This is a page for requesting tasks to be done by bots per the bot policy. This is an appropriate place to put ideas for uncontroversial bot tasks, to get early feedback on ideas for bot tasks (controversial or not), and to seek bot operators for bot tasks. Consensus-building discussions requiring large community input (such as request for comments) should normally be held at WP:VPPROP or other relevant pages (such as a WikiProject's talk page).
You can check the "Commonly Requested Bots" box above to see if a suitable bot already exists for the task you have in mind. If you have a question about a particular bot, contact the bot operator directly via their talk page or the bot's talk page. If a bot is acting improperly, follow the guidance outlined in WP:BOTISSUE. For broader issues and general discussion about bots, see the bot noticeboard.
Before making a request, please see the list of frequently denied bots, either because they are too complicated to program, or do not have consensus from the Wikipedia community. If you are requesting that a template (such as a WikiProject banner) is added to all pages in a particular category, please be careful to check the category tree for any unwanted subcategories. It is best to give a complete list of categories that should be worked through individually, rather than one category to be analyzed recursively (see example difference).
- Alternatives to bot requests
- WP:AWBREQ, for simple tasks that involve a handful of articles and/or only needs to be done once (e.g. adding a category to a few articles).
- WP:URLREQ, for tasks involving changing or updating URLs to prevent link rot (specialized bots deal with this).
- WP:SQLREQ, for tasks which might be solved with an SQL query (e.g. compiling a list of articles according to certain criteria).
- WP:TEMPREQ, to request a new template written in wiki code or Lua.
- WP:SCRIPTREQ, to request a new user script. Many useful scripts already exist, see Wikipedia:User scripts/List.
- WP:CITEBOTREQ, to request a new feature for WP:Citation bot, a user-initiated bot that fixes citations.
Note to bot operators: The {{BOTREQ}} template can be used to give common responses, and make it easier to keep track of the task's current status. If you complete a request, note that you did with {{BOTREQ|done}}
, and archive the request after a few days (WP:1CA is useful here).
Bot-related archives (v·t·) |
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Bot to help with GAR closures
Closing a GAR discussion is quite a bit of faff, so I hope on of the magicians technical editors could help us out. A bot would have to do the following:
- remove the {{GAR/link}} from the article talk page
- update the {{article history}}, or change the {{GA}} template into article history it when not yet present, like this diff
- remove the GA status from WikiProjects banners if delisted
- remove the good article template from the article if delisted
- remove the good article from the list of good articles if delisted
- archive the discussion (if a community assessment). The current archive is found at Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Archive 67. As a bonus, the bot could make a new archive whenever the previous one is full. This is now done manually (see Wikipedia talk:Good article reassessment/Maintenance)
I think the FACBot is already doing something very similar for featured articles. For a community assessment, this bot could be triggered when the discussion is closed (and {{GAR/current}} on the reassessment page is changed to {{GAR/result}}). For individual assessments the most logical trigger would be the removal of the {{GAR/link}} from the article talk page. In that case, the bot would start from #2. Pinging @Aircorn, who is doing a lot of this maintenance. Femke (talk) 07:27, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
- Howdy. NovemBot 1 does something similar for good topic promotions and featured topic promotions. I could reuse its code for turning
{{GA}}
into{{Article history}}
. Can you provide a link to 1 recent individual assessment closure and 1 recent community assessment closure for me to review? Also, are you open to having a limited list of people who can summon the bot for security reasons, or does it need to be summonable by anyone? –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:46, 10 April 2022 (UTC)- Brilliant!
- A link to a and example for an individual delisting and a community reassessment closure. Individual reassessments are done by quite a large group of people, so I think it would be preferable to have it summonable by anyone. (Community reassessment closures are done by a smaller group). Femke (talk) 16:38, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
- Sounds good. Next time you close a couple of these, can you just say "approved for delisting" and ping me and leave the checklist to me so I can practice a bit? Once I'm comfortable with the procedure then I'll start writing some code. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:10, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks for the ping. Femke seems to have covered everything so I will just add that this would be really useful. Aircorn (talk) 08:49, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
- I just closed two discussions: Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/WIN Television/1 and Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/American popular music/1. Let me know if you'd like more practice / whether I should open an individual reassessment (so that it can be closed in a week if no-one responds). Femke (talk) 16:18, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
- Done. 1, 2, work instruction I created. Please check those and let me know if everything looks good. If so, I'll begin writing a bot. I'll probably do the community process first. If we did a whitelist, how many people would we need to put on it? A whitelist would help with security concerns at the BRFA. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:37, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
- Everything looks good :).
- I went back 2 years in the archives, and found around 20 people closing discussions; half of those only closed one discussion. So initially 20 people on a whitelist? Femke (talk) 16:08, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
- I might end up doing the permissions check by having a summoning template ping the bot, then the bot can check for extended confirmed via who pings it. Looking like I'll be busy IRL for a couple of weeks. It's on my todo list. Feel free to follow up every once in awhile to keep me on track. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:03, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
- EC should cover basically everybody who would be interested in closing community GARS, so that should work. I hope this bot can be one of the puzzle pieces that make a new GA sweep initiative feasible (probably only of highly-visible articles, as there are just too many GAs). If an initiative like that were to become popular, it may attract one or two non-EC editors. Femke (talk) 16:04, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
- How is it going? I assume it would be good to hold off on closing reviews once an BRFA is launched, so that we have enough test cases? Femke (talk) 18:02, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
- Hey there. I'm going to be busy with my real world job for a couple weeks. Probably best to manually close your GARs. Once I get some time I can probably code most of this in a day, borrowing a lot of code from my other bot. Maybe ping me around June 7. Sorry for the delay. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:40, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
- Good news. My real life job is calming down, I will probably be able to work on the bot this week. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:13, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Femkemilene. Alright, gonna start working on this one. Do you want it to be a bot (summoned with a template) or a user script? This one requires editing around 4 pages at one time (low quantity of edits), so it may make sense to do it as a user script. Open to either though. Let me know. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:28, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- Good news. My real life job is calming down, I will probably be able to work on the bot this week. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:13, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
- Hey there. I'm going to be busy with my real world job for a couple weeks. Probably best to manually close your GARs. Once I get some time I can probably code most of this in a day, borrowing a lot of code from my other bot. Maybe ping me around June 7. Sorry for the delay. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:40, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
- How is it going? I assume it would be good to hold off on closing reviews once an BRFA is launched, so that we have enough test cases? Femke (talk) 18:02, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
- EC should cover basically everybody who would be interested in closing community GARS, so that should work. I hope this bot can be one of the puzzle pieces that make a new GA sweep initiative feasible (probably only of highly-visible articles, as there are just too many GAs). If an initiative like that were to become popular, it may attract one or two non-EC editors. Femke (talk) 16:04, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
- I might end up doing the permissions check by having a summoning template ping the bot, then the bot can check for extended confirmed via who pings it. Looking like I'll be busy IRL for a couple of weeks. It's on my todo list. Feel free to follow up every once in awhile to keep me on track. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:03, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
- Done. 1, 2, work instruction I created. Please check those and let me know if everything looks good. If so, I'll begin writing a bot. I'll probably do the community process first. If we did a whitelist, how many people would we need to put on it? A whitelist would help with security concerns at the BRFA. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:37, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
- I just closed two discussions: Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/WIN Television/1 and Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/American popular music/1. Let me know if you'd like more practice / whether I should open an individual reassessment (so that it can be closed in a week if no-one responds). Femke (talk) 16:18, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
Hello Femkemilene. Quick status report, I'm about halfway done writing this. Code. Feel free to start saving up GARs for me to close. Couple questions. 1) Do you want this included in GANReviewTool, or as a separate user script? 2) Do you want this to apply a colored {{Atop}} like in this diff? –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:52, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
- 1) yes, that would be easiest, so people don't need to isntall two scripts 2) Yes, please, that looks tidier. Amazing tool, the GANReviewTool, thanks for working on it! Femke (talk) 11:00, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
GAN bot
Film categories
A few weeks ago per Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film/Archive 79#Should "films by country" categories remain all-inclusive?, WikiProject Film reached a consensus to deprecate its former practice of deeming the base "[Country] films" categories to be "all-inclusive" (i.e. directly including all films from that country even if they were already otherwise subcategorized for genre or other characteristics.) However, some of the involved categories literally have thousands of articles, and there are nearly 200 country categories cross-referenced with a few dozen genre categories to deal with — so needless to say, we'd prefer to get as much of it as possible done by bot instead of editors having to manually go through over 100,000 films one at a time.
The important complications here are that there may be some films lurking in the base "Country films" categories which have not been fully subcategorized by genre at all yet, and some country-genre intersections may still be missing entirely — so the request would be for a bot to go through the Country-Genre intersection categories (e.g. Category:American documentary films, Category:British drama films, Category:Canadian short films, etc.) to remove "Country films" from films that are already subcategorized, but the bot should not be turned loose directly on "Country films" categories themselves, so that any unsubcategorized stragglers don't get stranded from the tree. Human editors can look after whatever cleanup is still necessary after a bot's done the grunt work, but we'd prefer to automate as much of the grunt work as possible first. Bearcat (talk) 15:52, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- Note: Category:Films by country contains all the Country/Genre intersection subcats:
Films by country by genre
Films by genre by country
Films by studio by country
Films by topic by country
Films by country and year
3D films by country
Black-and-white films by country
Direct-to-video films by country
English-language films by country
Feminist films by country
Independent films by country
Lost films by country
Multilingual films by country
Rediscovered films by country
Short films by country
Silent films by country
Television films by country
Films based on actual events by country
Lists of films by country of production
Film series by country
Crossover films by country
― Qwerfjkltalk 16:51, 5 May 2022 (UTC)- @Bearcat: If this just involves replacing
/\[\[[Cc]ategory:(...) films\]\]\n?/gi
(with nothing) then I could do it. ― Qwerfjkltalk 22:32, 6 May 2022 (UTC)- I don't really understand what that code syntax means, could you summarize it for the technologically inept? Bearcat (talk) 14:54, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Bearcat, remove
[[Category:[country] films]]
from the relevant pages. ― Qwerfjkltalk 18:50, 7 May 2022 (UTC)- Ahhhh, okay. If that would work, then go for it. Bearcat (talk) 18:59, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Bearcat,
BRFA filed. ― Qwerfjkltalk 09:28, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Bearcat, this is nearing completion. I just though id.mention.I'm tracking progress at User:Qwerfjkl/sandbox/24. ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:55, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- Okay, thanks for the update. I've manually cleaned out a few of the smaller categories with only a couple of dozen films total (but also Canada, since that's the one I generally work with the most and would have been doing the post-bot straggler cleanup on it anyway), but of course it was the categories with thousands of articles to deal with that led to the bot request, so the update is much appreciated. I have also noticed the occasional burst of people adding Category:Canadian films back to some Canadian films again, but that's easy to control since it's only one or two films at a time. Thanks again. Bearcat (talk) 21:33, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Bearcat, this is nearing completion. I just though id.mention.I'm tracking progress at User:Qwerfjkl/sandbox/24. ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:55, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Bearcat,
- Ahhhh, okay. If that would work, then go for it. Bearcat (talk) 18:59, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Bearcat, remove
- I don't really understand what that code syntax means, could you summarize it for the technologically inept? Bearcat (talk) 14:54, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Bearcat: If this just involves replacing
Removing user warnings tested at WP:SANDBOX
User warnings are not allowed on the user sandbox because new users could be afraid they did something wrong or got banned. These could be removed by a bot. It could detect for the text of a substituted template: for example, if it saw the following or similar:
Hello, I'm Interstatefive. I wanted to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions have been undone because they did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use your sandbox. If you have any questions, you can ask for assistance at the Teahouse. Thanks.
it would revert. After the bot reverts 3 warnings by the same user in 10 minutes it could send a message to the user stating to go to WP:UWSB to test user warnings. interstatefive (talk) - just another roadgeek 17:34, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
- I successfully implemented this feature as a bot, but I decided to make a minor change. Instead of leaving a message on the talk page of any user who posts 3 warnings to the sandbox in 10 minutes, I made it so that a warning is posted to the user's talk page if they add a warning to the sandbox at all. This reduces confusion on the side of the editor adding the warnings, and is easier to program. You can see my tests in the edit logs of User:CapsuleBot/sandbox and User talk:Capsulecap. As the bot is not implemented yet I will have to add it to Toolforge in addition to approving its task. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 18:40, 21 May 2022 (UTC)
Substitute inappropriate uses of PH wikidata in article text.
The 2013 wikidata RFC closed with an extremely strong consensus that it is not appropriate to use wikidata in article text on the English wikipedia. A few editors (notably @Exec8: and @HueMan1:), who were presumably unaware of this, have been performing edits where they have been replacing random words in the first paragraph of various Philippine city articles with wikidata templates, typical diffs [1] [2]. Such edits are contrary to the outcome of the RFC and make what should be plain text unnecessarily difficult to edit. I am therefore requesting a one time bot run which will substitute any inappropriate uses of the {{PH wikidata}} template, i.e. those found in article text, rather than infoboxes. 192.76.8.78 (talk) 10:15, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
- This task can be done with AWB, not? NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 14:57, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
- There are ~1800 pages transcluding {{PH wikidata}}, which is in the realm of bot numbers, but I would somewhat agree that this is probably context-dependent enough to merit at least a cursory pass-through with AWB to see how many pages actually need editing (as I suspect the majority of the transclusions will be only found in the infoboxes). Primefac (talk) 15:04, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
- It appears that some {{PH wikidata}} templates should be removed, while others should be replaced (maybe substituted?) GoingBatty (talk) 16:16, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
- If someone feels this would be better suited to WP:AWBREQ I have no objection to someone moving it.
- @GoingBatty The usages of {{PH wikidata}} in infoboxes are OK from a policy standpoint and should be kept, the usages in the body of articles should be substituted so that the article maintains the same text but in non-wikidata template form. 192.76.8.78 (talk) 16:43, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
- In this edit, it seemed more appropriate to delete the template than to substitute it. GoingBatty (talk) 16:57, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
- @GoingBatty Agreed that deletion was proper there, though in the version of the article prior to that edit the template didn't produce any output, so substitution and deletion would have been functionally the same thing (we would have just ended up with duplicate spaces, which are stripped by the parser). How that template ended up there is a mystery, I assume someone must have copied and pasted some text from one of the wikidataified articles. 192.76.8.78 (talk) 17:22, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
- I did a quick test with WP:AWB. Using
Wiki search (text) -> hastemplate:"PH wikidata"
[3] as the search, and find/replace{{PH wikidata|name}} -> {{subst:PH wikidata|name}}
(and of course the other common parameters) works just fine if we want to indiscriminately replace all of these. If we want to skip infoboxes, this task becomes harder and may require a bot. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:53, 25 May 2022 (UTC)- @Novem Linguae, I started coding a regex for this, something like
(?<! *\|.*)\{\{PH wikidata
→{{subst:PH wikidata
. (For the list I just used What transcludes here.) Qwerfjkltalk 20:31, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Novem Linguae, I started coding a regex for this, something like
- I did a quick test with WP:AWB. Using
- @GoingBatty Agreed that deletion was proper there, though in the version of the article prior to that edit the template didn't produce any output, so substitution and deletion would have been functionally the same thing (we would have just ended up with duplicate spaces, which are stripped by the parser). How that template ended up there is a mystery, I assume someone must have copied and pasted some text from one of the wikidataified articles. 192.76.8.78 (talk) 17:22, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
- In this edit, it seemed more appropriate to delete the template than to substitute it. GoingBatty (talk) 16:57, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
- It appears that some {{PH wikidata}} templates should be removed, while others should be replaced (maybe substituted?) GoingBatty (talk) 16:16, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
- There are ~1800 pages transcluding {{PH wikidata}}, which is in the realm of bot numbers, but I would somewhat agree that this is probably context-dependent enough to merit at least a cursory pass-through with AWB to see how many pages actually need editing (as I suspect the majority of the transclusions will be only found in the infoboxes). Primefac (talk) 15:04, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
- ┌─────────────────────┘
Actually, with some more thorough testing(?<!\n *\|.+)\{\{PH wikidata
works better. ― Qwerfjkltalk 13:38, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
Per the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Lots and lots and lots of hidden text, there are articles where some issue has led an editor to hide a block of text in the article (perhaps pending discussion of whether it is overly detailed or supported by sources or the like, or perhaps for technical reasons). Some examples include this edit, which hid a citation that apparently was not working at the time, and thereafter remained in the wikitext for nine years, and this edit, which put an entire paragraph in hidden text, where it remained for five years.
This is obviously bad editing, given that putting content into hidden text (particularly without indicating this in an edit summary or on the talk page) merely ends up polluting the Wikitext without resolving the asserted issue.
What is needed is a bot to suss out instances of relatively large blocks of longstanding hidden text and create a project-space list indicating:
- The article involved;
- Date when the text was hidden;
- Content of the hidden text (probably with "nowiki" tags)
As noted in the Village Pump discussion, there are some relatively short bits of hidden text that routinely go into certain templates to indicate what shoudl go there. I think a safe cutoff would be 50 characters, with any block of text longer than that being listed. Note that we do want to capture deleted images that have been hidden, but it is probably best to list those separately. BD2412 T 18:33, 28 May 2022 (UTC)
- Could possibly use an AWB offline database scan and a regex for this one.
/<!--.{50,}?-->/gs
I don't have time to do it myself, but just wanted to throw the idea out there. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:03, 28 May 2022 (UTC) - What we need is to list these pages, or put these issues on its discussion page and give a category? Kanashimi (talk) 21:27, 28 May 2022 (UTC)
- I think the first thing is to get a sense of the scope of the problem. How many articles have hidden text longer than a short note? How many have passages of hidden text that have just been sitting there for years and years? I would start with a project page listing instances, and sortable by date, size of the text block (or of the largest text block, for pages with multiple blocks of hidden text), and perhaps with the identity of the editor who added the hidden text or added the tags to hide existing text. This may be a task best handled by dropping talk page notes reminding editors that they hid some text some number of years ago, and it needs to be resolved. BD2412 T 22:40, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
- As I wrote in the village pump thread, I don't see any need to do anything about those html comments. However, if a report does eventually get generated, it should use a much higher cut-off than 50 characters: html comments about content (rather than template parameters) are typically hundreds of characters long. – Uanfala (talk) 11:39, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
- Hidden text of medium length is more likely to be wrong if unterminated. The minimum length should probably depend on which of <!-- and --> comes next after the HTML comment starts. The former usually indicates an error. Certes (talk) 22:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
- There needs to be some way of marking hidden text as not a problem, e.g. the lead of Patrick Stewart starts '''Sir Patrick Stewart''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|OBE<!--Do not change this to KBE, see [[Knight Bachelor]]-->}} and has done since he was made a Knight Bachelor in 2010 because there was an issue with well-meaning but mistaken editors changing OBE to KBE. That is inside a template and exactly 50 characters so I don't know whether it would be caught by this, but there will be other articles with similar notes.
- Also remember to exclude the output of {{long comment}} (which is always substituted). Thryduulf (talk) 19:19, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- Hidden text of medium length is more likely to be wrong if unterminated. The minimum length should probably depend on which of <!-- and --> comes next after the HTML comment starts. The former usually indicates an error. Certes (talk) 22:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
- As I wrote in the village pump thread, I don't see any need to do anything about those html comments. However, if a report does eventually get generated, it should use a much higher cut-off than 50 characters: html comments about content (rather than template parameters) are typically hundreds of characters long. – Uanfala (talk) 11:39, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
- I think the first thing is to get a sense of the scope of the problem. How many articles have hidden text longer than a short note? How many have passages of hidden text that have just been sitting there for years and years? I would start with a project page listing instances, and sortable by date, size of the text block (or of the largest text block, for pages with multiple blocks of hidden text), and perhaps with the identity of the editor who added the hidden text or added the tags to hide existing text. This may be a task best handled by dropping talk page notes reminding editors that they hid some text some number of years ago, and it needs to be resolved. BD2412 T 22:40, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
Remove WikiProject categories from articles
This query shows articles with WikiProject categories. This bot request is to remove the WikiProject categories from the articles, and add the WikiProject to the article's talk page if it's not already there. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:18, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
- Looking at it, while there are obvious errors like Category:WikiProject Women artists, there are also a bunch of categories like Category:WikiProject Australian Roads articles with a junction list using templates or Category:WikiProject Color articles needing infobox sources. It doesn't sound like something that could be easily automated. With only 600 pages, it's probably easier to generate a regular report. — HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 15:47, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
@Hellknowz The latter two categories you mentioned are created by a template, and are not directly added to the article. I would hope a bot could just focus on those categories directly added to the article. GoingBatty (talk) 00:43, 12 June 2022 (UTC)- @Hellknowz Scrap that. Once I excluded those two categories from the query, I saw there are very few articles left. I can handle them manually. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:41, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
Bot to update population counts for cities, counties, and states
After 2020, the US Census released a new population count for the United States. Many cities have their own Wikipedia articles that have sections which goes into detail about their pop. counts. Though, many articles about them that many still haven't been updated, even 2 years after the 2020 Census. I believe it is not humanly possible to update all the articles with old data, even if you did, it would likely be almost time for the 2030 Census counts. I propose a bot that would update information in likely three sections in each article which needs updating. first is the top introduction which usually say "as of the 2010 Census, the population was X." Second would be the Infobox which usually has a section that talks about population. third would be the historical population box which is usually very neglected by editors. The bot would update each section to the current Census counts, fill in gaps in the historical population section (I would bet some articles don't even have 2010 counts), and possibly update yearly estimates carried about by the Census. This website seems to have all the information that would be needed for the bot to run, an example https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/swaincountynorthcarolina. I would like opinions about this idea and see if anyone is willing to help create a bot as I do not know a lot of coding. Thank you for your time! DiscoA340 (talk) 21:24, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
- ~120 matches found for textual instances of 2010 census data; the population fields in {{Infobox settlement}} could be examined, and I'm not sure what the "population box" describes. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 21:37, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
- It's usually in demographics and it lists all the Census counts in the past and present. Here is an example of one in the article "New Hanover County, North Carolina" to the right. New Hanover County, North Carolina#Demographics. An example of a usual introduction that includes Census population counts is the article Jacksonville, North Carolina in the second sentence at the start. The wording can vary from article to article for that one. Sorry for not being more specific, if you have any more questions, feel free to contact me. DiscoA340 (talk) 00:56, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- Here is the template for {{US Census population}}. DiscoA340 (talk) 00:58, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- Category:Pages using US Census population needing update currently contains 14,000 articles. If you can get a few people together and process 100 articles per day, you'll be done in less than six months. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:47, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- If it's just raw numbers that need updating, chuck it all into a module and update it all at once. Primefac (talk) 13:57, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
- What Primefac says. Alternatively, there is WikiData. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 14:42, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
- There is also Wikicommons Tabular which is my favorite because it's uncontroversial (unlike Wikidata) and universal (unlike a local module). It doesn't fit every application but would be a good fit for this, I think. -- GreenC 18:45, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
- What Primefac says. Alternatively, there is WikiData. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 14:42, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
- If it's just raw numbers that need updating, chuck it all into a module and update it all at once. Primefac (talk) 13:57, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
- Category:Pages using US Census population needing update currently contains 14,000 articles. If you can get a few people together and process 100 articles per day, you'll be done in less than six months. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:47, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- Here is the template for {{US Census population}}. DiscoA340 (talk) 00:58, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- It's usually in demographics and it lists all the Census counts in the past and present. Here is an example of one in the article "New Hanover County, North Carolina" to the right. New Hanover County, North Carolina#Demographics. An example of a usual introduction that includes Census population counts is the article Jacksonville, North Carolina in the second sentence at the start. The wording can vary from article to article for that one. Sorry for not being more specific, if you have any more questions, feel free to contact me. DiscoA340 (talk) 00:56, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
Removing expired community sanctions and unblock conditions from WP:EDR
I noticed that temporary sanctions tend to linger on Wikipedia:Editing restrictions. Entries can be automatically removed if the rightmost column contains only a date which has passed; dates in the tables are always in yyyy-mm-dd
format. This will apply to all subpages of EDR, including archives, except that permission from Arbcom will be needed to auto-handle the Arbcom-imposed sanction lists. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 12:14, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- There is Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TheSandBot 9, but seems inactive given the history of the page containing expired restrictions. [4] 0xDeadbeef 13:08, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
- Courtesy ping to the operator, it might just be stuck. Primefac (talk) 08:05, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Primefac, 0xDeadbeef, and LaundryPizza03: Run just now. Thanks for the ping. Looking to automate this one... --TheSandDoctor Talk 00:24, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- Courtesy ping to the operator, it might just be stuck. Primefac (talk) 08:05, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
Add Reflist-talk to talk pages with references.
Many users add references to discussions on talk pages, and they all clump together on the bottom of the talk page if the editor doesn't known about the {{Reflist-talk}}. It seems to be a fairly simple task. I have checked the other bots, and there is SteveBot, which adds {{reflist}} to the bottom of articles. AdrianHObradors (talk) 18:15, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
Edit: Seems I broke the table up there putting a link to the template on the title, sorry! Removed, hope that fixes it AdrianHObradors (talk) 19:43, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
- User:GreenC bot/Job 8 does it every 6 months. Last was March. (p.s. not as simple as seems!) -- GreenC 18:29, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
- Oh, that is a good bot, @GreenC! Thanks for making it. And why such a long period if I might ask? A monthly execution (or even more) would seem reasonable.
- I have to ask though, when it says
checking all talk pages
, does it mean all talk pages? Or just the ones edited since the last time it executed? --AdrianHObradors (talk) 18:40, 2 June 2022 (UTC)- I think this thread answers both questions: Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_82#reflist_talk. -- GreenC 18:46, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
- Oh, I see. So, if I understand correctly, even if the bot was executed daily and only had to edit a few talk pages, it would still require millions of API calls? And just saw the other edit, I'm sure it isn't as simple as it appears hahaha. Glad still you made it :) AdrianHObradors (talk) 18:56, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
- This would be useful, but I'm not sure that it's a common enough problem to require such an expensive bot. I occasionally come across discussion pages, which are often in Wikipedia space rather than technically talk pages, where it causes some confusion if there is no {{Reflist-talk}}, but such action is needed much more quickly than the interval on which this bot could reasonably be expected to run unless anyone can come up with a much more efficient way for it to do its stuff. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:45, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
- Only pages altered since the last run need be checked. If the bot runs more often, it will have fewer pages to check each time. Can it obtain a list of recently updated talk pages efficiently, e.g. through SQL via page.page_latest? If so, then running the bot frequently might not use much more resource than doing a major run every six months. Certes (talk) 21:38, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
- Asked at Wikipedia:Request_a_query#List_of_pages_by_last_update -- GreenC 16:22, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
- User:Certes came up with a SQL query that is pretty interesting as it allows for not only mainspace but all spaces, in a reasonable query, that runs in about a minute ie. show all talk pages modified since X date. This can be fed to the bot so it has a smaller footprint to process. It's about 180k pages per month in mainspace, which is a lot less than 6.5 million. It would be more depending which spaces are included, probably Wikipedia:, Template:, .. can't say how soon I'll get to it, will require structural changes, but is certainly the way to go. -- GreenC 03:00, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
- Asked at Wikipedia:Request_a_query#List_of_pages_by_last_update -- GreenC 16:22, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
- Only pages altered since the last run need be checked. If the bot runs more often, it will have fewer pages to check each time. Can it obtain a list of recently updated talk pages efficiently, e.g. through SQL via page.page_latest? If so, then running the bot frequently might not use much more resource than doing a major run every six months. Certes (talk) 21:38, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
- This would be useful, but I'm not sure that it's a common enough problem to require such an expensive bot. I occasionally come across discussion pages, which are often in Wikipedia space rather than technically talk pages, where it causes some confusion if there is no {{Reflist-talk}}, but such action is needed much more quickly than the interval on which this bot could reasonably be expected to run unless anyone can come up with a much more efficient way for it to do its stuff. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:45, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
- Oh, I see. So, if I understand correctly, even if the bot was executed daily and only had to edit a few talk pages, it would still require millions of API calls? And just saw the other edit, I'm sure it isn't as simple as it appears hahaha. Glad still you made it :) AdrianHObradors (talk) 18:56, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
- I think this thread answers both questions: Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_82#reflist_talk. -- GreenC 18:46, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
- ┌─────────────────────┘
GreenC, That sounds interesting! I am a bit busy right now, but in about a month I will have more free time and would be willing to help. Don't have much experience writing bots, but shell and SQL is something I am familiar with. And maybe I am getting too excited, but, if it takes a minute to run... 180k pages per month is 250 pages per hour. Bot could maybe even be run hourly? That would be so great. AdrianHObradors (talk) 17:09, 5 June 2022 (UTC)- If a way can be found to run the bot hourly, or even daily, then I would be all for it. But please include Wikipedia (not only Wikipedia talk) space as that is where I most often see it being needed. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:29, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
- Or, thinking about this a bit more, would it be difficult or expensive for a display of references to be included by the core software before any new level 2 heading on a discussion page, as already happens at the end of articles in main space when <references /> is not present? Phil Bridger (talk) 17:41, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
Request to remove usages of deleted Infobox television parameter
|first_run=
has been removed from Template:Infobox television after this discussion. There are ~13k pages at Category:Pages using infobox television with unknown parameters with the parameter. Would really help if someone with a bot could remove all instances of these. Thank you! Gonnym (talk) 05:27, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
BRFA filed –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:56, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
- Quick note that Primefac is taking over this one. Feel free to contact Primefac if any issues. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:11, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
Adding WikiProject Music genres template to 1.6k genre articles
The task is to add missing {{WikiProject Music/Music genres task force}} template to talk pages to a set of articles, built after wikidata. The set of articles itself based on wikidata query of item that have an English article + instance of = music genre (Q188451) / song type (Q107356781) / type of musical work/composition (Q107487333) / audio content genre (Q108676140). It's a pretty neat selection here (relatively), as I've been working through these items for a few years now, trying to keep them in order, exporting infobox values, correcting scheme, making division between forms/genres/types, etc.
- So here's a full list of genres/types on enwiki: https://w.wiki/5JZi
- minus articles with existing template per Category:WikiProject Music genres articles: https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=22302423
- and here's the resulting list (non-automated, but manually drafted based on list1 minus list 2) for a bot consisted of 1671 articles: https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=22354998 (upd. 26.06)
It would be nice if new templates could adopt the quality/class parameters of other project templates, but if anything other bots with related tasks are likely to do this after.
I would appreciate if it would be possible to do such a task. The next step I'm planning is to add a parameter about the missing infoboxes for selected articles with p31 = music genre (minus some specific articles). Solidest (talk) 09:50, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Solidest, seems reasonable, but why is Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/Music genres task force/Assessment tag as {{historical}}? ― Qwerfjkltalk 11:19, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
- No idea. Maybe because the distinct project was reworked into a subproject of Music? Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/Music genres task force itself, however, remains active and uses the assessment division. Perhaps the historical tag means that the Assessment page itself has not been updated for a long time and needs cleaning. Solidest (talk) 11:33, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
- I could probably do this (though {{WikiProject banner}} makes this tricky). I'll give it a few days to see if anyone raises any objections (also, I currently have two BRFAs). ― Qwerfjkltalk 22:17, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Solidest and Qwerfjkl: I could do give this a go if you like, as I already have a similar task to add {{WikiProject Disambiguation}}. I'd submit a general BRFA to add any WikiProject banner using rules similar to User:Yobot#WikiProject tagging. The bot could leverage the AWB module User:Magioladitis/WikiProjects to standardize existing WikiProjects to make it easier to apply {{WikiProject banner shell}} in the same edit. GoingBatty (talk) 12:54, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
- @GoingBatty, sure, that'd probably be easier. ― Qwerfjkltalk 13:16, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Solidest - Could you please add a note on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music/Music genres task force to notify them of this request? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 14:50, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
- Done. Btw, I also added the clarification that list 3 is non-automated, unlike lists 1 and 2. Perhaps it should be rebuilt by the time the work starts. Solidest (talk) 15:12, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Solidest Agreed. When I click on https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=22302469 and then click the "Do It!" button, I see the number or results reduced to 1,670. GoingBatty (talk) 17:45, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
- The manual list is simply saved in the "Manual list" box (equal to the difference between list 1 and list 2), as I haven't found how to demonstrate it better here and I haven't figured out how to automate it either :) And the reduction by 1 happens because when you press button "Latin R&B" becomes "Latin R&&B". This must be a PetScan bug. Solidest (talk) 17:53, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Solidest Agreed. When I click on https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=22302469 and then click the "Do It!" button, I see the number or results reduced to 1,670. GoingBatty (talk) 17:45, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
- Done. Btw, I also added the clarification that list 3 is non-automated, unlike lists 1 and 2. Perhaps it should be rebuilt by the time the work starts. Solidest (talk) 15:12, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
Bot to remove or log redirects from a User or User talk page to Main Page
- FYI: I've also started a related discussion at WP:VPT#User/User_talk_redirects_to_Main_Page
Recently ran into an editor who decided to be clever and redirect their User page and User talk page to Main Page. Unlike most pages which give an indicator when you've arrived via a redirect that you can click on to get back to the source page, apparently this does not generate such an indicator. With that scenario in mind, a bot that monitors edits to User and User talk pages (not subpages, just the main ones that would conceivably be linked from the MediaWiki UI for contacting a user) for attempts to redirect to Main Page (I'm not aware of any other page that suppresses the redirect indicator, if such a page exists, redirects for those pages would also make sense). What the bot does upon finding such an edit really depends on how much consensus you think we need for it: could log it to a specific bot subpage that interested editors/admins could watchlist and address as they happen, or, if it wouldn't be deemed too controversial, the bot could simply remove the redirect (and perhaps still log it somewhere) and leave a note on their talk page as to why it was undone. —Locke Cole • t • c 01:39, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- Does this query suffice? 0xDeadbeef 02:40, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- That works, unless someone else took care of some others there was still Patrol_Officer who had their user page redirected to Main Page (which I fixed). The bot part of the request was more the automating a log page (for notifications of when such a redirect is created) or the automatic reversal (if such a system needs consensus, I can work on a discussion for that). If it's too much trouble, I guess I can just periodically check that query, but for people trying to be annoying in-the-moment the redirect existing at all would make contacting editors annoying (I briefly considered going to WP:VPT because it wasn't immediately clear to me what was going on when I tried to visit that users page/talk page). —Locke Cole • t • c 02:56, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Locke Cole, I think it'd be fairly easy to write a pywikibot script for this. I can write some code, but I'm not sure how to run it on toolforge (presumably it would run indefinitely). ― Qwerfjkltalk 13:56, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
presumably it would run indefinitely
Or at least until a software change in MediaWiki can happen to make such an edit impossible to save. I'm not familiar with the APIs available, but presumably if there were a way to hook into recent changes and filter by namespace to User/User talk, you could look for a redirect to Main Page being created (it might be worth looking into whether any other pages exhibit this suppression of (Redirected from ...) and prohibiting those too) and go from there fairly easily. —Locke Cole • t • c 17:42, 26 June 2022 (UTC)- Thankfully, redirects to special pages don't work. What other bad targets could there be? Certes (talk) 17:50, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- Not knowing how Main Page suppresses the "(Redirected from ...)" (I'm assuming through CSS/JS), I'm not certain if there are other pages that behave similarly that could be abused. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:07, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
contentSub
is hidden for Main Page and no other pages with code in MediaWiki:Vector.css and MediaWiki:Monobook.css.contentSub
contains other things than "Redirected from" and was probably hidden due to other things. If we wanted to, I think we could add CSS to display "Redirected from" while still hiding the other things. If we display "Redirected from" then it will be displayed for redirects from all namespaces. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:42, 26 June 2022 (UTC)- At least that should mean it's just Main Page that has this potential for abuse? I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that Main Page had a legitimate reason for suppressing the "(Redirected from ...)" message. —Locke Cole • t • c 04:44, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
- Not knowing how Main Page suppresses the "(Redirected from ...)" (I'm assuming through CSS/JS), I'm not certain if there are other pages that behave similarly that could be abused. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:07, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- Thankfully, redirects to special pages don't work. What other bad targets could there be? Certes (talk) 17:50, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Locke Cole, I think it'd be fairly easy to write a pywikibot script for this. I can write some code, but I'm not sure how to run it on toolforge (presumably it would run indefinitely). ― Qwerfjkltalk 13:56, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
- That works, unless someone else took care of some others there was still Patrol_Officer who had their user page redirected to Main Page (which I fixed). The bot part of the request was more the automating a log page (for notifications of when such a redirect is created) or the automatic reversal (if such a system needs consensus, I can work on a discussion for that). If it's too much trouble, I guess I can just periodically check that query, but for people trying to be annoying in-the-moment the redirect existing at all would make contacting editors annoying (I briefly considered going to WP:VPT because it wasn't immediately clear to me what was going on when I tried to visit that users page/talk page). —Locke Cole • t • c 02:56, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
Deferred An editor at the VPT discussion recommended using the edit filter system to stop this type of edit. @Qwerfjkl: I'd wait before writing any code, I'm assuming the filter will happen, so thank you for your help. =) —Locke Cole • t • c 18:29, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
Kenya stubs
Many of the stubs in the categories Category:Kenya geography stubs, and its six subcategories, are unsourced (some existences unverifiable) with no evidence of notability (WP:GEOLAND etc.). These should be uncontroversially (consensus exists through previous AFD) redirected to their 'parent' article. For example, Gatanga, Kenya sits within Category:Central Province, Kenya geography stubs, and should redirect to Central Province, Kenya. Is there a bot with the ability to do this with relative ease? MIDI (talk) 22:31, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- If an article is redirected, will the target have any mention of the topic of the redirected article? If not, then that's not a helpful redirect, if yes, then that merely passes the buck with the sourcing as the mention will need to be sourced. Are these places really not notable? Gatanga, for example, appears to be the name of a large(ish) administrative unit. – Uanfala (talk) 22:44, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
- This is a better AWBTASKS request, since there will need to be human oversight and likely manual editing. Primefac (talk) 08:09, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- You're prolly right, and that's something I can do myself (to fix what I've caused!). I'll move over to WP:AWBTASKS. MIDI (talk) 11:57, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
- This is a better AWBTASKS request, since there will need to be human oversight and likely manual editing. Primefac (talk) 08:09, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
Relink moved page
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
All these links need to be changed from Loring Park to Loring Park, Minneapolis CTF83! 18:20, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
- Go to WP:AWBTASKS, not here. Primefac (talk) 18:59, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
- Some links seem to refer to the park rather than the neighbourhood, and should probably not be changed. Certes (talk) 20:04, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
- Yeah I was going to go back and fix those. It would be easier to fix it that way. CTF83! 01:34, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
- I've worked through the links and changed 18 from the park to the neighbourhood. The majority of links seem to refer to the park and I've left them alone. In fact, I'm having second thoughts about some of my changes, such as this. I don't see anything here for a bot to do. Certes (talk) 11:38, 7 July 2022 (UTC)