User talk:AnomieBOT

Anomie is still around, mostly to maintain AnomieBOT. But after the WMF proved that office politics are more important to them than seemingly anything else, and otherwise generally seem more concerned with their own image than substance, Anomie is not engaging in technical work on MediaWiki.

Live status for all AnomieBOT tasks is available at Toolforge.

Regarding the OrphanReferenceFixer and TagDater, please note:

AnomieBOT is not an anti-vandal bot, so complaints about AnomieBOT "hiding" or not reverting vandalism are out of place here.
- AnomieBOT's current strategy is "wait 10 minutes to an hour or so to let ClueBot, VoABotII, other anti-vandal bots, or RC Patrollers fix the vandalism". I am open to specific suggestions on detecting vandalism, but keep in mind that the false positive rate of any method must be near zero to be useful.
AnomieBOT honors {{inuse}}; please use it if you have excessive edit conflicts.
If the reference errors or undated tags were caused by vandalism, just revert AnomieBOT's edits along with the vandal's. AnomieBOT will not be offended.
If AnomieBOT made a mistake in correcting a reference error or dating a tag, please correct the error by hand and report the URL of the problem diff below. Don't just revert the bot without fixing the error, or AnomieBOT is likely to "fix" it again in the same broken way before I get a chance to fix the bug.
If you have a problem with T11790, please take the issue up there. You will be having the problem with more than just AnomieBOT's edits.

Thank you.

	Regarding deletions, please note:
If you are here because you think AnomieBOT III deleted an article, please check again. AnomieBOT III deletes redirects when someone else deletes the article the redirect pointed to, and you almost certainly want to talk to that person instead.

	Regarding {{old AfD multi}}, please note:
If you are here because AnomieBOT added {{old AfD multi}} to an article when the old AfD was about a different person with the same name, just remove it. The bot has no way to tell whether it's the same person or a different one.

Archives

Index 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
11, 12, 13, 14, 15

This page has archives. Topics inactive for 90 days are automatically archived by .

Reference GIGO

I've been spending some time on Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting recently and have seen the following pattern, well, more than once:

(In the distant past) An editor adds a reference with the name enclosed in curly quotes in place of straight quotes
(In the distant past) Visual editor "corrects" this by wrapping the curly quotes in straight quotes
(Now) AWB running as Monkbot converts the curly quotes to straight quotes (example)
(Now) AnomieBot removes the contents of the outer pair of quotes (example)

And the last step breaks the reference, which incredibly MediaWiki manages to parse at all the previous steps. I don't know how best to avoid this story ending with a broken reference, but could I suggest that one improvement would be for AnomieBot to convert <ref name=""foo""> into <ref name="foo"> rather than <ref name="">, since that is apparently how MediaWiki parses it? I can also see that it might be good for AWB to remove the curly quotes in this situtation rather than converting them, or for a new bot task to fix all the references with curly quotes, nested or otherwise. Pinging @Trappist the monk for comments since Monkbot is involved as well. Thanks, Wham2001 (talk) 15:39, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

PS Since I'm here, perhaps now is a good moment to say thanks for AnomieBot, which amongst its many helpful tasks has saved me countless hours manually filling in the |date= param on maintainance templates, for which I am very, very grateful. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 15:41, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, monkbot (not AWB) is likely guilty of creating name=""summat"" ref names. But not all. If we are to believe this search there are about 460 articles with reference names that begin name="“ or name="”. There were a couple of articles in the categories where task 21 is working that I have fixed.

Similarly, this search indicates that there are some number of ref names that end with “" or ”"; the search times out. Constrained to the categories where task 21 is working, the search finds no articles.

Given these search results, I not inclined to tweak task 21's code though I will make a note in the source should I ever decide to reuse it on another task.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:28, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. 460 is few enough that I'm tempted to go through and fix them all myself. Is this the sort of task that AWB would be useful for? Otherwise I could simply work through all the hits in your search by hand. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 19:11, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps. This find regex:

(<ref\s+name\s*=\s*")[“”]([^\>]+)[“”]("\>)

and this replace:

$1$2$3

should be good for a start. The above won't fix stuff like <ref name="“”"> or <ref name="Historical Log 3C: Mutant-Hunting Exonims Begin “The Decimation”">.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:01, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note that search-and-replace will probably break articles like Diictodon in a different way. MediaWiki considers <ref name=“Ray2003”> and <ref name="“Ray2003”"> as being the same. The search-and-replace described here will only change <ref name="“Ray2003”"> to <ref name="Ray2003">, which MediaWiki will not consider the same as <ref name=“Ray2003”>, leaving one of the two orphaned. On the plus side, it looks like AnomieBOT will do the right thing with that to finish the fix. Anomie ⚔ 00:08, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Anomie: Right – if I do this using AWB I would want to check each edit manually before saving it. AIUI it lets you do this.

TTM: Thanks – in that case I will request access at PERM and give it a go. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 09:27, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A quick update: I decided against using AWB in the end since I thought it would violate the letter (if perhaps not the spirit) of WP:COSMETICBOT. I've fixed the 460 articles thrown up by the search above and, while it was quite dull as an editing task, many of them would have needed tweaking by hand even had I used AWB. Best, Wham2001 (talk) 20:49, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I note the summary is not quite correct, it's broken already after Monkbot's edit. See the error in Special:Diff/1314161747#Lifestyle for example. Anomie ⚔ 23:46, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That said, the suggested fix seems reasonable enough since the bot already has a similar fix for <ref name=''foo''>. Anomie ⚔ 23:53, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You're quite right – I didn't check the article state between the two edits carefully enough. Wham2001 (talk) 09:25, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

User:AnomieBOT III

Hello, Anomie,

i don't see any recent reports at User:AnomieBOT III/Broken redirects which is odd because I'm still deleting broken redirects to draft pages. Could you check on this for me? Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:51, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The bot just updated the report page at 22:34 UTC. The userspace report was updated at 22:34, and before that at 16:32 and 10:30. Anomie ⚔ 00:26, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

User:AnomieBOT III

Hello, Anomie,

I'm not sure what happened but AnomieBOT III didn't issue a broken redirect report on its regular schedule. So, maybe it needs a restart. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:53, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I cleaned up the bot's config file earlier, removing the passwords that shouldn't have been being used for years since I switched to OAuth. But in some of the older tasks there was some code still incorrectly checking that a password was set. That should be fixed now. Anomie ⚔ 00:03, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

User:AnomieBOT/TPERTable category link error

Special:Diff/1331338545 introduced a malformatted category link that caused many pages transcluding this table to be miscategorized into Category:Editnotice templates. –LaundryPizza03 (d c̄) 21:54, 5 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the report. Should be fixed in the code now; the bot may take a few minutes to update the page. Anomie ⚔ 22:16, 5 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Monthly categories for {{circular definition}}

This bot recently created Category:Wikipedia articles with circular definitions by month from January 2026. Not sure why. The monthly category should be Category:Wikipedia articles with circular definitions from January 2026. I probably set up the categories for {{circular definition}} incorrectly; apologies if so. Could someone more knowledgable help? – Scyrme (talk) 04:19, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

AnomieBOT created that category because Category:Wikipedia articles with circular definitions by month is in Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month. The normal thing, if you want Category:Wikipedia articles with circular definitions from January 2026, would be to have Category:Wikipedia articles with circular definitions be the parent category that is in Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month. If you want AnomieBOT to automatically add the |date= parameter to the template when people leave it out, that also wants pages without |date= to be put into a category that is a subcategory of Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month. See also Wikipedia:Creating a dated maintenance category. Anomie ⚔ 14:43, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I've amended the category structure and tagged the mistakenly made category for deletion. Hopefully there are no further problems. – Scyrme (talk) 21:06, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Potential pagemove

I've been thinking about requesting that User:AnomieBOT/C/Good articles in need of review be moved to a name that better reflects its scope, such as User:AnomieBOT/C/Good articles in need of reassessment. I already would've taken it to WP:RMTR had it not required part of the bot's code (specifically, the code that tells it to check the page every few hours and make edits when necessary) to be rewritten, and I'm hesitant on taking it to the page's talkpage because it doesn't currently have one. If there's anything you feel I should do regarding this, some advice would be appreciated. JHD0919 (talk) 11:57, 13 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The name of the page matches Category:Good articles in need of review. The bot does not support changing one without changing the other. If you do get the category renamed, an editor with appropriate rights can both rename the bot's page and Template:CF/Good articles in need of review and edit User:AnomieBOT/CategoryLister/Categories to match. Anomie ⚔ 12:57, 13 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

PEABODY ENERGY CHANGES YOU MADE TODAY

Dear Bot: It appears that you deleted a large part of the financial discussion which I created. I think it's because of my clumsiness in tryng to use <ref name>. I have reverted your changes because I don't want to lose all that work, on which I have spent many man-hours. If it still bothers you, tell me how to fix it and I will take it on. Regards, BuzzWeiser196 (talk) 20:46, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page watcher) This seems to be referring to this edit. There is a cite error message Cite error: The named reference 2014 10K was invoked but never defined (see the help page). in one of the references, but I have no idea if that was caused by the bot. Sugar Tax (talk) 21:29, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Here's how it shows up on my watchlist. Does this mean AnimieBOT made the change? If so, it seems like an extreme response to a minor error.

diffhist User talk:AnomieBOT 21:30 +8 Sugar Tax talk contribs (→PEABODY ENERGY CHANGES YOU MADE TODAY) BuzzWeiser196 (talk) 22:16, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

And by the way, I've repaired the error. Whle I was at it, I re-worked the financial section. I hope it meets with approval. If not, let me know.BuzzWeiser196 (talk) 22:19, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

You seem extremely confused. First, AnomieBOT is a bot, meaning that it's an automated computer program, not a human. Second, the one edit the bot made to Peabody Energy did not delete anything. All it did was attempt to correct a reference error, and incidentally move the text of another reference out of the infobox and into the body of the article. The rendered content of the article appears identical between the previous edit and the bot's edit. Anomie ⚔ 01:04, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Was the above reply written by a human, or a computer program? I would like to discuss this with a human. Cordially, BuzzWeiser196 (talk) 02:20, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

You are. Primefac (talk) 21:13, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, good. Your comment "You seem to be extremely confused" punctured my thin skin. Let's always be careful to treat each other with respect and civility — one of The Five Pillars of Wikipedia. Cordially, BuzzWeiser196 (talk) 13:37, 19 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

BuzzWeiser196 (talk) 13:37, 19 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback – Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day#Is an empty line at the start of a protected POTD subpage intentional?

Hello, AnomieBOT. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

—⁠andrybak (talk) 05:51, 30 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

multiple issues error

As seen here, at implementations of {{multiple issues}}, this bot is replacing variables inside |collapsed= with the current month and year. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 01:17, 6 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm surprised no one has reported this since the collapsed parameter was added back in 2013. The reason for the edit is similarly ancient history: {{multiple issues}} used to be used like {{multiple issues|no footnotes=date|unreliable sources=date|etc...}}, so pretty much any parameter other than "article", "section", "expert", or "text" might have been an issue parameter needing dating. In 2012 they added the current syntax (everything in |1=) as an alternative, and I updated the bot; 2013 someone added "collapsed" but I never noticed to exclude it from dating; and in 2015 they removed the old style and I never noticed that either. Anyway, I've fixed it now. Anomie ⚔ 02:19, 6 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Neat! Thanks for the prompt reply! Have a great [day/night]! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 02:43, 6 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Closed PR still in FAC sidebar

A few days ago, I closed my Carlisle & Finch PR. It was my understanding that AnomieBOT would come around and remove it from {{FAC peer review sidebar}} but that hasn't happened. Did I do something wrong when I closed the PR? RoySmith (talk) 16:27, 6 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't archive anything from the sidebars that is less than 1 month old. So it'll take care of it on the 14th. Anomie ⚔ 23:56, 6 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, OK, that explains that, but I'm curious why it does that. What incentive is there to keep an entry in the sidebar after it's been closed? RoySmith (talk) 00:11, 7 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Edit conflict

Hello,

I was editing the lead, and the bot made me lose at least 30 min of editing.

Would you be so kind to make it check if someone is editing before scanning pages so diligently?

Thanks! Selbstporträt (talk) 23:07, 15 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Checking if someone is in the process of editing a page is not something the bot (or anyone, for that matter) can do. Running into an edit conflict can be annoying, but there are things you can do to make them less frequent or easier to recover from, including saving frequently, only working on one area of a page at a time, and making use of the {{inuse}} template. See H:EC for more details. Umby 🌕🐶 (talk) 23:28, 15 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Will use {{inuse}} when editing leads for a long while, thanks! Selbstporträt (talk) 23:38, 15 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

G8 exempt on User:AnomieBOT III/Broken redirects/Userspace

Hi Anomie,

Since the 3rd of this month, User:Sdkb (WMF) and User:Skdb-WMF have been listed on User:AnomieBOT III/Broken redirects/Userspace despite being tagged with {{G8-exempt}}. I presume this is because neither userpage belongs to a registered account. Can you spot a quick fix, or is this something that needs an alteration on the bot's side?

Thanks for your help, UpTheOctave! • 8^va? 20:17, 16 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

{{G8-exempt}} just prevents the bot from deleting the page (which it doesn't in userspace anyway), it doesn't prevent listing it as a broken redirect on the report. The real issue here is that the global userpage feature makes the redirect not really be broken, but the bot doesn't know about that. Looks like my User:Anomie/linkclassifier script doesn't either. I'll see about fixing that. Anomie ⚔ 20:40, 16 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that seems to have resolved the issue on both the script and the report. UpTheOctave! • 8^va? 21:20, 16 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Bot shows on Pending Changes

I had to accept Special:Diff/1339264709 manually. This isn't a bug but this isn't great either. FantasticWikiUser_{(Ts and Cs)} 19:56, 19 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

You had to accept Special:Diff/1337382686/1339264709. The bot's edit not being auto-approved is the intended behavior; people would be much more upset if random bot edits approved vandal edits that no human had reviewed. In this case the net change was just the addition of a {{cn}} tag, but consider what would have happened if some unreverted vandalism had been in there. Anomie ⚔ 22:52, 19 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. Sorry if my comment sounded uncivil or assumed bad faith, I wish I changed the wording now. FantasticWikiUser_{(Ts and Cs)} 06:20, 20 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't offended by it. 🙂 Anomie ⚔ 13:31, 20 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

TemplateSubster: Template:DYK? 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. 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 ⚡ 13:21, 1 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The large number of transclusions seems to be due to {{DYK under discussion}} (created by @Theleekycauldron a few months ago) being added to Template:Did you know/Queue/7 by @HurricaneZeta. From there it gets transcluded onto Wikipedia:Main Page/Tomorrow, which in turn is transcluded (but not rendered) on Main page and many other Main-Page-related pages, as well as 153 users' pages. Anomie ⚔ 15:24, 1 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Anomie You can remove those tags and rmove the comments around the DYKbotdo template, I guess. I didn't expect them to stay until it got to the top. HurricaneZeta^C 15:26, 1 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@HurricaneZeta: Would you mind doing it? I don't know anything about DYK processes. Thanks! Anomie ⚔ 15:29, 1 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It's full protected, so I can't, sorry. HurricaneZeta^C 15:30, 1 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

i safesubsted the underlying template, that should fix it? if not, I'll do a more detailed fix later. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 16:23, 1 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I can't tell if it was what you did or Special:Diff/1341126782, but it's fixed at the moment. Anomie ⚔ 20:53, 1 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

TFD unclosed despite deleted template

TFDClerk usually closes TFDs listing a template deleted for other reasons, but WP:Templates for discussion/Log/2026 March 7#Template:Minimum wage row hasn't been closed. Izno (talk) 19:40, 11 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like the bot was getting confused by the move-with-redirect followed by deletion of the redirect. Probably it should ignore the move if an actual deletion happened. Anomie ⚔ 01:28, 12 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you

The rescuing orphaned refs feature is brilliant. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 20:06, 12 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

FFD not closed

Why hasn't AnomieBOT closed Wikipedia:Files for discussion/2026 March 4#3D remixes covers? * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:06, 14 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The FFD closer task currently only handles single-file discussions, where the file is linked in the section title. Possibly one of these days I should update it. Anomie ⚔ 18:59, 14 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]