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This is a page for requesting work to be done by bots per the bot policy. This is an appropriate place to simply put ideas for bots. If you need a piece of software written for a specific article you may get a faster response time at the computer help desk. You might also check Misplaced Pages:Bot policy to see if the bot you are looking for already exists. There are also quite a few "frequently denied requests", for various reasons, such as a welcoming bot, as it would de-humanize the process, and an anti-vandalism bot, as several already exist. If you want to request a bot to populate a category for a wikiproject, please create a full list of categories to be used, as most bot operators who can complete this task will not go into all subcategories, as some members may be irrelevant to your project. Also note that if you are requesting that an operator change or add a function to an existing bot, you should ask on that editor's talkpage.
If you have a question about a certain bot, it should be directed to the bot owner's talk page or to the Bot Owners' Noticeboard. If a bot is acting improperly, a note about that should be posted to the owner's talk page, to the Administrators' Noticeboard, or to AIV, depending on severity (ongoing vandalism to AIV). A link to such a posting may be posted at the Bot Owners' Noticeboard.
Please add your bot requests to the bottom of this page.
If you are a bot operator and you complete a request, note what you did, and archive it. Requests that are no longer relevant should also be archived in a timely fashion.
- See also: Misplaced Pages:Bot policy and Misplaced Pages:Bots/Frequently denied bots, to make sure your idea is not listed.
Bot to help with banned user StealBoy
I'm wondering whether a bot could help me in identifying new sockpuppets of StealBoy (talk · contribs). As some of you may know, this troll is incredibly persistent and has been creating hoax articles for over a year, possibly more. The list of his sockpuppets is too long to list and in fact, no admins really take the time to put the new puppets in the corresponding category, if only for WP:DENY reasons. Periodically, his semi-static IP is blocked for months and he returns once he gets a new IP. However, this guy has patterns which are very easy to spot: he creates only TV or film related hoaxes, almost invariably in the same time range, new puppets created have names with easy to identify patterns, anon edits are used to create links to the hoax articles and these links are always added to one of roughly twenty or so articles. So I was wondering if one of the tech-savy people here could periodically generate a list of suspicious edits/usernames. I do this manually from time to time by going through the list of new film-related articles and by spotting the IPs from a certain range on the aboved mentioned articles. If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to discuss privately the name patterns, IP range, articles which are usually vandalized and so on. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 16:57, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- Is StealBoy the new Willy on Wheels ? Guroadrunner (talk) 00:00, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- I have to say I'm not that familiar with Willy's antics. What I do know is that as far as number of sockpuppets, tenacity over time and utter pointlessness of the vandalism pattern, StealBoy (who is probably himself a sock of Lyle123) is in a pretty elite class of stupidity. 05:11, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
bare footnotes
How can I run a bot to fix the many bare URLs in Antipsychiatry's footnotes? —Cesar Tort 23:33, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
- I'll write a script to do it. Mønobi 03:38, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks a lot! —Cesar Tort 03:59, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- I've actually ported the part of the pywikipedia bot collection online. The reflinks.py script isn't synced up since I haven't had the time to merge my changes. — Dispenser 04:12, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- Well I'll run a script to create titles for the urls directly ;). Mønobi 04:26, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- I've actually ported the part of the pywikipedia bot collection online. The reflinks.py script isn't synced up since I haven't had the time to merge my changes. — Dispenser 04:12, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks again. When will you run a program? —Cesar Tort 04:02, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
- ASAP. Mønobi 22:27, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
See also User:DumZiBoT. Gimmetrow 04:19, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Missing settlements
Hi. I don't know how many people are aware but we are missing vast amounts of articles on towns and villages , and I mean VAST in a serious way -particularly on countries in the developing world, notably Latin America, Asia and Africa which comprises at least 85% of the world land cover. Given the enormous size and organization of wikipedia already, I would have thought that it was be an important goal for wikipedia to begin to address uneven coverage gegraphically and try to create an even coverage of the world like a neutral encyclopedia should, at least articles with a locator map and some basic details for starters as a reference point. I do a lot of work adding new articles on settlements using the same sources each time. I am certain a bot could be programmed to blue link articles on places by country and give the encyclopedia something of enormous benefit for people to try to work on. Given the sheer amount missing by now I;d be expecting wikipedia to be drilling bots to create these articles on a daily basis, but bots rarely seem to be taken to their full advantage and used to generate new articles, with the exception of the polbot and gene bots which run from time to time. Could somebody please explain how this could be done? ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ 20:12, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- Back in the day Ram-Man got some huge repository of info on U.S. places and had Ram-Bot create all the pages and put the info in. Really we'd need some list of notable places, like a gazzetter of South America or something. Then a bot could create simple stubs from it, adding pretty things like Cats and Infoboxes. I don't know where such a database is, but I'd suggest the federal government or the UN might have one in English. It would also need to have a human follow-up afterwards for the duplicates that would be created from different naming conventions. But it should be possible to code, if you can find the sources and a free-bot lying around. MBisanz 20:17, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Well the nearest thing I;ve found is the list at MSN Encarta.e.g Nigeria which lists towns and villages by country but it isn't a proper source. Now I am aware that some of the place names are slightly differnetly transliterated or dated in places, I remember Darwinek discussing this, but when I've been creating articles I've been checking at least three or four others websites such as maplandia, google maps etc to try to get some authority that they are accurate names and I have to say that 99% of what I;ve come across seems to give some standard assertion that it is very accurate. I;m not certain if every places will meet everybody's notability requirements but they are all populated settlements which I believe the vast majority of could be written into informative articles. I think it would strengthen the encyclopedia considerably to begin to address the uneven coverage geographically. Maplandia for me appears to be the best geo site but because of huge uneveness in knowledge often accurate population data isn't available for the undeveloped countries. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ 20:25, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- Well the ENcarta link is difficult, only that it would be hard for a bot to parse the 60 entry sublists and that there is no commentary on the cities on the maps (X is a city in province Q of Nigeria" I feel like the UN cartagraphic division must have lists of cities. MBisanz 20:32, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree. I;ve been trying to find a detailed list for each country in a long list with some basic data but I haven't found one. All I;ve found is world gazateer.com which lists probably 50 biggest cities in a country but isn't quite as full as I;d like it to be ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ 20:39, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- For Nigeria, Nigeria Direct has information which might be at least a start. I'm thinking that the best places to go for such information would be the web pages of each individual country myself. John Carter (talk) 20:41, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- John's right that ideally countries should have government sources. But does anyone here think Uganda or Burma has a website listing their major cities in English? It might work for some of the larger nations, like S. America (I'd expect Brazil and Argentina to have them) and what not, but Africa and East Asia will probably be deadends. http://www.un.org/depts/dhl/maplib/maplib.htm says it has 3000 gazzetters. I'm wondering if they could send a bibliography of them or if any are digitized. Also, there is the issue that China had at last count, around 980,000 good sized towns. Even if we could get a listing for them, do we really want to increase the size of Misplaced Pages by 50% at once? MBisanz 20:53, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Mmm I don;t know it is potentially problematic due to the deficiencies in avilability of government sources for poorer parts of the world which is a great shame, but it is inevitable that the encyclopedia as it is will easily double in size anyway, and likely to be increasingly filled by articles which aren't considered traditionally encyclopedic. I remember several people saying "real world content is what this encyclopedia needs" which I fully agree with ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ 21:02, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- Yea, I was thinking more of every third Random Page being a Chinese stub. Not a reason to not add them in, maybe just a reason to spread it around to smaller countries first. I'll take a look tonight as to what resources I can find. MBisanz 21:11, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
OK. Its just I feel places form a backbone to the encyclopedia and while hundreds of topcis are equally important many articles are based around a location in the world whether its people, landmarks or whatever. Even films and books are based in a place. I just feel that it is more powerful not to ignore that these places exist and begin to construct the best coverage of the world on one site the best we can. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ 21:28, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
- I agree with you regarding the importance of having a good coverage of settlements, but I'm concerned that a bot is not the right way to do it. First, there is the issue that an article about a settlement may already exist under another name. Second, there is the issue of quantity vs. quality. Having thousands of new articles that no one watchlists, maintains, and improves may not be entirely a good thing. Black Falcon 20:52, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Pretty much every country in the world – apart from countries like Somalia or Democratic Republic of the Congo, which have more urgent things to take care – have a statistical agency, whose purpose is to provide geographic, demographic or economical data for other government organizations. The use of government data is strongly preferred to Encarta or other outside sources. The problem with using the data from Encarta (or similar lists) is that we don't know what they include and what is missing. In other words, we will end up with a huge disorganized pile of blue links. For example, Madagascar has about 150 places called Ambodimanga... without accurate coordinates nobody would ever be able to figure out what is what, or even what they are (villages, communes...). I'm all for expanding the geographic coverage of Misplaced Pages, but it needs to be done systematically, hierarchically and complete for whatever administrative level we are talking about (counties, departements, communes, munincipalities etc). My understanding is that such a data exists for most (perhaps almost all) of the developing countries, and increasingly in electronic format. The data may not be available publicly on-line, but I would assume if we were to ask the relevant agencies for it, they would probably give it. – Sadalmelik (talk) 21:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
The best thing I have found to date is Global gazetteer. It lists places A-Z through an A-Z of all countries in the world. The information on population should be ignored though as it is an estimate but actual location, and elevation is reliable. I'd be amazed if a bot couldn't generate articles based on this. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ 17:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- I've reviewed it, it looks complete and standardized in a format a bot could read. Strong support for this task. And the country variable would provide a way to tag the talk to the appropriate wikiproject. MBisanz 17:26, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- I don't think it's a good idea to use Fallingrain as source, as it's indiscriminate on what it contains. I think it simply includes all the populated places from US gov. sources. It makes no distinction between villages with population of 100 and town with population of 100000. The problem then is that we end up with tens of thousands of new articles per country, only classified by first level administrative divisions. And that classification is not enough. That's why I suggested using government data instead, as it's hierarchical from the start (country level -> provinces -> counties -> towns or something similar). This hierarchy simply has to exist if one wants to find their way through tens of thousands of articles. And the hierarchy should be correct from the start, so government (official) sources are required. Misplaced Pages is big enough to ask and get the data, if it's not available on-line now.
- By the way, the altitudes in Fallingrain are not reliable. I did check a few when I started stubbing Malagasy communes. Generally I think they are correct within 100m or so... The worst case among the handfull I checked was Ambalahonko - Fallingrain claims 321m while SRTM shows 15m. – Sadalmelik (talk) 23:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Given the type of information that is contained in the Fallingrain database, I strongly disagree with having a bot carry out this task. Using a semi-automated process to create articles about cities that includes an infobox and a few sentences of information, like Sadalmelik has been doing with Malagasy settlements, is a good thing; however, creating thousands of stubs that say nothing more than " is a settlement in , " is not, especially when the source used does not provide reliable population or elevation estimates, and does not really offer much else. Black Falcon 17:56, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Rechristen -> rename_rename-2008-03-05T16:18:00.000Z">
Can anyone help replace instances of Christian name -> forename, christen -> name, etc.? --kylet (talk) 16:18, 5 March 2008 (UTC)_rename"> _rename">
- I am not aware of any consensus that this is universal, approved or even necessary. Why do you want to make these replacements? Happy‑melon 19:17, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
- Simply because not everyone here is a Christian, and so does not have a Christian name. --kylet (talk) 15:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- The onus is on you to prove that your request is wholly within the bounds of consensus before it can be considered, as making potentially controversial edits in either an automated or semiautomated fashion is prohibited. Please point to a guideline, policy, or community discussion demonstrating that such consensus exists. If one does not exist, feel free to start one, obtain consensus, and then come back here.--Dycedarg ж 05:00, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- See the Christian name article, Guardian style guide, and the Oxford American Dictionary (that came with OS X): "In recognition of the fact that English-speaking societies have many religions and cultures, not just Christian ones, the term Christian name has largely given way to alternative terms such as given name, first name, or forename." From here on in I am out of my depth, and have no idea about how one might create a 'bot'. --kylet (talk) 16:29, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- OK, so you've proved that people outside of Misplaced Pages think this. What I meant was that you need to prove that people inside of Misplaced Pages think this. A Misplaced Pages policy or guideline declaring that Misplaced Pages strongly discourages the use of the term "Christian name" and its derivatives, or a discussion demonstrating sufficient consensus for this taking place on a related page. Furthermore, the terms christen and rechristen are commonly applied to boats and other inanimate objects, and I don't see any reason to go changing those instances.--Dycedarg ж 06:37, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
- See the Christian name article, Guardian style guide, and the Oxford American Dictionary (that came with OS X): "In recognition of the fact that English-speaking societies have many religions and cultures, not just Christian ones, the term Christian name has largely given way to alternative terms such as given name, first name, or forename." From here on in I am out of my depth, and have no idea about how one might create a 'bot'. --kylet (talk) 16:29, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- The onus is on you to prove that your request is wholly within the bounds of consensus before it can be considered, as making potentially controversial edits in either an automated or semiautomated fashion is prohibited. Please point to a guideline, policy, or community discussion demonstrating that such consensus exists. If one does not exist, feel free to start one, obtain consensus, and then come back here.--Dycedarg ж 05:00, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- Simply because not everyone here is a Christian, and so does not have a Christian name. --kylet (talk) 15:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
A talk page archiving bot
I would like to put in a request to a talk page archiving bot with a similar syntax to User:MercuryBot, or at least the source code so I can run my own copy of the bot. Thanks, Nol888(Talk) 02:21, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- There are several already, including, as you mentioned, MercuryBot. Others include ClueBot III (mine), and MiszaBot III. -- Cobi 02:29, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- Well, none of those seem to be active, and ClueBot has a different syntax from the other two. Nol888(Talk) 21:27, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
- See WP:ARCHIVE. I've seen MiszaBot at work recently. -- SEWilco (talk) 03:30, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Bot to rate WikiProject quality assessment on talk page as same as other project tags
I would love someone who knows more about this, to help with this:
- Find all article talkpages that are already tagged with {{WikiProject Theatre}}, but are not assessed yet for quality ratings.
- Check to see if other project tags on that talk page are already assessed for quality ratings.
- Update {{WikiProject Theatre}} on each talk page, if missing quality rating, to match the other quality ratings on the other project tags.
I coulda sworn I've already seen something automated around wikipedia that does this, can't remember where or what. Could really use the help in doing this, it will help to assess what quality content to use at Portal:Theatre, which I want to work on next. Cirt (talk) 04:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- As I recall, this task was a bit controversial for anything but stubs, so we agreed that it could be done on a project-by-project basis if the project asked for it and understood the consequences. Projects can rate articles differently depending on how the article covers material relevant to each project. You might have an article on a drama which WP:CHESS rated A based on the description of one scene with a chess game. Gimmetrow 04:12, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- How about if we start by just matching up FAs and GAs? {{WikiProject Theatre}} won't really have any of those, because I just added the parameters to the template, even though the articles were previously tagged w/ the template itself. Cirt (talk) 04:15, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- I think the previous discussion is at Misplaced Pages:Bot_requests/Archive_13#Assessment_bot. If you want this done right away, it looks like Betacommand did this one before. Gimmetrow 09:37, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- Okay, thanks, I'll check out the archived thread and talk to Betacommand (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 19:27, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- I think the previous discussion is at Misplaced Pages:Bot_requests/Archive_13#Assessment_bot. If you want this done right away, it looks like Betacommand did this one before. Gimmetrow 09:37, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- How about if we start by just matching up FAs and GAs? {{WikiProject Theatre}} won't really have any of those, because I just added the parameters to the template, even though the articles were previously tagged w/ the template itself. Cirt (talk) 04:15, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Betacommand (talk · contribs) seems to be pretty busy - any help/ideas on this request? Cirt (talk) 06:40, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- Do you have consensus in your project for this? -- maelgwn - talk 10:42, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Template:ACIDnom
I came across this template {{ACIDnom}} which is part of the Misplaced Pages:Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive, a WikiProject that is now inactive. The template contains the phrase "The Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive is now closed. Please remove this template." Unless I'm completely misunderstanding something, this template should be removed from each article talk page it is used on. But the template and a bunch of template-redirects are used on hundreds of pages. Perhaps a bot could quickly remove them all? Gnome de plume (talk) 18:41, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- working now !! -- maelgwn - talk 02:32, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Done -- maelgwn - talk 05:50, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- Thank you! Gnome de plume (talk) 18:24, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Missing references section
Hello. I would like to ask if you can use some bot in geographical articles. Problem is following: There are many references used in many articles about U.S. towns but the References section is missing, see e.g. Gillsville, Georgia. Could some bot add
== References ==
{{reflist}}
to articles which need it? Thanks. - Darwinek (talk) 18:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- The problem comes from adding the {{GR}}-template. Smackbot has done something similar before. I'll leave a note to the operator. Rettetast (talk) 21:23, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- Thank you very much. It is a complex problem affecting hundreds of articles, therefore should be fixed. - Darwinek (talk) 10:56, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
- I have been going through some articles with the {{GR}}-template, and about 20-25% of the articles has this problem. The {{GR}}-template is used on 40,000 articles, so that will mean that about 10.000 articles has this problem. Rettetast (talk) 13:00, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks for doing that. This means it should be done only by a bot, manual work on this would be deadly and would take a long time. - Darwinek (talk) 14:15, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
- I have been going through some articles with the {{GR}}-template, and about 20-25% of the articles has this problem. The {{GR}}-template is used on 40,000 articles, so that will mean that about 10.000 articles has this problem. Rettetast (talk) 13:00, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
- Thank you very much. It is a complex problem affecting hundreds of articles, therefore should be fixed. - Darwinek (talk) 10:56, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Er, since when did {{GR}} produce ref-tag references? That's not what the TfD said. People mentioned the idea, that's it. If a bot needs to go about editing the page, it could just as well replace the GR templates with a proper in-line non-templated reference. Gimmetrow 20:25, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Bot to change old signature/user name
I have changed my user name, and would like, for reasons of privacy, to edit the old signatures to my new one. Is it appropropriate to ask for a BOT to do so, or do I have to make the edits myself? I know the information will still be in the old histories, but would appreciate it if the average search didn't drag them up. My old user name should be determinable from my contribs, as I just moved some pages that referenced it, and I'dlike to not reference it any further. FrozenPurpleCube (talk) 18:57, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- that is why we have redirects. replacing your old sig goes against policy. β 19:02, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- In my opinion, as far as privacy goes, changing your signature on every page it's on would be more damaging to your privacy than just leaving it alone. People tend to have their archives watchlisted, at least I know I do, and I'm sure that more than one person has the archives to public pages watchlisted. Everyone of those people would know that you changed your username; more people than I think are going to visit those archives and notice the changed username on their own.--Dycedarg ж 19:18, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- Could you please cite the relevant policy? The page on Misplaced Pages:UNC#Changing your username says they can be changed manually. Is this in error? I could change the edits myself if there's some reason a bot can't do it, but it's just going to be a lot of work in what seems to be a redundant process so I would think that's just the thing you'd use a bot to do. And no, I don't mind that people know I changed my user name, as long as they don't invade my privacy by making some big deal about it. It's not like folks can't look things up in the history anyway if that's their concern. My problem is that I just don't care for search engines having it, and I believe removing it would maximize my desire for privacy. FrozenPurpleCube (talk) 21:41, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- What particular privacy reasons do you have? You old username reveals very little about your identity. -- maelgwn - talk 05:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- The same one that lead to me to change my username. So, anyway, can anyone answer me as to whether this is a valid request for a bot to do, or should I just proceed to do it manually? It is apparently allowed to do it, being referenced both at the page above, and at WP:CHU. FrozenPurpleCube (talk) 06:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- Instead of doing it manually (and possibly losing content through clicking errors), please look at WP:AWB for a faster way to change it. MBisanz 06:25, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks for the information, I'll give it a try. FrozenPurpleCube (talk) 06:30, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- Never mind, it's too complex a tool for me to figure out, just for this one purpose, and I honestly don't feel comfortable making the request to use it either. I'd just have one use for it, and I'd be done here forever and ever. Is there any chance of finding someone who has figured this stuff out to do this for me? If not, I'll get to making the change manually. FrozenPurpleCube (talk) 06:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- I would do it if you could provide a reason for it to be done. WP:REDIRECT#NOTBROKEN applies here. -- maelgwn - talk 06:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- Well, forgive me if I seem terse, but I really don't want to get into a discussion of my reasons, as I fear that would defeat the purpose of leaving, but: I wish to maximize the amount of privacy I can gain through changing my username, the reason for doing so I stated as clearly as possible when making the request for changing it. If I need to reiterate, then I will say again, I intend to leave Misplaced Pages utterly and forever. The last edit I will make will be to my talk page saying so. Since I wish this to be as complete as possible, this includes utilizing every available option, which as indicated on the page I referred to earlier, includes changing the old signatures. I have found them remaining through several search engines, and while this does include some off-site examples, I can only hope that they disappear on their own, as many of them seem to simply be mirrors exploiting wikipedia content to attract search engine hits. For those that don't, well, I can't do everything, if I could, I'd remove every single edit and comment in their entirely. I know I can't, so please don't waste time saying so, but I do want to do what I can to distance myself from this place. If this is not a sufficient explanation for you, I'm sorry, but I don't like discussing this in this public way, and having to keep doing so only continues what to me, is something very painful. I can't give you any further explanation, I can't give you any further details, and if that's not enough, I guess I'll just have to begin doing it myself. FrozenPurpleCube (talk) 08:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- I would do it if you could provide a reason for it to be done. WP:REDIRECT#NOTBROKEN applies here. -- maelgwn - talk 06:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- Instead of doing it manually (and possibly losing content through clicking errors), please look at WP:AWB for a faster way to change it. MBisanz 06:25, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- The same one that lead to me to change my username. So, anyway, can anyone answer me as to whether this is a valid request for a bot to do, or should I just proceed to do it manually? It is apparently allowed to do it, being referenced both at the page above, and at WP:CHU. FrozenPurpleCube (talk) 06:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- What particular privacy reasons do you have? You old username reveals very little about your identity. -- maelgwn - talk 05:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Article classification within Formula One project, part II
Hello,
Is it possible for a bot to find any article with {{F1-bio-stub}} in the article mainspace, and produce the following statement in the article's talkpage if not already there -- {{WikiProject Formula One|class=stub}} ?
I am manually classifying these articles, and this will simply make a multitude of obvious stubs (there are many) faster and easier to classify.
Requests for help on how to do this myself with AWB were ignored, hence the bot request.
Please let me know Guroadrunner (talk) 01:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- I'll do it. Give me a day. Mønobi 05:10, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
- DONE - Work completed by Monobot, owned by Mønobi. Thank you for doing this! Guroadrunner (talk) 05:40, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Request for Bot to tag Company Articles
I was wondering if it would be possible to create a bot that would add the WikiProject Companies banner (Template:WikiProject Companies) to the Talk page of any Mainspace article which includes the Infobox Company or Infobox Defunct Company templates (assuming of course that the banner is not already there).
As of the last count (Oct 2007) there were over 11,000 articles that included Infobox Company, and with the project standing at just over 2,000, this bot would allow us to focus on classing and improving articles. I envisage having this bot run maybe once a month. Thanks for your help! Richc80 (talk) 05:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- This isn't hard to do, but I remember that when I was last active on Misplaced Pages (I've been inactive for a bit), there was a lot of frustration with bot operators (myself included) bot-tagging talk pages of articles. Do you know if this still a problem? If not, I'd be happy to do this for you with Alphachimpbot. alphachimp 06:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- I'm not aware of any problems, but then this is my first foray into the world of bots. From my perspective I would hope this isn't an issue, all I am looking to do is automate (and quicken) a process that we (WikiProject participants) are already working on. Maybe some more experienced editors could comment on whether this is still a problem, and if there are no major issues raised proceed? Thanks. Richc80 (talk) 13:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- It's not a problem. In fact, it's highly desirable to get articles associated with WikiProjects; the more the merrier. (I note that there is a special template to deal with excessive talk page clutter when there are multiple WikiProjects.) Tagging of this sort is important for Misplaced Pages:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment, since it depends on WikiProjects to do assessments.
- There are a number of bots that already do this type of tagging - see the "Bots" subsection of the the WikiProject topic in the Editor's index. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- John Bot will be happy to do this once it gets approval. CWii(Talk|Contribs) 20:24, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
- There are a number of bots that already do this type of tagging - see the "Bots" subsection of the the WikiProject topic in the Editor's index. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Portal icon placement
Is there a way for a bot to:
- Check if an article's talk page links to a specific WikiProject with an associated portal, (for example, WP:Norway).
- Check to see if the see also section already contains a link to the associated portal, (for example, Portal:Norway).
- If the see also section doesn't contain a link to the portal, add the following code at the top of the see also section: {{Portal|Norway|Nuvola Norwegian flag.svg}} (That's the code for the Norway portal, would be specific to each portal.)
This would be really neat if a bot could do this. (Not just for Norway, but for any other type of WikiProject talk page tag and associated Portal icon as well). Cirt (talk) 09:30, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
- Misplaced Pages:Layout#See also says The "See also" section provides a list of internal links to related Misplaced Pages articles. That doesn't support a link to a portal, even in the form of a flag. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:21, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- Misplaced Pages:Layout#See also supports linking a Portal with {{portal}}. Nevertheless, I don't think there would be enough consensus to add this link by bot everywhere. Some articles have a portal link under the lead infobox, for instance. But if a specific project asks for it and has a directly corresponding portal, a script could easily do this. Gimmetrow 18:25, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- Okay, will keep these responses in mind, thanks. Perhaps specific projects will ask for this in the future. Cirt (talk) 20:39, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- Misplaced Pages:Layout#See also supports linking a Portal with {{portal}}. Nevertheless, I don't think there would be enough consensus to add this link by bot everywhere. Some articles have a portal link under the lead infobox, for instance. But if a specific project asks for it and has a directly corresponding portal, a script could easily do this. Gimmetrow 18:25, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- Well, this would specifically be helpful for the WikiProject and portal-code I have mentioned, above. Cirt (talk) 20:42, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Depopulating a deleted category
Category:Jewish Christians has been deleted. Could a bot please depopulate it? Thanks! —Angr 20:58, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
- Strange story: CfD'd first, thent restored via DRV, then speedied as empty, then recreated, then speedies as repost. Was the latter deletion valid? MaxSem 21:28, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
- Unless another CfD took place that wasn't mentioned in the deletion log, I don't see how it could be.--Dycedarg ж 00:55, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- Ouch, I think I may have been cleaning up on auto pilot. Can someone point me to the DRV; if I made a mistake, I'll surely be glad to restore it. "What links here" on the cat doesn't link to a DRV, and the discussions that are linked to it all are for its deletion. -- Avi (talk) 12:21, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks for the link. However, both http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_August_29#Category:Jewish_Roman_Catholics and http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_August_25#Category:Jewish_atheists occurred afterwards and this category was still considered deleted. The cat's own history shows it was only recreated on 07:33, March 1, 2008 by User:Joyson Noel, who has a history of re-creating improper categories and posting blatant copyright violations (see the history of his talk page). As it was re-created under strange circumstances, I'm not certain it should be restored. If you wish to recreate on your own recognizance because you think it necessary, by all means do so, although based on the tortuous history of this cat, I'm certain someone is going to nominate it for deletion yet again
.Thoughts? -- Avi (talk) 12:46, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- Unless another CfD took place that wasn't mentioned in the deletion log, I don't see how it could be.--Dycedarg ж 00:55, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- I've restored it, though I'm not adverse to its being nominated for deletion or re-naming again. I don't think the two CFDs from August are enough weight to overrule the DRV in which it was decided that the original CFD was sockpuppet-tainted. If anyone wants it to be deleted, let it be a brand-new CFD with no reliance on precedent. —Angr 16:08, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- Fair enough. -- Avi (talk) 16:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
DOI finder for journal citations
Hi,
References are much more useful when they provide a permanent link to an online copy of the paper to which they refer. This is provided in the form of a doi, which can be placed in the template {{cite journal}} in the form of a parameter doi = . However, these codes are often cumbersome and unweildy, and for this reason and neglected by editors not using automated tools to insert their citations.
DOIs follow an easy-to-spot pattern, and are easy to detect using regexp. I find the following syntax is very effective for retrieving them from the source of web pages:
|doi.*(10\.\d{4}/.*)|Ui
It seems to be that it would be rather simple to program a bot to follow links already provided in a citation, which often point only to a mirror of the abstract page, and not the article itself, and to append a doi to the citation. It would also be possible for the bot to query google/google scholar with the authors and title where no URL is available, and search for a DOI in the result pages.
This would make verifying sources and using them to expand articles much simpler for editors, as well as futureproofing links with an unstable structure.
Anyone keen to make such a bot, or have any comments as to its feasibility?
Thanks,
Verisimilus T 17:57, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- I'm not certain this could be done in a fully-automated manner. A tool that helps with link fixups is http://tools.wikimedia.de/%7Edispenser/cgi-bin/linkchecker.py. My guess is that AWB may also have some capability for improving references, and I have heard that AWB is an interactive tool. Whenever I visit an article with the aim of tidying references I usually find numerous problems that need some amount of manual attention. The only fully-automated tool that should work across the board is the one running lately that adds the title of a web page to every URL reference. EdJohnston (talk) 20:29, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- I don't remember if I published User:RefBot code for that. Check the public code. -- SEWilco (talk) 18:04, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- I'd like to see a few examples of pages where Verisimilus thinks this would work. Not clear if you intend it to work in a fully automatic way. EdJohnston (talk) 20:29, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- Once it was fully tested, there'd be no reason not to work it fully automatically; it is only adding data, not removing any. Since each DOI can be followed, it can be easily checked that a) it works and b) it leads to an article containing the title of the article and authors' names. If this didn't suffice, a commented tag could always be added after them saying "DOI added by bot" or some such. I suspect a bot would be a lot more reliable here than a typo-prone human!
- I didn't see anything obvious in the refbot code; I suspect that it will be easier to get the bot past beaurocrats if that bot isn't refered to, flicking through some of the correspondence - it may cause confusion, even if the same framework is used.
- Thanks, Verisimilus T 12:36, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
- Most of the correspondence was political and had nothing to do with the trivial tasks that old RefBot code performed. But if the DOI code is not in there, you'll have to write new code anyway. -- SEWilco (talk) 13:16, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Hm, I'd hoped to avoid doing any coding myself, as my previous attempts have involved much slog and little success. Could anyone recommend a PHP bot framework that I might be able to tinker with to avoid starting from scratch? Thanks.Verisimilus T 14:42, 12 March 2008 (UTC)- Gosh, that was easy! I've now got a bot working and will put it through the WP:BRFA process when I've tweaked it. Thanks for all your support! Verisimilus T 15:59, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
- You work fast! It would be good to see an example of what your bot would produce if run on a page like Misplaced Pages:Scientific citation guidelines. This is a good one to pick because it has a number of example references to scientific journals. Actually changing that page should be avoided (I think) for now. Also I'm not clear if you will just add a field when a citation template already exists, or if you generate a new template from scratch. EdJohnston (talk) 18:07, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
- Gosh, that was easy! I've now got a bot working and will put it through the WP:BRFA process when I've tweaked it. Thanks for all your support! Verisimilus T 15:59, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
- I've queried google too many times in quick succession, so it has blocked me on suspicion of being an attacker. Therefore I've only been able to extract DOIs from IDs. Here's what the bot made of Misplaced Pages:Scientific citation guidelines. Verisimilus T 19:54, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Bot for formating lengthly templates (such as infoboxes)
An editor expressed concern that many uses of an infobox within articles are formated very tightly, as opposed to a cleaner table-like version, etc:
For example, within a template's parameter arguments, this is bad:
|param1 = blah
|param2 = blah
|longparametername = blah
|param3 = blah
instead of the cleaner:
|param1 = blah
|param2 = blah
|longparametername = blah
|param3 = blah
As this only affects the backend of the article and nothing display wise, it's not a high priority, but I'm wondering if a bot yet exists that can update the formatting for a given template through its use by simply doing this expansion (given the length of the longest parameter); if no bot does exist, I can see this being very generic for any template like Infobox or the like. (The specific template in question is {{Infobox VG}}) --MASEM 18:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- This type of cluttered infobox structure is one of my pet peeves, as I find that it makes editing more difficult and increases the likelihood of accidental errors. Although this type of change would not produce a visible result to readers, I think it would be very helpful for editors, and I would love to see cluttered infoboxes cleaned up in this way (it is quite-time consuming to do it manually). Black Falcon 18:15, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- its possible, Masem if you can compile a list of parameters for a single template Ill look into it. β 18:18, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- Well for the specific template, it would {{Infobox VG}}, which has all the parameters listed in Template:Infobox VG/doc. However, as I've noted, I think this can be made a highly generic task that can be applied to any similar box, so maybe there's a template specific format that can be created so that the bot is aware what template it is looking for, and what parameters are in that template, instead of programming specifically to one template. --MASEM 18:47, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- If there will be still no objections, I could add such feature to AWB general fixes, SmackBot will quickly propagate them everywhere. MaxSem 18:21, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- This would be great to have as part of the generic cleanups in AWB, and should be part of general cleanup maintenance if possible. --MASEM 18:47, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- its possible, Masem if you can compile a list of parameters for a single template Ill look into it. β 18:18, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
param1 = blah |
param2 = blah |
longparametername = blah |
param3 = blah |
- I think this should also adjust infoboxes such as above to have the separators first on the line, and it should only adjusts infoboxes, rather than all templates on the page. Gimmetrow 19:46, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- Definitely it would be limited to a subset of templates (whitelist, otherwise ignore). However, I'm not sure about that format, again it's still cluttered, and the separator symbol could easily be missed on longer lines. --MASEM 20:08, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- Right. I'm saying if someone is going to format templates (when editing the page for some other reason), I would like them to also reformat the above to have the separators first on the line. Gimmetrow 01:20, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
- Definitely it would be limited to a subset of templates (whitelist, otherwise ignore). However, I'm not sure about that format, again it's still cluttered, and the separator symbol could easily be missed on longer lines. --MASEM 20:08, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- I think this should also adjust infoboxes such as above to have the separators first on the line, and it should only adjusts infoboxes, rather than all templates on the page. Gimmetrow 19:46, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Misconceived links to date fragments such as Wednesday and April
Can we have a bot to address the misconceived links to date fragments such as Wednesday and April? There are tens of thousands of these and probably only a few hundred make any sense at all. It is relatively easy to identify the nonsense ones.
There are many other ridiculous ways in which people handle dates. Many are fairly easy to identify e.g. ''. This is a known side-effect of autoformatting and must be one of the most common diseases on Misplaced Pages. They are difficult for human editors to identify and fix but they are ideal bot fodder. Lightmouse (talk) 20:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
- Could you give a few examples? Mønobi 22:22, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
- I do not understand your question. The request contains examples. Do you want examples of links to '' or examples of links to ''? Lightmouse (talk) 09:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)