Wikipedia:Bot requests

For the policy on bot requirements, see WP:BOTREQUIRE.

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

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

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

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 Wikipedia: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).

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Please add your bot requests to the bottom of this page.
Make a new request

#	Bot request	Status	💬	👥	🙋 Last editor	🕒 (UTC)	🤖 Last botop editor	🕒 (UTC)
1	"Was" in TV articles	Deferred	1	1	MolecularPilot	2025-01-01 05:18
2	Basketball biography infobox request		7	2	Dissident93	2024-11-18 21:04	Primefac	2024-11-17 20:44
3	Replacing FastilyBot	BRFA filed	29	11	MolecularPilot	2025-01-01 08:43	Usernamekiran	2024-12-26 23:37
4	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
5	Tagging Category:Cinema of Belgium	BRFA filed	20	4	Bunnypranav	2024-12-21 15:58	Bunnypranav	2024-12-21 15:58
6	Bulk remove "link will display the full calendar" from articles about calendar years		6	5	Primefac	2024-12-09 16:31	Primefac	2024-12-09 16:31
7	Province over-capitalization		10	3	Dicklyon	2025-01-01 07:12	Primefac	2024-12-11 22:00
8	Tagging Category:Cinema of Israel		1	1	LDW5432	2025-01-02 05:23

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Article History template script

Hi all, I was wondering if anyone was interested in developing a script for talk pages to automatically role templates like DYK, GA and PR into an {{ArticleHistory}} format? I occasionally Wikignome, and it occurs to me such a script would likely be very useful for myself and many other editors, by automating a fairly time consuming manual process. The benefits will be more readable and organised talk pages, as well as a more comprehensive history for some articles. What a noble goal! --Tom (LT) (talk) 06:44, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

I posted at village pump earlier and didn't get any responses, so I assume such a script doesn't exist, therefore I thought I'd ask here :). --Tom (LT) (talk) 06:44, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

The MilHistBot has this capability. It normally does so when articles are promoted to A-class or FAC. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:37, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7 that's great! Is there a way to get it as a user script? --Tom (LT) (talk) 04:50, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it would have to be rewritten. As far as I know, scripts have to be written in JavaScript. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 10:06, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

I have worte codes that may parse {{Article History}}. You may use the codes to modify {{Article History}}, and the codes are in JavaScript. But I think the request can execute automatically? --Kanashimi (talk) 11:37, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Kanashimi! I don't understand the second half of what you have said though. How will the script happen automatically? (Is it possible that I can choose for it to execute, like with most scripts via a button added to the "More" menu?) --Tom (LT) (talk) 00:52, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

For example, we may using a bot to merge DYK, GA and PR mark into {{Article History}}. But I don't know if there is a such mark... --Kanashimi (talk) 08:47, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

I see Kanashimi. But how can I do that using a script that I can initiate? --Tom (LT) (talk) 00:53, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Are there some sample edits for DYK, GA and PR, so we can know more clearly what to do? --Kanashimi (talk) 01:08, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

EG @Kanashimi see Talk:FC_Bayern_Munich. Merge the "Old peer review" template into the "Article history" section. If there are separate DYK and GA templates, do the same thing.--Tom (LT) (talk) 00:34, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Second example is Talk:Sonic the Hedgehog - would merge the GA and PR templates into a single "Article history" template. --Tom (LT) (talk) 00:36, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

@Tom (LT): Thank you. I think it is possible using a bot to combine {{Old peer review}} into {{Article History}}. But I wonder if we really desiring a bot to do this. Also @KingSkyLord: please give some comments, thank you. --Kanashimi (talk) 12:25, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

@Kanashimi: A bot which automatically changes the {{Article history}} gets my full support! KingSkyLord (talk | contribs) 13:07, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

It is a requirement for FAC, and the FACBot does so. It is trickier than the GA and DYK merges though, due to different formats of peer review used over time, and page moves. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:16, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks all. Just wondering if at least a user script could be developed (or a bot if there is community consensus!)--Tom (LT) (talk) 23:55, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

@Tom (LT): Since we could do this automatically, I think it will be better not to bother humans. @Hawkeye7: I see some pages transcluding {{Old peer review}}. Will FACBot clean them in the future? --Kanashimi (talk) 22:04, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

No, not unless they become featured articles. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:57, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7 could FACBot or MilHist bot be customised to run on new good articles or peer reviews every so often? --Tom (LT) (talk) 04:42, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

To merge the article history? Sure. That is doable. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:56, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

This is EnterpriseyBot task 7, but I haven't run it in a while. I could set it back up, though. Enterprisey (talk!) 02:14, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Either is OK! Options are each sweep going through all articles in Category:Old requests for peer review, or simply going through recent peer reviews (they are always placed in categories titled in the pattern Category:June 2020 peer reviews. A full sweep will be needed at least once. I will leave how you assess WP:GA to you, and also whether you want to do the same for WP:DYK and so on. --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:47, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7 and Enterprisey - would it be possible to activate one of your bots bot on those pages? --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:59, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Working on it. It seems the Python code I wrote is sort of disgusting, so I'm translating it to Rust, which might take a few more days. Enterprisey (talk!) 08:39, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Great, thanks! It pleases me to know beautiful code will be used. --Tom (LT) (talk) 09:53, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Tom (LT), looking good. I'll have it run daily. Enterprisey (talk!) 10:47, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Enterprisey. I'll keep an eye on the change log of your bot for the next few days to see how it goes. Will you be running it through all Category:Old requests for peer review to start off with? --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:27, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't support the peer review templates yet. It might be a bit tricky to implement that. For example, on Talk:Isaac Asimov, there are two peer reviews, one finished and one not started. The dates of both would have to be auto-detected from the page history, which is probably doable but would be a pain. I will, however, implement {{Old XfD multi}}, and that, combined with ITN, OTD, and DYK, should cover most cases pretty well. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:34, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Ok I see. What information do you need? Is it the revision date only, or do you also definitely need a revision ID too? Also... regarding the current bot - apart from improving your bot's code, will it be running in new areas (Such as ITN, OTD, DYK, GA)? --Tom (LT) (talk) 07:03, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

The article history template requires a date, and I don't think it requires a revision ID. It's just that I would have to dig through the history looking for an edit that removes the peer review template... ah, I'm clearly just making excuses because that would be trickier to write . For your other question, currently it only supports ITN, OTD, DYK, and XfD. {{GA}} shouldn't be too hard. Enterprisey (talk!) 09:05, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

If you did expand it to GA, I think that would be a good think to help tidy up those talk pages too. At some future date I'll request a bot to insert the dates into the peer reviews. Then I'll ping you and your bot can churn through the 20,000 or so review-related talk pages to clean them up.--Tom (LT) (talk) 02:01, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I was just made aware of this discussion: please see Taming talk clutter from 2008 and read this discussion at Village Pump Technical.

Gimmetrow and Dr Pda designed the article milestones. Gimmetrow's old bot (Gimmebot) rolled EVERY content review template into the article milestones, so it can be done-- that is GA, PR, FA, everything. But more, he ordered the events logically and sensibly, and I have been going through and trying to fix at least the October FAs, since a) all templates are no longer rolled in by bot, b) some GA passes use faulty templates, c) many DYK noms do not identify the nom page, d) some processes are not providing oldids, and e) OTD is off doing their own thing, dumping clutter on to talk pages outside of the article milestones.

No, oldid is not REQUIRED for proper display, but neither is it hard to find. Dr pda also used to have a script that returned an oldid based on any timestamp. ALL OF THIS was accomplished more than a decade ago, so I'm sure it can be now. And the point of the milestones is to always be able to click back on any date and see what the article looked like at the time of that event.

GimmeBot processed every GA and every FA and every PR. If any one is going to take this on, please try to return sensible ordering of the milestones as they used to be and as I have been correcting them, eg, here. Separate each event, in order, and put the rest of the important stuff at the bottom. And get OTD and ITN on board, and figure out why DYK isn't providing nom pages. Happy to help if someone is going to take this on; as of now, I am repairing all FACs and FARs manually. See my contribs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:19, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for all the information. My bot task can currently format the parameters properly (all the actions in order at the top, etc) and can figure out the DYK nom page. I concur that it's not too difficult to figure out the oldid, and will put that in soon. It can also figure out the OTD template correctly, but the procedure it uses is simple and I gather there's more complexity I'm missing? As of this comment, I still haven't added GA/FA/PR, but I've set it up to add more actions to the template, and plan to add them all before I run the bot. (So if you don't really want to repair the FACs and FARs, the bot will get to them.) Speaking of running it, it seems that the task has expanded in scope that it'll merit another BRFA, which I'll open when I'm done coding. Finally, I notice that in some combinations, the article history looks worse than the individual templates, such as in this revision. I will probably make it combine templates only when there are three or more other templates, perhaps. Enterprisey (talk!) 11:13, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Enterprisey Glad you are on board, have hated seeing such a long labor over many decades lost and talk pages converting back to clutter where we cannot locate old events ... ipad typing now, I will be back in a few hours with more info for you. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:35, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I feel like that revision is probably something that needs to be redesigned in Module:Article history, as I agree that looks ugly. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:02, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks all. I think these are almost three separate tasks. Thanks Enterprisey for keeping chip away at this. Having a bot actually use the template is very useful. The second task is fixing up the template and I 100% agree latter-day additions are pretty ugly. The third task is potentially simplifying the back-end, something that is too complex for me but does seem like a job that is worth doing it it makes maintenance going forward easier. I look forward to hearing more progress from enterprisey on this eventually :) --Tom (LT) (talk) 10:18, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Brain dump

Enterprisey starting over with a brain dump of everything I know that is going wrong with Template:Article history, and things that might be done to fix the issues. Historically, when GimmeBot was doing everything, there was very little manual intervention. Since the demise of GimmeBot, we have different processes going different ways, nothing standardized, and some editors intervening manually and causing errors. This will be partially an exercise in getting everyone back on the same page.

In no particular order of priority:

1. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-03-24/Dispatches re the script from Dr pda we used to be able to activate from tools to find a missing oldid. Now I have to go trawling manually through articlehistory to find them.
2. Historically, the template or the bot (I dunno, don't speak the language) was programmed to kick out errors, that I watched daily with a link on my userpage. The error category was supposed to be red when there were no errors. Maralia and I kept up with errors daily, and I can't recall what changed there. My memory could be faulty, but I think someone objected to how the error cat was being used and did away with that. I could be wrong. Also, as Gimmebot got better and better, there weren't really any errors anyway ... it had gotten to where any time an error popped up, it was talk page vandalism.
3. I don't know what is going on with DYK. First, a whole ton of DYKBOT entries do not include the nomination page. Typically, finding them is not hard-- except when there have been article name changes. This one, for example, was really hard to find because of multiple name changes.

   There is another problem going on with DYKbot, which is explained in this discussion. I don't get it, but when the date is at the end of the month, we end up with a completely useless link in article milestones because it goes to the wrong page entirely (the next month). This will require some fixing with DYKbot.

4. OTD, I don't know what's up there. Look at this sample. They are dumping in a string of dates, outside of the article milestones, that uses a different format. Syncing the formats would be nice! OTD uses date2= oldid2= while article history uses otd2date= otd2oldid= SO when I have to fix these manually, it's a mess of irritating typing.
5. FACbot does not move the other information (other than events) to the bottom of the list, so we end up with a jumble. Technically, everything still works, but the reason that concerns me is that when we have a mess in there, regular editors will never learn to understand, watch and correct article milestone errors, because nothing is standardized. That is, look at this compared to this after I cleaned it up.
6. MANY editors are not understanding that it is the ENDING date of an event that matters, and that the point of the oldid is that we should be able to click through article history and see how an article looked as it finished any event. (Look at this edit and the two after it.) And because we have gotten away from the standardized approach, with many bots and editors doing different things, there are now messes everywhere that need cleanup, separately from ongoing tasks.

   Here's a fine and dandy mess as a sample: [1] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:52, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

7. I disagree with your revert reasoning on your bot work here, because you have to think long term goals :) We want editors to go back to understanding a standardized approach to talk page templates. And remember that, as soon as the next process hits and another event is added, we want the template in place already because three events on one page is clutter.
8. Separately, features have been added to Template:Article history that aren't working, eg here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:54, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
9. Then we have errors like this, which seem to result because FACbot is not using a script like Dr Pda's to detect when the event occurred, rather it is pulling the last date from the peer review, which is when the PR page was moved. (Separately, the PR page should not have been moved, because the article history template was designed to use the name under which the event occurred ... @Wehwalt: ... so that the title is now red-linked in the PR.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:15, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I will add to this list as I recall other things ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:38, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

WP:TALKORDER issues

I come across way too many article talks, like Talk:Jennifer Lawrence, where the {{Archives}} causes that ugly overlap. It happens whenever the template isn't at the bottom of the list of talk banners (view source to see what I mean). To fix, we'd need a continuous bot to make sure this template keeps getting moved to the bottom of talk page banners. I don't think a CSS fix is really possible for this, and a JS fix would not be preferable to just having a bot maintain talk pages. I've made a discussion on the talk last week, see Redrose's response there for useful info as well (perhaps a broader bot for that purpose should be considered). It reminds me that another issue we see is DS templates constantly in the wrong order, it's advised by the template itself, and WP:TALKORDER, to have them below the talk header. Yet they seem to be scattered randomly. We commonly have random whitespace in talk page banners, too, thus random newlines. Really a bot to clean all this up would be a good idea, and enforce order (except when opted-out, I suppose). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:04, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

You'll have to see Special:PermaLink/973120366 for the version PR refers to, since I went ahead and removed the {{archives}} (there's already a {{talk header}} so it makes it redundant). Primefac (talk) 22:19, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: I was just thinking about this the other day. WP:Talk page layout gives a fairly consistent indication of what the order for talk page banners should be, but they regularly end up more random. It'd be very nice to have a bot fixing that, and over time as people get used to a certain order, it could make the maze of talk banners easier to navigate.

Programming will be a fairly big task, though. You'd have to go through every talk page banner available and assign it an order. You'd also probably want to automate things like when to introduce collapsing of WikiProjects or {{banner holder}}. And we'd need to discuss what should happen when someone creates and adds a new banner that isn't part of the queue, or how to handle custom notice banners. I could also see complaints that if the bot operates too frequently, it's just making edits without a strong purpose. All those obstacles are possible to overcome, however, and I think if we did it'd make talk pages a lot nicer. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:00, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

I do think this would make talk pages a fair bit more friendly, to be honest, just by improving the consistency. I think the first part of dealing with this may be to get a consensus and/or a more complete list on what talk order is preferred. Headbomb as someone who edited WP:Talk page layout, might you have any thoughts on this proposal? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:13, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

This is a pretty damn tricky task, because WP:TPL is descriptive (observations) more than prescriptive (thou shall do this or else the cable gremlins will make you regret it). There's certainly more than a few things in there that are tricky and iffy. The only thing, AFAICT, that I'd consider 'safe' to do by bot is to put the archives at the very bottom, put banners in a {{WPBS}}, and put whatever can be shoved in {{Article history}} in {{Article history}}. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:03, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

For what it's worth (having just done an unrelated-but-made-me-think-of-it bot run), AWB has a set "order" that defines the order of talk page banners. Given that one of our central programs already has a metric, I'm not really sure how "tricky" this would be. Of course, how necessary is another question entirely, since any changes my bot makes are largely incidental to the overall task that it's performing.

Of course, the additional issue is that it will add yet another bot that will hide updates to a page due to a bot edit, but it's rather unlikely that bug will be fixed any time soon. Primefac (talk) 21:37, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

One challenge that AWB has with ordering talk page banners is dealing with redirects. You may want to look at the AWB custom module User:Magioladitis/WikiProjects, which probably needs some updating. GoingBatty (talk) 05:40, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

ProcrastinatingReader and Headbomb, the above prompted me to add the Template:Banner holder#Choosing banners to collapse documentation section. If you're interested, additional input/expansion would be welcome, and might eventually lead to enough standardization that a bot could take over the task. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:24, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Slightly separate but you also have pages using the graphs directly, eg Talk:Robert Hunter (lyricist), rather than via their talk page wrappers. Imagine new users stumbling across this - looks a mess. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 03:25, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

adding "nobots", and "category:wikipedians who opt out of message delivery" to indef blocked users

I have seen many users who have been blocked indefinitely for various reasons (socking, disruptive editing, CIR, and what not), but they receive many newsletters, and other notifications. Currently, there is User:Yapperbot/Pruner to remove inactive users from lists (WikiProject membership, FRS, etc), notifying the removed users appropriately. I am not sure what is the extent of this task. Would it be feasible to spend resources on creating a bot task to add {{nobots}}, and "category:wikipedians who opt out of message delivery" on the talkpages of users who have been blocked indefinitely, and do not have {{unblock}} on talkpage for more than 30 days? That way, resources can be conserved by avoiding new bot messages being posted, and later being archived. In case the user returns after a while, or after standard offer, they can simply remove the "nobots", and the category. Opinions are welcome. Regards, —usernamekiran (talk) 13:22, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, I created a custom module, which did the edit(s) successfully: special:diff/978555212. I tested the module under different scenarios, and I also tested on a few (talk)pages from Category:Indefinitely blocked Wikipedians. I couldnt find any errors, as it is fairly a basic task. I didn't save these edits, just previewed. —usernamekiran (talk) 16:30, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

bump. —usernamekiran (talk) 10:03, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Well, doing this to all indef blocked users is a bad idea, because we have 1 million indef blocked users. Doing it to all indef blocked users subscribed to a newsletter may be feasible, if all newsletter user lists are categorised in some way. Worth making a feature request to Naypta? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:01, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

yeah, thats what I meant, blocked users with subscriptions. Apologies for the vagueness. Maybe we can run the bot through mailing list, to look for the users fitting in the criteria of being indef, and no unblock request (instead of going through indef blocked category). —usernamekiran (talk) 18:39, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Alternatively, this could be implemented at the newsletter delivery bot-level, where those bot could check if a user has been indef blocked for over a month and not deliver the newsletter if so. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:22, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Clearing the category "Wikipedia usernames with possible policy issues"

Have a bot remove a user from the category Category:Wikipedia usernames with possible policy issues when they have been inactive for over one year or have been blocked indefinitely. Heart ^(talk) 03:15, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't work with that category, but would it make sense for a bot to move those pages to a corresponding "inactive user" category so that the usernames could still be tracked? – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:47, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Jonesey95, well, the notice explicitly states that users that haven't been active in a week can be removed. I think that rule is ludicrous and have extended it to a year to give time to change names, or to come back from a wikibreak. So I would see no need for the category, but it is up the user who creates the bot to decide this. Heart ^(talk) 06:21, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Doing... Good idea, I'll get working on this. BJackJS talk 18:15, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

TheSandBot 6 is already approved for removing blocked users from that category. – SD0001 (talk) 19:48, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Damn. BJackJS talk 20:32, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Ping TheSandDoctor to see if he can do a run? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:00, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader and BJackJS: I really need to make that a daily chron job...running inside 30min. Thanks for the ping, ProcrastinatingReader. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 23:18, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Redundant template pairs

The following pairs of cleanup templates:

• {{COI}} and {{Autobiography}} - on circa 200 articles
• {{More citations needed}} and {{One source}} - on over 3,200 articles
• {{More footnotes needed}} and {{More citations needed}} - on over 5,500 articles
• {{More footnotes needed}} and {{One source}} - on over 1,000 articles

should not be used on the same article; but often are.

We need a bot, please, to remove first template in each of the pairs named above.

The bot should not do this when the templates are section-specific (e.g. {{One source|section|date=October 2020}})

The bot should remove {{Multiple issues}}, where appropriate.

The bot needs to take into account common redirects (for example, {{More citations needed}} is often used via {{Refimprove}}; {{More footnotes needed}} as {{More footnotes}}, etc.).

This can be done as a one-off and then either run occasionally, or added to one of the regular clean-up tasks.

Other such pairs might be identified in future.

Prior discussion is here . Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:51, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• There's often overlap between the templates in each pair, but they serve different purposes. For example, {{More footnotes needed}} indicates a need for more in-line referencing based on the article's existing sources, which may be alright in number and quality, whereas {{More citations needed}} points out that the article needs more, or better references, and not necessarily in-line ones. – Uanfala (talk) 19:59, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
  • But {{More footnotes needed}} is a subcategory of {{More citations needed}} (in the non-technical sense of the term); if an article needs more, or better references, and not necessarily in-line ones, then to say that there is a need for more in-line referencing based on the article's existing sources is superfluous, as the articles existing sources have been tagged as insufficient. WT79 ^{(speak to me | editing patterns | what I been doing)} 16:23, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
• I think this one is quite simple to do with AWB, as the genfixes will handle the {{Multiple issues}} bundle, and GetZerothSection can handle the lead-only requirement. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:31, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
  • @ProcrastinatingReader: Thank you. Is that an offer to do so, or a suggestion that someone else does so? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:41, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

    I'd do it myself but I have little access to AWB (I mostly use macOS, unless I have a reason to boot into Windows) and JWB can't do this. So it's just some thoughts to help someone else do this. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:12, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Bot for fixing failed pings/misspellings of usernames

I recently remarked on the discord that people fairly frequently misspell my username, sometimes resulting in missed pings, and several others chimed in that they have the same or a similar issue. It would be nice to have a bot that could work off a whitelist of common misspellings of usernames, and fix them/ping the editor. We'd probably want a little oversight of the list to prevent abuse, but otherwise it'd hopefully be pretty straightforward. We might have it append some smalltext, similar to {{Unsigned}}. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:55, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Seems like a helpful and relatively simple bot. Since it's not that high priority maybe I could take a stab at it?

Anyway, some possibilities:

• Correct the misspelling and append something inline. For example, "@Skdb:" will be turned into "@Sdkb: (corrected from Skdb by Ovinus (talk))" on talk pages. It would ignore edits by the account Skdb.
• Post a notification on the correct user's talk page, something like

Hi! An editor probably tried to mention you (link to diff) on page (link), but misspelled your account name. (Sent in error? Report here.) Ovinus (talk) 07:17, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

• Gently notify the user who used the wrong name on their talk page.

The main issue with the first one is there's not a good way to distinguish between the few intended links to User:Skdb and a mistake. Plus, it gets more complicated when there's a ping of multiple people and one of them has to be changed. Because there's a redirect anyway, I think just the second and maybe third steps would be fine. Perhaps the third step would only happen if an editor repeatedly uses the wrong name (say, twice in the span of 48 hours).

In terms of the bot itself, I think a template editor-protected page with a table of the names would be sufficient. To be included the user would have to prove that they own the misspelled account (to prevent abuse). This could be done in one step by requiring the misspelled account to add their name or request their name be added to the list. Sincerely, Ovinus (talk) 07:17, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Ovinus Real, thanks for taking this on!

I lean toward corrections/pings rather than talk page messages because the latter seems a little too intrusive (especially for the misspeller), since it requires an extra step (since the correction ping summons you to your talk page, not the source of the failed ping), and since correcting at the source allows others in the discussion to navigate to the user's page (having a redirect like I do at Skdb is not the norm).

Thinking about it, really the only parties that need to be notified are the misspeller and misspellee, so having the bot making an edit that pings both with something like Correcting misspelled username of C0mpl1c8tD NamE on behalf of BadSpellr (report error) would be sufficient. That would get around any trickiness with pings of multiple users, etc., since it wouldn't append any smalltext.

Regarding distinguishing between intended and non-intended uses of misspelled usernames, so long as the bot only works going forward (i.e. timestamps after it was set up, rather than digging through histories), I can think of very few scenarios where someone would want to intentionally link a misspelled username. For those rare cases, we could set up a simple {{Escaped wikilink}} template that would create links the bot would ignore.

Regarding vetting the whitelist, a template-protected table sounds good. Verifying ownership isn't really the criterion, though—I don't need to own Skdb for it to be a misspelling of my username. We'd just need to make sure someone doesn't enter "Ovinus Real" as a misspelling of "Ovinus Totally Fake" to make the bot mass-vandalize your signatures. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 09:26, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

I think notifying via edit summary is sensible, and yeah, there's not much reason to link to a nonexistent user. As to ownership, I think it should be a requirement because otherwise someone—in good faith—could create an account under that name and have their pings gobbled up. For example, the account Ovinus is registered but has no edits; should they be considered a failed ping of me? I think not. (Though my usurp request for that account will be done in a few days, hopefully!) Anyways, perhaps we can get a list of templates–not including their redirects–which the bot should consider besides a direct user link. For example, should {{Noping}} be changed? If so, it should be changed without notifying the linked user. Ovinus (talk) 09:40, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:31, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

I would strongly suggest that even with the whitelist, the bot checks that the "wrong" username is not used before making a correction. The obvious advantage is that nobody has to actively patrol the whitelist vs. the new username logs, or even check before asking for an addition. There is a small disadvantage due to trolling: if Alice asks for an Aleece → Alice entry in the whitelist because many people make that mistake, Moriarty can register "Aleece" to break the corrections - "Aleece" will be blocked for impersonation but the username will be in use. However (1) this may not be a big issue, and (2) if it turns out to be there will always be time to look for solutions (e.g. correct X → Y as long as (X is not a registered username) OR (X blocked indef AND X has less than N edits)). Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 11:04, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

AFC drafts that have titles identical to titles on other Wikipedias

From user talk:SD0001:

... would there be a way to do a bot report of pending articles that have titles identical to titles on other Wikipedias, with links to those foreign-language Wikipedia pages? If an article exists on another Wikipedia, it's a good indication that the draft should be approved. Thanks, Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:19 pm, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't think using wikidata is an option since AFC drafts are very unlikely to have been linked to wikidata. Is there another way this could be done? – SD0001 (talk) 06:33, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. On an only-slightly related note, how feasible would it be to get a report of all draft pages with a corresponding fully-protected/salted article? Primefac (talk) 13:36, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

@Primefac: like this? (for protected redirects: [2]) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:15, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Pretty much. Something on-wiki might be nice for slightly-easier tracking purposes. Primefac (talk) 17:53, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Is it not possible to search Wikidata for an identical title for the Wikidata item (or identical title for the Wikidata link to a foreign-language Wikipedia), even if no links to Wikidata exist? Obviously this would not be perfect, but I think it could still be very useful. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:40, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

It might be possible to do that, but I'm not sure how well that would translate to a bot being able to keep a list of drafts-with-the-same-name-as-existing-WD-pages updated. Primefac (talk) 13:34, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes. Directly querying the database for an exact match is too slow (6+ minutes for a single page itself). Simply using the wikidata search and processing the result seems like the way to go. It's more flexible, but there could be some caveats. – SD0001 (talk) 18:02, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Using a SQL query this would be a cross database join. My bot "shadows" does something similar where it looks for File:'s that have the same name on Commons and Enwiki. It's pretty fast and Commons has 60 million File: pages, which exceeds the total of all mainspace pages in all wikis by a fair amount, it is fast. The problem is Wikitech is redesigning the SQL servers and cross database joins will soon no longer be available. A Phab is open to try and find a solution. If you would like to follow developments see Phab T267992. -- GreenC 19:03, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

@GreenC and SD0001: How about just a report for drafts where the draft title matches the wikidata English-language label, if one exists? Would that be easier? It seems like most WD items have English labels, and this simpler (?) report would probably cover most of what I'm interested in. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:51, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

@Calliopejen1: I just put together User:VahurzpuBot/Drafts matching non-English Wikipedias. The current code for this only looks at Category:AfC pending submissions by age/0 days ago and selects Wikidata items based on a case-insensitive but exact match on labels or aliases. Additionally, it doesn't update automatically yet. What other features would be useful? Vahurzpu (talk) 23:17, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

@Vahurzpu: Thanks! This is exactly what I was thinking of, but to be honest it's less helpful than I expected (still a lot of junk in here). Could you run it for one or two more days worth of AFC submissions, so we can see if this was a fluke or not? Thanks! Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:50, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Automatically report highly reverted pages for page protection

The bot would scan recent reverts and inspect the page history. It will then analyse the number of reverts against pre-set thresholds. If one of these thresholds are met, it files an automatic report to WP:RPP requesting page protection.

Example thresholds could be:

• 4 reverts in the last 3 days by non-registered users/non-auto confirmed users - request semi-protection
• 10 reverts in the last 3 days by non-registered users/non-auto confirmed users - request semi-protection
• 3 reverts in the past 24 hours by more than 2 different users where all users are autoconfirmed/extended confirmed - request full protection

I have no programming experience with Wikipedia so unfortunately I won't be able to program this. Eyebeller (talk) 07:59, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

We do have filters for similar kinds of edit warring, example: 249. In many cases it's a single editor who needs an individual sanction, who are reported to AIV by User:DatBot. Is there evidence that multi-user edit wars happen by new editors, are not caught by filter 249 and hence not reported, and someone doesn't report to WP:RFPP manually? Similar for the third bullet, is there evidence in such a case someone doesn't just go to WP:RFPP manually if needed? Additionally, this overlaps strongly with WP:ANEW, and a bot would not be able to distinguish between genuine content disputes and conduct issues / enforcing consensus etc. Those limits are too close to WP:3RR to allow for flexibility. And I'm not sure a high false positive rate is good; given RFPP's backlogs already often creep up, a high wrong venue rate would not be ideal. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:53, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I want to point out that the thresholds are examples and could be changed. Eyebeller (talk) 15:25, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

The main point is long term vandalism and abuse by multiple users. I should point out to tighten out on false positives we can do a more detailed analysis of those reverts to make sure that they were reverted as disruptive/vandalism. This could include analysing if the revert was made by Cluebot NG, if the revert edit summary contained keywords like "vandalism"/"disruptive" or if it was made with the default Huggle revert summary. Eyebeller (talk) 15:40, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I didn't realise this was here, but there's a parallel discussion at AN. Primefac (talk) 15:17, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Talk page notifications when topic equivalent is promoted to quality status on another project?

Hello! I posted a comment over at the Village Pump and was directed here, so I'll copy here:

I think it'd be cool if a bot could be designed to add Talk page notifications when the subject's article is promoted to Quality status at another Wikipedia project. To pick an artbitrary example, a notification could have been added to en:Talk:G.U.Y. when hu:G.U.Y. was promoted to quality status.

Added benefits could be editors comparing different language versions, encouraging translation efforts, and more editors becoming familiar with Wikidata, depending on the notification's text and bot design. I could also see notifications being posted to WikiProject talk pages, etc.

Thoughts? Concerns? Other feedback? Sorry if this idea has been brought to the table before. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 15:38, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Another Believer, is it possible to do a bot over multiple wikis? Mr. Heart ^(talk) 15:39, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

HeartatSchool, I have no idea! I don't know anything about bots or how they operate on/across projects. I'm just an editor who thinks this would be helpful. Actually, I think so. Notifications are posted to English Wikipedia article Talk pages when an image from Wikimedia Commons has been nominated for deletion, so, this is similar, no? ---Another Believer _(Talk) 15:41, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

What other wikis have article review processes (eg GA) other than enwiki, and I suppose huwiki? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:40, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

I believe (almost) every wiki has an FA and/or GA process. If an article is an FA/GA on another wiki, an FA/GA icon is shown in the languages section next to the link. – SD0001 (talk) 17:46, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

SD0001, Right, and that's helpful, but I'd also love to know when an article I'm watchlisting has been promoted in another language. Talk page notifications is one way for this to appear in my watchlist. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 18:01, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Great idea, I support it. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 23:49, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

I think this is technically difficult to do using a bot. Only reasonable approach I can think of is if we knew the name of the GA template on a given wiki (given that, although we use Legobot, other wikis probably do it manually with differently named templates), we could patrol its recent changes, check for addition of template, and then lookup Wikidata link to find the enwiki article and add a talk page message. Otherwise, this is probably better as a userscript with some kind of "Check other wikis for GA status" button in the toolbar. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:04, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Wikidata also keeps quality information as "link badges", you could also listen for changes in that. Majavah (talk!) 14:16, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, is that automatic or manually added? Also does Wikidata allow listening to changes to a specific property only? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:20, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Bot or other process to keep categories and page renderings up to date

Two related proposals on the Community Wishlist survey have been rejected as out of scope, so I am putting this note here in case there is anyone interested in taking on a project to keep Wikipedia pages and categories up to date.

Basically, pages on Wikipedia are not refreshed often enough, which means that it can take weeks, months, or longer for category membership to update, or for things like age calculation in infoboxes to work correctly.

When a change is made to a template or module that involves category membership, pages that transclude that template or module require a null edit in order to update their category membership. Because of delays in the job queue, such category membership changes can take weeks, or even months. Even worse, changes to the underlying MediaWiki software that apply categories (e.g. those in Special:TrackingCategories) do not force pages into the job queue, which means that category membership for affected pages can take months, years, or forever.

These delays cause outdated information, missing information, and outright errors to be rendered for readers, and cause editors who are working on fixing problems identified by maintenance categories to be delayed in applying those fixes. When a maintenance category should be populated but is empty, it gives editors the false impression that all affected articles are working properly.

One proposed solution/workaround is to set up a background process that tracks all pages based on their last edit time stamp, including null edits. That tracking could be used to make a list of needed null edits for "stale" pages. There is some detail in the phab links below about how to generate such lists and (possibly) how to force pages into the job queue so that a null-edit bot might not be needed.

For details and links to phabricator tickets, see meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Archive/Set maximum delay in updating category membership and meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Archive/Correct wrong tenure lengths. (Actually, I'll just put the phab links here: T132467, T135964, T157670, T159512.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:34, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Haven't dove deep into the phab tickets. Is the problem here that MediaWiki doesn't have the server resources to keep those millions of pages fresh, or is it that the resources exist but the there are no algorithms in Mediawiki to do the purges automatically? Or something in between? – SD0001 (talk) 13:23, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

It's the latter. There are good comments at T157670 from February 2017 that show tables of pages and their last refresh date. If we could somehow make that report, list the pages, and "expire" or refresh/null-edit (not purge) the most out-of-date pages, that would be a start. We would have to be aware of the effect on the job queue, but I think it would be manageable. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:15, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps there could be a second job queue, processed only when the main one empties, containing all pages ordered by last refresh date. This would keep the process busy when and only when it has nothing more urgent to do. (In practice, I expect we'd do some sort of "find stalest 1000" query rather than actually maintaining a queue of length 40 million.) Certes (talk) 14:43, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

I'd be interested in seeing the current results of Legoktm's query (select count(*), SUBSTR(page_links_updated, 1,6) from page group by SUBSTR(page_links_updated, 1,6) order by SUBSTR(page_links_updated, 1,6) desc;), and probably some variations on it, including that same query limited to article and template space. If we could get a reasonable list of the stalest articles and templates, a bot could null-edit them systematically. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:35, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

We may also be interested in any pages where page_links_updated IS NULL and page_touched is old. They won't have been re-parsed since creation. Unfortunately, the page table does not seem to be indexed on those columns and I don't see a relevant alternative view. Certes (talk) 17:16, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: see https://people.wikimedia.org/~legoktm/T157670/ - let me know what other queries you want me to run. Legoktm (talk) 18:25, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Those queries are helpful. From the NS0 query, it appears to me that we have about 15 million pages in article space (although {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} gives me 6 million pages, so if someone could explain that, please do), of which 8 million have been refreshed in the last two months. That leaves about 7 million "stale" article pages, if I understand the report (which I clearly do not). If we refresh one article per second with a bot, which doesn't seem like a heavy load, we can do 2.6 million articles every 30 days. How do we get this process started? I think we would need generate a list of the names of the stale articles somehow.

If we can get this working for articles, we can look at expanding it to other namespaces. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:43, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

The other 9 million are non-article pages such as redirects and dabs. Further reading: Wikipedia:Database reports/Page count by namespace. Certes (talk) 21:31, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! That might make it even easier. If we can get a list of the X thousand most stale articles (non-redirect, non-dabs) and feed them to a null-edit bot at one per second, we might be able to get the whole (actual) article space refreshed in less than a month, and then keep it that way with a background process that null-edits newly stale articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:20, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

We can go beyond main namespace but need to be a bit careful. (Refreshing Template:Pagetype might take a while!) Certes (talk) 23:48, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, you can purge the links of a page at a rate of around 20/request (each request every 5-10 secs incl delay). Any more and the request times out. So it's closer to 2-4 pages per second you can update. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:32, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Generating category directs for species common names

When uploading images to Wikimedia Commons, I often notice that there are no category redirects for the common names of most species, so there are too many redirects that need to be created manually. Is there a bot that could create these missing redirect pages, using data from Wikispecies or WikiData? For example: commons:Category:Red fox is {{category redirect|Vulpes vulpes}}. Jarble (talk) 18:23, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Beware that some common names are ambiguous and require disambiguation pages listing multiple species and/or other meanings (or at least a hatnote from the primary topic). Many such pages exist but some may be missing. Certes (talk) 00:48, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Cleaning up WantedPages by putting <nowiki/> in red links on talk pages

WantedPages is pretty useless as it is since it considers links from and to talk pages. Does the requested action above help at all? JsfasdF252 (talk) 03:06, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

A better solution has been discussed and requested in Phabricator. Until then, WP:Most-wanted articles may be a more helpful alternative. Certes (talk) 10:58, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Replace Template:IPC profile with Template:IPC athlete

There are some 800+ transclusions of Template:IPC profile. They go to an archive page, because the original link doesn't work, but with the first five I at random checked, the archive page doesn't work either: Scot Hollonbeck, Stephen Eaton, Jonas Jacobsson, Sirly Tiik, Konstantin Lisenkov.

It seems possible to replace the template with Template:IPC athlete: {{IPC profile|surname=Tretheway|givenname=Sean}} becomes {{IPC athlete|sean-tretheway}}. It is safer to take the parameter from the article title than from the IPC profile template though: at Jacob Ben-Arie, {{IPC profile|surname=Ben-Arie|givenname=<!--leave blank in this case, given name not listed-->}} should become {{IPC athlete|jacob-ben-arie}}[3].

If the replacement is too complicated, then simply removing the IPC profile one is also an option, as it makes no sense to keep templates around which produce no useful results. Fram (talk) 11:34, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

@Fram: if I’m understanding you right, is the template totally redundant and should all transclusions be replaced with IPC athlete? If so, you can just TfD the template, then an existing bot with a general TfD authorisation can easily do this task. It’s also probably faster (it’ll probably take at least 7 days for community input + BRFA for the task alone otherwise). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:33, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll bring it up at TfD then, didn't know that their "power" went that far (but it is a good thing). Fram (talk) 08:23, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Need a bot to add remove contents to wiki pages

Hey I need a simple bot that could be able to add words to the links I send it. Maybe have the option where to add the text, but also have an option to remove all the text that you put in the bot once it comes across one of the words on the links. Might've not expressed myself the best but I hope you guys got my message. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JokerLow (talk • contribs) 23:51, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

I didn't. What are you trying to accomplish with this bot? Primefac (talk) 00:23, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Make archive bots assume standard naming

AT Wikipedia talk:Moving a page#Updating archive bot settings when moving a page you can learn PrimeHunter has recently created Category:Pages where archive parameter is not a subpage, and that by far the biggest reason for pages to end up there is that Wiki editors move pages without updating talk page archival bot instructions.

But why should humans have to do menial tasks like that at all?

I assume when the bots were created there were no real standards and practices regarding auto archiving, but now there is. Seems to me we can avoid needless administration (and a lot of pages that don't archive properly) if we change the code of the two main archival bots to assume the standard naming as the default. If the |archive=User talk:Example/Archive %(counter)d parameter (Lowercase Sigmabot III) and the |archiveprefix=User talk:Example/Archive (ClueBot III) parameters could be made optional we could remove them from the standard instructions while still allowing manual override for the (few) cases where it's needed. This should mean that moving a page would no longer break auto archiving.

Of course, if there were a good reason this wasn't implemented back when, feel free to enlighten your audience :) CapnZapp (talk) 09:59, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

A page move sometimes fails to move existing archives. It could be messy if archiving automatically starts over with new archive names. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:11, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Agree with PrimeHunter; we should not assume that a talk page's archives were moved along with the talk page. Primefac (talk) 10:33, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Quite, normal confirmed editors do not have the "Move subpages (up to 100)" option that is provided to admins and page movers, and they may overlook some of the directions at the "Please clean up after your move" page that is displayed following the move. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:14, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Well, the easy solution to this is to check if the value of |archive= (minus the subpage) is a redirect, and if it has any subpages matching the subpage pattern that are non-redirects. So in that way it could be automated. For ones that don't meet the criteria, it's likely post-move cleanup is needed and it could build a report. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:17, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

The suggestion was to make |archive= optional. A bot cannot check a parameter if it isn't there. It would have to look for moves in those cases. Moves aren't logged at the target name so it would have to examine the page history or incoming redirects. If somebody copy-pastes the talk page instead of moving then there might be no trace. Not demanding a subpage name will also increase the number of poor archive parameters when somebody copies the archive parameters from a random page with very different activity. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:39, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you all for your consideration so far, @PrimeHunter, Primefac, Redrose64, and ProcrastinatingReader: Are you saying the occasional "overarchiving" (or whatever you feel is an appropriate title for the issue you have brought up) is deemed more disruptive than the (presumably) much larger load on human administration? That a big reason the bot writers mandated the archive name was so nothing was ever archived in the wrong place, even though it added a workload on humans that (from the layperson's perspective) is unnecessary? Perhaps a suggestion of this nature has been discussed previously? Cheers PS. If this place is the wrong venue for taking a holistic approach and here discussion should be limited to only unproblematic suggestions, please direct me to a more appropriate venue and thank you for your time. CapnZapp (talk) 10:29, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

There are large backlogs in every area requiring human attention. There tends to be skepticism to automating these, in fear of some false positives or errors, and Prime makes a good point above as to possible pitfalls here. Here it seems like you're not requesting a new bot, but rather a tweak to the existing archive bots? In that case, you'd need to communicate with those botops and get them to implement the desired change in their bot. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:31, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't know the original reasoning for demanding the parameter. I just think there are valid reasons for doing it. Category:Pages where archive parameter is not a subpage currently has 2875 pages (including 710 in userspace) but the tracking was added only a week ago and some of the wrong parameters are more than 10 years old. If maintenance editors with knowledge of archiving get it down to zero and monitor it then wrong parameters should be fixed quickly, often with better results than an archive bot ignoring the wrong parameter. Many of the pages are tiny or empty and don't even need any archiving like [4] PrimeHunter (talk) 10:55, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Remove deprecated parameters from Template:Infobox dog breed

Following discussion in the first half of 2020, Template:Infobox dog breed underwent a minor redesign to reduce the focus on kennel clubs from English speaking countries [5]. As a result a number of parameters were deprecated but remain in many of the 627 transclusions. It is requested that a bot be tasked to remove the following deprecated parameters from these pages:

| patronage = | fcigroup = | fcisection = | fcinum = | akcgroup = | akcstd = | akcstd1 = | akcstd2 = | akcfss = | akcmisc = | ankcgroup = | ankcstd = | ankcstd1 = | ankcstd2 = | ckcgroup = | ckcstd = | ckcstd1 = | ckcstd2 = | ckcmisc = | kcukgroup = | kcukstd = | kcukstd1 = | kcukstd2 = | nzkcgroup = | nzkcstd = | nzkcstd1 = | nzkcstd2 = | ukcgroup = | ukcstd = | ukcstd1 = | ukcstd2 = | otherstd =

This is not a war stopper, but it may cause some confusion for unknowing editors in the future. Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 22:46, 7 January 2021 (UTC).

Likely too small for a bot run, but I set up a tracking category in order to remove the deprecated parameters (when that's had a chance to filter through all 600-odd transclusions I can manually remove these params). I would suggest (at any point, really) setting up an unknown parameter check just to keep future maintenance to a minimum. Primefac (talk) 16:15, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Primefac & Jonesey95, thank you very much, that will make the task much easier. The unknown parameters check will be of assistance also, it’s quite common to find some funny ones people have tried to insert. Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 22:13, 8 January 2021 (UTC).

I have no doubt. I'll let the system refresh itself overnight and I'll try to get to the param clearing at some point over the weekend. Primefac (talk) 22:44, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks, I have cleared all in the category so far. Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 10:19, 9 January 2021 (UTC).

 Done as far as the deprecated params go. Primefac (talk) 19:10, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you very much for everything you have done, that’s an amazing job. Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 21:17, 10 January 2021 (UTC).

Article Alert for WP:WILDFIRE

Hello, I'm here for requesting a bot to make an article alert page for WP:WILDFIRE wikiproject, like [[WP:CALI] and WP:USA does. --🔥LightningComplexFire🔥 17:51, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Article alerts/Subscribing Majavah (talk!) 17:54, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Replace Airdisaster.com links

The website airdisaster.com appears to be used in several articles about aviation accidents, but now links to a spam site/domain hoarder, which seems very undesirable for users. Can someone get the direct links removed and where possible linked to an archived page? In particular where it is linked as an external link, occurrences in references appear to be fixed already Pieceofmetalwork (talk) 16:07, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

@Pieceofmetalwork: Are you suggesting adding {{webarchive}} like this edit? GoingBatty (talk) 18:46, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that would be a good solution. Pieceofmetalwork (talk) 18:48, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Fixing punctuation before citations

​Per MOS:REFPUNCT, citations are supposed to go after punctuation like periods and commas, not before it. This is already included in GENFIXes, but I think it's noticeable enough to readers that it'd be good to have a bot working on it; it's not really WP:COSMETICBOT to my reading. Yobot has an approved task for doing this, but given how many pages I've come across with this issue, I'm guessing it's no longer working. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:29, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Have you asked the botop why the task is not running? Primefac (talk) 20:33, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

I gave them a ping above. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:27, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

I can work with it. The task was stopped because there were comments on some bugs pending. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:51, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. Probably helps that it's now part of the genfixes. Primefac (talk) 21:52, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

It always was. But to run properly it has to run with general fixes which means that the edit sometimes is lost within other minor fixes which gives the impression the bot is doing nothing worthy. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:53, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

wikilink to Sansoni (publisher) in Cite book templates

Sansoni (publisher) is an old and important Italian publisher, whose page was recently created.

There are hundreds of pages with Cite book templates for works published by Sansoni.

It would be useful to link them to the publisher page.

So my proposal is that a bot should look for instances of {{Cite book }} where there is one of these parameters:

|publisher=G. C. Sansoni
|publisher=G.C. Sansoni
|publisher=Sansoni

And replace it respectively with:

|publisher=[[Sansoni (publisher)|G.C. Sansoni]]
|publisher=[[Sansoni (publisher)|G.C. Sansoni]]
|publisher=[[Sansoni (publisher)|Sansoni]]

The replace should only be done on the first instance in each page, of course, to avoid excessive wikilinks.

Thank you in advance!

--Lou Crazy (talk) 02:21, 14 January 2021 (UTC)