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Removing redlinks is a tedious part of keeping WP:DEAD current. Could this be done easily by a bot? Salad Days 23:20, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

This would be trivial for a bot to do, and take very little time. I had a look at the page, and could see two lists: A-K and L-Z, correct? I can write a small bot program which will parse the list every day and remove all the non-existent articles. Let me know if it's only those two lists, and I'll get started. Jayden54 15:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that's correct: those are the two main dead-end pages for the foreseeable future. I will mention on the page not to rename or move them so as not to confuse your script. Thank you very much for your help! Salad Days 18:45, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Jayden: if you do write this bot, make sure to use the HTML class=new to see which links are redlinks; don't load each article to check. —Mets501 (talk) 19:03, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh, something occurred to me. Sometimes people make notes next to the links like "prodded for notability" or strike out the entry instead of removing it, and thus you'll probably want to remove the entire line. It also appears that someone has been adding a wikilinked date to some entries, which might be a nuisance to work around. I can mention to the dead-end maintainers not to do this, if it's too inelegant to code around. Also, I've restored an old dead-end pages dump at User:Salad Days/Sandbox 4 so you can test your bot out, if you like. Salad Days 19:15, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I just did a bot run on your sandbox page, and on the two list pages, and it seems to work fine (18 links were removed in total from the real lists, and around 900 or so from the sandbox). It's no problem if articles are crossed out or if notes are attached, because the bot removes the complete line. Have a look at the diffs ([1], [2]) and let me know if the changes are okay. Also, how often should I run the bot? Once a day? Once a week? I don't think we need to go through the bot approval's process since the edit rate is completely negligible (only two edits are necessary) and the read rate is very low as well (I'm doing exactly the thing that Mets501 said, which requires only two reads in total for each list). Cheers, Jayden54 17:23, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Once a day would be preferable; there's currently a lack of momentum on the page to remove fixed bluelink articles and instead piddle around with the red ones. Your description sounds like it wouldn't impact your CPU cycles too much, but the decision is ultimately yours. As an extremely minor request, perhaps the edit summary could display how many lines were removed? On second thought, the bot's edits won't show up on my watchlist so it's sort of a moot point anyways. Thanks again for your excellent work! Salad Days 22:47, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
The bot is very light-weight and only takes me about 1-2 minutes to run, so it's no problem to do it once a day. I'm doing it manually at the moment, so I might forget to do it sometimes, but it'll be more or less once a day. Hopefully I'll have it fully automated soon. I've also included the number of lines removed in the edit summary, which was an easy change since I was already keeping track of how many lines are removed. If the format of the list significantly changes let me know because it might mean I will have to slightly adjust the bot. Cheers, Jayden54 11:03, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Sounds good! Salad Days 12:35, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Create the RV bot

I'am unable to create a bot. My programming skills are not in this area. I would like help in developing my RVBOT as an automated clone of the Antivandal bot to help the wikipedia anti-vandal fleet. Retiono Virginian 16:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

You should speak to Tawker or Cyde about this. —Mets501 (talk) 16:46, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think another general purpose anti-vandal bot is necessary, because AntiVandalBot can already handle all the vandalism. Jayden54 17:32, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Anyone know what happened to anti-vandal bot though? It hasn't run in the past several days. —Mets501 (talk) 17:53, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I haven't got a clue. All it seems to do is restore Wikipedia:Introduction and nothing else. I've left a message on Tawker's talk page and the bot's talk page, so hopefully it'll get resolved soon. Jayden54 21:04, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Obiwanbot

Can someone create a bot called Obiwanbot for me? - Patricknoddy 10:49am, January 28, 2007

I think what the bot does might be a little more important for your request than what it is called (!) - PocklingtonDan 16:06, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
The bot will anything it wants to do. - Patricknoddy 12:57pm, January 28, 2007
I think you're a bit confused about what Wikipedia bots are. Have you read Wikipedia:Bot policy or Wikipedia:Creating a bot? —Mets501 (talk) 18:29, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
This isn't digimon! :) ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 04:16, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
It can edit, create, and read articles. - Patricknoddy 4:05pm, January 31, 2007
The real purpose of the bot is to categorize articles and put them in the correct WikiProjects. - Patricknoddy (talk · contribs) 5:30pm, February 1, 2007
It will use the Force to destroy vandals. ~ Flameviper Who's a Peach? 17:34, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Note: Don't put it in the same room as Vaderbot, they'll fight. ~ Flameviper Who's a Peach? 17:35, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Adding template to the talkpage of a list of chemicals

This has been moved to User:Betacommand/Bot Tasks 18:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Shared IP/School IP bot

Can someone make a bot named Realbot? The bot puts {{SharedIP}} and {{SchoolIP}} on the IP's page as well as put where the IP is editing from, in case of vandalism. Some administrators forget to see where the IP is editing, before blocking the IP. This is to lessen the amount of collateral damage. Whoever makes this bot will receive a barnstar and/or special template! Thanks. Real96 03:29, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

That would be exceptionally hard to do... A few million IP address out there and It's not always easy to know what ones are shared and what ones are school-owned without some digging. Digging, I might add, is not something a bot can do in this case. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 04:15, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Can't the bot look at the IP page and see where the address of the school is from after a person puts a warning on the page? (i.e. .edu/nameofschool.state.xx.us)? Real96 05:27, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I belive it might be possible to do this, using a standardised template the merely states that that IP is used by an educational facility, without actually naming what the educational facility is. This would be possible because of the fact that the range of IPs assigned to eg ".sch.uk" or ".edu" domains should be publicly available. It would be possible for a bot to generate a list of IPs from these known ranges, and run through each one, appending a standard "shared IP of an educational facility" template to the IPs user/talkpage. This would be a one-time-only run, but might have to make tens of thousands of edits to mark up all the pages. I think this is a good idea and merits further investigation. - PocklingtonDan 08:31, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

(reduce indent) Yes, the bot can put an education or shared IP template on the IP's page without revealing the IP's location. If someone would manipulate and copy AntiVandalBot's code to create Realbot, maybe the bot could exist! Real96 03:41, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I think if we were to add a category like Warned users to the vandalism, spam, etc. warning templates then a bot could easily look at that list every five minutes or so, whois the new IP addresses that have been added to it, and insert the shared IP template to those users' talk pages. I could write such a thing if there is a desire for it. --Selket 00:19, 3 February 2007 (UTC) P.S., it could also delete the category membership from the user_talk page when it updates it to keep the category from ballooning.

AIV Helperbot

Can AIV helperbot add block templates to indef. blocked users or temporary blocked users if administrators fail to do so? Real96 05:39, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem would be recognizing all of the different block templates, including personal messages, and that would be too much required AI for a bot. It would also require many more server requests and edits. —Mets501 (talk) 02:42, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
That would also be a job better suited for a bot designed to place templates on user-pages. It could not distinguish between a username block, or a vandal block, or a community ban etc... HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 18:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Any type of Bot!

I have a fast computer and internet connection, and I am on it most of the time. I have created this account, and would like to be able to use the source for an existing bot as I have no programming experience outside Flowcharts. Any ideas on a bot I could run? I already run AutoWikiBrowser and have been doing category renaming and deletion work recently. Maybe an automatic bot that did this would be a good start? Thanks everyone. Robertvan1Bot 23:17, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

One bot idea that was well recieved but went nowhere was Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_10#ref_bot. Vicarious 00:21, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
You can run AWB in automatic mode if you request approval at WP:BRFA, if you'd like to continue doing that sort of general stuff. —Mets501 (talk) 02:41, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I was thing about this, but am I likely to be accepted when there are other bots who do this already? robertvan1 18:41, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation bot

Hows this: a bot which, if you save a link to a disambiguation page, asks you to adjust the link to make it a bit more specific.

What would be ubercool is if the bot would list the links provided by the disambiguation page, and just allow you to click to select which one you meant.

Paul Murray 03:08, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea. However, it could not notify the person real-time, it would have to watch the recent changes list and then add a note to the article's talk page suggesting the disambig link that needs changing. based on past experience, people would NOT want the message written to their own user talk page (people are paranoid about spam). If I'm editing a long stretch of an article I often type wikilinks without checking if they exist first - if they show up as blue, i assume they are good. This would help stop that. - PocklingtonDan 11:08, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
How about a system alert? ~ Flameviper Who's a Peach? 17:32, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not at all following why you provided a wikilink to that page, which doesn't contain the words "system alert", and is inactive to boot. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 03:11, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

can anyone make a bot to write articles?

someone pls do that so we can have more featured articles —The preceding unsigned comment was added by PWG99 (talk • contribs) 21:07, 30 January 2007 (UTC).

How can a bot write an article? How would it know what to write? This isn't really possible... Jayden54 21:40, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
We tried that bot out, actually. It was all going well until it refused to open the pod bay doors... --W.marsh 05:29, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone know of a bot that will crawl a category and create a list based on the "What links here" count. I'm looking for something to guide priority assessment in a Wikiproject (not that it would be the basis for priority - just a helpfull tool). Morphh (talk) 02:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I can take a category, go to each member, and get the what links here list, just name your category and I will get it done first thing tomorrow morning. If you need the number of links, well that should be possible too - which category were you thinking of? ST47Talk
Category:WikiProject Taxation articles - Which has 628 articles. I'm not really interested in the links themselves. Just trying to get an idea of the structure and importance as top level articles tend to have more links and such. Morphh (talk) 03:10, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I've just created a bot to help with WikiProject LGBT studies that might be able to help you with this - if ST47 hasn't already gotten to it. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 16:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Satyr, no I havn't had a chance yet, go ahead. ST47Talk 19:40, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Done -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 21:25, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Perfect - Thanks!!!! Morphh (talk) 21:58, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:AFD helper bot

A bot that does the trivial aspects of closing an AFD. A real person would close the AFD by placing a tag for the bot (perhaps {{close|keep}}), the bot would be watching the afd pages and see the tag being added. In the case of keep it would close the voting page, remove the afd template from the article and add the {{oldafdfull}} tag with all the appropriate information to the talk page. The tag itself would probably just have some trivial message because it would only be on the page for a few seconds, something like, "A bot will come take care of this soon". The bot would be worthwhile if it only handled variations of keep (including "no consensus", "speedy keep" and "nomination withdrawn"), but could also be made to do deletes as well. For either just the delete or any use it could use a whitelist of users allowed to do the action, I'm not sure what the current policy is on who can close. Vicarious 05:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

  • I think that would be a good idea, in principle. Removing the AfD tag and adding the talk page notice could be fully automated, and if they were it would free up admins to close more AfDs, which would be good since AfD is always backlogged. But the bot wouldn't be able to delete pages, people hate admin bots, plus when you delete a page you need to look at it and usually remove most incoming links... a bot would not do a good job of that. A better use of programmer time might be improved AfD closing scripts... one that lets the admin fully automate the process of removing the AfD tag and adding talk page notices, auto-loads the "delete" page and "what links here", that kind of stuff could save valuable time for admins who close a lot of AfDs. --W.marsh 05:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Template removal request

This has been moved to User:Betacommand/Bot Tasks 15:54, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Lamest bot EVAR!

I just had an idea for a bot that goes through articles and fixes section headers.

Example: Changing 

==Section title==

to 

== Section Title ==

and so on. Like changing "See Also" to "See also" and correctly sequencing "references", "see also", and "external links" at the end of pages.

A name: SecBot

Just an idea. ~ Flameviper Who's a Peach? 17:30, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:AWB does this when it applies general fixes. alphachimp 17:32, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Abkhazia articles

Can a bot please add {{WikiProject Abkhazia}} to all articles in Category:Abkhazia? - Patricknoddy 4:57pm, January 31, 2007

Ill add this to my bots list. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 16:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Copyvio Bot Idea

I had an idea for a Copyvio bot (let's just call it, .V.iobot). It would search through articles and take segments from those articles and check them in Google, sans other Wiki links. If it finds matches to those segments, it adds the name of the article checked to the bot's userpage (or a subpage), entitled "Possible Copyvio Articles." Then I (or another editor) could go to that page and double-check they really are copyvios and then put them up for deletion.

Has this been done before or is currently being done? If not, is it a good idea? It sounds like it would be helpful. I'd really love to script it if the job is open. .V. [Talk|Email] 22:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a similar to the idea Chris is me has with CopyvioHelperBot. You can see the discussion that is occuring over it here.--Balloonguy 22:32, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Damn. Oh well, nevermind. .V. [Talk|Email] 01:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I am (slowly) working on extending Wherebot to work with the database dumps. -- Where 22:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

fact tags

.{{fact}} -> {{fact}}. and . {{fact}} -> .{{fact}} And I mean an actual running bot, not just AWB. AWB is a very sloooww thing. {Slash-|-Talk} 06:34, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

{{fact}} should be a temporary tag. Nothing marked with a {{fact}} tag should be in the article for long. Why does it matter so much what side of the period it's on? ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 09:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
There is a proposal to do this (basically) at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval --Selket 00:05, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

db-talk-bot?

How about a bot that scans through All pages (Talk namespace), and checks each page to see if it isn't an orphaned talk page. If it is, tag it with {{db-talk}}. Or does this exist in some form already? – Tivedshambo (talk) 20:19, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

What about pages that have discussions regarding the future recreation of the article? These should not be tagged, a human should look at these pages before being marked. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 20:42, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, my bot used to do that, but it was too controversial. —Mets501 (talk) 00:13, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Could you have your bot create a list of these pages for human review? Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 04:48, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProjects

A bot adding templates to new pages which fall under individual Wikiprojects. Real96 13:14, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Such a thing requires too much of a brain to have a bot do Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 15:02, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
However, if you have a relatively well populated category and a particular WikiProject in mind, we might be able to help. See the Spain WikiProject (2 comments up), for example. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 16:39, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Laughing at BC's comment. I was just thinking of ideas for bots which can be useful for Wikipedia. Something else came to my mind as well. What happens if a vandal uses a bot to vandalize Wikipedia? (i.e. on April Fool's Day). How can we as a community undo these errors if the bot vandalizes at a certain rate per minute? Thanks. Real96 18:29, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Have the bot blocked as quickly as possible, and then revert all the vandal edits. Might be worth reverting all the edits with a bot or AWB (if that's possible with AWB). I doubt a vandal bot would be able to do much damage if it gets noticed by the RC patrollers. If it does manage to stay under the radar then it might have a bit more impact, but then it can't be very obvious vandalism (since that's almost always caught by RC patrol). Jayden54 20:24, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
vandal/spam bots are a (simi)common event we have developed tools to counter them. Any Admin that has access to Vandal Proof can murder a vandalbot very fast (IE less than five minutes) admin users of VP have a nice added function of rolling back every on top edit a user has. There are also bots such as AVB, the TB's and of course VOAbot II along with the RC patrolers and admin with JS tools and admin rollback thus vandals tend to die a fast death. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 04:47, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Personal Sandbot

It would be great if a bot that blanks/cleans personal user-sandboxes were to be created...

--TomasBat (Talk)(Sign) 19:02, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I can do that with AWB, if I wanted to. If it's just yours, I can make some javascript that gives you a tab that can automatically blank your sandbox? ST47Talk 19:14, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Also talk to User:Essjay he has a bot that clears the sandbox. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 19:16, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Discussion continued on User talk:ST47, I made him a JS for his sandbox. ST47Talk 23:30, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

New user bot

Could there be a bot that goes down the new users page and posts {{subst:Welcome123}} or some other welcome template? There are a lot of new users every minute so maybe the bot could relieve people on the Wikipedia:Welcoming Committee of greeting new users. Orin LincolnÆ 04:21, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

If you read through the archives and addressed the issues raised by the other people with this idea it would help, but this idea has it's problems(as the archives show). HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 04:37, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Such a bot will never exist. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 04:50, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Afghanistan articles

Can a bot please put {{WikiProject Afghanistan}} of the talk pages of articles in Category:Afghanistan? - Patricknoddy (talk · contribs) 5:37pm, February 1, 2007

Please look at User:ST47/AfghanistanSandbox and remove any categories that do not directly apply to afghanistan, and I'll run your job as soon as I can :D ST47Talk 00:12, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
All relate to Afghanistan. - Patricknoddy (talk · contribs) 6:52pm, February 2, 2007
OK, I will do that soon. ST47Talk 02:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
STBot running on 2,345 Talk pages. ST47Talk 13:38, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
STBot is finished, ignored 3 pages because the template was already present. ST47Talk 12:44, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Please be more careful while listing categories for tagging. Category:Balochistan which is part of Geography of Afghanistan is also part of Geography of Iran as well as Pakistan. All those articles have got tagged as well. The categories need to be chosen much more carefully — Lost(talk) 13:44, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Deleted image bot

Hi. How about a bot that removes images that do not exist from articles? This is because I have encountered many broken images in articles, and they are rarely removed. My request is for a bot that removes images and descriptions that link to nonexistant images that have been in an article for more than 24h. This way we can edit without having to remove nonexistant images. Thanks. Suggestions? AstroHurricane001(Talk+Contribs+Ubx) 15:14, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

My bot can do that, but where would it get the list from? —Mets501 (talk) 15:25, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
How about scanning through Wkipedia to search for articles with nonexistant images? Thanks.AstroHurricane001(Talk+Contribs+Ubx) 15:40, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
it could also parse the deletion log. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 01:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Double redirect bot

Hi. How about a bot that removes double redirects after a move? I have encountered many double redirects after an article containing redirects was moved, andthe redirects became double. I have often had to fix them myself, because the people that moved the article forgot to follow instructions and did not fix the double redirects. I request a bot that automaticly recognises double redirects after a move and fixes them, so we can edit articles without having to fix the double redirects. Thanks. Suggestions? AstroHurricane001(Talk+Contribs+Ubx) 15:19, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, it would have to follow the move log. My bot used to fix special redirects before the devs closed Special:DoubleRedirects, but now I have no place to get a list of pages to operate on. —Mets501 (talk) 15:26, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
How about the bot checks for double redirects every time someone moves an article? Thanks.AstroHurricane001(Talk+Contribs+Ubx) 15:42, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Visual arts bot request

Since we're on a roll with WikiProject-related requests, would it be possible for a bot to put {{Visual arts}} on all the pages within Category:Visual Arts? Appreciate the help. Planetneutral 05:45, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I have one run that I am about to load, so if Betacommand isn't finished his above first, I'll be able to do this in a day or two. ST47Talk 12:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Much obliged! Planetneutral 13:51, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
I know y'all are busy, but I was just wondering if there was any hope for this. Planetneutral 19:34, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

tag for WikiProject Spain articles

Could you use your magic to tag all articles related to Spain for the {{WikiProject Spain}}? ¡Muchas gracias! EspanaViva 22:18, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I can! I guess I'll use Category:Spain and filter it, I'll have a list of categories for you to approve within the hour :D ST47Talk 00:09, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Please look at User:ST47/SpainSand and remove any incorrect categories, and I'll run your job as soon as I have a chance :D ST47Talk 00:19, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, thank you very much, but it's going to take me a day or two to go through all those listed categories. Can I let you know here when I'm done? Thank you again! EspanaViva 02:11, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Sure, don't worry about it, I won't have time for a while anyway. ST47Talk 02:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
OK, just finished double-checking. A small number came off the list, and I wound up adding a few (beginning with Spanish poetry - towards the bottom of the list). I'll use these manual additions to go back and fix up the category structure as well. Fire when ready, Gridley! and thank you again! EspanaViva 22:20, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, interesting, found a whole cluster under Spanish literature that were somehow missed. I've added most of them manually now, but not yet quite done. I'll let you know. EspanaViva 22:44, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
OK - Now I'm done . . . please go ahead and do your magic! ¡¡Muchas gracias otra vez!! EspanaViva 22:57, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
OK, as soon as I have a chance! De nada, por supuesto. ¡Usted regresa en cualquier momento! ST47Talk 00:20, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Running on 13284 talk pages. ST47Talk 12:55, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
ST47, it looks like this process could take up to 24 hours (or more), if the Afghanistan experience (below) is any measure. Three quick questions:
  • What happens to newly-created articles which are added to these categories, say a week or a month from now? Will the bot automatically add the tag, or will this process need to be re-run periodically?
  • Same question regarding newly-created categories, or existing categories which are newly linked as sub-categories to existing Spain-related categories - again, will the bot automatically catch these and add the tag, or will this process need to be re-run?
  • I keep finding Spain-related categories which were not properly linked in, and so didn't make it onto the list that the bot is working on. I've started a sub-page where other people can add these as well. Should we just come back to you in a week/month as these additional orphan categories are discovered for the bot to chew on?
Hey, I warned you I was full of curiosity! EspanaViva 14:09, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
You will need to have them re-added, the bot only does a once-through for #1 and #2. Regarding #3, I was asked to shut down the bot for over-zealous categorization, why don't you make a list of those categories and just comment here again once you're ready? (Note - I have started it, bot didn't get too far. The bot runs in a way that if you give me a category that has already been done on the next list, it will simply skip those articles.) ST47Talk 15:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

ST47 - well, I'm puzzled why Aztec Triple Alliance and Florentine Codex wound up on the list to be tagged, since I went through their categories and parent categories, and they don't seem to have an obvious tie to any of the categories we listed. Let's give this some thought so as how to avoid problems the next time! Perhaps run it so that articles in sub-categories are not automatically tagged? Also, may run it in batches of smaller groups so that issues can be managed as they arise on a smaller scale? EspanaViva 16:32, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Referencing Bot

After my previous AIV Warning Bot went nowhere, I got an idea while reading an article, then I found out it was a previous request that was not kept alive. I was thinking how convenient it would be for a bot to turn all the large amounts of web citations on Wikipedia articles into the more formal reference tags such as {{cite web}}. As User:John_Broughton stated in the previous request, it would go to Special:Linksearch and get a list of all external links for a specific domain (e.g. www.msn.com). It should understand that when a URL appears twice in a page, there should not be two identical footnotes. So, the first reference/footnote gets a name="X" argument. It probably should avoid pages that have both a "Notes" and a "References" section. It probably shouldn't footnote a URL if the URL is in the "External links" section. And, obviously, it should put as much information as possible into the "cite" ({{cite web}}) template. If you are willing to create a excellent and much needed bot that I would be glad to run and operate, it would be much appreciated. Thank you. --Extranet (Talk | Contribs) 07:08, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I think this is an excelent idea and if someone can propose a method for implementing it I would strongly lobby for its approval. Unfortunately, I think such an algorithm (converting a poorly formated citation -- possibly just a URL -- to a properly formated one) would be at least one, most likely several, Ph.D. dissertations in computer science. I don't think AI is to the point yet of being able to read a link, and get figure out the author's name, publication date, etc. from the text of the referenced article. I hate being so pessimistic, and I think it is a great idea, I just can't see how to write the program. I hope someone can prove me wrong, but I'm not holding my breath. --Selket 07:32, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
I just looked at the source HTML for a Washington Post article, which included this:
  • var wp_content_id = 'AR2007020201233' ;
  • var wp_headline = 'Mobilized Online, Thousands Gather to Hear Obama' ;
  • var wp_author = 'Zachary A. Goldfarb' ;

It's possible that there are some more standard (meta) fields than these (I didn't look through the entire source), or that one would have to write a bit of code for each major news source (PubMed is already standardized, and a converter already exists), but even if this bot only covered (say) the top 25 news sources, it could still make a major difference, if only to move editors from seeing articles with only embedded links to seeing what good footnotes look like. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 07:56, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Could somebody please take a stab at trying to make it - as I probably stated in my other request, I don't know much programming language. --Extranet (Talk | Contribs) 08:40, 3 February 2007 (UTC)


You could at the very least check for a <title> to get a proper name for the URL, though in some cases the title tag may contain extraneous information. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 20:51, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
This bot has existed for months, and is currently in its 4th rewrite. User:RefBot is not available on Wikipedia due to being blocked for false reasons, and because of an Arbitrator's kangaroo court. For examples of the first version of the bot, see the User Contributions of RefBot and User:SEWilcoBot. (SEWilco 19:08, 4 February 2007 (UTC))

New idea

Giving this some more thought, I think that in addition to formatting the citations, it is also necessary to check the articles to make sure they actually support the cited statment. I think this is a very important job for the good of the Wiki, and it almost certainly requires human input. Would anyone be interested in starting a fact checking wikiproject to go around, check citations, and put references in the propper format? I would love to start such a thing if others are interested. --Selket 20:47, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I have toyed with the idea of a Citation review page where people can post questionable citations, but have not done much with the idea. It would be a large undertaking to start something like that. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 20:52, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
See also m:Wikicite and the articles linked from it for other proposals to improve article verification. (SEWilco 19:08, 4 February 2007 (UTC))
Are you aware of Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check? (SEWilco 21:46, 4 February 2007 (UTC))

Some people have used the {{PDFlink}} inside the citation template as the format parameter. With the revised PDFlink usage, the first parameter is required. I would like somebody to run a bot which will convert {{PDFlink}} and {{PDF}} to PDF. --Dispenser 23:10, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I should also mention that there a cat (Category:PDFlink without a parameter) which list all the pages the bot would need to check. --Dispenser 15:45, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Prod bot

I'm sure there must be a bot that could do this already but I'm not sure which one. I'd like a bot to run through the sub-categories at Category:Proposed deletion. It would look for articles that had been prodded, had the tag removed and then replaced. If it finds any they could be dumped into a file for a human to go through. I realise that the bot could remove the tag and notify the editor that had replced it by mistake, but I don't think that would be a good idea. First of all to have the bot re-remove the tag would give the apperance of the bot edit warring. Second, I've noticed that editors get upset when the prod tag is removed a second time especially when it is for an article that has been justifiably prodded. I went through on of the sub-categories and removed 6 prod tags that had been restored improperly so I do see the need for it. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 12:30, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

My understanding is that if a prod is removed, it should not be placed back. Isn't prod for uncontested deletions? I think a bot removes prods that have been re-added is a good idea, however, it must make sure that a different user removed it thant he one who added it, it must ignore re-addings that happened after enough time(say 2 weeks), and it should not remove the same prod once. Of course I am sure if I think about it more I will realize more problems, but such a bot could function. I would be a little more complex than the average bot I think. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 16:38, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
The template generally shouldn't be readded, but if it is removed by blanking or otherwise by vandalism it is usually restored. I don't know that a bot can really make the decision but it would certainly be good to collect a list of the instances for a person to examine. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:48, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
No I don't want the bot to remove the prod or notify the person that re-added it. Just to dump a list someplace that a human could look at and decide if the re-adding was a good/bad thing. The problem is that the bot would have to look at several differences for each article in the sub-categories to see if the prod had been removed and restored. As an example as to why this is required see this. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 22:15, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Aland Islands articles

Could a bot please put {{WikiProject Åland Islands}} on all the talk pages of the articles in Category:Åland? - Patricknoddy (talk · contribs) 9:11am, February 4, 2007

Can you create a list of all subcategories that you would like tagged, and someone will get to that ASAP. ST47Talk 15:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

May I request that you hold off on this project and other similar projects by User:Patricknoddy, pending the results of the discussion here. I have a concern that the creation of these large WikiProjects which may not have any active participants may create difficulties. Spamreporter1 15:32, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Algeria articles

Can a bot put {{WikiProject Algeria}} on the talk pages of all the articles in Category:Algeria? - Patricknoddy (talk · contribs) 9:36am, February 4, 2007

Can you create a list of all subcategories that you would like tagged, and someone will get to that ASAP. ST47Talk 15:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

May I request that you hold off on this project and other similar projects by User:Patricknoddy, pending the results of the discussion here. I have a concern that the creation of these large WikiProjects which may not have any active participants may create difficulties. Spamreporter1 15:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Bot to warn authors during Speedy Delete

At present, when an article comes up for AfD, the Jayden54Bot inserts a warning into the users' talk page. Excellent idea!

Last week I had the Lasagna cell article vanish without warning. I was stunned, since there was no Talkpage discussion. Also there were no watchlist notifications. It disappeared from "my contributions," and all my old watchlist entries vanished too. I know that it hadn't been AfD'd. Most frightening: if I hadn't been recently using its talkpage, I might never have noticed its disappearance. Lacking experience with this, and lacking evidence, I had no idea what to do next. (Unfortunately I didn't notice the deletion resources link on the error page.) I ended up yelling to admin for help. It turned out that the article had been Speedy Deleted by an admin under incorrect SD criteria, without tagging, and who also hadn't seen the talk page.

I found the whole experience very unsettling. It was like seeing "Extraordinary Rendition" in action! (grin.) I had no clue that SD existed, or how to find what had happened. And... if I found it confusing, I assume that lots of others must have the same plight. I seem to have guessed right. Someone attempted an ineffective cure in the form of a SD Patrol started in late 2005, even with comment about others' saving good articles from accidental deletion. (Scary: if some have been saved, how many have been lost?!!)

Here's a much better fix: just make the original author responsible for saving the SD'd article. Use a bot similar to Jayden54Bot to announce on the original authors' talkpage the speedy-deletion event, as well as providing some resources for that author. This way legit articles won't just vanish silently with nobody noticing. Sample:

The article Lasagna_cell has been Speedy Deleted by User:someAdmin under WP:CSD. If you object to this deletion, contact User:someAdmin or enter a request at Wikipedia:Deletion_review. For more info, see Wikipedia:Why_was_my_page_deleted?. See also your article's Deletion log.

--Wjbeaty 07:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

This should be quite easy to do, if nobody else bites in a few days I will look into it (unless reasons not to come up). BJTalk 07:03, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I've given a headsup to the Jayden54Bot author.
I'm already aware of one possible counterargument: the bot would do something very new: it would be giving clear warning to all the vandals/spammers. But if it's a choice between silence and secrecy to fight abuse, versus transparency and honest communication to avoid "biting" people (and to cancel out human error)... I'd side with transparency. It seems very non-WP if we perform silent deletions 'intentionally'. --Wjbeaty 07:41, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I really don't think that is a reason not to have a bot for this task, if a vandal gets warned he wont be able to do anything but remove the template. In that case he would be warned/blocked. BJTalk 07:45, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Has my support, SD needs to be made more friendly in some cases. One difficulty I see is that the bot would have to scan directly through the deletion log, since unlike with AfD (worst case, no tags used) there'll be no other record. At that time, the page history has already vanished, so the bot would need to have sysop status in order to find the original author. From the log it also isn't easy (for a bot) to detect why a deletion was done, so the message would have to restrict itself to a generally-worded "your page was deleted for some reason, here's how to find out why". Won't reduce its usefulness.
No problem with vandals, I don't think this will give them any new ideas, not more than would giving them a warning - which they should get anyway. The task is ideally suited for a bot; it's a tedious job, so it's often skipped for the obvious junk. The result is that there are many accounts with no apparent contributions because all their nonsense pages were deleted. It's a useful piece of information to keep, even if they won't care about previous deletion warnings. Another admin deleting their next page a few days later will care. Femto 14:44, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I think this is a great idea (and had already considered it myself) but it's a bit trickier than what my bot currently does. AfD warnings are relatively easy since the bot only has to parse today's AfD log page once or twice a day and check each AfD. Articles nominated for Speedy Deletion can be gone within minutes so there's not really a list that can be checked once or twice a day.
I see two solutions to this problem. Option one is to do what Femto says, and parse the deletion log, but there's one big problem with this: the bot would need to have sysop status. Judging by previous response to bots have sysop status I don't see that happening anytime soon, so I think we can forget that option.
The second option is to have the bot check Category:Candidates for speedy deletion every 5 minutes, and save a list of each article that has been nominated. This would be the best option and doesn't require the bot to have sysop status. The only "problem" is that the bot would have to run every 5 minutes (and possible even more often, say once every minute), and thus needs to run on a dedicated server. I'm running my bot on my own computer, and I haven't got a dedicated server (yet) so I can't run this bot, although maybe it could run on the Wikipedia toolserver?
The bot could be really light-weight, and only save a list of all the articles nominated, and then once or twice a day it will actually warn all the users. This won't help with preventing deletion, but will let the user know what happened to their article. Jayden54 15:42, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
No, no, the main intention is that the bot should (also) be able to catch deletions of pages that were "speedied on sight" on the discretion of an administrator — without prior nominations, no speedy tags, no categories to check. The only tangible information that is left behind in these cases is the deletion log, which is hard to find for new users. Especially under these circumstances an automated message is needed most. I think a toolserver process is the way to go, early notifications could also avoid many clueless repostings.
The concern about sysopped bots is that they may accidentally perform unwanted (and hard to fix) adminstrative actions. Shouldn't be too difficult getting consensus for this one, the sysop status would be used strictly on a read-only basis. To make sure, two separate accounts can be used. One process running on a sysop account exclusively for reading the logs, piping its data to another process that makes the actual edits from a common bot account. Femto 12:55, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
I do like this idea, but I still have my concerns about a bot getting sysop status since there has been so much backlash previous times. ProtectionBot, which was a great idea to protect the main page, had a very difficult time getting through RfA, and that was a pretty solid idea. Also, for this bot someone else would have to take the lead, definitely not me. Someone who is already trusted by the community and an administrator, e.g. Tawker or Werdna. I noticed you are an administrator, maybe you can get the ball rolling? Jayden54 11:21, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm flattered by your confidence in me, but I think I couldn't even get a bot going whose only purpose would be to crash itself :) Well, the difference is that this account wouldn't make any changes (as soon as there's a single edit it should be nuked), unlike a 'real' sysop bot whose purpose is to make actual admin edits. This might even work with a blocked account, depending on how the software handles blocked admins (whether read-only sysop pageviews already fall under the block — I've no intention trying to find this out). Femto 15:15, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I did think of a work-around that doesn't require sysop status. The bot would have to closely monitor the New Articles feed, and immediately find the original author of each new article. Then some time later (24hrs) it would check each article and see if it has been deleted, and if it has, warn the author. That would probably work, although there are a few things to look out for (e.g. too many requests, missing any new articles, too late to get the author, etc). Jayden54 11:21, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
New pages log, hadn't thought of that. The bot would need to be near-realtime though, deleted pages disappear from the New pages log as well. One could also correlate it with the deletion log and so avoid any lag after deletion. But, some pages start off as dormant, semi-respectable stubs, and only get deleted after later edits make it apparent that they're nonnotable bios or copyvios. The bot would need to keep new pages in its memory at least for as long as a few weeks if not months this way. Femto 15:15, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
A blocked admin account can read all admin stuff, I tested it on my own wiki, running that same software. The community may allow a blocked admin account, though I can see some panicked folk worries it would unblock itself. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 17:53, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
That's great news, thanks! (I for one welcome our new robot overlords if they develop enough self-awareness to do this :) Femto 15:59, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

However, usually the original creator of an article is not present. How about also notifying everyone who's made 4 edits or more, or if it's speedied on sight, how about 3? It should also check whether a user has made an edit within the last 2 weeks also. {Slash-|-Talk} 06:19, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

How do you know? Even if many messages might get never read, some will, and these are the whole point of the exercise. Even so, it will keep a history of earlier deleted pages, and admins won't have to bother checking that there was/will be proper notification.
More sophisticated behavior can be added later, as needed. For now it should suffice getting a simple prototype up and running that 1. watches the deletion log for deleted articles, 2. finds their creator from the Special:Undelete page history, and 3. posts a short message. Anyone? Femto 15:59, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree, once it is working properly, we can send it for a shrubbery. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 16:01, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
would it be possible to incorporate this proposal into this bot? or another bot? SGGH 15:15, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Victoria cross

Wikipedia:WikiProject Victoria Cross Reference Migration moved a heap of content into wikipedia, the old domain is now being squatted and we are providing heaps of links (over 1300) to it. Could someone with access to some sort of automated tool, find and replace (or just get rid of) the links to the external site with a link to the wikiproject instead please? --Peta 02:01, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

To be specific, the text:
This page has been [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Victoria Cross Reference Migration|migrated]] from the [http://www.victoriacross.net Victoria Cross Reference] '''with permission.'''''

Should be converted to: 

This page has been migrated per the [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Victoria Cross Reference Migration|Victoria Cross Reference]] project '''with permission.'''''

And the list of pages to be checked is found here. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 03:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I've removed most of them manually, and will finish the job soon, thanks anyway bot writers. --Peta 08:33, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I need a bot/AWBer to go through Special:Whatlinkshere/Stv, and change occurrences in articles of [[stv]] and [[STV|stv]] to [[STV]], in line with WP:MOSTM (the move requires divine intervention, which has been sought). I managed to get a bunch of the direct links out with a change to Template:ITV, but there look to be over 100 occurrences articles affected. Chris cheese whine 15:49, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Removal of protection templates

I'm not sure if this exists already, but due to the new protection feature I believe a bot that automatically removes protection templates from pages whose protections have expired would be a valuable asset. -- tariqabjotu 23:46, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I just used AWB to run through the 143 transclusions of {{protected}} and only needed to remove two, I believe unprotections are on the IRC feed, so someone wiser than I should be able to make something to wait 5 minutes then try to remove the template - or even a daily run using the log? ST47Talk 01:47, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
I want to make a bot so i will look into it. Cocoaguy 従って contribstalk 22:25, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I often go through the protected template transclusions ({{sprotect}} is the worst) and regularly remove about 10% of the transcluded templates from unprotected articles. It is an ongoing maintenance problem which is well suited for a bot, and it has got infinitely worse since time-expiry protection. We could really do with a bot for this if anyone is interested in making one. It would need to remove tags from time-expired protected pages, and from pages which have never been protected, perhaps via a list similar to DumbBOT which can be manually inspected. -- zzuuzz(talk) 15:28, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Does not appear particularly complicated. I tried a test run with {{protected}} and redirects only, and everything seems to work fine. I will add the other templates as soon as I get approval. Tizio 16:32, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Cycling

Could we have a bot to place {{cycling project}} on the talk page of all articles within Category:Cycling and its sub-categories please? Mk3severo 14:42, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Ill start this . Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 01:50, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! Mk3severo 13:37, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
I wonder if someone could action this one again, as quite a few pages were missed when the bot seemed to stop abruptly. Thanks, Mk3severo 01:50, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I will finish up Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 15:19, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject tagging through sub-categories

Are there any bots currently running that can apply WikiProject tags on all the articles in a particular category and in its entire sub-category tree? If there's one available, there are three (very large) requests listed here that we'd love to have some help with! :-) Kirill Lokshin 19:41, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Will add that to the To Do list. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 16:57, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually if you have a need for those types of issues I might be able to take care of all of those tasked listed on that page if you can give me a little more info. Ill ask for that later. Cheers Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 17:00, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

A Bot that adds category tags

I need a bot which adds category tags to people/states/etc. to the respective category. Currently, I am trying to clean up Phi Beta Sigma and am going to make a category for it. I have to put category tags on each person's page, which is EXTREMELY tedious. Can a bot please help out for this? Thanks. Real96 20:50, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

This can be done with AWB --Selket Talk 15:18, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Didn't know that. Thanks for the heads up! Real96 02:39, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Bot request for WikiProject Spain

The WikiProject Spain has a list of Spain-related categories here. We will be asking you to place the WikiProject Spain template on the talk page of the articles in these categories. We will be asking you to go through these categories a chunk at a time, so as to cut down on any "over-inclusion" issues.

When that first run is complete, and we have dealt with issues (if any), then we will be aking you to move forward to the next chunk of categories. We would also ask that you not go down into the sub-categories of these at this time. Just add the tag to these categories only.

If all that makes sense:

  • This is the request that you place the WikiProject Spain tag on the talk page of the articles numbered 1 - 50 on this page.

Please let me know if you have any questions! EspanaViva 19:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I can start on this either tomorrow or friday. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 19:51, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you! EspanaViva 20:03, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Betacommand, would you mind if I did this one? I have a new PHP bot SatyrBot that's just been approved for a trial run of 50-100 edits, so this project would be a perfect fit. Is that okay? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 20:25, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Certainly OK with me! Please let me know if you have any questions on my talk page. EspanaViva 21:17, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, just thought of something, though . . . each category is going to have multiple articles in it. So, if your limit is 50-100 edits you're going to have to do just a handful of categories. Take a look at the number articles in the first few categories (starting with #1), and then select just that number of categories that will give you the number of edits you are aiming for. (This sounds like quite a bit of work, but I doing this in the interest of science!) EspanaViva 21:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Not a problem. And to clarify, this "trial" run will be for 50-100 articles. If it goes as planned, then I'll have the automatic bot approval and will be able to run however many articles/categories you need. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 21:41, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Bot idea for blocked users to appeal themselves

What do you think of the idea of a bot for users who are blocked, especially those who completely blocked (i.e. from editing the talk page), are not unblocked and given the chance to insert an appeal/edit WP:ANI or WP:RFAR, and (for whatever reason) don't have e-mail with which to e-mail a request to a higher authority? Specification idea: This bot would use a CGI form page for blocked users to fill out with their username and information such as a reason for requesting the appeal. The bot would require that this is coming from the same IP address the user last used, by comparing the HTTP client's originating IP with the last-known IP with which the user was logged on at Wikipedia and making sure that IP address itself (and possibly its talk page) is/are blocked from editing. If this test passes, the bot would use a designated username to edit either some page such as WP:ANI, WP:RFAR, or some designated subpage specifically for entries by the bot (to "sandbox" it just in case of abuse of the feature, but the page would have to be watched like the other logistical pages). --Blooper Glooper 01:45, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

not only no but HELL NO as when admins protect user talk pages they do it for a reason. this would just be WP:BEAN's tool for vandals. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 04:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I think e-mail suffices for such cases, if they don't have e-mail, there are plenty of web based e-mail services out there. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 04:55, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Anti Vandle/ Spell check bot

An anti vandal / spell check bot, that you tell to "crawl" wikipedia for new changes, and misspellings. A feature would be a tab for it on you wiki tab bar. Has a Database, and is always adding to it. "learns" for your actions. Bayesian style of learning / database.

settings: Auto (auto, fixes spellings, checks for vandalism, uses Learns, tells you what it did on your talk page, incoperation of Lupen's anti vandle tool) Learn (learns from your actions) Off (turns bot off) Vote (on bot's page, lets other's vote on what to do) Actions (List's all the actions made by the bot) Fix this Page (make's the bot run on the current page, and attempt's to fix it)

Has an interface similar to Lupen's Live spell check. But actually corrects words, and fixes broken links, and redirects. can only be controlled by user.

Also adds citations via looking up fact needing cite, in Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Wikipedia; and adds link to site that appears on 2 out of 5 and up.

Bot is also capable of tagging with "Wikify" and "Clean up" tags, if it can not help via any other means.

while in vandle cleanup, report's user or IP to the vandle registry, and leaves the do not vandalize page on the user's talk page.

The bot try's to watch what you do, and learn from your actions. Script for the also needed.

--'•Tbone55•(Talk) (Contribs) (UBX) (autographbook) 01:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Look in the rules for bot creation. "No spell checkers." Other part seems doable. RED skunkTALK 02:45, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps doable for a programming professional, but way beyond my scope :-) —Mets501 (talk) 12:08, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Great idea, now where is my team of 10 programers? BJTalk 15:39, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
After looking at it again it would be doable if you split it up, but all together would take a lot of time. RED skunkTALK
23:53, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Continuation of WikiProject Spain tagging project

The first trial run of the Satyrbot went very well. Satyr47's work is much appreciated! While Satyr47 is waiting for the "official" results of this trial run, we'd like to press forward with a full-fledged run of the following:

  • placing the WikiProject Spain tags ({{WikiProject Spain}}) on the talk pages of the first 50 (only) categories listed on the list here; please do not do any sub-categories of these categories.

Please let me know when this might be done . . . much appreciated! EspanaViva 07:31, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I received the bot flag a lot quicker than I thought I would. EnpanaViva, if you'd like me to continue, let me know. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 17:48, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject American Open Wheel Racing

I made a very minor mistake when I tagged about 600 or 700 articles incorrectly with my AWB as part of WikiProject American Open Wheel Racing. I tagged them with {{Template:WikiProject American Open Wheel Racing}} when I should have tagged them {{WikiProject American Open Wheel Racing}}. The template displays correctly. I'd hate to sit there for several hours to correct this little stupid error that isn't causing any harm. Could this bot do it in an unattended fashion at some low usage time? Royalbroil T : C 14:59, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

It's not really an error...it's just unnecessary text. I wouldn't worry about it. Running a bot through to correct it would be more wasteful than anything else. alphachimp 17:08, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your quick response. Royalbroil T : C 18:07, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Reverting Blanked Pages

I think that a robot that could revert blanked pages would be extremely valuable. Moreover, blanking is an immediately noticable act, so it shouldn't be difficult to program a bot to do this kind of task.--Orthologist 23:21, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Forensics

Forensics was just moved to forensic science. Can someone with AWB access fix up all those redirect links please? --Selket Talk 00:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any redirects. Perhaps it was already done? —Mets501 (talk) 01:46, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I have bad memories of moving a Pokemon page and having to correct 42 redirects. No lie. ~ Flameviper 16:42, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Baybot

I was thinking a new page patrol bot that would use Bayesian filtering and learn from other newpage patrollers (such as me) the general content of vandalism/attack/advert/joke pages.

It would go to new pages, check the length, check it for words like "gay" and "sucks", and if it raised a sufficent number of red flags, it would tag it with something like {{Botspeedy}}.

And as an added bonus, it could also add tags like {{cleanup}}, {{unreferenced}}, and {{uncategorized}} (which are simple business really).

Now we can't get too headstrong and assume that a bot will be right 100% of the time when tagging pages for deletion. So we would have to make a separate "bot flagged" template like {{tl|Botspeedy}. It would say something like 

This page has been flagged for speedy deletion by BayBot,
an automated script which patrols Wikiepdia's new pages.
If this page has been flagged incorrectly and you are the page creator, it is
advisable to not remove this tag youself.
A Wikipedia administrator will come by shortly to
review the tagging of this page and decide if it should be deleted or not.

So yeah, I'm a genius.

~ Flameviper 16:49, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I doubt that it is possible to have a bot do that. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 17:08, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
How would do detect such things, how would you avoid false positives? From the [[Bayesian filtering article, it seems to be a probability based system, and thus likely to make mistakes. Perhaps if you manually confirmed each edit? HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 17:09, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Also, it's not just enough to tag an article for speedy delete because it "looks" spammy. A human being should do a cursory glance, if there is even a small chance of notability, at least do a quick google search. And if the page does deserve a tag, there is still the matter of notifying the page creator (as someone else has said, if you don't tell an editor you're deleting his/her article, then the probability increases significantly that he/she will just create it again). Plus if it looks like a conflict of interest, a note about WP:COI is appropriate. And if the editor has done similar articles, or looks like a vandal-only account, then that also requires more effort. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 19:02, 9 February 2007 (UTC) (P.S. You've got the wrong wikilink - WP:CSD - in the template you mocked up - it should be WP:AFD.)
Based on the description, it sure looks like the right wikilink to me. Speedy deletion => CSD. Chris cheese whine 06:04, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

List of football (soccer) players with 100 or more caps

Table markup conversion from HTML needed on two tables with some 200 rows between them. Chris cheese whine 05:54, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, hold that thought for a moment. I've tagged it as copyvio. Chris cheese whine 06:19, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Bot For Wikiproject Aircraft

I've been noticing that it has been necessary to add a lot of {{aero-specs}} and {{aero-table}} tags. It is very tedious. Can someone write a bot for that? I probably could but i'm pretty busy. RED skunkTALK 04:16, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Could you explain this a little more where are the tags being added and why?
What do you mean by where? The aero specs tag is being added to pages that are missing substantial amounts of information on their specifications. The aero table is added to pages not using the new (right way to do it) format. Click here for more information TY RED skunkTALK 22:45, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
How do you tell what pages need the tag? Are they all in a specific category? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 04:53, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Well I guess that you could say that they are all in the aircraft category. There is also the specified form sort of like intro boxes. Ones without information in them could have tags added for aero specs. Aero table would be a lot harder. Looking back it would be too hard to do that part. Message me if you have any more questions. Redskunk 18:10, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

US House of Reps Clerk URLs

I've been working on the Dead External Links Wiki Project. Many of the articles about various sessions of the US Congress have links to "Rules of the House" pages on clerk.house.gov. The URL has changed from clerk.house.gov/legisAct/legisProc/etc to clerk.house.gov/legislative/etc. Is there a way to do a global replace to fix this on every Wiki page? Sanfranman59 21:39, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Can you please give an example of such a page? --Selket Talk 01:31, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Nevermind, I found one. I only found one (110th) but I fixed it. --Selket Talk 01:54, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm ... yeah, sorry about that. I just assumed that since I found quite a few as I first started going through the broken links list that there were sure to be a bunch of others, but I guess not. Thanks for responding so promptly! Sanfranman59 22:35, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

North Dakota Capitol

I've never put out a request for bot help before, so I hope I'm doing it right. I recently moved North Dakota Capitol to North Dakota State Capitol. Any help fixing the double redirects would be greatly appreciated. --MatthewUND(talk) 06:42, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. --Selket Talk 22:47, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

My User Page

At The Moment My User Page Userboxes Have A lot Of Gaps In between Them. If I Could Get This Fixed And Could Be Told How To Prevent This In The Future Would Be Very Helpful. (Id Rather Be Hated For Who I Am, Than Loved For Who I Am Not 08:45, 11 February 2007 (UTC))

I've fixed your userpage. —METS501 (talk) 18:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

bot to find unsourced articles

Wikipedia needs a bot that will add automaticly the tag {{unreferenced}} to articles where the majority of the material is unsourced.--Sefringle 08:01, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure how the bot would be able to read the article and determine that claims needed to be cited. Maybe if it counted the number of {{fact}} templates that had been added? --Selket Talk 09:33, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Alternatively, go by the number of <ref></ref> tags, plus the number of inline links [3], plus the number of lines in the "Reference" or "References" section? If the ratio of this sum to the size of the article is above a certain number (experimentation/investigation needed to find out what this ratio should be), then the article is tagged as unreferenced? Mike Peel 09:43, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Finding uncategorized templates, and putting them into Category:Uncategorized templates

I believe that there are currently a large number of uncategorized templates that can't be found except by finding pages that they're used on, i.e. they aren't in the template categories - Category:Wikipedia templates and subcategories. I would like to see a bot that can check for these and place them in Category:Uncategorized templates, where they can subsequently be sorted into the appropriate template categories by hand. Are there any bot frameworks out there that would be able to do this, or would anyone be interested in putting together a bot to do this? Mike Peel 16:18, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Anyone? Mike Peel 09:43, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll do it.--Balloonguy 22:14, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Bot to find articles with upside-down lists of works

Hi, i'm trying to standardize all filmographies etc to the guidelines laid down by Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works), specifically that items in filmographies, discographies etc should be listed in chronological order, earliest first. At the moment i am manually searching for articles that have their filmographies listed upside-down (reverse-chronological) and manually tagging them with the {{MOSLOW}} tag.

Obviously there will be thousands, including many i would never find manually. I wonder if there would be some way of recognizing an "upside-down filmography" automatically (e.g. by finding a section called "Filmography" then looking at two consecutive lines - if they have differing years, the second being lower than the first, then we can assume its an upside-down filmography). In that case the page just needs to be tagged with {{MOSLOW}}. The next stage, of actully fixing it, is not needed just yet (although User:Whilding87 has a nice script on his user page for that).

The bot doesnt have to recognize *every single* upside-down filmography (because there are many different formats), but if it can capture a sizeable number of articles with upside-down filmographies, it will be worth it. 82.9.25.163 18:15, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Where would it get it's list of pages? HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 18:59, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
could start with e.g. Category:American film actors - only 200 entries but would be a good prototype base. if successful, could then be expanded out to other categories. or if it has to be a list, could start with List of male film actors (A-K). would prefer to start with a "small" set (to ensure no false positives) then expand. i could help pseudocode it but couldnt code it myself.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.9.25.163 (talk) 19:09, 11 February 2007 (UTC).
It does seem technically possible, as there are modules that can parse a variety of time/date formats. I think this would be best done offline on the most recent database dump, that way you can scan pages at a much faster rate. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 19:15, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
thanks, if its technically feasible i think i'll try to proceed with this idea. what do i need to do next? 82.9.25.163 19:18, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Learning to program would be a good start hehe. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 15:21, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
It's funny, I had the same idea yesterday. Finding upside down lists and tables requires a regular expression and a loop, nothing too fancy. I am contemplating writing this bot. Because it would be my first one, I think it's best if it would be user-assisted. I'd have it list all pages it finds (in categories with actors, writers, directors etc) that it thinks need a {{moslow}} on a special userpage, for human review. After reviewing and editing out the false positives manually, the bot can apply the templates on the remaining linked pages. Good thing is I can program. Bad thing is i've never used python or pyWikipediaBot before. From Wikipedia:Creating a bot I gather that pyWikipediaBot is the easiest way to start. If more people think this is a good idea for a bot, I'm going to start working on it. theroachmanTC 20:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I find the perl mediawiki module to be the easiest. It is not listed on Wikipedia:Creating a bot because it is currently defunct, but I have repaired the latest version and am using it for my bots. I can send you the functioning module(I just had to fix a couple regexes), and I can help you with using it, assuming you know perl, it is a very easy and powerful module.
I even added a command for Special:Export to get up to 100 pages in one call. Just go to my talk page. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 20:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the offer to send the functioning module. I know as much perl as I know python, none. But I'm sure I can pick it up quite fast and ask people for help if I need any. Most of the bots I see on the RFA page are written in python, so currently I'm still more inclined to use that. But I'm not deciding which framework I am going to use just yet, first I'm going to document some bot requirements, then I'm going to decide on a framework.. theroachmanTC 21:05, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Just fyi, there is currently no consensus for ordering filmographies chronologically, as pointed out in a ref for the guideline (Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works)#Ordering), and currently being discussed on its talkpage. (With prior discussion at Wikipedia talk:Filmographies#Chronological ordering.) There is also Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Filmography which could really use some more feedback. --Quiddity 23:54, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh excellent remark, thank you for that. I have checked out all those discussions and gave my two cents in the RfC. The fact that there is no consensus for filmographies makes it even more likely that a bot is needed in the future, when a consensus is reached. The bot should be programmed to find filmographies that are not following that consensus and mark them with {{moslow}}. Thanks again for the heads up. (I'm learning python...which is nice.) —theroachmanTC 03:17, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Need a bot.

Its a bit complicated, but the main use would be to help with a mass reversion of unicode characters in sort keys. See a more detailed explanation at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Bizarre_category_modifications. Thanks. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 14:56, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Humans did it already. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 15:19, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Fah! Humans! --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 15:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

fine

I just had a few great Ideas. Thought I would bring them here. Cant even code worth crap. . . Do what you want with my ideas let me know if any are going to be useful. --Darkest Hour 22:15, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't get discouraged; all input is appreciated. One of the pillars of Wikipdedia is "be bold" and yet there are hundreds of pages of text worth of policies, etc. It can be frustrating trying to join a new process, when you are encouraged to "jump in" but then feel like people are jumping on you when you suggest something that violates policy or has already been done, which you didn't know. So, don't give up, read as much as you can, share any new ideas you have, and don't get upset if someone else doesn't like them. I know I've had lots of ideas that no one else liked. --Selket Talk 07:14, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Althought.Bot

This is a simple, but very great bot idea and I would really like this bot to be made for me since I don't have enough programming language knowledge to make my own.

Anyway, over the month I have noticed numerous article with the word, "although", commonly misspelled as "althought". A bot that would change all the mispelled "although"s, would be useful on Wikipedia and it would save time and effort rather than doing this process manually.

If someone is willing to make this bot, hand the "code" over to me and teach me how to operate/set the bot up, etc. Please contact me on my talk page. Thank you :D --Bhavesh Chauhan 02:31, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

But you don't account for the possibility that the word "althought" will ever be added to the English language, or that the made-up word "althought" will somehow become significant, such as a proper noun. I may be naïve, and I'm no creativity killer, but this might be too specific a task. Anyone else? --Blooper Glooper 04:16, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
But some mis-spelling are needed, such as those in a quote. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 19:00, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
My bot (CmdrObot) already has this misspelling in its dictionary. I did a quick search over the latest enwiki dump (2007-Feb-06) and there are only 25 articles with 'althought' in them. Cmdrjameson 13:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Business_and_Economics; Need Tagging Bots

Isnt it already added to the template? --Parker007 02:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I had a misunderstanding, Talk to User:Mathbot's operator to take care of that Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 03:28, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
If you guys want the bot to create a statistics table, you should add Category:B-Class Business and Economics articles (same for A-Class, FA-Class, etc.), to Category:Business and Economics articles by quality, and Category:High-importance Business and Economics articles (same for Mid-importance, Low-importance, etc..) to Category:Business and Economics articles by importance, and then add Category:Business and Economics articles by quality and Category:Business and Economics articles by importance to Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments. See more detailed instructions at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot.
One important note. You should use lowercase in the project name, so "Business and economics" instead of "Business and Economics" per existing style conventions. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:56, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Update I have made the following categories so far:

I made some changes to {{WikiProject Business & Economics}} and I recreated the categories you made with lower case, e.g., Category:High-importance Business and Economics articles to Category:High-importance business and economics articles. The bot created Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Business and economics articles by quality which is I think what you wanted. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Can a bot put put the tags: {{WikiProject Business & Economics|class=stub|}} on all the articles in Category:Business_stubs
I can take care if that. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 03:28, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I added importance mid, i.e. {{WikiProject Business & Economics|class=stub|importance=mid}} until we at the project actually assess the importance; We don't want it to loook like its in the unassessed row. Please. Sorry for adding another variable. --Parker007 10:07, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Why have the importance=mid by default? Just leave it empty for the assessors to fill in later — Lost(talk) 11:10, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Because otherwise it will be considered unassessed. And then it will be in the last line in the box. --Parker007 15:17, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Isn't the point to have humans assess these articles? I would think leaving the unassessed is going to inspire people to assess them. If you mark them mid, I think people will assume that someone else assessed it as mid. --Selket Talk 16:27, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Okay agreed. --Parker007 08:28, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Can a bot free right now start puting the tags: {{WikiProject Business & Economics|class=|importance=}} on the pages in the following categories and if the bot finds that the page is a stub it puts tag: {{WikiProject Business & Economics|class=stub|importance=mid}}. Please? --Parker007 08:28, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I've just created the article Christian heresy with text extracted from Heresy. There are lots of articles that link to Heresy. Most of them need to link to Christian heresy. What I need is a bot that will go through a set of links and either automatically or interactively change links to Heresy into links to Christian heresy. Where can I post such a request so that a kindly bot writer will see it and maybe help me with this? Or... is there a bot in existence that will do what I want done? --Richard 07:13, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The bot would have to know which article to link to. I think it's going to require substantial human interaction. --Selket Talk 07:16, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry. I probably didn't make my request clear. The bot would look at the "What links here" for Heresy and then go through each article and replace the link to Heresy with a link to Christian heresy. In the worst case, a completely automated bot would make some articles link to Christian heresy that should have linked to Heresy. These errors would have to be fixed manually.
Alternatively, the bot would pull up the article and present the text around the link and ask "Change link? (y/n)" and the user would decide.
I just looked and it appears that the number of links in question is between 1000 and 1500.
--Richard 07:29, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I understand, I did this for vestibule by hand a little while ago, and it was not a lot of fun. I do think an assisted bot could work well. The decisions would still be made by humans, but the bot could speed the process up a lot. I might code something like that as this is a problem that comes up a lot. It could probably be done as an AWB module. --Selket Talk 22:41, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
If you wanted to do it in AWB, you can just do it with a couple of lines of RegEx find and replace which is already built in. It's just \[\[(h|H)eresy\]\]→[[Christian heresy|$1eresy]] on the first line and \[\[heresy(\|.+)\]\]→[[Christian heresy$1]] on the second line for links that are already piped. AWB requires that you check each edit anyway so that's not a concern. In fact I just tried it and it works fine. If I had time I'd do it myself, but I'm going to go to bed soon and tomorrow's booked. I'll do some tonight anyway. Anyone with AWB should be able to help you with the rest of this though.--Dycedarg ж 08:36, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Random article list

Not sure I need a bot for this, but couldn't think of where else to ask. Wikipedia:Wikipedia is failing got me to thinking about finishing my study of article quality. I'd like a list of X random articles older than a certain threshold, say two years, with information such as the date created, the number of kb of text, the number of images, and the number of edits. Ideally I'd get links to oldids at various stages such as quarterly and the same data on the article at each of those points. Could certainly be run on an offline database copy. Anyway, would love to have the data. Could make a nice paper/Signpost writeup. - Taxman Talk 05:16, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Automatic 'Orphan Page' bot

Is there a bot which checks the 'What links here' of pages and adds the 'orphan page' template if the number is less than a certain number? If not, can i make it?Smomo 22:09, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I know that one does not exist, so knock yourself out. ST47Talk 22:29, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually, with a database dump, you could do this with AWB - find any page that does not match the regex [[.*]].*[[.*]].*[[.*]], which would give you anything with less than 3 wikilinks, then use that same regex on skip if contains with a |orphan as a way to ensure the template isn't there, or perhaps if there is a way to skip if in a certain category... ST47Talk 22:33, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Orphaned pages are those with no incoming links, not those with few outgoing links. Christopher Parham (talk) 02:36, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
You are in fact correct. How about some JS that would, if you click a tab on the page, would go to What links here, somehow check for links? (trying to think of a way to do this without a full-blown bot) ST47Talk 11:28, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
It would be difficult and laborious by hand. I would like to formally request a bot to do this, as it is beyond my capabilities. Smomo 15:18, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
There are a number of things to take into account, for instance only counting incoming links from articles, and making sure that disambiguation pages, which shouldn't have incoming links, aren't tagged. How few links must a page have to be orphaned? There are probably other issues; whoever makes the bot should look into exactly how these tags are applied currently. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:30, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I still think this is a good idea. Does anybody want to take this bot on and make it? Smomo 17:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to have a go, though I've never made a bot before. I know VB, but I've no idea how to make it interface with WP, so any help would be appreciated. I envisage it working as follows: look at a database dump, looking at articles' Special:Whatlinkshere. If all entries have User:, Wikipedia:, etc. prefaced to them, then retrieve the live article from WP. Check the whatlinkshere to make sure it still is empty of articles. Check the contents of the article to make sure it doesn't already have an orphan tag. Add the tag. David Mestel(Talk) 19:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I used to run this with User:MarshBot, but it just used special:lonelypages. One that could actually check "what links here" would be great. If anyone wants to write something like this with pyWiki or whatever, and show me how to use it, I will take care of running it if it works relatively automatically. Note: It would need to be able to ignore certain types of pages, like dab pages. --W.marsh 19:47, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Bot that Changes tags

Would it be doable to change aero-spec tags to the newer aero-specs tag. Could you do hat with AWB? RedSkunk 00:45, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Almost certainly. Can you be more specific? --Selket Talk 00:46, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

condense changes

If I make three or four edits in a row, or ten, I would like them to all be condensed into one, as if I had used "preview" correctly. I'd like this mostly so people wouldn't say "hey I notice you don't use preview. Why don't you give it a try?", but I find that I keep fiddling with a sentence or paragraph even after I thought it was good. Martin | talk • contribs 07:31, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

That can't be done by a bot. You would need to update the Wiki software itself. --Selket Talk 07:53, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
I see that there is a Preferences option on the User page that consolidates changes during the page presentation. Just as good.... Thanks Martin | talk • contribs 16:17, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm, doesn't work for me. Martin | talk • contribs 16:20, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Recat of Japanese military stubs

Most Japanese military biography stubs are double-tagged with {{asia-mil-bio-stub}} and {{Japan-bio-stub}}. I'd like to request a bot to go through Category:Asian military personnel stubs looking for the Japan-bio-stub tag, and replace the combination of those two template tags with {{Japan-mil-bio-stub}}. Please see this edit for one example I did manually. Thanks in advance!! Neier 13:39, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I will try to make one but i will call it Cocoabot if you have any more templates that need to be merged than contact me on my talk page. Cocoaguy ここがいい contribstalk 15:44, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
This can be easily done using autowikibrowser.--Balloonguy 17:25, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Except, I don't run windows, so no AWB for me. - Neier 02:42, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

U.S. County Bot

I recently updated the infobox U.S. County template, and I wanted to see that counties are actually using this template. I have just started looking at counties in Alabama, and I see that most of the county articles are not using the template! I manually added the {{infoboxneeded|infobox U.S. County}} infoboxneeded tag, but this will take forever. Is there a way for a BOT to be created that will check each county's page — for all states — and if it is not using the infobox U.S. County template, it will throw the tag on the top of the article? Thanks! Timneu22 (talk · contribs) /Timneu22 00:50, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I can probably do this let me look into it. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 14:15, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Presidential $1 Coin Program

There are a lot of double re-directs that need to be fixed in response to a page move I made. Georgia guy 14:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

WP:AFD listing assistance

I was recently nominating an article for deletion when I realized how tedious it is, plus this is something that everyone (not just admins) can do anyway. Here's how it works, a user places a tag on the articles page that looks something like {{subst:afd | cat=Category | text=Reason the page should be deleted}}, the bot is monitoring recent changes, creates the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PageName with the preloaded debate, and adds the page to that days listings. Additionally an intelligent bot could easily tell if there had been a previous listing and handle the page naming accordingly. Also, because this process involves creating a new page the bot would simply remove the tag and take no action if an anonymous IP added it. Vicarious 08:49, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

There are JS tools capable of this, such as AutoAFD, which I use. It makes the whole AFD process extremely simple, it opens three different windows: One the article with the AFD template added, one the altered log page, and one the page for the AFD discussion itself. If you can use JavaScript (and if you can't I would seriously recommend changing web browsers) then just use this. This isn't really the sort of thing that requires a bot.--Dycedarg ж 09:00, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I disagree, wikis should have the smallest learning curve possible, including the least amount of setup to be able to use them. You don't even have to create an account to edit a page, but to propose for deletion easily you have to setup a JS tool? Especially because the average user will propose very few articles for deletion, we should make the first time easy, not the subsequent times. Vicarious 09:27, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
If you're just doing it once, you don't have to set up the tool. You can just follow the easy three step process outlined on the page. It's not prohibitively difficult, and if as you say the average user will propose very few articles for deletion the amount of time it takes is negligible in the long run. It takes longer to read the deletion policy than it does to learn how to nominate an article for AFD, so if someone is too lazy to learn how to do it properly they probably shouldn't be nominating anything for deletion anyway because they probably haven't spent the time to make a properly thought out decision about whether or not its deletion is merited.--Dycedarg ж 10:17, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
The three steps are not that easy, and unrelated to me their is a current discussion about the instructions being too complicated here, admittedly it's not unanimous but it still proves the point that I'm not the only one of this viewpoint. This is especially true if it's not the first nomination, which I might add the js tool you pointed out can't handle either. I'll admit this isn't the difference between 2 hours and 1 minute, but it is the difference between 5-10 minutes and 1 minute with basically no downside. Vicarious 11:58, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
As someone who also found the process ridiculous and tedious, and who also made a bot approval request for this task, I have to say this is definitely a problem in need of a solution. My own solution of a form field was not approved since edits would have been made under the bot, not the user's account. This proposed alternative seems to bypass those objections. I am in support of it and would be willing to help out with coding if necessary. I think the suggestion that a user must install a JS tool prior to suggesting an article for deletion is crazy. Wikipedia should be as easy and intuitive to use as possible - PocklingtonDan (talk) 12:43, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I never said anyone must do anything. Please refrain from putting words in my mouth. Vicarious called the AFD process tedious, and for experienced users the script makes it less so. In that post he never once said that his point was to make it easier or more open to newcomers, he said that in his second post. Obviously no one would expect a new user to bother with JS scripts. Regardless, I stand by my statement that it is not prohibitively difficult. Anyone with sufficient time on their hands and a modest understanding of wiki markup should have no problem with it. For that matter, how many people who don't have the knowledge necessary to do a couple of template substitutions has enough knowledge of policy to be able to justify their AfD nomination in the first place? Also, a bot would still be making the edits, only the posting of the initial template summoning the bot would be by the nominating user, and that strikes me as adding an unnecessary potential for abuse. If someone wants to write the bot I'm not going to argue with them, I simply see this as completely unnecessary. Go ahead if you want though.--Dycedarg ж 22:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Move Pages Bot

Last night and on Saturday night, there was a vandal who moved pages at about 10 pages per minute. For example, if the page was Wikipedia, the vandal would move the page to Wikipedia2. Do you think someone could create a bot which moves pages back to the original destination once this vandal has been blocked? As always, a custom award and a barnstar for the designer. :-) Also, for further information, please see this. Thanks! Real96 17:44, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Ping me I have a tool in my js to revert page moves. all you have to do is ping me. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 17:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Copyright problems bot

This page is always clogged. It would be great if a bot could remove all deleted links, and move them to an archive section (ordered by day?). Proto ► 12:53, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

S-protect and protect template bot?

Per discussion at WP:ANI#A_Semi-protected_article_that_.22isn.27t.22, it seems like there might be some added value in a bot that would remove templates such as {{sprotected2}} from pages when their semi-protection or full-protection has expired, so that misleading headers aren't left in place. I have very little experience with programming, and thus I thought that I might be better off leaving a message here. -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 14:42, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_11#Removal_of_protection_templates. -- zzuuzz(talk) 14:48, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
VoiceOfAll has a bot that checks page protection and updates WP:RFPP; perhaps this could be added in as a feature of that bot. Essjay (Talk) 14:48, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Name/Date Wikify Bot

This Bot would well wikify. Takes names and dates and wikifies them.

What type of logic and replacement routines could it use? HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 15:19, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
It would search for unwikifyed names and dates and wikify them. It would not wikify the same name or date more than three times in the same article. It would look for stubs and newer articles and wikify them. It would not wikify the name of the person if the article is about the person. It would rest for 5-10 seconds before moving on. It would not edit the same article more than 5 times in a single day. It could use the random link to find short articles. It would capitalize names put approiate punctuation in dates. It would sign with, Wikified by DarkBot. Thank you for you consideration on this bot. --Darkest Hour 17:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I need help with the coding.
"What did he do to the door of the Carter Convention Center with his crowbar? Jimmy Carter." (SEWilco 04:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC))
Eh? --Darkest Hour 16:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Also

If the above bot isnt approved or this one turns out to be better: Another bot: This bot would report newly created accounts with names containing certain banned words and phrases, or that use certain special characters to WP:AIV. --Darkest Hour 22:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I actually like this idea. Even if the list was only profanity, it could still be quite helpful. Opinions? alphachimp 15:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, this would work as there are certain outright banned words, just be careful of words that contain a swear normally, such as "shitakes" or "wristwatch" HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 18:02, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I have a python tool that helps me filter the IRC feed I could re-configure it to report both username's and WoW attacks to AIV fairly easy if anyone is interested. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 18:26, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Does it avoid false positives like "wristwatch"? Failing that it should be manually assisted(imo). HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 18:28, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
its only as good as as the filters that we can create. :) Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 22:49, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree, "its only as good as the filters that we can create." --Darkest Hour 23:18, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

References Bot

What I have in mind is a bot that would scan an article for a section titled References, External links, Sources, or Bibliography. It would also scan an article for a tag providing a link to another WikiMedia project (such as the one on the right).

Wikisource has original works by or about:
[[:s:|]]

If the bot couldn't find either an appropriately-titled section or a tag then it would place the following template at the top of the article: {{Unreferenced}} The bot would also be programmed to leave an article alone if the first word in its title was List, because some people have claimed that lists should be exempt from reference requirements if the articles they link to have references. What do you guys think? Galanskov 06:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Can you show a place where it says list should not have references?--Balloonguy 18:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
It's been put forth as an argument at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability. To my knowledge, it's not an official policy, but in some situations the argument does make sense. Say you created a list of the kings of Spain, which was basically a collection of links to articles about the kings. If all of the articles listed had references, then the need for references for the list itself could possibly be waived, although I myself would be opposed to such an exemption. Some counter this by saying that categories are more useful, but the relative merits of categories and lists are really another matter entirely. Therefore, to prevent the bot getting entangled in the whole debate, I recommend that it leave lists alone. Galanskov 00:01, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Sometimes a source is simply named in the text. "In the Report of The U.S. Naval Astronomical Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere during the years 1849-52, in vol. ii, p. 138, figures are given of two stars in bronze (found at Cuzco, Peru), one having a sixth ray prolonged into a hatchet, which suggests that it must have been a war-club or battle-axe. In Squire's book on Peru (Peru, Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas, by E. George Squier, M.A., F.S.A., late U.S. Commissioner of Peru; 8vo, New York, 1877), pg. 177, there is a figure of a six-rayed object in bronze, said to have been one of several, which are designated by the author (apparently following some earlier writer) casse-têtes, and he says that among the fractured skulls that were found "the larger part seemed to have been broken by blows from some such weapons." (SEWilco 00:34, 18 February 2007 (UTC))
True, but if the article is ever to get onto the featured list then a more formal system of referencing will need to be implemented. Still, I admit you've got a good point there.Galanskov 02:08, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

This is from Wikipedia_talk:Speedy_deletion_criterion_for_unsourced_articles#A_proposal

...we get a bot to put an unreferenced template onto any article without ref tags or a references section. Mostlyharmless 08:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I LOVE that idea. Agne 09:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Don't forget the {{cite}} template and its kin, which predate the ref tag. . -- nae'blis 20:45, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Or plain external links, or parenthetical citations, .... Christopher Parham (talk) 01:44, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
RefBot has recognized all those for several versions, so it can be done. I'll add {{citation}} when I finish its new core. Tagging unreferenced articles is trivial, but if nobody cared enough to supply citations in the first place then why tag it? (SEWilco 03:47, 20 February 2007 (UTC))
Some time ago, I wrote a script to make a list of unreferenced math articles, and while it is not impossible, it is harder than you expect because of natural language issues. The section headings that are used for references in articles are quite varied. Not all referenced articles use any sort of citation template. You should expect several percent false positives the first time you search for unreferenced articles (which I estimate at around a hundred thousand errors if you scan the entire article space and exclude redirects and disambiguation pages). CMummert · talk 04:26, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the response! I don't imagine it would be easy, and whoever did create such a bot would deserve a few barnstars! I'd think that the text of any template of this kind should include a statement asking for refs and inviting users to remove it where references are provided. Mostlyharmless 10:50, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Actually, mass-tagging those pages won't really help unless you've got a cadre of volunteers to do the actual referencing. We have a plethora of cleanup processes and nearly all of them are terminally backlogged. >Radiant< 12:34, 16 January 2007 (UTC
I agree. Cleanup lists aren't working all that well at the moment. This is more about giving a clear reminder to users that they have a duty to reference their articles, and getting them to do so voluntarily. I certainly don't think that most editors would do so, but a sizable minority would, particularly on anything that isn't an unwatched and unattended stub. And of course the template could go onto every new article. Mostlyharmless 02:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

A better idea might be to after a new article is created and the vandel fighters have delt with it, a bot goes and checks for references and if it does not have references it tags the articel and informs the editor.--Balloonguy 19:21, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you Balloonguy. I think one of the real problems is that newcomers aren't fully aware of how vital it is that articles be referenced, so they create unreferenced articles and by the time they fully grasp the importance of citing sources they've forgotten about their really old articles. Galanskov 02:03, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Lately I've been changing links...

Using this <span class="plainlinks" style="font-size: 100%;">[http://Yahoo.com/search Yahoo!]</span> Which gets: Yahoo! over Yahoo!. Can there be a bot to do this because doing them by hand will be a never ending task. --Darkest Hour|DarkeBot 00:04, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Are you saying (perhaps I misunderstand) that you're modifying external links so that look like wikilinks? If so, why? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:10, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Don't do that. External links are supposed to look like external links so people know where they're going when they click on a link. It explicitly states in Wikipedia:How to edit a page "There is a class that can be used to remove the arrow image from the external link. It is used in Template:Ref to stop the URL from expanding during printing. It should never be used in the main body of an article." The only exception it lists is in image markup.--Dycedarg ж 02:41, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Caps fix

Any reference to TNA iMPACT! and variants (suggest using just iMPACT as a case-sensitive search term) needs the iMPACT! changed to Impact!, per WP:MOSTM and WP:MOSCL. Chris cheese whine 09:57, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I oppose this, and should note that a move request similiar FAILED and this editor moved it anyways. TJ Spyke 10:01, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
You oppose our Manual of Style? Then the appropriate venue for discussion is Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Chris cheese whine 10:20, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
For one thing, MOS is only a guideline and not a policy (meaning it's a suggestion and not a rule). Another, there was no consensus to move and you moved it anyways (and since you were involved in the discussion, it was even more inappropriate). TJ Spyke 10:28, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
"Guildeline not policy" is irrelevant. If you dispute it, take the discussion to the appropriate venue. Chris cheese whine 10:35, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Now I can't speak for all bot owners and users of WP:AWB, but I am not about to go change 200 some articles unless there is consensus for the change, and clearly there is not. You can't decide that you are intrinsically right in a situation like this just because you are supported by a strict interpretation of a guideline. Please establish some semblance of consensus for the change on the talk page of the article in question before making these kinds of requests.--Dycedarg ж 13:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
There is a clear consensus among the community at large, at WP:MOSTM, which clearly has wider acceptance than a group of 4-5 editors on a talk page. (Incidentally, there were around 8 arguing in favour of the change) Chris cheese whine 13:53, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

semi-bot disambig help

To the best of my (limited) understanding AWB is not able to do the following in a reasonably efficient way. A manually assisted bot with a easy user interface so more than the bot creator can use it, that points links to disambig pages to the correct page. First, the bot would find links to disambig pages that are likely to be incorrect, meaning it would ignore links from other disambig pages as well as anything but the main article space. Then it would show the user the few sentences around where the link in the article on one side, and the disambig page on the other, however simply clicking the link on the disambig page completes the operation with no typing involved. Also, a well made bot could guess the correct link frequently enough for it to be worth adding a feature where the bot recommends an option to the user by highlighting it. Vicarious 07:47, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Does something like what you want already exist? See Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/fixer. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:06, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Is this automatable?

List of dialing codes of Greece numerically - possible delink all the area code entries automatically? For instance: 

:[[Greece dialing code 210|210]] - [[Athens]]-[[Piraeus]]-[[Eleusis]] area

... becomes ... 

:210 - [[Athens]]-[[Piraeus]]-[[Eleusis]] area

There are dozens of entries on the page, so if this can be done automatically rather than picking through it manually, it would be much appreciated. Chris cheese whine 16:56, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. It missed one because someone misspelled "dialing" as "dlaning", but another problem is that it is listed as 27630 but links to 27620, and I don't know which is correct. I think you should be able to fix that though.--Dycedarg ж 18:06, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Having to fix one manually is very much better than dealing with a hundred. Chris cheese whine 18:12, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Request for dummy edits to made within a category

Could a bot operator configure a bot to do a single dummy edit (i.e. a single space at the end of a line, an enter carriage return, etc.) on every single file in the image namespace in Category:Non-free image copyright tags? I noticed that the cache has not updated and did not (for the image I tested) until I made a dummy edit. Thanks, Iamunknown 23:27, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Give the servers a little time and they will do it them selves Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 23:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Bot to review Flickr images

I think we need a bot like commons:User:FlickreviewR here. Images from Flickr are uploaded here all the time. It would be nice if we had a bot that could review these images, verify them, and then either tag them as verified (and {{Move to Commons}}) or moves them to a directory for either human review or deletion. It would be ideal if editors uploaded Flickr images straight to the Commons but we all know many do not so having this bot that would either mark them for deletion or verify them and tag them to be moved to Commons would be very beneficial.↔NMajdan•talk 18:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Why not get a clone of FlickrreviewR on Wikipedia? --Iamunknown 20:10, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
That is exactly what I am suggesting. I just don't know how to go about getting it done.↔NMajdan•talk 03:51, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Removing user pages from categories

A common mistake when linking to categories is to forgo the initial colon, i.e. write [[Category:Wkipedia]] instead of [[:Category:Wikipedia]]. A related mistake is when users copy an article over to user space and forget to <nowiki> or link the categories and interwiki links rather than including the page in them. A similar thing happens when developing/reworking templates. Could a bot be made to regularly (say every month) scan all wikipedia categories looking for these incidents and sorting them out? Note that extra care would have to be taken with respect to user categories and user-based templates, which obviously don't want to be touched. Mike Peel 23:38, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I say, that is a very well-thought out idea. 1 wikip 1 23:59, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Removing, commenting out, or adding a colon to mistaken categories on user pages is certainly something that it would be preferable for a bot to do, if possible. Is it possible?
  1. How long would it take a bot to go through every single category, looking for those which have pages that are in user space?
  2. How does the bot "sort out" which categories are appropriate and which are not for user pages? (This is the $64,000 question, I think.)
  3. What does the bot do when it has determined a category is inappropriate: remove, comment out, add colon, post a message on a user talk page? (I'd certainly support the last of these, since it has the fewest negative consequences, assuming a good answer to question #2.)
  4. How does the bot handle an inappropriate category that is on a user page because the category is generated by a template?
-- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:27, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Here's what I can come up with concerning your questions:
  1. That would depend on how many categories we have, but I don't think it would matter. That's what bots are for, if it had to run for three days to check all the categories then what would be the problem? It could be placed on a server and run continuously or it could just run in the background of the computer of one of the many people who leave their computer on all the time. It's not like bot software is typically all that system intensive.
  2. How many categories that belong on user pages are not a subcategory of Category:Wikipedians? If it was merely a matter of skipping those categories then it would be easy to do that.
  3. I think it would be best if it just added the colon. In the instance of a post on a talk page forgetting the colon, there would be no way to know who added the category in order to post on their talk page without trolling through the page history. It should just have an edit summary stating what it's doing and why.
  4. I don't know about this one. Is there any way to obtain a comprehensive list of templates that add categories to mainspace articles?
Anyway, if this could be done it has the potential to be quite useful, if this really is all that much of a problem. I might look into doing it later if I have the time; but I do think someone should do it.--Dycedarg ж 22:48, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
In reply to 4: I think that you'd need to search through all of the templates looking for [[Category:]] links that aren't in <noinclude></noinclude> statements, then manually check through it to remove the templates that don't intentionally include the articles in the categories. Mike Peel 23:09, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
(after edit conflicts)
  1. I have no idea. Presumably not a huge length of time, though - the contents of each category (a simple text array) would need to be fetched then parsed for User: and talk: pages, which I wouldn't have thought would take too long.
  2. This is an important question. The best way I can think of to deal with this would be to search for categories with user pages in them, then the bot operator would have to approve/disprove (or whitelist/blacklist) each category based on its title, description and contents. If these lists were then stored and checked against, this would only need to be done en mass the first time, with reduced numbers of categories appearing in the future. One issue with this would be if the categories were repurposed to do a different job; I'm not sure how this could be dealt with.
  3. I was thinking: change [[Category:Wikipedia]] to [[:Category:Wikipedia]], leaving a useful edit summary that would, if possible, contain a link to a page explaining the reasons in more detail. I would argue against removing the category links (they are generally kept on the page for a reason). Commenting out with <nowiki></nowiki> statements would also be a possibility, and would be preferable in cases of lots of category links (e.g. at the bottom of a template being redeveloped), but less appropriate for a single category link in the midst of a talk comment. I like the idea of leaving a message on the user's talk page, but there would be a few issues with only doing this: it assumes that the user will read the message, and take action based on that, and it also leaves the clutter in the categories until the user fixes their pages.
  4. The bot could pick these instances out by identifying the page by the list of contents from the category, then searching for [[Category: statements within the text; if it didn't find any, then it could either look through the templates included, searching for the category link, or it could add the page to a list of pages which could then be checked through manually later.
Something else the bot would have to keep an eye out for: making sure that the category links aren't already in <nowiki></nowiki> statements. Also, I'd recommend that the bot only makes one edit per page, removing all offending category links at once, if possible.
I know that this wouldn't be a simple bot to make, and would probably take a fair bit of manual maintaining. But I'd argue that that makes it a challenge, rather than an impossibility. Is anyone up for the challenge? Mike Peel 23:06, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Finding wikipedia fullurls

Is there a bot which finds fullurls to wikipedia pages? I've been running into cases where they are used for inline links, or to provide what appear to be "references".[4] Gimmetrow 23:00, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Interesting - checking at Special:Linksearch, it looks like the fullurl of wiki.eso.workers.dev is used in templates like {{logo}} and {{albumcover}}. That means, I guess, that it is in most if not all image pages. So this (hypothetical) bot should only check mainspace and maybe talkspace. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:25, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
The situation where this is a bit of a problem occurs when a citation needed tag is replaced by a "reference" to another wikipedia page. The fullurl link/footnote makes the text appear to have a reference. If these could be replaced by standard wikilinks, it would be more evident what's going on. Just wondering if this was already a task for some bot. Gimmetrow 03:45, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Svg to Png

I think there should be a bot that help replace bitmap images to svgs after their svg has uploaded. Often, bitmaps exists in many articles. it is hard to replace all of the bitmap image to svg, right?
--Jacklau96 09:07, 25 February 2007 (UTC) Example:
Bitmap: Image:Wheelchair.png and
SVG: Image:Wheelchair.svg

If you give a list, a bot can do this. ST47Talk 16:26, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
All the images are in Category:Images made obsolete by an SVG version. I had my bot working on that a while ago, and I'm resuming now. —METS501 (talk) 16:48, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Could it also be made to work on commons:Category:SupersededSVG? // Liftarn

Welcoming bot

I would really like to run a bot that goes through the new user log and automatically welcomes new users - it would make many editors actually edit - as most accounts never get round to this! I would like a bot that puts {{subst:welcome}} ~~~~ (or something to that effect) on new users talk pages. I've got no expertise in creating these kinds of scripts else I would create one myself RyanPostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 23:06, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

It's been suggested many times before, and shot down everytime so I don't think you'll be able to get approval for this bot. Search through the archives to find previous discussions. Jayden54 23:17, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Just checked the archives and I agree that a special bot for welcoming is unfriendly an impersonal. I was hoping to run one from my account so the message is actually from me - maybe it could be programmed to do one in 20 new users so I am not swamped with requests for help RyanPostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 23:25, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
You might propose to the Wikipedia:Welcoming committee that the bot randomly assign (willing) members of that committee as points of contact so new users aren't being impersonally greeted.
Also, there are on the order of 5,000 to 10,000 new registered users every day, so even 1 in 20 is a large number. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:23, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I've semi done your suggestion with this diff, I've also suggested (As I would like to do here) that the welcome message are done every 250 - 500 for every user RyanPostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 01:32, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Dungeons & Dragons article renaming

Various good faith move and page creations have resulted in large numbers of Dungeons & Dragons articles having their name suffixed with "(Dungeons & Dragons)" even if there is no article at the unsuffixed title. If a bot could move all articles of the form "Foo (Dungeons & Dragons)" to "Foo" if "Foo" doesn't exist or is a redirect to "Foo (Dungeons & Dragons)", that would save a lot of tedious manual work. This has been suggested at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons#Disambiguation with no objections. Cheers --Pak21 13:18, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

semi-bot disambig help

To the best of my (limited) understanding AWB is not able to do the following in a reasonably efficient way. A manually assisted bot with a easy user interface so more than the bot creator can use it, that points links to disambig pages to the correct page. First, the bot would find links to disambig pages that are likely to be incorrect, meaning it would ignore links from other disambig pages as well as anything but the main article space. Then it would show the user the few sentences around where the link in the article on one side, and the disambig page on the other, however simply clicking the link on the disambig page completes the operation with no typing involved. Also, a well made bot could guess the correct link frequently enough for it to be worth adding a feature where the bot recommends an option to the user by highlighting it. Vicarious 07:47, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Does something like what you want already exist? See Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/fixer. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:06, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Is this automatable?

List of dialing codes of Greece numerically - possible delink all the area code entries automatically? For instance: 

:[[Greece dialing code 210|210]] - [[Athens]]-[[Piraeus]]-[[Eleusis]] area

... becomes ... 

:210 - [[Athens]]-[[Piraeus]]-[[Eleusis]] area

There are dozens of entries on the page, so if this can be done automatically rather than picking through it manually, it would be much appreciated. Chris cheese whine 16:56, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. It missed one because someone misspelled "dialing" as "dlaning", but another problem is that it is listed as 27630 but links to 27620, and I don't know which is correct. I think you should be able to fix that though.--Dycedarg ж 18:06, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Having to fix one manually is very much better than dealing with a hundred. Chris cheese whine 18:12, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Request for dummy edits to made within a category

Could a bot operator configure a bot to do a single dummy edit (i.e. a single space at the end of a line, an enter carriage return, etc.) on every single file in the image namespace in Category:Non-free image copyright tags? I noticed that the cache has not updated and did not (for the image I tested) until I made a dummy edit. Thanks, Iamunknown 23:27, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Give the servers a little time and they will do it them selves Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 23:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Bot to review Flickr images

I think we need a bot like commons:User:FlickreviewR here. Images from Flickr are uploaded here all the time. It would be nice if we had a bot that could review these images, verify them, and then either tag them as verified (and {{Move to Commons}}) or moves them to a directory for either human review or deletion. It would be ideal if editors uploaded Flickr images straight to the Commons but we all know many do not so having this bot that would either mark them for deletion or verify them and tag them to be moved to Commons would be very beneficial.↔NMajdan•talk 18:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Why not get a clone of FlickrreviewR on Wikipedia? --Iamunknown 20:10, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
That is exactly what I am suggesting. I just don't know how to go about getting it done.↔NMajdan•talk 03:51, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Removing user pages from categories

A common mistake when linking to categories is to forgo the initial colon, i.e. write [[Category:Wkipedia]] instead of [[:Category:Wikipedia]]. A related mistake is when users copy an article over to user space and forget to <nowiki> or link the categories and interwiki links rather than including the page in them. A similar thing happens when developing/reworking templates. Could a bot be made to regularly (say every month) scan all wikipedia categories looking for these incidents and sorting them out? Note that extra care would have to be taken with respect to user categories and user-based templates, which obviously don't want to be touched. Mike Peel 23:38, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I say, that is a very well-thought out idea. 1 wikip 1 23:59, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Removing, commenting out, or adding a colon to mistaken categories on user pages is certainly something that it would be preferable for a bot to do, if possible. Is it possible?
  1. How long would it take a bot to go through every single category, looking for those which have pages that are in user space?
  2. How does the bot "sort out" which categories are appropriate and which are not for user pages? (This is the $64,000 question, I think.)
  3. What does the bot do when it has determined a category is inappropriate: remove, comment out, add colon, post a message on a user talk page? (I'd certainly support the last of these, since it has the fewest negative consequences, assuming a good answer to question #2.)
  4. How does the bot handle an inappropriate category that is on a user page because the category is generated by a template?
-- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:27, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Here's what I can come up with concerning your questions:
  1. That would depend on how many categories we have, but I don't think it would matter. That's what bots are for, if it had to run for three days to check all the categories then what would be the problem? It could be placed on a server and run continuously or it could just run in the background of the computer of one of the many people who leave their computer on all the time. It's not like bot software is typically all that system intensive.
  2. How many categories that belong on user pages are not a subcategory of Category:Wikipedians? If it was merely a matter of skipping those categories then it would be easy to do that.
  3. I think it would be best if it just added the colon. In the instance of a post on a talk page forgetting the colon, there would be no way to know who added the category in order to post on their talk page without trolling through the page history. It should just have an edit summary stating what it's doing and why.
  4. I don't know about this one. Is there any way to obtain a comprehensive list of templates that add categories to mainspace articles?
Anyway, if this could be done it has the potential to be quite useful, if this really is all that much of a problem. I might look into doing it later if I have the time; but I do think someone should do it.--Dycedarg ж 22:48, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
In reply to 4: I think that you'd need to search through all of the templates looking for [[Category:]] links that aren't in <noinclude></noinclude> statements, then manually check through it to remove the templates that don't intentionally include the articles in the categories. Mike Peel 23:09, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
(after edit conflicts)
  1. I have no idea. Presumably not a huge length of time, though - the contents of each category (a simple text array) would need to be fetched then parsed for User: and talk: pages, which I wouldn't have thought would take too long.
  2. This is an important question. The best way I can think of to deal with this would be to search for categories with user pages in them, then the bot operator would have to approve/disprove (or whitelist/blacklist) each category based on its title, description and contents. If these lists were then stored and checked against, this would only need to be done en mass the first time, with reduced numbers of categories appearing in the future. One issue with this would be if the categories were repurposed to do a different job; I'm not sure how this could be dealt with.
  3. I was thinking: change [[Category:Wikipedia]] to [[:Category:Wikipedia]], leaving a useful edit summary that would, if possible, contain a link to a page explaining the reasons in more detail. I would argue against removing the category links (they are generally kept on the page for a reason). Commenting out with <nowiki></nowiki> statements would also be a possibility, and would be preferable in cases of lots of category links (e.g. at the bottom of a template being redeveloped), but less appropriate for a single category link in the midst of a talk comment. I like the idea of leaving a message on the user's talk page, but there would be a few issues with only doing this: it assumes that the user will read the message, and take action based on that, and it also leaves the clutter in the categories until the user fixes their pages.
  4. The bot could pick these instances out by identifying the page by the list of contents from the category, then searching for [[Category: statements within the text; if it didn't find any, then it could either look through the templates included, searching for the category link, or it could add the page to a list of pages which could then be checked through manually later.
Something else the bot would have to keep an eye out for: making sure that the category links aren't already in <nowiki></nowiki> statements. Also, I'd recommend that the bot only makes one edit per page, removing all offending category links at once, if possible.
I know that this wouldn't be a simple bot to make, and would probably take a fair bit of manual maintaining. But I'd argue that that makes it a challenge, rather than an impossibility. Is anyone up for the challenge? Mike Peel 23:06, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Finding wikipedia fullurls

Is there a bot which finds fullurls to wikipedia pages? I've been running into cases where they are used for inline links, or to provide what appear to be "references".[5] Gimmetrow 23:00, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Interesting - checking at Special:Linksearch, it looks like the fullurl of wiki.eso.workers.dev is used in templates like {{logo}} and {{albumcover}}. That means, I guess, that it is in most if not all image pages. So this (hypothetical) bot should only check mainspace and maybe talkspace. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:25, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
The situation where this is a bit of a problem occurs when a citation needed tag is replaced by a "reference" to another wikipedia page. The fullurl link/footnote makes the text appear to have a reference. If these could be replaced by standard wikilinks, it would be more evident what's going on. Just wondering if this was already a task for some bot. Gimmetrow 03:45, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

New Request for Mizabot/Metsbot/or another bot which subst tags

First, I have a request for a new task for a bot which substitutes tags. Per the album assessment project, we assess albums which have the {{albums}} tag. Instead, for assessing, I need to have this tag (shown below) placed on each album talk page, instead of the regular {{albums}} tag...because the regular album's tag makes the album harder to assess.


{{Album |class= |importance= |attention= |needs-infobox= |auto= }}

Second, what happened to Antivandalbot? Thanks. Real96 00:18, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

That'd be quite easy for Alphachimpbot to do. Is it actually necessary, however? (I'd think you could assess without the change in template syntax}} alphachimp 04:29, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it's necessary. I am to lazy to subst. the template myself, and there is 24T articles which aren't assessed. Thanks. Real96 02:41, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Svg to Png

I think there should be a bot that help replace bitmap images to svgs after their svg has uploaded. Often, bitmaps exists in many articles. it is hard to replace all of the bitmap image to svg, right?
--Jacklau96 09:07, 25 February 2007 (UTC) Example:
Bitmap: Image:Wheelchair.png and
SVG: Image:Wheelchair.svg

If you give a list, a bot can do this. ST47Talk 16:26, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
All the images are in Category:Images made obsolete by an SVG version. I had my bot working on that a while ago, and I'm resuming now. —METS501 (talk) 16:48, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Could it also be made to work on commons:Category:SupersededSVG? // Liftarn

Welcoming bot

I would really like to run a bot that goes through the new user log and automatically welcomes new users - it would make many editors actually edit - as most accounts never get round to this! I would like a bot that puts {{subst:welcome}} ~~~~ (or something to that effect) on new users talk pages. I've got no expertise in creating these kinds of scripts else I would create one myself RyanPostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 23:06, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

It's been suggested many times before, and shot down everytime so I don't think you'll be able to get approval for this bot. Search through the archives to find previous discussions. Jayden54 23:17, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Just checked the archives and I agree that a special bot for welcoming is unfriendly an impersonal. I was hoping to run one from my account so the message is actually from me - maybe it could be programmed to do one in 20 new users so I am not swamped with requests for help RyanPostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 23:25, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
You might propose to the Wikipedia:Welcoming committee that the bot randomly assign (willing) members of that committee as points of contact so new users aren't being impersonally greeted.
Also, there are on the order of 5,000 to 10,000 new registered users every day, so even 1 in 20 is a large number. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:23, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I've semi done your suggestion with this diff, I've also suggested (As I would like to do here) that the welcome message are done every 250 - 500 for every user RyanPostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 01:32, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Dungeons & Dragons article renaming

Various good faith move and page creations have resulted in large numbers of Dungeons & Dragons articles having their name suffixed with "(Dungeons & Dragons)" even if there is no article at the unsuffixed title. If a bot could move all articles of the form "Foo (Dungeons & Dragons)" to "Foo" if "Foo" doesn't exist or is a redirect to "Foo (Dungeons & Dragons)", that would save a lot of tedious manual work. This has been suggested at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons#Disambiguation with no objections. Cheers --Pak21 13:18, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I was hoping that I could enlist some assistance in having a bot slap {{WikiProject Law}} on the talk page of each article in Category:Law and each of its sub-categories and sub-sub-categories etc. (of which there are many), in connection with WikiProject Law?

Apologies if I have posted the request in the wrong place; we lawyers are not techies, and so are not very good at this sort of thing. But we do give the world lots of jokes at our own expense.

--Legis (talk - contributions) 14:47, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

this is the right place Ill start on that shortly Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 16:00, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Gratefully appreciated. --Legis (talk - contributions) 16:35, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Wiki is having some server issues I know the techs are working on fixing, but I want to be nice and Im going to leave this task for a few days until that tech issue is solved. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 17:21, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Request for bot to add articles to WikiProject

I originally requested bot Ganeshbot to do this, but I haven't got a response and that bot hasn't had a contrib on 2 months so I'm asking here. Can somebody please have a bot place {{WikiProject College basketball|class=|importance=}} on all article talk pages in Category:College basketball and its subdirectories?↔NMajdan•talk 17:52, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Sure Ill start that in a few days, See comment above. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 18:07, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Sounds great. Thanks.↔NMajdan•talk 18:19, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

http://uk.pc.ign.com → http://pc.ign.com

Will someone please run a bot to change all

  • http://uk.pc.ign.com
into
  • http://pc.ign.com

Full list can be found HERE, only the articles need changing (no talk/wikispace stuff). Users who browse IGN from uk get put on UK servers, as not everyone who reads wikipedia is from the UK they shouldn't be sent to UK servers. It also uses up a little space in article. Thanks.--Empire Earth 19:55, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Anyone?--Empire Earth 22:57, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
This would be easy to do, but it simply is not worth it. The links work fine as they are. alphachimp 01:08, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

AfD Assist Bot

Someone — don't remember who — had a brilliant suggestion on Wikipedia:Adminship survey (I think) and it's good enough that I thought it should be brought up here: A manually assisted script to help close AfDs more quickly. I could envision it as follows:

  • The program prompts the closing admin to close a given AfD as keep or delete (merges and such would probably just fall under "keep") and fill in a closing rationale. The bot places the closing templates on the top and bottom of the AfD, removes the topic category, and fills in the given closing rationale.
  • Admin deletes the article if the result is delete. Perhaps if it is a keep, the bot could remove the AfD notice and place the {{oldafdfull}} template on the talk page with the proper parameters.
  • If the result is delete, the bot would automatically remove relevant links to the article.

This would help a lot (for me at least) in clearing the AfD backlog. Removing the category, manually closing the article and especially removing links to the page is time consuming, and could be done by a bot, I think. I'm a mac user, I don't know if I'd be able to utilize it necessarily but I'm sure other people would appreciate it too. Comments? I don't know jack about programming (though I learned a little Basic and Logo in middle school or earlier.) Grandmasterka 09:41, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

WikiProjects

A bot is requested to iterate through Category:WikiProjects, find all projects that are inactive, move those to Category:Inactive WikiProjects, and add {{inactive}} to the top of those pages. A project is defined as inactive if neither the project nor its talk page has been edited for two months. This should ideally be repeated every couple weeks or so. AllyUnion's bot (User:Kurando-san) used to do this in the past. >Radiant< 12:46, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Empire Earth (video game) → Empire Earth

Please run a bot to replace all

  • [[Empire Earth (video game)]]
and
  • [[Empire Earth (video game)|Empire Earth]]
with
  • [[Empire Earth]]

There is about 8-12. Then an admin can delete Empire Earth (video game). Thanks.--Empire Earth 01:12, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

This is unnecessary. Please see Wikipedia:Redirect for the reasons, but in short we do not fix links to redirects if the links are not broken. The only thing that needed changing was that there was a double redirect, which I fixed.--Dycedarg ж 01:28, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
So you are saying that people will type "Empire Earth (video game)" in the search box?? The page is no longer needed.--Empire Earth 01:52, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
If nobody is going to do this, I will do it myself.--Empire Earth 15:22, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Again, this is not necessary. No one said that the article Empire Earth (video game) was needed for searching purposes, but there is absolutely no point to changing all those redirects and deleting it. The redirect does not take up anything approaching an appreciable amount of hard drive space, and I doubt any administrator would waste his time deleting it anyway. WP:R says "Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken", not "Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken unless you don't think the redirect is necessary".--Dycedarg ж 18:51, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
But it's an extra page, and a page takes up space.--Empire Earth 19:51, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Changing all the links takes up more space, because a new revision for each page needs to be saved. And it unnecessarily clutters the page histories and might waste the time of the people having the articles on their watch lists. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Memset (talk • contribs) 21:56, 25 February 2007 (UTC).
How delightful is it that this discussion probably takes up more space than the redirect does? -24.234.235.103 10:45, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Prod Tagging Bot | Please?

‎*Team Galactic

I am looking for a bot that will add the following to the mainspace of the article:

{{subst:prod|[[Wikipedia:No_original_research]] & does NOT include [[Wikipedia:Reliable_sources]] for [[WP:Verifiability]] of content. Leaving Message on article creator's talk page regarding this, and will ask him to add sources.}}

& add the following to the creator of the article's (first editor) talk page:

Your article [[---------]] has been proposed for deletion "[[Wikipedia:No_original_research]] & does NOT include [[Wikipedia:Reliable_sources]] for [[WP:Verifiability]] of content." Please add [[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|references]], or it will be deleted. --~~~~

--Parker007 18:36, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Just to clarify - you're asking for someone to program a bot for you to handle a grand total of nine article postings (prods) and nine postings to user talk pages? So that if anyone wants to argue with the prods or user messages, they would complain to the owner of the bot, not to you? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:26, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
The bot would list in the edit history "per {{user|Parker007}} and (my edit diff where I mentioned request for prod)". I have lots of articles that I want to prod. But it is too tedious. --Parker007 01:58, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
And I have more articles to be prodded too. But these articles are the first batch. --Parker007 21:14, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Or if someone can write a script which I can add to monobook.js just for doing this, I would very greatful. --Parker007 21:19, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I can do this for you. I'm actually somewhat surprised there isn't already a script for this, there's one for doing every other kind of deletion request automatically. I should have it done some time tomorrow.--Dycedarg ж 06:00, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
It's done. To use it add
importScript('User:Dycedarg/easyprod.js');
importScript('Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Add LI menu');
importStylesheet('Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Add LI menu/css');
to your monobook.js. Just a few quick note: First, to notify the original contributor I used {{prodwarning}} because that seems to be the standard thing to do. If you want me to have it add something else to the author's talk instead, like what you have above, please create a subpage in your userspace with it and I'll have the script use that instead. Second, the author's talk page opens in a new window, so you'll need your popup blocker to exempt Wikipedia or it'll get blocked. Third, I used something in the script that so far as I know only works with Firefox and Opera; if you use IE this won't work for you. If that's the case, make a note here and I'll alter it for you. Or you could just switch to Firefox, you'll be happier anyway.--Dycedarg ж 07:59, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Bad word and Rss Feed Bot

Could there be a bot that uses Lupins bad word list and the RSS feed to revert vandalism? Rest 5-15 Sec. Pearl. BadwordBot. --Darkest Hour 17:35, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

And how would it avoid false positives? HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 17:36, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Elementry my dear Watson. Statistics would prevent it from random sampling.
It would look for obvious vandalism. Like strings of gibberish (hurehcurewrhcbcbre) and out of place wording like "butt" in an article about cake. The bot would take notice and not revert the whole article on butt because the word butt is common place.
OR go simple and make it restore blanked pages. And put subst:test1 on the talk page of the offender. --Darkest Hour 17:51, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
There are legitimate reasons to blank a page. Strings of gibberish cannot be distinguished from words not known the the script. Butt could be a typo, or perhaps something that looks like vandalism could be in a quote. There are bots that do this, but they rely on very complex sets of rules. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 18:05, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Okay lets try another:
wikify bot,
greeting bot,
archive bot (starts a new archive every month),
A bot that alerts a user of possible vandalism (on a page like lupins recent changes page)(RSS Feed) (it higlights possible vandalism and the user gets to decide wether or not it is). All these are bots that I would like to have a go at. Please let me know what you think.
All in Pearl please.

--Darkest Hour 18:16, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

May I suggest that you split your request in four (four sections, that is), and actually spell out what you envision each bot doing? For example, you use Werdnabot for archiving your talk page, already; your request for an "archive bot" should explain how that would be different, what pages it would archive, etc.
And it's not clear if you're proposing to write the bots yourself ("I would like to have a go at") or are asking someone else to write them ("All in Pearl please"). If the latter, I suggest you reconsider making such a demand. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I am requesting that someone help me with the coding. I only know enough to tweak a little here and a little there.

Greeting Bot

This bot would greet new users. That is accounts being no more than 5 minutes old. Using the original welcome template.

Please see the archives there have been many many bots proposed. this kind of bot will never be approved. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 23:16, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
That's correct. The next thing will be bots doing all editing on Wikipedia and bots welcoming bots. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:53, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
:-) Cbrown1023 talk 00:13, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Name/Date Wikify Bot

This Bot would well wikify. Takes names and dates and wikifies them.

What type of logic and replacement routines could it use? HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 15:19, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Archiver Bot

It would be bassically the same as werdna bot.The difference is that every month it starts a new archive for you.(something I wish werdnabot did)

WerdnaBot can do this if you know how to use magic words see Help:Magic words Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 23:14, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Anti-vand Bot

This bot would need human input. It uses the RSS feed and the recent changes page and updates itself every 1 minute. It then highlights possible vandalism. But a human would need to click a confirmation on wether its vandalism or not. The bot would then act accordingly,if its vandalism revert it and add a warning to the offenders talk page : If not ignore it. It would not be active unless you go to the certian page. (That way you are not bugged every minute by a bot buzzing at you). This might need to be a monobook script to really work out properly.

How is this any different from User:Antivandalbot? ^demon[omg plz] 03:11, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
AVB is dead Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 03:19, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, let's make a new one! ST47Talk 13:41, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Moving media to Commons

Wouldn't it be possible to make a bot that works trough Category:Copy to Wikimedia Commons and moves the files to Commons? A sort of combination between Push for commons and FlickrLickr. // Liftarn


Standard links to New York Times articles expire after a while, and direct the user to a paid archival service. These are the links one gets from simply copying the url of an news article they are viewing. However, the Times also provides permanent anchors for blogs. To get the permanent anchor, one can use this service, though there may also be some simple algorithm for it. I've probably fixed dozens of such links using this method, and the NYTimes must be one of the most common citation sources. So, it seems like a good project for a bored bot to run around and change the temporary links to permanent ones. As an example, here's one I just fixed, which inspired me to make this suggestion. Derex 02:56, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know how to do this, but it sounds like a great idea. alphachimp 18:56, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Only ex, en, and ei variables are need, getSharePasskey() function is found contain these values but does not give permalink if coming from anywhere else. The parter value could be either left empty or set to Wikipedia. Probably the way to build the bot is to use the pywikipedia framework with a screen scraper for permalinks and use the XML dumps for input. —Dispenser 04:25, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Urban studies and planning

Please would someone tag the talk page of all articles in Category:Urban studies and planning and all subcats with {{Planning|class=|importance=}}? Many thanks. --Mcginnly | Natter 14:32, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi! Due to issues with overtagging, most of the bot operators who can assist you will not blindly add subcategories. I recommend creating a user or wikiproject subpage where you can list all of the categories that should be included, depending on how deep you want to go. Also, you can use WP:AWB to do this yourself if you want to! Simply create a bot account (such as User:NatterBot, or User:PlanningBot, but there are no required conventions on naming). Then you can download WP:AWB and request approval at WP:RFBA. Once approved, your bot will receive a bot flag and someone will allow you to use WP:AWB. If you still want someone else to do this, and would like a list of all subcategories to use as a starting point for the final list, just post here and tell me how deep to go - no edits will be made until you approve the list. ST47Talk 13:38, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks I've already got an approved sock account for AWB so I'll use it, just thought I had to approve every edit with AWB that's all. --Mcginnly | Natter 13:30, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Oh, sorry I see it does have to be a bot account. - right off to RFBA --Antischmitz 13:39, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Watermark bot

What about a bot to notify uploaders of images tagged as both {{imagewatermark}} and {{self}}? // Liftarn

This can be done manually. According to m:CatScan there are only 10 images tagged with both (namely Image:Art RCWA.jpg, Image:Art SLVIx.jpg, Image:Azadistadium.jpg, Image:Bhuuman.jpg, Image:Chevaline deployment sequence-mod.gif, Image:Leine at Hannover City.JPG, Image:Nelder Mead1.gif, Image:Polaris A3TK Chevaline RV and PAC toe-in and tilt-out.gif, Image:Soulframe-2004.jpg, and Image:Velociraptor dinoguy2.jpg) -- memset 12:24, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
It seems to miss a lot of images. For instance Image:BlueBombardier.jpg and Image:Actros Police HK.jpg are not included. But then a bot would perhaps not find them either. // Liftarn
Image:BlueBombardier.jpg wasn't found because {{imagewatermark}} has just been added to it. And Image:Actros Police HK.jpg uses Template:GFDL-self instead of Template:self, but Template:GFDL-self doesn't add pages to Category:Self-published work (although this would be a good idea). I tried to find images by the template instead of the category, but CatScan just returns database errors at the moment. -- memset 17:30, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

We should have a bot that fixes wikilinks within an article. It would do 3 things on an article:

  1. Remove duplicate wikilinks within one section, leaving only the first.
  2. Remove all wikilinks linking to a section in the article (# links)
  3. Add wikilinks to all mainspace articles in the same catagory as the article on the first time the article's name was mentioned. It would only do this with existing text.

Pyrospirit Flames Fire 16:33, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

one is doable #2 why would you unlink? #3 that could cause a problem in coding. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 16:58, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Why would you want to get rid of wikilinks to sections? They're quite useful for things like character pages for TV shows that have a dozen or so characters on them. It's much easier to link to the character directly than make the person search through the myriad entries on the TOC looking for it, and there are other times it's quite useful as well.--Dycedarg ж 17:03, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Suggestion #1 has been suggested before (sorry, can't easily point you to it - maybe December 2006)? #2 is NOT a good idea, as noted; I don't think I've ever seen section links abused (I'm not sure how or why they would be); #3 is interesting, though perhaps computationally intense. (Category:1952 births, for example, has thousands of entries that would have to be checked by doing a text-string match across the entire text of an article, and I'd guess that in virtually all articles such a set of searches would not result in a new wikilink. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:08, 6 March 2007 (UTC)


Bot-assisted tagging for WP:PLANTS

Greetings! I was wondering if a bot operator could direct their bot to tag all talk pages of articles within Category:Plants (and its subcategories) with {{Plants|class=|importance=}}. Articles will be assessed later by members of WikiProject Plants. Thanks! --Rkitko 08:59, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi! Due to issues with overtagging, most of the bot operators who can assist you will not blindly add subcategories. I recommend creating a user or wikiproject subpage where you can list all of the categories that should be included, depending on how deep you want to go. Also, you can use WP:AWB to do this yourself if you want to! Simply create a bot account (such as User:RkitkoBot, or User:PlantBot, but there are no required conventions on naming). Then you can download WP:AWB and request approval at WP:RFBA. Once approved, your bot will receive a bot flag and someone will allow you to use WP:AWB. If you still want someone else to do this, and would like a list of all subcategories to use as a starting point for the final list, just post here and tell me how deep to go - no edits will be made until you approve the list. ST47Talk 13:37, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. I've never used AWB before, so I think that might be an interesting learning experience. User:PlantBot sounds good to me. Thanks again! --Rkitko 20:33, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Looks like User:PlantBot is already a registered user. So I chose User:BotanyBot instead. Once the bot is approved, I will request AWB permission. Thanks again for your help, ST47! --Rkitko 23:58, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

The Category Bot

Hmm, well, I've been busy with random stuff lately, particularly minor edits. I've cleaned up from 1 - 1 BC (After the 19th century in its entirety) in the categories at current. My proposal would be for a bot to...

  1. Open a random article space page.
  2. Check that page for typoes in categories (IE: Births --> births, deathse --> deaths)
  3. Fix said typos.
  4. Save page with a minor edit and a summary of the changes (IE: CatBot: Births --> births, DeAths --> deaths)
  5. And, if possible, if the category remains redlinked and there is only one page in the category, remove the category from the page.

Now, I understand not all of this might be possible, but it's certainly labour intensive to do this by hand, especially when the same categories can simply popup again and again due to human error. Logical2uReview me! 18:22, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps a nicer way of doing this would be to look through the category listing for categories with typos, and correct the typos category by category - that way whole mis-spelt categories could be removed quickly, all at once (rather than random page by random page). Martinp23 23:12, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
That would require a list of typos. It could look through random pages, make a list of categories that don't have not been created, then it can show that list to a human. A human can match them up to the correct one, and the bot can check each mis-spellings category for other identical misspellings, and fix them all.
Instead of going through random pages, going through a database dump would allow the finding of all categories that are used but do not exist. Perhaps a special SQL query could be requested to make a master list of such categories. HowIBecameCivil 23:17, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

DEFCOM BOT

Do you think HBC Helperbot could put a notice on Defcom in order to tell administrators that WP:AIV is backlogged? Real96 06:02, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

You should contact User:HighinBC about this, as he codes and runs that bot -- Martinp23 23:09, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I think he's sick. Real96 02:39, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I think a bot that monitors a series of backlogs and adjusts the Defcon is a great idea, but that is not my bot. I think would be a task would be better suited to a bot designed to do this, instead of tacked onto my existing bot. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 00:03, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Template redirects bypass bot

Would anybody be interested in coding up a bot for the purpose of removing redirects in template space, as to preserve the bolding effect when templates are transcluded on pages with links pointing to that page. Many wikipedians often forget to update these templates after a page move. The bot's logic should also include the ability to change hyphenation, capitalization, accent mark, and macrons to the link text if the redirect is similar. —Dispenser 02:18, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

DRV log page bot

Deletion review could use a bot to do routine tasks related to creation of daily and monthly log pages, and including completed days on the monthly log at the appropriate time. Monthly log to be created once a month, and presumably updated once a day, daily to be created once a day. See User:Trialsanderrors for further details. GRBerry 23:08, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll be happy to do this - I'll get in contact very soon. Martinp23 23:10, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Username bot

Reports to AIV for inappropriate usernames (i.e. words with .com/.org/.net, fuck, shit, damn, fagnut, cunt, whore, Wikipedia sucks, I hate you, you are evil, suck my ass, as well as racial epithets, etc.) Real96 02:38, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

This already exists for the IRC bots. Cbrown1023 talk 02:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
see User:Betacommand/Log for my script output. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 03:31, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Double redirects is up and running

Double redirects is up and running:

http://wiki.eso.workers.dev/wiki/Special:DoubleRedirects

Bots get to work, and stop slacking. --Parker007 18:09, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks empty at the moment - we've possibly got other bots running on it already (or it just hasn't been updated yet). Martinp23 19:11, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
You have to click the number of links you want to display for it to work. --•Tbone55•(T, C, UBX, Sign Here) 21:15, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Don't think it was that - it had probably just not been updated (or something). I can see the double redirects now :) Martinp23 19:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

There are Double redirects still left:

http://wiki.eso.workers.dev/w/index.php?title=Special:DoubleRedirects&limit=500&offset=500

http://wiki.eso.workers.dev/w/index.php?title=Special:DoubleRedirects&limit=500&offset=0

--Parker007 05:43, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
My bot's working on it. --Erwin85 18:46, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Template bot

a simple bot, that places certain templates at the end of an article(s) you specify. --•Tbone55•(T, C, UBX, Sign Here) 21:13, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

This can be done with AWB. What exactly do you want done? --Selket Talk 19:05, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Request to remove bot User:TuvicBot

It always removed the langue links which is valid [6].--Ksyrie 03:58, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

It does seem to be removing valid links, I will look further into it. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 04:03, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
I cannot find that bots approval, so I cannot tell what it is supposed to be doing. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 04:06, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Check the two chinese links for Safflower,zh:紅花 and Invoice,zh:統一發票--Ksyrie 04:09, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
and this Xie Xingfang,zh:謝杏芳;Xicheng District,zh:北京市西城区.--Ksyrie 04:11, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
I blocked the bot for a little while and left a message on the owners page, it seems to be malfunctioning. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 04:23, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks a lot.--Ksyrie 04:26, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Another bot found a little disfuctional.User:Idioma-bot.See Gulf of Carpentaria and zh:卡奔塔利亚湾.--Ksyrie 04:40, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Third bot,User:Soulbot,See Mesoplodont whale and zh:安氏中喙鯨.--Ksyrie 04:48, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Fourth bot,User:STBotD,see Direct action and zh:直接行動--Ksyrie 04:51, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I will wait on somebody else to deal with this, I am not sure what is happening here with these bots. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 04:56, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Maybe all interwiki-modifying bots are malfunctioning... due to some code change or whatnot in MediaWiki. If so, blocking these bots won't really solve the issue. -- 我♥中國 07:29, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
The reason they remove links, is that it's to another page with a mismatching disambiguation state, IE a link from our WWW (disambiguation) to, say, bs:World Wide Web, which are not of the same subject, and just shouldn't exist. The only other reason it removes links is because a page does not exist. ST47Talk 13:24, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

City name redirects

Is there a way to create a bot to automatically create redirects to American city articles from names that are incorrectly punctuated or capitalized? For example, there are many many city articles for which ONLY searching for "Baltimore, MD" will get you to the right article. "baltimore MD", "Baltimore MD", "baltimore md", sometimes even "baltimore, MD" either take you to a search results page or to nothing at all. As most of these articles were created by a bot to begin with, someone suggested that a bot could create these redirects. Thanks-Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 15:56, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds possible, if there's a list of articles to work with, note that the only necessary formats would be "city STATE", "city state", and mabye "city, State" or "city State". ST47Talk 11:37, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Looking for the perfect dates

You:

  • strong, confident, ever willing to help others
  • smart! You know 'bots like nobody else
  • never realized that dates like 01 Aug don't redirect like 1 Aug does

Me:

I guess you want a bot to go through all the months with days 01-09 and check for what links here? If so, I'd like to try this using perlwikipedia, I'll get an article count in a bit. ST47Talk 00:32, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
According to my script, there are 537 such links. Note that some month (May 01) do redirect properly. ST47Talk 00:50, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Enjoy:
ST47Talk 00:59, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
A mass fix may be botworthy, or we can simply create the rest of the Redirects, say so if you want it done. ST47Talk 01:07, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Hi ST47: Thanks for the quick response. I guess I was being just a little cute, before. I've never botted, is it a big thing to create the redirects? If not, that would be great. Thanks, Saintrain 05:22, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
It's easy, I'll write a bot today at school whenever I find myself bored. ST47Talk 11:31, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
That was fast. I hope you weren't too bored. Thanks, Saintrain 19:26, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Lol. Done! ST47Talk 20:42, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

wiktionary

This might be overstepping, but I couldn't find any bot pages on wiktionary so I thought I'd propose an idea here. There are a series of pages here that should only list redlinks and have instructions at the top to remove blue links, this would be an ideal task for a bot. Vicarious 08:25, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Try their "Coffee room" or whatever it's called. As for the idea, this can be done in perl, by grabbing each page, if it contains something like "==" that every page should have, add it to an array, then iterate over it removing those lines from current and save it. ST47Talk 11:34, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
also look into pywikipedia as that can do what you need very quickly as it has a ifexist function. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 17:52, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Talk header bot.

I'm suggesting a bot that simply inserts the template {{talkheader}} at the beginning of every artice's talk page.

As a side note, mabey this bot should also put {{archivebox|auto=yes}} automatically in every talk page.

I have a strong objection to this. Not because I personally don't like the templates, but because the community has rejected that idea many times in the past. Some people think that if talkheader is on every talk page, it will just look like a disclaimer/copyright message and people will skip right over it by habit. Besides, if we wanted {{talkheader}} on every talk page, there's a mediawiki feature for that, we don't need a bot for it. :-) —METS501 (talk) 05:38, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

TattletaleBot

This bot comes out of a discussion with Ray Saintonge on wikien-l.

The problem: we have a zillion schoolkids vandalizing Wikipedia from shared IP addresses. We clean it up some, and then we block. This a bunch of work for us, people other than the vandals see warning messages that don't apply to them, and then a lot of innocent people suffer until we unblock.

The solution: School administrators put a special template on the IP talk page to show their interest in a given IP. Whenever a warning or a block happens, the administrator gets an email notice. They then take some locally appropriate action, defusing the situation before we block. Or if a block happens, then when people come to them with questions, they already know the answer.

I don't have time to build this in the near future, but if anybody gets interested and wants to chat about it, feel free to get in touch. Thanks, William Pietri 17:12, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I've been reading the thread on wikien-l, but I have one problem. Do you think that school administrators would actually place that template there? How would they even know that there is a template to place there? —METS501 (talk) 18:44, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
A school admin can look at the block log and talk page. If they knew enough to put a template with their e-mail(which would get them spammed), then they know enough to look at the logs. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 18:47, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
True, but knowing is not the same as doing. Suppose their students average one warning a month. If they look daily, then that's 97% of the time that they get empty logs. Under those conditions, most people would stop checking. Given that the school techs I know are all overworked, I imagine that goes doubly so for them. Whereas if they get immediate e-mail notification, they could take immediate action if they so desired. As to spam, I could think of a few ways around that. The most obvious is to just use the Wikipedia email system. Hope that helps, William Pietri 22:44, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
Hi, Mets. I think some school administrators would. And when they come by unblock-en-l to get unblocked, they could be told how to reduce the chance of blocks in the future. One recent message on unblock was part of the inspiration; the administrator was clearly willing to do more to keep a block from happening again. William Pietri 22:44, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
I cannot see the harm in the idea, as long as it is an opt-in system. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 22:45, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't think this would work. The high schools in my district all have library accessible computers that require no login authentication. Having a log file from Wikipedia of the vandalism would not give administrators an effective means of finding the students.
Also, vandalizing Wikipedia is not against any school user agreements, so the actual recourse that can be done by the administrator is practically nothing.
Finally, I would agree with William Pietri in saying that most techs are overburdened and would not take the time to do this. --D 19:32, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Just to be clear, I wasn't thinking of a log file. When the IP got a warning, they'd get an email. From the one administrator I talked to personally, he said he'd go out, look at who was using the library computers, and tell the person involved to knock it off. Recently on unblock-en-l, one administrator looking to get unblocked said they'd even be having an assembly to explain the right way to deal with Wikipedia. This would be used by the people who care and ignored by the ones who don't. William Pietri 01:29, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
I think it would be good if schools do chase up a little more on vandalism. Not saying they should chase up on every incident obviously no one has the time but a little chasing up along with a clear instructions by the school on what is acceptable and/or a little nudging would go a long away IMHO. I've always been of the belief that it is the responsibility of schools to some extent to help teach etiquete and decent behaviour (obviously this is predominantly the parents role but school plays a part) and this kind of thing can help IMHO. I also suspect it would in fact be against most school policies to vandalise wikipedia. Most won't have anything specific but general AUPs would probably have something that would cover it. E.g. being disruptive, obscenities (well, for a lot of vandalism), etc. Heck even general policies may apply (using school property to cause damage). In any case, most school policies only allow educational usage and I doubt anyone will be able to successfully argue that vandalising wikipedia can be resonably considered educational usage (some 'bright' sparks may try of course). Remember that it isn't a court of law we're talking about here. I don't know how things work in the US say, perhaps the nature of the ways work there mean that school policies have to be very specific or they'll get sued. But I suspect in a lot of other countries this is not the case, school policies don't really have be that specific, there is a resonable amount of leeway. Also, we're not talking about students getting suspensions here (that sort of thing probably does have to be spelt out resonably well), maybe not even punishments (although I think with many schools that wouldn't be unresonable, especially restricting computer access for a short time) just a stern word with the students and if necessary involving the parents would often probably be enough. And once a student has been warned of course, even if the policies aren't that clear in that specific area, the fact the student has been warned would mean in most schools further action would be acceptable if necessary. Universities are of course a different area although even then I would suspect it would still be against policies. Nil Einne 09:54, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
How about a "help each other" phrase in a template, inviting others on an IP to use their IP Contributions link to monitor their own school's usage? (SEWilco 20:11, 11 March 2007 (UTC))
That's a fine notion as well. It's pull rather than push, and so I think the two would be complimentary. William Pietri 01:29, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I have a request or idea if it is possible re-make interwiki bots, so as there add {{commons}} to other languages wiki. For example if the bot see in czech wiki {{Commons}}, that he replace this to all other wikis (like replace to en, fr, de) by using interwiki links if there this template don´t exist. I´m trying do this by myself but giving myself a question if is not possible use a mechanical power for doing this :) The idea is that all wiki use the same while category on commons are in english.

Hope so that somebody understand what I mean :) Thx for your time and hope that in early time see this new generation of bot working :) --Chmee2 14:35, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Per my suggestion at Wikipedia talk:Multilingual coordination#Tool to spread interlanguage links, assuming interlanguage links are symmetric and transitive it seems a bot could add the transitive closure of all interlanguage links to all language versions of an article in the closure set, and step through all articles (in, say, en:) doing this. Does anyone know of some reason not to do this? Is anyone interested in writing such a thing? -- Rick Block (talk) 17:54, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

We already have the interwiki.py script, I don't see how this is any different. ST47Talk 19:06, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
I didn't actually know about it, but reading through m:interwiki.py, doesn't it determine the transitive closure set from the perspective of the operator's (single) language wikipedia (step 1 of the above) and update links only in that wikipedia? The point of the suggestion is to make the set of links the same for all wikipedias in the closure set (i.e. run in multiple language wikipedias effecitvely simultaneously). This would require having bot logins in all the wikipedias the bot is updating, but I assume this is a solvable issue. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:39, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
with interwiki.py, if you have accounts on more than one wiki, are set it up in the user-config, it will edit on all the wikis: I got in trouble for that on ko once. ST47Talk 20:48, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Null edit bot

Category:WikiProject Irish Republicanism articles has just been renamed, and a large number of articles have disappeared from it that are still in the category according to their talk page. According to this I need to do a null edit, and someone at the VP says there's bots that do that? Thanks. One Night In Hackney303 03:04, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this is necessary anymore, as it will be updated automatically by the wiki software. It just takes a bit of time, because it gets added to the Job queue. Jayden54 09:01, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

WikiProjects

A bot is requested to iterate through Category:WikiProjects, find all projects that are inactive, move those to Category:Inactive WikiProjects, and add {{inactive}} to the top of those pages. A project is defined as inactive if neither the project nor its talk page has been edited for two months. This should ideally be repeated every couple weeks or so. AllyUnion's bot (User:Kurando-san) used to do this in the past. >Radiant< 13:13, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

SatyrBot can do this. Let me run some programming and testing and get back to you in a day or two. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 13:59, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Bot for RfA

I was thinking there should be a bot for automatically updating the count for a RfA e.g. (41/2/0). Sometimes people forget to change them, and it would be handy for something to change them if one forgets. Nol888(Talk)(Review me please) 21:42, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Easy to do, but completely unnecessary, there are enough people that it's almost always up to date. ST47Talk 22:25, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Vandal Detection Bot

Make a bot that can scan through the user talk pages of IP addresses and detect a specific vandalism tag which includes the date of vandalism, then have it count the number of tags within a certain time period, and if a minimum number is met, post the IP address and a link to the user page on a "block page" for administrators to look at. Store a list of all IP address vandalism and check to see if vandalism tags are removed from user talk page. To save server access time, the list of IP addresses to block can be loaded to the page every x times.

Outline of the process: Check user page, counting all vandalism tags dated after x date. Also, count overall number of tags. Compare count to y number of allowed tags, if greater, move ip address to list to be updated to the server. Also, check overall number of tags against last overall number of tags count. If new overall number of tags is less than old, move ip address to list to be updated to server with comment about missing tags. If not, store new count of overall tags to client side data file. After z number of ip addresses have been found to be over the limit of number of allowable tags, append list to special "block consideration" page for administrators to view, along with any comments on why they should be blocked and a link to their talk page. D 16:33, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

No. First, user talk pages can be blanked; to be complete, the bot would need to go through history pages (or diffs). Second, anonymous IP addresses vary - some are dial-up, some are dedicated (home broadband), some are from schools, some are from business; how these are handled varies. Third, the algorithm could be endlessly argued over - how serious, within what period, etc.
Most importantly, if editors who are placing the warnings know about levels of warnings, then they almost certainly know about WP:AIV, and can report problems (reporting is very easy). If they don't understand levels of warnings, then the bot is likely not to be useful, but the data it uses isn't useful. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:17, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
The talk pages are scanned for blanking. Here's the line that deals with that, found in my section "Outline of the process:" If new overall number of tags is less than old, move ip address to list to be updated to server with comment about missing tags. If the page is blanked, the vandalism tags won't be greater than the number of the current scan, so the user will be caught redhanded. To make that work better, I'll even check the talk pages tags behind the date of the last scan. That way it only compares the number of old tags to the number of old tags.
As for the arguments over the algorithm, I'm going to set the standard. As each editor uses their own judgment, it would not hurt to have a little uniformity. After all, that's a part of being bold. Third, the tags in question are going to be a newly designed tag. They will be specific for my bot. Meaning that instead of tagging first, second, third, last warning, there will only need to be two tags: a tag for possible negligent editing that looks like vandalism, and a tag for actual vandalism. The count will determine which level of tag the user is on. So if you get the vandalism tag 5 times in an hour, then I'm sorry, but one of those was your last chance and you are going to be added to the list. The algorithm will however skip over possible negligent vandalism tags, giving benefit of the doubt to the IP editor. --D 01:41, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Please ignore this bot request. I'm going to propose it myself.--D 17:02, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Bot for regular editing

Trampton 17:19, 13 March 2007 (UTC).

While bots are great, and we are too, we aren't psychic, and you do need to explain your suggestion. Also, note that bots are programs, and while we can tell them to, for example, load "Wikipedia:Bot requests" and add "I like bots" to the ed, we can't tell it to generate content without source, I.E. we can't say "write an article about cookies". ST47Talk 18:54, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Welcome Bot

Please could somebody make a bo that would automatically send Welcome Mesages to new Wikipedians. This would help the welcoming committee. Thank You. Djmckee1 20:04, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe that this has been suggested before and been turned down due to the fact that it dehumanizes the process. Dismas|(talk) 20:06, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Check the archives. It gets denied every time. —METS501 (talk) 21:41, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Spam Commenting Bot

I might (try) making something like this myself, but I would like some feedback on wether it is a good idea first. Basically, it would take Category:Wikipedia_external_links_cleanup, and iterate through each article in there, trying to detect if the NoMoreLinks template has been added. If it has been added, it will simply continue to the next article, if not, it will add the "NoMoreLinks" template to the "External Links" section. Tim.bounceback - TaLk 14:31, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, I'd ask User:Eagle 101 or User:Shadow1 for their opinions on it, as they are the big spam people. ST47Talk 18:17, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
OK, I've left a note on Eagle 101's talk page about it. Tim.bounceback - TaLk 19:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Just a quick question - is it worth running multiple times, and if so, how often (how often are articles added to that category)? Tim.bounceback - TaLk 20:27, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Requests for bot approval request tracker

I'm encouraging anyone to make a bot that monitors bot approval requests. Taxman described the task of such a bot in a discussion on the bot approval time as follows.

The suggestion on a bot to track requests isn't a bad idea, something like WP:RFASUM that lists the last time each bot request has been edited and perhaps the last time edited by a BAG memeber. BAG wikilinked by Ocolon

Such a bot would help bot approval group members and all the other Wikipedians assisting with the bot improvement and approval process to keep track of approval requests and prevent requests from being neglected unintentionally. It would provide a good summary of the current approval process and make this more transparent. — Ocolon 17:09, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea, I'll look into using perlwikipedia's get_history to do this, but I don't see why not. It may even be possible to determine when a request is approved using get_text and looking for certain icons. Let me try to write a plan up. ST47Talk 18:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I've set up some code and placed a sample output at User:ST47/BAG. I have a pretty good idea on how to make the status column work, I just haven't set it up yet. Let me know if there's anything else I should add in. ST47Talk 21:48, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for tackling this task. :) I think it would be helpful not only to list the last one who edited but also the corresponding date/time (another column maybe). Furthermore I'd suggest to order the list by the time of the last edit, ascending, so that rather neglected requests are on top of the list while requests that have been edited lately are on the bottom. — Ocolon 22:02, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, isn't there a way to make a table sortable by column? I haven't put it into the bot - as for dates, the framework I'm using doesn't support that yet, but after nagging the dev, he's decided to add it. I'll set up table sorting in just a moment. ST47Talk 22:14, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
This is great. I'd like to propose to merge the date and time columns, so that you have entries like 2007-03-12, 12:03:22, in this order. Sorting by this column would give a real chronology then. — Ocolon 07:49, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
We can send a message to the BAG members to ask them to please use the templates so that your table works too. Also, keep in mind that requests are still open when in the Bots in a trial period section. —METS501 (talk) 02:35, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
OK, I'll reconfigure the table in a few minutes. Question - are bots in a trial period transcluded? That table currently lists the "new bots" and "new functions". In the meantime, I'm also going to set up the status system. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ST47 (talk • contribs) 11:02, 17 March 2007 (UTC).
forgot to sign :( OK, so status is set up, please use templates for now without substing (the ones that are up there are all OK, only one is not "Open", and it displays correctly. Sorting also functions properly by date or name or last edit or status. ST47Talk 11:24, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject MMO Newsletter

I am wondering if there is a bot available to deliver WikiProject Massively multiplayer online games' newsletter on April 1. Instructions on who to send it to are available on our newsletter page. Thanks! Greeves (talk • contribs) 17:22, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll do it, let me look at those pages. ST47Talk 18:49, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
OK, I can do this - I would make a list of all members and remove those who appear on the link only or nothing lists, and then do the link only group seperately. Let me go get approval, and put a link to the text to be delivered on my talk page when you want it done. ST47Talk 18:56, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Just as a side-note, you put in your bot request for monthly newsletters, ours will probably only be quarterly. Thanks! Greeves (talk • contribs) 20:11, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, I'll drop a note there. ST47Talk 20:40, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Bot to clear stale warnings off of IPs userpages

Purpose: The bot will clear off old IP warnings from 2006. Real96 03:20, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Those warnings are used by sysops to determine if there is a history of vandalism. --D 03:48, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
The warnings from 2006 are used by sysops? Have they not heard of dynamic and shared IPs? – Qxz 18:20, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Of course they have. They've also heard of static IPs. If there is consistent vandalism over a period of months to a certain type of article, it can warrant blocks for longer than would otherwise be appropriate. The only thing I can see as being appropriate for a bot like this would be to clear old warnings off of the pages for school IP addresses, as those can get pretty crowded in a relatively short period of time and old warnings are much less relevant.--Dycedarg ж 22:02, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I actually think clearing off the warnings would be a good idea. Even static addresses don't last forever; homes and offices change hands, people change jobs; households or businesses switch ISPs. But they should probably be replaced by something like the following:
This IP address has been used, most recently in April 2003, to vandalize Wikipedia. Given the long intervening time with no known vandalism, however, it is likely that the vandal is no longer active or has changed addresses. If vandalism resumes and a short-term block proves ineffective, however, a long-term block may be called for.
NeonMerlin 20:57, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
At what time would be appropriate for adding that tag? What if they vandalize the next day? This idea raises some questions as to what latency period constitutes an inactive user. --D 02:24, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
If there was a bot a like this, the bot should place a messagebox at the top of the page that said something like "This user has been previously warned but those warning have gone stale and a WHATEVERBOT has removed them on TIMESTAMP. Prior to the bot cleaning, the page looked like this." (and include a link to the page so that the sysops could see the previous warnings). Cbrown1023 talk 20:35, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Test of an automatic system to rate articles

I'd like to see scores for 50 randomly-selected articles, five of them featured, according to my draft scoring system. The system is an early draft and has not been discussed by the community in its present form. (The previous version, which the community rejected, called for user voting in combination with a system like this.) I'm thinking it would be better to come to the VP with an already tested system. Even if it is rejected as an official system, though, there has been enough interest expressed that someone will probably code it as an off-site tool if it proves adequate, in which case I will support them. NeonMerlin 19:18, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Yes, I know the Thoroughness rating isn't quite finished yet, but I'm not sure how to improve it. I'd welcome input into the system itself. NeonMerlin 19:32, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks very complicated, but if it gets coded a dotnet assembly dll would be great. Then it's available to AWB and plugins. --kingboyk 14:39, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
If you're looking for someone to code up a bot to do the scoring, good luck. That's an awful lot of coding for a system that has no community input, let alone consensus. And the coding would be completely wasted if permission was not given for the bot to operate. I'd guess that approval is hardly guaranteed, since the bot (potentially) will post a rating to every single article talk page in Wikipedia.
Generally speaking, it's better to start with a relatively simple scoring system and tweak that (adding complexity where necessary), rather than start with a very complicated one and then try to figure out if (a) the results seem reasonable and (b) if they don't seem reasonable, what needs to be changed to fix that. Plus, a relatively simple system can be tested by doing some calculations manually; what you have is going nowhere if you can't interest someone in coding a bot for it. And a very complex system is going to be difficult to sell to the community as being accurate. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:57, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Removing wikiproject templates from talk pages of deleted articles

I noticed that there's quite some deleted articles, which still have a wikiproject template on their talk page. This is particularly bad for projects like WP:VG, where there's lots of articles that don't meet the policies for inclusion, and are thus deleted. This clutters up statistics (deleted articles are often poorly rated) and unnecessarily adds extra articles to 'unassessed articles' categories. This could be added to an existing bot that browses talk pages. (Maybe one of the bots that add signatures to unsigned comments?) --User:Krator (t c) 17:20, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Really, talk pages of deleted articles (which are inactive) should be deleted. I'm sure that there was/is a bot somewhere which nominates such pages for deletion, but it seems to be offline now. Martinp23 17:22, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Martin, I'm pretty sure that it is Oleg's Mathbot that used to do that, but it ended up tagging archives instead so he stopped it. Cbrown1023 talk 22:49, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Ahh - so really, the best thing would be to ask Oleg to adjust his code to ignore talk pages with "/" in them. Though this would miss some deleted pages with surviving talk pages, I suspect that it would catch most. Martinp23 23:01, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't think inactive talk pages of deleted articles should always be deleted - disputes that existed before the article got deleted might have arise again, and lots of discussion can be avoided this way. However, the project templates should always be removed, hence this bot request. It is easier to do than deleting talk pages, because project templates shouldn't be on subpages or anywhere but article talk pages anyway. --User:Krator (t c) 23:52, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
The bot that Oleg was running would not actually be deleting the pages, it would be nominating them for speedy. Furthermore, the pages that you were talking about (e.g. special archives of deletions discussions...) are supposed to be skipped because of their template name. Cbrown1023 talk 01:29, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
I may take a look at having an attempt at an idea like this, using toolserver data (when it's back up to date), or some web interface if I can find an efficient one. Martinp23 18:28, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Bot Tagging

I don't know if this is the place to put this, (but I was given a link). Could a bot please put the template {{hiking-stub}} on all pages in the category Category:trail stubs? And/Or just on every page that has another stub tag in the following categories:

Backpacking
Backpacking stubs

If this is possible, I'd be much abliged as it will be very tedious (sp?) to do this by hand. EDIT: Oh yah, hiking stubs is a subcategory of hiking... probably not a good idea to put any there because obviously it'll loop -Leif902 12:26, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi! Due to issues with overtagging, most of the bot operators who can assist you will not blindly add subcategories. I recommend creating a user or wikiproject subpage where you can list all of the categories that should be included. Also, you can use WP:AWB to do this yourself if you want to! Simply create a bot account, download WP:AWB and request approval at WP:RFBA. Once approved, your bot will receive a bot flag and someone will allow you to use WP:AWB. If you still want someone else to do this, just post here with the category list. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 14:11, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Alright, sorry I'd do this myself, but I'm not really comforatable yet with editing wikipedia, I'd hate to kill something... I don't want categories added however, just the hiking-stub template to all the articles in those categories (minus it's own of course) which are stubs... is this possible? Thanks - Leif902 18:23, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
So just those four categories - Category:Backpacking, Category:Camping, Category:Hiking, and Category:WikiProject Backpacking? No others? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 20:43, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Those and all sub categories and Category:trail stubs (was listed above, sorry)... But the WikiProject Backpacking category won't have any stubs in it and the hiking-template stub category is a subcategory of one... better watch out for that (I'd hate to have an infinite loop where the bot keeps posting over and over). I hope this isn't too much trouble, I figured it'd be easy with a bot, only stub articles obviously should be tagged.

Thanks in advance, -Leif902 20:59, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah - see, there's something of the problems. First, a bot doesn't know which sub-categories to follow and which not to. That's why I suggested coming up with a full list of categories you want run through. Second, a bot doesn't know what's a stub and what isn't. We can tell it to look for pages less than, say, 5,000 characters and mark those. But the bot would be wrong in some instances. If we don't have really clear instructions to give the bot, it would be just as likely to mess things up as it would to make things better. Since I count about 35 categories total that you'd want to go through, you might just want to enlist another WP:PACK member or two and split up the categories and do it by hand. It might *seem* like a bot could do this, but without really clear parameters, humans are better suited to the job, IMHO. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 01:16, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Okay, thanks anyways. I just thought a bot could look for existing stub tags in the articles and mark only those and you could just tell it to skip certain categories, I don't know, thanks anyways, -Leif902 02:01, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Oh - I see - I missed that! Sorry :) Then if you can come up with the definitive list of categories, that's certainly possible. The category list is important because if you look through the subcats you'll see things like Category:Recreational vehicle manufacturers, which will probably have stubs, but doesn't need the hiking stub. Does that work for you? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 04:17, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

FAQ Help Bot

Hi, I would like to run a bot and I am not really experienced with programming, so it told me to post here. I was thinking on a bot (maybe called FAQbot or equivalent) that watches Wikipedia:Help desk for changes and if it finds a similar keyword match to a question in the FAQ pages, it will respond with an answer. This could also work with the {{helpme}} requests at CAT:HELP. If someone would be kind and very grateful to create this for me, it would be much appreciated. Many thanks, Extranet (Talk | Contribs) 06:59, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Template:Infobox UK station fields

Would it be possible for someone to run a bot through all transclusions of Template:Infobox UK station and perform the following changes:

  • exits0405 → usage0405
  • lowexits0405 → lowusage0405

These two fields are identical, the intention is to move all articles over to 'usage' which is a better description of the data. This will allow the template to be simplified and so make it easier to maintain.

The current use of the fields is:

Field Number of uses
usage0203 1 0.05%
lowusage0203 17 0.92%
usage0405 2 0.11%
lowusage0405 24 1.30%
exits 29 1.57%
lowexits 29 1.57%
lowexits0405 658 35.55%
exits0405 1091 58.94%
Total 1851

So this change would require in the region of 1749 edits (use of lowexits0405 + use of exits0405). This is of course more than going the other way but as I've said, usage better describes the field. Some of the other fields in the list can also be merged together but I'll work through these manually as they need checking.

If anyone is able to do this, don't hesitate to contact me if there is anything you wish to verify. Thanks. Adambro 14:36, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I think I can do this. Would you like the various redirects renamed at the same time? (Some pages use "UK stations", others "Infobox UK station") Gimmetrow 15:01, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Good point. Including "Infobox UK station" would certainly be preferable to going through the redirects as many do currently. This would increase the number of edits slightly but not much. This would add the following tasks:
  • UK stations → Infobox UK station
  • UK stations PTE → Infobox UK station
There aren't any others that go through redirects. Adambro 15:27, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
I have requested approval to run a bot to do most of this work myself. Adambro 15:49, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
OK, that's fine. How do these edits look, though? Gimmetrow 16:06, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Just a slight typo on lowusage0405, you've missed out the zero before the four in the parameter name. I'll sort them. Adambro 16:36, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, sorry about that. Gimmetrow 16:45, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

DeOrphan bot

I don't know if this has been done before, or is technically feasible, but a bot that scans Wikipedia to locate articles tagged as orphaned and introduces internal links by putting brackets in words same as the name of the article would be extremely helpful. It wouldn't introduce every link available, but it would reduce the amount of work.--Orthologist

That would need to be a human assisted bot because the bot cannot tell if a link is appropriate. However, assisted by a human such a bot could be very productive. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 00:16, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Why would it need to be assisted? If it located and recognised First Certificate in English as orphaned, it would scan Wikipedia to find First Certificate in English together and make them into internal links to that page. It wouldn't make feel bad into depression (that requires consciousness), but does introducing links by putting brackets around the same exact words as the name of the article require assistance?--Orthologist 22:48, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
How would the bot know whether "depression" is being used to refer to something related to a human or something related to a surface? (SEWilco 23:08, 11 March 2007 (UTC))
Or to the economy? NeonMerlin 21:02, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I think the best way to do this is to have a bot make suggestions to a human who can then go back and add the links a appropriate. It could also be written so that it displays the text around the proposed link and the name of the article and let's a human hit link or don't-link. If you have a few orphaned pages in mind, I can search an old database dump for articles containing their titles and provide you a list. --Selket Talk 20:15, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
I suggest it should display the first paragraph of the proposed target too, if it's doing more than one target at a time. NeonMerlin 21:02, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
As I said it wouldn't be perfect. It would link a word to the disambiguation page, and then editors would fix the link. But, most important, it would have introduced new links, even if those redirected to the disambiguation pages. Moreover, orphaned articles usually have unique titles, so it wouldn't be that difficult.--Orthologist 17:55, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Links to non-existent page Wikipedia is not a soapbox should point at Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a soapbox redirect page or to its destination, Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a soapbox. --CiaPan 15:15, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

You do not need a bot for this. Here's a list of all sites linking to that non-existent page: Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikipedia_is_not_a_soapbox. These are few enough to do the changes by hand, I think. — Ocolon 16:20, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Redirect rewriting

Very simple, I think (at least for people who know how to code). So simple, indeed, that I suspect it had already been suggested and eventually refused.

A bot that transform incoming links when they point to a redirection. Example: [7] has a link to Seven Deadly Sins wich redirects to Seven deadly sins.

Such a “redirectbot” (proposed name) would edit the link in Seven virtues and change it to Seven deadly sins. In the long run, it would save some CPU cycles and from day one, would remove a bit of the feeling of clutterness of the Encyclopedia.

What do you think of it? Has this already been suggested? Is there a place to browse the various proposals and why they have not been implemented?
David Latapie (✒ | @) 12:17, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

All I know is that on nl: we don't allow these edits. Redirects work, so why fix them? It would only cause unnecessary edits. --Erwin85 17:02, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
See the Wikipedia guideline Don't fix redirects that aren't broken. — Ocolon 17:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Can anyone create a bot that take Gini Coefficients from a page and add them in each country ?

I recently created an addition to the Country Infobox template, namely the Gini coefficient.

Now, I started to add this coefficient to the infoboxes of 5 countries. But it's rather a repetitive and quite long and boring procedure. Additionally, it would be nice if a bot could take values from the page and update changes of the coefficients.

The pages where one can get the values from is here: List_of_countries_by_income_equality

And the value for each country's infobox to be completed/added is, e.g.: 

|Gini                      = 33
|Gini_year                 = 2000
|Gini_rank                 = 33th
|Gini_category             = <font color="#00c600">low</font>

low (green bc. good), medium (orange), high(red because bad) have these color-intervals (found here Gini_coefficient#Income_Gini_coefficients_in_the_world):
low:

  1. 008000 < 0.25
  2. 00c600 0.25–0.29

medium:

  1. dede00 0.30–0.34
  2. ffce63 0.35–0.39
  3. ffa552 0.40–0.44

high:

  1. ff6b6b 0.45–0.49
  2. ff0000 0.50–0.54
  3. c60000 0.55–0.59
  4. 800000 ≥ 0.60

Anyone fancy to make this bot (if possible)?


Is there another todo list, taskforce, project I can place this?

Please tell me if I am barking the wrong tree.. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by R U Bn (talk • contribs) 12:21, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

This is the correct place to ask this. I am willing to get permission for my bot to do this, but I would like to point out a couple things first: For one thing, I would not be adding the rank. Because the information comes from studies taken from different years, the data is incomparable. To rank them by this data would be misleading, and OR in any case. It would give no indication of how the countries compare to each other now, or even at any given point in time. How Japan in 1993 compares to Bulgaria in 2003 is neither useful nor relevant information. Second, I would not be adding any information that's older than 2000. As your little argument in Japan makes plainly obvious, adding decade old information to an article is of questionable merit, and could in any case be controversial. And bots don't do controversial things. 7 years is pushing it as it is. You can add the information that's older to any article you wish. Or, you could find a source of more current information, and I could work off of that. If you're okay with this, I would be willing to have my bot do it, probably within the next couple days if I can get approval for it by then.--Dycedarg ж 20:19, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
I thought I'd add, adding a color to the rank might also be slightly POV. Who's to decide hard limits as to what's good and bad? ^demon[omg plz] 01:35, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps. But the HDI field in the template has high, medium, and low color-coded just about the exact same way, so I had assumed that was an accepted practice.--Dycedarg ж 01:50, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Ok, Dy., agreed for now and thanks!!
For later or just to know opinions, what about giving the latest coeff. available for older data (>7y) nonetheless -I háve been searching for other UN sources, but without success- and giving it a special tag or warning indication? See also my last comment on the discussion on Japan's talk pages (Talk:Japan#Gini_figures) why I think it's still usefull to represent the data in that case.
About the colors, I got them from the Gini page itself. Don't know where they come from though. Though I don't think it nec. to see them as good or bad, but rather what is higher or lower (so people don't have to look for the exact meaning of the number to know what a higher and lower number means). Of course, if that too seems to hard (though I would want to see someone living on the poor side of the country's people in a red marked country and say that it is good; even at the richer side), at the utter disagreement maybe take some arbitrary colors not hinting at good/bad? Or another way to make them less hard is to use more color gradients, so there aren't any hard splits. R U Bn (Talk • contrib) 19:19, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
While I agree that the old stuff would be useful information, I don't think it's useful enough to include in the infobox, where as someone on the Japan talk page mentioned only current information is generally included. And the mere fact that why it is useful would need to be argued to the editors of every article with outdated information precludes a bot from doing it. As I said, if updated information for a large number of countries is found later, feel free to contact me and I'll add it then. I think the colors are fine; as I said the HDI field in the infobox use the same colors without controversy.--Dycedarg ж 20:13, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Deletion request

I had used a bot to create Indian town articles using census data. For the towns that already existed, the bot created the stub article in it's sandbox. These are currently being merged into article space manually. After a merge, the article is striked out from the list. A merged sandbox article will not have a category. The category is removed by adding a colon to the syntax. See User:Ganeshbot/sandbox/Adilabad. Is it possible to go through this list and delete the sandbox articles that have already been merged (striked or not). This would help identify what is complete and what is not. Completed ones will show up as red-links after the delete. Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 06:14, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

You could feasible go through and tag them with {{db}}. If the bot is yours, you could do it by criteria G7, author requests deletion. Also, I think this would fall under G6, non-controversial housekeeping. ^demon[omg plz] 01:29, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
I could do the tagging myself. My concern is that it will flood the the CSD category. Is that okay? Please advise. Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 19:54, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
I've manually added the list to the CSD category, with specific instructions. Deletions have already begun. Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 04:09, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject articles needing attention

Would it be possible to create a bot that would go through all articles tagged with a specific WikiProject banner (i.e. all articles under Category:Caribbean articles by quality), find ones that are tagged with a cleanup template, and add Category:Caribbean articles needing attention to their talk pages? Jwillbur 22:00, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

SatyrBot does something like this for WP:LGBT. Take a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies/to do short list and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies/to do full list for what the bot produces. The first one is a random subset of the second one, suitable for adding to a project page, like we do on WT:LGBT. If that's good, leave me a note on my talk page and I should be able to change the script a tiny bit to work with your project.
Very simple to do and will gladly do it as soon as BCbot is reflagged Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 03:59, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
No need, BC :) This project has been completed. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 04:50, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

"As of..."-bot! (-.-;)

I noticed that many articles in Wikipedia say things like "As of 2007", "As of September 2006", etc., referencing to things that have not yet happened but could happen soon or other similar situations. The problem is that many of these references are terribly outdated: I have found some that say "As of January 2005" and the like. I wondered if it was possible for a bot to update all these situations, so that they remain up to date until those things actually happen, and people can simply remove the "as of"s when it is adequate. The bot would only have to detect the phrase "as of" and if it is followed by a date, then it could update it to the current month and year. (I believe there are no situations where "as of (a specific date)" wouldn't need an update, do you??...) Just my humble first bot proposal... Kreachure 23:11, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

What would happen if it said, "As of January 2005, the population is 2500". If a bot updated that, it would be inaccurate. —METS501 (talk) 23:17, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, the problem is that some of the "As of"'s refer to facts or statistics that are themselves outdated, so there could be instances where updating only the date would be inaccurate. I guess there's no way for a bot to ignore these while updating the others which deserve updating. But what if people put some sort of special marker or template along with the "As of"'s that would actually need an update, so that the bot would recongnize these and update them once in a while? That's the only way I could see this bot working... thanks anyway! Kreachure 00:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

If they put a template next to the as of — couldn't they alternatively update the as of by hand? I think this would be easier and less work. I also think you only use as of in an article to indicate that something could change in the future and the provided information might not be up to date when read anymore. Wouldn't a bot updating the date automatically exactly cause what the author meant to prevent? I'm not a native speaker though, so in case I'm wrong: Can you please clarify or give an example where it would make sense? — Ocolon 16:16, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
No, you're right. The "As of ..." links are meant to identify data (typically statistics) that are expected to change in the future. As far as I can tell it's not the date that should be changed, rather the statistics or facts should be updated. Gimmetrow 16:24, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

It may be useful if a bot could add some kind of tag to the articles that have (or that it thinks has) outdated info, then they could be addressed manually by users Akubhai 20:36, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:As of. Get more people to work on that project, and there won't be a problem. --Rory096 22:36, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Fair use removal bot

There doesn't seem to be a bot that does this, so I'd like to request one.

The bot I envision would check the "File links" on images which include {{screenshot}}, {{logo}}, and other fair use templates. It would then remove the images from the Wikipedia space, template space, portal space, and, most importantly, user space. In the case of user space it would leave a message along the lines of "I have removed a Wikipedia:fair use image (or images), Image:Example.jpg, from your userpage (or user subpage) because Wikipedia policy doesn't allow them to be used on any pages besides articles. If you believe this removal was in error because the image was not a fair use image, please ask at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions."

Overall, it would function something like OrphanBot. How does this sound? Picaroon 21:44, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BJBot 3 :) Martinp23 21:46, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
I've realized I'm able to tell my good ideas from the ideas of mine which I think are good but aren't by whether someone has already thought of them. Picaroon 21:55, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Ha - c'est la vie :). Please remember that you are free to (no, encouraged) to add your suggestions to the current BRFA candidates, if you have any suggestions/things to add. Martinp23 18:07, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Formating bot

I need a bot for my talk page that moves the </div> tag to the bottom of the page every time the </div> tag is not at the bottom. This is needed to combat the issue of new sections being placed below the </div> tag. This is an example of what I need it to do: User Talk:Andrew Hampe (diff) --Andrew Hampe | Talk 16:33, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Shoot. Sorry, screwed up. I need it to do this instead. Sorry about the goof up. --Andrew Hampe | Talk 16:48, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

What about using this as end of your talk page:
<!-- please add new sections above this comment -->
|}
</div>
<!-- please add nothing below this comment -->
:-) Ocolon 17:02, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
You dont get that when you use the + tab to add a new section. I'll put your idea on the page anyway though. I still would like a bot to do this. --Andrew Hampe | Talk 17:16, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
I've edited your user talk page to correct the issue. ST47Talk 18:00, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, it works. I was avoiding that because it's bad code to not close the style and </div> tags --Andrew Hampe | Talk 18:34, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Bot Desperately Needed on Wikipedia:Request an account

We really need a bot to start tending to the newly created Wikipedia:Request an account page. At present, it takes several minutes to complete the clerical work surrounding an account creation. Specifically, the bot needs to check whether a user account has been created (either by a user, or by an admin to meet the request). If it is already created when the user posts the request, the bot should tag that account as already existing and post that in the user's entry. If the account is created by an admin, the bot should move that request to the relevant archive (current archive using the formatting illustrated on that page.

Let me know if you need further clarification. I'd sincerely appreciate anyone's help with this. (There's a barnstar involved :D) alphachimp 18:56, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Looking into this. ST47Talk 21:31, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, I think I have working code, however it takes long time and still gets throttled at times, I'll get back to you if it works. ST47Talk 22:18, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
It works! I'm going to run one (1) live test then try a brfa. ST47Talk 23:08, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Bot

I need a bot. Can somone create one for me that will search out words or mispellings on a page and replace them with a different word? Silverpelt 00:51, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

If you have windows, AutoWikiBrowser does exactly what you described.--Dycedarg ж 00:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Create a List?

As I mentioned on the Patel Talk Page, the list in the article is not comprehensive. Can a bot search through Wikipedia and create a page such as List of Notable Patels (with the criteria being they have a wikipedia page) with a link to each page. I'm guessing the bot will pick up extraneous pages such as Patel but I can go through and remove those pretty easily. Thanks.Akubhai 20:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

BoolCatBot?

Is there a bot that does boolean logic on categories? I'd like to be able to say things like:

IF an article is in a subcategory of Category:Calvinism AND is NOT in Category:WikiProject Calvinism THEN dump the list to such-and-such a place

Is there any bot that will do this sort of thing?

-- TimNelson 06:24, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I only went 3 levels deep into Category:Calvinism, and here are the results. ST47Talk 10:23, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Wow! That'll be useful. One question; is there any way I can do something like this, or do I have to ask you every time?
Thanks again,
-- TimNelson 12:56, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
I used WP:AWB (you don't even need access to do this) I made a list out of each category and saved it, then click tools-> list comparer, load them up and hit go! ST47Talk 20:46, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
For intersections, a really useful tool is m:CatScan. (Can only handle "and") -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:46, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the information, both of you. Unfortunately AWB doesn't run on Linux, but it's good to know that it can do that. I'll be using CatScan, though.

-- TimNelson 00:46, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Vandals

Where is AntiVandalBot? I found lots of test edits in pages listed in the "File Links" of [[Image:example.jpg]]. Although I am using VandalProof to track them, but they keep vandaling (the vandals are mostly by IPs). --Jacklau96 09:06, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

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