Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 22:36, 7 May 2009

Overview Dictionary Bot policy Bot Approvals Group Guide Noticeboard Newsletter Bot Requests Requests for Approval Adminbots {{BAG Tools}} Creating a Bot List of bots Activity monitor Status report History Types

Commonly Requested Bots Frequently denied Anti-vandal Archiving Autoassessment Newsletter delivery Template substitution WikiProject tagging

• WP:BOTREQ
• WP:BOTR

This is a page for requesting tasks to be done by bots per the bot policy. This is an appropriate place to put ideas for uncontroversial bot tasks, to get early feedback on ideas for bot tasks (controversial or not), and to seek bot operators for bot tasks. Consensus-building discussions requiring large community input (such as request for comments) should normally be held at WP:VPPROP or other relevant pages (such as a WikiProject's talk page).

You can check the "Commonly Requested Bots" box above to see if a suitable bot already exists for the task you have in mind. If you have a question about a particular bot, contact the bot operator directly via their talk page or the bot's talk page. If a bot is acting improperly, follow the guidance outlined in WP:BOTISSUE. For broader issues and general discussion about bots, see the bot noticeboard.

Before making a request, please see the list of frequently denied bots, either because they are too complicated to program, or do not have consensus from the Misplaced Pages community. If you are requesting that a template (such as a WikiProject banner) is added to all pages in a particular category, please be careful to check the category tree for any unwanted subcategories. It is best to give a complete list of categories that should be worked through individually, rather than one category to be analyzed recursively (see example difference).

Alternatives to bot requests

• WP:AWBREQ, for simple tasks that involve a handful of articles and/or only needs to be done once (e.g. adding a category to a few articles).
• WP:URLREQ, for tasks involving changing or updating URLs to prevent link rot (specialized bots deal with this).
• WP:USURPREQ, for reporting a domain be usurped eg. |url-status=usurped
• WP:SQLREQ, for tasks which might be solved with an SQL query (e.g. compiling a list of articles according to certain criteria).
• WP:TEMPREQ, to request a new template written in wiki code or Lua.
• WP:SCRIPTREQ, to request a new user script. Many useful scripts already exist, see Misplaced Pages:User scripts/List.
• WP:CITEBOTREQ, to request a new feature for WP:Citation bot, a user-initiated bot that fixes citations.

Note to bot operators: The {{BOTREQ}} template can be used to give common responses, and make it easier to keep track of the task's current status. If you complete a request, note that you did with {{BOTREQ|done}}, and archive the request after a few days (WP:1CA is useful here).

#	Bot request	Status	💬	👥	🙋 Last editor	🕒 (UTC)	🤖 Last botop editor	🕒 (UTC)
1	Basketball biography infobox request	Needs wider discussion.	8	3	NotAG on AWB	2025-01-04 14:52	Primefac	2024-11-17 20:44
2	Replacing FastilyBot	BRFA filed	30	11	Usernamekiran	2025-01-03 03:59	Usernamekiran	2025-01-03 03:59
3	Deletion of navboxes at Category:Basketball Olympic squad navigational boxes by competition	Working	5	5	MolecularPilot	2025-01-01 04:45	Qwerfjkl	2024-11-20 17:32
4	Bulk remove "link will display the full calendar" from articles about calendar years	Y Done	7	5	Primefac	2025-01-14 12:43	Primefac	2025-01-14 12:43
5	Province over-capitalization		10	3	Dicklyon	2025-01-01 07:12	Primefac	2024-12-11 22:00
6	Tagging Category:Cinema of Israel	Done	15	2	LDW5432	2025-01-07 20:00	DreamRimmer	2025-01-07 10:27
7	Bot to simplify "ref name" content	Request withdrawn	16	8	BD2412	2025-01-10 04:27	Anomie	2025-01-04 15:10
8	Lowercasing the word "romanized"		10	3	Primefac	2025-01-14 09:38	Primefac	2025-01-14 09:38

Request at WT:RFA for a CSD report generator/spambot

I'll try to summarize, see the discussion at WT:RFA#CSD_tagging if you want more details. Several new page patrollers asked to receive notifications if an article they tagged for speedy deletion was declined or deleted under a different criteria than the one they requested. Coupled with this is a request for an opt-in service to summarize patrollers' tagging outcomes. This task probably requires an adminbot. Wronkiew (talk) 04:46, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I would add that I think it would be best to have the report be a weekly report rather than everytime a CSD is declined, or have it set to put the message on a subpage rather than the main user page.---I'm Spartacus! 05:10, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I think the subpage idea is sound if there's been more than one report of a particular code difference in a day - I recently had a CSD tagger tag an entire football team as non-notable. But if a tagger has tags changed for multiple reasons then its probably worth giving them multiple messages. ϢereSpielChequers 11:12, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Deletion criteria should be in the deletion log, and the deletion log is accessible to everyone. Why do you think that this would require an adminbot?--Dycedarg ж 19:54, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I think this requires an adminbot because the history becomes inaccessible when the article is deleted. You could watch recent changes and store anything CSD-related. However, edits made right before the article is deleted might be lost if they're not downloaded fast enough. With an adminbot, you can just watch for newly-tagged articles and review the deleted contributions afterwards. Wronkiew (talk) 00:51, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

For my implementation below, I do not believe that this should be a problem.--Dycedarg ж 04:50, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Another quick question: Do you want the notifications for the first part of the task to be opt in to, or opt out? I'm considering giving this a try, as I haven't had an interesting programming project in a while and I've hit an unusual patch of free time.--Dycedarg ж 20:47, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I think opt out would wind up being more helpful. I left talkback notices with the taggers for most of my declined speedies in March and April, and got almost no negative reaction (User talk:Dank55/Mar and User talk:Dank55/Apr), so I don't think anyone would be offended by a database of this information, especially when they can opt out. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 23:31, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I've decided I would like to give this a try, and to that end have worked out a possible implementation. It would function as follows:

The bot follows the recent changes IRC feed. Edit summaries are scanned to find edits that add CSD tags. Any tagged page is tracked, with every revision's text including the revision where the tag was added being downloaded until the page is deleted or the tag removed. If the page is deleted, the fact that some revisions may not be successfully retrieved before the deletion occurs should be largely inconsequential; in the vast majority of cases the revision containing the original tagging should be successfully downloaded before the deletion occurs, and if the deletion is somehow sufficiently instantaneous as to beat the bot the criteria cited for the tagging is usually in the edit summary for the edit in which the tag was placed. In any case the bot only needs the criteria for the deletion and the criteria for the tagging, the intervening edits should be irrelevant. If the tag is removed, the page will continue to be followed for a reasonable period of time (10 minutes or so I would guess) to ensure the removal was not reverted or the page otherwise retagged. If the page is retagged, the criteria for the retagging is noted alongside the criteria for the original tagging. The bot will continue to follow the page through as many cycles of retagging/tag removal as occur until the page is deleted or the tag left off for greater than the previously mentioned reasonable period of time. If the page is deleted, the criteria cited by every editor who tagged it will be checked against the criteria cited by the deleting admin, and any mismatches will be noted on its list. If the tag is removed permanently, the bot will check whether or not the tag was replaced by a notability notice or by a prod tag as well as whether the article was altered significantly in size since the tagging, and will note that along with every editor who added a tag to the page on its list. (One exception is an A7 page being userfied, such a tagging would be presumed correct.) Once a day, the bot will dump its various lists to a different subpage for every editor (I'm thinking of just putting them in the bot's own userspace), and will then give every editor a friendly notice on their talk page with a link to their subpage, which will contain a list of every misplaced tag and the name of the user or admin who removed the tag the last time it was removed or deleted the page for a reason differing from the one they provided. I think once a day is a good compromise between being too spammy and providing feedback too far after the fact to be of much use.

I was thinking of possibly leaving editors who merely revert a tag's removal off of the list. I doubt most hugglers who revert a creator's or IP's removal of a speedy tag bother to check the validity of the tag, or for that matter read the page at all. Of course, that's not exactly ideal behavior, which is why I'm thinking of just warning them alongside everyone else anyway. I'd appreciate some opinions about this.

In addition to the standard service that will be provided to everyone who does not opt out, I was thinking of having two opt-in services: Firstly, one that additionally puts an alert on a user's talkpage every time a speedy is declined or a page is deleted for a different reason immediately after the event occurs, for people who don't mind spam and want the instant feedback. Second, one that adds to the user's subpage a table that will be maintained with speedy statistics (including correct speedies) on a longterm basis. Everyone else will only have the results from the previous day on their page.

Opting out of the bot's services will require adding your name to a list in the bot's userspace. If you have a nobots template on your talkpage, the bot will refrain from editing it and will place your name on the aforementioned list for you. (In that case it will never look at your talkpage again, to opt back in to it's service you would have to remove your name from its list manually in addition to removing the nobots template.)

You'll note that the above system as outlined assumes that editors will be noting CSD taggings in their edit summaries in some fashion. My reason for this is that the vast majority of taggings are done using one of various automated tools with easily machine readable edit summaries. Those who don't should be encouraged to note what they're doing in some fashion in their edit summaries anyway; I'm going to try to make the regex for that test as flexible as possible (any mention of speedy deletion, CSD, or a link to the CSD page will suffice, the page text will be loaded to confirm the presence of the speedy tag to eliminate any false positives anyway). I don't think it's worth the vast increase in consumed bandwidth checking the text of every edit for tag adding would require just to provide feedback to the minority of editors who don't provide proper edit summaries. It also requires that admins note the criteria for deletions in the deletion log, but it goes without saying that admins should be doing that.

Now, all of that only covers notifications. If you want a permanent, searchable database of everyone's CSD stats for the purposes of informing voters on RFA or somesuch (I believe that's what some people in the original thread were asking for) I could possibly have the bot generate one, but I haven't done something like that on this scale before, and I'm unsure of how much space I have for that sort of thing on my toolserver account. I'll have to look into this.

Of course, all of the above is subject to change. I'd appreciate any and all feedback anyone can think of before I do any actual coding.--Dycedarg ж 04:50, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Brilliant (in the British and American senses). - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 13:06, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

A few comments/questions:

Why would you need to get and store the full revision text? All you really need is the tagging user, the criterion they used, and perhaps the timestamp. If you do this, you really shouldn't need to download anything as it would all be in the RC feed. You might want to check the templatelinks to verify, though that probably wouldn't be necessary unless you think people might use a different tag than what they claim.

Unless the bot subpages will be presented in table format for people to review them, it would be best to use a real database or a file for storing data for the bot's reference.

If its going to actually leave messages on user talk pages, this should almost certainly be an opt-in system.

-- Mr.Z-man 05:11, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

• Without the full revision text or at least the diff text, there's no way to accurately keep track of what happens to the tag after the initial tagging. IPs or inexperienced users will remove the tag with no edit summary, people will put the tag back via undo or rollback or twinkle, and the edit summary of a user or admin who removes an improper tag permanently could take any number of forms.
• The subpages will be in table format for people to review, and unless the second opt in choice is selected will only contain the results of a day's worth of tagging.
• A variety of people chimed in on the discussion linked above, and the general feeling seemed to be that an opt-out approach would be fine. There's already bots that do things like tell people that an article they wrote was AFD'd or CSD'd and things like that. It's more bot spam, yes, but I'd say it's an important enough issue to justify it. Obviously if further discussion produces a different consensus I'd be fine with that.--Dycedarg ж 05:40, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Why have the bot maintain a list of opt-outs in its userspace? You could just check for nobots tags as needed. Also, you might want get more input about opt-in vs. opt-out by posting to WT:NPP. Wronkiew (talk) 06:13, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

The point of that was primarily to reduce unnecessary bandwidth usage. If I relied solely on the template, I'd have to load the pages of people who've opted out every single time the bot runs, potentially meaning a lot of unnecessary page calls. I suppose the number of calls would probably be insignificant if the number of people was relatively low, especially since I'll be having the bot download the userpages in batches, but my general theory is to make things as efficient as possible so long as it's not overly burdensome to do so. Furthermore this would allow people to opt out of my bot without opting out of all bots that edit talkpages without having to figure out the relatively complicated template syntax involved in doing so using the {{bots}} template. Thanks for the mention of WT:NPP, I hadn't thought of that. I'll post a note there about this now.--Dycedarg ж 17:25, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the edit summary thing, most of my speedy noms are manual, and although I do a now put "db" into the summary, and now I also sometimes add the citera (e.g. "db a7"), I never put links in except when using Huggle or NPWatcher, which as I said isn't most of my taggings. I'm not sure if many people are like this? - Kingpin13 (talk) 07:17, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

The regex will, as I said earlier, be as flexible as possible. The word db by itself will be sufficient to have the bot check the page for a tag. If you don't state the criteria in some fashion the bot will be unable to check the edit if it fails to download before deletion, but that's a rather unlikely scenario as it would require a virtually inhuman response time on the part of the deleting admin. In any case, I agree with Dank55 below and recommend using one of the many easy to use tools that automate speedy deletion, if only because it makes life easier for everyone involved (including you).--Dycedarg ж 17:25, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

←WP:Twinkle and most other tools will:

• mark the page as patrolled (if possible), which makes life easier for the new page patrollers
• give proper notification to the creator
• add the proper tag to the page
• and most important (for me!), give an edit summary that lets me know I don't have to double-check your work. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 13:04, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

So how are you going to find if the summary has anything to do with CSD? Are you going to have a list of common summaries? Also, when the bot is checking for the criteria it will actually check what the user added to the page right? Out of interest, how are you planning to find what criteria they used, because a lot of a users (including me (and tools)) use things like {{db-context}}, instead of {{db-a1}}, etc. Will you have another list for all variations?

Also, in regard to using tools, I find that opening up the whole program takes time (although I will if I'm going to be patrolling constantly for a longish length of time), also Twinkle won't work on my browser/cp. However, I manage to do all five things manually :).

Anyways, sorry about all the nagging ;), just curious. Think this is a really good idea and good of you to take it upon yourself to do :). Thanks for your time :) - Kingpin13 (talk) 19:36, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Sort of. The bot will search edit summaries for instances of the words db, csd, variations of the phrases speedy delete/speedy deletion, links to the csd page, and whatever other common themes come up in some random searches of CSD tagging edits I'm going to do over the next few days. And yes, after it finds a likely edit summary it will check the page text to ensure the tag was actually added. The bot will have the full list of every redirect to every csd template and which criteria they represent, and I'll try to ensure it stays up to date if people create more redirects down the road. Don't worry about the appearance of nagging, I appreciate it. The more people ask questions the more likely some break in my logic will be caught now when it's easy to fix.--Dycedarg ж 21:14, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Wow this is moving quickly! My experience like Dan's is that taggers almost always appreciate feedback - especially on those occasions when they can then bring my attention to something that I hadn't noticed which justifies their original tag - so I'd go with opt out. But I'm concerned that a batch system won't work - taggers won't have access to articles deleted under a different speedy, and both they and the admin will have to remember stuff from days ago, I suggest this needs to work in as close to realtime as possible Also there are three things that I would like the system to be able to account for, firstly the admin has the option of deleting under two codes rather than one - either of which could be the one it was tagged for. Secondly the intervening edits can be the reason why a tag was originally correct but after intervening edits the admin was correct to delete it under a different code. Thirdly the tag may have been correct but someone then salvaged it - in the last week I've stubbed and salvaged a copyvio and identified and salvaged a couple of no-context articles. Fiddly thought it might become I think we need a way to decline that the bot recognises as a good tag - could it pickup an edit summary of "decline correct speedy - article now salvaged"? ϢereSpielChequers 23:54, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed that notification needs to come within 24 hours, and 12 hours would be better, or the taggers (and I) are likely to forget key things. If taggers complain about these notifications, you can always switch to talkback notices, which don't "look bad". (On that subject, can anyone build a self-destructing template? Talkback notices would be a lot more popular if they turned invisible or unobtrusive when you clicked on the link.) - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 02:07, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

The reason for the batches was so that an editor who made multiple mistakes during a single prolonged CSD session wouldn't get a bunch of messages on their talkpage. Upon further consideration it might be a good idea for the bot to issue notices every few hours as opposed to once a day (I can't imagine many people have CSD sessions that last longer than that). I'm trying to strike a balance between being too verbose and not being prompt enough. In any case I intend to have an opt-in list for people who want a notice in real time every time the bot notices a mistake. As for admins deleting with multiple criteria cited: I can have the bot recognize that easily enough, and have it allow any of the criteria cited by the admin to match the criteria cited by the tagger and be considered correct. About the second issue: I was already planning on having the bot note changes between the revision tagged and the revision deleted. The problem is that pages are oftentimes changed after the initial tagging without any meaningful change being made. Authors will do things like add {{hangon}} and other things of that nature that don't alter the proper reasoning for the tagging. There's no good way for the bot to detect when substantive changes have been made as opposed to just superficial ones. So I'm not sure what it can do aside from just noting that changes were made after the tagging but before the deletion under a different criteria, and note whether or not the changes substantially altered the size of the article. As for the third issue: I can set the bot to recognize some situations where the tagging may have been appropriate but deletion did not occur for a reason unrelated to the correctness of the tagging. Such cases could include articles that were userfied, deleted under G7 (I see author request as something that overrides other concerns), redirected , and I could also add some special edit summaries like you suggested to the list as well.--Dycedarg ж 02:39, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

It may be easiest to tie in with the Abuse filter, rather than rely on edit summaries. It already has some filters that operate on csd tags. If it logged all edits that added or removed CSD tags, the bot could process that log. Much more reliable, and probably faster.—Kww(talk) 03:33, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip, it hadn't occurred to me to check if the abuse filter could do that. I'll have to look into that.--Dycedarg ж 04:06, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dycedarg, if the bot can pick up some phrase from the edit summary to know that it was a good tag but reality has changed then I think you've cracked the intervening edit problem. As for what message is used there's a template at {{uw-csd}}, but its designed for the declining admin to use. I think this bot could phrase things more neutrally - Hi, basepagename you tagged article with code but user deleted it as code instead/removed the tag with edit summary deletion declined - I like Pokemon. ϢereSpielChequers 07:26, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm going to come up with some custom template or something like that for the bot to use. I'm not sure exactly what the wording will be, but that should be one of the easier things to nail down.--Dycedarg ж 04:06, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I've thought more about how the bot should go about issuing notices. My current thought is this: Every three hours the bot will issue notices to everyone on its list who has not tagged a page for speedy deletion within the past twenty minutes. If only one or two instances were recorded, the bot will simply note them in its talk page notice and not create a subpage (assuming the second opt-in service outlined above is not requested by the editor in question), it will only create a subpage if there were three or more instances. This way editors will get relatively speedy feedback, they should only receive notices after they have finished their current session of CSD work (which will prevent them from getting multiple notices), the notices will not get overly long, and the creation of subpages will be kept to a minimum. Any thoughts on this new approach?--Dycedarg ж 04:06, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Sounds sensible, when you say "it will create a subpage" do you mean a subpage for the user, so for me User:Kingpin13/CSDreport, or for the bot? (User:BotName/CSDreportforKingpin13) If it's going to be for the user this should almost certainly be opt-in methinks. There seems to be some debate over opt-in or opt-out, but I'll go for opt-in - Kingpin13 (talk) 06:43, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Any subpages the bot makes would be in the bot's own userspace. It would merely link to the subpage from the notice it would leave on the editor's talkpage. The reason I think opt-out would be fine is that there are already several bots that leave unsolicited messages on talkpages. Any objections I've seen have had to do with a lack of a proper opt-out method (BetacommandBot) or mostly irrelevant messages (the one that warns that a page was put up for AFD warning people who had made only very few edits or only superficial ones to the article they were being warned about). This one serves an important purpose: Feedback helps people be more accurate when they tag things for deletion, and improved accuracy reduces the work the taggers have to do (as well as reducing the possibility of bombing an RFA over incorrect tags), reduces the workload for our sometimes overtasked admin core, and reduces instances of newbie editors being upset by the incorrect tagging of their articles. It's a win-win. If people are upset by the first message they receive, they can opt-out in roughly fifteen seconds and never be bothered again.--Dycedarg ж 14:31, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand the point about needing to notify people if the article was deleted under a different reason than for which it was tagged. This doesn't necessarily mean that the tagger made a mistake and a bot shouldn't be implying they did. Articles can qualify under multiple criteria. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:48, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, sometimes articles will qualify under multiple criteria, and may be legitimately tagged and deleted under differing criteria. But very often it indicates a problem. If you check various RFAs that failed for CSD tagging problems, mistaken criteria comes up rather often. It is by far better than tagging a page that did not match any criteria, but it is still indicative of a gap in policy knowledge. Since the bot can never be sure that what it's notifying editors of was genuinely a mistake, it will use very neutral language. The warning will simply state that an admin deleted the page under a different criteria, what the criteria was, and direct the user to ask the admin for more information if the user wishes to do so. The whole point of this is to provide more information to editors about how they're doing at CSD, not to condemn or chastise them.--Dycedarg ж 02:04, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

In case people are curious about my progress, I am in the process of coding the bot. Once I've got it mostly written and am sure about my implementation, I'll be starting the BRFA discussion. I'll link to that from here once it's started. Also, I've decided to use regular scans of Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as a backup for when the the tagger doesn't use an edit summary the bot recognizes. It's less precise than I would like but it's the easiest way; in any case I don't think the increase in precision would be worth the overhead the abuse filter method would generate.--Dycedarg ж 06:21, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Also I forgot to mention, in case anyone's curious I've made the account the bot will edit from. It's User:CSDCheckBot. I made it early so it will have time to autoconfirm before I'm ready to test.--Dycedarg ж 06:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

BRFA filed--Dycedarg ж 04:46, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

BLP monitoring bot

Perhaps the biggest WP:BLP problem is the addition of poorly sourced content to articles on living people. Now, while bots cannot tell a good source from a bad one, they should be able to detect when text is added without any references cited (i.e. no <ref> tags). I am wondering if a bot can monitor recent changes, in a manner similar to ClueBot (talk · contribs), and when a chunk of text is added to an article in Category:Living people verify whether or not it included ref tags. As the risk of false positives is high (references may be added without ref tags, and added text could just be templates or metadata rather than contentious claims, for example), the bot would not make any edits to articles. Instead, unreferenced additions would then be reported (this is where it gets hazy), so that non-bot editors can check and see if they are inappropriate. The report could take the form of a dynamic feed or a continually updated list (though the latter might accrue archives of little use). The end result would be a less noisy and more refined version of Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Living_people. Is this something that could be useful? Skomorokh 02:37, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I think what you're looking for is a script similar to Lupins Anti-Vandal Tool, which will work in the same way, but filter the articles different (i.e. only show edits which add unsourced info to BLPs). - Kingpin13 (talk) 10:28, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that is similar to what I am looking for. Do you think this could be done? Regards, Skomorokh 20:17, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Looking at only diffs that don't add <ref> tags seems far too prone to false positives. You need to come up with metrics that can be effective and have few false positives. (No easy task, I realize.) --MZMcBride (talk) 22:55, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

The idea is that it would reduce the number of false positives from Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Living_people. I don't think there are very many instances of an IP adding say 2kb or more of prose text without ref tags to a BLP that wouldn't be worth investigating. Thanks for the interest, Skomorokh 22:59, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

This could be built as an AbuseFilter rule. Amalthea 00:05, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

That's an interesting suggestion – but would that mean these types of edits would be prevented? Skomorokh 13:51, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

It can also just log, like filter 61 currently does with references removed by new users. Amalthea 14:44, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

That seems like a promising option if the original proposal does not attract a bot operator. Cheers! Skomorokh 19:12, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Substituted template edit request

I am requesting that this edit be made to all of the substituted instances of that template. -- IRP ☎ 20:10, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

It would likely be helpful to have a link to the discussion supporting this change in the template. --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:32, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Those templates shouldn't be substituted in the first place. The canonical template for that purpose is {{Repeat vandal}}. Cenarium (talk) 21:35, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Then can we use a bot to unsubstitute all substituted instances of that template? -- IRP ☎ 23:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Local equivalent of Commons' Crop bot

Category:Non-free Misplaced Pages file size reduction request is badly backlogged, and onerous to work on manually. There are certain category intersections for which the required crop size is uniform and thus amenable to automation: for example, non-free images that are in the category Category:Book covers tend to be for infobox use at a maximum of 250px wide. A manually-assisted bot could clear out all such requests very quickly I'd wager. Commons has a User:Crop_bot account which does similar things in enabling editors to use jpegtran and ImageMagick, and I'm sure the operator would be willing to have it adopted here. Comments? Suggestions? Skomorokh 20:22, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I think NeuRobot (task · contribs) does something like this (just approved), but runs automatically. I'm not familiar with Crop_bot, but it sounds good to me. – Quadell 12:46, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I tried it, and I like it. If the toolserver operator is willing to run it here, that would be great. – Quadell 12:54, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply! NeuRobot seems to be a conservative version of what I am suggesting, though the backlog is still rather significant. Any idea how one would go about getting the manually-assisted toolserver bot to work locally? Skomorokh 23:04, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Need about 200 pages created

I want to create about 200 pages, one for each country, that are preloaded with basic text. The only difference between the pages would be the occurrence of the country name. Can I get a bot to do this?

I want a series of articles called "Environment of Foo" (where Foo is a country) in WP space. They will all contain the basic things such an article should have with the only difference being the country name. Once these articles are edited to, say, Start Class they can be migrated manually into article space. Obviously any articles that already exist in article space will not be needed.

Instead of articles being being created organically and anarchically I want to give a little bit of structure to the article creation process. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 10:48, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

If you can create one as a template, we can better see what you're referring to. – Quadell 12:05, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I could run this, however I need an example to start from. LegoKTM 22:58, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I have created a template at an info page at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Environment/Environment of Foo. Before creating the bulk articles I will get some input form the environment WikiProject. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:15, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I am very opposed to this. There is absolutely no need to create about 200 stubs with zero information (if Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Environment/Environment of Foo#Template will be used. These articles should only be created on a case-by-case basis. Make them one at a time when you know they will be expanded. I know by experience that these articles will not be expanded unless your Wikiproject truly works on each one of them. Even the few that currently exist are in terrible condition.It does no good to just link to the country's articles for Flora, Fauna, Protected areas, and Environmental issues when this article itself will have nothing in it. And what will link to these articles? Will they be added to the county's main article or somewhere else? These are no reason to be looking for a sense of completeness to finish off the ones alreadey created. That sure isn't completeness to have a bunch of stubs that only link to other articles, and that infomation already exists in the articles it will link to. In many cases, it may be much more apprpriate to leave this information in the main country article than to make a new one. And one comment about the proposed template: Do not use

at the top of the article. Just wikilink it in the first sentence. Reywas92 21:55, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely concur with Reywas92. Autocreating sourceless stubs verges on disruptive editing, and certainly isn't a legitimate task for a bot.—Kww(talk) 22:00, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

While I have no opinion on whether these articles would be at all useful, I note that the request is asking for these pages to be created somewhere in project space (probably as subpages of the appropriate WikiProject) with the intention that they would only be moved to article space when they reach "start" class. Anomie⚔ 03:20, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't notice that! Still, it shouldn't be too hard to just copy and paste the template when the project is ready to start working on the next country. Reywas92 13:31, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Because the current Environment of Foo articles are in a terrible state is one of the many reasons to create lots of stub articles in Misplaced Pages space. They can then be worked on until they are at least a Start Class article. There has been a lack of progress on getting the current Environment of Foo articles to a better standard. The Environment of Foo article will compliment the Economy/Geography/History/Politics of Foo articles and the new environment articles will of course be summarised and linked from the main country page. I take the point about putting {{main|country}} at the head of the article and have edited the template accordingly. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 22:03, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Having them all made en-masse seems like a good way for distributed collaboration. This request seems entirely reasonable. –xeno 22:11, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I support this request. – Quadell 22:46, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Distributed collaboration is a good way of describing what I want to achieve. Since the collaboration is done in article Misplaced Pages namespace there is no harm in starting off with numerous stub articles. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 23:14, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Article namespace or Misplaced Pages namespace? -- User:Docu

Oops. I mean't Misplaced Pages namespace. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 01:28, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Cookie botting - find and replace

I retouched File:Choco chip cookie.jpg and uploaded it as a PNG (also removed the white background) and I could use a bot help to replace all the old images superseded by the new one. Also, it seems that someone uploaded a bad version with the same PNG name to wikipedia so the file currently showing on wiki is far worse in quality than the wikicommons file I uploaded. Would appreciate someone fixing this issue as well.
Warm regards, Jaakobou 07:14, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I deleted the local png, since the Commons one is superior (and has the local one in its history). The search and replace still needs to be done though. – Quadell 22:45, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't image redirects work or something? --MZMcBride (talk) 22:53, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Note: Image still needs all jpg uses replaced by the PNG file. Jaakobou 15:03, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

• Seems like an unnecessary use of bot/botop/wikimedia resources, these are nearly exclusively used on user talk pages and archives. Just leave the old images in place and point to the new image from the old image page (or redirect as MZM says, if this works). –xeno 15:07, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Agreed. The few article-space uses can be handled manually, if necessary. I'm not sure I even agree that this image needs a transparent background, but that's a discussion for elsewhere. Anomie⚔ 15:18, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
    • I agree with the above, though the uses in template-space could use fixing too. There aren't all that many templates that use it though. I doubt if the hundreds of editors with this picture sitting in their talk page archives will care if it gets replaced or not.--Dycedarg ж 17:25, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Possible for bot to notify creator and contributors of AfD?

Can a bot notify the creator and contributors with x amount of edits of an AfD? This would be done by examining the wikipedia edit history of a page (or the below two webpages):

• web page history,
• wikisense contributors

If this is not possible, can a bot be made to notify the creator of an article of an AfD?

For example, the first editor on a page is found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Misplaced Pages:Bot requests&dir=prev&action=history&limit=1

The list of today's afd's is found here: WP:AFDT

Ikip (talk) 00:14, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I think this used to be done by a bot, but it was stopped due to complaints. Xclamation point 00:46, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Do you have any other details? I can't find any bot resembling this at Misplaced Pages:Bots/Status. thanks. Ikip (talk) 05:43, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I found it: User:Jayden54Bot, Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests for approval/Jayden54Bot, User:Jayden54Bot/AFDNotify, opt out: User:Jayden54Bot/ignore.js it was disabled because the editor wanted to take a long wikivacation. I am not aware of any complaints about this bot which shut it down. I emailed the editor about this, hopefully he can give me the coding. Ikip (talk) 06:28, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

It appears like the editor doesn't want to give out coding for this (after repeated requests by other editors, he never gave it out)

So is it possible is someone else would be able to make this? Ikip (talk) 07:50, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll try. Coding... Xclamation point 20:40, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I wish editors would simply publish their bot info. Ikip (talk) 00:21, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Restricted image tagging bot

A bot is requested to ensure that bad image tags ({{badimage}}) on image talk pages are kept synchronised with MediaWiki:Bad image list. Thanks. -- zzuuzz 00:17, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh that's simple. Coding... Xclamation point 00:27, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Good idea! Amalthea 00:44, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

(ec) BRFA filed. Xclamation point 00:45, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Y Done Xclamation point 03:44, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Template change in Copy to Wikimedia Commons category

Per Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Images and Media#List of files comparison we would like a bot to go though Category:Copy to Wikimedia Commons and replace any file with both {{Copy to Wikimedia Commons}} and {{Should be SVG}} with {{Convert to SVG and copy to Wikimedia Commons}} which is a single consolidated version of both those templates. Peachey88 03:14, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Coding... Xclamation point 03:44, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Skimmed the linked discussion. Still don't understand the purpose of going around changing tags. Can you be more explicit? --MZMcBride (talk) 06:54, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

They are put in a seperate category compared to the plain (Move to...) category since they need work (aka conversion to SVG) before they should be transfered over to commons. This also makes it easier for the people transfering the files since they don't have to keep skipping files that are tagged. Peachey88 07:47, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

collecting robot

I would like a bot that does the following. Runs periodically to find new articles on a given subject, specified by some string. Once the bot finds all the articles, saves the original link and sends a report to the user. Is that possible? The idea is to follow real-time the appearance of new articles on a given subject.

Your prayers have been answered: User:AlexNewArtBot. Regards, Skomorokh 13:53, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Bot-assisted assessments for WP:CFB

Similar to Misplaced Pages:Bot_requests/Archive_20#WP:INDIA_Bot_Assisted_Assessment that was handled by User:Bot0612. Many articles are using Template:WikiProject College football, and are unassessed, but have an assessment in a different project. Could we do the same thing as the WP:India sweep? Make a run through all of Category:Unassessed college football articles, and for any page that has a "class=" rating for another project, assign the College football class to the highest rating in the other project(s)? We have a backlog of over 1000 unassessed articles that we're trying to clean, and I suspect this would take a sizeable bite out of the list. DeFaultRyan 21:43, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I can certainly do this. It might also be possible to look at the article page and attempt to find stub templates there -- would that be alright? ] 23:38, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, AnomieBOT does that and more by fetching prop=info|categories. Stubs can be found by checking for any cat matching /^Category:.* stubs$/i, disambiguation pages by checking for Category:All disambiguation pages, and redirects by checking for the "redirect" flag. Anomie⚔ 01:11, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

That all sounds great. DeFaultRyan 05:27, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

If you want to do it, Anomie, go ahead :-) I have the code written already -- your additions would take about three minutes to implement! ] 07:17, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

No, you can go ahead. I was just giving you a suggestion on how you could do it. Anomie⚔ 11:31, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

BRFA filed Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests for approval/Sambot 13. ] 16:44, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

One last thing. Is it possible to also add |auto=yes as well as the class rating for each article that the bot automatcially assesses? It would be nice to keep track of which ones were automatically flagged, for tracking and/or reassessment purposes. Thanks. DeFaultRyan 18:26, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Added. ] 18:44, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Y Done. Somewhere in the region of 485 edits made. ] 22:23, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Bot to categorize all WP:VG articles as low by default

Right now there are a massive backlog, massive enough that there are usually more articles created over time than there are enough devoted people to tagging them can handle and as a result the backlog just keeps growing. The task would be a lot simpler if we could have a bot go through and categorize articles that fall under the scope as low by default. Those that would be categorized this way would include: those with no importance tag, those with an importance tag, but nothing after it, those with an importance tag and improper importance listed (ie anything but low, mid, high or top) and all articles with the tag "list=yes". The latter would be per the wikiprojects importance level. Without this I do not believe we have enough staff for the number of articles to ever come close to completing the task.じんない 06:08, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Surely you could do that in the template itself -- having the importance default to "low" unless one of the other ratings is present. ] 07:45, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Also, I don't see any actual discussion of this at WT:VG; there was apparently a brief mention of the idea in the middle of a larger discussion a few months ago, but that seems to have been almost entirely ignored. Anomie⚔ 11:44, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll put it bluntly: I asked a couple times there and a few other places. Each time is was mostly ignored. Sadly the community is like "just go and do it or not" for stuff they don't care about personally. Also, to Sam Korn, while I may be able to do it, I have never designed a bot and am too pressed with RL to do so. It would also be helpful if they could add "screenshot" and "cover" tags if they are missing, but not fill them in.じんない 03:48, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

IMO, auto-tagging page's priority is a bad idea. If a page is already categorized, it makes it much less likely that an informed, but new, user will change it to its correct priority. Far better would be to have the template assume low for stats purpose if no priority is given rather than actually auto-assigning one. --ThaddeusB (talk) 05:16, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

There's never been a big problem with most articles being raised when they are appropriate. In fact, for another wikiproject, WP:ANIME something similar was done and basically it was said, "if you don't agree, just change it". The idea being that most of the time, most people would agree and any disputes should be resolved in the talk page if possible. Furthemore, defaulting the template to low also makes it harder to find mistakes where someone may have typed "priority=high" or "importance=hugh" when they meant to say "impotance=high". There are a number of people who don't check to make certain their change is reflected accurartly.じんない 06:10, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

The template approach seems better to me. Same effect as the bot task with only a couple edits to the template code. If the template on the talk page had "importance=hugh", then the default wouldn't apply because the importance field would have a value. Gimmetrow 12:59, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

You could add a category to take care of unrecognised arguments. ] 13:03, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

• I can have my bot do this when it's done its current task. In the meantime, please initiate a discussion at WT:VG confirming there is consensus to do this. –xeno 12:48, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
  • It shouldn't need a bot. Just have the template default to "low-importance" rather than "unknown-importance". ] 13:03, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
    • Yes, that would work but I think the goal is to get us out of backlog so we can then stay on top of properly categorizing things. Both options should be presented to WT:VG for a decision. –xeno 13:05, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
      • Either the bot edits every talk page to make "importance=low", or the template code defaults to that when the importance field is empty. Once either is done, then either you are going to go back and look at every talk page that would be tagged by the bot, or look at every instance where the template defaults due to an empty field. I guess I don't see the substantial difference, other than the bot generates a bunch of edits which may be grouped with some other work, and having the "importance=low" text on the talk page may have some indirect benefit over a default. Or it may not. Gimmetrow 13:12, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
        • I should also point out there is an editor who has taken it upon himself to visit every single instance of the WP VG template, in theory he should be prioritizing them as he goes... –xeno 13:16, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
          • I have been trying to do so in spare time, but the backlog is far too massive for 1 person. The main advantage is to a bot vs. template change is that someone who has the page on their watch list may be notified and update it properly if they see a bot update it. It also adds the field and should in theory (depends upon how it's constructed) correct any bad taggings. That last point is very hard to catch if the template defaults to low unless you are searching the unassessed pages regularly.
          • I have also started a discussion on it. Perhaps now that there is someone willing it may get more traction.じんない 23:23, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Press multi adder

I'd like to request a bot that would go through the news and discover when links are made to wikipedia articles and create a press multi on the talk page. Ideally, the bot would scrape google news and see which articles contain a wikipedia link. Does anyone support this?Smallman12q (talk) 20:09, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

hi ! need assistance to learn & to make one ....

dear friends : i wish to learn how to make a bot ....i'm basically a medico who was a computerscience engineering student , & presently a web site designer with basic knowledge in webdesigning ....& i serve here in wiki too ...so saw sme of te bot's working well in my area so me to wish to learn how to make one & how to make em work ....if someone wants to assist me i would appreciate it ....

regards

pearll's sun--Doctor muthu's muthu 08:03, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Creating a bot. But please remeber this page is for requests. Not questions. Cheers - Kingpin (talk) 16:00, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Deleted categories emptying

User:Nick deleted Category:Terrorists persuant to a recent CfD. The subcategories deleted as a result need (around 50-60) to be thusly emptied. Thank you. Sceptre 22:36, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages bots
• Misplaced Pages requests