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).

---

Please add your bot requests to the bottom of this page.
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#	Bot request	Status	💬	👥	🙋 Last editor	🕒 (UTC)	🤖 Last botop editor	🕒 (UTC)
1	"Was" in TV articles		7	5	Bunnypranav	2024-11-26 13:08	Bunnypranav	2024-11-26 13:08
2	Replace standalone BLP templates	Done	7	3	MSGJ	2024-10-30 19:37	Tom.Reding	2024-10-29 16:04
3	Assess set index and WikiProject Lists based on category as lists		19	5	Mrfoogles	2024-11-06 16:17	Tom.Reding	2024-11-02 15:53
4	Request for WP:SCRIPTREQ		1	1	StefanSurrealsSummon	2024-11-08 18:27
5	LLM summary for laypersons to talk pages of overly technical articles?		10	7	Legoktm	2024-11-12 17:50	Legoktm	2024-11-12 17:50
6	Redirects with curly apostrophes		6	5	Pppery	2024-11-11 17:30	Primefac	2024-11-11 16:52
7	Bot for replacing/archiving 13,000 dead citations for New Zealand charts		3	2	Muhandes	2024-11-14 22:49	Muhandes	2024-11-14 22:49
8	Basketball biography infobox request		7	2	Dissident93	2024-11-18 21:04	Primefac	2024-11-17 20:44
9	Meanings of minor-planet names		1	1	Absolutiva	2024-11-18 16:20
10	Reference examination bot		4	3	Wiki king 100000	2024-11-25 17:00	Usernamekiran	2024-11-20 13:02
11	Replacing FastilyBot	BRFA filed	26	9	Usernamekiran	2024-12-26 23:37	Usernamekiran	2024-12-26 23:37
12	Deletion of navboxes at Category:Basketball Olympic squad navigational boxes by competition	Working	4	4	Geardona	2024-11-20 23:48	Qwerfjkl	2024-11-20 17:32
13	Tagging Category:Cinema of Belgium	BRFA filed	20	4	Bunnypranav	2024-12-21 15:58	Bunnypranav	2024-12-21 15:58
14	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
15	Province over-capitalization		8	2	Dicklyon	2024-12-21 23:39	Primefac	2024-12-11 22:00
16	VPNGate	Y Done	13	6	MolecularPilot	2024-12-22 01:39	DreamRimmer	2024-12-21 13:40
17	Creation for nano bot	Not a good task for a bot.	3	3	Primefac	2024-12-09 16:30	Primefac	2024-12-09 16:30

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BC births and deaths categorizations

RfC: BC births and deaths categorization scheme has just been closed on:

(option 5:) Return to earlier guideline-conforming scheme adding "rollup" categories by decade/century

Could we have bot-assistance on realising that? Pinging a few people that may be able to give some assistance:

• @Fayenatic london: may have some experience as to what can be handled (semi-)bot-wise at the end of categorisation discussions
• @Rick Block: seems to have some experience with the "roll-up" systems
• @Good Olfactory: commented in a prior discussion here

If I need to be more specific on possible tasks involved, please ask me. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:18, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

1. The "roll-up" on decade categories, as currently seen at Category:0s deaths, is simply done using <categorytree mode=pages>0s deaths</categorytree> on that page. The parameter in the middle of that string has to match the name of the page that it is on. There is a way to show an ordinary category tree using the PAGENAME parameter: {{#categorytree:{{PAGENAME}}}}. However, I do not know of a way to combine that with mode=pages. For more info see MW:Extension:CategoryTree. So AFAIK this "rollup" code will have to be added manually.
2. The old categories will have to be undeleted by admins; I don't know a way to automate that. After undeletion, we would then list them at WP:CFDWR so that Cydebot would remove the CFD templates from them.
3. I believe the member pages (biography articles) will also have to be reverted manually. The best that I can offer would be to provide links to the diffs made by Cydebot when emptying the old categories. – Fayenatic London 11:01, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

@Armbrust:: I manually undeleted Category:1 BC deaths to Category:9 BC deaths. Would you be able to automate reversals of your bot's edits starting from [1]? See [2] for the instruction at CFDW for deaths from 1 to 599 BC. – Fayenatic London 21:56, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

@Armbrust: I've manually reverted from the bottom of that page of contribs up to Curia (wife of Quintus Lucretius). Is it any trouble to you if we use rollback or undo on your bot's edits? – Fayenatic London 12:45, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't mind, although some articles were edited after the bot. Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 19:51, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I've now done up to Horace. – Fayenatic London 21:23, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

As the work cannot be processed by bot, I have listed the CFDs listing the births/deaths categories to be reinstated at WT:WikiProject Years#BC births and deaths categories. – Fayenatic London 13:50, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I subsequently moved the list and progress marker to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive 53#BC births and deaths categories. – Fayenatic London 21:36, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Re. "As the work cannot be processed by bot" – says who? I think part of the tasks can be processed by bot. I'd prefer to keep the discussion here (various bot operators may pick up on tasks for which they see a possibility to automate it), with a possible exception to logging tasks performed at WT:WikiProject Years#BC births and deaths categories. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:31, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

@Fayenatic london: again, please discuss these issues here. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:39, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Your confidence in bot-kind is touching. I agree that this task would be best handled by a bot, but I have never come across an existing bot written to do what is required here. Well, I suppose there is little harm in waiting longer; perhaps somebody may write a new bot for us. The main disadvantage of waiting is that subsequent edits to the biographies will mean that an increasing proportion of the bot edits cannot be reverted using Undo. – Fayenatic London 21:22, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Actually it could be done with AWB alone (replace year category with birthsyear cat and remove birthsdecade category), but compiling a list of affected articles is troublesome. Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 08:29, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

@Armbrust: I had thought about using Cat-a-lot to do that, but ruled that out, because a year category on a bio could be for births or for deaths. A human editor could tell which, by referring to the decade categories, but that would probably be too difficult to program into a bot. So yes, it could be done using AWB, but requiring manual intervention on each one before clicking Save. – Fayenatic London 13:45, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

If you use the bot's contributions list compile the articles, than this shouldn't be a problem. Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 19:12, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

@Armbrust: How would that help for those pages that have both, e.g. [3]? – Fayenatic London 09:04, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

@Armbrust: RSVP. Perhaps there is no way to automate this other than somebody writing a new bot. – Fayenatic London 21:43, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

User:Francis Schonken: How long do you want to wait? Perhaps this bot request might be reactivated by posting separate requests under separate headings for the three tasks: posting "rollup" category trees on decade category pages; undeleting year category pages for births and deaths; and reverting selected contribs by ArmbrustBot on biography articles. – Fayenatic London 21:43, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

"wait"? I didn't suggest to wait for anything. I'm only against splitting up the discussion, e.g. someone doing part of the reverts (bot-wise or not) and not logging them here, then someone else doing some reverts (bot-wise or not) and getting confused while not knowing what has been done etc... I'll make some subheaders to this thread (...opposing as I am separate threads not kept together). --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:36, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Subthread 1 – undeletion of BC births and deaths categories

I'm not sure but from some comments I deduce this task has been done partially or completely – can someone give an overview whether this is done?

Have any BC births or deaths categories been undeleted that weren't populated before these categories were deleted? (I'd advise against that but have no clue where we are with that). Can someone give an update? --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:36, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I had undeleted deaths categories back to Category:89 BC deaths, and have just undeleted a lot of them again. I only undeleted those that were deleted in 2015; there are a few gaps which were not in use at the time of the 2015 CFDs.

I have now added a temporary note to Template:DeathyrBC to discourage further re-deletions. The notice appears only on empty year-BC deaths categories.

As the last batch of merges were on deaths categories, I have not systematically undeleted births categories yet, but only those which were repopulated by reverting two of the bot edits (death and birth year). – Fayenatic London 09:58, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I have also undeleted decades, but not years, for all the first millennium BC, and added the same temporary note to Template:BirthdecadeBC. – Fayenatic London 20:18, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

I have added a test in {{birthyrBC}} and {{deathyrBC}} so that a parent category for the year itself, e.g. Category:586 BC, only appears for years in the range 1–699 BC. This is because year categories in the 8th century were upmerged by Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_16#8th_century_BC, and the RFC for biographies only requires re-creation of the year categories for births and deaths. For years before 699 BC, the latter are therefore parented only by decade categories for births/deaths. – Fayenatic London 08:48, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Subthread 2 – adding "rollup" to BC births and deaths categories

I've no clue where we are with this task? Have rollups been added to BC birth and death cats apart from the few examples that came up in the RfC? If not, to me this seems like an excellent job for a bot... any takers? --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:36, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

No-one had started this. I have now done it on a few, Category:0s BC deaths back to Category:40s BC deaths. – Fayenatic London 22:45, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken: I have just come across the template {{category tree all|mode=all}} which does a similar job, and does not need a parameter to be added manually. I used this on Category:50s BC deaths. How do you like it compared to the earlier method e.g. [4] ? – Fayenatic London 22:52, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken: as you have not replied I have replaced the previous version of the category tree on the pages for 0s to 40s BC. Whether or not you have time to take a share of the work you have requested, it would be helpful if you would at least confirm your preferences on these matters. – Fayenatic London 18:24, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

I have now used AWB (first time in years, running OK on a Mac using Crossover) to implement this for all extant births and deaths decade categories in the 1st millennium BC. I think that means this part of the request is now

 Done – Fayenatic London 20:16, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Subthread 3 – repopulating BC births and deaths categories

(basicly reverting armbrustbot's dual upmerge edits)

• I've been doing three or four a long time ago;
• I understand Fayenatic london has been doing quite a few too, but am not clear how far this got?

I still think this is best handled by a bot: going through armbrustbots edits on these BC biography articles one by one (that is: reverting them one by one, from the most recent one to the oldest one), and (this is the important part) giving a dump of the articles where such reverts are no longer possible (because they have already been done or some other intermediate edits prevented a revert). Then sort out the items on this dump manually. I'd be happy to help sort out manually when presented with such dump list. --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:36, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Any editor can help with reverting the biography pages.

The CFDs listing the births/deaths categories to be reinstated are:

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 May 25#1st to 5th century BC births  Done 27/5/2016

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 May 30#1st to 6th century BC deaths  Done 20/5/2016

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_22#6th-century_BC_births and 7th (below that)  Done 6/6/16

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_16#8th_century_BC (just the births and deaths)

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_15#9th_century_BC and 10th (below that) (Contribs)

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_13#11th_century_BC

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_8#12th_century_BC

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_April_24#13th_century_BC

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_April_23#14th_century_BC to 16th

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_April_20#17th_century_BC

The last list of categories deleted (instruction to bot at CFDW) was [5] for deaths from 1 to 599 BC.

@Nyttend: you also appear to have helped to diffuse Category:40s BC deaths back down to years; do you have any other recommendations? – Fayenatic London 10:06, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I discovered the situation because a few year categories were in CAT:CSD, and I figured that there surely would have been several notable Romans in each year; after moving several of them over, I just decided to move everything from the 40s into year categories, and I eventually discovered the bot's action. Are there a ton of edits that potentially need to be reverted? I'd just urge caution, because a lot of articles were wrongly categorised, so Armbrustbot's edit was helpful and shouldn't be reverted; for example, Antipater of Tyre died "shortly before 45 BC", so he shouldn't be in 45 BC deaths, and this edit was helpful, even though most of the bot's edits weren't. I did everything manually and would urge you to do likewise to avoid restoring overprecision like 45 BC for Antipater, although I'm not aware of how many articles are involved, so I understand that this might not be practical. PS, please don't have the bot do anything with the 40s BC deaths, since I've gone through them; none of them need work unless I messed up (e.g. I did Gaius Cassius Longinus just now, having overlooked him before), and the bot has no way to judge whether or not I messed up. Nyttend (talk) 13:39, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I've removed Antipater from the other new category 45 BC as it is not for biographies.

This flags up a couple of points:

1. Individuals like this, for whom we do not know the exact year of death, will appear in the categorytree ("rollup") listing below the sub-cats, if we leave them in the decade categories. See Category:40s BC deaths. The template ({{DeathyrBC}}) on Category:45 BC deaths does say "People who died c. 45 BC.", so it seems acceptable to me that he was categorised in 45 BC deaths, although 46 BC might have been a better choice. Alexander of Judaea is another case, "died 48 or 47 BC", categorised in 48 BC. I suggest that it is good enough to pick a date which might be one year out.
2.  Instead of working from ArmbrustBot's contribs, we could work from the decade/century categories as our starting point, diffusing the contents back down into the year categories where the date is stated. We could still do the actual edit by reverting ArmbrustBot's edits in most cases, but it would be a different method of working. However, it's probably quicker to work from the contribs.

– Fayenatic London 22:41, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

@Nyttend: @Francis Schonken: I left links to this discussion at WP Bio and WP Years, but nobody has commented. What do you think about using the approximate year of death in such cases? – Fayenatic London 23:16, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that it's good to include circa 45 deaths in the 45 deaths category; these categories ought to reflect people whose precise death year has confidently been identified, with the parent 40s BC deaths (and comparable ones for other decades) being given when we know in which decade a death occurred, but we can't be sure of the year. Nyttend (talk) 06:26, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough. – Fayenatic London 22:59, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken: The longer we wait for someone to create a bot to revert another bot's contribs, the greater the proportion that cannot be reverted using rollback or Undo. I've picked up the task again (see above), and gone back past the batch of deaths (40s BC) that Nyttend had fixed. Will you join in again? – Fayenatic London 23:05, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

@Rhadamante: I noticed that you did some a few months ago – thanks. If you have time to do some more, that would be much appreciated. – Fayenatic London 19:25, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken: you said you'd be happy to help sort out manually when presented with a dump list of pages that can no longer be reverted. Given the passage of time, it is now over 90% of the remaining edits that have to be reverted manually. If you wish I would be happy to convert the list of bot contribs into a list of linked pages; or can you work straight from the contribs (as I have been doing)? – Fayenatic London 22:17, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

OK, that was an exaggeration. Only about 10% can be rolled back, but about half can be undone. – Fayenatic London 23:29, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken: having finished the deaths for 0–599 BC, I can report as follows. The categorisation needs to be reviewed rather than automatically reinstated, as many had been categorised in a specific year even though the dates are only "circa"; in these cases I only removed the year category e.g. 586 BC, leaving the deaths-by-decade category e.g. 580s BC deaths. This means that it is not a suitable task for a bot anyway (not that any was found).

My review was usually pretty quick, just based on whether the dates were written as "circa" or not; if some were and some weren't, e.g. in infobox and lede, I would look into it briefly and harmonise them according to what seemed right.

I started with the Deaths because they were the last set to be processed by the bot, so some could be rolled back. There were over 1,000 pages in that series of contribs. In many cases I also manually resolved the Births categories on those pages.

Please would you now assist in reviewing the Births? Using Popups to review the history of each listed page is often helpful. – Fayenatic London 20:08, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: @MER-C: might you also be willing to help with this task, as you nominated & closed the CFD discussion that is currently being reversed? – Fayenatic London 20:42, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Progress marker

My workflow is:

1. Working down the list of the bot's contributions, open the next article in a new tab. If the dates are "circa", then edit the latest version and remove the year categories, leaving the decade births/deaths category. For the edit summary, paste a link to Wikipedia_talk:Categorization_of_people#RfC:_BC_births_and_deaths_categorization_scheme.
2. If the birth/death dates are not stated to be "circa", review page history and try to Undo (or rollback) the edit by the bot.
3. If Undo fails, manually edit the categories.
4. If this creates a redlinked category,
   1. undelete it with the same edit summary,
   2. edit the category page to remove the old CFD template, giving the same edit summary, or simply revert the CFD tagging, and
   3. undelete the talk page, giving the same edit summary.

After completing the bottom one of the page of the bot's contribs, click "older 50" and carry on from the top of the next page (until the CFD topic changes).

• Current page of contribs to be worked on is here (8th century BC), done from top down to King Xuan of Zhou – Fayenatic London 09:52, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

ReminderBot

I request an on-Wiki bot (way) to remind tasks. "Remind me in N days about "A" etc. Talk page message reminder or anything is okay. --Tito Dutta (talk) 17:09, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

See previous discussions at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 143#Reminderbot? and Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 37#Reminder bot. It needs more definition as to how exactly it should work. Anomie⚔ 17:22, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

• This may work in the following way:

a) a user will add tasks in their subpage User:Titodutta/Reminder in this format {{Remind me|3 days}}. The bot will remind on the user talk page.

b) Anomie in an discussion, one may tag something like this {{Ping|RemindBot|3 days}}.

Please tell me your views and opinion. --Tito Dutta (talk) 18:31, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Outside of a user subpage, how will the bot know who to remind - i.e. how can it be done so that other editors aren't given reminders, either accidentally or maliciously? - Evad37 [talk] 22:40, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't know if a bot can do it. {{ping}} manages to do this right. When you get a ping, the notification tells you who it is from, so we can see that it keeps track somehow (signature?). I realize that ping is deeper into MW than a bot, but personally, I wouldn't use a reminder system that requires me to maintain a separate page. {{ping}} is useful exactly because you can do it in context and inline. Before ping, you could just manually leave a note at someone's page but the benefits of ping are clear to everyone. I draw the same parallels between a manual reminder system and the proposed {{remind}}. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 22:49, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, being able to leave reminders on any page will make it more useful – but how can it be done in a way that isn't open for abuse? - Evad37 [talk] 23:23, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Maybe this is a better way to think about it: A reminder could be little more than a ping to oneself after a delayed period of time. Ping doesn't suffer from forgery issues (you can't fake a ping from someone else) and reminders could be restricted to ping only oneself (so that you can't spam a bunch of people with reminders). But as I allude to above, ping is part of mediawiki so I imagine that it has special ways of accomplishing this that a bot can't. I think that this discussion is becoming unfortunately fragmented because this is a bot-focused board. I think I was asked to join the discussion here because I previously proposed this on WP:VP/T and was eventually pointed to meta. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 03:09, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Agree; this is a potentially useful idea (although outside reminder software can always suffice), and might make sense as a MediaWiki extension, but if we did it by bot it would end up being a strange hack that would probably have other issues. — Earwig ^talk 03:12, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

• It would be great if we have this. User:Anomie, any comment/question? --Tito Dutta (talk) 23:48, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

How would a bot go about finding new reminder requests in the most efficient way? The Transhumanist 01:11, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

The Transhumanist, what if we pinged the bot instead? So, for instance, I could say {{u|ReminderBot}} at the end of something, and the bot would be pinged and store the ping in a database. Later on, the bot could leave a message on my talkpage mentioning the original page I left the ping in. Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 04:10, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

• Agree this would be badass. I sometimes forget in-progress article or template work for years, after getting distracted by something else.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:02, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I love this idea. I think the obvious implementation of this would be to use a specialized template where the editor who places the template receives a talk page message reminding them after the specified number of days/weeks, etc. The template could have a parameter such as "processed" that's set to "yes" after the bot has processed the request. A tracking category of all transclusions without the parameter set to the appropriate value would be an efficient method of searching. ~ Rob^Talk 02:01, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
    • @BU Rob13: Am going to code this with Python later on. Philroc^{My contribs} 15:02, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
    • @BU Rob13: By the way, would you want the user to input the thing they wanted to be reminded about too? Philroc^{My contribs} 15:02, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
      • Philroc, I'm not Rob, but yeah, I think that would be a great feature to have. APerson (talk!) 02:31, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

For the record, I've started working on this - at the moment, I'm waiting for this Pywikibot patch to go through, which'll let me access notifications. Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 19:59, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Patch went through, so I can start working on this now. Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 03:35, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Gotta keep this thread alive! Unbelievably, Pywikibot had another bug, so I'm waiting for this other one to go through. Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 00:56, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Status update: Coding... (code available at https://github.com/APerson241/RemindMeBot) Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 04:53, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Status update 2: BRFA filed. Requesting comments from Tito Dutta, Evad37, SMcCandlish, and Philroc. Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 04:30, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Idea: WikiProject stale participant member remover bot

Many WikiProjects have participant lists. Many of the editors on those lists haven't edited in months, or even years—rendering those lists out-of-date.

This bot would find and update participant lists. Once it found a list, it would remove users who haven't edited Wikipedia for more than three months. The Transhumanist 20:26, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I imagine that this bot would work on an opt-in basis. Each Wikiproject would determine if there is consensus to subscribe their participant list to this bot's service, in a manner similar to Cluebot's talk page archiving service. Are participant lists standardized enough to allow this to happen? – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:10, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&limit=500&offset=0&profile=default&search=Wikipedia%3AParticipants The Transhumanist 09:25, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

People take breaks, some return here after gaps of years. What is the benefit of removing them from such lists and does it outweigh the disadvantage of telling returnees that they are no longer members? ϢereSpielChequers 10:09, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Another way this bot could work is if it detected an "Inactive participants" list nearby, it would move the member instead. I know of quite a few WikiProjects that have a setup like this. APerson (talk!) 04:08, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Or to be more positive - use a "Participants list" and an "Active participants" list! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:28, 18 March 2016 (UTC).

Is there still interest in this? Personally, I don't think it's worth the coding time to have a bot handle this task because participant lists are hardly formal enough to need regular updates. What's the worst thing that happens when you don't know how many members of a project are active vs inactive? ~ Rob^Talk 01:46, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

@The Transhumanist: See above. ~ Rob^Talk 23:14, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: I was looking at it as an out-of-date contact list. Contact lists are only as useful as they are accurate. Let's say you need to contact someone (anyone) in a WikiProject about something pertaining to the editing of that subject. You've left a message on the project's talk page, but nobody has answered. So you go to the participants list to see who you can contact directly for some one-on-one, and the project lists 50 people. But unbeknown to you only 4 of them are active editors on Wikipedia these days. Knowing these lists are mostly out of date, you start with the first user listed and look at his contribs, only to find out his latest edit was 3 years ago. So you take him off the list so you don't wind up looking up his contribs again later. On to the next user, and the next, and so on... until you think, "it would be nice if these lists were updated automatically." The Transhumanist 19:13, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

The Transhumanist, would a user script that you could run while you were at a participants page work too? APerson (talk!) 14:51, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

I imagine so. WikEd is a user script, and it is a full-blown editor. The Transhumanist 20:43, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Alright, I have a bunch of good ideas about how to parse the various sorts of participant lists, which I'm making into a script right now. Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 20:49, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

BRFA filed. Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 03:30, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

See also this VPPR thread started during the BRFA at a BAG member's request. Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 03:27, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Finding the most viewed Wikipedia articles on education

Hi all

I'm trying to use TreeViews to get information on what are the most viewed articles in Category:Education, unfortunately such large categories just crash my browser, it means I will have to split the query up into at least 50-100 smaller queries.

Would this be possible to do with a bot? Ideally the output would be spreadsheet of the article title and the number of page views of the article for a 30, 60 or 90 period in the recent past. I will use Treeviews if it is the only way but I'd really love to save myself from half a day of data entry. I imagine this would also be useful for people working with other organisations for other subjects if there was a repeatable process for muggles to follow.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 14:55, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

This should be possible via bot; the TreeViews tool, according to its source code, just hits the PagePile API, which should be accessible using, say, PHP. (I'd take this one myself, except for the fact that I'd have to learn PHP while coding it. Which, come to think of it, might not be such a bad idea.) Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 04:17, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Bot that reinstates removed deletion notices.

I request a bot that does the following, while preserving the original time as it was in the notice before it was removed:

1. Reinstate any speedy deletion notice that is removed by the page creator
2. Reinstate BLP PROD notices if no other edits than removal of the notice are done
3. Reinstate any XfD notice if the discussion is not closed

--Laber□^T 20:29, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

The second point is probably not feasible. How would we control for the addition of offline sources that aren't in ref tags (i.e. a citations section with bullet points)? The first and third points should be doable. (Note that I'm not taking the request, just commenting on it.) ~ Rob^Talk 21:24, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

An admin should of course check before deletion if such references are in the article. I talk about "clear" cases where there are no inline citations at all, i.e. if you would insert a reflist template it would be empty. --Laber□^T 21:28, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

I understand, but I'm saying that such a case isn't clear when citations sections without ref tags are used. It would cause problems if a bot re-inserted a prod tag after it was removed and a nobots template had to be used to keep the bot off the page. ~ Rob^Talk 00:36, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Okay, BLP PROD shall only be reinstated if the user removes it without the page being changed in any other way, i. e. if there are no changes to the article except removal of the tag. --Laber□^T 15:32, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

But what if the tag was added in error? What if there were in fact already some references, and so someone decided to remove the tag? Or what if the article was created before March 18, 2010? Omni Flames ^{let's talk about it} 06:54, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

See User:SDPatrolBot for a bot that once did that with CSD tags. →Σσς. (Sigma) 05:10, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

What happened to that bot? Why isn't it running anymore? KSFT^C 02:55, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Its operator is inactive. After talking to him about it, BRFA filed →Σσς. (Sigma) 02:29, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Commonscat

How about a bot that looks for missing Commons category link in articles where such a Commons category exists with lots of images? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 04:44, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

@Anna Frodesiak If I'm not mistaken, there is a basic form of this is implemented via Wikidata; did you have something more specific in mind? -FASTILY 06:34, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Fastily, I think Anna means that plenty of articles that doesnt have the Commons template for whatever reason. And that a bot that locates and adds the Commons template to the said articles would be beneficial.--BabbaQ (talk) 18:03, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

I suppose the bot would find Commons categories by checking if there's a Commons link under the sitelinks listed in the Wikidata item for a given article? Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 00:59, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Doing... I'm working on this. KSFT^C 04:46, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Diacritics in article titles: mass creation of redirects from unadorned ASCII?

People, including the literally hundreds of thousands of BLP subjects involved, often prefer diacritic accent marks on article title characters, but very few people know how to type them on standard keyboards, and in many cases they turn URLs into incomprehensible strings of hexadecimal-encoded Unicode.

Has the question of the mass creation of unadorned ASCII-only redirects to article titles with diacritics in them come up before? If so, what was the disposition?

If not, is it a reasonable project to create them? How can their existence be signaled to those who may want to use the more legible URLs? Can a bot be trusted to add the non-accented title name to infoboxes and first paragraph bolded names? EllenCT (talk) 13:21, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Creating ASCII-only redirects would be a fine and welcome thing to do. Adding names stripped of diacritics to infoboxes and the text of articles seems, by contrast, a heinous crime to be committed solely to advertise the fact that wikipedia can cope with incorrect formations of the names. I don't think there's much we can or should do to promote the redirects, should they be created. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:25, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Tagishsimon that redirects would be a positive thing, but we 100% should not remove the proper name from articles themselves in favor of ASCII-only. I'm sure there's a guideline on names somewhere that supports using the diacritic as long as it's Latin script, but I can't be bothered to look it up. Off the top of my head, WP:TSC supports the use of diacritics in article titles and creating redirects to those titles. Consensus on this task wouldn't be hard to come by, but you'll need to post something at WP:VPR for sure, since this involves mass-creation of redirects. ~ Rob^Talk 13:59, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, replacing the name would be bad. Adding it would help, but can bots figure out where to add it? Maybe just the infobox and not the intro? EllenCT (talk) 12:20, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

@EllenCT: Adding what, exactly? ~ Rob^Talk 15:21, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Adding the Romanization of the article title to the infobox under the fully diacritical name would be good, or would it be insulting to BLP subjects with e.g. ethnic pride in their diacritics, or whose name means something bad without diacritics? EllenCT (talk) 19:22, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

@EllenCT: Bots wouldn't be able to sort that out, most likely. At least not easily. Infoboxes often use different parameters to handle alternative names, and we'd need to go through all of them to make sure the bot can handle each infobox template correctly. Moreover, I don't think it's desirable to add them anywhere in the article. While redirects are useful to aid searching, it's undesirable to use an incorrect name anywhere in the article. I doubt any reader is confused by the diacritics once they see them; they can put two-and-two together. More to the point, I may be able to do this task if you can create a user page with a table or bulleted list that shows each possible diacritic and the ASCII-only version of the letter. One of those probably already exists on the web (or even an article!), and linking to that would work just as well. Mind doing that bit of searching for me? ~ Rob^Talk 04:39, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

I was thinking about proposing such task few days ago :) Such conversion "table" can be found below editing area (the "Latin" section), that probably is at least very solid start. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 09:33, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Alright, so AWB definitely can't do this, but it should be pretty easy in something like pywikibot. Any other botop is welcome to have a go at this; I'm not actively working on it. ~ Rob^Talk 01:46, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

I already have an approved bot task to create missing redirects for pages with diacritics in their titles. I was asked not to run it too quickly after an article creation, (if the page needs to be moved the redirects get in the way of that process), so I wait several weeks after a database dump before running it. However, I've not run it recently so will get round to doing so again soon. Rjwilmsi 07:33, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Rjwilmsi yes, please. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:53, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Rob, I'm not saying, that you should do this with AWB (as Rjwilmsi will as I understand take it), but the short answer is that you can do this with AWB (maybe not the most prettiest way, but still doable). Algorithm in big steps:

• Run a SQL query (which you anyway would need to do, if you work with pywikibot);
• Convert all needed letters somewhere (Excel, for example);
• And create redirects using Wikipedia:CSVLoader. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 08:27, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

I could see cases where it might be appropriate to give a diacritic-free version of the name in article, especially where this changes spelling, e.g. Müller / Mueller, and cases where the letters with diacritics are not necessarily fully supported (ŵ - a Welsh letter (and possibly others) was in this state for a long time). We should do so carefully, though. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 15:29, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, mw:Extension:TitleKey should be able to automatically handle searching "Muller" in the search bar and redirecting to "Müller", but it won't handle "Mueller". This may be worth looking into. →Σσς. (Sigma) 04:57, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Bot to delete orphaned documentation subpages

An adminbot should delete the pages in Category:Documentation subpages without corresponding pages where the base template has no transclusions per criterion G8, with a few exceptions. If the base template was moved without redirect, the doc page should also be moved without redirect. An example of this is Template:User WPVG2/doc, where the base template was moved to User:Crash Underride/User WPVG2. This doc page should be moved to User:Crash Underride/User WPVG2/doc without redirect. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 22:31, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Why "where the base template has no transclusions"? Anomie⚔ 23:41, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

@Anomie: Can't speak for GeoffreyT2000, but it seems like a sensible safeguard against templates that were deleted but should have been redirected. I've seen this happen occasionally. As the relevant database report is actioned on, the bot would eventually get to the subpages or the template would be recreated as a redirect. ~ Rob^Talk 04:46, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

PHP help please with deriving daily top-300,000 in low memory conditions

Can anyone unzip the https stream of a full day's snapshots[6][7][8] from https://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/analytics/ e.g. pageviews-20160601-[012[0-9]00000.gz] such as to produce the sorted list of the top 300,000 /^en / articles daily in the lowest amount of memory? EllenCT (talk) 22:21, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

You might be able to figure something out by implementing the count–min sketch. gzip(1) and pigz(1) both support writing to stdout, which you could pipe into a non-PHP program that reads from stdin one line at a time. →Σσς. (Sigma) 23:02, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

How about a linked list of the top N, from a preallocated array of N list elements and indices? Does PHP have a way to open a stream from an HTTPS RESTful API? EllenCT (talk) 05:30, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Automatic change of typographical quotation marks to typewriter quotation marks

Could a bot be written, or could a task be added to an existing bot, to automatically change typographical ("curly") quotation marks to typewriter ("straight") quotation marks per the MoS? Chickadee46 (talk|contribs) 00:16, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

I think this is done by AWB already. In citations AWB does it for sure. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:25, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Potentially this could be done, but is it really that big an issue that it needs fixing? It seems like a very minor change that doesn't have any real effect at all on the encyclopedia. Omni Flames (talk) 11:14, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Missing category identification

Would it be possible for a bot to go through articles on footballers and create a list of ones where they are listed as playing for a club in their infobox, but are not in the matching category? For example, Danny Green (footballer, born 1990) is listed as playing for Thurrock F.C. in the infobox, but Category:Thurrock F.C. players is missing from the article. This is a quite frequent occurrence as when a player is transferred, editors may forget to add the category despite updating other parts of the article. Cheers, Number 57 14:55, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Coding... I've never written a Wikipedia bot before, and I'm new to this whole process, but I'm going to attempt to do this! KSFT^C 02:29, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

@Number 57: I think I have it mostly working, and I have requested approval, but the categories don't seem to exist for every team. KSFT^C 19:27, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

@KSFT: Thanks, that's great. I am busy tonight but will look and give you a full reply tomorrow. In short, there will be some missing for semi-professional teams (which I will create) and there will be a few mismatches where clubs (and the categories) have been renamed since the player were there. Cheers, Number 57

Outline drafts bot

We need a bit that will search for all draft outlines in user and Draftspace and move them to the drafts page at the Outlines project. This is mandated by the consensus at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Outlines/Drafts/Outline of ancient history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.77.230.182 (talk) 05:32, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

That's not what that consensus means, at all. A conclusion for not A is not a conclusion for B--that is a fallacy. --Izno (talk) 11:47, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

N Not done. The consensus was "do not move", and it would have applied only to a list of articles. This request is invalid as written. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:38, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: The request here was to move the other pages to the format that the consensus was to keep. There was not, however, consensus to make all pages of that type follow the format. KSFT^C 19:29, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Bot requested to help fix USC template invocations

See Template talk:UnitedStatesCode#Handling usc.7Cch.7Csec.281.29.28A.29.28i.29 type_invocations.2C or a bot to autocorrect.3B transferred codes.3B https for links Sai ¿?✍ 11:10, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Request for bot

Hello I am requesting a bot that can automatically patrol a new page. Please help me and create me this bot.NepaliKeto62^{Talk to me} 02:59, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Not a good task for a bot. Patrolling pages requires editorial review and must not be automated. Also, to be a bot operator, you must be able to maintain the bot. If you cannot create your own bot, you should not be running one. — JJMC89 (T·C) 03:13, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Please help me. Make a bot that automatically adds comment in requests by somebody. Bot same like {Musikbot} is good for me. So create such bot for me. NepaliKeto62^{Talk to me} 07:48, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

I don't think you have sufficient experience editing on Wikipedia to run a bot. Based on your multiple requests for someone to make you a bot, you don't know how to create, maintain, or operate a bot; therefore, you are not qualified to be a bot operator. — JJMC89 (T·C) 10:07, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes I know how to run a bot please help me. Please make me a bot that gives auto comments in request for rights section. Make a bot once and check whether I can run it or not. Please NepaliKeto62^{Talk to me} 12:31, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

If you aren't able to maintain the bot, then you shouldn't run it. Also, I don't see any evidence that you have the experience needed to run a bot. KSFT^C 14:28, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

I don't want to turn you off to operating a bot, but I do want to inject a large dose of reality here, so apologies if this is a bit blunt. There is no chance of a bot operator entirely writing the code for a bot for you and then turning it over to you to operate. There's many, many reasons for that.

1. Bot operators take a certain degree of pride in their work (or at least I do), and it's satisfying to watch your hard work pay off for the encyclopedia as you run your bot.
2. Bot operators must be able to quickly respond to issues with their automated script. To do this, you need to know everything about how the bot runs and how to debug its code. If you didn't create the bot and have no programming skills, this is impossible to achieve.
3. Even when a crucial bot is transferred from one operator to another when the former goes inactive, that bot is always transferred to a botop who has proven their ability to program by taking on independent projects and proven their knowledge of and dedication to the project through experience. Your 362 edits on enwiki would not fit the bill for taking over a crucial bot, not to mention the unproven programming abilities. (A non-crucial bot is, more often than not, just allowed to die when the botop leaves.)

Repeated requests for others to spend their time building a bot to accomplish an unspecified task and then turn it over to you are not going to go anywhere. Having said that, there's a lot you can accomplish without a bot. Take a look at WP:Twinkle and WP:Huggle, two semi-automated programs to help fight vandalism. Alternatively, you're welcome to create content or help out around the encyclopedia in any number of other ways. When you're eventually comfortable with how to edit Wikipedia and have a clear idea of uncontroversial repetitive changes you'd like to make, you're welcome to register for WP:AWB and try your hand at using WP:REGEX in a semi-automated fashion. After that, you could eventually progress to running an AWB bot if you encounter the need for one and have the technical ability to design and run it. Running a bot shouldn't really be a "goal", though. I only got into botwork because of a need for repetitive changes relating to accessibility on the site, something I had been working to correct for a while. Focus on improving the encyclopedia in whatever ways you can and then drop by WP:BRFA when you have both the skills and the need to run a bot. If you have any questions or want any suggestions on getting involved in Wikipedia, please do feel free to message me on my talk page. I'm always happy to refer editors to areas that could use their help. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 21:30, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Okay then I was requesting bot because there was option ask someone to run a bot for you in bot/aproval page. NepaliKeto62^{Talk to me} 00:25, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

That refers to this page, where you can ask a bot operator to design a bot to complete a specific task that you have in mind. The bot operator would create and run the bot; you'd just be supplying the idea. This is best done when you encounter something that requires automation around the project, not as a goal unto itself. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 06:46, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Replace ambiguous links to New York

Following the recent decision to move New York to a disambig page, a lot of preliminary work is ongoing to point existing links to either New York City or New York (state). A frequently occurring case is the |location= parameter in citations, which often reads |location=[[New York]]. This request aims to patrol citations in all articles and replace |location=[[New York]] with |location=[[New York City|New York]]. There is no ambiguity because pointers to a place in New York State would have the city name prepended. — JFG ^talk 16:47, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Some other frequently-occurring substitutions to consider:

1. [[New York|NY]] → [[New York (state)|NY]]
2. [[Manhattan]], [[New York]] → [[Manhattan]], [[New York City|New York]]
3. [[Queens]], [[New York]] → [[Queens]], [[New York City|New York]]
4. similar changes for all other NYC boroughs
5. [[Long Island]], [[New York]] → [[Long Island]], [[New York (state)|New York]]
6. [[Monroe County]], [[New York]] → [[Monroe County]], [[New York (state)|New York]]
7. similar changes for all other NY counties
8. [[New York]] Governor → [[New York (state)|New York]] Governor
9. [[New York]] Senator → [[New York (state)|New York]] Senator

Lots of work ahead… — JFG ^talk 20:55, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

@JFG: Doing... I'll likely have questions. One preliminary question is whether it's really desirable to list Manhattan, New York (etc) as "Borough, City" rather than "Borough, State"? The latter seems more typical of the "City, State" model. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 21:57, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

The mention of boroughs is mostly found in infoboxes with birth/death places or landmark locations. There is no uniform notation: we see "Manhattan, New York City" (3,109 pages), "Manhattan, New York City, U.S." (90 pages), "Manhattan, New York" (2,583 pages, meaning of New York unclear in that case), "Manhattan, New York, U.S." (313 pages); the latter form looks more inclusive, however I'd like to know what "New York" means there. When the text only says "Manhattan, New York" I would tend to link to the city as the most precise target. I asked the question on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New York City: surely natives know best! — JFG ^talk 23:43, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Got a first answer at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New York City: If "Manhattan, New York" is used, it can only mean "Manhattan, New York City". I don't think it has to be spelled out that way, though, because it wouldn't add anything. As for linking and disambiguating: any wikilink after Manhattan is unnecessary per WO:OVERLINK. In fact, even mentioning "US" is unnecessary. So, this speaks in favor of substitutions #2, #3 and #4 above. The overlinking remark is interesting but I think a New York disambig bot should leave links as is; whether an existing link to New York is superfluous is a human judgment call, out of scope for the bot's disambiguation purposes. — JFG ^talk 08:58, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

It looks like there is a move review currently open. Shouldn't we wait for it to reach a consensus before we make these mass changes? KSFT^C 21:59, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Agreed, I just independently discovered that move review and was holding off as a result. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 22:08, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, the move review is underway, however irrespective of the outcome there are about half of the New York links which are meant to point to the city (found 80 out of 147 in a manual sample). I totally agree that we can prepare the bot, test it on a few pages (pointers to New York (state) are harmless even if the move is not endorsed) and wait until the outcome is cemented. — JFG ^talk 23:43, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

WP:COSMETICBOT forbids such edits, and besides, there's no way anyone would get approval from the BAG to trial a bot to fix links with an unresolved RM. Rightly so. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 06:45, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: Sure, links to New York (state) must wait for the outcome of the new New York debate. However we'll need to fix pointers to New York City irrespective of the eventual fate of New York. — JFG ^talk 13:43, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

extract cite: journal template information from history articles

Hello, I'm currently working on a project that assesses the use of scholarly journals in history on Wikipedia. Some years ago a researcher performed the analysis on scientific journal citations on Wikipedia: http://firstmonday.org/article/view/1997/1872 . I lack the requisite computer skills to download the cite journal template so I was wondering if anyone could help me get the text--journal titles--from the cite journal template for the category of history articles AugusteBlanqui (talk) 19:47, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

@AugusteBlanqui: Finding all "history" articles will be tricky. Category:History and its subcategories should theoretically work, but such a broad category tree is likely to be horribly broken if you go down far enough. For instance, bizarrely enough, Category:Aquaman is in the tree (History --> Pseudohistory --> Atlantis --> Atlantis in fiction --> Aquaman). There's several ways you can go about this, in my opinion.

1. Find a list of journals you're interested in. Pull all {{Cite journal}} data, regardless of article, and then pare it down to only include the history journals on your list.
2. Find a WikiProject or list of WikiProjects you're interested in, possibly Wikipedia:WikiProject History and others, and then pull {{Cite journal}} data from all articles that are tagged for that project on the talk page. Note that this won't get you all history articles, but it will make sure the list you do get contains only history articles. There may be issues of bias here, though. An editor who works at that WikiProject may favor one journal even though that journal isn't systematically favored. Since a relatively small number of editors tag pages for WikiProjects, this is a fairly serious methodological concern.
3. Find some sub-set of the Category:History tree and check it thoroughly to ensure it doesn't contain any broken subcategories. Use that subset to pull your data.
4. Say screw it and be content with Aquaman-related articles and other oddities appearing in your dataset. The positive news is that those articles likely won't cite many journals that would influence your data.

Before a bot operator will be able to help you, you'll need to pick some method of grabbing the articles. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 06:58, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: Option #1 would be fine. I don't mind sifting through all of {{Cite journal}} and cross-referencing with a list of history journals based on Impact_factor. The issue is getting the template data in a text format that I can sift through (plain text...anything). I have a good start by just manually looking at a few key history articles on Wikipedia and comparing their references/bibliographies/further reading lists with under-graduate and graduate course syllabi. There's a few python programs on GitHub ( https://github.com/attardi/wikiextractor ) that look like they might do the job but I'm starting from scratch in terms of programming knowledge. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 22:01, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Alright, this isn't something I can personally do, but other bot operators will likely be able to help you with creating a CSV file (or similar format) with data from all transclusions of {{Cite journal}} transclusions. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 22:23, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Whatever botop picks this up, I encourage you to spin this off into a tool that creates similar CSV files for any requested template on-demand. That would be immensely useful. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 22:24, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

There's an additional possible spin-off - use in detection of self-promotional reference spam. To quote in its entirety a WP:VPM post:

By mere coincidence, I found two cases of self-promotional reference spam within the past two months: Jojojava and 151.72.6.77, both adding numerous references to published articles of J. Benchimol and F. G. Santeramo, respectively, to various Wikipedia articles. I doubt that those two are the only cases out there, so I wondered if we could think of a way to automatically detect this sort of edit behavior: IPs or single-purpose accounts adding identical references to numerous articles (while adding no content). Maybe we could have a bot flagging this type of edits, because it is very hard to spot for the human eye. - posted by Bender235 [9]

A bot harvesting additions of cite journal will be able to spot sequences of additions of pointers to the same article / same author, presumably. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:03, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Backing up spam blacklist and whitelist requests

Maybe this can be done by one of the currently existing archiving bots, but I'd like help with the following: On some discussion pages, discussions are 'grouped' in themes - WT:SBL and WT:SWL are two typical examples. Both mentioned pages (and some others) have two main sections, one for 'additions' and one for 'removals' (and some other discussion sections), and editors make subsections inside these sections depending on the nature of their request. These are currently manually backed up into archives with the same structure ('additions', 'removals', etc.) as I am not aware of a bot that is capable of handling this. I would like to see this done by bot, archiving sections ## days after last timestamp into archive pages following the same structure. Any ideas? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:17, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

How does the bot that archives WP:RFPP work? It also has separate sections, for protection requests and unprotection requests. ~Amatulić (talk) 06:38, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

@Amatulic: the bot there takes the subsections from the different sections, but archives them all into the same section. I'd like here to keep them in the archives also archived by section (or we would have to overthrow the whole system further, which may also be an option). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:55, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Well, let's ask ourselves, what would be the use case for retaining major page sections in the archive?

I can only speak for myself... From my point of view, when I need something from an archive, I use the search form that appears conveniently in the page header on most pages that have an archive. In that case, I don't really care what section of the archive contains the information I'm seeking, all I care about is that I find the information I'm seeking. In the case of the spam-blacklist talkpage, the search results don't distinguish whether a result is in the 'requests for addition' or 'requests for removal' sections anyway. I guess it's possible that someone would actually browse through an archive page to find something, but I suspect it's unlikely if there's a search form available. ~Amatulić (talk) 06:30, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Infobox video game related edits

Hi everyone,

I am a frequent editor of video game-related articles. I'm not really familiar with bots, so if this is a stupid question, my apologies. In the {{Infobox video game}}, the |modes= is for single-player, multiplayer, or both. Often other modes are introduced, like multiplayer online game, or specifically mentioning "2 player". The |engine= is intended for game engines with an established, independent article, and not for middleware, such as Havok (see Wolfenstein (2009 video game). Some games use an engine based upon the engine used in previous game and add a link to the game in the infobox (see South Park; sometimes the word "modified" is added, which doesn't say anything on how it modified (see Garry's Mod. Is there a way for a bot to systemically go through all of the WP:VG articles and change these things accordingly? soetermans. ^{↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK} 15:45, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

What are the changes you want to be made? KSFT^C 15:56, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Could it be so that only video game engines with their own article are mentioned in the engine parameter? That "modified" or a link to another video game is automatically removed? And that in the modes parameter, if that is the case, only [[Single-player video game|Single-player]] or [[Single-player video game|Single-player]], [[Multiplayer video game|multiplayer]] or [[Multiplayer video game|Multiplayer]] is listed? soetermans. ^{↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK} 16:06, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry if this sounds all too vague. soetermans. ^{↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK} 16:07, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

(I'm not a bot operator here, so I won't make the real changes, but...) OK, |modes= will be pretty easy to do. |engines= will be a little bit harder. Such edit probably won't be hard to make, but determining, if the target article is about video game or video game engine - that will be a bit harder. So video game engine will have {{Infobox Software}}, right? If target article doesn't have it, then remove it? Of course, we can give you a list of infobox parameter values for manual review, if it would suit you. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 16:58, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

It might be better to add code to the infobox template that detects unsupported values for |engine= and |mode= and places the articles in a maintenance category. That way, you would not need a bot. If you start a discussion at WP:VG or elsewhere, ping me and I can try to help with the template code. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:02, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Bot to automatically add Template:AFC submission/draft to Drafts

Let me explain my request. There are quite a few new users who decide to create an article in the mainspace, only to have it marked for deletion (not necessarily speedy). They might be given the option to move their article to the draft space, but just moving it to the draft space doesn't add the AfC submission template. Either someone familiar with the process who knows what to fill in for all the parameters (as seen in drafts created through AfC) or a bot would need to add the template, as the new user would definitely not be familiar with templates, let alone how to add one.
My proposal is this: Create a bot that searches for articles recently moved from the mainspace to the draft space and tags those articles with all the parameters that a normal AfC submission template would generate. For those who just want to move their articles to the draft space without adding an AfC submission template (as some more experienced editors would prefer, I'm sure), there could be an "opt-out" template that they could add. The bot could also search for drafts created using AfC that the editor removed the AfC submission template from and re-add it. Newer editors may blank the page to remove all the "interruptions" and accidentally delete the AfC submission template in the process, as I recently saw when helping a new editor who created a draft. Older editors could simply use the "opt-out" template I mentioned above. If possible, the bot could mention its "opt-out" template in either its edit summary or an auto-generated talk page post or (because it'll mainly be edited by one person while in the draft space) in an auto-generated user talk page post.
I realize this may take quite a bit of coding, but it could be useful in the long run and (I'm assuming) some of the code is there already in other bots (such as auto-generated talk page posts, as some "archived sources" bots do). -- Gestrid (talk) 06:55, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Sounds like a sensible idea; maybe the bot could check the move logs? Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 01:59, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Anti-non-commercial-file bot

There should be a bot that during the uploading process scans for the two word phrases "Creative Commons" and "Noncommercial", "Non-commercial", or "Non commercial" in the namespace (if I am right as to what it is called) of a file and warns the uploader that there is a licensing problem. I have accidentally uploaded such a file that violated copyrights, but I am innocent, and my warner was not precisely describing my problem.

I believe that, if we were to add this bot for use on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, we could save thousands of unwanted files from going in the wrong direction and keep many uploaders (such as me) non-upset. Gamingforfun³⁶⁵ (talk) 19:29, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Why would any of those phrases indicate a licensing problem? KSFT^C 19:50, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Hmmm. Who knows why? Gamingforfun³⁶⁵ (talk) 00:49, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

@KSFT: WP:NONCOM. That's why. Generally, a file shouldn't use a non-commercial license unless it also has a non-non-commercial license. The only exception to this is when the file is being uploaded under WP:FAIRUSE. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:53, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Primary School articles

Following this discussion, could anyone help set up a bot task that would

• Look for any article talk page tagged with Category:Articles in Wikipedia Primary School Project SSAJRP. Rename the category Category:Wikipedia Primary School articles
• Look for any article tagged with Category:Articles in Wikipedia Primary School Project SSAJRP in the main name space
• Remove that category from the main namespace
• Add the category in the article talk space with a category name change into Category:Wikipedia Primary School articles

Thank you for your help

Anthere (talk) 07:51, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Left-overs from persondata

A bot should clean up these 5500 rests and left-overs from Template:Persondata. 88.67.113.78 (talk) 14:14, 13 July 2016 (UTC)