Wikipedia:Bot requests

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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).

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).

Please add your bot requests to the bottom of this page.
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# Title Replies Last editor Date/Time Last botop editor Date/Time
1 Bot to fix capitalization of "Senator" in specific contexts 15 Dicklyon 2018-09-26, 14:26 None N/A
2 Bot to update 'Needs infobox' 3 Zackmann08 2018-09-28, 20:45 Zackmann08 2018-09-28, 20:45
3 BBLd - Linkfix 12 Adithyak1997 2018-11-08, 18:17 None N/A
4 CAT:MISSFILE bot 47 KatnissEverdeen 2018-10-28, 19:02 Krd 2018-10-27, 16:23
5 Request for a list of article-space pages with the most Linter errors 4 Galobtter 2018-10-15, 04:49 Galobtter 2018-10-15, 04:49
6 [r] → [ɾ] in IPA for Italian 11 IvanScrooge98 2018-10-08, 06:38 None N/A
7 Remove infobox image requests from WP templates when the article has an infobox image 5 SoWhy 2018-10-09, 14:38 None N/A
8 Generating a list of a sub-set of articles using a specific template 4 Gonnym 2018-10-24, 11:31 Anomie 2018-10-14, 12:38
9 Updating links from album articles to AllMusic 7 Mudwater 2018-10-26, 00:40 None N/A
10 Mass move of election articles 5 TheSandDoctor 2018-10-17, 18:13 TheSandDoctor 2018-10-17, 18:13
11 Categorize location related lists of userboxes 2 Andrybak 2018-10-24, 17:40 None N/A
12 Creating redirects from values in a list of episodes article 4 Ronhjones 2018-10-24, 17:49 Ronhjones 2018-10-24, 17:49
13 Report on Lunar Nomenclature by the Working Group of Commission 17 of the IAU 0 Urhixidur 2018-10-27, 14:43 None N/A
14 Add a wikiproject template to New York City parks articles 3 ProgrammingGeek 2018-11-14, 01:53 None N/A
15 Add talkref to talk page sections with ref tags 1 Deacon Vorbis 2018-11-02, 15:48 None N/A
16 File name vandalism 5 GreenC 2018-11-01, 20:54 Zackmann08 2018-11-01, 21:35
17 repairing external links to amnesty international 7 Lustiger seth 2018-11-18, 17:41 None N/A
18 Removing the venue parameter from Template:Infobox album when it doesn't apply 9 Headbomb 2018-11-14, 13:27 Headbomb 2018-11-14, 13:27
19 Emptying :Category:Episode lists with unformatted air dates 2 AlexTheWhovian 2018-11-19, 08:18 None N/A
20 spectator.co.uk 7 Lustiger seth 2018-11-14, 20:10 None N/A
21 College football schedule conversions 8 Frietjes 2018-11-19, 16:11 None N/A
22 Joe's Null Bot task 5 clone 5 Joe Decker 2018-11-11, 07:53 JJMC89 2018-11-11, 07:12
23 school project for desktop Encyclopedia 2 Headbomb 2018-11-14, 13:17 Headbomb 2018-11-14, 13:17
24 Unreferenced articles 2 Boleyn 2018-11-12, 18:18 None N/A
25 WikiProject tagging 3 Redrose64 2018-11-12, 23:40 None N/A
26 Regina (band) -> Regina (Bosnia and Herzegovina band) 2 91.158.232.8 2018-11-15, 21:17 None N/A
27 Tag with Template:R from unnecessary disambiguation 0 Headbomb 2018-11-14, 13:15 Headbomb 2018-11-14, 13:15
28 Renaming :Template:Category elections by year to :Template:Category U.S. State elections by year 1 GoldRingChip 2018-11-19, 02:41 None N/A
29 Bot to improve names of media sources in references 0 Sdkb 2018-11-19, 04:43 None N/A


Bot to fix capitalization of "Senator" in specific contexts[edit]

I'd like to request bot help to downcase "Senator" to "senator" (and the plural) in specific titles and links to those titles, as follows:

This came up at Talk:Dan_Sullivan_(American_senator)#Requested_move_8_September_2018 and I've started an RFC to see if there's any objection, at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#RFC:_Capitalization_of_Senator. So far, nobody is claiming that senator or senators in these contexts is part of a proper name. Dicklyon (talk) 03:45, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

The problem is that the capitalization of “senator” depends on context, and bots are notoriously bad at determining context. This is something that should be done manually. Blueboar (talk) 11:40, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
If you look at the bot proposal above, you can see I'm only proposing very narrow specific contexts where the bot can easily get it right; 250 specific moves, and the links to them (not messing with any piped text of course). The rest would need to be done by hand, as you note. Dicklyon (talk) 16:13, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
There should be no need to "fix all links to" any redirects that may be created by a page move; this is WP:NOTBROKEN. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:01, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
Presumably it would make sense to convert United States Senator from Alaska -> United States senator from Alaska because of how those words display on the page. If it's a piped link it wouldn't make sense to convert as you say it's not broken. -- GreenC 21:14, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
Right, if it's a piped link, someone made an explicit choice about how it should appear, and we shouldn't have a bot mess with that. It's optional, unnecessary but harmless, to fix the part before the pipe, however. Dicklyon (talk) 03:37, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose for multiple different reasons. First, I'm not convinced that "United States Senator" is incorrect; though I agree that "American Senator" is incorrect. Pages such as List of United States Representatives from Nebraska would be equally wrong. For categories, any change should encompass all the subcategories of Category:United States Senators. Perhaps a "Members of the United States Senate" formulation would be better. There's also no point to use a bot to update links to redirects; several of these formulations are already redirects and all of them should remain as {{R from other capitalisation}} forever. Finally, a proposal to move articles should be a WP:RM; you can probably bundle all 50 states into a single proposal if the page titles are otherwise the same. power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:45, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
    Can you explain your objections better? How can "United States Senator" be correct in the contexts mentioned? And are you objecting because I didn't go further correct other over-capitalization at the same time, like Representative? I'd be happy to add that on, but no need to do everything at once. As for links to redirects, there is absolutely a point. The redirect links usually appear in article text, over-capitalized; downcasing them corrects this very common style error in articles. Perhaps you didn't understand what corrections I meant; sorry if I was unclear. And yes I can easily generate the multiple-RM requests, but that seems like the wrong approach for such obviously uncontroversial corrections that have been discussed elsewhere; and even if the moves got done it would leave a ton of cleanup work for someone, where a bot would be a huge help. Dicklyon (talk) 03:23, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
    My concern is that in "Alabama senator", the word "Alabama" describes the person. In "United States Senator", "United States" describes the legislative body, not the person. Also, (U.S. senator) simply looks wrong to me. I doubt that consensus will agree with me on this point, so I'm not going to argue it in detail here. power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:05, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
    I don't see the difference. There's an Alabama Senate (I presume) and a United States Senate. But senator is a title whether it's an Alabama senator or U.S. senator, and doesn't need a cap except when attached to an individual's name as MOS:JOBTITLES explains. Dicklyon (talk) 02:50, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
    @Power~enwiki: Let us know if you're still concerned. Let's not worry about your "simply looks wrong to me", but rather focus on Wikipedia guidelines such as MOS:CAPS and MOS:JOBTITLES. Dicklyon (talk) 03:37, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
    Oh, you're only referring to updating un-piped links in articles? I was thrown off by the use of the word "move". I guess that's fine, though I don't see the point of changing template names (and categories should go to CfD regardless; they already have bots for that). It's probably possible to do that with AWB fairly easily; I've never used that so you'll have to ask someone else. power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:05, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
    OK, we can separately do the Categories at CfD when this is all settled. Dicklyon (talk) 02:50, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Revised plan: downcase Senator, Senators, Representative, Representative, in these contexts, when they exist (most of the added ones don't, but we can try):

And templates:

The objection above by power~enwiki seems to have gone away, as he has not responded to pings about whether his concerned have been answered. Dicklyon (talk) 14:26, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Bot to update 'Needs infobox'[edit]

So I was browsing the WP Backlog and came across a number of categories regarding articles needing Infoboxes. For example, Category:Baseball articles needing infoboxes and Category:BBC articles without infoboxes. Did a little clicking around and found that a number of these actually already have had Infoboxes added but the parameter on the talk page was never updated to reflect this. So, my thought was to create a bot that would do the following:

  1. Take a list of categories that are of the basic format <article type> articles needing infobox
  2. Routinely (weekly?) checks those pages for an infobox.
  3. If the page contains an infobox, updates the |needs-infobox=yes on the talk page.

I'm happy to tackle creating this bot myself but wanted to discuss it first and see what others thought? --Zackmann08 (Talk to me/What I been doing) 23:59, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea. Category:Wikipedia articles with an infobox request definitely looks in need of bot help. -- GreenC 00:39, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
Sounds OK to me, Suggest start at Category:Wikipedia backlog, get the list and pick out the "needing infoboxes", "without infoboxes" "needing an infobox" (nothing like consistency...). Come back if you get stuck writing it. Ronhjones  (Talk) 19:47, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
@Ronhjones and GreenC: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ZackBot 10 --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 20:45, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

BBLd - Linkfix[edit]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&limit=500&offset=0&target=http%3A%2F%2F%2A.bbl-digital.de

instead of 

http://bbl-digital.de/eintrag/$1/
http://www.bbl-digital.de/eintrag/$1/

it should be 

https://bbld.de/$1

i.e. new domain, httpS, no "eintrag/" and no final "/". 78.55.121.98 (talk) 02:33, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to work with this test:
http://www.bbl-digital.de/eintrag/Adlerberg-Woldemar-Eduard-Ferdinand-v.-1791-1884/
https://bbld.de/Adlerberg-Woldemar-Eduard-Ferdinand-v.-1791-1884
-- GreenC 12:49, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

I was curious if this is a problem in huwiki. So I checked both your link and the huwiki list, tried several links and they all worked. There is an automatic redirect on that site to the correct address without eintrag and trailing /, so IMO it is not worth to change them unless somebody is bored. Not a big deal although. If some of them does not work, another problem may cause the trouble, that's why GreenC's test didn't work. Bináris (talk) 14:47, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

I don't understand how an external link works on huwiki but doesn't work on enwiki. -- GreenC 16:11, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
I clicked on the uppermost link in this section and tried several links randonly, all worked. You may have found one problematic. Bináris (talk) 16:18, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
Do these work? [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] .. for me only two of them work (near the end). They were not chosen randomly from the list, they are the first 8 (starting at line #14). -- GreenC 16:25, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
Same for me. But the problem is not with the form of the link or the redirect. These are simply bad or broken links. Bináris (talk) 16:54, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
Got it. Someone would need to manually find the correct links and update the pages. Only about 40 to check. -- GreenC 17:03, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
Green and Bináris, I have recently resolved the issue mentioned above. Please do verify through random checking. Also, I am having a doubt whether the archive link present in some of the links that were added by InternetArchiveBot needs to be removed or not. For example: [August Volz]. I actually don't know whether it needs to be removed or not.Adithyak1997 (talk) 11:39, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Adithyak1997, thanks for taking this on. I would recommend deleting |archive-url=, |archive-date= and |dead-url= if the source |url= is different and working (verified), and update |access-date=. -- GreenC 14:05, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Green, with what value do I need to update |access-date= with? Is it today's date?Adithyak1997 (talk) 15:07, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Yep! -- GreenC 15:37, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
@Green, The archive link has been removed and |access-date has been added. Please verify whether any changes needs to be made in the bot request table which is present at the top of this page.Adithyak1997 (talk) 18:17, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

CAT:MISSFILE bot[edit]

Hi! In regards to CAT:MISSFILE, we have a significant issue which could be helped greatly by the creation of a few bots. For the past few weeks now, Sam Sailor and I have been patrolling the backlogged category (you can check our documentation of the backlog in Sam Sailor’s documentation log and Katniss’s documentation log.) In helping to lessen the backlog, we noticed a few patterns which could greatly reduce the back of the category if a bot were to preform the tedious manual tasks.

  1. Often, users will attempt to change the name of a file in good faith to correct a perceived typo. There have also been several cases in which even experienced users will change certain incorrect punctuation in a file name. Of course, this causes the image names to link to files are not technically linked or uploaded on the project servers.
  2. Another large issue is users adding file names to the articles before they are uploaded, and then often times, forgetting to upload them completely.
  3. There are also a few issues with the current bots created for this category, User:CommonsDelinker and User:Filedelinkerbot. Even after they are removed from Commons, the bots are sometimes not performing their duties. There were several instances of files (and audio files) deleted from Commons back in July which were still present in the articles when we manually removed them in September.

As an experiment, neither of us patrolled CAT:MISSFILE for a period of 10 days, and the backlog already grew again to 681 articles in the short time that the category was not patrolled (for more information on this, you can read our talk page conversation). Though neither of us are particularly tech savvy (and thus wouldn't know the technical way to describe the commands that would be most efficient for the bots to perform), we believe that the creation of bots to perform these tasks would help to greatly reduce the backlog in that category. If anyone has any suggestions, thoughts, or ideas in regards to creating bots to efficiently completely these tasks, that would be great! Thanks! (Courtesy ping for KylieTastic, who may potentially be interested in this conversation even though she is currently on WikiBreak) Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 14:05, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

In terms of existing bots @Magnus Manske and Krd:.. Filedelinkerbot is running and CommonsDelinker is running. If they are not removing certain links report the errors as you find them. Also, maybe ask them to investigate new features like above; since they wrote bots designed for this sort of thing a good place to start. -- GreenC 15:57, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your advice, GreenC. I have invited them both to contribute to this discussion. To clarify, the issue goes beyond a few errors. In patrolling CAT:MISSFILE the past five months, I can safely say there have been hundreds of files over that period that are deleted but the bots are not catching them. The reason for creating this discussion (in addition to exploring the other two suggested features) was to hopefully come up with a solution less tedious than reporting every single file that the bots aren't catching, as it's clearly a lot. Thanks, Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 18:32, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
I appreciate the initiative, but I sadly don't have enough resources to check hundreds of files. Please advise if there is some pattern visible, or please report few examples for further investigation. Thank you. --Krd 18:59, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
Hi Krd, the only pattern I've noticed is that probably 99.9% of the files that aren't being deleted are ones that were deleted from Commons by Explicit, though I have no idea if that means anything or not. Regarding the other feature requests as well, would either of the issues above warrant creating new features on the existing bots (or new bots altogether)? In example, maybe a bot could detect users changing a filename in the mainspace without uploading it/changing the name of the file itself first, and revert those edits? Could a bot (either existing or new) also detect if users are adding images to the article mainspace that aren't uploaded (e.g. a file has never been uploaded to Wikipedia under that name before)? Hopefully I'm explaining myself okay, as I said this would be my first time making a bot request and thus I'm not sure if I'm explaining what's in my head right. Let me know if any clarification is needed, and I would be interested to get people's opinions on this! Best, Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 13:01, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
Regarding your feature request, I'd say this is definitely more that a simple task, more than a few additional lines of code, but a small new project which I definitely have no resources for, neither for the actual coding nor the later maintenance.
Regarding the actual problem, please choose one example (and if possible please keep it uncorrected until I was able to look). --Krd 14:03, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
User:KatnissEverdeen. Both ideas (#1 and #2) are technically feasible (IMO), and justifiable, but not simple, maybe even kind of hard. Assuming the two features were implemented, estimating in your experience, how many links do you think such a bot would be fixing on a weekly basis? Dozens, hundreds, thousands? -- GreenC 14:54, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
Hi Krd, this one wasn't deleted by Explicit, but here is one example. File:Fyodor_Petrovich_Tolstoy_2.jpg was deleted from Commons on September 24, 2018, but is still showing up as a missing (red-linked) file on List of Russian artists. This was found just by checking two articles at random, the second one being the example I outlined above, so I'm sure there are plenty more given I was able to find one so quickly. From patrolling that category, this is a pretty regular occurrence. Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 19:08, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
@KatnissEverdeen: As far as I see, Filedelinkerbot currently works for files only that are deleted at Commons, but File:Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy 2.jpg was deleted locally at enwiki. I don't know why this isn't active, but think I can easily add that, although I'm not sure if additional discussion or approval is required. What do you think? --Krd 07:33, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
Krd, I would say there has been enough discussion. I can't imagine why someone wouldn't agree with you doing it. It's probably worth saying though that there are some files that were actually deleted from Commons (don't have any examples at the moment, but I could probably find one if you need it) that are slipping under the radar of the bots. Most of the issue comes from enwiki files however. Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 13:23, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm going to active it now, please block the bot if something goes wrong. And please report further examples, if there appear any in the future. --Krd 17:07, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
@Krd: You should probably file a BRFA for the "deleted at en.wp" part. I guess it will be approved quickly. --Izno (talk) 18:01, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
Done. --Krd 06:08, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

┌─────────────────┘Thank you, Krd! The bot seems to be working beautifully and has already reduced the backlog by several hundred files! I would say #3 of my list above is Yes check.svg done! Face-smile.svg Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 13:34, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi GreenC, let's see, so in the two weeks (give or take a day) that the category hasn't been patrolled, the category is up to 706 not counting the 10 templates that are also in that category. So let's say roughly 700 in the category at the time of my reply. I would say from experience that about 75% of the pages in that category are there because of the three things I outlined above. So 75% of 700 would be 525 files in two weeks, divided by two for a single week would make ~263 a week. Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 19:12, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
Bots are terrible at evaluating context, and #1 and #2 are quite different. I think you will struggle with #1 unless you have a bot that is constantly running and uses "recent changes" to check if the file name has been altered and if the resulting file name is bad - otherwise you can end up with a page that could have several edits between the file change and the current version, and having a bot revert a much older edit won't be easy. I wonder if such a system could be added to ClueBot - ping @Cobi:. #2 is not a problem, however if you don't fix #1 then the bot will end up removing links when someone has changed the file name - one could wait a fixed time before doing that, so it it's not fixed in X days, then the link gets removed. Ronhjones  (Talk) 20:14, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi Ronhjones, I really like your suggestion about adding a feature to ClueBot. Often, some of the file name changes are sneaky vandalism anyways, so it would make sense for ClueBot to have a feature which catches that. What would you (or anyone who wants to jump in) say is an appropriate amount of time to wait? A week, a few days, a few hours (as ClueBot seems to always catch vandalism right away)? Another suggestion, would it be possible to adding a warning when someone alters a file name that would pop up as they hit save? For example, "You are about to alter a file name. Changing a file name, even due to typos/grammatical errors, may cause the file name to break. Are you sure you want to do this?" It certainly wouldn't prevent all cases, but it would definitely cut down on the accidental file name changing issue. Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 23:36, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

@KatnissEverdeen: Hopefully the cluebot operator will comment. Another option, which just occurred to me, is an edit filter - thus you could trap all the #1 with an edit filter (maybe warn and only allow respected editors to edit), then that makes it easy to attack the rest as just needing the image link removed. I'm no edit filter expert, why not suggest at Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested and see what happens? If you can get a quick stop/revert system to fix #1, then I would think a 1 day wait would do for #2, with say, the bot running once a day. Ronhjones  (Talk) 00:01, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Good suggestion, Ronhjones! I'll suggest it, but since I'm definitely not an edit filter (or bot request!) expert, what would you say qualifies as a "respected user" in this case? Autoconfirmed? Someone with 100+ edits? Just asking to make sure I'm understanding correctly, as well as the fact that it's not just non-autoconfirmed users that are making this mistake. Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 01:01, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

@KatnissEverdeen: I "think" the edit filter can accept/deny based on the user edit count. I would think autoconfirmed too low, would let in the determined vandals, 50-100 would be nice. Also they might be able to stop AWB edits - I saw a page you fixed where there was an AWB run fixing "fancy" quotes to normal quotes. Ronhjones  (Talk) 01:06, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Ronhjones That "fancy" quote issue actually comes up more often than you'd think, in fact I've even seen many experienced users make the mistake. I've gone ahead and made the edit filter request here. Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 01:32, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Kat, WP:Edit filter can't revert but they can log, warn or block edits. I see they are also only meant to be used for abusive edits, this may or may not be considered vandalism. Will see what they say. Ronhjones is right that #2 is more feasible than #1, though I think #1 is (theoretically) possible by monitoring EventStreams and comparing diffs, it's just would be a lot of work and resources to setup and run. --GreenC 12:46, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

GreenC I would say that the file name changes fall into three categories. 1) deliberate/blatant vandalism 2) sneaky vandalism, often changing one letter of a filename (i.e. if the file name was "Katniss," a user might vandalize it and change it the K to a C, "Catniss", etc.) 3) good-faith attempts, such as correcting punctuation or spelling, to 'correct' a file name (which breaks the file). I would argue that the first two categories would warrant an edit filter, and there's not really any harm in having the edit filter warn or stop edits in the third category seeing as it's usually a mistake anyways. Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 14:37, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree with GreenC, in that a bot for #1 can only be done by a continuously running one, monitoring the changes - not easy (and not for me - I only run RonBot from the PC). I commented on the edit filter page - deliberate/blatant vandalism does occur and I have often see many a nice portrait replaced with a large image of some sexual organ - admittedly they do get reverted fairly quickly, but not before half a dozen annoyed readers have posted an e-mail to OTRS! Ronhjones  (Talk) 15:29, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Regarding "There have also been several cases in which even experienced users will change certain incorrect punctuation in a file name.", what about a bot that does something like what User:DPL bot does, which is to notify users who introduce red linked file names.. Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:19, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Not sure how DPL bot 2 works and if the strategy would work here - ping the owner for comment @JaGa: Ronhjones  (Talk) 19:37, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Just to give people a heads up that may not be following this page, the edit filter request I made was denied due to technical limitations. Seeing as an edit filter isn't feasible, is there maybe another way we could have a warning pop up when someone hits save (before the page is offically updated)? Such as, "You are about to alter a file name, which if not properly linked will break the image. Are you sure you want to do this?" or something like that. Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 18:58, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

@KatnissEverdeen: The only thing to stop a live change in it's tracks is an edit filter. MusikAnimal said We can to some extent detect changes to image link syntax, but unfortunately we can't detect if the image exists - which does not really help you too much - especially the "to some extent" part - if they could have detected all image link changes, at least that might have been useful to pop up a "you are changing an image link" message. I don't see any easy answer now. If we were to check if the link points to a deleted image, and if so remove it, then we are at risk of there being a deleted image that someone has coincidentally changed the file name to - the bot would not be able to work out that it was a bad name change, and not a unlinked deletion. One option is to just remove all image links that do not point to a current image, that I suspect would be rather controversial (but much easy to code!) and would certainly need some discussion and support before any approval. We could have a bot that just sends a message to the last editor to say that there is now a broken image link, and ask if they broke it - but if it's an IP or it's a vandal then it's probably a waste of time. Ronhjones  (Talk) 01:17, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for replying, Ronhjones. From my experience, the majority of editors doing this are IPs who haven't necessarily familiarized themselves with the rules, so the bot sending people messages probably wouldn't help unless it is an experienced editor who has accidentally altered an image name. "One option is to just remove all image links that do not point to a current image" - I'm not sure I agree with this idea. I think, like you said, we would be at the risk of removing valid image links which vandals have altered. Is there a way for a bot to sense if the file name has been changed recently? Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 13:04, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
I think you mentioned that some experienced editors also break file links, so there would be some use to notifying experienced editors that they have broken the image right? Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:40, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
@KatnissEverdeen and Galobtter: I think Galobtter has a valid point, if we are only posting a simple standard template (to be written) to a user talk page, then there is no harm done. Even if said editor was not the culprit, since they have edited the page, they conceivably might have an interest in the subject and might fix it anyway. One could also duplicate the message on the article talk page - editors might have the page in their watch lists - OR, better still I think, a small template to the top of the article page like the cleanup tags - I could write a task for my bot to do all or some of that (and as it's an adminbot, page protection does not get in the way).
As for working out the change of link, that does really need a continuously running system like ClueBot or DPL bot 2 (owners were pinged but never answered), which can monitor the recent changes. To try to do that, say once a day, I think would be a nightmare of trying to compare revisions - easy for a human, difficult for a bot (and not for me, as my bot talks are PC based).Ronhjones  (Talk) 15:31, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
DPL Bot 2 doesn't check continuously but twice a day, seeing what new dab links are there and notifying users (See BRFA). I can see a similar system working for this category too. Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:36, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

┌────────────┘Given what we have tried/suggested so far, I would say creating a standard template to post to the user talk page and article talk page would definitely help with the issue, at least a little bit. Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 15:40, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Coding... @KatnissEverdeen:I'll make something up. Of course, it does not stop their being another bot added later, if someone can work out a useful method. Ronhjones  (Talk) 16:36, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
@Ronhjones: Thanks in advance for creating a talk page template for this. I also patrol this category and a template would be very helpful! (Although an update to ClueBot also seems like a great idea for some of the image-related vandalism reversions.) - tucoxn\talk 16:49, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

BRFA filed Ronhjones  (Talk) 23:37, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Ronhjones, I know you've withdrawn the BRFA, but I wonder if it would still be useful to tag the articles as having a broken image even with notifications of the editor who broke the file link, since in most cases a notification isn't sent (as the editor is an IP/non-autoconfirmed user)? Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:54, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
Galobtter Ok, I'll trim down the code, undelete the template (handy being an admin :-) ), and un-withdraw. Ronhjones  (Talk) 19:09, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

BRFA filed This is in regard to messaging users a la DPL Bot 2. Ping KatnissEverdeen Galobtter (pingó mió) 10:09, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

fix ping @Tucoxn and Sam Sailor: Galobtter (pingó mió) 10:10, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
Wonderful, thank you both, Ron and Galobtter. Sam Sailor 10:16, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks everyone! Face-smile.svg Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 14:14, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

Related to this conversation, please see this diff in the discussion for Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Filedelinkerbot 3. It's very interesting to note that ImageRemovalBot "went AWOL last month." It seems like that bot's operator has not been editing much recently. I bet all of this is linked to the recent increase in red-linked files we're seeing at CAT:MISSFILE. - tucoxn\talk 15:21, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, that's very interesting and that's for letting us know Tucoxn. Is there anything we can do to get the bot back online, if the operator has left permanently? Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 16:08, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
On the subject of ImageRemovalBot, I'm not sure why it's not running. I'll give it a kick and see if that fixes it. --Carnildo (talk) 02:38, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
In terms of Krd's FileDelinkerBot and ImageRemoval Bot, I'm still seeing several examples of files deleted from Commons that are not being removed from pages or templates. Jungle (Tash Sultana song), Template:Portal/doc/all and Template:POTD protected/2016-04-15 are just a few examples. Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 16:02, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Interesting. While the first example may have been before the bot was fully active, and I cannot find the relevant file in the second example, for the third case the file is definitely in the Filedelinkerbot log, saying it has been tried to unlink that from the mentioned page. Sadly there is no reason why it didn't work. --Krd 16:23, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Hmm, that's super strange, Krd. I can't find the relevant file in the second example either now, but there was definitely a broken file showing up yesterday. Oddly, it's also still in CAT:MISSFILE, so there must be something still broken there. That's too bad about the third example. Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 19:02, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Request for a list of article-space pages with the most Linter errors[edit]

[I was sent here from Wikipedia talk:Linter.]

While working on Linter table tag errors, I stumbled across Greek football clubs in European competitions, which had over 1,000 Linter errors, mostly missing end tags (crazy diff here!). I was able to fix them with a series of find-and-replace operations, so it wasn't too bad. Is there a way to find pages with many Linter errors? We could reduce our total count more quickly if we could knock out some of the worst offenders.

This is a request for a list of 1,000 pages with the most errors in article space, or a list/table of all article-space pages with 20 or more errors (and how many of each type of error exist on each page). Does anyone know how to create such a list? The list will need to be recreated periodically as gnomes work through it, fixing errors. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 11:57, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

I don't know what's involved, but wonder if User:Firefly would be interested in adding this to Firefly Tools? -- GreenC 13:06, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
Jonesey95 Done! I realised this could be done through quarry, and after some fiddling around got Quarry:query/30386 working. I made into a table at User:Galobtter/Articles_by_Lint_Errors Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:09, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
Excellent! Thanks Galobtter. Is this something that could be updated periodically, like once a week? I put it on my watchlist and will be working on the articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:42, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
Jonesey95, Yes; I can manually run the query every week and that'll only take a few minutes work; but I'll also see if I can get User:Galobot on it :) Galobtter (pingó mió) 04:49, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

[r] → [ɾ] in IPA for Italian[edit]

In Italian the letter ⟨r⟩ – usually trilled as [r] – is systematically realised as a flap [ɾ] in certain positions, which I don't think is currently in our IPA entries. Specifically it occurs in any unstressed syllable with a vowel on either side,[1] and in the onset of a mid-word syllable with secondary stress.[2]

Formally: [r] → [ɾ] / [ˈVːɾV, (V/C)(ˌ) ɾV-, Vɾ-, -ɾ(ˈ)C-]

References

  1. ^ Which for this case should just any unstressed syllable I think.
  2. ^ Romano, Antonio. "A preliminary contribution to the study of phonetic variation of /r/ in Italian and Italo-Romance." Rhotics. New data and perspectives (Proc. of’r-atics-3, Libera Università di Bolzano (2011): 213-214.

─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 12:50, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

This looks similar to the script made for Wikipedia:Bot_requests#[r]_→_[ɾ]_in_IPA_for_Spanish which might be applicable with some tweaks. But it would need a discussion somewhere, and an explanation what to do as I am not familiar with lexicographic/linguistic terminology (trilled, flap, unstressed syllable, onset of a mid-word syllable with secondary stress). Would also need to develop a search formula like this. @Nardog: -- GreenC 13:10, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

Whoops, I summarised Canepari's analysis which is slightly at odds with the actual conclusion of the review. What I said earlier maybe would be how an Italian speaker hears it, but for our purposes I suppose that means the only confirmed standard realisation of [ɾ] is in the unstressed intervocalic position. So whenever there's an 'r' between any two vowels ('iueoɛɔa'), it should be replaced with an 'ɾ'. There may also be a syllable break '.' and/or vowel lengthening mark (':' or 'ː') between the 'r' and the previous vowel. This should narrow the search down to unstressed syllables automatically as the stress mark (' or ˈ ) would get between 'r' and the previous vowel.
I tried to make a search expression which seems to work but I wouldn't mind someone else checking my logic. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 14:39, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
44 results. Normally that is too small for a bot, but since the code is already done with a few tweaks, and it's so few cases I can run it if you want. -- GreenC 14:53, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
Oh a lot more than 44. Something wrong with my offline script gave a wrong number. -- GreenC 15:32, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
Yeah. I just realised this isn't Wiktionary. Anyway, I messed up the last search expression by putting in the stress marks so use this instead. Thanks. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 15:37, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
502. That's botable but not so many to require botrequest. Can we apply the same consensus from the Spanish to the Italian, do you foresee anyone would object? -- GreenC 16:11, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
Well there was a bit of debate about it back in 2009 at Talk:Italian_phonology#flap_vs_trill but the source I gave is solid, and I doubt anyone would object. For the record, this independent blog post was what put me on to this in first place. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 16:37, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

You couldn't give me a hint on how to write a search expression for Wiktionary, could you? The only difference is that instead of an IPA-it template you have an IPA template with "lang=it" somewhere inside it. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 17:03, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

This maybe, it's a technique I've never used before. Will wait a day or two for comment on the bot. -- GreenC 21:02, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

There is no consensus for this. Please discuss it first at Help talk:IPA/Italian before changing existing transcriptions. Nardog (talk) 02:12, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

We are currently discussing this at Talk:Italian phonology#flap vs trill. Italy.png イヴァンスクルージ九十八（会話）Italy.png 06:38, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Remove infobox image requests from WP templates when the article has an infobox image[edit]

This should not be too hard. Many WikiProjects like WP:VG use a cover=yes (or cover=y) switch in their WikiProject banner on an article's talk page to populate a request category (e.g. Category:Video game articles requesting identifying art). However, sometimes editors add a cover to the article and forget / don't know about the WP banner request, leaving the article in the category despite not needing an image anymore. I'd like to request a bot to check all articles in Category:Video game articles requesting identifying art and see if the infobox has an (existing) image defined. If so, the bot should remove the cover=yes (and of course ideally log the removal somewhere so we can check whether it made mistakes). That way, when trying to eliminate the backlog, editors won't have to load articles that were already fixed. This would be a manual bot, run every once in a while. Anyone feeling like coding something like that? Regards SoWhy 07:17, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

There are articles that have screenshots in the infobox - a valid existing image that will usually need to be retained and moved to another location in the prose - but the request for a cover is a genuine one. So this request is not as straight forward as if image present, remove cover required flag. A better solution would be to have a bot run that creates a list of articles that have an image and a request for a cover, users can then manually clear that list first. This means that the category will then be free of articles with images and requests, eliminating the need for a regular bot run. - X201 (talk) 09:27, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
Articles with screenshots in the infobox are indeed a problem but how often will this actually be the case? Of course, the bot could instead compile a list of articles which contain an image but have cover=yes and someone can check them manually and then feed the list sans those false positives back into a bot/tool/AWB. I'd be happy to help check such a list if generated. Regards SoWhy 10:26, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm generating a list now. - X201 (talk) 13:26, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
@SoWhy: Here you go. User:X201/Cover required but image present - X201 (talk) 14:28, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
@X201: Thanks! I'll go through it later and notify you when I'm done. Regards SoWhy 14:38, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Generating a list of a sub-set of articles using a specific template[edit]

Not sure if this is the right place, so sorry in advance if it isn't.

Would it be possible to get a list of all main-space articles (so no talk-, user-, template-pages, etc.) using Template:Infobox television episode or Template:Infobox Television episode that also have parenthesis in their title (basically I want all disambiguated articles using these templates)? --Gonnym (talk) 19:43, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

6k or so. May include some redirects--handling for redirects in search is optimized for readers rather than editors, so sometimes results aren't great. --Izno (talk) 20:41, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks a lot Izno! --Gonnym (talk) 21:16, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
Here's a Quarry query to get the information. This includes all the redirects to Template:Infobox television episode], not just Template:Infobox Television episode, and specifically selects only titles that end with something looking like a disambiguator. Anomie⚔ 12:38, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
Did not see this answer, thanks! --Gonnym (talk) 11:31, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Updating links from album articles to AllMusic[edit]

Hello! There are many articles about albums that have links to album reviews on the AllMusic website. It seems that some time ago, I'm not sure when, AllMusic changed their URLs. So now, a lot of the links to the AllMusic reviews are to obsolete URLs. It would be great if a bot could find these and change them to the current URLs. But, I'm not sure how hard or easy it would be for a bot to figure out the current URLs. (I've updated some of these manually, and I can generally find the current AllMusic page for an album review by doing a search for the album on the AllMusic site itself.) As a further complication, the references in some of the articles contain the URL for the AllMusic review itself, while others (for example this one) use the {{AllMusic}} template to generate the URL. I don't know how many articles include the outdated links, but I would think there have to be thousands of them. So, how does this sound so far? — Mudwater (Talk) 18:29, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Given this old and new link how would a bot determine r1701846 -> mw0000649874? Link to discussion Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Albums#AllMusic_links. -- GreenC 18:50, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
I haven't detected a pattern that can be used to convert programmatically from the old links to the new ones. If there isn't one, then the bot would have to use some kind of search to find the new links. And as I said, I'm not sure how hard or easy that would be to implement. — Mudwater (Talk) 19:40, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
This is difficult but one possible solution: checking the old URL at Wayback returns the redirected URL, thus resolving r1701846 -> mw0000649874 [9]. If they all have this I don't know. One could extract the new URL from the redirected Wayback URL. Probably need to go through 10 of 20 samples to see how many work and if the rule holds. If so it might be automated. -- GreenC 20:53, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
Sounds like a promising line of inquiry! — Mudwater (Talk) 22:10, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
I'll take this on. Will be busy the next 2-3 weeks might make some progress, if not after that. Number of complications including archive URLs (can't modify a source URL if there is corresponding archive URL already in place), the AllMusic template and probably more than the "/album/" links. A bot probably won't get them all but will narrow the field. -- GreenC 15:00, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Thanks! — Mudwater (Talk) 00:15, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

┌───────────────┘@GreenC: and everybody: Hey, guess what. It looks like the old links are now redirecting to the new links, within AllMusic itself. I think that was happening before and then stopped working. But it looks like it's working again now. I guess they fixed it at their end. (Here's a random example, but there are thousands of these puppies on Wikipedia.) So, I guess we're good, for now anyway. — Mudwater (Talk) 00:40, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Mass move of election articles[edit]

The naming guideline for election articles was recently amended as a result of an RfC to move the year from the end to the start of the article title. As part of the proposal, I stated that if successful, I would request a bot run to move the thousands of articles affected.

As the RfC was closed in favour of the change, we now need a bot run to move the articles. I have prepared this offline in an Excel file and can also provide it in a txt file to the bot owner by email. If it needs to be on-wiki, I can create a few pages in my sandbox with a full list of the proposed moves. Cheers, Number 57 21:52, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

@Number 57: It's been a while (couple months since I've done bot work), but I'm interested. Just need a bit for some API research and some time to wrap my head around this. Also need to figure out how many articles would be affected and how to find them. --TheSandDoctor Talk 23:03, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
Found them, just need to figure out the "rules" for the bot to rename them by. --TheSandDoctor Talk 23:05, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
Prototyping looks good so far. Email sent as well Number 57. --TheSandDoctor Talk 03:41, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
@TheSandDoctor: No need to find the articles – I've prepared a list of articles that should be changed and the new names (sorry, perhaps should have been clearer above about what I'd prepared offline). Sent by email. Cheers, Number 57 07:25, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
BRFA filed --TheSandDoctor Talk 18:13, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Categorize location related lists of userboxes[edit]

I created new category Category:Lists of location userboxes to better organize userboxes. I would like to change (and add where it's missing) all entries of 

[[Category:Lists of userboxes|.*]]

to 

[[Category:Lists of location userboxes|{{subst:SUBPAGENAME}}]]

in all pages of following PrefixIndex searches:

  1. Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:Userboxes/Location
  2. Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:Userboxes/Travel
  3. Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:Userboxes/Life/Citizenship
  4. Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:Userboxes/Life/Origin
  5. Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:Userboxes/Life/Residence

—⁠andrybak (talk) 08:53, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Andrybak - Done- Since there were not many pages in your request (~400), I went ahead and ran the pages through AWB using my main account. You can review all the changes using [this link]. Regards. — fr + 17:48, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, f. Marking it as Y Done. —⁠andrybak (talk) 17:40, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Creating redirects from values in a list of episodes article[edit]

Hello and thanks in advance for your time. Is it possible for a bot to take a list of list-articles, with articles such as List of House episodes, go to the episode section of an article from that list, and then get all values in the "title" column? Basically the name of each episode. If that is a yes, can the bot then check if an article at that name is present or not? Finally creating a redirect based on that article name. So for example:

  1. Bot gets a list of articles;
  2. It goes to the first article in the list - List of Arrow episodes;
  3. Goes to the episode section - List of Arrow episodes#Episodes;
  4. Goes over the episode list. At episode #2 gets the title "Honor Thy Father";
  5. Checks if Honor Thy Father is an article;
  6. If article (or redirect) present then create a redirect at "title (TV show)" (as: "Honor Thy Father (Arrow)"), if not then output to list as "title" (as: "Honor Thy Father").


My goal is to be able to create episode redirects fast and easy, so trying to figure out how best to do it, as manually this is taking me a very long time (there are a few more steps, but would like to know if the general idea is even possible). --Gonnym (talk) 08:01, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

More likely would be for the bot to look for the {{Episode list}} templates in the wikitext, rather than trying to scrape the HTML. But first you'd need a consensus at WP:VPR or the like establishing that the community actually wants all these redirects. Anomie⚔ 11:06, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
Are you sure I need to get a consensus for something that seems to already have consensus? Category:Redirected episode articles lists over 13k redirects and redirected episodes have their own redirect template. --Gonnym (talk) 11:24, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
Mass-creating of stuff by bots tends to be more controversial than humans doing it. Anomie⚔ 11:42, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
@Gonnym:It is part of the bot policy Wikipedia:Bot_policy#Mass_article_creation, unless it's just a few pages. {{Episode list}} is in 11923 articles. This could be many, many thousands of new redirects. Ronhjones  (Talk) 17:49, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Report on Lunar Nomenclature by the Working Group of Commission 17 of the IAU[edit]

Centralize the ~1400+ instances of references (Template:Cite journal ...) to the "Report on Lunar Nomenclature by the Working Group of Commission 17 of the IAU" by replacing them with a single template (named e.g. Template:R:LunarNomenclature). The contents of the latter should be:
{{cite journal |last1=Menzel |first1=Donald H. |authorlink1=Donald Howard Menzel |last2=Minnaert |first2=Marcel |authorlink2=Marcel Minnaert |last3=Levin |first3=Boris J. |last4=Dollfus |first4=Audouin |authorlink4=Audouin Dollfus |last5=Bell |first5=Barbara |title=Report on Lunar Nomenclature by the Working Group of Commission 17 of the IAU |doi=10.1007/BF00171763 |journal=Space Science Reviews |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=136–186 |date=1971 |bibcode=1971SSRv...12..136M |ref=harv }}
yielding:
Menzel, Donald H.; Minnaert, Marcel; Levin, Boris J.; Dollfus, Audouin; Bell, Barbara (1971). "Report on Lunar Nomenclature by the Working Group of Commission 17 of the IAU". Space Science Reviews. 12 (2): 136–186. Bibcode:1971SSRv...12..136M. doi:10.1007/BF00171763.
Urhixidur (talk) 14:43, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Add a wikiproject template to New York City parks articles[edit]

Could someone make a bot script to add {{WikiProject Protected areas}} to all the talk pages of articles in the following categories:

given that the template, or any of the templates that redirect to it, isn't already on the page.

If the script can automatically add a |class= parameter based on existing wikiproject banners, it would be appreciated. Thanks. epicgenius (talk) 14:10, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Epicgenius, no one else seems to have chimed in so I'll give this one a go ProgrammingGeek talktome 18:26, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Coding... ProgrammingGeek talktome 23:56, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
BRFA filed ProgrammingGeek talktome 01:53, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Add talkref to talk page sections with ref tags[edit]

Talk pages can get pretty messy when there are a bunch of sections with <ref>...</ref> tags, but without {{talkref}} placed. I thought perhaps a bot could patrol talk pages and add these automatically where appropriate. There are probably some issues I haven't considered, but I just wanted to toss out the idea. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 00:30, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

By the way, I wouldn't mind doing the bulk of this myself. I've never looked much into how bots work, but wouldn't mind using this as an excuse to learn more in this area. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 15:48, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

File name vandalism[edit]

So I've been spending sometime manually cleaning out Category:Articles with missing files. One of the things that I've found is that 99% of the time, the reason the file is broken is vandalism. Someone has come in and vandalized the file name on a page. Would be pretty cool to have a bot that would look at recent edits (particularly by IP address users) that have resulted in pages being placed in that category and reverting them. --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 20:03, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

That would not be a good task for a bot as per WP:CONTEXTBOT -- the bot has no way of knowing if the edit is correct. What checks would it perform to not revert good edits? —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 20:24, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
@Hellknowz: I think there would be a way to figure it out. Having written a few bots myself... If a page was not in the category, then I make an edit to the page, and now it is in the category... My edit broke the file. --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 20:28, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
What if I simply made a typo and didn't get a chance to fix? Or added a different file with wrong extension? Or reverted someone's edits to version with broken file? Or the file was deleted and I edited the page? —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 20:49, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
@Hellknowz: I didn't say it would be easy... I just thought it was worth discussing. Geeze. --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 21:35, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

There are two BRFA ongoing related to broken file links. See Wikipedia:Bot_requests#CAT:MISSFILE_bot above. -- GreenC 20:54, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

repairing external links to amnesty international[edit]

Hi!
amnesty.org changed their url layout several months ago. All external links that look like 

http://....amnesty.org/library/...

should get fixed. And there are many of them: special:linksearch/*.amnesty.org, special:linksearch/https://*.amnesty.org.

I used the following regexps (perl syntax) in dewiki for replacements: 

  # first search pattern
  qr~https?://(?:[a-z.]+\.)?amnesty\.org/library/(?:index|print)/[a-z]{3}(?<path1>[a-z]{3}[0-9]{2})(?<num1>[0-9]{3})(?<year>[12][0-9]{3})(?:\?open&of=[a-z]{3}-[a-z]{3}|)~i;
  # first replacement
  "https://www.amnesty.org/documents/\L$+{path1}/$+{num1}/$+{year}/en";

  # second search pattern
  qr~https?://(?:[a-z.]+\.)?amnesty\.org/(?<lang>[a-z]{2})/library/(?:asset|info)/(?<path1>[A-Za-z]+[0-9]+/[0-9]{3}/[12][0-9]{3})(?:(?:/[a-z]{2}/)?(?:[0-9a-f-]+/|dom-[A-Z]+)[a-z0-9]+\.(?:html|pdf))?~;
  # second replacement
  "https://www.amnesty.org/documents/\L$+{path1}/$+{lang}";

I could use my bot (de:user:CamelBot), but it's trained for dewiki and their templates and so would need some adaptions to enwiki. I guess, there are bots here already that can do this out of the box, right? -- seth (talk) 14:33, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Be aware of archive URLs eg. https://web.archive.org/web/19991231010101/http://amnesty.org/library/.. shouldn't get modified or it will break the archive URL. -- GreenC 15:04, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi!
Just in case, I wasn't clear enough: Is there any bot that is specialized on (regexp-based) link replacements here at enwiki or even globally?
Of course, that bot should cope with archived urls and templates such as template:webarchive. -- seth (talk) 10:44, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Not aware of a bot specialized for link replacement, there should be. I do it frequently with awk regex, but it doesn't use PCRE so I'm having trouble understanding the statements what needs to be done. For example given this URL:

https://amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR25/002/1999/en/aa762f2f-e34a-11dd-a06d-790733721318/amr250021999en.html

It uses the second search pattern and would produce https://www.amnesty.org/documents/AMR25/002/1999/en is this correct? @Lustiger seth:-- GreenC 05:58, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

I have the regex figured out, now working to update WP:WAYBACKMEDIC to undo the archives as most of them have been archived. Seems like a logical extension of its function and it has its own custom template and ref parsing libraries which can be adapted. These will work in the search box, looks like around 1500 total:

  • First search : insource:/https?:\/\/([a-z.]+\.)?amnesty\.org\/library\/(index|print)\/[a-z]{3}([a-z]{3}[0-9]{2})([0-9]{3})([12][0-9]{3})/
  • Second search: insource:/https?:\/\/([a-z.]+\.)?amnesty\.org\/([a-z]{2})\/library\/(asset|info)\/([A-Za-z]+[0-9]+\/[0-9]{3}\/[12][0-9]{3})((\/[a-z]{2}\/)?([0-9a-f-]+\/|dom-[A-Z]+)[a-z0-9]+\.(html|pdf))/

-- GreenC 18:20, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi!
@GreenC: yes, this is correct. There are two different types of old urls to be transformed into one new url scheme. You mentioned an example for the second type. An example for the first type would be
http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAFR440131994?open&of=ENG-360
-> https://www.amnesty.org/documents/AFR44/013/1994/en/ (or https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/AFR44/013/1994/en/)
The only thing is: I'm not sure, whether
<https://www.amnesty.org/documents/AMR25/002/1999/en/ or
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/AMR25/002/1999/en/
is the better new url. The first url is just a forwarder to the second. So maybe the second is better. But I don't know for sure.
-- seth (talk) 22:05, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
@Lustiger seth:. Thanks. I've been finishing up another project and now looking at this. The URLs go to a landing page where users select a language which then goes to a PDF under a different URL. The problem is that the PDF URL is invisible to Wikipedia archive bots (IABot) so it will never be archived at Wayback Machine and could be lost to link rot. There are two solutions: set the URL on Wikipedia to the underlying PDF URL. Or have the update bot trigger a "save page now" at Wayback so the PDF URL is archived. The second solution works but only for Wayback, other archive providers scanning Wikipedia for links to save will still never see it. Nevertheless I'm leaning towards the "save page now" at Wayback option and run it on all amnesty.org links even those that don't need to update URLs, to ensure the underlying PDF links are archived. -- GreenC 16:05, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
@GreenC:: I agree. The second solution is better for the users, because the landing page is more comfortable for them.
Another possibility (a variation of the first solution) would be linking to all pages. Something like "AI report [landing_page], in languages [pdf en], [pdf es], [pdf fr]". But this might be too much info for the users. -- seth (talk) 17:41, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Removing the venue parameter from Template:Infobox album when it doesn't apply[edit]

I originally raised this at Template talk:Infobox album#Including the venue parameter for studio albums when substituting last month. There have been several users (one of whom, most notably, has been Zackmann08) transcluding thousands of uses of Template:Infobox album on albums, and for studio albums, inserting the unnecessary parameter |venue=. This parameter is not needed for the vast majority of studio albums as they were recorded in studios, not live venues. The template explicitly states in bold to use this parameter for live albums—so then it has no use being included for other types of albums. I, and I have noticed other users doing so as well, often remove this parameter upon discovering it has been added to articles because it has does not apply to them. So I'm requesting if a bot can remove the venue parameter from uses of Template:Infobox album on articles where the infobox already has its |type= defined as "studio" (or "album", as this is often used by users who don't know to write "studio"). It's not a big deal if it is removed anyway—if it's needed for a type of album, it can be restored as necessary. But these cases are few and far between, not for the vast majority where |venue= has been added by users just because they're automatically transcluding a template without much consideration for what those albums actually are. Thanks. Ss112 02:39, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

So your solution to "thousands of unneeded edits" is a bot that will perform thousands more edits that ABSOLUTELY are not needed?? The parameter is blank and therefore not being used so there isn't any problem with it... You are looking for a solution where there is no problem. Most infoboxes have parameters that are only to be used in certain situations. As long as those parameters are left blank, there isn't a problem. As I said when you first brought this up with me (and I note that you mentioned my username in this post but didn't link to me so I wouldn't be notified), this isn't a problem at all. If you are so worried about venues being added for other types of albums, then add a tracking category. If the type param is not live and a venue is provided, place the page in the tracking category. But having a bot remove an unused parameter is just a waste of everyone's time.
no Denied per WP:COSMETICBOT --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 05:26, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
BAG note: @Zackmann08: You are not a BAG member, and have no authority to approve or deny bots. Do not claim otherwise. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:20, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
@Headbomb: I didn't realize I needed to be a BAG member to approve or deny. Had this been a formal BRFA I wouldn't have commented that. I felt that given that it was a bot request and clearly violated WP:COSMETICBOT it was safe for me to comment that. I have learned something and appreciate your comment. Note that I have struck my comment above. --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 17:13, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
@Zackmann08: Thanks. Approved/denied is very specific to the BRFA process, much like you wouldn't comment say "Accepted" when it comes to an ARBCOM case, when the only people who can do that are ARBCOM members (and only by a majority vote). Your general objection is noted though. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:18, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
@Headbomb: Learn something new every day! Out of curiosity, how does one become a member of WP:BAG? Perhaps we can discuss on my talk page? --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 17:23, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
The process is outlined in the bot policy at at Wikipedia:Bot policy#Bot Approvals Group. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:26, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
@Zackmann08: Did you think I thought you wouldn't see this? I already knew you were a regular here when Jonesey95 suggested I put in a request here. I don't feel the need to tag users upon every mention of their username, so I didn't care whether you saw it or not. Otherwise it seems like you're implying I had bad intentions by "noting" I didn't notify you. So then I must say it seems a little telling that you would deny this because you think I've attempted to rag on you without notifying you. Maybe others have a different view. Why don't you let them comment and deny the request or offer their opinions, since I'm so obviously complaining about you just racking up your edit count without consideration for the unnecessary parameters you're adding all over the place? Not that it really needs to be said, but you are one user. Your view that it isn't a problem doesn't mean nobody else thinks it isn't a problem. The tracking category is an absolutely pointless venture, because evidently I want the pointless parameters to be removed, not to track instances of it for...what reason exactly? Maybe I can get somebody to knock up a script to do it, since I don't think this request page is the be-all and end-all and that all semi-automated tasks must go through here. Ss112 13:16, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
Also I don't know if you're attempting to direct quote me or paraphrase what you thought I was saying, but I never said they were "thousands of unneeded edits". I never said substituting the template to update its parameters was "unneeded". It is needed (although I thought we got bots to do this and get it done quicker, instead of users). But along with that has come thousands of insertions of |venue= in instances where it doesn't apply, and even where it has previously already been removed. Ss112 13:26, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

@Ss112: I'm not sure a bot is needed for this exactly. Or at least for what you requested exactly. The template could easily be updated to throw an error / put problem articles in a category if |venue= is set when |. A bot that pre-emptively removes an empty |venue= likely wouldn't be approved without consensus to show this task was desired, although removal of an empty parameter under certain condition (e.g. substantive edits are made) likely would be. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:27, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Emptying Category:Episode lists with unformatted air dates[edit]

I'm filing a request for a bot to empty the category Category:Episode lists with unformatted air dates. This category tracks transclusions of {{Episode list}} that do not use {{Start date}} when listing airdates under |OriginalAirDate=, rather listing plain text dates, which is required as {{Start date}} produces microformats as it produces the dates.

If this request is approved, the following find-replaces (find first line, replace with second line) are required. After the first two regular expression replacements (one for MDY and one for DMY, replacing |OriginalAirDate=November 7, 2018 with |OriginalAirDate={{Start date|2018|November|7}}), the month names needs to be replaced with their respective month numbers (i.e. |November| with |11|), which can just be done through standard find-replaces as shown in the collapsed section. (There is another way that's more detailed/complicated but with less steps (only three instead of twelve), but I thought it'd be best to go with the more straightforward/simpler way to prevent any confusion. Or if the bot owner has another way, even better.) 

(\|\s*OriginalAirDate\s*=\s*)([A-Za-z]+) (\d{1,2}), (\d{4})
$1{{Start date|$4|$2|$3}}
(\|\s*OriginalAirDate\s*=\s*)(\d{1,2}) ([A-Za-z]+) (\d{4})
$1{{Start date|$4|$3|$2|df=y}}
Month-number replacements 
|January|
|1|
|February|
|2|
|March|
|3|
|April|
|4|
|May|
|5|
|June|
|6|
|July|
|7|
|August|
|8|
|September|
|9|
|October|
|10|
|November|
|11|
|December|
|12|

Thanks. -- AlexTW 14:47, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Could someone confirm if I'd be able to just do this through AWB? -- AlexTW 23:22, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 Done Through AWB due to lack of response. -- AlexTW 08:18, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

spectator.co.uk[edit]

There are about 1000 mainspace links to Spectator, most are broken. They changed URL schemes without redirects. The pages still exist at a new URL. Example:

There's no obvious way to program this, but posting if anyone has ideas. -- GreenC 06:27, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

I actually does not have much knowledge about the wikipedia bots. When I checked two to three links, the things that needs to be done from a reader's point of view is:

1)Identify the link which is identified as broken.
2)Remove the words "-.thtml" from the last portion of the link.
3)Add the month number and year number before the last section of url which needs to be separated by commas. This year and month number is the number on which the article appeared. If the month is only one digit, you need to add a zero before the month number.Adithyak1997 (talk) 10:40, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

The idea is to automate the conversion since it's 1000+ links. A bot wouldn't know which month. In the second example it is "letters-201" vs "letters" thus "-210" is also an unknown. If there was a way to find the redirected URL, such as though archive.org or some other way. Or volunteers to manually fix them. -- GreenC 20:14, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
One could also just write an e-mail to spectator.co.uk with the old urls and kindly ask them to give a mapping to the new urls. Then a bot could replace those links. -- seth (talk) 11:13, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
@Lustiger seth:. Do you want to give it a try? Narrowed it down to 552 dead links (User:GreenC/data/spectator). I've tried asking these things before and never had success so maybe someone else would have better luck. If they provide a mapping, I'll make the changes. -- GreenC 17:42, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
E-mail with links to special:linksearch/http://www.spectator.co.uk, User:GreenC/data/spectator, and to this discussion sent. If I get an answer, where shall I place the list? -- seth (talk) 10:04, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks! In data/spectator -- GreenC 16:30, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi!
2018-11-11 10:02: mail sent to spectator digitalhelp@... (probably this was the wrong address, because they only look after subscriptions).
2018-11-11 10:12: first (automatic) answer: "You will receive a reply from one of our customer service team members within 48hrs."
2018-11-13 01:48: second answer: "I am awaiting further information regarding your enquiry and I will contact you as soon as this information has been received."
2018-11-14 01:42: third answer: "We would request you to email editor@... for further information." (deleted e-mail address)
2018-11-14 19:54: second try (mailed to editor@...)
2018-11-14 19:54: forth answer: "I'm afraid that due to the number of them received at this address it’s not possible to send a personal response to each one. To help your email find its way to the right home and to answer some questions:
  • If you are writing a letter for publication, please send it to letters@....
  • Please send article pitches and submissions to pitches@....
  • If you are having problems with your subscription, please email customerhelp@... [...]. For problems with the website, our digital paywall, our apps or the Kindle edition of the magazine, our FAQ page is here – and if that doesn’t answer your question please email digital@....
  • If the matter is urgent, please call our switchboard on 020 [...]."
2018-11-14 20:06: third try (mailed to digital@...)
iow: this may take some time. -- seth (talk) 20:10, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

College football schedule conversions[edit]

I'd like have a bot update the templates used to render college football schedule tables. Three old templates—Template:CFB Schedule Start, Template:CFB Schedule Entry, and Template:CFB Schedule End—which were developed in 2006, are to be replaced with two newer, module-based templates—Template:CFB schedule and Template:CFB schedule entry. The old templates remain on nearly 12,000 articles. The new templates were coded by User:Frietjes, who has also developed a process for converting the old templates to the new:

add {{subst:#invoke:CFB schedule/convert|subst| at the top of the table, before the {{CFB Schedule Start}} and }} to the bottom after the {{CFB Schedule End}}.

The development and use of these new templates has been much discussed in the last year at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football and has a consensus of support.

Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 00:32, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

We also need to add the optional "Source" column that was approved as part of the new template. Cbl62 (talk) 03:13, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
@Cbl62: This is irrelevant to the conversion process at stake here. Template:CFB schedule entry services the source column, although the template documentation does not reflect that. Jweiss11 (talk) 04:52, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
While we're doing the conversion, it makes sense to get everything working properly. Others have noted that there is a glitch in using the "Source" column in the named parameters version of the template. Whether the glitch in documentation or in core functionality, it should be remedied so that the "Source" column can be added. Cbl62 (talk) 10:38, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
@Cbl62: What is the glitch with the "Source" column in the named parameters version of the template? You can describe it or show an example? Jweiss11 (talk) 14:38, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
The "glitch" is that people have expressed a concern that they have difficulty adding a "Source" column to the new named parameters chart. See discussion here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football#2018 Nebraska score links. I have yet to see a version of the new named parameters chart that includes a source column. Can you show an example where it has been done? And is there a reason it is not included in the template documentation? (By way of contrast, in the unnamed parameters version, the Source column is included in the template documentation as an optional add-on, see, e.g., 1921 New Mexico Lobos football team.) Cbl62 (talk) 15:00, 19 November 2018 (UTC) See also 2018 Michigan Wolverines football team where sources are presented in each line of the template but no "Source" column has been generated. Cbl62 (talk) 15:06, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
This is not a glitch. The is simply user habit. The person to ask about the template documentation is User:Frietjes, as she is the editor who wrote it. The inline citations at 2018 Michigan Wolverines football team could be easily moved to the source column if one so wanted. Jweiss11 (talk) 16:00, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
the source parameter is demonstrated in example 3. feel free to add this to the blank example at the top of the documentation, along with other missing parameters, like overtime, etc. Frietjes (talk) 16:11, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Joe's Null Bot task 5 clone[edit]

Further to Template talk:Db-meta#Template:Db-c1 and Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard#Checking for bot activity, is anybody able to assume the duties of Joe's Null Bot (talk · contribs)? I don't know if all tasks are stopped, or just Task 5. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:20, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

On the Joe's Null Bot page it says "Migrated 27 December 2016 to run on Tool Labs rather than my own server". Logging in there and searching for joe or null I found a project called "nullbot" and it is indeed Joe's Null Bot. It contains:
Extended content 
tools.farotbot@tools-bastion-03:/data/project/nullbot$ ls -ltr
total 91404
drwxrwsr-x 2 root          tools.nullbot     4096 Dec 27  2016 logs
-r-------- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot       52 Dec 27  2016 replica.my.cnf
drwxr-sr-x 2 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot     4096 Dec 29  2016 old
-rw-r--r-- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot     2244 May  4  2017 savedcopy
drwxr-sr-x 2 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot     4096 Oct  8  2017 oldlogs
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot      110 Oct  9  2017 cron-tools.nullbot-2.err
drwxr-sr-x 3 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot     4096 Oct 18  2017 pynull
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot     1508 Dec 20  2017 cron-tools.nullbot.20.out
drwxr-sr-x 2 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot     4096 Dec 21  2017 nullbot
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot      385 Mar 10  2018 cron-tools.nullbot-12.err
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot      420 Jun 30 00:22 cron-tools.nullbot-11.err
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot      912 Jul 25 18:13 cron-tools.nullbot-13.err
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot     1018 Oct  4 17:10 cron-tools.nullbot-10.err
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot     1852 Oct 12 05:42 cron-tools.nullbot-5.err
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot      885 Oct 21 09:13 cron-tools.nullbot-9.err
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot     3852 Oct 25 04:08 cron-tools.nullbot-4.err
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot     1470 Oct 30 06:15 cron-tools.nullbot-30.err
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot     5120 Nov  3 09:01 cron-tools.nullbot-8.err
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot 24586391 Nov  9 05:03 cron-tools.nullbot-4.out
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot  2950972 Nov  9 05:38 cron-tools.nullbot-5.out
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot    36892 Nov  9 07:21 cron-tools.nullbot-6.out
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot      166 Nov  9 07:21 cron-tools.nullbot-6.err
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot 26290814 Nov  9 08:39 cron-tools.nullbot-8.out
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot  1944205 Nov  9 09:24 cron-tools.nullbot-9.out
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot  1191809 Nov  9 12:14 cron-tools.nullbot-12.out
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot 36224638 Nov  9 21:18 cron-tools.nullbot.20.err
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot     6044 Nov 10 00:15 cron-tools.nullbot-11.out
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot     8109 Nov 10 02:02 cron-tools.nullbot-2.out
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot    66422 Nov 10 03:02 cron-tools.nullbot-30.out
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot    70120 Nov 10 03:10 cron-tools.nullbot-10.out
-rw-rw---- 1 tools.nullbot tools.nullbot    74470 Nov 10 03:13 cron-tools.nullbot-13.out
The cron log files are protected so can't be opened. It shows the bot is running (Nov 10) with a large err file (cron-tools.nullbot.20.err) but also crons that are running error free. A 'last nullbot' shows Joe has not logged in since Nov 1 when logs being. The Perl files were last updated in 2017. Joe's user page says "My job occasionally leaves me out of communication for as much as a couple weeks as a time." -- GreenC 04:08, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
What do you get for a ps -lu tools.nullbot shell command? How about tail -n 10 cron-tools.nullbot-5.out --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:53, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
As GreenC says the files are read protected, so one gets "tail: cannot open ‘cron-tools.nullbot-5.out’ for reading: Permission denied". Processes are run in the job grid, so ps -lu can't be used; one can access information about jobs as described in here, but since the jobs are hourly no job was being run when I checked (assuming the job name is "nullbot"). Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:26, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
The job is running according to toolforge:grid-jobs/tool/nullbot. The timestamp on this task's error file is newer, so there could be a problem with it. — JJMC89 (T·C) 07:12, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Sorry I've been off-line, a combination of health (temporary, I assure you), life and moving-related changes. Due to an unrelated issue that JJMC89 noticed, the bot will be offline for a day or two, but the problem with task 5 is simple, there's a sanity check for the size of the category involved, and it has been exceeded. I have already made a fix for it, when the bot comes back up, that task should be back up. --joe deckertalk 07:53, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

school project for desktop Encyclopedia[edit]

Get pages for school project and save them to local database, in order to create an offline desktop encyclopedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smaragda2 (talk • contribs) 15:51, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

I take it this is something to do with Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/school project for desktop encyclopedia? The specification is far too vague. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:35, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Offline versions of Wikipedia already exist. See WP:DUMP. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:17, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Unreferenced articles[edit]

Could a bot please identify articles that are not currently tagged as unreferenced but seem not to have references? Thanks for looking at this, Boleyn (talk) 19:12, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Why do I get the feeling that this might be WP:CONTEXTBOT? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:42, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi, Redrose64, I'm not sure I was clear enough, by identify the articles I meant generate a list of articles, similar to Wikipedia:Mistagged unreferenced articles cleanup. Thanks, Boleyn (talk) 18:18, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject tagging[edit]

If it's possible, I'd like to request a bot to tag with the WikiProject Television banner, categories and pages relevant to the project. My question is, what would be the best option to supply such a list without also including incorrect articles in the mix. Is this allowed and possible? If so, any opinions on how best to tackle this? --Gonnym (talk) 23:29, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

There are several bots approved for a WikiProject tagging run. In most cases you should supply a list of article categories, and should not specify something like "and subcategories of those", since that has led to problems in the past with mistagging. Instead, each subcategory that is to be processed should be explicitly listed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:40, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Follow up question. I'm currently making the list and while checking the Category:Years in television by country category tree, all the sub and sub categories of this are valid entries. Should I still list all the specific categories? --Gonnym (talk) 08:49, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
It will depend upon who picks this up... some botops are more lenient than others when it comes to "and subcategories of those". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:40, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Regina (band) -> Regina (Bosnia and Herzegovina band)[edit]

These 35 wikilinks should link directly to Regina (Bosnia and Herzegovina band), so that the redirect Regina (band) can be redirected to the disambiguation page Regina, because there's also another band with the same name: Regina (Finnish band). 91.158.232.8 (talk) 01:03, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Y Done @91.158.232.8: Please randomly verify(if you wish)the edits as directed/requested by you through this history section. You could check for pages that contains the edit summary as "Changed link for Regina band". Also, there is one redirect that remains which is to the disambiguation page. Please remove that.Adithyak1997 (talk) 14:01, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Thank you! 91.158.232.8 (talk) 21:17, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Tag with Template:R from unnecessary disambiguation[edit]

The task is rather simple. Find all pages with Foobar (barfoo). If they redirect to Foobar, tag those with {{R from unnecessary disambiguation}}. This should be case-sensitive (e.g. Foobar (barfoo) → FOOBAR should be left alone).

Could probably be done with AWB to add/streamline other redirect tags if they exist. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:15, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Renaming Template:Category elections by year to Template:Category U.S. State elections by year[edit]

Accoring to the discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 November 18#Template:Category elections by year:

Highly misleading redirect to Template:Category U.S. State elections by year. The template was created at this name on 5 March 2013, but was moved the following day to its present stable title. There are about 6,000 uses of the old title, which will need to be changed by a bot. But this trivial bot job will stop the ambiguous title being mistakenly used on categories for elections other than those in US states. If there is consensus to do this, a request at WP:BOTREQ will have it done easily. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:50, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

I was the editor who redirected it in 2013. It looks like all uses of the template's old name are used for US states. I suspect there would be little or no objection to the request. Thank you. —GoldRingChip 02:41, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Bot to improve names of media sources in references[edit]

Many references on Wikipedia point to large media organizations such as the New York Times. However, the names are often abbreviated, not italicized, and/or missing links to the media organization. I'd like to propose a bot that could go to an article like this one and automatically replace "NY Times" with "New York Times". Other large media organizations (e.g. BBC, Washington Post, and so on) could fairly easily be added, I imagine. - Sdkb (talk) 04:43, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Bot_requests&oldid=869592417"