Wikipedia talk:PetScan

Wikipedia:CatScan

The idea behind this page was that I wasn't sure what link to use for the softredirected short cut WP:CATSCAN (direct tool or instruction page) and I wanted a way to mention the template I made at Template:Catscan. So I thought, why not make a little intro page. It makes it easier spread the word about this great tool, since the page can be categorized, and we can use it to list en.wikipedia specific tips.

It might not be a bad idea to make little intro pages like this for other toolserve tools. -- Ned Scott 08:09, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

CatScan template for X-class, Y-importance topic articles

I know that in the past there have been several suggestions asking about making categories for, for example, Start-class, High-importance biology articles, and that they have almost invariably been shot down because of the huge amount of new categories, many of which would be empty from now till the end of time, which would be created as a result. However, we could quite easily create a couple of templates to place on the categories by class and importance allowing for lookup of such articles via CaScan, as that is exactly the type of thing the tool is meant for. I will, I think, go ahead and create the templates after a couple of days, but I'd appreciate a little help from someone - preferably more than one someone - looking over my shoulder at my work and making corrections and additions as necessary. I think I'm going to name the templates {{Class-importance assessment catscan}} for use on categories by class, and {{Importance-class assessment catscan}} for use on categories by assessment, and I can create another template with catscan links for all classess and importances if deemed necessary, for wikiprojects to use how they will. I understand that this talk page probably doesn't get much traffic (it's hard to say if User:Ned Scott even still watches it), so I'd appreciate it if someone who knows more than me could post notices where appropriate pointing back to here. Thoughts? —Dinoguy1000 18:39, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea to me (if I'm understanding it correctly)! I'm not sure if CatScan can do three points of reference, like your example shows with assessment, importance, topic, but I'm sure we can get it working somehow. CatScan is such a great tool, and finding more ways to use it like this is very good for the project (and oddly fascinating for people like me). I'll be home from work in a little bit (on lunch break) and will be able to comment about this more. As for where to leave notices, I would leave one at each of the three pages at WP:CATSCAN#See also and Village pump - technical. If no one does this before I get home, I'll be glad to leave the notices. Gotta run. -- Ned Scott 21:12, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, CatScan would only be doing two points of reference: cross-referencing a class category with an importance category. The template would handle the topic (via a parameter), determining the title of the "second-tier" (if you will) category, so whoever adds the template to a category would have to pass the topic via a parameter. I would have gone ahead and created these templates, but I wasn't sure of how exactly to name them, and I'll probably also need some help implementing all the parameters (I'm planning to have hideable links for A- and C-class if a given project doesn't implement them, and I need to provide a backup in case a project uses nonstandard naming). If you need me to explain any better, feel free to ask (but shh, don't tell anyone I was online when I wrote this!). —Dinoguy1000 22:35, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Before I forget, I also wasn't sure about how exactly to arrange the links, nor whether I should call {{catscan}} as a metatemplate, or hardcode the necessary URLs here. Any thoughts? —Dinoguy1000 18:27, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Ack, I almost forgot about this! Sorry about that. Unfortunately CatScan is down right now, so nothing can be tested yet. I'll wait till it's back up before leaving any notices for this discussion, as well. -- Ned Scott 04:08, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

That's all right. In any case, CS seems to be back up now, and I'm still hoping for some ideas to the questions I posed above. ;) —Dinoguy1000 18:14, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Question

Isn't this capability already built into the MediaWiki software itself? ----Divebomb is not British 18:16, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

New tool is very unfriendly

It may have more "engine power" and functionalities, but the design is less friendly than that of the older one, and the manual is very technical, too. Unless somebody can make it more user friendly, it is, from where I stand, a waste of time - whereas I am quite good at using the old one, I still cannot get the new one to produce some useful results (or at least anything more useful than from the old one). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 19:15, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Down?

Is PetScan down? It was looking real strange and not completing queries for a little and now won't load at all. --Nessie (talk) 17:21, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

It definitely seems to be down at the moment. -- The Anome (talk) 21:02, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

petscan.wmflabs.org returns a 504 gateway time-out (nginx/1.13.6) for at least a few days that I've been trying it. Who should I tell and where? —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 08:24, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Can confirm I'm getting the same error. Ionmars10 (talk) 20:23, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

It came back last week, but now it's down again. - X201 (talk) 10:16, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

It's also been down for me for several days. It worked once today (in that I got the blank form) but no luck since. This may be related: Templates with disambiguation links isn't getting updated either due to database maintenance described here. Certes (talk) 16:54, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

PetScan is still dead. I've reported this to the Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) and to the author/maintainer Magnus Manske. -- The Anome (talk) 13:26, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

It lives! Thanks for bringing it back up, such a useful tool. Couldn't do without it. Opencooper (talk) 07:27, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks to whoever fixed this. I'm ready to release my queue of queries! Certes (talk) 12:07, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

PetScan Guru help needed..

Hi guys, I seem to be too stupid - I like e.g. to search for all articles which exist in ES WK but not in EN with a given category... any hints how to achieve this? Language=es, Has none of these templates=en, category=xyz?! Any hint highly appreciated..CommanderWaterford (talk) 07:02, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

PetScan Down?

Bad Gateway, not reachable... CommanderWaterford (talk) 09:21, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

The initial form loads, but when I "Do it!" I also get a 502 Bad Gateway. Certes (talk) 11:25, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Anyone working on this!? It had several outages the last couple of days.... :-( CommanderWaterford (talk) 09:37, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

It's now working for me but has been up and down several times over the last few months. Certes (talk) 10:50, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

"Doing it" is supposed to be enjoyable. It hurts to read the project page. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 14:52, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

0 results for me. Mateussf (talk) 18:26, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Bug or what: randomly adding "®exp_filter" into fields

Tracked in github.com
Issue #120

Sometimes PetScan adds ®exp_filter into text fields after I hit the "Do it!" button. Those can be found in random fields, like in Linked from or Site links text fields, sometimes in multiple fields and other times just in one field. Any idea what's causing this odd behaviour? Everytime this happens, I'll have to reload a fresh PetScan page to make PetScan work properly because those "®exp_filter"'s break the search. 87.95.206.253 (talk) 17:31, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

I've seen ®exp_filter appear in the "Link to a pre-filled form for the query you just ran" URLs, causing them to appear in the form when the external link is followed. Certes (talk) 17:40, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

I have the same problem. It is annoying. How can I urge this problem to be solved? --Herzi Pinki (talk) 10:09, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

PetScan accepts a URL parameter called regexp_filter. "Link to a pre-filled form..." inserts &regexp_filter=value into the URL it generates. (value is usually blank.) This works perfectly when the link is clicked. However, such links are often pasted into wikitext or HTML. Some browsers interpret the string "&reg" as an HTML entity for the registered trademark symbol, even when not followed by a semicolon, so &foo=bar&regexp_filter= becomes &foo=bar®exp_filter=, appending the unwanted text to the preceding parameter and usually causing it to make an unwanted appearance in one of the input boxes.

Could we change the parameter name to something that doesn't begin with reg? Of course, regexp_filter= should also be accepted for backwards compatibility, but if a replacement parameter name not beginning with reg can be offered in "Link to a pre-filled form" then the problem should be solved. Certes (talk) 23:37, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Other discussions about this longstanding annoying bug:

• https://github.com/magnusmanske/petscan_rs/issues/120 (most recent discussion on GitHub)
• meta:Talk:PetScan#Bug or what: randomly adding "®exp_filter" into fields
• https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Amagnusmanske%2Fpetscan_rs+%C2%AEexp_filter&type=issues (proves that this issue dates at least back to 2019)

2001:14BA:9C35:6600:193F:16A0:BF8A:43A1 (talk) 18:55, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Can anyone make this work?

I have once again attempted to get results from PetScan. I have, as usual, failed to get any results. Could someone please give me a URL that works shows all (not many!) talk pages that are in both Category:Requested edits and Category:WikiProject Medicine articles? This will likely require searching subcats to a depth of two or three. Please ping me if you get a URL that works. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:00, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: I think the problem is that Category:WikiProject Medicine articles appears on the article page but Category:Requested edits appears on the talk page, so no page has both. I don't know how to solve that. Certes (talk) 21:47, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

@Certes, are you sure about that? Everything in Category:GA-Class medicine articles (one of its subcats) says Talk: on it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:02, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I glanced at Category:Articles requiring reliable medical sources as the first subcategory alphabetically and that's on articles rather than talk, but you're right about other subcats. Is this what you wanted? I changed page properties to include Talk: and added sorting but everything else is the default. Certes (talk) 11:26, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Almost exactly, and I was able to figure out what I want (this – it just required limiting the one category to no sub-cats, so that I only get unanswered requests). Thank you! WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:00, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Category intersection issue

Trying to find articles that are in both Category:American Jews and Category:Jewish-American families and its sub-cats, using this PetScan query, there are articles in the results that don't seem to be in Category:Jewish-American families or its sub-categories. Examples include Frank Loesser, John E. Mack, and Brandon Tartikoff. What am I missing? —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 19:48, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

(Time passes)

These explain why PetScan includes them:

• Frank Loesser is in Category:Pulitzer Prize for Drama winners‎ → Category:Pulitzer Prize winners‎ → Category:Pulitzer Prizes‎ → Category:Pulitzer family (newspapers)‎ → Category:Jewish-American families
• John E. Mack is in Category:Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners‎ → Category:Pulitzer Prize winners‎ ...

I can't quite wrap my mind around the problem. Is there something mis-categorized in the chain?

Category:Pulitzer family (newspapers)‎ → Category:Jewish-American families seems correct.

Category:Pulitzer Prize for Drama winners‎ → Category:Pulitzer Prize winners‎ → Category:Pulitzer Prizes‎ seems correct.

So, if there is a problem, it seems it's with Category:Pulitzer Prizes‎ → Category:Pulitzer family (newspapers)‎. Any clues appreciated. (Pinging Place Clichy) —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 20:41, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Sometimes, if an article A is in category B and category B is in category C, it implies that article A belongs in category C. (All Jewish-American families are Jewish families.) Sometimes it doesn't. (No Pulitzer Prize winners are Pulitzer Prizes). It would be nice if PetScan could be asked to prune its search tree when it finds a link of the second type but, unfortunately, we hold no data which distinguishes between the two types of link. Certes (talk) 00:28, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. There are cases where any fix would be worse than the "problem", and this seems to be one of them. Of course not all Pulitzer Prize winners are Jewish, yet you found a string of categories placing them in Category:American Jews. The usual first thing to do here is to check categories in this chain vs. guideline WP:EPONCAT: is there a category placed in a parent that should apply only to its eponymous article but not to the entire content of the category? I can't really find one here: Pulitzer Prizes are defined by the Pulitzer name, I therefore would not break the link between Category:Pulitzer Prizes‎ and Category:Pulitzer family (newspapers)‎. At the secondary of course not all Pulitzer Prize winners are members of the family, but this is so obvious that this category chain would not confuse anybody. Except PetScan. Place Clichy (talk) 06:20, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

how to find the auto-run link for output in plain text

This link returns the results in the default format. At the top of a 'wiki' formatted output, there are a pair of external links. One of them has &format=wiki. Similarly at the bottom of a JSON output there is &format=json in the external link. There is no equivalent in the plain text output.

What do I give &format= to get an autorun link for a plain-text output?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:35, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

&format=plain --JAAqqO (talk) 14:53, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:59, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Listing articles in the same category from multiple wikis

Is it possible to list articles that belong to the same category from multiple wikis (i.e. belonging to a category that is tied to a specific Wikidata item such as d:Q15075866) using PetScan? That would be a pretty nice way of finding articles missing from English Wikipedia. Daß Wölf 21:21, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Results missing

There is a current widespread problem that may affect PetScan results; e.g. if category parents have been changed, that change may not be reflected in the results for a few days. See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#PetScan_missing_results – Fayenatic London 10:46, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

How do I get a list of articles which are in a category and their talk pages in a second category?

Intersection of Category:All articles to be expanded (main space) and Category:WikiProject SCUBA articles (talk space) · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 12:00, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

@Pbsouthwood: I don't think that is possible. You can do a search for the a template on a talk page (e.g. WikiProject Scuba diving) and membership in a main space category. I get 153 results for articles with the WikiProject template that are in the to be expanded category (I was intending to provide a link to the search, but apparently that's currently broken). Plantdrew (talk) 16:02, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Plantdrew, That seems to work. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 18:06, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Glad it's working for you. Searching talk pages for WikiProject banners hasn't been working for me for several days now (search takes forever to complete and comes back with 0 results). I was considering coming back to advise you to try doing this later (PetScan frequently has periods where searches stop working). Other searches (e.g. category+template on article) are working for me, just not template on talk pages. Plantdrew (talk) 19:14, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

No result for source categories

Hi, I'm new to Petscan, just tried using it this evening and I got the following error: "No result for source categories".

This error happened with one of the example queries as well: https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=552

Any ideas what I've done wrong? audiodude (talk) 01:25, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

...and it's working again! audiodude (talk) 01:38, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Petscan displays blank page, unusable

https://petscan.wmflabs.org/ just displays a blank page. Taking a peek at the HTML, I see this likely culprit: <body style="display:none">. Reported on Discord, affects at least 2 people. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:03, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

I think it's probably unrelated to that CSS, as that line seems to have been there since the tool was created (initial commit).

However, in the browser-console I see ORES is mentioned, which makes me wonder if phab:T347344 is involved? I've filed a separate task at phab:T347367 (as it's a different error-message) in case it is related. Quiddity (talk) 00:52, 26 September 2023 (UTC)