Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 12#adding a references section

Possible outputs would include:

• A count of total GA noms outstanding, including those held or under review
• An exception list, showing GA holds over 7 days, GAs out of sequence in the lists, GAs under review more than 7 days, noms > 1 month
• A list showing nominator names and the number of noms, for anyone with > 1 nom
• A list of categories with totals for each category -- e.g. "Military History: 12 noms"
• A similar list showing untouched noms -- e.g. subtracting ones which were on hold or under review
• A list of suggested categories for the backlog template to mention

I guess a subpage of the candidates page would be the place to put it. Historical data could be saved; might be interesting to look at trends.

As I said, these are just ideas. I'll post a note at the GAC talk page and ask people to comment here. Mike Christie (talk) 15:40, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

:This bot would be quite nice. Really helpful managing the backlog over there. IvoShandor 09:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

:I wouldn't mind taking on this project. I have a bot running, currently, that updates the statistics for the :Category:Cleanup by month page, and while the operation is a bit different, it is essentially the same concept. I can't vouch for how long it would take (of course I have to code it, and then get it approved at WP:B/RFA), but if you decide you would like such a bot, I'd be up for it. —Daniel Vandersluis^(talk) 18:52, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

::Thanks Daniel. I have created a subpage for this project at User:Mike Christie/GACbot; please add any additional comments there or at the talk page. Mike Christie (talk) 14:36, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

:SatyrBot can do exactly that. Just did the same for Georgia (US state). Reply on the bot's current project talk page with where the category list is, and I can get started today. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 14:32, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Governors of California, New York, etc need a {{:s-off}} after {{:Start-box}} (where they have one) because they are political offices.

However I have been going through British Colonial Governors of e.g. Nova Scotia, Hong Kong, Newfoundland, Victoria, Queensland, Bermuda and find a large number are shown as {{:s-off}} although they should in fact be {{:s-gov}}. If I and others add the appropriate categories here, I wonder if your bot could adjust them from s-off to s-gov ?? It will be tedious because many will be correct and many will be missing succession boxes altogether.

• :Category:Governors-General of Australia all OK
• :Category:Governors-General of the Bahamas
• :Category:Governors-General of Barbados
• :Category:Governors of Barbados
• :Category:Governors of Bombay
• :Category:Governors General of Canada
• :Category:Governors of the Falkland Islands
• :Category:Governors-General of Fiji
• :Category:Governors of Hong Kong
• :Category:Governors-General of India
• :Category:Governors of Jamaica
• :Category:Governors-General of Mauritius
• :Category:Lieutenant Governors of New Brunswick
• :Category:Colonial Governors of New Jersey
• :Category:Governors of New South Wales
• :Category:Governors-General of New Zealand
• :Category:Lieutenant Governors of Ontario
• :Category:Governors-General of Pakistan
• :Category:Lieutenant Governors of Prince Edward Island
• :Category:Governors of Queensland
• :Category:Governors-General of Sierra Leone
• :Category:Governors-General of South Africa
• :Category:Governors of South Australia
• :Category:Governors-General of Trinidad and Tobago
• :Category:Governors of Victoria
• :Category:Governors of Western Australia

- Kittybrewster (talk) 20:44, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

::Could you explain a little better and show a few diffs please? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 02:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

:::Sure. By way of example - [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Milo_Butler&diff=125189229&oldid=125189069] But many governors were governors of several places and that leads on to additional lists I have not yet found which should be included above. - Kittybrewster (talk) 15:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

::this is a very simple task ill get started on this PDQ. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 15:17, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

:I would recommend holding off on this until the WP:TFD is completed. Naconkantari 02:35, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

::If this does go forward, what sorts of factors would you want included? (I can probably throw something together regarding average amount of AIV reports over the last 50 edits, but I'm at a loss for any other factors) ST47Talk 02:51, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

:::I would do factors such as:

:::*number of AIV reports

:::*number of CSD requests

:::*number of edit summaries reading "revert, rv, or rvv"--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 02:53, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

::::True, didn't think of CSD. I can also have it use IRC to get the revert stats/total edits. ST47Talk 02:56, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

:It is rather hard for a computer to read an article and determine if it doesn't "make much sense." How would you write the list of rules that the bot would follow when evaluating a new article? --Selket ^Talk 15:08, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

:Something along those lines has already been proposed to, and is being considered by, the Bot Approvals Group. Please see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Eskimospy Bot. --kingboyk 15:13, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

:USer:SmackBot is doing this (as with Fact), but it has some technical difficulties ATM .Rich Farmbrough, 12:58 27 April 2007 (GMT).

• The default message:

The WikiProject Biography Newsletter: Issue II - April 2007

The April 2007 issue of the WikiProject Biography newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

• Distribution: All people listed as active at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography/Members (> 300)

• Exceptions: Some folks listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Outreach#Delivery_options want the newsletter transcluded ({{Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Outreach/Newsletter/Issue 004}} and one person doesn't want delivery at all.

Thanks in advance. --kingboyk 20:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

:Me or ST47 can take care of that. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 22:12, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

::Thanks mate, that would be much appreciated. :) --kingboyk 22:19, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Good to go, thank you. --kingboyk 22:28, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

{{done}} --kingboyk 13:39, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

:Smith, John → :Category:Living people

I did this manually from about Jan-June last year, and it wasn't much fun. What we have now is about 300 pages, plus one new one every day, that needs this treatment. ×Meegs 19:02, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

:This could be done with AWB, though I can't think of any way to remove the sortkey like that. As these are all archived pages (except for the today's page) does it really matter that much how they look after the category is turned to a link (ie. would Smith, John which would look like Smith, John be fine)? Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 22:48, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

::Thanks. Yes, I agree that removing the sort key is not important at all. I am not a Windows user, and still an AWB user's help with this task. ×Meegs 00:04, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

:Running now, I have my own code :) Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 14:15, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

:I haven't forgotten I'm working on it. that category tree is a mess. (indefinite loops, and all the pages being categorized under the same title due to a userbox) Im attempting to straighten that out. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 00:16, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

::Thanks for dealing with this. There should be an overhaul to remove all userboxes from categories or make all userboxes provide a parameter for the transcluding page to not be categorized, but I don't think that's very important. At least there shouldn't be any cases of two categories under each other. This isn't urgent by any means; take your time. –Pomte 08:55, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind. I just found mw:Extension:CategoryTree, which does the job. –Pomte 08:10, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

1. add template to the class parameter for {{tl|ChicagoWikiProject}} items in template space
2. add cat to the class parameter for {{tl|ChicagoWikiProject}} tems in category space
3. add dab to the class parameter for {{tl|ChicagoWikiProject}} articles with {{tl|disamb}} or {{tl|hndis}} tags
4. add GA or FA to to the class parameter of {{tl|ChicagoWikiProject}} articles if any other template has such a parameter value on the talk page.
5. add needs-photo= yes to the {{tl|ChicagoWikiProject}} template if no image is on the article page. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 22:10, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

:Ill look into getting this done. Please copy it to User:Betacommand/Bot Tasks and remove it from here. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 00:13, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

1. I forgot to add stub to the class parameter if a stub tag is present on the article page. Is this also doable by the same bot? TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 21:38, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

:Why would it create double redirects? You have to just fix the redirects. We don't send out bots to fix working links unless there's a very good reason for it. --kingboyk 16:59, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

::It would create double-redirects because Alfa Romeo in Formula One is itself a redirect. And I was loath to fix the potential double-redirects manually because there would be about 500 of them. However, since I made the bot request there has been a proposal to change Alfa Romeo in Formula One from a redirect to a proper article, so the problem may soon solve itself. -- DH85868993 23:09, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

:::No, you wouldn't have to change the 500 links, just change the other redirect too :) Redirects are editable, perhaps you didn't know that?

:::The proposal to make a new article was mine actually, I hope you like it! I think that an F1 team of Alfa's pedigree is important enough, and wide enough, to be in a seperate article. --kingboyk 23:11, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

::::The F1 information has now been transferred to Alfa Romeo in Formula One, and Alfa Romeo (Formula One) updated to point there. Thanks for your help. DH85868993 02:50, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

{{done}} --kingboyk 13:39, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Staffwaterboy 16:54, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

:Wasn't there another topic about this not too long ago? Can we have some specific criteria for different levels? ST47Talk 12:31, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

::There's been discussion about the overall wisdom of the defcon template at Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Feeding_Trolls_via_defcon_Template and continuing at Template talk:Vandalism information. --kingboyk 13:15, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

There are 33400 total logos, many of them are JPEGs or GIFs. Surely none of them should be. Vagary 10:24, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

:I think this is a great idea. It probably shouldn't be limited just to those pages. Any archived page should be able to opt-in. --Selket ^Talk 20:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

::What exactly is a "topic" - the title of a section [often uninformative, unfortunately]; keywords [who decides?]; an article or username? I'm not opposed to the idea, but I'd like to get a better sense of how a bot would be used to implement it. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:00, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

:::To me, it's the title of the section. And regarding other pages, I wasn't thinking about that at the time, but it sounds great, as well. Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 12:55, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

:Eagle 101 has a tool I think might be modifiable [http://tools.wikimedia.de/~eagle/spamArchiveSearch.php] which can be hosted on the Toolserv —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Betacommand (talk • contribs) 21:12, 24 April 2007 (UTC).

::If you're looking for usernames for bots, I've had User:NwwaewBot and User:NicksBot registered, in case I ever did a bot, and if people want, I'll "donate" those usernames for the bot. Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 12:55, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

::If someone will write (or convert the tool above) the bot out for me, I'll apply for toolserver access and run it there (or co-run it with the bot writer, if they wish). Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 21:36, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

:::eagle has one up, check is toolserv page. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 19:35, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

:I could. I'll try to get something created for this when I get some time in a few days. --Android Mouse 20:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

:Looking at the template in more detail I find it says, "This template should not be placed on article talk pages.", when placed on a talk page. Is this a mistake? I don't understand. --Android Mouse 22:34, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• title: "ISO 639:-iso3 code-"
• content: #redirect-article name-{{R from ISO 639}}.

Examples:

• ISO 639:eng [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ISO_639:eng&action=edit]
• ISO 639:spa [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ISO_639:spa&action=edit]
• ISO 639:dan

The proposal was made at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Languages#R_from_ISO_639_.2F_missig_articles

Existing redirects can be seen at :Category:Redirects from ISO 639.

This would help the WikiProject Languages in finding missing articles, i.e. languages that have an ISO 639-3 code but no article in Wikipedia. The redirects would also help code lookup and linking from outside. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 01:42, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

:If anyone actually does this, I'd suggest adding a sort key so all 7589 redirects (we currently don't have that many language articles) aren't listed under "I" in the category. Even without actually adding the redirects it wouldn't be extraordinarily difficult to produce a list of missing articles. If no one takes you up on adding the redirects, let me know if you'd like a list. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:58, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

::Could sorting be done in the template? I.e. can the template read the part after "ISO 639:" ? Then we would be more flexible. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 21:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

:::Templates can add category sort keys, but since the m:StringFunctions extension is not installed here I don't think there's a way to parse a string like "ISO 639:xxx" to get just the xxx part. It could be added as a parameter to the template. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:18, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

::::It can be added as a parameter to the template and then passed to the category call. --Selket ^Talk 15:14, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

:::::I have the category sorting working through the template now, feel free to help migrate them. #redirect English language {{R from ISO 639}} becomes #redirect English language {{R from ISO 639|ENG}} --Selket ^Talk 15:28, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

::::::Cool! Looks really better now. Could it be changed from uppercase to lowercase? AAA to aaa, ENG to eng? The spec says it must be lowercase, thus it would be nicer to use the official writing in the templates. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 22:10, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

:::::::It shouldn't matter much since the sort key is never actually shown anywhere, but to prevent 'ENG' and 'eng' from being sorted differently I added a forced lowercase to the category statement. The user can input the parameter as 'ENG', 'eng', or even 'eNg' and it'll always be sorted on 'eng' now. --CBD 11:21, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

:I'm working on a page that will look like List of ISO 639-3 codes with each code linked to the appropriate article (blue link if the article exists, red if not), with the code bolded if the template in the article specifies the code. The page should be up sometime tomorrow. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:30, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

::See Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Articles by code. I'll bring this up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages as well. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:03, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

:I was under the impression that a bot was fired up and ready to go? I'm asking Martinp23 (BAG) now if he knows... --kingboyk 22:29, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

::User:SatyrTN was, I think, interested in doing this task earlier, though I may be mistaken. I'm sure that there's a post on a bot talk page about it. Anyway, if SatyrTN is no longer able to do the run, feel free to note here, and I'll probably be able to take care of it with MartinBotIII. Martinp23 22:31, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

:::here it is :) Martinp23 22:34, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

::::Due to RL interfering, and that I'd have to go through BAG to get approval to edit anything other than talk-space, please go ahead if you want to do the change. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 02:42, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

:::::You'd have to get an approval, but that would be rubberstamped now that you have explicit community approval.

:::::That said, if RL has intruded, fair enough :) --kingboyk 13:15, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

::::::The RfD proceeded on the basis that we had a bot standing by to do the work, therefore somebody ought to be doing this sharpish. I'll have a word with Martin to see if he would oblige. --kingboyk 16:16, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

{{Done}} by me (and User:MartinBotIII :)) Martinp23 18:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

| titlebkg = X

| color = X

| title_style

| header

| top

| top-style

| above_style

| group-style

|

| odd-style

| list(odd#)style

| even-style

| list(even#)style

| bottom

| bottom-style

| below_style

|}

Some of the other navigational metatemplates also carry legacy names, but not as many as {{tl|Navbox generic}}. If the templates using {{tl|Navbox generic}} with legacy names can be updated as above, I could add the other navigational templates and legacy names below...?  Thanks, David Kernow (talk) 12:58, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

:can I get a few diffs of what you want done? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 14:49, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Can't recall the most recent examples I've passed by, but here's the beginning of a list of candidates:

| Template:Nationalflags

| Template:USStateFlags

| Template:Province-level divisions of the People's Republic of China

| Template:Spamming

| Template:EMSpectrum

| Template:Endocrine system

| Template:Digestive tract

| Template:Urinary system

| Template:Integumentary system

| etc...

Hope that gives you the idea{{spaced ndash}}thanks for your interest!  David (talk) 01:28, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

PS Here's a recent example of the same but with a {{tl|Navigation}} rather than a {{tl|Navbox generic}}-based template: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ACapital_cities_of_the_European_Union&diff=126001472&oldid=123618999]

: Are these parameter names going to be a bit more permanent? Maybe best to wait until you've settled all the little tweaks like top/bottom -> above/below. –Pomte 17:13, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

• Remove infoboxneeded from talk pages
• Add the infoboxneeded tag to the article (with the same parameter(s) as the tag before it was removed from the talk page), only if the article doesn't have an infobox

This is a repeated request. Timneu22 00:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

:What would the bot do if the infoboxneeded tag is used incorrectly and doesn't state which infobox is missing? Simply remove it from the talk page or should it copy it as-is? I'd be willing to write a bot for this --Android Mouse 02:51, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

:: My guess is that it should add the infoboxneeded tag but without specifying which infobox. If you'd like, I can update the infoboxneeded template to show "no infobox specified" if the argument isn't present. If it is easier, you could probably just remove it from the talk page but not put it on the article. Timneu22 17:31, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Ok, I'll just have it copy it without any arguements. I went ahead and added a request for approval. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to create the bot first or not. The Create a bot page leads me to believe I am supposed to create the request before beginning development. --Android Mouse 18:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Many articles, particularly stubs and articles that should be marked as stubs, have zero references.

A bot that ran once a month or so and flagged any article with zero external links that was more than a few days old with {{unreferenced|date=DATE|linkcount=0}} or something similar then alerted the original author would prove useful. This might require developing a special tag or template, perhaps {{noreferencesrequired}} to flag articles that by their very nature do not require references, such as deliberately empty biographical stubs like this one. Davidwr 23:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure this isn't the first time this has happened.

I propose a generic bot that can block-by-reverting any range of IP addresses from anonymously editing any page that is on the bot's watch-list or that has this bot's "watch me" tag. A tag might look like {{blockanonymousedits|iprange=1.2/16|date=4 May 2007|expires=14 May 2007|text="http://"|comment=roaming user repeatedly posting controversial links resulting in edit war}}.

The "text=" is if the block is intended to keep the user from posting particular text. In this case, the user is blocked from posting http:// web links.

See Talk:Internet_censorship#Proposed bot to auto-revert anonymous edits that post the disputed link and the sections immediately above for a discussion of the problem in Internet Censorship. Davidwr 14:13, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

:If the IPs are the problem semi-protection can word, if the link is the problem the the link blacklist may be an option. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 14:15, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

::We do not want to block all anonymous users unless absolutely necessary. Semi-protection is specifically recommended against if the goal is to silence a particular anonymous user or anonymous users in general. In this case, that's exactly the goal: To keep him from posting a controversial link until the controversy is settled. I can't speak for other editors but I do not want to stop him from making edits that are actually useful. Blacklisting may be an option in this particular case, I'll discuss it on Talk:Internet_censorship. The generic problem remains. The http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Spam_blacklist Wikimedia spam blacklist is not what we want. The link in question may belong on other Wikipedia pages and may eventually belong on this page after the discussion and debate is over. Davidwr 14:21, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

:Such a bot is effectively and edit warring bot(reverting, as bots cannot block unless they pass WP:RfA, which is unlikely), so I think a rather large consensus that it is needed would have to be found before such a bot could be implemented. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 14:33, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

::Good point. As an alternative, Wikipedia should impliment a way to semi-protect pages against changes to links. This is probably better done in the main software rather than through a bot. Another alternative is to have the bot described above only monitor pages that have been added to the watch list by an administrator, much in the same way that semi-protection requires administrator action. Along those lines, if administrator approval will be required anyway, the page-edit software should prevent the edit in the first place. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Davidwr (talk • contribs) 14:40, 4 May 2007 (UTC).

::User:Shadowbot might be what your looking for. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 20:33, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Thanks. The author of Shadowbot added the needed functionality for this one-off case. Davidwr 23:09, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Centy 11:43, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

:I just did this by hand. Took me five minutes. DavidRF 14:17, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

:Yeah I'll go ahead and run this task. Let me write up a bot request. Its a simple find and replace correct? —— Eagle101 ^{Need help?} 02:00, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

::I've already been approved to run, this should be done shortly. —— Eagle101 ^{Need help?} 02:26, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

:::{{done}} task is finished :), check User:Gnome (Bot)'s contribs about 15 minutes before I posted this post to see what it did. —— Eagle101 ^{Need help?} 04:03, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

:I'm putting MetsBot to work :-) —METS501 (talk) 22:45, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Much thanks! I started to do it by hand, and then noticed the bot going at it. :-) --70.51.232.124 23:15, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

::Wasteful run isn't it? Just redirect the template and let the names coexist? Or am I missing something? --kingboyk 22:56, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Could I have used a redirect? The problem is the original template was a generic one with a parameter, while the new one is specific to the Palestine project. I think that a redirect to the WikiProject Palestine would have negatively affected every other project that is still using the general WikiProjectNotice. I could be wrong though. --70.51.232.124 23:15, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

::::I don't think you could redirect it, because it was a generic template with parameter. --TeckWiz is now R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's go Yankees!) 23:31, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

:::::Exactly. Template:WikiProject Palestine is specific and customizable, while the other one was a general template with a parameter. The bot is done, by the way. —METS501 (talk) 00:40, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

::::::Ah I see. /me didn't look close enough. --kingboyk 00:48, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

:I'll do it with TW. --TeckWiz is now R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's go Yankees!) 01:18, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

::I just rolled back all its contributions with admin rollback, except for three that couldn't be rolled back. I hope those ones fix themselves... Grandmasterka 01:22, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

:::All...then what did I just rollback? :) --TeckWiz is now R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's go Yankees!) 01:38, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

::::Okay, I just did the last 50, anyway. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=500&target=Shadowbot3 its last 500 contributions]. Grandmasterka 01:45, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Thanks! FYI, the latest run started at 00:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC), and lasted a mere 19 minutes until 00:44.   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 01:50, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

::::Quick question, is it functioning correctly now? Ryan Postlethwaite 02:07, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

:::::Hmmm...I was just attacked by a user for for reverting his page for him. :) --TeckWiz is now R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's go Yankees!) 02:13, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

::::Yes, it is fixed now. I was making a lot of modifications to Perlwikipedia that day and forgot that Shadowbot3 uses the bleeding-edge version. I'm really, really grateful to you guys for cleaning up the damage. Shadow1 (talk) 18:37, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

:I'm pending bot approval, and then I will get to this task. I'll also update the statistics to point to [http://web.archive.org/web/20050327072826/http://www.bangladeshgov.org/mop/ndb/arpc91_v1/tables04.htm], as the new domain doesn't seem to have the data. —METS501 (talk) 23:17, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

::All done. —METS501 (talk) 18:04, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Thanks a lot! You are really fantastic!-Arman Aziz 00:49, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

:I can only find a couple. Do you have a list? —METS501 (talk) 18:15, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

::Nevermind, I found quite a few. I'm doing this manually with WP:AWB now. —METS501 (talk) 18:22, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

:::{{tick}} Done. 133 edits made. —METS501 (talk) 19:32, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

:I'll go program this bot now, thats very easy to do in a bot. I presume that you want this to run daily at 0:00 UTC? —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 05:06, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

::Bot is finished being programmed, and has successful trials in my sandbox, I'm just waiting on someone to show me where it was agreed upon that a bot is the best way. After that I'll post a quick BRFA. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 05:28, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

:::{{done}} bot is approved, see here. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 06:26, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

:Let me think about the logistics of this and now best to get a working bot. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 19:33, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

:I have an idea how this could be done and would be interested in writing a bot unless Betacommand intends to. --Android Mouse 20:52, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

::Im thinking this out and thinking of bugs and other bad things to avoid and account for before programing but please share your ideas. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 04:48, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

:::My idea is to have the bot log which articles it has already created notifications for or which already have notifications, to save bandwidth. It would then periodically run a query to find all pages in the Canidates for Speedy deletion category and would filter out articles which aren't in the bots log. All the remaining articles not in the log, the bot would look up the earliest revision for and then load the raw text of the creator's talkpage. If it parses through and finds a notification about the article's status then it will log the article as completed and move on to the next article. If not, it would append the template to the talk page, log it and move on to the next article. Some sample queries are:

:::# First loading the articles for speedy deletion: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/query.php?what=category&cptitle=Candidates%20for%20speedy%20deletion&cplimit=500&noprofile&cpnamespace=0

:::# Second, finding a specific article's earliest revision, possibly making multiple requests to get to the earliest: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/query.php?what=revisions&titles=Pacific%20Northwest%20Portal&rvlimit=200&noprofile

:::# Third, loading the lastest raw text of the creator's talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/query.php?what=revisions&titles=User_talk:168.99.197.188&rvlimit=1&rvcontent&noprofile

:::The bot's log could probably be purged every few days or so, since articles are usually deleted by this time or their speedy deletion templates removed. Any suggestions? I couldn't find a way to locate the creator of an article except to look up the revisions, and the MediaWiki Query Interface seems to list revisions from newest to oldest, forcing the bot to possibly request multiple pages to find the earliest. --Android Mouse 20:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

::::Would it be possible for the bot to check if the user has already been notified? Unless this bot is very well publicized, most users who do issue notifications will still continue to do so; repeated warnings could be a bit of a problem. Warning templates generally include in the wikitext, possibly the bot could recognize that, plus the article name, and the date the warning was issued (in case of recreation). If it detects an other warnings for other pages, perhaps it could issue a {{t1|uw-create}} warning instead of the basic speedy notifications. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 01:38, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

:::::Yes, when it loads the latest raw text of the user talk page it would scan for any such warnings and perhaps it might scan for simply the username of the person that nominated it for speedy delition and the article name in close succession, incase a custom message was added instead of a template. --Android Mouse 06:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

:::::I'm going to go ahead and start developing this bot. If anyone has any other suggestions, I'm listening. --Android Mouse 05:09, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Bot finished, waiting for approval. --Android Mouse 20:32, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

:I have severe concerns regarding this bot. I question whether we should be using a bot for what editors and admins should be doing and I doubt that the bot can do it as well. I fear that people will get lazy and count on the bot which in many cases is going to be a bad thing. Specifically:

1. This is going to confuse new users. They are going to get a message from Android Mouse Bot 2 and assume that's who nominated it for deletion.
2. Sometimes, I will intentionally not use the page name in warning messages. This is usually the case with attack pages in which the title is part of the attack. In those case, I would use {{tl|attackpg-warn}} without a page name. In obvious bad faith creations like this, the editor will know the name of the page and there is no reason to repeat the attack on the user's talk page.
3. Speedy deletion templates are frequently misapplied. An example is Railfan window. This article was tagged as db-nonsense on the talk page. An admin removed the template as not applicable and left a note[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AError46146&diff=130437851&oldid=123527217] on the creator's talk page saying that the he removed the tag, but suggested the author improve it (it's not speediable, but it's questionable whether it would survive AFD in it's current state). The nominator than added the db-nonsense tag to the article and this bot dropped[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AError46146&diff=130502433&oldid=130437851] a warning on the creator's talk page. I removed the speedy tag as non-applicable. There is no way this editor should have been given a patent nonsense warning.
4. Why in the world would it be notifying people of a db-author[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AGungadin&diff=130549082&oldid=130012061] request? They already know as they added the tag. And then, the message used gives the standard words about using hangon and not removing the speedy template. This is even more inappropriate. If they added the tag, they can remove it.
5. I also think using this for {{db|custom reason}} begs for confusions. In [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:216.102.199.245 this message], the bot is talking about notability and the deletion reason has nothing to do with the subject matter. It is an incorrect speedy where someone thought the page should be deleted after a merge.

:I don't believe this bot can do an adequate job of replacing the admin. The admin can handle cases that are not a simple drop a warning on the user's talk page; this bot cannot.

:If people feel we need this bot, then it should not be using the standard warning templates. It should be using a more generic, non-biting message that includes who nominated the article and the reason. -- JLaTondre 18:04, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

For the time being I have shut the bot down. Also, this bot has now been approved.

1. The templates the bot uses can be modified to notify the user the bot didn't nominate it for speedy deletion.
2. For this template I can have the bot not use the article name.
3. I can change it to use another template which is less condescending and notify it is just a bot, and that the nomination may not be valid.
4. This can be easily fixed.
5. Can also be fixed.

--Android Mouse 18:21, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

::Yes, I know it's been approved. That doesn't mean issues weren't overlooked which need resolving. If you fix these it would make me much more comfortable. I'm still concerned about the potential for other cases beyond these five. That is why I made placed the message on WP:AN per my note to you. I hoping with more eyes than those paying attention to the bot pages, any other issues will be identified and resolved before they impact a user. It's possible no one will think of any, but more input doesn't hurt. -- JLaTondre 19:03, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

:I agree mentioning the article name with attack pages can be a really bad idea, unless the user's talk page is also going to be deleted. A quick look through my deletion log should give some examples. However not using the article's name may confuse a user as to which article has been deleted. It needs to be recognised that attack articles are often labelled as nonsense, vandalism, and even A7. Redirects, user pages, vandalism, talk pages, histmerges, and author requests also do not usually require notice. Copyvios should have a special notice, and sometimes with spam articles - we don't necessarily want to tell the author it's been deleted. Has the bot given any thought to checking for the validity of G4's? How will the bot work when someone tries to speedy delete France? -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 21:12, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

In order to avoid two discussions on this I think comments should now be posted on the administrator's noticeboard entry. --Android Mouse 21:18, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

• I believe the message should be clear on the point that such notifications are a matter of courtesy rather than mandatory. Some people are already confused on that point. >Radiant< 15:27, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

:Will do as soon as I get approval (which I'm about to request) Martinp23 10:51, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

::{{Done}} (almost) by MartinBotIII - feel free to make a request directly to me if it needs again doing in future. Martinp23 20:04, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Or me if Martin's not around :-) —METS501 (talk) 11:00, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

::::Or, for that matter, anyone else with approval for the task :) Martinp23 17:28, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

:::::I'll be sure to, thanks --WikiSlasher 06:28, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Alternatively, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Persondata#Extraction_of_persondata Extracting/transforming/loading the persondata using these perl scripts] could get the job done. --Rajah 04:14, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

: I will (Cocoaguy ここがいい _contribs^talk) 21:18, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

if you still need someone to house it, i will--Iamzemasterraf 19:00, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

:The first person to get it running will be the winner! Note that WP:DEAD was split apart recently, and I believe the line "$lists = array('Wikipedia:Dead-end_pages/A-K', 'Wikipedia:Dead-end_pages/L-Z',);" will need to be changed to reflect the new pages. Thanks for your offer to help! Salad Days 21:52, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

i cant build it, which is why im asking you thanks ACBestMy ContributionsAutograph Book 18:51, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

:What functions do you need for your WikiProjects? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 20:05, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, templates on talk pages mostly. The ones that say 'this is part of wikiproject ....' Thanks! ACBestMy ContributionsAutograph Book 05:58, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

:Leave me a message on User talk:SatyrBot and I'll be glad to help. Let me know what wikiproject template you want to use and what categories you want tagged. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 13:49, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Can I have a bot developed for me though, so i can do this and other stuff? ACBestMy ContributionsAutograph Book 15:25, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Here are the list of pages that use it. I just did a cursory glance and found a few pages where films are using it incorrectly, those should be fixed soon —Fitch 18:53, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

:I can do this no problem with my bot, but has there been discussion as to whether this should be done? —METS501 (talk) 02:40, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

So could a bot add {{Template:Classical}} to the talk pages of all those articles in :Category:Compositions by composer and its subcategories, except for the :Category:Operas by composer category, or any opera subcategories that do not already have a project banner for any other WikiProject (ie. not already covered by another WikiProject).

Thanks.

Centy 21:57, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

:If you can compile a full list of categories to be run, SatyrBot can do this. Please only include categories where most if not all the articles should be tagged, so as to minimize "over-tagging". Take a look at WikiProject Spain's list (scroll down - there are two sections) they put together for this same sort of project. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 22:14, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

::Happily, it appears SatyrBot has already produced a list of categories. Because of a recent reorganisation, everything in the first section needs tagging. As long as you just tag pages in the category (I've included all subcategories) we shouldn't get any duplication . The second section is a category I've already done by hand. The third are two anomalous categories, where every page in them is in some other category and so are not needed. For this section could the bot remove every page from these two categories and then I'll put the categories up for deletion. The fourth section are all those bot generated categories out of our WP's scope. Centy 01:59, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Sounds good. Please see the bots project page for one more question and a couple comments. Thanks! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 03:29, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

:I don't understand, could you be more specific on what task you are requesting a bot to do? --Android Mouse 23:09, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

:Let's wait until the week is up first :-) —METS501 (talk) 03:29, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I can do it, when it closes, provided it closes as delete. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 19:54, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

:{{tick}} Done ^demon^{[omg plz]} 17:15, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

:Its possible, and can be done by connecting to IRC and watching the feed there. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 05:30, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

::I was trying to work on a way to implement just this very idea a few weeks back, but you can't sort Special:Log by namespace, so I was having issues trying to get a good feed of what to work on. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 19:52, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

:::You're right, the only way to do this would be to regex it out. If I have some spare time, I'll write (the regex) and post it here. The bot idea sounds pretty good, I've been thinking about writing something like this too. Tim.bounceback^{(review me! | talk | contribs | ubxen)} 21:43, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

::::As have I :) - AWB has some, if you want to take a look at it. It's important to take both galleries into account, and the fact that Wikilinks may appear in images call code, so the extra and will need to be accounted for in the regex. Martinp23 21:57, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

:::::OK, here's the regex I have so far... doesn't support wikilinks in the image call code, and it hasn't been tested as I haven't had access to a maching with Perl, but here it is:

:::::s/(\[\[|)\s*($image)\s*(\]\]|<\/gallery>)//g. Tim.bounceback^{(review me! | talk | contribs | ubxen)} 15:26, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

• The fields 'last', 'first', 'author' and 'coauthor' in everything beginning with "{{cit" and ending with "}}". (Using cit instead of cite means all {{t1|citation}} templates are counted as well.)
• Anything between "{{Har**|" and the next "|".This will analyse the plethora of Harvard citation templates starting with Har and all using the first field for the last name of the author.
• I am not familiar with {{tl|Note}}, {{tl|Ref}}, {{tl|Note label}} and {{tl|Ref label}}, but they are probably not that different.
• The first and second word after a tag that does not contain any of the above templates.
• The above covers most methods of citing sources in Wikipedia.

Analysis of external links would probably not be useful, as the US court cases website, ISBN lookup and sites like that would top the list. Besides, I remember that this has been done before, though I cannot remember where I read it.

I have a feeling that L. Ron Hubbard will end up on top.

--User:Krator (t c) 11:51, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

:No one? :( --User:Krator (t c) 20:48, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

:I've asked Tizio, whose bot already creates daily subcategories of :Category:Proposed deletion. —METS501 (talk) 14:52, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

::Ok; so far I got the following:

Category:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons as of $D|Template:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons subcategory starter
Category:Images with unknown copyright status as of $D|Template:Images with unknown copyright status subcategory starter
Category:Images with unknown source as of $D|Template:Images with unknown sources subcategory starter

::Please let me know which other cats need creation (and which template holds the starter text). Tizio 13:34, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Using the format given, you need to add the following:

Category:Images needing editor assistance at upload as of $D|Template:Images needing editor assistance at upload subcategory starter
Category:Images on Wikimedia Commons as of $D|Template:Images on Wikimedia Commons subcategory starter
Category:Images with no copyright tag as of $D|Template:Images with no copyright tag subcategory starter
Category:Images with no fair use rationale as of $D|Template:Images with no fair use rationale subcat starter
Category:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons as of $D|Template:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons subcategory starter
Category:Orphaned fairuse images as of $D|Template:Orphan fair use subcat starter

There is also Category:Replaceable fair use to be decided after $D, but you need to add 7 days to the date, and its starter is Template:Replaceable fair use Images subcategory starter. By the way, a good name for your bot might be WineBot because older wines are often considered better than newer wines in many cases, which is similar on how we are required to let the categories to age before handling them. You could make a joke for the emergency shutoff button, stating that administrators should block it if it is malfunctioning or acting drunk. Jesse Viviano 22:32, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

:Before anyone undertakes this task, are you sure there is a consensus to support this? An article that only states 'So and so is a supreme court case' I could very easily see being nominated for speedy deletion. This begs the question, are all of the supreme court cases notable enough for their own articles? --Android Mouse 05:20, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

::The vast majority are not, however, there needs to be some way to link each mention of the case to its FindLaw text or some other equivalent. The ussc template provides this. Perhaps an alternative wold be to find each article that mentions a supreme court decision, flag it for human review, then use a human-assisted bot to insert the ussc template if one does not already exist. Human assistance is needed in case the article has a different way of citing the case. davidwr ^09f9(talk) 13:36, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

:::As someone who has worked on hundreds of U.S. Supreme Court cases, created the first 90 volumes of Supreme Court case lists, and actually created Template:SCOTUSCase and Template:SCOTUSCases, I have a few comments. First, this absolutely must involve the participants of WikiProject SCOTUS cases. Second, there are over 30,000 Supreme Court cases, and while I would love to see all of them on Wikipedia one day, they can't just suddenly flood :Category:Lists of United States Supreme Court cases. Third, FindLaw only goes from volume 150 to present, and the most recent cases (in volumes 545, etc.) still aren't directly linkable under their proper volume number. This plan needs serious consideration and planning before it is implemented (if ever). Cheers. --MZMcBride 03:46, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

This could even be done retroactively by determining when the link was first created, and then linking to the appropriate history page for that date. I could see this extended to any talk page that gets regularly archived, interwiki links, etc. — Omegatron 01:55, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

:A few questions I have:

1. How would the bot determine dead links? Most people link to VP discussions in the format: Wikipedia:Village Pump (proposals/policies/etc..)#Discussion. After it is archived, the link still remains technically valid. How would the bot be able to tell the difference? If it scanned the current revision of the VP and searched for that heading it could turn up false positives as it is possible for a new section with that same title to be created after the old one has been archived.
2. How would it find all the links pointing to the VP? Is there a way to bring up a list of all the pages currently linking to it? I know this is possible for image usage but I'm not currently aware this can or can't be done for article links.

:--Android Mouse 02:33, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

::I think with your second point you're looking for Special:Whatlinkshere/PAGENAME, which is available in the toolbox of each article. —METS501 (talk) 02:35, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Thanks, how did I not see that :-0 --Android Mouse 02:44, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

::::As for the first point, if it ran often enough, a false positive would be unlikely, I would be more worried about if the name of the heading was changed during the discussion. One other problem though, how would the bot know whether or not the discussion the user linked to is in progress or not? Discussions are archived based on the last edit date. Some are archived days after they are started, others may be debated for weeks. If an anchor (#) is used, it could check to see if that heading still exists, but if it isn't, the bot woud not know if the discussion the user was refering to still exists. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 03:58, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

1: The links would be detected based on the section anchor and the fact that the relevant section had become archived. You wouldn't redirect Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals); you'd only redirect things like Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Discussion when the Discussion section was archived.

For retroactive use, it would have to determine when the link to the pump was originally created by going through the page's history (or by guessing which nearby timestamp goes with the link?)

It's not trivial to implement the retroactive part, but not impossible, either. — Omegatron 14:51, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

So, say you made a link on your talk page on March 2 that pointed to an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Discussion. The discussion died off in April, at which point the section was archived, and the link becomes a dead end (which makes it very difficult for future readers to follow what you were talking about).

In June, when the bot is implemented, it looks through the What links here for the Pump (probably maintains an internal index or something for efficiency), and finds your talk page. If your link contains a section anchor, it then scans backwards through your talk page history (probably a database dump to avoid loading down the servers?) until it finds a revision (from March 1) in which that link didn't exist.

It then looks at the March 2 history entry for the pump page that you linked to and sees if such a section existed at the time. If it did, it then navigates forward in time through the pump's history (or just the automated archival events) until it finds a revision in which that section no longer exists. It then edits the original link (keeping the section anchor) to point to the pump's history revision right before that section was archived. — Omegatron 14:55, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

:I could see that working out. But I'm not sure how practical using a database dump would be. You'd have to periodically download a multigigabyte file with every single revision for every namespace. You would only be using a small fraction of that data and would have to redownload it again once those links had been updated. I think it would ultimatly end up using more bandwidth using that method. --Android Mouse 16:47, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

:: Just a hunch. I don't know the implementation details. Just explaining how the bot would mimic what we do by hand to fix an old link. — Omegatron 17:33, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

::: Ah, ok. How often do you think such a bot would need to be run? Or more precisely how often does Werdnabot scan the page for old sections? I wouldn't mind writing the bot, based on the details you described above. Unless someone else would like to, or unless anyone has any other suggestions on how this might be done. --Android Mouse 21:37, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

:::: That would be great. I think Werdnabot's dead, actually, and shadowbot has taken over, but the pump still says "This talk page is automatically archived by Werdnabot. Any sections older than 7 days are automatically archived to Wikipedia:Village pump (news)/Archive."

:::: I don't know if we'd want to "run it" every few days, or just leave it on continuously watching the pump for archivals. I think this would make sense being expanded to other places besides the pump, so you might want to keep a more general application in mind while you write it? — Omegatron 13:57, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

:::::I'll try to keep it as general as possible, as I can see it helpful with other pages such as WP:AN. I'm going to wait about three days until I start writing incase anyone else has any more ideas/suggestions. --Android Mouse 18:38, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Implemented as User:Android Mouse Bot 4 — Omegatron 00:49, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

: On a side note, how does putting 5043278 wikiproject banners on a talk page make the articles better? — Omegatron 21:16, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

::Omegatron, that's been argued to death. Take a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject reform.

::To your question, Tennis, SatyrBot can do this, if you don't mind waiting two days - I'm finishing up another project similar to yours. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 21:27, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

The criterias for speedy deletion when an image are moved to commons are:

• The entry on commons actually exists
• This is rather easy for a bot to check
• The entry has proper source and copyright information on the commons page
• May be harder but it will be possible, and if the bot cant confirm this it can just say so, and the deleting admin can check for himself.
• The file names are the same (if not remember to redirect all image links)
• I am not sure that the bot should to this, but it could leave an note at the image description page if this has to be done.
• The file was properly uploaded (preserving GFDL required history of revisions)
• This is possible and if the bot cant confirm this it could leave a note.
• The file was properly added to an article or category in commons
• This is not hard for a bot to check, and it could also say which categories and articles it has bin added to. It has to avoid categories that is automatically included by the license templates, but I believe it would be possible .
• The files on Wikipedia and Commons are bit-for-bit copies.
• Easier for a bot to do than a human.

I am no bot writer, but I hope there is someone who has an idea on how to do it. It would save a lot of time for the administrators working on these categories. Rettetast 15:02, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

:I was just thinking about this the other day. I have no clue to begin how to write all of this, but if someone wanted to write it, I would be more than willing to host it, as those categories are *very* commonly backlogged. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 15:06, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

This is because many pages belonging to a project that I am a member are no longer being watched by active members and several have been deleted without active members receiving sufficient notice to review or improve these pages. Content tis being deleted rather than improved.

perfectblue 18:05, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

:SatyrBot currently performs a function like this for WP:CARIBBEAN, WP:CM, and WP:LGBT. It produces two lists - examples are: Wikipedia:WikiProject Caribbean/To-do list and Wikipedia:WikiProject Caribbean/Small to-do list. Let me know if you want me to add your project to its scans. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 20:43, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm all for writing this bot myself (in fact, I realy want to - please don't someone else!) I'm just trying to make sure this is something everyone agrees will be of benefit. PeteMarsh 16:39, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

:I don't understand, will the bot be making any edits to wikipedia or is it just going to print out a list of articles that don't have a hello world example? If it won't be making any edits then you don't need the community's approval, just make sure there is a reasonable delay between page requests. --Android Mouse 19:46, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

::I hadn't imagined it making any edits - but this sounds alright to go ahead with? PeteMarsh 20:19, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Yeah, you only need approval if it will be editing. --Android Mouse 20:24, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

::::Looking into this futher it seems that not every programming language page has a 'Infobox programming language' I would request that my bot also be allowed to edit these pages to include these. Edits could be restricted to something like 1 a minute, maybe even two minutes; there would be little server stress. PeteMarsh 21:11, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

::Have you made sure there is a consensus to support this? From what I read in the articles you linked to is that it isn't in common usage in English, but does this mean it should be corrected? --Android Mouse 03:17, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Thanks. I'll toss up a RFC on Names. samwaltz 03:22, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

• Would it be possible for a bot to remove "[" replacing with "" and remove "]" replacing with ""?

• After that the bot would search if there is in the article.

• If it cannot find it, the bot would make a new sub-section "==References==" and place "" below that.

• The bot would have to make a list from the last dump of all the mainspace articles, and perform the operations (hopefully it will get over within one week).

• Example Nonvolatile_BIOS_memory

--Paracit 23:24, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

::In my view, end of section references are preferable when there is a textual description of the reference. For a pure html link, the reference section just obscures matters, requiring an extra click-through. However, putting raw links into a reference section might encourage people to change them to proper citations. That's a testable proposition, and if it's true this would be a good idea. Derex 00:12, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

:::Some editors might consider it controversial to change an inline link to a cite.php reference. Even if it encourages adding full citation info, some will view this as a short term detriment, by making the link one step removed. Gimmetrow 01:34, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

::::It is possible to create such a bot and not very complicated actually. But I share the concerns mentioned above. Maybe you should see if you can reach a consensus in a discussion on this question at WP:CITE and/or WP:EL. Perhaps this has already been decided on and you can provide a link to it? I'd be interested in helping with the bot / programming it, if there's such a common agreement. I suggest continuing to talk about a bot when we are sure your suggested changes are supported by the community. — Ocolon 08:33, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

::I've run across other articles where an editor has manually (I assume) converted embedded links to references/footnotes, without adding anything else. I suppose that encourages editors to work the references to improve them; I'm not sure (because I didn't systematically follow up over the months) that anyone actually did.

::

::As far as starting a discussion, I also support that before a bot is written and approval for it requested. I note that WP:EL is the wrong place, however; that policy has to do with the "External links" section, which isn't an issue here (except that the bot should be programmed to stay out of that section). In addition to) WP:CITE, it's worth noting the proposed change at Wikipedia:Embedded citations (which isn't a policy or guideline) and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:33, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

:::I would almost suggest to just be bold, and manually do a few articles and see the reactions. Do the links get improved? Do you end up just annoying people? etc. —— Eagle101 ^{Need help?} 04:03, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

::::Check this out so many external links converted to inline citations:

::::http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Clinical_depression&diff=118654983&oldid=118576074

::::--Parker007 21:14, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

:::::I agree that the Clinical depression article *did* benefit from converting the external links to inline citations. A problem that this conversion did not address is that the reference sections contain a lot of raw link text that ought to be replaced by useful 'metadata' in the form of authors, titles and complete names of publications. (Each raw link could be replaced by a citation template, and the link itself could be filled into the 'url' field, so the citation would be clickable). Someone could go through manually and fix that. Another more general problem is that this article seems to be overwhelmed by its excessive references. Wikipedia is not a directory or a bibliography. Not sure what your tool could do about that, but it might suggest to us that manual fixup can do things that a bot cannot. EdJohnston 16:43, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

• [[Wikipedia_talk:Citing_sources#Request_for_consensus:_External_Links_.3D.3E_Incline_Citation_Bot|Request

for consensus is filed]] --Paracit 06:45, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

:Almost all of these were transcluded with the template {{tl|User CVU1-en}}, which has been fixed. In fact, I only see a few archives that point to the CVU2 page. --Selket ^Talk 07:03, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

: Yes, a bot could rename uses of the template, but it would seem unnecessary when a redirect would work. Is there a serious problem with the name such that the old one must not remain? Gimmetrow 23:53, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

::I guess not. We've got an infobox, {{tl|superherobox}}, that pretty much applies to any comic character now, so we wanted to rename it {{tl|Comics character}}. I'm not sure that there are any issues, I'll raise it at the discussion. Thanks for the reply. Hiding Talk 13:16, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

::: Just go ahead and rename it. Moving the page will leave a redirect from the old name and all existing transclusions of the template will work properly. (If any double redirects are created, just fix them) – Gurch 21:03, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

March 28 1948

a bot or something adds a comma after 28, but not after 1948. Yes, it did it right then! I didn't type that comma, and it's still not in the revision box where I am typing now. Unless 1948 ends the sentence, of course, another comma is needed after the year. The fix is needed even if there are no brackets, like this:

March 28 1948

That time, no comma was automatically put in. So I see it only works for bracketed dates, so far. I have fixed hundreds of examples of that error by hand, but there are probably about 6 or 12 million more to be done in the English version of Wikipedia. I am sorry, but I don't have enough time.

A very similar problem is about equally widespread in locations. For example:

He was born in Pasadena, California on Easter Sunday.

That needs another comma after California, of course. About 6 or 12 million of those errors, too. Another bot needed? Can I request that, too? Korky Day 12:58, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

:That's not actually a bot. That's a part of the Wikimedia software. Whether you type March 28 1948 or 28 March 1948 (or other date formats), the software will display the date in your preferred date format (which you can set under "preferences" -- click the "my preferences" link at the very top right on any Wikipedia page). The default preferred date format (for the U.S.) is Month xx, yyyy (with a comma).

:So why not add the extra comma? Well that's actually a grammar issue, and some sentences shouldn't have that comma. For instance, in the sentence "June 7, 1999, is my birthday.", that second comma is needed. But in the sentence "I saw her on June 1, 1999." there shouldn't be a comma. Since almost nobody ever follows that grammar rule anyway, I guess the developers decided it wasn't too important to fix.{{spaced ndash}}Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 15:28, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

::Thanks, Quadell. There are also rare instances where no punctuation follows because it's not a full date. Consider "On March 28, 1948 people registered to vote." 1948 could be the number of people or it could be the year in which on that date an unspecified number of people registered. So it's not something a bot can be programmed to determine. But that example proves that having it correct is indeed important.

::Your estimate of "almost nobody" does not match my viewing. About half the instances I see are correct. But maybe in the type of articles you read it's different.

::I think a bot is justified because there are millions of errors and the exceptions few.

::Solution? A bot that adds a comma whenever there is not another punctuation mark there. It would ignore instances within direct quotes. But also maybe tag it with something like "verification requested that a year precedes this comma". Then if no one changes it for a couple of weeks, the tag is automatically deleted. If someone says it is not a year, then the bot would ignore it from then on. Korky Day 01:00, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

1. Monitor a list of articles and their sizes on a sub-page, and
2. Update the sizes of those articles on a semi-regular basis?

I ask because Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs/dinosaur articles by size was created to show users which articles need the most attention and expansion. It was originally updated manually using CatScan, but that tool stopped working April 11th of last year. Since that time, we've updated the page manually, but it's grown considerably and it's time-consuming to use pop-ups to hover over each link to get the article size. A bot, even if it was run just once a week, would save us hours of work. Firsfron of Ronchester 06:22, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

:I could create a bot for this. Although which articles would you like it to post sizes for? The ones that are already listed here or a specific category of articles? --Android Mouse 06:47, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

::Well, either way would be fine! :Category:Dinosaurs would be fine to work off of, but that category includes :Category:Fictional dinosaurs, which we don't want included in the results. If there was a way to tell the bot to ignore articles in a "fictional dinosaurs" category, that would work. Or we could just compile a list for the bot to work off of...? Thank you very much for your interest. Firsfron of Ronchester 06:53, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

:::That sounds good. I'll have it get articles from the :Category:Dinosaurs, excluding the fictional dinosaurs subcategory, so no one will have to deal with maintaining and updating a list of what it would need to scan. I'll likely have time to write this bot sometime tomorrow, if not it should be finished within two to three days. --Android Mouse 07:05, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

::::Very cool. Thank you, Android Mouse. I look forward to it! :) Firsfron of Ronchester 07:13, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The bot is now written and waiting for approval. I should note that there are many categories and articles that might not directly relate to the Dinosaur wikiproject. I found that :Category:Birds is a nested subcategory of the Dinosaur category, along with :Category:Jurassic Park. Excluding :Category:Birds, :Category:Jurassic Park, and :Category:Fictional dinosaurs, there are just over 3,000 articles. There may be more unrelated categories that I didn't see. Tell me if you'd like any other categories ommited. --Android Mouse 21:43, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

1. To be able to add {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Iceland/Outreach/Newsletter {{{CURRENTMONTH}}} {{{CURRENTYEAR}}}}} Max Naylor 09:21, 27 May 2007 (UTC) (or whatever the correct ParserFunctions are for current month and year);
2. On the first of every month;
3. Only to users who have not unsubscribed to the newsletter;
4. On the provision that the newsletter has been created;
5. At the bottom of a user’s talk page.

Should something like this be possible and deployable over different WikiProjects? Max Naylor 09:21, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

:If there is a list of the people that need to receive the newsletter, I could possibly do it using AWB. E ^talk 09:25, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

::Here is a list of members, and here is a list of those who do not wish to receive the newsletter. Max Naylor 10:11, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

:::I'll request bot approval now and see if that goes through, then I can start the process. Also, where is the newsletter you want distributed? E ^talk 11:15, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

::::Here is the current edition Wikipedia:WikiProject Iceland/Outreach/Newsletter June 2007, but as you can see, the month and the year will need to be variables in the bot. Hope this helps. Max Naylor 12:00, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks.

Also see: Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_8#Create_a_bot_to_update_CIA_World_Factbook_links

:I'm currently in the process of doing this. E ^talk 10:14, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

::It's just about to finish the process. All countries listed at list of countries has been changed to the new link. Alphachimpbot is currently editing every page that contains the old link. E ^talk 11:53, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

:The problem is, how would the bot find articles with a trivia section? The only way I can think of is to scan through the raw text of thousands of pages, which is obviously infeasable and impractical. If wikipedia had a decent search feature it would make the process much more easier. Anyone else have any ideas? --Android Mouse 00:52, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

::Well, to begin with, would it be possible for the bot to check all the pages in all the subcategories of this category? I'd say about 90% of the pages in there have an unmarked trivia section (apart from seasons 15{{spaced ndash}}18, which I've already tagged manually). Outside of that, I'm not really sure. -Panser Born- (talk) 08:16, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

::Just addressing the specific question (I haven't considered whether this is a good idea or not) it would probably be best if it searched a copy of the database dump? Otherwise it would have to spider the site which isn't a good use of server resources. --kingboyk 12:12, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

:::So it's possible to do this without using server resources? Surely accessing the database dump would use resources as well? -Panser Born- (talk) 20:13, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

::::If it were restricted to the Simpsons category you posted above it would probably be ok to have it check each page individually for triia sections. If that is what you want done I wouldn't mind taking on the task. --Android Mouse 23:31, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

:::::That'd be great, thanks for your help. =) -Panser Born- (talk) 12:48, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Bot written waiting for approval --Android Mouse 08:53, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Approved, all needed articles in this category have been tagged. I'm downloading the most recent database dump and will eventually modify the bot to scan untagged articles from that. --Android Mouse 23:21, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

:Awesome, you've been a great help. =) I look forward to seeing the database dump version when you get around to it. Thanks again, -Panser Born- (talk) 00:39, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

::What about some articles that have maybe only a line or two of interesting trivia, versus some articles that have pop culture references that occupy more than half the page? How does the bot choose which page to tag? Blueshirts 19:16, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Interesting question. What I could have it do is check the size of each section. If the article has a trivia or pop culture section larger than so many bytes (and is also untagged) then it would add the tag, else it would move on without editing. The question is, what size should be the defining factor if a tag is added or not? I think if it is over 512 bytes it should get a tag. For reference, my current response is 431 bytes. --Android Mouse 16:58, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

::::Sounds good. Even though I think 512 byte is sorta small compared to the trivia section of articles like Progeria, it's best to add the tag "early" so users would think twice about adding more extraneous info to the section. Blueshirts

I've been doing some of this using AWB. I searched the database dump for ==Trivia==, and tagging articles that still have ==Trivia== and dont have the template. I wasn't sure if all articles should be tagged, or just those with large trivia sections. Lately I've been doing those with over 4 bullets (tested with regex). -- pb30<talk> 03:38, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

:I don't know if it clear if all trivia sections should be tagged or just the large ones. My bot has been tagging only the ones with sections larger than 512 bytes. I was going to have it decide on the number of bullets, but some trivia sections aren't in bullet format, rather a poorly thrown together paragraph. --Android Mouse 19:12, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

::Yeah thats one downside of just looking at bullets, but it was the only way I thought of. And I think a trivia section in paragraphs looks nicer than bullets, but both should be tagged if they are too long, -- pb30<talk> 21:35, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

• Wiktionary editors have long since created to-do lists from Wikipedia article titles and worked through them. There have been at least two such projects, to my recollection. Wiktionary editors need no help from Wikipedia in this regard. I am also confident that should you raise the subject at the Beer Parlour, Wiktionary editors will inform you that they don't trust Wikipedia articles to be free from mis-spellings. ☺ Uncle G 15:45, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

::Mis-spelled words get used infrequently and therefore won't be on the top of the list, however, words like "and" and "the" get used very often and would therefore be on the top of the list, that is, if they weren't in Wiktionary already. Also, I didn't intend to use Wikipedia titles, instead I wish to use the actual words inside the articles (whether they are related to the article or not), and the words would be taken off the list as soon as they are in Wiktionary (or the word gets blacklisted as a true mis-spelling), so it still seems like a good idea. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 16:13, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Common misspellings may well satisfy the criteria for inclusion anyway. -- Coffee2theorems 18:18, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

:Are you planning on working from the XML dump of the 'pedia? An overall frequency list would be good (I think this has been done at some point?); then removing everything in the en.wikt using that XML dump, and producing the remaining list?

:The results can be added to the wikt as sup-pages of wikt:Wiktionary:Frequency lists, as we have from the entire Project Gutenberg corpus. (And this isn't technically a bot on either project.) You will be surprised at how mis-spellings rise to the top of such lists, once the 150,000 or so most frequent words are taken out. Robert Ullmann 18:22, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

To be quite honest, I'm not planning on doing anything because I'm not at all good at doing programs that use the Internet (other programs are fine), it was a suggestion for someone else to do, and basically proving that I shouldn't do anything is that I don't know what the XML dump is.

And, with all due respect, your abbreviations where a bit complicated to decipher so I will, I think, repeat the exact basic algorithm:

1. Create a list of words from the Wikipedia articles
2. Check and delete words that are on the blacklist
3. Check and delete words that are already in Wiktionary
4. Sort the list based on frequency
5. Present list

It can even check for words on the list that get changed often to a more frequent word and count them as a misspelling, e.g. the sentence says "Cheese is a soild food made from the milk of cows, goats, sheep, and other mammals." (that's a direct quote, with one misspelling, from our article on cheese) then two days later it notices that solid is written "solid" and it's therefore likely that "soild" is a misspelling.

Jeffrey.Kleykamp 18:45, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

In Wikipedia:Types_of_bots, it says that for database miner bots (like this one) it might be preferable to download a database dump and run the bot on it's own server, is that the XML dump? And where do I download the XML dump? But that all doesn't matter because I'm not doing the programming anyway, sorry, Jeffrey.Kleykamp 19:39, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

:The XML dumps are at http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20070402/ (the most recent dump as of today). You say you don't know about doing programs "that use the internet" - well, that's no problem, as the XML file is a (in case of en:wiki: *huge*) text file with some extra markup which just looks like html tags - that is, a lot of bar. \Mike(z) 21:30, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

:Before spending too much time on this, is there any evidence that Wiktionary is

1. missing any words used in Wikipedia (to any significant extent).
2. that the words that are defined in Wiktionary actually include an adequate definition of the particular meaning requireed for the actual usage in Wikipedia.

:::--121.209.184.120 04:18, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

::First thing's first, 4.1 GB is a lot to download for my internet connection, it would take 10+ hours (revised estimate: 5+ hours). Also, any words that get used often in Wikipedia are worthy of being in a dictionary (even a common misspelling), and point two of the paragraph above I don't really understand, I think however that the point is irrelevant because I just want a list of words as suggestions for Wiktionary and ordered from most common word that is not in the Wiktionary to least common. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 12:53, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Is anyone planning on making this bot or what, 'cause I ain't plannin' on doin' nothin'... Jeffrey.Kleykamp 17:49, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

:I thought about this bot and think it would be a good idea if someone made this bot and run it once a month, because it would also help with words in different languages (who's Wiktionaries aren't as near completion), especially rare or constructed languages (Klingon for example), also it would be good in the future as people from a specific language adopt new words, also about the fear of many incorrectly spelled words being on the list all you have to do is take two versions of Wikipedia and compare the two and delete any words that changed significantly in the amount of times used (so if the word "chese" went from 77 uses to 58, i.e. 25% less, then delete it, because, technically, the 77 original uses are mostly corrected by Wikipedians on the second version and the 58 uses are new misspellings, whereas the correctly spelled words are going to stay, unless someone saw it fit to delete them as they are unfit in that context or add new ones as part of an improvement to the article, and therefore the uses won't change either), please note however that the change in uses doesn't have to go down, it just needs to change by a high enough percentage.

:I also think it would be nice if people would add there name to the following list if they think it would be a good idea to make this bot:

:The task is simple, but why does it need to be done? What's wrong with the redirect? —METS501 (talk) 19:16, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

::The redirect serves as a deterrent against the use of the template in new succession boxes. However, the old code is still part of many old boxes, something which we believe complicates our template system, especially since we do not give any instructions about it but some users (especially the newer ones) might fall on it. We just want to get rid of a piece of useless code, rid Wikipedia of a spare template, and remove any sources of confusion for Wikipedia's less experienced contributors. Waltham, The Duke of 09:28, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

:::All done. —METS501 (talk) 19:52, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

::::Thank you very much. We shall initiate the procedures for its deletion soon. Waltham, The Duke of 09:59, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

1. Replace United Kingdom with United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in both first line and in nav box on right.
2. Change width of nav box to 450
3. Move to xxxx in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, keeping redirect.
4. Redirect xxxx in the UK (such as 1801 in the UK) to the new page (eliminating double redirect)

I have done all thse task manually on 1801 in the United Kingdom.

I have done tasks 1 and 2 manually on 1802 in the United Kingdom to 1806 in the United Kingdom.

LukeSurl ^{t c} 15:29, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

• The bot would generate a list of articles in :Category:Living people on a daily or twice daily basis.
• The bot would search these articles for specific terms (probably through a regular expression) that are unlikely to appear unless someone has libeled the subject. Examples include: pedophile, paedophile, rapist, etc. Basically, it'd look for any terms that probably should not be in a BLP article. I'd suggest creating an admin-only page to edit the expressions the bot looks for.
• The bot would generate a list of biographies containing these words. Obviously, some biographies, such as those of known sex offenders, would need to be placed on some sort of whitelist. I suspect, however, that the level of work involved in generating that list wouldn't be too high.

I imagine that there are technical hurdles I'm missing, but I really think a solution like this would be in order. Although I don't have the programming expertise to create such a bot, I'd be happy to assist in whatever way I could. alphachimp 07:36, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

: Well, :Category:Living people contains several hundred thousand articles... so if you wanted to do it daily I have a feeling the bot would have to be requesting pages pretty much non-stop, and even that might not be enough; won't harm the servers, they get tens of thousands of requests a second, but it might harm the bandwidth of whoever tries to run the bot :) Also, there are thousands of biographies not in :Category:Living people, and by definition they would tend to be the more obscure, less-watched ones to which libel could be introduced without detection – Gurch 16:27, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

: I'm 103 2/3% interested in this, as it's totally my bag. However, it seems more practical to simply index :Category:Living people (LP) once a day, then sit the bot on RC with a high limit (500) and refresh every 'x' minutes, depending on edit influx/site volume, checking for any edits to LP pages, adding diff content to a priority queue (i.e. anon users get priority), and finally running the diffs against badword lists, which is made even more particularly easy given the fact that the diffs highlight the changes for you :P. I personally would see that as the best possible scenario, both with regard to WP's server resources and the bot maintainer's server resources. I would probably argue, though, that a dynamically-updatable mask list available to simply "all admins" would be a bad idea, especially considering the amount of mental effort that goes into designing *good* badword lists that don't conflict with pre-existing badwords or cause a slew of false positives (e.g., while it might make sense to most people to badword /.*ass.*hole.*/i, it's pretty easy to see that that could cause a whole bunch of false positives). Trial period should probably have the bot simply add suspect edits to its user page every hour or so, so that it's easy to verify the accuracy of the bot's detection. Once it's live, it might even make more sense to simply not force the bot to revert anything at all by default, and simply let vandalism patrol admins manually (or automagically) check the bot's "I think this might be bad" list, then let them decide to manually add auto-reverting of commonly-vandalized LP entries and/or category members. Thoughts? --koder 19:45, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

:Looks alphabetical to me.. --ST47Talk 13:43, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

1. Carries the reason for blocking (as given by the admin in the block summary)
2. Gives the exact block duration
3. Describes the option of using (and not abusing) the {{tl|unblock}} request
4. Describes the option of e-mailing another administrator
5. Gives a general courtesy message asking them not to repeat behavior/editing that hurts Wikipedia and other contributors.

Such an automated bot can act on each blocking that is logged; a minor delay is obviously acceptable. We can also instruct the bot to give messages customized for the different blocking reasons that are given as pull-down options for the blocking admin. Rama's arrow (just a sexy boy) 16:08, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

:Are the comments on Special:Ipblocklist always in the same format of, (time length of block, what is blocked) (reason)? --Android Mouse 16:48, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

::You would probably be better off using the [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=block&user=&page= block log] (accessible through the [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=logevents&letype=block API]) as it won't have autoblocks. The API results are pretty straightforward to parse also. -- JLaTondre 17:26, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

:Some comments:

1. I do not recommend this for indefinite blocks. There are specifically cases (usually username block related) when WP:DENY makes sense.
2. Also, most of this information is already in the block message. Is there a specific reason to duplicate it on the talk page? Our block templates do not contain all those. I don't see a bot would need to leave anything more than the standard templates.
3. I'm worried this will cause more confusion. As can be seen at Android Mouse's talk page, despite the message his speedy delete notification bot leaves, people continue to believe he is the one who either nominated their article or deleted it. If this task is picked up by a bot, the message needs to very clear or people will make the same mistake.

:Thanks. -- JLaTondre 17:19, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

::I agree with JLaTondre about indefinite blocks (except those on offensive/inappropriate usernames). However, there is a specific need to have this special notification as all admins are obligated to properly inform blocked users of the reasons, durations and options. As for possible confusion as to who did the blocking, the bot could easily include the name of the blocking admin (if it can replicate the block summary, it can include the blocking admin) and a link to the list of administrators. Rama's arrow (just a sexy boy) 21:00, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

:::If the user doesn't know how to access their block log, it doesn't matter. They will see the blocking reason and the expiration date when they try to edit. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 21:12, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

::::The blocking reason and expiration shows up when a blocked user tries to edit. The only real purpose to talk page block notices is to elaborate on the block reason (less important now that we have templated block notices) or to let other admins know that an account is blocked without looking at the block log (less important - to me - since we got the HBC AIV helperbots.) Some admins value this notification much more than others, and it would be the main purpose of this bot, in my opinion. I don't personally see it as important, since it just takes a second to look at the block log, but others do. Grandmasterka 21:29, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

How often will a link to a date actually help someone understand the article? Maybe it's just me, but I see a wikilink as an offer for more information, and trying to read through a bunch of wikilinked dates is damned distracting.

I would like to see a bot simply remove all wikilinks to dates. In all articles with more than three such links. James S. 17:33, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

:WP:CONTEXT#Dates says Dates when they contain a day, month, and year — 25 March 2004 — or day and month — February 10 — should be linked for date preference formatting.? --ST47Talk 17:47, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

::Also, a bot simply removing links indiscriminately would not be good. You even said: "unless there is a specific reason that the link will help the reader to understand the article." Bots are usually pretty dumb. If you tell it to remove links that don't have day, month, and year, it will remove all such links, relevant or not. For example, if a specific holiday occurs on the same date each year, (like christmas) the article should have the date wikilinked. Also, removing all wikilinks to dates will leave thousands of date, month, and year artices orphaned. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 18:00, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

::I predict many angry complaints on the bot operator's talk page, if this is ever implemented. --Android Mouse 18:16, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

:Perhaps we can go about this a different way. Educate editors. The first time an editor wikilinks a date, the bot can put a note on his User page reminding him of precedent. It won't undo the past but it will help the future. davidwr ^09f9(talk) 21:40, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

:Template:Unsigned has 35,000+ transclusions;

:Template:Unsigned2 has ca. 5,000 transclusions;

:Template:Unsigned3 has ca. 200 transclusions;

:Template:UnsignedIP has ca. 1,500 transclusions; and

:Template:Undated has ca. 75 transclusions. Note: This template may not need to be substed.

I think an existing bot could handle this, but I'm not certain which is the best one to ask – off the top of my head, I can think of Bluebot. Also, there's still the question of whether it should be done. Is it worth substing each one of those transclusions? Which is better performance-wise ... 40-45 thousand bot edits or an equal number of transclusions? Are there perhaps other factors that I've not considered? ... If this is a worthwhile task, I will place a request on an operator's talk page. For now, I'm just asking for some input. Thanks, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:40, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

:I don't see why it would be worth the hassle to make all the substitutions. Is there any specific reason why that template should be substed in the first place? --Android Mouse 00:59, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

::Not that I know of ... . I just saw that a template that was supposed to be substed often wasn't. Maybe it's supposed to be substed in order to prevent server stress? For instance, HagermanBot alone has about 100 thousand edits, most of which are substitutions of the above templates. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 02:36, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

:::I wouldn't think non-substituted templates would cause that much server stress since the servers have an advanced caching system set up. Although I wouldn't know for sure, since the little things can really add up. --Android Mouse 03:28, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

::::I believe part of the reason for substing is so that the templates don't strain the server since not substing them means that each time you go to the page, you have to load at least 2 different pages. Also, my bot, which currently does substing, could do this task. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:13, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

:::::I can do this...do we have a consensus to do so? ^demon^{[omg plz]} 00:36, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

:I can do it with my bot, but do we have consensus do to this? ^demon^{[omg plz]} 19:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

::Yes. "Per Wikipedia:Template namespace ("not masquerading as article content")", and the usage note on {{tl|fc}} itself, if you'd bothered checking. 81.104.175.145 16:13, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

:::{{tick}} Done. Made 225 edits total across all 4 templates. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 00:35, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

:Related templates: {{tl|afc}} {{tl|lfc}} {{tl|efs}} {{tl|fseason}}. 81.104.175.145 14:01, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

::{{tick}} Done, 41 edits. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 15:12, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Ta muchly. 81.104.175.145 16:06, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

--Stromek 11:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

:Could you be more specific please? What type of information are you planning to transfer? --Android Mouse 19:42, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

:What format is the database in? Lmc169 21:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

:Well, I can write you a perl script that can save the data, but we need to know how it's stored. --ST47Talk 21:27, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

::Why wouldn't this go into the Czech Wikipedia rather than the English one?

::Also, as I read the request, the plan would be for a subsequent updates to the database to result in updates to the Wikipedia article. The only way to accomplish that without overwriting the contributions of other editors is if the article is vary structured (think, for example, of infoboxes), which is pretty much antithetical to what Wikipedia is about. So I don't think updates via bot makes any sense at all.

::(And did anyone mention notability - 800 gardens?) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:04, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

::Couple problems with this. {{tl|unreferenced}} is for articles with no sources, just because an article does not have inline cites does not mean it is unreferenced. {{tl|citation style}} would be preferred. Also, unless the external link is already used like a footnote, how would the bot know where to put it? Also, I belive there has been discussions on replacing with {{tl|Reflist}}. Many people are against it, usually advocating using {{tl|Reflist}} only in articles with a lot of footnotes. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 16:58, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

:::This could also present an issue when dealing with stubs. If a stub is 2-3 sentences long and there's only one reference (or, more commonly, an external link), noting that the article lacks in-text citations seems unnecessary. Of course, the bot could be programmed to ignore articles below a certain length, or any articles tagged with a stub template. Also, though I prefer the use of {{tl|reflist}}, I too remember some opposition to its use. See, for instance, the template's talk page; there may be discussion elsewhere that I'm not aware of. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:50, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

:I don't remember which, but a bot already does this. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 20:05, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

::I think its User:DomBot Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 20:06, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Even better if the bot would look for a reply that contained some special content, like {{fixbadlink}} and fix it automatically.

The latter may not be worth the effort but the former is certainly worthwhile and very low-risk as it doesn't change any articles.

Of course any such bot would have to respect an "I know what I'm doing" notice on the User's main or talk page so as not to bother experienced editors. davidwr ^09f9(talk) 22:04, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

There is absolutely no reason to go around fixing redirects though. See this section of the redirect guideline, the dabs or links that go to the wrong target should be addressed but not the redirects. IvoShandor 15:35, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

• 'bmi' -> 'BMI'
• 'bmibaby' -> 'BMI Baby'
• 'bmi regional' -> 'BMI Regional'
• 'wagn' -> 'WAGN'

81.104.175.145 22:38, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

:On what articles? --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:01, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

::Any that contain them. 81.104.175.145 23:17, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

:Anyone? 81.104.175.145 04:08, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

:You can do this yourself with WP:AWB if you run windows :) --ST47Talk 10:07, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

::I'll see what I can do. The problem with automatic spell checking though, even if it's just simple search and replace work as it is in this case, is that there are bound to be false positives. Even misspellings that look like nobody would possibly ever use them on purpose will invariably generate false positives and, usually, there will be a handful in a batch of 500 or so edits. That's why those edits should always be reviewed by a human. It's mundane work that will most likely go completely unnoticed but it's important. -- Seed 2.0 11:02, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

:::Oh well, looks like you did it yourself. -- Seed 2.0 11:44, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I propose a (probably dedicated) bot that would periodically go through the most recent archives of these boards, search for links pointing to sections in them and update these. E.g., the bot would change WP:ANI#Foo or Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Foo to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive251#Foo. Sandstein 05:05, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

:I'm actually working on such a bot, as suggested here. I didn't expect it me to take as long, but I'm easily distracted :-$ --Android Mouse 05:14, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Bot approved and now running. --Android Mouse 02:48, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

:Thanks! Sandstein 15:09, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I've been doing this manually (with another user stepping in when I was slacking), but would still much prefer an automated bot to do this. Updating the chart would be a bonus, but not required immediately. Getting the data recorded is more important to me for now, and generating the pretty chart could come later, perhaps by a separate bot if needed. MECU≈talk 16:40, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

:{{accepted}} --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 18:18, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

:Good news, I wrote something that will work. Bad news: there's an "if" in that statement... if the bug I uncovered in the Special:Unusedimages page is fixed... --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 23:30, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

::What bug? I might be able to get a dev to work on it. MECU≈talk 16:52, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

:::Bug #10153. It's alright, though... I switched the method I was using from counting the images to reading the header at top (which will be another small bug report later... it reports the right number instead of the number selected as a limit, but the wording is wrong). So, in conclusion... it works. How often do you need it run and where do you want the results? --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 16:59, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

::::Awesome! Once a day, preferably at the same time each day. You can just report the results and append them onto the end of the table that's going at User:Mecu/OrphanImages. Start ASAP. I don't care what time of day it runs, so in the off-peak hours is fine. Thanks again! MECU≈talk 17:03, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

{{done}} 16:59, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

:I've added a feature request for WP:AWB which auto-adds the date to other cleanup tags. Also User:SmackBot auto-dates other templates, could probably do {{tl|trivia}} as well -- pb30<talk> 22:26, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

::Thanks for adding the AWB feature request. Since this is a recurrent task, I'll notify Rich Farmbrough to see if this is something that SmackBot would take on. I didn't notify him initially as the bot was not operating the last time I checked, on May 29 ... but it seems to be up now. Cheers, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 22:49, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Yes, SB took a four day break while I was visiting my father. It has now taken this on. Rich Farmbrough, 15:56 4 June 2007 (GMT).

s/(\[\[|)\s*($image)\s*(|.*(\[\[.*\]\].*)*)?(\]\]|<\/gallery>)//g. Tim^V.B._{{critic & speak}} 15:44, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

:Any chance you can figure out the TBD info first? --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 15:33, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks to the bot operator that took care of this! --evrik ^(talk) 15:56, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

{{done}} manually by some other user... --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 17:45, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I have a reasonably simple bot request, I would write it myself (It is incredibly simple), but my bot framework I am using (jwbf for java, if anyone knows any better ones tell me) has some MAJOR bugs regarding categories, and it can't fetch subcategories.

The idea is to parse :Category:Fair_use_images and its subcategories, and reading the list of pages the images are used on and seeing if they are used on any User namespace pages. If so, it removes them and warns the user in question. It's a task I know many users do, and it would probably free up a lot of time.

Note that I am new to images, and I believe that image policy agrees with this idea, however if not please correct me.

Thanks! Matt - TheFearow 08:10, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

:It's my understanding that Eagle 101's Gnome bot already does this and I think BetacommandBot still processes ORFU'd images. --Seed 2.0 08:59, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

:Winbot is already doing unicodification work (and Curpsbot-unicodify used to). In addition to that, many users are unicodifying articles they're cleaning up or otherwise working on with AWB. Having said that, if you don't mind waiting a couple of weeks, I could grab the latest DD and make a list. After that, the next step would be to see if there's consensus to convert NBSPs and the like which, frankly, might be a problem. I suspect false positives might be a another issue, in which case those edits would have to be supervised. But, yeah, it might be worth looking into. I'm a bit busy right now but please feel free to remind me in a couple of weeks. As an aside, you might want to read WP:ACCOUNT to make it easier for others to contact you (see [http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9213 this]). --Seed 2.0 16:51, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

::Thanks. Is converting &nbsp; to {{tl|nowrap}} related to unicodification? How is a "false positive" even possible with this? 75.35.110.164 12:48, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

:::To tell you the truth, I think I misread your request (sorry). I thought that was just an example of the work you wanted done. Yeah, the nowrap stuff is way more trivial than general unicodification. Hmm, tables might still be a problem since "&nbsp;" is often used as a placeholder. Tell you what, remind me in two weeks to look into it and I'll see what I can do (unless somebody else wants to take this on, of course). -- Seed 2.0 16:57, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

::::Another case where &nbsp; can't be replaced with {{nowrap}} is wide spaces created using multiple consecutive &nbsp; and/or normal spaces (like     this). This is also probably most likely to occur in tables and such, or perhaps in inline program code where spaces should not be collapsed but <pre> cannot be used. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:04, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::Good point. How about: (A: space or newline)(B: 1 or more nonspace)&nbsp;(C: 1 or more nonspace)(D: space or newline) -- is there any situation where that could not be converted to (A){{nowrap|(B) (C)}}(D)? 75.35.110.164 02:35, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

:WP:BRFA --ST47Talk 10:07, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

:: Well, Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/OsamaKBOT. I am starting now--OsamaK 19:21, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

:::Please correct me if I'm wrong but I'm under the impression that your bot was only approved for interwiki work. If you want to fix double redirects, you need to get approval for that as well. --Seed 2.0 08:31, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Basically, my proposal is to have a bot that erases unlinked entries. It's something that I would like to write, though. --Sigma 7 00:06, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

:In that case, please request approval here first. Before you do, I would suggest that you red WP:RED, if you haven't already done so. Frankly, I'm a bit skeptical if this is an appropriate task for a bot but this is probably a more appropriate place to go over that in detail. -- Seed 2.0 08:38, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

::For the birth & death sections of calendar articles, red links are purposefully excluded. There are HTML comments stating do not add non-Wikipedia entries. For other sections, it is more problematic. -- JLaTondre 13:25, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

:It shouldn't be to hard to get a a copy of MartinBot's Source Code and adjust it for this job, if you need any help I'll try and help I'm ok with perl and python and it won't be like your writing all the code, most of it's done all ready. --Lwarf ^Talk! 12:09, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

:It is best to request the task here and let somebody else who can code the bot implement and run the idea. I would, though, be willing to setup an svn system for you and some partial collaborative work. --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 03:51, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Please could, if possible, a bot go through and replace all links that link to Project Apollo to Apollo program. This is the list of over 500 articles which link to Special:Whatlinkshere/Project Apollo.

Basically, I want to make all pages link directly to Apollo program rather than a redirect.

You may think this unnecessary, that's okay. Thanks anyway (I've been at it all morning).

--J. Atkins (talk | contribs) 12:03, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

:Generally, changing a link to point directly at an article rather than at the redirect is something we don't approve bots to do. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 12:39, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

::(Edit conflict) Uh, what he said. ;) Please see WP:R. Thank you. -- Seed 2.0 12:41, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

::Okay. I should have looked at the redirect policy first, sorry. Thanks for clarifying it. --J. Atkins (talk | contribs) 16:12, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

{{declined}}

A bot is set to run on an account without the word "bot" in it. It will place a welcome template on new user's talk page (I like {{t1|WelcomeMenu}}). Now, everyone always says "it's doesn't have the feeling to it if you're welcomed by a bot". This is why the name wouldn't include "bot" and the account could be shared (ahh...a violation of account policy :) ) by several trusted users/admins who would answer questions left on the bot's talk page (since it would be welcoming every user, it would probably receive a lot of messages.) Like I said... just a proposal. May sound a little crazy. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:07, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

:I like the idea of a welcoming bot, but I think the only way to get around the obvious impersonal problem is for the bot to sign the welcome from a user (the user could be changed with each welcome taken from a list of users that wish for the bot to sign their name). I think this could alleviate most of the problems that are associated with a WelcomeBot. Ryan Postlethwaite 23:17, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

::Wow Ryan...I never thought of that. That's a great idea! Maybe I'll find someone who's programmed a denied welcome bot before and ask them if they can do that. Then submit a BRFA. I think ST47 has written one. I've asked him if he could do something like you've suggested. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:20, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

:::That'd be interesting. perhaps users could 'sign up' and for every welcome, one of their signatures could be used at random? I'll pull the code out of where ever it is and try to hack something, we could do, say, if a user edits and has a blank User talk, they get welcomed, but it would need to be people who edited and have no warnings...someone should post to the VP. --ST47Talk 23:33, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

::::Maybe the list should be kept offline? --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:35, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

:::::Yeah, that's probably wise. Two processes would be the way to go, one to get the list of users and another to screen them, first for contribs, then for a user talk page.

::::::So it would only welcome users who have made an edit? And I've linked to this at the pumps proposal's page. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:41, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

::::Yeah, a blank talk, with contribs would be best, but maybe it should be kept to users that have registered within the past week/month (not sure how feesable that is)? VP might be a good idea for this one. Ryan Postlethwaite 23:44, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

:::::Well, it'd be accounts that had just registered. The IRC end would look for new accounts and make a list, and then once it hits 500, output the oldest 100. --ST47Talk 23:50, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

:::::Please, please, don't welcome vandals, trolls, impersonators, blockable usernames, spammers or sockpuppets, especially for their contributions. It really cheapens genuine welcomes. For this reason I think it is a bad idea, but whatever. Thanks. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 23:52, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

::::::Well, it wouldn't leave a message if the page exists, so if it has a vandalism warning, it won't be welcomed. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:57, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

:::::::It's also the vandals without warnings who shouldn't be welcomed. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 23:58, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

::::::(2ec)Well, if this goes forward, it'd welcome users who had edited but had no warnings, and I added the delay to ensure that if they had vandalized, there would have been time to warn. --ST47Talk 23:59, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

:::::::If we wanted a name without "bot", User:Welcomer is available. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 00:01, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Sounds like an interesting idea... Tim^V.B._{{critic & speak}} 15:31, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

::You really should not welcome people at random, but rather should look through their contributions and give advice as needed. A bot cannot do that. ^(H) 00:04, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

:::Most people just place a welcome template, H. Which is what the bot would be doing. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 00:06, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

:::H: Noone does that, this bot would be no different. --ST47Talk 00:10, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

::::Exactly. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 00:11, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

:::::Support, I like this idea of a special bot. As R said before, User:Welcomer is available and that would fit perfectly with the template chosen. Let me know about the progress of this :) Extranet is now E ^talk 00:42, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

::::I do precisely that. I would hope many editors do. If you don't look through contributions you could be leaving an utterly inappropriate message. Why else would all the specialized welcome messages exist if not for people welcoming individually based upon context?

::::See also bugzilla:9213: New-messages bar not coming up and/or getting stuck up for anons. --Quiddity 01:47, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

::::: If you used the signature of or maybe as second signature (i.e. User:welcomer & User:jeepday {<-- me}) where the second user was not only a volunteer on the welcome committee but was also actively editing currently. That way they are getting a welcome from someone who is actually currently online. I think I would also welcome IP's with message tailored to them talking about the benefits of signing up. There is nothing wrong with dropping a welcome message on the talk page of a new vandal, lets them know they are not working in the dark. (I sometimes drop a {{tl|welcome}} instead of a "test tag" on IP's) Jeepday (talk) 13:57, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

::::::How would we determine who is online? I could make an IRC channel where people - who already signed up with their sig and IRC name - could sign in and out? --ST47Talk 14:56, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Welcome them by hand thanks. This has been denied many many times, and the idea of having it deliver on behalf of people has been discussed as well. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 15:48, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

How about something like User:SuggestBot. Users opt-in, and then receive a small list of some new users with blank talk and some contribs. A user can then make sure the contribs are helpful and post whatever welcome message is best. -- pb30<talk> 16:08, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

• Given the huge amount of sockpuppets, test accounts, vandal accounts and other junk, I'm not at all sure it's worth the effort to "welcome" all those. >Radiant< 12:09, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
• But there's plenty of new people that come here to write an encyclopedia. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 22:01, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
• Yes, but I think it's better, when you see some useful edits by an account with no talk page yet, to give them a manual and personal "hello", than to have this automated by some program. >Radiant< 09:01, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
• Just like humans do, the bot will welcome with a premade template. I've seen very fwe new users who've actually received a custom message. Also, as said above, it will sign with a users signature. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 11:12, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support many users seem overwhelmed when they first join Wikipedia and a bot would be a great way to make sure anyone who joins knows where to go to for help. Blackjack48  ♠ â™£ 15:17, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
• There's a convenient "Help" link in the left menu. If that can't provide resources as well the welcome message, then it should be improved. –Pomte 08:38, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

::A welcome from a bot is no different that a custom account creation message. I oppose welcoming people without examining their contributions to see if they should be welcomed. ^(H) 15:20, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

:::As said above, if it's a vandal, it will probably have warnings. If it has warnings, the page exists. If the page exists, it won't welcome them. (There is an amount of time between the account creation and the welcome). --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 21:43, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

:I have done mass welcoming manually, using blank pages as a list, that is not the case. Many of the blank talk pages I was going to welcome did indeed have vandalism only histories. Other had made simple mistakes like not understanding our inclusion criteria. My point is that dropping a welcome and leaving was not enough, I had to examine the contributions and act accordingly. ^(H) 02:14, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

::So how about this: A user signs up to receive a handful of users to welcome, delivered by a bot. The bot looks at new users who have been a member for X amount of time, have X amount of edits, and have a blank talk page. This way users can look at the contribs, pick the correct template, and post it. -- pb30<talk> 03:21, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

: Being welcomed by a bot (actually all the communication with WP automatons) could be quite a turnoff for people. Look at the bot informing people about their pictures proposed for delete - either people ignore it, get upset or take it as already made decision of some power controling the robots. I can't remeber if I ever saw the desired response for this message on IfD. Pavel Vozenilek 20:36, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

::I agree. And what about when they find out it was just some bot made to look like a person? "You deceived me!" Better for humans or other sentient beings (now no-one can accuse me of systemic bias :D) to give the welcome message. It's more personal and shows our wiki-community feel. In a nutshell, what it means is if welcomes are given out automatically, then the welcomes are useless, because there isn't actually anyone there that's welcoming them. --WikiSlasher 13:05, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

:::This maybe late, but Wikiquotes has a welcome bot. ~ Wikihermit _(HermesBot) 02:15, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

:my bot can do this, can you expand on what you want though? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 22:29, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

::The WikiProject which I founded, "Wikipedia:WikiProject Manitoba", is in need of a bot that can go and tag all stub talk pages with the {{tl|WPMAN|class=stub}} template. The stub name is {{tl|Manitoba-stub}}, and there are a couple types of Manitoba related stubs.

::The fact is, all that tagging will take forever, and I was wondering if a bot could do it for me. :) GrooveDog 02:11, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

:::define and there are a couple types of Manitoba related stubs otherwise it sounds clear cut. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 03:20, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

:::I would need your bot to tag the talk pages of all articles that include the {{tl|Manitoba-stub}}, {{tl|Manitoba-road-stub}}, {{tl|Manitoba-geo-stub}}, and {{tl|Manitoba-politician-stub}} templates. It would tag those talk pages with {{WPMAN|class=stub}} template, so that I don't have to, because there are many many many stubs in those categories. GrooveDog 12:08, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

:ok give me a few days. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 15:22, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

::Currently running myself. --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 17:48, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

{{done}} Work will finish tonight.. (tagging one page per minute). --Auto^{(talk / contribs)} 19:17, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Is there a some pywikipedia code to do this? :: maelgwn :: talk 02:24, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

:Instead of deleting or delinking the images, I would recommend replacing them. A simple placeholder image, like eg. :Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg should do the trick. That way, the layout of the article's doesn't get screwed up (well, hopefully). --Seed 2.0 18:20, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

::Maybe, but it has to be a general image since there a number of reasons why images are deleted. I forgot one thing the bot should do. It should ignore images withe deletion summary that includes "I8" which means that the image has moved to commons, and it should also check if there is an image at commons with the same name and ignore it if it exists. Rettetast 18:32, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

:::You could do it with AWB, but it would take a while. --Wikihermit ^{(Talk • HermesBot)} 23:32, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

::::I wanted to make this bot, but I never found a way to sort the logs by namespace. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 23:51, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::In AWB? Make List from: then add the log. It doesn't work for AWB because the image is already deleted. If you wanted to do this with AWB, you would have to manually add the deleted image under More. I don't think there is a simpler way with AWB. Maybe you could check with Betacommand, Rettetast. Wikihermit ^{(Talk • HermesBot)} 00:27, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

::::::Yeah, I knew I couldn't do it with AWB, but IIRC, you can't sort the logs by namespace. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 13:54, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::::AzaToth has just added a great feature to TW, that does just this for up to 500 images at a time. --R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!)

Don't User:CommonsDelinker and User:OrphanBot already do much of this? How big is the problem with images that aren't caught by either bot (yes, I know that there are some images that don't fit into the remit of either)? --ais523 17:23, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Also note that I managed to use both terms in my sentence, isn't that nice ;-) Jeffrey.Kleykamp 23:33, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

:Type i.e. in the search box, but then press "search" not go, and voilà you have a list with the sentence they are used in. Jackaranga 08:03, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

::But that doesn't really give you a list, e.g. for "e.g." it gives you "E G Martin", "E G Marshall", "E. G. Coffman", etc. which has nothing to do with exempli gratia, what I want is a list like this:

::*"(e.g., choosing the anti-tank gunner to combat enemy armored vehicles)" article: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2

::*[Next quote here] article [Next article here]

::::A bot couldn't determine the difference between the two. :: maelgwn :: talk 00:12, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::A bot could tell the difference because there are spaces between the E and G, also the words are capitalized and the titles of articles, I only want the text inside the article and it would look for these exact spellings: "e.g.", "e.g", "eg", "eg.", and the exact same thing with E capitalized because it might be used in the beginning of the sentence. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 09:56, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

:I'll take this one on. I've already started thinking about handling similar cases for internal links (ex. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Main Page] vs Main Page). This would be similar. I've seen a number of variations in how people format these (ex. Main Page[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page]) that will need to be taken into account. It will take me a couple of days to put it all together. I will submit a bot request in awhile unless someone sees a problem with this. -- JLaTondre 13:21, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

::Its almost possible with AWB. The only problem I'm having is adding the second ] to the end of the link. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:HermesBot/Sandboxes/Sandbox1&diff=prev&oldid=137347307]. --Wikihermit ^{(Talk • HermesBot)} 00:01, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

{{Done}} HermesBot is now approved to do this. ~ Wikihermit _(HermesBot) 04:10, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

:Thanks. This, that and the other 08:10, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

:External links in the references sections should be left alone though I think. --WikiSlasher 07:11, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

::It doesn't make much difference, does it [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks&diff=prev&oldid=137759307]? It still links to the same page, and I can't find anything in the MOS, so I'll leave it unless someone shows a problem. ~ Wikihermit _(HermesBot) 15:03, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

:::Well, the formatting of the link would be different. It would show as a Wikimedia-project link, rather than a fully external link. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 15:13, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

::::It's a minor issue, but if you're making a reference in an article to a Wikimedia project (like in the article Wikipedia) and you go "printable version" and print it, normally it would have the URL there in brackets next to it, e.g. "List of policies and guidelines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_policies_and_guidelines) . English Wikipedia. Retrieved on 2007-01-31." So someone could jump straight to the reference without going to Wikipedia, then typing it in the box. Also, this way you won't risk making a bad link in any number of our mirrors. It might not matter that much though. --WikiSlasher 11:02, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Kransky 10:35, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

:Probably not a good bot request. AWB... This, that and the other 10:43, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

:Note: The category was tagged as {{tnull|db-author}} so I guess we can consider this request withdrawn. -- Seed 2.0 10:46, 12 June 2007 (UTC) Link in the request has been changed. --Seed 2.0 10:48, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

:Can you provide a complete list of instances? :: maelgwn :: talk 07:58, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

{{Not done}}{{spaced ndash}}MadmanBot did a trial run at 2 edits/minute and discovered a few things:

1. The number of talk pages in :Category:Biography articles with comments is declining rapidly -- it seems transclusions of the new template no longer include that category, so talk pages are removed from it as soon as MediaWiki realizes there's no reason for them to be there anymore. The category is therefore now useless until the category is added back to the template and the bot waits about a day for it to be repopulated.
2. Those comments subpages are used by several entities such as the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team. The bot would have to check Whatlinkshere and subst: each reference to the comments. While this is possible, it may be more advantageous to keep things the way they are for now, as WP 1.0 is a very important project. Talk it over with your fellow editors and get back to me.

Thanks! — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 04:23, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

The only solution I can really see is that we have that line of code in there and have the category be: :Category:Biography articles with comments. Then we would have to go through and move any of our comments to the main talk page, manually. If our comments are the only thing on the page then we can list it for deletion. Does this sound good to you? --Psychless 04:46, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

:You can do that. A bot wouldn't be involved in any way, then? The bot can easily copy all comments to the talk page. It has no way of determining, however, if those comments are only those of WikiProject Biography. — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 04:49, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

:OK. You didn't expect this problem, which is fine. But please, before trying something else and coming up against another problem, please revert back to the status quo, and try a longer discussion, involving more people, before making changes like this. At the moment, this looks like a reaction against people asking for comments during the assessment drive, and that is a bad motivation to change things like this. Carcharoth 10:03, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Per responses here and on Template talk:WPBiography, this is clearly no longer an uncontroversial task. The Psychless doubtless had good intentions, but it would seem that the drawbacks of modifying the current Comments structure greatly outweigh any benefits that there might be. WPBiography cannot remove (or have removed) these subpages without verifying that the only comments on each page are theirs, and that the subpages are not transcluded by any other pages. As such, this is not a job for a bot.

{{Declined}} — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 12:12, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

:Sounds like a good idea. I assume it would be easiest and most efficent for a bot to scan a database dump for this to find unnoted sections. Before I write this, are there any other suggestions on what the bot should avoid or look out for? I'll begin creating it in about 2 or so days if I this recieves no respones or input. --Android Mouse 17:12, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

• (1) Scrape a transclusion list from "what links here" for {{tl|WPBiography}} (warning: this is large list of nearly 400,000 articles). This will be a list of talk pages of biographical articles, with the talk pages to be examined, along with the associated articles, in the next step. If possible, exclude from this list the pages that have "non-bio=yes" in the WPBiography template.
• (2) Run down the list and examine the talk pages and associated articles to determine the following:
• (a) Examine the talk page to see if the WPBiography template has a "listas=" parameter (excluding cases where 'listas' is there but blank). If it does, extract and list the listas parameter.
• (b) Examine the talk page to see if it has a DEFAULTSORT magic word on the page. If it does, extract and list the sort value being used. If it doesn't, note this as well.
• (c) Examine the article page to see if it has a DEFAULTSORT magic word on the page. If it does, extract and list the sort value being used. If it doesn't, note this as well.
• (d) Examine the article page to see if category pipe-sorting is being used. (Should be anything after a "|" in the category tags). If so, extract and list the sort values being used (there may often be more than one sort being used). If no pipe-sorting is being used (sometimes the pipe-sort character is there with nothing after it), note this as well.

The aim of this is to try and get a handle on pipe-sorting, DEFAULTSORTing, listas, and sort them out, but for biographical articles only. These are the ones that most urgently need this to be sorted out, and the vast majority will simply be a switch from "NAMES SURNAME" to "SURNAME, NAMES". The next step would be getting humans to pore over this data and decide what to do next. The ultimate aim is to have categories involving people properly pipe-sorted so that they can be reliably browsed.

• (e) As a bonus, could the bot-generated list also state whether the article contains Wikipedia:Persondata data, and extract that as well, as this often contains relevant information on how the article should be listed in a list or category?

Some relevant links: {{tl|WPBiography}}, Wikipedia:Category#Category sorting, Wikipedia:Category#Setting a default sort key and Wikipedia:Persondata. Note also {{tl|DEFAULTSORT}}, as many people use the template pipe character (|) instead of the magic word colon (:).

So, is a bot the best way to get this data, or do I need to persuade someone to do lots of datamining on a database dump (I wouldn't really know how to handle or process a database dump)? Carcharoth 16:25, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

----

:Long discussion moved to User:Polbot/ideas/defaultsort

----

• Phew! I think moving this somewhere else to thrash out the details might be an idea! Carcharoth 13:41, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

• I moved much of this to User:Polbot/ideas/defaultsort. I'll write up a request for bot approval today or tomorrow.{{spaced ndash}}Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 13:53, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
• Thanks. Carcharoth 14:05, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

:ill start preping for this and should have some data for you to review. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 00:32, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

::A request for the bot operator... for convenience's sake, could the bot please add the template to any existing {{tl|WikiProjectBannerShell}}, if one exists? It's actually quite easy to do with a preg_replace. If one doesn't yet exist but should after the addition of {{tl|WPVolleyball}}, the page will be automatically identified and a helper from the {{tl|WikiProjectBannerShell}} cleanup task force will get to it. It's difficult to have a bot create the {{tl|WikiProjectBannerShell}} correctly. — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 00:48, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

:Please look these cats over and remove any that shouldn't be tagged. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 01:25, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

::All pages in the Volleyball cat tree should be tagged. I'm unfamiliar with bots so I ask the question, Can pages that already included the template be ignored, or will there be duplicate templates on an articles talk space? BrianZ^(talk) 14:27, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

:::After struggling with encoding for a bit, I manager to generate this list. Betacommand probably has a "do stuff with all pages in this category" sort of program (which is possibly why he proposed the tagging by category), but if a simple list is needed, I made one. Gracenotes^T § 16:28, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Category:2006 in volleyball
Category:2007 in volleyball
Category:American volleyball administrators
Category:American volleyball coaches
Category:American volleyball competitions
Category:American volleyball players
Category:Argentine volleyball coaches
Category:Argentine volleyball players
Category:Australian volleyball players
Category:Austrian volleyball clubs
Category:Azerbaijani volleyball clubs
Category:Beach Volleyball World Championships
Category:Beach volleyball
Category:Beach volleyball at the Olympics
Category:Beach volleyball competitions
Category:Beach volleyball players
Category:Belarusian volleyball coaches
Category:Belarusian volleyball players
Category:Belgian volleyball clubs
Category:Belgian volleyball players
Category:Brazilian volleyball players
Category:Bulgarian volleyball players
Category:Canadian volleyball coaches
Category:Canadian volleyball players
Category:Catalan volleyball players
Category:Chinese volleyball coaches
Category:Chinese volleyball players
Category:College volleyball venues
Category:Cuban volleyball players
Category:Cypriot volleyball clubs
Category:Danish volleyball coaches
Category:Danish volleyball players
Category:Dominican Republic volleyball players
Category:Dutch volleyball clubs
Category:Dutch volleyball players
Category:Fictional volleyball players
Category:Filipino volleyball competitions
Category:Finnish volleyball players
Category:French volleyball clubs
Category:French volleyball players
Category:German volleyball clubs
Category:German volleyball players
Category:Greek volleyball clubs
Category:Greek volleyball players
Category:Indian volleyball players
Category:Indoor arenas in Cyprus
Category:Israeli volleyball players
Category:Italian volleyball clubs
Category:Italian volleyball coaches
Category:Italian volleyball players
Category:Japanese volleyball players
Category:Japanese volleyball teams
Category:Kenyan volleyball players
Category:LSU Lady Tigers volleyball coaches
Category:Mexican volleyball players
Category:Montenegrin volleyball clubs
Category:National volleyball teams
Category:Norwegian volleyball players
Category:Olympic beach volleyball players
Category:Olympic volleyball players
Category:Olympic volleyball players by country
Category:Olympic volleyball players by year
Category:Olympic volleyball players of Argentina
Category:Olympic volleyball players of Australia
Category:Olympic volleyball players of Brazil
Category:Olympic volleyball players of Canada
Category:Olympic volleyball players of China
Category:Olympic volleyball players of Cuba
Category:Olympic volleyball players of France
Category:Olympic volleyball players of Germany
Category:Olympic volleyball players of Greece
Category:Olympic volleyball players of Italy
Category:Olympic volleyball players of Japan
Category:Olympic volleyball players of Kenya
Category:Olympic volleyball players of Norway
Category:Olympic volleyball players of Poland
Category:Olympic volleyball players of Russia
Category:Olympic volleyball players of Serbia and Montenegro
Category:Olympic volleyball players of South Korea
Category:Olympic volleyball players of Tunisia
Category:Olympic volleyball players of the Dominican Republic
Category:Olympic volleyball players of the Netherlands
Category:Olympic volleyball players of the Soviet Union
Category:Olympic volleyball players of the United States
Category:Pan American Volleyball Championships
Category:Peruvian volleyball players
Category:Polish volleyball clubs
Category:Polish volleyball players
Category:Portuguese Volleyball competitions
Category:Portuguese volleyball teams
Category:Puerto Rican volleyball players
Category:Russian volleyball clubs
Category:Russian volleyball players
Category:Serbian volleyball players
Category:South Korean volleyball players
Category:Soviet Union volleyball players
Category:Spanish volleyball clubs
Category:Spanish volleyball players
Category:Swedish volleyball clubs
Category:Swiss volleyball clubs
Category:Swiss volleyball players
Category:Taiwanese volleyball players
Category:Tunisian volleyball players
Category:Turkish volleyball clubs
Category:Turkish volleyball players
Category:United States volleyball clubs
Category:Volleyball World Championship
Category:Volleyball at the 1996 Summer Olympics
Category:Volleyball at the 2000 Summer Olympics
Category:Volleyball at the 2004 Summer Olympics
Category:Volleyball at the Olympics
Category:Volleyball biography stubs
Category:Volleyball by country
Category:Volleyball clubs
Category:Volleyball coaches
Category:Volleyball competitions
Category:Volleyball in Argentina
Category:Volleyball in Austria
Category:Volleyball in Azerbaijan
Category:Volleyball in Belgium
Category:Volleyball in Croatia
Category:Volleyball in Cyprus
Category:Volleyball in France
Category:Volleyball in Germany
Category:Volleyball in Greece
Category:Volleyball in Italy
Category:Volleyball in Japan
Category:Volleyball in Montenegro
Category:Volleyball in Poland
Category:Volleyball in Portugal
Category:Volleyball in Russia
Category:Volleyball in Spain
Category:Volleyball in Sweden
Category:Volleyball in Switzerland
Category:Volleyball in Taiwan
Category:Volleyball in Turkey
Category:Volleyball in the Netherlands
Category:Volleyball in the Philippines
Category:Volleyball in the United States
Category:Volleyball organisations
Category:Volleyball players
Category:Volleyball players at the 1964 Summer Olympics
Category:Volleyball players at the 1968 Summer Olympics
Category:Volleyball players at the 1972 Summer Olympics
Category:Volleyball players at the 1976 Summer Olympics
Category:Volleyball players at the 1980 Summer Olympics
Category:Volleyball players at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Category:Volleyball players at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Category:Volleyball players at the 1992 Summer Olympics
Category:Volleyball players at the 1996 Summer Olympics
Category:Volleyball players at the 2000 Summer Olympics
Category:Volleyball players at the 2004 Summer Olympics
Category:Volleyball players at the 2008 Summer Olympics
Category:Volleyball players by country
Category:Volleyball venues
Category:Volleyball video games
Category:Women's volleyball
Category:Years in volleyball

Gr, I had written a recursive algorithm while offline that made a list of every single page in :Category:Volleyball and all subcategories to a given depth (in this case, no limit). It works, but Betacommand made the list first, so use his; perhaps I shall made use of my function at a later date. Gracenotes^T § 01:37, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

:done Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 02:10, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Category:1906 San Francisco earthquake
Category:1960 earthquakes
Category:1993 earthquakes
Category:2001 earthquakes
Category:2002 earthquakes
Category:2003 earthquakes
Category:2004 Indian Ocean earthquake
Category:2004 earthquakes
Category:2005 Kashmir earthquake
Category:2005 earthquakes
Category:2006 earthquakes
Category:2007 earthquakes
Category:Earthquake articles needing a picture
Category:Earthquakes by century
Category:Earthquakes by continent
Category:Earthquakes by country
Category:Earthquakes in Afghanistan
Category:Earthquakes in Africa
Category:Earthquakes in Argentina
Category:Earthquakes in Armenia
Category:Earthquakes in Australia
Category:Earthquakes in Azerbaijan
Category:Earthquakes in Belgium
Category:Earthquakes in California
Category:Earthquakes in Canada
Category:Earthquakes in Chile
Category:Earthquakes in China
Category:Earthquakes in Colombia
Category:Earthquakes in Eritrea
Category:Earthquakes in Europe
Category:Earthquakes in France
Category:Earthquakes in Greece
Category:Earthquakes in India
Category:Earthquakes in Indonesia
Category:Earthquakes in Iran
Category:Earthquakes in Italy
Category:Earthquakes in Jamaica
Category:Earthquakes in Japan
Category:Earthquakes in Laos
Category:Earthquakes in Mendoza Province
Category:Earthquakes in Mexico
Category:Earthquakes in Montana
Category:Earthquakes in Morocco
Category:Earthquakes in New Zealand
Category:Earthquakes in Pakistan
Category:Earthquakes in Papua New Guinea
Category:Earthquakes in Peru
Category:Earthquakes in Portugal
Category:Earthquakes in Romania
Category:Earthquakes in Russia
Category:Earthquakes in Spain
Category:Earthquakes in Switzerland
Category:Earthquakes in Syria
Category:Earthquakes in Taiwan
Category:Earthquakes in Turkey
Category:Earthquakes in Venezuela
Category:Earthquakes in the 12th century
Category:Earthquakes in the 13th century
Category:Earthquakes in the 14th century
Category:Earthquakes in the 16th century
Category:Earthquakes in the 17th century
Category:Earthquakes in the 18th century
Category:Earthquakes in the 19th century
Category:Earthquakes in the 20th century
Category:Earthquakes in the 21st century
Category:Earthquakes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Category:Earthquakes in the Philippines
Category:Earthquakes in the United Kingdom
Category:Earthquakes in the United States
Category:Effect of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake by country
Category:Megathrust earthquakes

:Um, thanks, but that is the categories. I wanted a list of the articles in all those categories. See the example [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Earthquakes&oldid=99778883 here]. Carcharoth 02:44, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

::Yay, done! I had initially coded something in JavaScript, but that was too easy (and rather inefficient, given the latitude of laziness in the language), so I made a function in Java. The results are at User:Gracenotes/Sandbox (hopefully the formatting is okay), indiscriminate of namespace. Gracenotes^T § 03:24, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

:::It appears as though your list has 150 items; mine, 247. Gracenotes^T § 03:27, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

::::Thanks! I think the category structure must have changed, with some big new categories getting tied into the pre-existing structure. Either that, or someone's been writing lots of articles! :-) Carcharoth 03:32, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::No problem! And I got to practice with the Java collections framework :) Gracenotes^T § 04:54, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

:If you had read the bold message at the top, you'd have seen "There are also quite a few "frequently denied requests", for various reasons, such as ... an anti-vandalism bot, as several already exist." There are a few antivandalism bots already running. ST47 10:45, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

::If you're interested, you may also want to look into what you can do to help. There are various tools that, if used responsibly, can help make finding and reverting vandalism a lot easier. --Seed 2.0 10:52, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

:::Well I've found some articles that have not been reverted by Anti-vandilism bots, so I end up fixing them myself. I just thought we could use more, or have each bot go through a section of all the articles in Wikipedia. ☺Efansay^(talk)/_{Contributions}☺ 10:54, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

::::There's a certain limit to what anti-vandalism bots can catch. We'll always require human RC patrollers to go through and inspect edits manually. Shadow1 (talk) 11:31, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::And when anti-vandalism bots catch vandalism, they usually catch them so messily, I wish they didn't try to catch any at all. Gracenotes^T § 16:06, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

::::::Now now :o -- Tawker 04:14, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

:So you want a bot to replace 2007-06 with June 2007? ~ Wikihermit 23:12, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

::No, a bot who links 2007-06 to June 2007, not replace --87.167.233.106 17:28, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

:::How many years back should it go? ST47 22:36, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

::::For the Comparison of media players at least till 1992, but i think more would be better.--87.167.249.160 15:47, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::Task approval for creating redirects from all pages of format YYYY-MM to Month YYYY requested, where 1990 <= YYYY < 2008. ST47 15:52, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

:If we can get the code that HagermanBot is running from Hagerman then I would be able to run it. E ^talk 22:25, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

This is because are replacing an old template with a new one on talk pages. It is a tedious job and are about 500 articles with this template.

It needs to replace not add. There is a category in which the talk pages with those pages are added to which is :Category:WikiProject Rugby league template replacements

Thanks ^Special_Windler 12:14, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

:I'll run my bot and do it. ~ Wikihermit 15:37, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

::{{done}} ~ Wikihermit 16:17, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Bassically all articles in this category (below) and all of its sub categories, and then it sub categories (so on) their talk pages need to be added.

:Category:Rugby league

Or as a drop down

Rugby league

But I don't want talk pages which already have that tag to have it replaced, because they are assessed and don't need replacing. The category :Category:WikiProject Rugby league template pages has all the articles that do not need a templete added to that page. SpecialWindler_TALK 23:51, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

:please look over this list of categories and let me know if any need removed. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 01:54, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Category:1908 in rugby league
Category:1909 in rugby league
Category:1910 in rugby league
Category:1911 in rugby league
Category:1912 in rugby league
Category:1913 in rugby league
Category:1914 in rugby league
Category:1915 in rugby league
Category:1916 in rugby league
Category:1917 in rugby league
Category:1918 in rugby league
Category:1919 in rugby league
Category:1920 in rugby league
Category:1921 in rugby league
Category:1922 in rugby league
Category:1923 in rugby league
Category:1924 in rugby league
Category:1925 in rugby league
Category:1926 in rugby league
Category:1927 in rugby league
Category:1928 in rugby league
Category:1929 in rugby league
Category:1930 in rugby league
Category:1931 in rugby league
Category:1932 in rugby league
Category:1935 in rugby league
Category:1936 in rugby league
Category:1937 in rugby league
Category:1938 in rugby league
Category:1939 in rugby league
Category:1945 in rugby league
Category:1946 in rugby league
Category:1947 in rugby league
Category:1948 in rugby league
Category:1949 in rugby league
Category:1950 in rugby league
Category:1951 in rugby league
Category:1952 in rugby league
Category:1953 in rugby league
Category:1954 in rugby league
Category:1955 in rugby league
Category:1956 in rugby league
Category:1957 in rugby league
Category:1958 in rugby league
Category:1959 in rugby league
Category:1960 in rugby league
Category:1961 in rugby league
Category:1962 in rugby league
Category:1963 in rugby league
Category:1964 in rugby league
Category:1965 in rugby league
Category:1966 in rugby league
Category:1967 in rugby league
Category:1968 in rugby league
Category:1969 in rugby league
Category:1970 in rugby league
Category:1971 in rugby league
Category:1972 in rugby league
Category:1973 in rugby league
Category:1974 in rugby league
Category:1975 in rugby league
Category:1977 in rugby league
Category:1978 in rugby league
Category:1979 in rugby league
Category:1980 in rugby league
Category:1981 in rugby league
Category:1982 in rugby league
Category:1983 in rugby league
Category:1984 in rugby league
Category:1985 in rugby league
Category:1986 in rugby league
Category:1987 in rugby league
Category:1988 in rugby league
Category:1989 in rugby league
Category:1990 in rugby league
Category:1991 in rugby league
Category:1992 in rugby league
Category:1993 in rugby league
Category:1994 in rugby league
Category:1995 in rugby league
Category:1996 in rugby league
Category:1997 in rugby league
Category:1998 in rugby league
Category:1999 in rugby league
Category:2000 in rugby league
Category:2001 in rugby league
Category:2002 in rugby league
Category:2003 in rugby league
Category:2004 in rugby league
Category:2005 in rugby league
Category:2006 in rugby league
Category:2007 in rugby league
Category:2008 in rugby league
Category:2009 in rugby league
Category:Adelaide Rams rugby league players
Category:Amateur rugby league
Category:American rugby league teams
Category:Auckland rugby league clubs
Category:Australasian rugby league players
Category:Australian national rugby league team captain
Category:Australian rugby league biography stubs
Category:Australian rugby league competitions
Category:Australian rugby league logos
Category:Australian rugby league players
Category:Australian rugby league teams
Category:Australian rugby union biography stubs
Category:Balmain Tigers rugby league players
Category:Bradford A.F.C.
Category:Bradford A.F.C. managers
Category:Bradford A.F.C. players
Category:Bradford Bulls
Category:Bradford Bulls players
Category:Bradford Rugby Club players
Category:Brisbane Broncos
Category:Brisbane Broncos rugby league players
Category:British rugby league competitions
Category:British rugby league players
Category:British rugby league players by club
Category:British rugby league teams
Category:Canadian rugby league players
Category:Canberra Raiders rugby league players
Category:Canterbury Bulldogs players
Category:Continuous Call Team
Category:Cronulla Sharks rugby league players
Category:Defunct Rugby League venues
Category:Doping cases in rugby league
Category:Dual code rugby internationals
Category:English rugby league players
Category:European Nations Cup
Category:European rugby league competitions
Category:European rugby league players
Category:French rugby league competitions
Category:French rugby league players
Category:French rugby league teams
Category:Gold Coast Giants/Seagulls/Chargers rugby league players
Category:Gold Coast Titans
Category:Gold Coast Titans players
Category:Gold Coast Titans rugby league players
Category:History of rugby league
Category:Hunter Mariners rugby league players
Category:Illawarra Steelers rugby league players
Category:Inductees of the Australian Rugby League Hall of Fame
Category:International rugby league teams
Category:Irish rugby league players
Category:Irish rugby union biography stubs
Category:Maltese rugby league players
Category:Manly Sea Eagles rugby league players
Category:Melbourne Storm rugby league players
Category:National Rugby League
Category:National Rugby League referees
Category:New Zealand Warriors
Category:New Zealand rugby league biography stubs
Category:New Zealand rugby league coaches
Category:New Zealand rugby league players
Category:New Zealand rugby league teams
Category:New Zealand rugby union biography stubs
Category:Newcastle Knights rugby league players
Category:Newtown Jets rugby league players
Category:North Queensland Cowboys rugby league players
Category:North Sydney Bears rugby league players
Category:Oceanian rugby league competitions
Category:PNG Rugby league logos
Category:Papua New Guinean rugby league players
Category:Parramatta Eels rugby league players
Category:Penrith Panthers rugby league players
Category:Rugby League State of Origin
Category:Rugby League Tri-Nations
Category:Rugby League World Cup
Category:Rugby League in Ireland
Category:Rugby biography stubs
Category:Rugby league biography stubs
Category:Rugby league coaches
Category:Rugby league commentators
Category:Rugby league competitions
Category:Rugby league governing bodies
Category:Rugby league images
Category:Rugby league in Australia
Category:Rugby league in England
Category:Rugby league in Europe
Category:Rugby league in France
Category:Rugby league in Italy
Category:Rugby league in New Zealand
Category:Rugby league in Oceania
Category:Rugby league in Papua New Guinea
Category:Rugby league in Russia
Category:Rugby league in Scotland
Category:Rugby league in South Africa
Category:Rugby league in Wales
Category:Rugby league in the United Kingdom
Category:Rugby league international tournaments
Category:Rugby league lists
Category:Rugby league logos
Category:Rugby league players
Category:Rugby league referees
Category:Rugby league stadiums
Category:Rugby league stadiums in Australia
Category:Rugby league stadiums in France
Category:Rugby league stadiums in New Zealand
Category:Rugby league stadiums in the United Kingdom
Category:Rugby league stubs
Category:Rugby league teams
Category:Rugby league terminology
Category:Rugby league trophies and awards
Category:Rugby union biography stubs
Category:Russian rugby league players
Category:Russian rugby league teams
Category:Samoan rugby league players
Category:Scottish rugby league players
Category:South African rugby league players
Category:South Queensland Crushers rugby league players
Category:South Sydney Rabbitohs
Category:South Sydney Rabbitohs rugby league players
Category:St. George Dragons rugby league players
Category:St. George Illawarra Dragons rugby league players
Category:Sydney Roosters
Category:Sydney Roosters players
Category:Tongan rugby league players
Category:USA Rugby league logos
Category:United Kingdom rugby league biography stubs
Category:United Kingdom rugby union biography stubs
Category:Wakefield Trinity Wildcats rugby league players
Category:Welsh rugby league players
Category:Western Reds rugby league players
Category:Western Suburbs Magpies rugby league players
Category:Wests Tigers rugby league players
Category:Wigan Warriors players
Category:Women's rugby league
Category:Years in rugby league

none of the categories need to be removed, except :Category:Rugby league needs to be added

but just a question, does he bot overide previous talk pages which already have the template?

If they do, there is a category that has the articles which already have the template on it.

SpecialWindler_TALK 02:06, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

{{done}} Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 05:45, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

What I want is that a bot adds {{WikiProject Rugby league|class=stub|importance=|auto=yes}} to all the talk pages in the following categories.

:Category:Rugby league stubs

:Category:Rugby league biography stubs

:Category:New Zealand rugby league biography stubs

:Category:Australian rugby league biography stubs

:Category:United Kingdom rugby league biography stubs

But I don't know if a bot can do that, but it seems to do it (as I said) for WPP:BIO. And I don't want the bot to override an article's tag if there is one already there. But alot of the articles in the categories (above) don't even have a tag.

SpecialWindler_TALK 22:14, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

::Ill look into this. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 01:50, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

{{done}} Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 05:45, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

• :Category:New Zealand rugby union biography stubs
• :Category:Australian rugby union biography stubs
• :Category:Irish rugby union biography stubs
• :Category:Rugby union biography stubs
• :Category:United Kingdom rugby union biography stubs

If a bot can remove the {{WikiProject Rugby league|class=|importance=}} from those talk pages, it would be much appreciated. Otherwise I will have to start manually removing them as it is my mistake.

Sorry.

SpecialWindler_TALK 03:01, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

:/me stabs. (Joke for creating this mess) and goes to fix. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 03:04, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

::Don't follow (still sorry for trouble) SpecialWindler_TALK 03:10, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

:::and :Category:Rugby biography stubs (very very very very sorry) and thanks for doing this, it must be frustrating. SpecialWindler_TALK 03:20, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

{{done}} Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 05:45, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

:How would the bot find orphaned images? I can't think of any efficient way to do this that doesn't involve being a server hog. Anyone have any ideas? But isn't there already a bot or two that does this? --Android Mouse 00:54, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

::What I was thinking was the bot would, at least for now, only look at the new contributions list, and a few weeks later, go and check the what links here button. That really shouldn't be a problem for server hogging. In any case, Betacommand's bot is somehow managing to pull off something similar, though that's even looking at the old images. The Evil Spartan 00:58, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

:I run the bot that checks for orphaned fair use images, and it is running now. I have several checking methods for detecting orphans. what images were you thinking about targeting and why? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 01:38, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

::Mostly I was going for the "picture of me and my bf (he's so cute!)" type of image, that just happens to be 11MB. I'm exaggerating, but the fact is that a lot of people upload an image of themselves that they intend to use for personal use (user page), but never get around to doing so - meanwhile these images are totally useless elsewhere. These images are server hogs, and could probably use to go through ifd. The Evil Spartan 02:12, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

At this point that shit storm isnt worth it. It will make a lot of users mad, and waste server resources, The server space isnt an issue they will stay on the servers either way, and the work the bot would do checking 3 million images... Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 05:51, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

:Done, let me know if you need it updated again. ST47 19:04, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

::Wow, that was quick! Muchos gracias! Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 20:23, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

:Tagging in progress by User:STBot. ST47 13:42, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

::285 pages found, 48 tagged (8 new pages), 236 ignored (236 already tagged). See User:STBot/Logs. ST47 14:03, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

:See Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 12#Internal link rot bot for some previous discussion on this idea. -- JLaTondre 11:40, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

::I remember approving this a few weeks ago, are you sure it doesn't exist? ST47 13:30, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

:::Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Android Mouse Bot 4 I believe this is it -- pb30<talk> 13:59, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

::::Yes, that's it. It stopped editing a few days ago [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?limit=50&title=Special%3AContributions&contribs=user&target=Android+Mouse+Bot+4&namespace=], because I broke the code while I was working on it. Unfourtunately I won't have much spare time for the next few days so won't be able to fix it until around Thursday. --Android Mouse 18:29, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

:The source was never released? Also, has anyone attempted to contact Hagerman through email or other means? --Android Mouse 19:57, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

::I will try to contact him via email. E ^talk 20:39, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

:There was a bot that did this (and maybe still does this), I just can't remember which one it was. —METS501 (talk) 15:15, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

::DomBot Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 15:18, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

:::Then, whats the significance of the r23052? Shinhan 15:50, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

::::It improves the API and makes bot op's jobs easier. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 15:52, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

::DomBot isn't the only bot that does this; there's another that does more, whose name escapes me at the moment. I'll think of it. — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 17:07, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

:::Ah, yes. This is also a function of DumbBOT. — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 21:01, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

# (article) — (talk page)

Example:

1. Jimbo Wales — Talk:Jimbo Wales
2. Jesus — Talk:Jesus
3. Isaac Newton — Talk:Isaac Newton

Each page should not exceed 100kb (Is this a good number?), to be kind to people with dial up and slower computers. The bot would only have to do this job once a month. Leave comments and questions below... --Psychless 20:51, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

:Well, here are a couple things, off the top of my head.

1. As I understand it, the WikiProject Council coordinates WikiProjects' efforts; I don't see the need to create another WikiProject to do the same thing. Further, WikiProjects' members are "editors that [. . .] collaborate on encyclopedic work"; I feel that such a WikiProject would not be encyclopaedic.
2. There are already too many WikiProject banners on talk pages. Efforts should be directed towards communication between WikiProjects and perhaps centralization of similar taskforces and subprojects.

:That being said, if your WikiProject proposal is approved, my bot can easily handle your request; it's well within its scope. — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 20:59, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

::*Yes, but what this project will do is very different from what the WikiProject Council does. The Council mainly helps you organize and get involved in a wikiproject. This is different. A project that improves an article's chance of getting improved is unencylcopedic?

• We are only adding wikiproject banners to pages that have no banners at all. How "nice" the talk page looks is less important than how good the article is. Again, we're only putting the banner on pages that don't have one at all so the communication effort argument doesn't really make sense.

Please take my response in the most "un-rude" way as possible :). Thank you for offering to do this! --Psychless 01:02, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

:No offense taken; I can see your points. However, again, I'd prefer to see some evidence of community consensus before I set up this task. — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 01:06, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

::I know, I don't expect the task to be started until the wikiproject is past the proposal stage. --Psychless 04:41, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

:::There are several bots that could do this. The issue is, why? WP:WPBIO, which has the largest number of articles bannered, has 386,000 articles. If even double that have banners (which I doubt), that means less than half of Wikipedia's articles have banners. What good is a list of half of wikipedia going to do anyone? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 05:58, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

::::My point (#2) exactly. — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 06:51, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::As said in my wikiproject proposal, which I probably shouldn't of assumed everyone would read, the list would be used to easily find the articles that need the banner. We would then tag those articles with the banner. Also, according to the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Statistics, 970,000 articles have a banner which also incorporates assessment. --Psychless 14:22, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

::::::just ask here for what you want tagged and we will have a bot do that for you. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 14:25, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::::He doesn't need articles tagged at this time; he needs a list of nonexistent, blank, or uncategorized talk pages. I can easily do this; I just want to see what the WikiProject Council thinks of his proposal. — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 17:14, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) WP:1.0 Work via Wikiprojects discussed this 5 months ago, but nothing really came from it.

Essentially, this is why this list of articles is needed. "There is currently a great deal of work being done across projects to assess articles for the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, and that's great, but a great number of articles are not currently tagged by projects which assess for this, and may never be. Therefore, the purpose of this project would be to tag and assess articles not currently covered by an assessing project, for the purposes of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team." (copied from previous link). If articles don't have an associated wikiproject banner(s), then it will never be assessed and that hinders the entire WP:1.0 project.

Although this request is for a list of articles needing banner tagging, I think the use of bots could help us a lot in doing the actual tagging. Using a bot, all the :Category:Poets could be quickly tagged with the {{tl|WPPoetry}} banner. Mahanga^Talk 03:32, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

:I greatly dislike having articles tagged by bots, but I suppose it can't be helped, since the WikiProjects love it. In regards to Wikipedia 1.0, it makes sense to me. It can't hurt to make the list; I may wait another day or two to see if there's any opposition to it from the Council, then I'll have it generated. It'll take four hours or so, but it's an easy variant of a task my bot already does. — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 05:17, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

::For what it's worth, coming from the Council and the Work via WikiProject group, but speaking strictly for myself, I would love to see this happen. It would get at least one project which (hopefully) will notice that the article falls within their scope aware of the article. Those individuals might then be able to help see if there is another project which perhaps deals more centrally with the subject, and maybe add that banner, even if there is no extant category to indicate the relationship. I know many of them will be categorized for the Biography project, but that project also seems to have the most active assessment unit, at least right now, so that might not be a real problem there. Anyway, just my two cents. John Carter 19:03, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

:No, please don't do this, either by bot or manually. The request above is based on the resut of a series of modifications by KuatofKDY to the s-gov template, which broke the template and which I have reverted. A template should not require an empty parameter in order to work; if the only parameter is optional, it should work properly without a parameter rather requiring a blank parameter.
There are several other related issues involved in KuatofKDY's changes to this template, all of which should have been discussed and tested before being applied to such a widely-used template. The template is now protected at the last version which works correctly without the stray pipe. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:27, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose. There is no evidence of any consensus for this change, which replaces a clear template name with an obscure one. Approved? Where and by who? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:47, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• This could be done with a simple move. A bot is not needed. — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 18:10, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose. There is no evidence of any consensus for this change (which replaces a clear template name with an obscure one), or for the claimed "WP:SBS standards". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:50, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• This could be done with a simple move. A bot is not needed. — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 18:10, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose. Please bots, don't do this: there is no evidence of any consensus for this change (which replaces a clear template name with an obscure one), or for the claimed "WP:SBS standards". I am trying to start some discussion of these changes, many of which have unfortunately involved breaking existing templates. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:52, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

:It sounds good in theory, but I suspect it'd just create another massive backlog that no one would deal with. If a few editors would express interest in working on the resulting report, I'd support this. — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 20:00, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

::I'm not a bot operator, but I think this is unnecessary. It's fairly easy to tell which pages are biographies by looking at their titles in :Category:Articles with unsourced statements or the "whatlinkshere" link of {{tl|cite needed}}. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:02, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

:::It might sound easy to look at the what links here, and judge the names, but there are 10,000+ uses and only a handful are living people because of the policy. Also, there won't be that much information to look through because there are usually between 1-5 sentences that you need to delete and it's usually easy to tell which, so if it takes an average of 10 seconds to delete them, then it would take less than 17 minutes to delete 100. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 20:19, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

::::A lot of the information that is in those articles is easily sourceable. I agree that any unsourced info should be subject to summary removal, but I honestly don't think an approach of mass-deleting sentences at the rate of a bot is productive. Such mass changes are inherently generally met with resistance and/or hostility (the incidents of mass tagging fair use images and trivia sections come to mind). I personally agree with the latter, but it still produced a lot of controversy for several weeks. This proposal goes even farther, as it applies to content and not just a maintenance tag. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:38, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::Jimbo says delete aggressively, [http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-May/046440.html], but I'm not sure how much we can trust his judgement, see this. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 20:44, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

::::::Heh, that's a fun factoid. :) I agree that we should delete "aggressively", but I don't know think that should translate to "without due consideration". In more than a few cases, content tagged with {{tl|cite needed}} is based on a source noted in the article; it's just not yet in-line cited. I think content decisions deserve case-by-case attention that is absent from an automated process set on a 10-second cycle. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 21:07, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::::I agree that it should take more than 10 seconds, but the policy exists, and it clearly states that any such information should be deleted, so creating a list seems logical, now, there are three possibilities:

:::::::#if people want to keep information then in the edit summary of the deletion it'll state that it should find a reference

:::::::#if the information is truly notable then it'll be re-added eventually with a reference

:::::::#if the person deleting thinks they could find a reference, then they can search for it in- or outside of the article

:::::::Jeffrey.Kleykamp 21:25, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

::::::::Hold on ... is your proposal: (1) to have a bot compile a list of BLPs that are in :Category:Articles with unsourced statements, or (2) to have a bot automatically or semi-automatically remove all BLP sentences tagged with {{tl|cite needed}}? So far it's the latter I've been arguing against, but your statement above (especially the part about "the person deleting") implies that it's the former. If it is the former, I have no problem with the idea. Could you please clarify? Thanks, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 22:54, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Number 1, I want a bot that lists all articles about living people that have an unsourced statement, so that a human can find and delete it. Hope that clears things up, Jeffrey.Kleykamp 23:15, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

:Thanks for clarifying. In that case, I apologise for the misunderstanding. I have nothing against such a measure if someone is in fact willing to go through the list. I do hope, however, that the issue above regarding the mechanical removal of sourced (but not obviously so) or easily sourceable is kept in mind. Cheers, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:19, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

::Well, it's still a reasonable point to consider because having a bot-generated list does tend to take the human element out of the process, albeit only to a certain extent. I know this has been discussed numerous times but the fact of the matter remains that people usually tend to focus more on the issue as it presents itself when not given a huge laundry list of articles that supposedly need to be fixed. This is particularly true when that list stretches from the extensive into the unmanageable (see the bajillion image-related discussions we've had in various places in the past few months). Please also note that I'm not really opposed to the idea of using a bot-created list to get started, as long as there's human review; I'm merely stating the obvious. -- S ^up? 23:31, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

:::That's true. When doing any kind of backlog cleanup, I notice that my standards for tagging pages for deletion start declining after about 30 minutes. That is, I'm more likely to tag for deletion a page that I previously would have considered saveable. Emptying a backlog for its own sake can be unproductive. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:48, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

::::First thing's first, if you think about it, there should be no "human element" because these things shouldn't be happening in the first place. Plus, I don't think the list would be that big because it's only a small percentage of the 10,000+ {{tl|Cite needed}} and because a lot of those things are in there for a bit of a long time, so after the first list it would get smaller, especially if the bot runs often, and it doesn't take that much time to delete something unreferenced. Also, the bot could be used for other proposes, basically any job that requires two+ templates being on the same page including it's talk page (i.e. the algorithm just finds common "what links here" links and counts talk pages as part of the article). Jeffrey.Kleykamp 00:03, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::An example of a secondary use would be articles that have {{tl|advert}} and a second template, like {{tl|POV}}, could be a sign that the article is beyond saving. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 14:19, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

::::::Another example would be Full site map, what I mean is that it could start at one article and look at what links here, then go through each article in that list and see what links there, etc. Jeffrey.Kleykamp 14:37, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

:I can have my bot go through all the talkpages to make a list of pages that were tagged in error. -- S ^up? 16:08, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

:Well, some of these have three tags on them. I'll just go ahead and fix them. I'll post here when I'm done. --S ^up? 16:28, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

::Thanks, GrooveDog 16:29, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

:::{{done}} You're welcome. :) -- S ^up? 17:36, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

::::Thanks (as a WP:MB member)! Greeves ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:39, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

: So, that bot would have to be run every 10 min to check newly protected pages for existence of protection template? — Shinhan < talk > 13:12, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

::Well, in reality, it would be more efficient to have it run continuously to make a list of all newly protected pages from the feed, which it would then have to check in $time+600 to determine if the template was added or not. The thing I'm more concerned about is that this would be a great way to annoy a lot of administrators within a short period of time without really gaining anything. It's rather easy to figure out if a page is protected, semi-protected or unprotected and, in my experience, few admins forget to add an appropriate protection template. The ten minute limit is also a bit arbitrary and, if memory serves (I might be wrong about this one though), we already have a bot that does this for protected talkpages (VoABot, possibly at one point also DumbBOT and I believe also another bot). --S ^up? 13:36, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

::: Thanks everyone. The problem happens often enough that I've caught about a dozen of these randomly. I know we have bots which remove templates from recently unprotected pages, but they don't do the reverse. Jon Savage was recently semi-protected for 13 days without a template. It is easy for experienced, logged-in users to find out the protection status of a page, however inexperienced users (i.e. nearly everyone) won't figure it out. "You can edit this page right now" is a mandate not to be taken lightly. Would it address concerns if we only bugged admins after an hour or 12 hours, for example? We could have the bot crawl through the list of protected pages a few times a day. Cheers, Kla'quot (talk | contribs) 16:18, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

:Anyone? Andy Mabbett 14:21, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

::How would a bot do that? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 14:23, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

:::Something like

1. Read existing page.
2. Determine size
3. If over max size; determine logical break point(s); start new page; write page header; write table of places until logical breakpoint reached; write page footer; record scope of page.
4. Repeat until old page fully copied
5. Copy old page discussion s to first new page; append note saying this has been done
6. Delete old page
7. Update page header template with list of new pages, if any
8. Repeat for next old page

If that's to complex for bot writers, then at least a list of pages and the number of entries would be useful, to facilitate manual sub-division. Andy Mabbett 10:27, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

: Define "determine logical break points". I think thats the main thing that Betacommand was asking; you need to explain how is the bot supposed to know when to subdivide, or what is a logical break point.

: Also, bots are not run under administrator accounts, so deleting pages cant be automated. (that probably includes marking pages for CSD) — Shinhan < talk > 13:22, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

::I think the former point is covered at at Talk:List of United Kingdom locations#Lists too long. As to your latter point, the pages concerned would be orphaned, so could be redirected; or AFDd, or speedied, manually. Andy Mabbett 13:29, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Is that reasonable? Granted, I don't know what the current though on running a bot over all articles is, but I think this would be worth it. BenB4 00:49, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

:I don't know whether it'd be worth it or not, but I do know you need to make that expression ungreedy, either by changing the instances of .* to .*? or by adding modifier /U (PCRE_UNGREEDY). — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 00:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

:I think best place for this would be Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos#Markup. I dont think this problem is widespread enough or problematic enough to warrant a bot checking and then fixing 1.8 milion pages. — Shinhan < talk > 13:10, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

:: It would be a good thing to put into a bot that's already going around fixing similar things, though. — Omegatron 00:24, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

:No. That's what WikiProject talk pages are for; all WikiProject members should have them watchlisted, because that's where discussion relating to the WikiProject's administration goes. A bot doesn't need to deliver this message to 31 users' talk pages just in case they're not paying attention to the WikiProject of which they are a member. — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 06:30, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

::You might look at User:HermesBot and User:R Delivery Bot - these will deliver "newsletters" to WikiProject members. But in general, we don't use (or allow) bots here to replace watchlists and talk pages. Otherwise user pages would be deluged with bot postings.

::The standard process is to post a reform proposal on a project talk page, then see what others think. If you get consensus, then you can make changes as proposed. If you get no response whatsoever, then you should make a small, initial change, to see how others react (or if anyone cares). If you get significant disagreement from those who are actively watching the talk page, then you should take it as a sign that your reform proposal either needs modification or to be dropped altogether. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:21, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

:I don't understand. Why not just go to [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Watchlist&days=0&hideOwn=0] and randomly pick one yourself? --Android Mouse 06:02, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

::You mean Special:Watchlist/edit? — Shinhan < talk > 06:16, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

:::To Android mouse: (1) Just FYI, the redirect you provided is the version of the watchlist that shows changes; as I mentioned, that's not going to remind me of ones no one changed. (2) I don't want actually to watch all of the pages that I would have on the list I'd make for the bot; I watch pages where I want to catch vandalism, etc., and I can't watch them well if there are too many. I would want to be able to make a separate list for the articles that I want to revisit and improve, then have a way to make slogging through it a little easier. (3) Even if I created a separate list as raised in point #2, I'm not a machine and can't keep track easily of which pages, out of 963, I have or haven't revisited recently (that's the current length of my watchlist, WITHOUT all the pages I'd like to go back and add to). '(4) As I mentioned in point #2, my watchlist is distinct from this list; most of my watchlist wouldn't go on this list, because most of my watchlist is about eliminating vandalism or inaccuracies quickly, on articles to which I couldn't really make much improvement or addition to existing content.

:::To Shinhan: No, I know that I can edit the listing itself — that's how I got it back down under 1,000. I'm talking about something to help me cycle through editing the articles. Lawikitejana 08:50, 26 June 2007 (UTC) P.S. Nonetheless, thanks for responding constructively!

::::My suggestion was not to edit the watchlist but to use that list and a random number generator to find a random article from that page.

::::Ok, second suggestion. You would first have to make a page in your userspace that would list every article you wish to random-watch. Something like User:Lawikitejana/RandomWatchList. You would use # to make a numbered list from that. Next, you use some kind or random number generator (like [http://www.random.org/integers/]) to generate a number between 1 and . The random number that is generated would mean you should edit the article on that line.

::::Example: Your RandomWatchList page has 127 articles on it and random number generator gives number 73. So, you go and edit the 73rd article on your RandomWatchList page. (Since its a numbered list shouldnt be hard to find it).

::::Thats easy version. If you want something more complicated you could also program your own bot...— Shinhan < talk > 13:11, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

:are these lists category based? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 05:53, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

:I have some concerns regarding this task. I just went through the category tree to get a feeling of how many articles we're talking about here. Long story short, I stopped somewhere around the 11,000 article mark (obviously including subcategories of subcategories and, since I don't have a dd available right now, not accounting for articles that are already tagged). I realize the scope of your project is broad and I know we have much bigger bot tasks but 11,000+ articles just seems too much for a banner tagging task. We already have a problem with overtagging and most of these articles are likely to be within the scope of one or even a few other projects. --S ^up? 22:44, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

::Perhaps the bot could skip the page if it already has so many tags at the top? --Android Mouse 23:38, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

:Perhaps this is a silly question, but what if I were to split the request? Say I request that the articles in :Category:Buildings and structures in the Netherlands be tagged this week, :Category:Dutch people in two weeks time, etcetera, say 1,000 articles per request or per week. It doesn't address the issue of overtagging, but would it address the issue of size? Aecis^Brievenbus 23:53, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

::I'd probably be easier to request it all at once since once a bot is set to do it, there is little to no interaction needed for it to finish. As I said above, perhaps it could skip the page if there are already 2 or so tags at the top of the page? --Android Mouse 00:15, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

:::I don't know if the code is set to allow the bot to do it, pardon my ignorance, but is it possible to list the untagged/skipped articles somewhere? That would allow us to check the articles manually, to determine whether adding {{tl|Wikiproject Netherlands}} would indeed be overtagging. I did see such datadumps by BetacommandBot once or twice, iirc. Aecis^Brievenbus 00:32, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

::::Yeah, it'd be possible to list which were skipped. --Android Mouse 00:43, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::In that case I have no objections to skipping articles that have already got n (2?) wikiproject templates. Aecis^Brievenbus 00:48, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I am generating lists of subcats and articles, now and will post links later. If you want a bot run i can exclude all talk pages with templates already on them, that is the most common method to avoid over tagging. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 01:38, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I only went 5 levels into that cat but here are my results: [http://tools.wikimedia.de/~betacommand/categories.txt Categories] and [http://tools.wikimedia.de/~betacommand/articles.txt Articles] (note the article is running now give it some time to finish) Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 02:31, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

:Please do, and if possible, as discussed above, please notify us (e.g. via a subpage of my userpage) which talk pages weren't tagged, so that we can add the WikiProject template manually if necessary. Aecis^Brievenbus 00:30, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

That may be a bit confusing so simply

• If in :Category:Rugby league players = Yes
• If {{template|Infobox rugby league biography}} = No
• On talk page tag needs-infobox=yes and autotemplate=yes to {{template|WikiProject Rugby league}} parameter.

SpecialWindler talk 21:04, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

:Will anyone reply? SpecialWindler talk 21:05, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

::I can do it. If the {{t1|WikiProject Rugby league}} template isn't on the talk page, should the bot add it? --Android Mouse 23:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

:::All the pages should be tagged, unless they were created after 17 June, 07. which they might. Yes it would be alright if the bot did that. SpecialWindler talk 06:16, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

::::Ok. I'll let this sit for one more day before I start, incase anyone else has comments/objections/anything else to add. --Android Mouse 06:32, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::OK, but I don't know why there will be a big objection. SpecialWindler talk 07:29, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Android Mouse, if there are already :Category:WikiProject banners in a {{tl|WikiProjectBannerShell}}, will the bot nest the new banner within the shell? See my talk page for a PCRE regular expression replace that will do the job. — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 17:36, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

:Thanks for pointing this out, I wasn't even aware of the bannershell, I'll make sure it adds it to that, if it is there. Unfourtunetly I won't be able to use the regular expression you provided though since I use C. --Android Mouse 18:06, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

::Well, you can do the same thing in any language; just [ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/ download the PCRE library]. There's contributed source code, including C++ wrappers and sample Makefiles [ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/Contrib/ here], and everything else you might need is [http://www.pcre.org/ here]. I've used the PCRE library successfully in plenty of C, C++, and C# applications.

::Just a tip. I don't know how you can live without regular expressions; I can't. ;) — Madman bum and angel (talk{{spaced ndash}}desk) 18:29, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

:::Neat, I'll check that out. Now all I have to do is figure out how regular expression work :) --Android Mouse 18:34, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

{{done}} --Android Mouse 19:40, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

:A good idea (though I'm not sure if the problem is that common), but implementation is a bit tricker than looking for just one thing. Template:reflist is another way of displaying references/footnotes, and for all I know there may be others, so a bot needs to look for a variety of things. Also, I've seen the references tag with an extra space before the slash, so I suggest the bot look for the text string "John Broughton (♫♫) 13:13, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

:talk to User:Tawker & User:Martinp23 Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 21:14, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

::Thanks for the suggestions, but both seem to be on a leave. Anyone here active to help me out? XD I would be appreciate it. :) Erebus 00:45, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

:::Leaving a short, polite message and waiting for a reply is really your best option. If you need the source code for one of the bots, you really need to talk the coders themselves. --S ^up? 13:05, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

:Category:Nintendo DS-only games

:Category:GameCube-only games

:Category:Wii-only games

:Category:PlayStation 2-only games

:Category:PlayStation 3-only games

:Category:ZX Spectrum-only games

:Category:Xbox 360-only games

(obviously, the relevant parents are :Category:Nintendo DS games, :Category:GameCube games, :Category:Wii games, :Category:PlayStation 2 games, :Category:PlayStation 3 games, :Category:ZX Spectrum games and :Category:Xbox 360 games.

Cheers, Miremare 22:52, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

:That sounds reasonable. How often would you need the articles to be checked? -- S ^up? 23:10, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

::I don't really know how often bots usually do their work, but I don't think it would need to be that often, just a check every now and then. It's not the most urgent of tasks after all. Cheers, Miremare 23:58, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

:::Alright. I'll go through those articles tomorrow unless there are any concerns or objections and we'll go from there. -- S ^up? 00:14, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

::::Ok, thanks S. Miremare 00:20, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Seeing that this had been announced on the relevant category talk pages about half a month ago with no objections raised and considering that it is in line with the guideline, I'm going ahead and adding the parent category to those articles that aren't already in it. -- S ^up? 15:13, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

:Okay, {{done}} I think checking again every month or so should be enough. If there's an unusually high number of games coming out at some point (like right before or after E3 or something), please don't hesistate to contact me. -- S ^up? 16:31, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

::Thanks, that's great. Cheers! Miremare 17:18, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

to the newer and better one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vlcsnap-5522132.png

:{{tick}} Done —METS501 (talk) 04:23, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

:*National Football League (as opposed to NFL)

:*National Football League playoffs, 2006-07 and all prior pages included in :Category:National Football League playoffs (as opposed to NFL playoffs, 2006-07.

:*2007 National Football League season and all prior pages included in :Category:National Football League seasons (as opposed to 2007 NFL season)

:*2007 National Football League Draft and all prior pages included in :Category:National Football League Draft (as opposed to 2007 NFL Draft) Pats1 22:38, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Are you requesting that the redirects be replaced by the actual page? If so, you might wish to read WP:REDIRECT#Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken. -- JLaTondre 23:06, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

:That would make sense, then. My bad. Pats1 23:10, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

:I don't understand what you mean by "comparison articles", don't understand why you're posting on this page, and don't understand where the results of the table merges would be housed (or, if you will, how interested readers/users would find the tables). Wouldn't Wikipedia:WikiProject Database analysis or Wikipedia:Tools or Wikipedia:Toolserver be a better place to post this? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:33, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

::This could be done, but quite frankly I don't believe its worth the time to configure a bot. We have comparison articles for a reason. --Draicone ^(talk) 22:20, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Pages with links to old (replaced) CamelCase templates that need some bot action include [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:CityTrainQld/Navigation Template:CityTrainQld/Navigation] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:CityTrain_Platforms Template:CityTrain Platforms] (I wouldn't say that the links to these two replaced templates are definitive lists). Many thanks in advance... :) Seo75 01:56, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

:So i gave this a trial and it kinda broke it. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Central_railway_station%2C_Brisbane&diff=142377773&oldid=131154823]. Some of the templates have not been renamed. :: maelgwntalk 03:04, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

::Thank you for giving it a go. I have fixed the even-more templates so the page looks okay again, and perhaps ready for another trial? Seo75 03:48, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

:::That looks fine now. Sorry i dont have time at the moment to put in a bot request ... so hopefully someone else can do it or get back to me after my holiday (about 15th July) and I can do it then. :: maelgwntalk 04:06, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

::::I might be able to arrange a bot to take care of it. First I'd just have to move everything to the correct capitalisation then rename it, that should avoid all conflicts (as the redirects would be created). --Draicone ^(talk) 22:48, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

:::::Looks like it has been mostly done – or is progressing – with no more obvious breakages (I thought I had move/redirected everything but then found there was more in the 4 July test-run. Thank you again for the work so far! Seo75 01:25, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

:Done. Next time the bot runs, it should archive the page. --ST47Talk 15:00, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

:I can do this, if there's consensus to do so. Can you post the idea at WP:AN or WT:ARBCOM to see if it's needed? In the meantime, I'll start on a bot. Let me know if there's a discussion anywhere. :) --ST47Talk 18:31, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

::Bad idea. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee&diff=142679778&oldid=142673065 my comments]. Thatcher131 15:26, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Rejected - doesn't really fix the problem, as evasion is done by sockpuppets and as bans are often against Foo and related articles. Both of these problems could probably be fixed, but my solutions are not server-safe and probably would cause false positives. Maybe I'll work on a tool that would allow scanning of a RFCUed or SSPed sock's contribs to check for edits to articles that link to articles or are in a certain category, but I don't know if that's needed. --ST47Talk 17:36, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

:There might be one for WP:AN/I, I don't know how that works. If one doesn't exist, you could ask User:Shadow1 for the code of his archiving bot and he or I could adapt it for this use. --ST47Talk 18:32, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the helpful reply :) as far as I can see WP:AN/I is archived by date of last entry. I'll have a word with Shadow1, regards sbandrews (t) 18:48, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

::There is a way to have shadowbot archive by tag does it and just set the date archive limit to say 365 days. ^∆ 21:00, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

:If you request approval for WP:AWB, you ca use find-and-replace to make it almost automatic. --ST47Talk 20:24, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

::Thanks for the quick reply and suggestion! Malnova 20:36, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

:Done: User:ST47/UKLC. --ST47Talk 22:39, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

::Many thanks. I think... Andy Mabbett 22:57, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

1)I insert a piece of copied text inside of an existing taxobox above the field for "| regnum =" like this:

| status = G5

| status_system = TNC
| status_ref = {{Cite web
| publisher =NatureServe
| title = Eurybia divaricata
| work = NatureServe Explorer
| url = http://www.natureserve.org/explorer/servlet/NatureServe?searchName=Eurybia+divaricata
| accessdate = 2007-06-13}}

such that it looks like this with the new text:

{{Taxobox

| color = lightgreen
| name = White Wood Aster
| image = Aster divaricatus R0019871.JPG
| image_width = 250px
| status = G5
| status_system = TNC
| status_ref = {{Cite web
| publisher =NatureServe
| title = Eurybia divaricata
| work = NatureServe Explorer
| url = http://www.natureserve.org/explorer/servlet/NatureServe?searchName=Eurybia+divaricata+
| accessdate = 2007-06-13}}
| regnum = Plantae
| divisio = Magnoliophyta
| classis = Magnoliopsida
| ordo = Asterales
| familia = Asteraceae
| tribus = Astereae
| genus = Eurybia
| species = E. divaricata
| binomial = Eurybia divaricata
| binomial_authority = (L.) G.L.Nesom
| synonyms =

Aster divaricatus L.
Aster corymbosum Aiton

}}

2)I then change the text under "title" with the formula "| title =Genus species"

3)I change the part of the url such that "searchName=Genus+species"

4)I change the "accessdate" to today's

5)if there is no {{reflist}} tag, or a ==References== section, then I add one or both of those when needed

Problems might arise with the fact that some articles have taxoboxs and some don't. Also not all articles on a list of North American species would necessarily have articles. If anyone thinks this bot is a possibilty, it would save a lot of time and improve the Plants project significantly. If there are any more questions needed to be answered just let me know. Thanks! Djlayton4 | talk | contribs 21:56, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

: Please read Wikipedia:Bots/Frequently denied bots before making requests like this. — Shinhan < talk > 09:08, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• {{tl|PD}} - [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?offset=&limit=500&target=Template%3APD&title=Special%3AWhatlinkshere&namespace=6 links]
• {{PD-old}} - [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?offset=&limit=500&target=Template%3APD-old&title=Special%3AWhatlinkshere&namespace=6 links]
• {{PD-art}} - [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?offset=&limit=500&target=Template%3APD-art&title=Special%3AWhatlinkshere&namespace=6 links]
• {{PD-ineligible}} - [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?offset=&limit=500&target=Template%3APD-ineligible&title=Special%3AWhatlinkshere&namespace=6 links]
• {{PD-USGov}} - [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?offset=&limit=500&target=Template%3APD-USGov&title=Special%3AWhatlinkshere&namespace=6 links]
• {{PD-US}} - [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?offset=&limit=500&target=Template%3APD-US&title=Special%3AWhatlinkshere&namespace=6 links]
• {{PD-self}} - [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?offset=&limit=500&target=Template%3APD-self&title=Special%3AWhatlinkshere&namespace=6 links]
• {{PD-user}} - [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?offset=&limit=500&target=Template%3APD-user&title=Special%3AWhatlinkshere&namespace=6 links]
• {{PD-because}} - [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?offset=&limit=500&target=Template%3APD-because&title=Special%3AWhatlinkshere&namespace=6 links]