the Hurricane Research Division of the NOAA - was just wondering what your thoughts would be? He has professional knowledge so I'm not sure it is unreliable?

Best Bellminsterboy (talk) 08:02, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

You appear to be confused. AnomieBOT's edit just added |date=October 2020 to the tag; the tag itself was added in the previous edit by SounderBruce. You should contact that user to discuss the matter. Anomie⚔ 23:08, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Losing information

I notice that AnomieBOT sometimes loses information; in this case, the "abruf" parameter, an alias for "zugriff", was ignored and its contents were deleted upon substitution. Would it be possible to detect when that happens, and preserve the information somewhere? I assume the bot keeps logs somewhere...

Eelworm (talk) 09:03, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

The bot cannot preserve this information, other than in the article history. If you want the information somehow preserved post-subst, edit the appropriate template so the information is included in the substed output. Anomie⚔ 00:56, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! So it's a limitation of the bot? I have no idea about the bot's actual code (is it available?), so I'll take your word for it, but it is an unfortunate limitation. The point is that losing information is never acceptable, even if the template is incomplete. Eelworm (talk) 08:05, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with the bot. The problem needs to be addressed at Template talk:Internetquelle, where it looks like you have posted already. Someone may be able to adjust the template for you. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:49, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

It has everything to do with the bot. We can't assume every template to be up-to-date all the time: it's invalid to perform a substitution dropping an "unknown" parameter. If it's a long-standing bug in the bot we should go over the logs to undo the damage once the bug has been fixed.

To summarize: the bot appears to silently drop "extra" template parameters. It shouldn't. It's very easy to detect this situation, which may be caused by a typo or an out-of-date template. There are a number of options for what to do in that case, and all of them are better than silently losing information. Eelworm (talk) 18:07, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

@Eelworm: I suggest that you read up on WP:SUBST, and also look at the code underlying Template:Internetquelle. That should help you understand what happens if you replace

{{Internetquelle |url=https://www.airliners.de/flughafen-dortmund-2019-passagierrekord/53234 |titel=Flughafen Dortmund stellt 2019 deutlichen Passagierrekord auf |abruf=2020-01-06}}

with

{{subst:Internetquelle |url=https://www.airliners.de/flughafen-dortmund-2019-passagierrekord/53234 |titel=Flughafen Dortmund stellt 2019 deutlichen Passagierrekord auf |abruf=2020-01-06}}

which is what AnomieBOT did. It is up to the maintainers of Template:Internetquelle to decide whether |abruf=2020-01-06 should map to a valid {{cite web}} parameter, or not. At present, it doesn't; so substing the template drops the infotmation. That is not AnomieBOT's fault. But here's a thing for you: if I take the template transclusion from the version of the page before AnomieBOT's edit, i.e. the first block of code above, this is what it displays:

• "Flughafen Dortmund stellt 2019 deutlichen Passagierrekord auf". Retrieved 2020-01-06. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |nosubst= ignored (help)

So, since the date 2020-01-06 wasn't displayed to begin with, it cannot have been lost. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:50, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Of course it was lost! It was lost from the wikitext. If Template:Internetquelle is fixed now, it won't magically reappear. As you say, substing the template drops information. It shouldn't.

I have no idea why you think it's useful to imply I haven't understood what's happening here (and the page you link to is about explicit {{subst:...}} substitutions, which are different from what's being discussed here). It's not. Eelworm (talk) 08:10, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

We are under the impression that you haven't understood because on at least three occasions, you have asserted that the fault lies with AnomieBOT. You can easily verify that it is nothing to do with AnomieBOT by editing a page - any page, but WP:Sandbox is best - and pasting in this line:

{{Internetquelle |url=https://www.airliners.de/flughafen-dortmund-2019-passagierrekord/53234 |titel=Flughafen Dortmund stellt 2019 deutlichen Passagierrekord auf |abruf=2020-01-06}}

Now save it. Does the 2020-01-06 get displayed? No, it doesn't. Edit the page to verify that 2020-01-06 is still there, and when doing so, insert the six characters subst: immediately after the pair of opening braces (which is all that AnomieBOT did), and save. Now, edit the page again and you will see that 2020-01-06 is not there. Does that make it the fault of AnomieBOT? Absolutely not, since AnomieBOT was not involved. Does it make it your fault? By your arguments above, yes it does.

What we are saying is that the fault lies either in Template:Internetquelle itself for not providing any code to use |abruf=, or it lies in Template:Internetquelle/doc for implying that |abruf= is a valid parameter when all tests show that it is not. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:57, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Adding "subst:" to the template invocation is what AnomieBOT did. It should absolutely not have done so, blindly, given that the invocation used unknown parameters. It led to the loss of information, and it might have led to the loss of interesting information in other templates. It makes sense that there is a bot involved in the process, rather than having the mediawiki software automatically substitute some templates. That is because bots have more opportunities to be careful not to perform substitutions that lose or misrepresent information, such as by performing a basic check for unknown parameters. Eelworm (talk) 10:16, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

It absolutely should have done so, because that is exactly what it is being instructed to do. AnomieBOT is a bot, not a human; it cannot make considered decisions, it acts according to specific instructions. In this case the specific instruction to add subst: is in the form of the {{Subst only|auto=yes}} that is in the template's doc page, which has been there for over four years now, being moved from the template itself to the doc page by Andy M. Wang (talk · contribs); the decision to make it subst-only was originally made on 9 September 2016 by Pigsonthewing (talk · contribs) with this edit. Complain to either Andy (M. Wang or Mabbett) if you like, but do not blame AnomieBOT. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:55, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm talking about a simple programmatic check ("is this template invocation being passed parameters the substitution template never looks at"), not any kind of "considered decision". And I'm unlikely to complain to human editors about AnomieBOT failing to perform such a simple check, particularly since, as far as I can see, they've done nothing wrong. Templates change, making a previous decision to auto-substitute invalid in some cases. We can detect most of those cases. We should. (Going through AnomieBOT's recent edits, it seems to be dropping the author's name from some citations. That's a pretty bad thing to do in academic circles.)

But we're going in circles here: there's a limitation in AnomieBOT which causes it to delete encyclopedic information (except from the article history, whence it is very difficult to restore) in articles when a substitution template is out of date and fails to reference newly-valid parameters. This behavior is unintended by all of the human editors involved in the process. I've informed the bot's author of the problem, and am obviously still hoping for a substantive response. Eelworm (talk) 14:07, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

If there is a problem with substing of a particular template, stop it from being substed until the problem is fixed. The bot is just following human instructions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:15, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Just to pile on (as BAG and late-to-the-party tps), this is not a bot issue, for all of the reasons stated above. Primefac (talk) 14:55, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

TFDTemplateSubster for orphaning

Just curious, Anomie, can User:AnomieBOT/TFDTemplateSubster be used to carry out orphan outcomes by fully noincluding, or blanking, the template and then shoving it onto that page? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:11, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Why wouldn't it be able to? * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:07, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

If a subst produces the desired result, the bot can do it. Anomie⚔ 00:44, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

ProcrastinatingReader, you weren't around when we last had this discussion (and no, I don't have diffs, but I seem to recall it was something around late 2018/early 2019), but that is absolutely not what the bot should be doing. If an orphaning needs to take place, there are two other bots that can handle that with much more specific edit summaries. Primefac (talk) 14:54, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Primefac, I had a feeling that'd be the answer. Mostly just wondered out of curiosity - we have active bots that do orphaning (you and Spork), so mostly a question for reference rather than something I was planning to do. Thanks all. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:33, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Fair enough. And as Anomie said, your question/setup is possible to do, just not something we like doing. Primefac (talk) 17:32, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Note a discussion in late 2018/early 2019 would have been about TemplateSubster rather than TFDTemplateSubster. IIRC the main issue was, as mentioned, that TemplateSubster's edit summary proved to be confusing when a template substed to nothing; TFDTemplateSubster is better as it'll link to the TFD, but it'll still refer to it as "substing" rather than "removing" which may still be confusing. Anomie⚔ 13:17, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Interesting. So, if it is still not permitted, the issue is purely one of edit summary, nothing technical? Would the blanking/noinclude thing I describe would achieve exactly the same effect (technically), i.e. no extra spaces, newlines, or other undesired behaviour? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:53, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

AnomieBOT substs the template, and if the template substed to nothing and it was the only thing on the line it removes a newline too. It doesn't do anything else with trying to clean up whitespace. Anomie⚔ 00:51, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Right (re: PR), it was an edit summary issue and not a technical one. Primefac (talk) 17:57, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Right, and I believe that was what predicated the TFD subster being created. Primefac (talk) 17:57, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

TFDTemplateSubster was created more because TemplateSubster didn't link the TFD in edit summaries and usually needed forcing for TFD substs. Anomie⚔ 20:02, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

So if this is still an issue, it's resolved by adding an "orphan" param or something to the /row template? That's assuming that this should be supported, of course (there's a slight risk of someone changing a template mid-subst when orphaning, but I guess that goes for any template being substed). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:10, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

This is not an issue, because it is not done. Primefac (talk) 19:08, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Also, I should clarify that almost every instance of using the TFDsubster is orphaning a template, but you're referring to "orphaning by blanking" which is not (and should not) be done under the current consensus. Primefac (talk) 19:12, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: So, get consensus (at WT:TFD or other appropriate venue, not here) that people want this, and what exactly needs to change about the bot's edit summary or whatever, and I'll figure out a good way to implement it. Without people actually wanting AnomieBOT to do this, I'm not going to spend time trying to figure out what might need changing. Anomie⚔ 00:40, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

That's fair. As I say, I was mostly just curious on why it isn't done currently / musing on the technical side (both answered now). Practically, I don't usually a backlog of orphans at holding, and fac is active with his bot, so I don't think there's immediate need. But yeah, if that situation ever changes it may be worth discussion. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:23, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

OnThisDayTagger

This edit at Talk:List of days of the year looks like a mistake. Does the code need a tweak to account for the recent page move? -- John of Reading (talk) 06:45, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes it does.  Done Anomie⚔ 13:52, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Parameter case

I just saw the bot add |date= to {{citation needed}} when |Date= was already present. This still leaves the article marked as having an unsupported para. Can the bot detect this and just change Date to date? MB 17:20, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Aggressive

This guy needs to be less aggressive. I was in the middle of upgrading an article called The Radio Reader and had just put in a couple more citation refs; when I tried to save them I got stepped on by an editing conflict message. As a result I had to reload the page and start over the whole addition of the citation, and a couple other changes I'd made.

According to the article history, looks like the conflict came from AnomieBot. [1] It's been about 10 years since I've experienced an edit-conflict. I'd bet that AnomieBot could have waited an hour - or a day - after my previous edit before 'dating maintenance tags'. Hardly a rush on that, what?

Twang (talk) 18:27, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

AnomieBOT does have a waiting period, and you can always just copy and paste your intended text (at the bottom of the edit conflict screen) over AnomieBOT's version. The bot will not take offense; it will simply wait and apply its tags later. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:14, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Refs orphaned on purpose

I appreciate often the service of rescuing orphaned refs. Sometimes I delete some text and didn't intend to take away the ref from the rest of the article and Anomie restores it. Thanks for that. However, the primary reason I delete refs is because they're unreliable, or unsuitable as references, and so when I orphan a ref, there's a very good chance that I want it gone, and then Anomie comes around and does the opposite of that. Is there a configurable option for this or some tweak that could be done, perhaps? Thanks. Elizium23 (talk) 05:42, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

If you remove a ref that is used more than once and then click Preview, which you should always do before saving an edit, you should see a big red error message about the ref you are removing. It is telling you to remove all instances of the ref. AnomieBOT is fixing your error in a non-destructive way. If you want to destroy something, sometimes you need to be more thorough. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:54, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

CHUUClerk - Wikipedia:Changing username/Usurpations

The bot clerks Wikipedia:Changing username/Usurpations to add daily sections and adds the text

Requests left here should be addressed on or before [date].

It should read "on or after" since the purpose is to document the hold period for the request. Thanks, Cabayi (talk) 11:31, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

A bit of research - this edit in 2011 flipped the meaning. Cabayi (talk) 11:50, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

The bot won't allow manual fixes to the problem - Special:Diff/985694541 Cabayi (talk) 12:05, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

That edit was specifically requested by User:xeno at User talk:AnomieBOT/Archive 3#CHUUClerk. I can't find any documentation as to whether there's supposed to be a hold period, or if the text is trying to give an idea of how soon a requester can expect their request to be answered. Anomie⚔ 13:29, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

It's an on-hold period so that the original owner of the account name which is being usurped has a chance to respond to the email which was sent to them. It's a week on enwiki -

Your request is now complete and ready to be processed after the hold period (usually about a week).

the penultimate bullet point in Wikipedia:Changing username/Usurpations/Front matter

and a month on meta where it's more rigorously documented

Please note: Per standard procedure, accounts with valid edits are not usurped, and the target account must be notified by renamer at least one month before usurpation.

m:Steward requests/Username changes#Requests involving merges, usurps or other complications

The request won't be serviced before that time. pinging 1997kB who has handled most of the usurpations recently Cabayi (talk) 14:25, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I am not sure this text is about usurpation, but if it is then yes, wording should be changed. ‐‐1997kB (talk) 14:41, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

In the local system we sometimes processed usurps more speedily especially when it was to help unify. Now that unification is complete, the text can be changed to reflect current practice. –xeno^talk 00:25, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Ok, adjusted wording. Anomie⚔ 19:56, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. Cabayi (talk)

Substing Template:Anchor in section titles

This is an expansion of AnomieBOT's existing TemplateSubster. {{Subst only}} doesn't have an option for "only in section headers"; I think that this template is the only template which would be relevant, so I don't think it's sensible to add a parameter to the template and modify this bot. Could this bot be expanded to do this? All the best, WT79 ^{(speak to me | editing patterns | what I been doing)} 16:16, 29 October 2020 (UTC) (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.)

I'm going to ask the potentially stupid question, but why on earth would we want to subst calls to {{anchor}}??? Primefac (talk) 22:25, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

For basically the same reason you changed the title of this section: If you edit a section using a template in the header, the auto-generated edit summary winds up including the template invocation, looking ugly and breaking the section link from the history.

@WT79: At first glance this doesn't seem like a task I'd want to pick up for AnomieBOT. The template is transcluded in 76893 pages at the moment, which the bot would need to re-scan each time they were edited to see if new uses inside headers had been added. If this should be done by a bot, it seems better suited to something like WP:WCW that processes database dumps. Anomie⚔ 01:17, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

OK, thank you for that. I'll post a request at WP:BOTR. WT79 ^{(speak to me | editing patterns | what I been doing)} 15:56, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comedy-mystery_film&action=history 2A02:C7F:6E64:1C00:614F:DF63:DA36:F60A (talk) 18:46, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

You need to update the redirect with the en-dash (Comedy–mystery film) to point to the same target for your changes to stick. I have now done so. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 18:52, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Lists of identical options

This could probably be resolved by comparing DOI values. ISBN would be useful too where relevant. Not clear if the bot uses any filter to disambiguate, or whether it would be worth the effort, but this problem is probably not going to get any smaller with time. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:48, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

All the bot does to try to avoid duplicates is sort parameters, normalize whitespace and some punctuation, and remove accessdate, accessmonth, accessmonthday, accessdaymonth, and accessyear params. I really don't want to try to bake too much into it, as that seems likely to make it more fragile. I'd rather have the bot complain on talk pages than pick a wrong option, since it already picks a wrong option in certain cases where there's only one option.

I note one of the entries there (the one from Bruniaceae) has a different DOI for some reason. And even if they all had the same DOI, the bot would still have to somehow choose which one to use. With or without the author and/or journal linked? With or without |doi-access=free? With or without |format=PDF? And so on, without actually being able to understand any of it. Anomie⚔ 13:12, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Relisted discussions still showing as open

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 August 21#Category:American people of Iraqi-Arab descent is listed at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Old unclosed discussions, even though it was relisted. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:29, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

@Pppery: Special:Diff/987120304 Anomie⚔ 01:24, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

WP:RENAME

Hi, Will the bot archive request if the status is withdrawn? -- CptViraj (talk) 04:25, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

AnomieBOT looks for a comment with {{done}} or {{not done}} followed, on the same line, by the signature of an authorized user. Anomie⚔ 13:05, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

I see. Thanks! -- CptViraj (talk) 12:14, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Template subster error

The subster stopped ~12 hrs ago. Toolforge status page is reporting an error. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 03:04, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

That happens sometimes when there's Toolforge maintenance. Restarted it. Anomie⚔ 12:28, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Actually, it looks like Toolforge's DB is still down for maintenance. Anomie⚔ 12:38, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Restarted now. Looks like they gave up waiting on the maintenance and went to an alternative plan. Anomie⚔ 13:00, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Restores unreliable sources.

Reference case: Heinrich Bongartz

Bot restored dead link to forum which I had just deleted as being an unreliable source.

Left following message: Rescuing orphaned refs ("forum2" from rev 988357926)

Can bot be reconfigured to avoid throwing this cybertrash back in the system?Georgejdorner (talk) 20:47, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

The bot cannot tell the difference between a human trying to remove a reference and doing so incorrectly, leaving a in the article as you did here, and a human reworking an article and accidentally breaking a reference. The solution is for humans to completely remove the reference when they want to remove the reference instead of leaving errors behind. Anomie⚔ 21:57, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

PERTs are not updating

To editor Anomie⚔: example User:AnomieBOT/TPERTable, which has not updated since 10 November. Just FYI. P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 05:52, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

To editor Anomie⚔: thank you very much for the fast fix! P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 00:52, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

TFDclerk task has broken down.

Anomie, the TFD clerk task needs to be restarted. Techie3 (talk) 07:58, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Toolforge had an extended outage for maintenance, see mailarchive:cloud-announce/2020-November/000338.html for details. Restarted now. Anomie⚔ 13:00, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

OTD

FYI, the task that updates the article talk pages with OTD dates hasn't worked in the past two days. Thanks. —howcheng {chat} 08:12, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Toolforge had an extended outage for maintenance, see mailarchive:cloud-announce/2020-November/000338.html for details. Restarted now. Anomie⚔ 13:00, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

TemplateSubster: Template:WikiProject United States Public Policy has too many transclusions - Fixed

* Note that TFD substitutions should now be done via User:AnomieBOT/TFDTemplateSubster rather than by (ab)using TemplateSubster!

In an effort to prevent disruption, I refuse to subst templates that have over 100 transclusions unless they are listed at User:AnomieBOT/TemplateSubster force. Please either edit the template to remove it from Category:Wikipedia templates to be automatically substituted, manually subst the existing transclusions, or add it to User:AnomieBOT/TemplateSubster force to let me know it is OK to subst them. Possibly added by User:Funandtrvl at 2020-11-14T03:59:16Z. When you have fixed this issue, please change the section title (e.g. append " - Fixed") or remove this section completely. I will repost the notice if the page is still broken or is re-broken. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 04:06, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

On 2020-11-14T06:42:51 AnomieBOT replaced a reference to {{WikiProject United States Public Policy| ...}} in Talk:Campaign finance in the United States by one referring to {{WikiProject United States| ...}} without checking to see if such a reference already existed. Now that Talk page has two different references to "WikiProject United States". I don't know enough about "WikiProject" anything to do anything sensible with this, except to try to call attention to this apparent duplication and conflict here and in Talk:Campaign finance in the United States. DavidMCEddy (talk) 08:21, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Pinging Funandtrvl (talk · contribs) who converted the template into a wrapper and marked it for automatic substitution. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:15, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware of the problem. I can go through and remove the template:WikiProject United States Public Policy on pages where it is duplicating the template:WikiProject United States/US Government. Or, is there a bot that could perform that function? The Public Policy project is defunct, and it's better that the still-tagged articles go under a related project, or two, so that they are maintained and monitored by a WikiProject. Funandtrvl (talk) 18:34, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

All transclusions from Template:WikiProject United States Public Policy have been moved to WP US Government or American Politics task force. Thanks for your patience! Funandtrvl (talk) 06:32, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Importance

Hi can you edit your bot so when it adds on states it doesn’t make someone’s to fill out the importance for the US, or can you edit it to have the US importance filled out thanks. Bigmike2346 (talk) 16:26, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

AnomieBOT hasn't run a WikiProject tagging task since October 2019, and before that not since 2015. I don't think it has done any US-related topic since 2010. If for some reason someone does request such a run (and I decide to do it), it's up to the requester to specify how the importance field gets filled out. Anomie⚔ 23:05, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Could you make it for when the level of importance is low in all other category’s for the us project it will also be written as low, and the same for if it’s a stub? Bigmike2346 (talk) 00:58, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

"citation needed" when fact had a citation

This edit from the bot, adding a "citation needed" flag, is incorrect. 15:37, 13 November 2020 diff hist +19‎ m Sharon Oster ‎ Dating maintenance tags: Tag: Reverted Sullidav (talk) 03:02, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

The citation needed tag was actually added by Monxton in Special:Diff/988496575. AnomieBOT only added |date=November 2020 to the tag. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:20, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Apologies, this was my poor choice of template. Answered on User talk:Sullidav#Sharon Oster. --Monxton (talk) 13:50, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Technical Barnstar
	For making life easier with maintenance tags a gd fan (talk) 05:45, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

just curious

Why does AnomieBOT evade my "Human (not bot)" watchlist filter that excludes bot edits? soibangla (talk) 00:16, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks

You deserve a lot of thanks for your work. Eschoryii (talk) 01:50, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Extended trial at BRFA?

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Usernamekiran BOT 4's latest status is extended trial. But Wikipedia:BAG/Status shows this as trial complete. Primefac tried to readd it as extended trial on the main page in Special:Diff/991526046, but bot reverted this with Special:Diff/991526805. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 06:35, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Too many different redirects to the templates, the bot didn't take into account {{BotTrialExtended}} when trying to decide which template came last. I'll update the bot to load the whole list of redirects to its target templates. Anomie⚔ 12:53, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

 Done The bot should update the status table in a few minutes. Anomie⚔ 13:12, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Anomie. By the way, do you know which of the {{BAG Tools}} templates are supported by AnomieBOT's clerking? eg does it handle things like {{BotOnHold}} as well, or only the approved/declined templates?

Also, slight feature request, is it possible for it to handle step #2 of User:SQL/How to close a BRFA (notification) - by observation, I've noticed most BAGs do notify on close? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:42, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

It pays attention to {{BotTrial}}, {{BotExtendedTrial}}, {{BotTrialComplete}}, {{BotApproved}}, {{BotSpeedy}}, {{BotDenied}}, {{BotExpired}}, {{BotWithdrawn}}, {{BotRevoked}}, {{OperatorAssistanceNeeded}}, and {{BAGAssistanceNeeded}}. It doesn't pay attention to {{BotOnHold}}, mainly because that apparently wasn't created until fairly recently and wouldn't affect anything other than maybe the "status" column at WP:BAG/Status.

It could, but do we really want it to? A search shows few uses. Maybe people just delete them without archiving, but it may be that the instruction never really took off in the first place. IMO people should have their BRFA page watchlisted to monitor the status and shouldn't need a talk page notice as well. So I'd like to see a confirmation (probably at WT:BRFA and cross-posted to WP:BON and WT:BAG) that we still want that notice to happen. Anomie⚔ 13:20, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

I think the main reason why I personally don't notify are the reasons you mention: they respond to trials etc without prompting (or pinging) so they should be well aware when I approve a task. Additionally, since there's no semi-automation for approving/declining a task, it's just one extra (and again, slightly unnecessary) step to find the op and let them know. Primefac (talk) 19:27, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

TFDClerk issue on Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 November 17

Something weird still going on, described it at User:AnomieBOT/shutoff/TFDClerk. Primefac (talk) 19:25, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

This discussion is still open, but I had to manually add it to the list and the bot is removing it. Never seen this before, and it looks like the discussion has all of the proper headings etc. Primefac (talk) 19:23, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

So what happened is that the discussion was closed on November 25, and after 24 hours the bot stopped paying attention to the page anymore because there's no point in scanning old pages where all discussions are closed. Then on December 7 someone undid the close, reopening the discussion. But since the bot wasn't paying attention anymore, it doesn't see the reopened discussion. Ideally someone should probably relist it on a current day when they're going to do something like that. Anomie⚔ 02:09, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

@Primefac: ↑ Anomie⚔ 02:09, 11 December 2020 (UTC)