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Archives
Archive 1 (January -> February 2006) Archive 2 (February 2006) Archive 3 (February -> April 2006) Archive 4 (April 2006) Archive 5 (April -> May 2006) Archive 6 (June 2006) Archive 7 (June -> July 2006) Archive 8 (July 2006) Archive 9 (August 2006)

Frequently asked questions

• When I start it up I get error "The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application."

  This error means your computer does not have the .NET framework version 2 installed properly. Download

• Will it ever work on linux?

  Probably not.

• Does AWB work on other projects/languages?

  Many WikiMedia projects and languages are supported, see the "Select language and project" option in the file menu. Other languages will be added on request, though at the moment the interface is always in English.

• What interwiki link order does AWB use?

  It uses the orders specified at m:Interwiki sorting order, as all other bots do.

• I don't like or use Internet Explorer, please use FireFox instead.

  AWB does not use Internet Explorer, it does however happen to use the same web browser control that Internet Explorer does, the equivalent FireFox component does not provide the needed functionality.

• How do I open the page in another browser if I can't use the one in AWB?

  Right click on the edit box in the bottom right side of your screen. Select "Open page in browser"

• How do I edit a page that doesn't exist?

  Uncheck "Ignore non existing pages" in the "Skip articles" box.

• How do I skip certain articles?

  Use the "Skip if contains" and "Skip if doesn't contain" in the "(2) Set options" tab

• Can't you leave up a "stable" version, so I don't have to download new versions?

  It is important to keep people up to date with the latest versions, because their use of the software doesnt just affect them, but the whole of wikipedia. As any bugs that remain will be trivial, hopefully releases won't be so frequent anyway.

Discussion

Formatting templates

While I'm waiting to see what I can do on Wikinews with AWB, I'm trying out the MWiki-Browser. How would I go about formatting all occurrences of a template with it?

From

*{{source|url=http://somewhere.at.example.com|title=This is not the news you are looking for|author=|pub=Example.com|date=August 25, 2006}}

To

*{{source|url=http://somewhere.at.example.com

|title=This is not the news you are looking for

|author=

|pub=Example.com

|date=August 25, 2006}}

And, as a (hopefully) minor feature request, can the protection of articles be performed from AWB. This is probably only of use to Wikinews where all articles 10 days old are protected. --Brianmc 08:19, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

AWB now works with wikinews. I think the best way to do that would be using the advanced find and replace to only do replacments inside templates, though i haven't really done anything like it before so i'm not sure what would be the best way. Protection of articles would currently be quite technically difficult. Martin 08:37, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the information, I really need to read up on regex or find a friendly expert. :-) --Brianmc 10:56, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Tagging talk pages of red-link articles

Kingbotk has had a few false positives, where I've tagged talk pages for articles deleted since I built my list. Looking at the message displayed above the edit box for new talk pages, I think AWB could very easily trap and avoid this.

This is a currently redlink talk page and redlink article HTML:

please verify that a page called <i><a href="/search/?title=There%27s_nothing_to_see_here%2C_move_along&action=edit" class="new" title="There's nothing to see here, move along">There's nothing to see here, move along</a></i> exists.

This at the time of writing is a blue link article but red link talk page HTML:

"please verify that a page called <i><a href="/About_a_Book_Club_%28Hope_%26_Faith_episode%29" title="About a Book Club (Hope & Faith episode)">About a Book Club (Hope & Faith episode)</a></i> exists"

It's a silly message really, because Mediawiki has had to look up whether the article exists or not!!! Anyway, it seems that class="new" is responsible for making the link red.

Presuming that the message comes from the Mediawiki namespace somewhere and not from the PHP code directly, we can also leave a message on the Mediawiki talk page asking to be alerted of changes or of course just watchlist it :) --kingboyk 12:46, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Stupid me... much easier way is to just check if the "article" tab is red or not. --kingboyk 10:11, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

OS X?

I'm not sure if this has been asked before, but is there a version of Mac OS X? Geoking66 02:40, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

For there to be such a version the OS would need to support the .NET framework version 2 and have Internet Explorer. In other words, I doubt it. --kingboyk 09:59, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Most (Mboverload) typos in one article?

Possibly Japanese settlers in New Guinea during 1919-1940 times "comunity → community (12), regulary → regularly, autorities → authorities (2), autority → authority, belived → believed (2), colaborators → collaborators (3), condemmed → cond" then the edit summary fins out of space. Approx 32 replacements. Rich Farmbrough 08:51 27 August 2006 (GMT).

Wow, that's mighty impressive, shame the article is probably going to get deleted! Martin 10:15, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

New version ignoring option?

The new version seems to be enabling "add replacements to edit summary" even though I have this option disabled in the settings. It's just doing it anyway. Am I missing something or is this a bug? --W.marsh 13:19, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

It is a new bug, I improved the edit summary system and missed something, the older version is ok. thanks Martin 13:25, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

changing link bug

here it only added a summary with no change, link should be changed like in here pl:gregul 06:30, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

It is most likely a bug in what ever find and replace strings were used, AWB has an option to ignore articles when no replacement was made anyway. Martin 10:42, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Nested square brackets bug

I quote Timeshifter who I think explains the symptom well

The bot is causing some images to not show up. The image is Table 1 in the section called "Frequency of Incarceration." SmackBot deletes one of the brackets at the beginning of the external link in the caption. It also deletes the 3rd bracket at the end of the caption and link. It obviously is not recognizing the stacked brackets due to the combination of link and image coding ending at the same place. This is a serious problem because it is common to put a source link at the end of a sentence. Here is the correct image coding:

A U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report. The totals do not include people held in juvenile facilities. According to a 2006 OJJDP (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention) report there were 97,000 held in juvenile facilities as of October 22, 2003. ]]

SmackBot ends up with this coding below, and it causes the image to not show up:

A U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report. The totals do not include people held in juvenile facilities. According to a 2006 OJJDP (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention) report there were 97,000 held in juvenile facilities as of October 22, 2003. ]

Clearly a somewhat rare occurrence to have two external links in an image link, but there it is. Rgds, Rich Farmbrough 09:22 28 August 2006 (GMT).

Ok, thanks I'll look into it. Martin 09:38, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Fixed by Martin, I believe, see #small bug below. Rich Farmbrough 20:39 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Tip - Disappearing space on C:

This might be worthy of a mention on the project page.

Since I started using AWB in anger, free space on C: has become an issue. I cleared 2GB of space and soon that was gone too. I searched for large files, cleared my internet cache regularly, but still the drive would be full. Well, exploring in Cygwin it would seem that IE creates a sh*tload of files in the Temporary Internet Files folder which don't get cleared even if you tell IE to clear it's cache. What's more, they're hidden in Explorer even if you have it configured to show hidden files. Why they would do this I don't know - it's slightly sinister if you ask me - but, anyway, if you find that C: is gobbling up the gigs with no apparent cause this might be it.

It's covered in more detail here. The best tip seems to be:

• Click Start, click Run, type the following command and click OK:

Shell:Cache\Content.IE5

--kingboyk 09:53, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I haven't noticed a problem, but if it does does exist for some people it will only become noticed if they were doing 10s of 1000s of edits. The cache would probably clear itself after a period of time anyway, unless there is a massive flaw in how internet explorer works. Martin 10:49, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd call 386,156 files in just one of the subfolders - having clicked "clear cache" multiple times - a massive flaw! I'm only part of the way through clearing this crud and I've clawed back gigabytes. This is insane! Anyrode, I hope the tip is useful to somebody, it's sure helped relieve my disk space issues. --kingboyk 10:55, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

But it should be noted that your bot has made enourmous number of edits in a relatively short period of time, for the average user doing a few 1000 edits this will never be an issue. Martin 11:09, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

It's not that I'm blaming you Martin (unless you work on the MSIE team :)) but I think that a "clear cache" button which leaves several gigs of cached files in place, to the extent that a user's C drive is full and programs start crashing, is quite manifestly broken. Perhaps we'll have to agree to disagree on this point :) --kingboyk 19:38, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

For me clearing the cache of IE (in IE) clears "Shell:Cache\Content.IE5" (accessed by the procedure you've shown above). On a second note, AWB just uses the BrowserControl which is shared with IE. So we are rather bound to that with all the drawbacks/bugs. If you can provide a better control for browsing (or refer to one) or a tweak to the AWB code, you are of course very welcome :-). --Ligulem 08:48, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I know that - why does everyone seem to think I'm complaining?! Can't a guy indulge in a bit of gentle Microsoft bashing? :) --kingboyk 09:11, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

For your curiousity: The mozilla control which iirc can be downloaded here, while nice, does not provide the critical functionality that AWB needs. Martin 08:54, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Ooh. Interesting, thanks. --kingboyk 09:11, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. Rich Farmbrough 10:20 31 August 2006 (GMT).

small bug

There's a small bug if a URL is embedded in a image description link where AWB messes up the brackets: for example , you have ]], and awb removes one of the right square brackets and adds a left square bracket before the url. Tim! 10:45, 28 August 2006 (UTC) This is the same as two sections up, sorry :) Tim! 10:47, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Fixed in newest release. Martin 08:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Weird bug with talk pages

I have a weird bug with AWB when prepending information to talk pages. When I want to prepend a msg to a list of talk pages, the diff blanks the whole page with just a "Modified" word. Here is the screenshot: (clicky).

Is it me or is there something weird?

Thanks, Grafikm 11:34, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm trying to release a new version at the moment that cleans up a few issues, but sourceforge is giving me an "internal server error", I'm sure it will work soon. Martin 11:45, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Done it now, hopefully that will be the last release for a while. Martin 11:48, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Woot, thanks!!! :) -- Grafikm 12:06, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Auto-update?

How about a one button "upload new version" to make re-installing a snap when an existing version is superseded? bd2412 T 15:26, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Not really possible while it is hosted at sourceforge, hopefully the frequency of releases will slow down now anyway. Martin 08:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Prepending to talk pages reloaded

While testing my bot that currently delivers newsletters, I encountered a weird thing. While prepending to an un-existing page, well, nothing gets prepended. The diff is loaded but is not saved. And of course, the option "Ignore non-existing pages" is unchecked, as can be seen. And it works for a blank article talk page too. Obviously, it is only true for auto-mode.

Is it a bug or a feature?

Thanks, Grafikm 16:57, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Hhhhmm, I tihnk it's fixed now, hopefully this really will be the last release for a while. Martin 08:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

(Hopefully very easy) feature request

Hi Martin: can you create a way to add the contents of first-level subcategories to the article list? For example: when you make a list from a category, you get all the pages in the category plus the subcategories as part of the list. Do you think it would be possible to be able to double-click on the category in the list of articles to add the contents of that category to the list? Or something of the like...? It would be much easier than copy/paste, especially if you wanted the pages in all the subcategories of something with a huge amount of subcategories, such as Category:Saints by country. —Mets501 (talk) 21:24, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

If you highlight the categories in the list and then open the context menu "Add selected to list..." and then "from category", this will get all the articles from those categories. Martin 21:34, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

/me slaps himself in the head. Thanks :-) —Mets501 (talk) 21:49, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Unicode bug

When I was operating WinBot in 3.0.2.3 I was told that the unicodify in this edit was a bad one. So I am wondering if there is a bug in here? Many thanks. --WinHunter 03:44, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

IOW, the bug discussed at Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive_8#AWB_bots_are_breaking_non-BMP_articles appears to be back. EdC 07:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, fixed in the newest verison. Martin 08:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Linux?

Can I run it on Linux, using Mono and Wine. --Mihael Simonič 07:13, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Afraid not. Martin 08:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

What about this: I have .NET farmework and IE6 instalated with Wine, mscoree.dll is also included in Mono. --Mihael Simonič 13:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

You like to make things complicated, I see :)) -- Grafikm 13:59, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Lol. It's not reasonable to expect Martin to support, erm, "esoteric" configurations like that. If you can get it to work, great - please report back - but the official line I suspect will remain the same :) --kingboyk 15:41, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Plugins

Feature requests

• (Being looked into) Access to XML settings. (If this isn't available I might try to go in the opposite direction, having the plugin control AWB's settings)
• HasChanged boolean byval argument to ProcessArticle(), so that the plugin doesn't tell AWB to skip when AWB has made a change; or (easier) ignore the plugin's Skip value if AWB made a change
• If the plugin has set a valid edit summary, have AWB not complain about empty edit summary box (but if in point above the Skip value is ignored and plugin returns an empty summary, AWB must use it's own summary)

--kingboyk 15:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Reading and writing AML settings is a possibility, actually changing the AWB settings in a definite no. Having the "HasChanged" variable would be tricky, I know things like that look easy but they are not, largely because it is fundamentally against how AWB works, i.e. if you are doing job x, then the article either needs job x doing (so save it) or it doesn't (so ignore it), also, anything that is done with find+replace wuithin AWB can be done easily in the plugin anyway. Martin 16:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

True, true. Thanks. My plugin is working now anyway and hopefully will go into service later today - I have a backlog to catch up on! :) --kingboyk 17:15, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to be a pain in the arse now and suggest that - given your (well argued) line about moving all work to the plugin and not using AWB's skip/find/replace features at all, the code which calls the plugin ought to be moved back to where it was :) i.e. AWB gets article text, sends it to plugin for processing, and if plugin says skip that's the job done. What do you think?

I took your advice by the way and moved my "skip this article" regex into the plugin. I hardly need worry about AWB settings now, it's all blank settings except for "make from file" and an edit summary of "Bot". --kingboyk 12:51, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, you're the only person making a plugin, so i don't see the harm in moving it back. Also, I have added 3 methods to the interface for reading/writing XML and reseting the settings. It is a bit limited because of the complexity in dealing with plugins, I'll update my example when I have released the newest version. Martin 12:57, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Got the newest version, thanks. WriteXML() fires when saving settings (as expected), but ReadXML() doesn't seem to fire when loading settings. Bug? Also, under what circumstances is Reset() called? --kingboyk 18:17, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

The read only fires when the XML node actually has some attributes. reset it called when the user clicks "reset" in the file menu. Martin 18:28, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Cool. I shall now have a play with that, thanks Martin. --kingboyk 18:34, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Hopefully the last feature I ask for until you've had a rest :) In Initialise() could the plugin somehow get access to the options/start tabs? I'd like to add a tab which shows the status of my plugin and statistics - what it's doing, how many articles it's done/skipped/major edit/minor edit, etc etc. --kingboyk 13:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Plugins in testing

I have a plugin ready (User:Kingbotk/Living persons biography plugin) and am testing it, should anybody be interested :) --kingboyk 15:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Small categorisation bug

When recategorising articles, could you please fix it so that links that start [[:Category are ignored, or at least create an option for this in settings? I'm not sure this is a very good explanation of what I mean, but hopefully it's understandable. Thanks, — FireFox  _{16:01, 29 August 2006}

Why would you not want to change links like that? they will also need to be changed surely? Martin 16:42, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Well not if they're in discussion, changing someone else's comments. — FireFox  _{16:44, 29 August 2006}

I don't see a problem with changing a link in someone's comments if leaving it would result in the link being incorrect. This doesn't apply to automated bots of course, as a human needs to check the context. --kingboyk 10:19, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Well I am mainly talking about an automated bot anyway, FFBot, so an option here would be helpful. — FireFox  _{13:00, 30 August 2006}

Not if I say "blah blah look at category:trees it should be a sub cat of category:plants blah blah.." and someone recats trees to graphs. Rich Farmbrough 21:40 30 August 2006 (GMT).

Hence the "a human needs to check the context". A bot would get that edit wrong, a human shouldn't. --kingboyk 10:00, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Another small categorisation issue

When categories have been foolishly placed in the middle of text it seems that their removal leads to extra carriage returns being inserted. If followed by spaces this can change formatting, e.g. this edit. Regards, Rich Farmbrough 10:01 30 August 2006 (GMT).

new feature

1) can this be implemented: change from i.e. to y ? to simplify the links

2) why can't general fixes/unicodify (like removing underscores) be done (by AWB) before "find and replace" ? this causes a need of consideration all unicode/special characters into the regexes used into "find and replace" (special wikipedia's characters can't be matched by "find" until you know them exactly, but it's hard to cosider them everywhere!) gregul

1) Already a feature under "Apply general fixes" Harryboyles 12:53, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

read again, it's done after "find and replace" so in fact it wont work when matched string contains those characeters, general fixes will change to and not moregregul

It has to be done after the find+replace or it can cause some complications. Links aren't simplified any more than they currently are because this can often lead to some strange looking links. Martin 13:14, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, in this case it is fairly easy to allow an option to apply before or after the general fixes. Martin 13:27, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

3) what about moving pages, can this be done ? (if it isn't already included) gregul

4) can erasing redundant spaces be included into general fixes ? for example into expressions like this "blblb ", " blabll", '' ddd '', ''' eee ''' etc., also multiple spaces between the words would be erased as they aren't visible if more than 1 gregul

Buglet

I thought my plugin had a bug, because it was skipping red-link talk pages. However, in debugging mode I found nothing wrong... then noticed that when I click "Auto save" AWB then automatically checks "Skip articles when no change made", which for some reason is causing those pages to skip.

I've no idea why AWB would auto-check "Skip articles when no change made" but if there's no vital reason for doing so could you turn that off pse Martin? :) --kingboyk 13:43, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately it's not a bug, it's a defensive feature, otherwise some people have a nasty habit of setting a bot loose without it on and making a series of trivial edits. Martin 13:48, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

lol, OK. Do any of the objects I get passed in Initialise() give me access to that checkbox? --kingboyk 13:53, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Answer to self, they ought to now I have access to the tabcontrol. --kingboyk 20:37, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Skipping bug?

I just downloaded the new version and it seems to be skipping nearly everything, without regard to any setting as far as I can tell... Anyone know what I could be doing wrong, or if this could be a bug? --Galaxiaad 01:36, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Probably you have "skip articles when no change made" selected? --kingboyk 10:09, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Nope... argh! --Galaxiaad 14:31, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Try the latest vesion. thanks Martin 14:56, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Working. Thank you! --Galaxiaad 16:33, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Categories - for discussion

Copied from my talk page, Rich Farmbrough 09:46 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Could your bot also stop being 'helpful' with categories? I am getting sick of reverting that three or four times a day. To get categories sorted alphabetically you often need to place them above templates, but your bot keeps moving them back to the bottom (which ends up giving me a mish-mashed order). Elric of Grans 23:04, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Well it's done for now. I understand what your saying about categories, it raises two interesting points a. how should categories be ordered, and b. what to do about transcluded categories. The first has been thrashed out, and the conclusion reaced that alpahbetical order is not necessarily best (AWB used to order categories). The second is more probelmatical, I believe, for example that in general maintainance categories (and hence templates) should go after normal categories - and I thnk this is widely supported in principle. On the other hand it is common practice to put cleanup and wikify right at the top of articles. One off the things that AWB does in its general options is to put interwiki at the end, and non-trancluded categories immediately before, so I will copy part of your comment and this reply onto the AWB talk page for discussion. Rich Farmbrough 09:43 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Alphabetical sorting isn't best in my opinion, sorting by relevance/priority is better. Yes, that does raise the point that transcluded maintenace categories will be first if the template is at the top of the page but c'est la vie... convention is to put those templates at the top of the page and that's not AWB's fault. It's quite simply not an AWB issue. --kingboyk 10:03, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

It's not solely and AWB issue <grin>. I definatley don't think it's an AWP problem, nor do I want to go 'round the mulberry bush we've been round before - just invite new ideas. I liked your Freudean slip "at the top of the fault." <second grin> Rich Farmbrough 10:11 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Bolding first occurance of title in Image: name

Here I added formatting to an image filename. Whoops! Rich Farmbrough 10:06 31 August 2006 (GMT).

One more oddity

See SmackBot's edit to Linear B. It blanked most of the article. Obiously unusual characters in the page, but apart from that no idea why. Rich Farmbrough 12:16 31 August 2006 (GMT).

You've certainly been very unluckly with bugs today Rich! I'll have this sorted (well, I'll work around the problems in the .NET HTML decoder anyway). Martin 16:27, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Shotgun effect, there's a lot of them thar ISBNs. Thanks for your hard work. Can you let me know if there's something I can scan for to spot where else this might have happened? Rich Farmbrough 20:43 31 August 2006 (GMT).

Edit summary link

Just a minor niggle, but can AWB insert w:WP:AWB when not working on wikipedia? I get redlinks in the edit summary using it on Wikinews. --Brianmc 16:03, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Could you create a soft redirect to this page instead, as some projects have their own AWB page, and others just soft redirect to here. thanks. Martin 16:25, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, Wikinews now has WP:AWB referring people to the project page. --Brianmc 10:48, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Autonomous mode on other projects

Hi, I juse AWB on nl.wikipedia. It used to be possible to use my AWB on autonomous mode (bot-mode) on my bot-account there, but in the newer versions of the software it's not possible anymore, which is a problem for me. I see that someone else has the same problem (see here). Can anyone help and fix this, or is it not possible? NielsFTalk to me.. 19:28, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

The automode only becomes available when it has logged in (there is a log in button on the file menu, or it does it automatically when you start editing). Also make sure you have the newest version. Martin 19:38, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Ah thanks, upgrading to the latest version did the trick! Thanks for your quick response. NielsFTalk to me.. 20:06, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Plugin stuff

Besides getting notification of start/stop/exit, could the plugin get access to txtEdit please Martin? The ContextMenuStrip isn't very useful if I can't put text into the box (or, is there a routine to call to do that?) --kingboyk 20:39, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Timer

I'm using 3.0.2.8 and I can't seem to get the timer to appear. I have tried turning it off and on again with no success. --After Midnight 22:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

• Sorry, my bad. I didn't see that it moved.... BTW, can someone remind me of the limit for "too fast". I can't remember where that is documented. --After Midnight 22:24, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Hiding tabs from plugin

Any idea why the following code doesn't work Martin?

        Friend Shared Sub HideTabs()
            For Each tabp As TabPage In SettingsTabs
                tabp.Hide()
            Next
        End Sub

When this code does work:

        Friend Shared Sub HideTabs()
            For Each tabp As TabPage In SettingsTabs
                tabp.Text = "I love Bluemoose!"
            Next
        End Sub

--kingboyk 12:26, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

You can't use .Hide(), you have to remove the tabpage from the tabcontrol, then add it back if you want to show it, careful to add back in same order though. Martin 12:40, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Would that break AWB in any way? Do you ever reference the controls through the tabcontrol.tabpages() collection or only by name? --kingboyk 12:46, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

It should be fine. Only one way to be sure though. Martin 12:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Hehe, yep! --kingboyk 12:54, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Possible bug in Categorisation

I am trying to remove Category:Giant Panda (Hip Hop) and AWB will not recognize the string. Is it possible that it has something to do with the parenthesis? --After Midnight 21:16, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I see whats wrong, fix will be in next release. thanks Martin 10:27, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Ooh, small world - that's a CFD nomination of mine :) --kingboyk 10:46, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

New release 3.0.2.9 did the job. Thanks for the fix. --After Midnight 21:23, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Notification of new messages

When working on Wikinews and I get a new message on my talk page, AWB is trying to load up a Misplaced Pages page instead of a diff of my talk page on Wikinews. --Brianmc 07:27, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh yeah, what a stupid error, fix in next release. thanks Martin 10:27, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Found when someone went "where the $#@% did you get AWB for Wikinews?" :-) --Brianmc 15:30, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Image bug

Hi Martin, I encountered a little image commenting out bug, see this diff. A random line break was previously added, so the formatting was

[[Image:Delmarquis1.jpg|thumb|250px|right|
Del Marquis in concert with ].]]'''Del Marquis''' (born '''Derek Gruen''' ] ], ]) is ...

Just letting you know. —Mets501 (talk) 16:55, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Problems

Hi, I have some small problems (my browser is Firefox):

• I try to work with the catalan version and I receive a message. It appears a window telling me I received a new message. Cool, but now I already read it and I can't close it. I read it with both Firefox and IE and the message is still there. I'll have to kill AWB process. Done.
• Now, I still have the same problem as some months before. My text editor is wordpad or notebook (I don't have word). I didn't answer then because I was going to change my PC and I decided waiting what's up with the new one, but still can not load the settings (it finds problems even after a <!-- !!!). The supposed working file you corrected, doesen't work. Therefore I was thinking on:
• Since the important part of the file are catalan typos, I wanted to put them in a page (it could be here) as your Typos page, but I can not load them in AWB as you do in the english version. So, could you please add an option in wich either you can choose from wich page you want to dowload the typos list, or change the page deppending on the language...

Thank you!--Xtv - (my talk) - (que dius que què?) 16:01, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

• Probably a caching issue in IE, don't think there is much that can be done.

• The settings file is not designed to be edited manually, though it can be done, I don't recommend it.

• I'll make it so it changes the typos page depending on the language. The ca: page will be http://ca.wikipedia.org/Viquip%C3%A8dia:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos (I have copied your settings into it), note that it will detect any problems with the regex syntax and alert you to it, and is also sensitive to using the correct syntax <Typo word="" find="" replace="" /> Martin 19:03, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Great! Thank you very much!--Xtv - (my talk) - (que dius que què?) 19:10, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Redirects

I want to replace #REDIRECT ] (of course with the \ tags for regular expressions) with, e.g. car (just an example). If I enter this in "Find and Replace - Normal", that doesn't work. The problem is, AWB doesn't take care of this page and follows the redirect. On the redirected page ABW of course doesn't replace anything. Does anyone know how to make this work? Many thanks in advance, Pill- 18:04, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Turn off the "Bypass redirects" option in the "General" menu. Martin 18:26, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Feature request

Could we have an option under the "Make from" setting which fetches articles from a category and all it's subcategories? So for example, if you entered a category such as Category:Misplaced Pages maintenance, it would fetch all articles from that category, and then fetch all articles from the sub-categories too, etc etc until there were no more sub-categories. This would be very helpful for certain bot tasks. Thanks, — FireFox  _{10:21, 04 September 2006}

I have already coded this, but not implemented as it is a little scary, apart from cyclical categorisation (which can be dealt with), it could be possible to have many hundreds of categories. I guess I would have to implement a limit on the number of results. Martin 11:13, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah, ok :) — FireFox  _{11:17, 04 September 2006}

You could write a plugin FF ;) --kingboyk 21:01, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

International issue

Even on fully localized projects, English names of special namespaces still could be used. For example, on de: you can use ] instead of ]. But AWB does not support such ambiguousness and as result, some pages cannot be recategorized and some images cannot be removed. Of course, you still can use regexps, but it's kinda pain in the ass... MaxSem 14:51, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Auto tag - Uncategorised

I was doing some removing of categories from articles, per WP:CFD and in some cases, the only category was removed, but in one case the {{Uncategorised}} tag was added and the other was not (I added it manually, so the diff shows it in there). They both had iw links, but the 2nd also had a stub tag. Does the stub tag keep the Uncategorised tag from getting applied, and if so, is that a possible upgrade opportunity? --After Midnight 01:37, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, a stub tag will stop the uncategorised tag being applied, as AWB is just being ultra cautious (as often tags give an article a category). But I will tweak this at some point to ignore stub tags. Martin 08:35, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Rats?

Any ideas:

From the Article ATR

• ⌊⌊⌊⌊rats0rats⌋⌋⌋⌋Template:Ratsinfoboxrats ratsAircraftratsTemplate:Ratsalternateusesrats

ratsTherats ratsItalianrats-ratsFrenchrats ratsbasedrats ratsaircraftrats ratsmanufacturerrats ratsAereirats ratsdarats ratsTrasportorats ratsRegionalerats ratsorrats ratsAvionsrats ratsderats ratsTransportrats ratsRégionalrats (ratsATRrats) ratswasrats ratsformedrats ratsinrats rats1981rats, ratsfromrats ratstherats ratsconsortiumrats ratsformedrats ratsbyrats ratsAérospatialerats ratsofrats ratsFrancerats (ratsnowrats ratsEADSrats) ratsandrats ratsAeritaliarats (ratsnowrats ratsAleniarats ratsAeronauticarats), ratsofrats ratsItalyrats.

Does this on any article.... Restarted AWB

Same all the way through.....

Reedy Boy 17:31, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

What settings are you using? Martin 17:51, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I would guess replace \b with rats. ATR is an anagram of RAT, so I smell a rat. Rich Farmbrough, 19:26 6 September 2006 (GMT).

Perhapsly someone vandalised the RETF page? Rich Farmbrough, 19:28 6 September 2006 (GMT).

Good thinking, there was a regex mistake on the typo page. thanks Martin 19:40, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Request to add Chinese Project Support

Hello, I want to use AWB in Chinese Misplaced Pages, so I request to add Chinese (zh) project support. The namespace in Chinese project is in English (due to two different characters in the same project) , so I think Chinese project might be easier to be supported. You can contact me if needed. :) --Littlebtc 17:45, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, will do. Martin 19:40, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Add to selected list from category

Hey, How come sometimes when you select multiple categories, right click, the 'Add to selected list from category' is greyed out and requires multiple re-highlights and or re-right clicking.

Anyone else noticed this? Would you be able to look into it please martin?

Cheers

Reedy Boy 19:00, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I've noticed it on occasion, yes. IIRC it usually happens when some of the selected category names contain numbers?? --kingboyk 09:05, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Acronym and initialism Random Edit

AWB wants to change

• • YRUU: () Young Religious Unitarian Universalists

into

• • YRUU: () Young Riousacrileg$2 Unitarian Universalists

Mistake on the typo list?

Reedy Boy 19:05, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it was a typo list error, I've fixed it now. Martin 19:26, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

minor edits

Is there an option to mark the edits done through AWB such as spelling mistakes etc. as minor? I am unable to find it. Thanks -- Lost 06:24, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

In the "general" menu, there is an option. I think I will move it as some point to somewhere more logical. thanks Martin 08:20, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. Found it -- Lost 09:02, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Plugin example code

Martin, I think the example code needs a slight change regarding the ReadXML event. It needs to test the return value of MoveToAttribute() and if False, use the plugin's default value. In VB code like this is giving strange results:

        Friend Function XMLReadBoolean(ByVal reader As System.Xml.XmlTextReader, ByVal param As String) As Boolean
            reader.MoveToAttribute(param)
            Return Boolean.Parse(reader.Value)
        End Function
        Friend Function XMLReadString(ByVal reader As System.Xml.XmlTextReader, ByVal param As String) As String
            reader.MoveToAttribute(param)
            Return reader.Value
        End Function

So I'll be changing my functions to take an ExistingValue argument, and return that if MoveToAttribute() returns false. HTH HAND :) --kingboyk 10:29, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

In VB this code does the trick:

    Friend Module XMLUtils
        Friend Function XMLReadBoolean(ByVal reader As System.Xml.XmlTextReader, ByVal param As String, _
        ByVal ExistingValue As Boolean) As Boolean
            If reader.MoveToAttribute(param) Then Return Boolean.Parse(reader.Value) Else Return ExistingValue
        End Function
        Friend Function XMLReadString(ByVal reader As System.Xml.XmlTextReader, ByVal param As String, _
        ByVal ExistingValue As String) As String
            If reader.MoveToAttribute(param) Then Return reader.Value Else Return ExistingValue
        End Function
    End Module

--kingboyk 10:41, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

AWB process won't die

I've noticed that if I exit AWB (by closing the form) while it's trying to verify that I'm logged in, the process keeps on running for several minutes (until I kill it). Note that this is with no plugins installed, just plain AWB. --kingboyk 14:55, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Alos, ff you don't notice this, you will be unable to extract the upgraded version.... Rich Farmbrough, 12:33 10 September 2006 (GMT).

hndis and surname

I recently separated the surname template so it no longer redirects to hndis. One of the "general fixes" for AWB appears to replace {{surname}} with {{hndis}}. How can that fix be disabled for AWB in general? -- JHunterJ 17:23, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I've changed it in the next version, I'll release it now. Martin 18:36, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Watchlist problem

Even when I have "Add all to watchlist" unchecked in the menu, all of the articles that I edit are still getting added to my watchlist. Is there a toggle somewhere that I've missed? --Elonka 21:06, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure you have the option unchecked in your preferences too? — FireFox  _{21:12, 09 September 2006}

I thought that the AWB options were independent of individual Misplaced Pages preferences? --Elonka 22:48, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes they are, but once AWB has submitted a page for saving to Misplaced Pages your Misplaced Pages preferences take over. If they say "add all pages to the watchlist" that's what Mediawiki will do. AWB and Mediawiki are independent products and they don't share their settings in any way. --kingboyk 12:37, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I may be mis-remembering, but I thought that the way it used to work was that they were entirely independent. In other words, I could have AWB working in the background, and any changes it made could be flagged to not show up on my watchlist. But at the same time, I could be normal editing in another window, and those changes automatically would show up in my watchlist. Otherwise I have to keep remembering to check or uncheck the watch box depending on which window that I'm in. In other words, what I would like (and the way that I thought it used to work) was that I could keep my normal Misplaced Pages preferences set as "add to watchlist", but if I keep the menu option unselected on AWB, that it's able to keep the watch box unchecked. AWB seems to be able to toggle the watch and "minor" boxes on... Isn't there a way that it can also turn them off? --Elonka 18:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

My experience has been similar to what Elonka seems to expect. In the past, when I have had the AWB preference set to "not add to watch list", it didn't add them, even though my standard setting outside of AWB was to add them. --After Midnight 18:58, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

It can't be done, because if AWB unchecks the "add to watchlist" box, it unwatches stuff that was already in your watchlist, there is no way to discriminate between what is already in your watchlist and what isn't. Martin 19:15, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah, good point, I see the problem. Hmmm. Well, to be honest, I'd be willing to take that risk. Could the option of "do not add edited pages to watchlist" be added to AWB, perhaps with a clear disclaimer, like, "Warning! Changing this will affect all articles that you edit with AWB, and could have the unintended consequence of inadvertently unwatching an article that was already on your watchlist. Please use with care." --Elonka 20:55, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Bolding article name in Image bug

This seems to be a problem in the latest version (3.0.3.0) with this article Starstreak missile, at least. Rich Farmbrough, 12:34 10 September 2006 (GMT).

Not enabled to use this?

I just tried running AWB for the first time. After having set up my procedure, when I press "Start the process", I keep getting the error message "You are not enabled to use this." It then opens a window to Misplaced Pages:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage, on which I am clearly listed as a registered/enabled user. Did I set up my procedure wrong? --Ginkgo100 22:21, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Problem with Special:Log/Newusers

I'm trying to make a list from Special:Log/Newusers, but I'm not getting any users whose talk pages don't yet exist, even if I uncheck "Ignore existing pages" in the "Skip articles" section. I deduce that this is because the code added or tweaked per the request at Misplaced Pages talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive 4#suggested functionality addition assumes that one would only want users with live talk pages. But I want to find users without talk pages, and I suspect that the unchecked "Ignore" option never comes into play because the generated list must first include the desired pages. If so, could this be fixed so that all users in the desired portion of the log are represented? If this is done, the default behavior of skipping non-existing pages should automatically provide the current functionality, and folks in my situation will be accomodated as well. Thanks. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:29, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Any thoughts on this problem yet, folks? Am I being dense, perhaps? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:33, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Creating page list by filtering on content

I would like to use AWB's excellent mechanisms for fetching pages and examining their content to generate a list of pages with challenging editing problems. The idea is that AWB can find problem pages matching a specific pattern, but the fix to each page may take some research, so it would be nice to simply generate a list for offline work. However, I haven't come up with a decent way to do this. The "Make list" filter only works on page names, as I understand it. The skip articles can identify target articles (or filter out non-targets), but only to perform an operation on them — they toss the page off the page list whether or not they perform the operation. (Tagging the articles for attention is an option, but I'd prefer to create an offline list rather than edit each article twice, once to tag and once to fix.) Nor can I see how to use the "Find and Replace" options, even the "Advanced" rules, to manipulate either the page list or a separate file (like a log). Do the experienced AWB users here have any advice for this AWB newbie? Thanks. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:51, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

If you can program in C# or VB.NET your best bet would be to make a plugin. It would be very simple to implement. You'd build your list, AWB would send the text of each article to the plugin, the plugin would analyse the content and write it out to a log and just tell AWB to skip the page (so AWB wouldn't actually do any edits). You wouldn't need a fancy user interface or anything so you could do that with a few lines of code and some regular expressions. --kingboyk 10:10, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like fun. You don't happen to know of any cheap (and legal!) C# or VB.NET programming tools, do you? I can't even afford to upgrade my Windows OS with Microsoft's monopoly-enabled fees. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:12, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Microsoft Visual Studio Express. The bees knees. AWB is developed in the C# version. My plugin uses VB.NET (which, of course, all the best programmers use - isn't that right Martin? ;)) --kingboyk 21:17, 12 September 2006 (UTC) PS There are Java and C++ versions too, but I can't vouch for either of them as I haven't used them. --kingboyk 21:19, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Cool! I've been wanting to try out C# after having read an article about it a few years back that made it look better designed for OOP than than C++'s grafting of OO onto C. (Ugh, what geeky alphabet soup.) Thanks for the info. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:38, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm as happy to bash MS as the next guy (my first PC had Linux on it over 10 years ago), but dotnet is OOP heaven. When I first read a massive tome on it every page was "wow, it does that?" and "that's clever". It's first rate. Definitely as a C++ programmer you want to use C#. I'm using VB.NET as I have a lot of experience with VBA in Access, and VB6. They all compile to the same Intermediate Language so, with a very small number of exceptions, they all do pretty much the same thing. Good luck and let us know how you get on! --kingboyk 09:31, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh noez! A programming language thread ;) ! C++ does have it's merits. But not for those using old fashioned C programming paradigms (read a decent book that explains things like RAII). I admit, average joe programmer is quick at achieving progress in C#, as such it isn't a bad language. It's also cool for rapid prototyping. --A C++ freak ;-) 09:51, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Have you tried C++.NET? Is it any good? Or are they incompatible bedfellows?

Horses for courses. I'm into rapid application development. I have no desire to write device drivers, no ability with art so no interest in creating fancy graphics etc etc. I also think there's a certain amount of snobbery about low vs high level languages. Indeed take C# vs VB.NET - VB can do almost everything that C# can do, but it's a higher level language. Surely that makes it better? (unless coming from a C background). --kingboyk 10:16, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

bypass wikilinks while scanning database

1) could there by an option "ignore wikilinks" (into wiki database scanner) ?

2) Feature, automated searching the list of articles (for a MISTAKE) – i.e. articles are created from database but many of them are already fixed (database gets out-of-date soon). To eliminate those "fixed" articles I load a new settings with only one regex/string matching MISTAKE, then set "skip when no change/replacement made" and push "start the process" – if it find "no change/replacement" those "no needed" (I don't want to apply general/other fixes for them etc. if no MISTAKE is available anymore) articles are removed from the list, but the process stops when MISTAKE is founded. The thing is to check all articles automatically in this case (similar to "auto save"), like auto ignore (remove from list) if there's no MISTAKE, leave the article on the list if MISTAKE is founded, and check consecutive articles, could this be implemented in the future version? gregul

I'm not sure what you mean by ignore wikilinks? As for the second idea, if I understand correctly, this has been suggested before, but I refused on the grounds that it would be a large drain on servers to have people crawling through thousands of pages. Martin 13:55, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

2) I will be doing this by switching articles by hand anyway, this's for not doing redundant edits which will be included into database

1) Not to search into ] ] etc. (it's called "ignore interwiki links" as in "find and replace") --gregul

now if i search through database – sometimes there's nothing to change because im ignoring interwiki into "find and replace" gregul

404 on startup with nonstandard Default.xml

Once again, this is using AWB with en.wikinews, I've overwritten the default config .xml file with that detail, plus setting the EnableRegexTypoFix option. Now, whenever I start up AWB I get a 404 error, my guess it is perhaps looking for a page of regexes on Wikinews. If this is the case, can you let me know what I'd need to create on wikinews, and where I'd need to copy from? I'd love to be able to include fixes to change quotes from MS Office into plain quotes - they break our PDF/print edition.

Steps to reproduce are, File->User and project preferences, set project to Wikinews, select make from Category, enter a recent date (eg September 1, 2006), click on the More options tag and select Enable RegexTypo Fix, uncheck Skip article, click Make list, select File->Save settings, overwrite Default.xml, quit AWB, restart and observe the error, should be: The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found. --Brianmc 17:35, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The page is http://en.wikinews.org/Wikinews:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos now I have created the page it works ok. Martin 19:32, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for this, I've copied the typo list from wikipedia and added it to my watchlist so I spot updates. I really appreciate this tool and have made some significant changes on Wikinews with its help. --Brianmc 20:14, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Newest version crashes

The current version of AWB always crashes on the first or second edit. Does anyone else have this problem?--Kungfu Adam 21:46, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

No. It's quite usual, alas, for it crash after a thousand or more edits, but I've never had it crash after one or two. --kingboyk 22:33, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

No problem for me either, doesn't crash after 100+ edits. Lincher 03:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I had a bad download. I could reinstall...--Kungfu Adam 11:10, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

No such luck. I guess I can wait for the next release and see what happens.--Kungfu Adam 17:42, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Hmm.. I also have the same problem, I tried both 3.0.2.9 and 3.0.3.0 and they crashed on my first and second edit. Dunno why though. --WinHunter 01:25, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

XML settings bug?

Loading these settings (make list from category) I get an error at

if (reader.MoveToAttribute("index"))
   listMaker1.SelectedSource = (WikiFunctions.Lists.SourceType)int.Parse(reader.Value);

in UserSettings.cs.

Settings (tested with plugin deleted, it's not a plugin issue) -

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Settings program="AWB" schema="2">
  <Project>
    <projectlang proj="wikipedia" lang="en" />
  </Project>
  <Options>
    <selectsource index="Category" text="Mexican politician stubs" />
    <general general="True" tagger="True" unicodifyer="True" />
    <categorisation index="0" text="" />
    <skip does="False" doesnot="False" regex="False" casesensitive="False" doestext="" doesnottext="" moreindex="0" />
    <message enabled="False" text="" append="True" />
    <automode delay="15" quicksave="False" suppresstag="True" />
    <imager index="0" replace="" with="" />
  </Options>
  <regextypofix>
    <regextypofixproperties enabled="False" skipnofixed="False" />
  </regextypofix>
  <FindAndReplaceSettings>
    <findandreplacesettings enabled="False" ignorenofar="True" ignoretext="False" appendsummary="True" afterotherfixes="False" />
  </FindAndReplaceSettings>
  <FindAndReplace>
    <replacerules enabled="False">
      <rule name="Rule" type="0" enabled="True" />
    </replacerules>
  </FindAndReplace>
  <startoptions>
    <summary text="clean up" />
    <summaryindex index="clean up" />
    <find text="" regex="False" casesensitive="False" />
    <menu>
      <wordwrap enabled="True" />
      <toolbar enabled="False" />
      <bypass enabled="True" />
      <ingnorenonexistent enabled="True" />
      <noautochanges enabled="False" />
      <skipnochanges enabled="False" />
      <preview enabled="False" />
      <minor enabled="False" />
      <watch enabled="False" />
      <timer enabled="False" />
      <sortinterwiki enabled="True" />
      <addignoredtolog enabled="False" />
    </menu>
    <plugins />
  </startoptions>
  <pastemore>
    <pastemore1 text="" />
    <pastemore2 text="" />
    <pastemore3 text="" />
    <pastemore4 text="" />
    <pastemore5 text="" />
    <pastemore6 text="" />
    <pastemore7 text="" />
    <pastemore8 text="" />
    <pastemore9 text="" />
    <pastemore10 text="" />
  </pastemore>
  <preferences>
    <preferencevalues enhancediff="True" scrolldown="True" difffontsize="150" textboxfontsize="10" textboxfont="Courier New" lowthreadpriority="False" flashandbeep="True" />
  </preferences>
</Settings>

--kingboyk 14:31, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

On further inspection I think the settings are getting saved incorrectly, and "selectsource index" should be "0", not "category"? --kingboyk 14:38, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

This is only in SVN, I've changed it now. Martin 15:28, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Making lists

Martin, any chance we could get these?

• Make list from category - first 200 articles. Sometimes I want to sample the category and not get the entire thing (especially if contains 100,000 articles!). Links on page for a category page doesn't currently work; an alternative to my request might be to makle links on page for a category page work i.e. it returns the listing on the first page.
• What redirects here.

--kingboyk 14:55, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I suppose I can put an optional limit in the category, but the other things would need a change in User:Yurik/Query API. Martin 15:37, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Blimey. I didn't know about that. Never heard of it. (rolls eyes). --kingboyk 17:45, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Login problem

My Auto Wiki Browser refuses to believe that I'm logged in, even though I very obviously am. As you can see at the screenshot to the left, I had logged in successfully, yet it was still prompting me to log in again. What on earth is the matter? Ingoolemo  04:48, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Most likely that you are not using the monobook skin. Martin 10:12, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll look into making it work though. Martin 15:21, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

find and replace - ignore external/interwiki links, images, nowiki ...

when this option is set, regex: ('''.*?'''( \(.*?\))?) ?? ?(jest )?to(^:| )

won't catch: '''Bielefeld''' to

in pl:Bielefeld – everything it's ok when I unset that option, regex checker tells it's true anyway, so it might be bug gregul

It was a problem with an internal regex being too greedy, I've fixed it. Martin 15:21, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Lists of large categories

I'm finding that when I create a list of articles from multiple large categories, AWB omits a substantial number of the articles. Specifically, the subcats of Category:Orphaned articles, there are about 17,000 articles listed, and when I create a list from them, many articles are left out of the list (several hundred at least), even if I try it twice. So um... any ideas? If this is a known bug, is there any reliable tool to generate a list of all articles in a large category? --W.marsh 14:29, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah I'd glad you posted this. When I build a listing of Category:Living people I get 120,000 or so articles. If I build a list of Category:Biography articles of living people (talk pages tagged with living=yes) I only get 101,000. I do a bot run and discover that thousands of my remaining 20,000 or so articles already have living=yes. Mediawiki hasn't updated the category properly (unlikely, because the job queue runs often enough on WPBiography); the list comparer is broken (possible but I don't think it's this); or there's something wrong with the list grabbing from large cats. --kingboyk 14:37, 16 September 2006 (UTC) PS My plugin keeps a log so I can furnish a skipped list if need be.--kingboyk 14:37, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I've noticed this, as it only occurs on very large categories, I half suspect it is the queri API rather than AWB, but I'll find out for sure soon. Martin 15:21, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Adding wikiproject banner to talk pages

Hi, is it possible to add a wikiproject banner to the talk pages of articles using AWB? I clicked on more options, clicked on append message and wrote down the banner of the project {{WP India}}. And then I saved. But nothing happened. Please suggest -- Lost 19:50, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

You have to set all the settings, then start the process. Martin 21:17, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I did set all settings as far as I could gather. But not able to do it. Help would be greatly appreciated. -- Lost 04:52, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Purpose of AWB?

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, but what is the actual purpose of AWB and/or what is the main function of it that makes it superior to simply going around in IE and editing pages? The article doesn't exactly make it clear (to me). I tend to see mainly spelling and grammar errors corrected with AWB tags in the change-log. What exactly does AWB allow you to do? TheHYPO 00:42, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

AWB can be used for repeating the same task over and over and over and over again. Like adding a template to every page in a category, (even hundreds of them). It can also be used to do tasks like update a link or image on pages. It is not designed to replace your normal browser, or to be your primary editor. Some bots run solely using the find and replace utility of AWB. — xaosflux 02:02, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

User login

Hi, I'm using AWB on Swedish Misplaced Pages, and it works well. To my knowledge, I have not entered my username in AWB or its config files, still AWB is logging in with my standard login. How can it work? Magic? I'm clogging down the RC with my edits though, how do I make AWB login as my bot account? //Knuckles 06:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's magic :) Actually, no, it's because AWB uses the Internet Explorer engine. You'll have to log out of Misplaced Pages in IE and log back in as your bot. If you want to run AWB and do manual edits at the same time using 2 different accounts, use IE for your bot and do your manual edits in another browser like Firefox or Opera. --kingboyk 09:13, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Aha! I added this in the User manual on the front AWB page. Thanks! //Knuckles 11:24, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

"Correcting the misspelling" of a direct quote

Hi there. Occasionally, people will come across the Black Mesa (game mod) page using AWB and "correct" the spelling of a person being quoted, even when the spelling is in their exact words. Is there a way to prevent this? Thanks. Viewer 06:28, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Put "(sic)" or "" next to the intentional spelling mistake, and any AWB user with any wits about them will know it's as quoted and leave it? --kingboyk 09:10, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

What to do, what to do?

I have just downloaded and been registered for AWB and looked at the Terms and Conditions. Does spell-checking - the task I plan to complete with it - class as unecessarily minor edits? Thanks. Ck lostsword||_Suggestions? 17:25, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

No, spell checking is not minor. thanks Martin 17:37, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure? I'd been under the impression from Misplaced Pages:Minor edits that simple spelling corrections were minor edits. Where I'm still fuzzy though, is whether the addition of a {{stub}} template counts as minor or not. --Elonka 18:15, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Err... no, this is a seperate issue. You're talking about "do I tick the Misplaced Pages 'minor edit' box or not?". The original question was about the terms and conditions of AWB and not making "unneccessary minor edits". --kingboyk 18:19, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Memory leak?

Again, this is something I've observed before I started using a plugin, so the problem is within AWB itself. I've found that AWB memory usage can increase steadily throughout a session until it's at 400MB or more of physical RAM. Also in the past it's been normal for me to wake up in the morning and find that AWB stalled throughout the night. To counter the second problem, I've added a feature to my plugin to stop and restart AWB if the list isn't empty and it doesn't send any articles to the plugin in 10 minutes. Unfortunately that has the side effect of trying to keep AWB running if it's struggling for memory.

My machine has 1GB of memory, but this morning when I got up both of my AWB processes had crashed as out of memory and, rather annoyingly, they'd taken my Firefox with umpteem open tabs up down with them. I can only imagine that certain resources aren't being disposed of correctly or objects are somehow kept alive when no longer needed. Any ideas Martin and has anyone else doing thousands of automated edits noticed this? --kingboyk 10:04, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

It's the IE control, it seems to want to cache pages. I have never had any problems with it, even on large runs, maybe your IE has a different option set to cache pages in a different way or something. Martin 10:08, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah. Well, remember the issue I had with gigs of pages being cached? Also, since I zapped that cache my MSDN help viewer has been f*cked too. My version of IE must have problems. Any registry settings or owt you know of to help fix it? --kingboyk 10:20, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

My Pc's got 2GB of ram in, and 1GB of page file. I've had AWB running for long enough to have to close it due to using all the page file. I havent really done AWB runs recently, or any large ones, but it seems to be a bit better in the newer version.

Ive noticed it during any .NET app that i've created, whenever you open or close forms, and press buttons and the memory usage just keeps increasing! I know people run AWB bots and stuff, with i think mboverlord running one quite a lot... And martin, you have bluebot don't you? Reedy Boy 10:41, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I regularly do runs of multiple thousands of edits without any problem, the memory usage does get quite high after a couple of thousand, but it seems to reach a ceiling eventually. Historically there was a problem with stalling occasionally, but that particular problem has been solved. Martin 13:10, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I made ~3000 edits today, I noticed memory usage went up to ~300mb, then IE seemed to purge itself and it went right back down. Martin 18:27, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Pre-loading pages

As a feature request, would it be possible to have AWB pre-load a page? Sort of like running a tabbed browser? I notice that when I'm running through a long list (such as Special:Uncategorizedpages), that I usually only need a few seconds to actually decide what to do with a particular page, but that it takes just as long to wait for the next page to load after I hit "save." If AWB could be pre-loading the next page in the list, while I'm making the decision on the current one, that would speed things up considerably, as I wouldn't have the "wait for page load" delays. --Elonka 18:20, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

It would be pretty difficult to implement. Normally the delay is fairly insignificant, but the servers have been slow for the last couple of days. Martin 18:27, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Also, sometimes I use AWB from a dialup location (yes, I know I have masochistic tendencies <grin>), so in those situations, the pre-load would still be very useful.  :) But I understand if it would be too difficult -- I figured it couldn't hurt to ask! --Elonka 18:54, 18 September 2006 (UTC)