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This is the discussion page for the AutoWikiBrowser (AWB) project. It is also the place to discuss using the AWB program (for help, questions, or general inquiries about AWB). Specific guidelines on where to make particular reports or requests are provided in the § Before you post section below. Before asking a question, please refer to the read the § Frequently asked questions below.

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Before you post

Frequently asked questions

               //Detect IE5.5+
               if (navigator.appVersion.indexOf("MSIE")==-1)
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                   // Previous contents go here
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Discussion

Stub spacing

The requirement for two blank lines before stubs has now been removed. See WP:STUBSPACING — GhostInTheMachine 08:54, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Does this mean there is or will be a new version of AWB? I'm currently using version 6.3.1.1. Kiwipete (talk) 22:26, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Due to (19 December 2024) changes to CSS on enwiki, output is now OK with two blank lines, one blank line or no blank line before a stub. AWB no longer needs to force two lines before a stub for enwiki. No idea about other wikis — GhostInTheMachine 23:50, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Bot saving blank pages

Since there's not much information on this that I'm aware of, I think it's important to keep track of the circumstances that this bug presents itself. Tom.Bot was running on Wikispecies nearly continuously for 2 weeks, from Dec 7 to Dec 21, after 492,026 successful saves in the same instance of AWB before it started intermittently saving blank pages, despite failing a "Skip if doesn't contain" check that I thought would help prevent this problem. Very shortly prior to that, I "Reset saved/skipped counts", which usually produces a large negative "Edits/min" value, which may or may not be related. Before restarting the AWB instance, I reran the bot on some of the blanked pages and they were not blanked again. Restarting the instance fixed the problem.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:40, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

See also User talk:Primefac/Archive 21 § Blanking, slightly different setup for skip checks. Primefac (talk) 12:56, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Special:Tags

Is there a way to apply Special:Tags (e.g. talk banner shell conversion) to AWB edits? If so, does it consume the already-precious summary buffer?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:04, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Multiple blank lines

Hi, this is related to a change I want to do on Wiktionary, is there a way by AWB to change multiple blank lines to a single blank line? Sample:

====Synonyms====
* ]
====Derived terms====
* ]

to

====Synonyms====
* ]
====Derived terms====
* ]

Svartava (talk) 08:11, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

You can make a strict regex rule to replace (\n\*+\]\])\s*\n\s*\n\s*\n\s*(==) with $1\n\n$2, which will reduce 2 or more blank lines down to 1.

You can also make a more liberal rule to replace (\n\*+\]\])\s*\n\s*(==) with $1\n\n$2, which will also expand from 0 blank lines up to 1.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  09:28, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

I think there is a simpler replacement: find (\S\n)\s+(\n\S) → $1$2. Primefac (talk) 13:13, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

What about WP:STUBSPACING? Oh yeah, now that WP:STUBSPACING is automagic, that's probably safe.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:40, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you both for your help :)) Svartava (talk) 17:46, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Hatnote order

This afternoon, Primefac pointed out to me that certain edits I was making were putting the hatnotes in wrong order in a set of articles, as here.

Think is, I was running a similar task last night, and this and other similar edits came out OK. And the only thing I've changed between now and then is uploaded a new list of articles. I've changed none of the AWB settings I was using.

Any idea what might be causing the discrepancy? --Ser Amantio di Nicolao_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 17:42, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Do you think that AWB itself is changing the order of these hatnotes? Could you include the regex you're using to add the {{Use mdy dates}} template? Kiwipete (talk) 18:59, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

@Kiwipete: Apologies, I've been out all day. Came home and did a little tinkering to see if I could isolate more of the issue before I came here.

To answer your question: I simply put "{{Use mdy dates|date=January 2025}}" into the "Append/Prepend text" window, marked "Prepend", and checked the box "Sort metadata after". In every instance over the past few days where I have checked and double-checked, that has been sufficient. (To answer your other question: AWB wasn't changing the order of anything. Rather, in this instance it's properly sorting the metadata after introducing the new hatnote. In this instance, it is not. It is inserting the hatnote and moving on. (A module might fix this, and I haven't had the time to experiment with it today.))

HOWEVER: I found the issue again on another television article from another batch: see here.

The two incorrect articles are about television seasons, and I'm wondering if the problem has something to do with the {{italictitle}} template and its siblings. That's the only common denominator I can think of.

(And please excuse any lack of clarity in my response here - I am severely non-technological, and consequently it's a minor miracle that I've gotten as far as I have in targeting this issue.) --Ser Amantio di Nicolao_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 07:17, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Why did you add a blank line between {{Use mdy dates|date=January 2025}} & {{Infobox Arizona Legislature here?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:41, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: Wrong "newlines" setting, sorry. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 07:10, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Should have limitation on certain parameters of templates

AWB should have restriction on certain parameters of citation templates. see this diff. It has put a space after comma at url parameter and causes CS1 error. It's ok to have AWB on title parameter of citation templates.––kemel49 18:01, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Also consider this diff.––kemel49 18:08, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

@KEmel49: AWB is very configurable and is used for different tasks by different editors. Problems with AWB edits should be raised first with the editor making them.

@BD2412: Do your regular expressions have something to stop them editing URLs? I tack (?<!https?://\<\>]*) on to the end of some of mine, and that works 99% of the time. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:56, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

I generally just eyeball it. 99% of the time, there are just one or two clear errors on the page. What would actually help more would be for the changes to show up more prominently in the AWB edit window. Give me a few minutes and I'll mock up a concept. BD2412 T 19:23, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Okay, that was more than a few minutes, but I would like the AWB window (top image) to look more like the Misplaced Pages edit window (bottom image):

In fact, what would be ideal would be for the entire URL to be highlighted in the AWB window when an edit was changing its structure, and/or for AWB to have an alert for that in the alert window. BD2412 T 21:47, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Can't save at all

When I try to save any edits with AWB, it justs says "Saving", then "Restarting in 10", waits 10 seconds and re-scans the same page. No edits are made, and nothing appears in the log. Every time I click save, the wait increases by five seconds. Milo8505 _(talk) 19:39, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

None of your edits appear to show an AWB tag so has it ever worked for you? Neils51 (talk) 21:50, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

No, I have just been given permission recently, but I am on the checkpage.

Maybe it's something silly I'm doing wrong, as I'm a complete beginner in this program.

Any help much appreciated.

Milo8505 _(talk) 06:33, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

It was something silly indeed. I had not given my bot password sufficient permissions Facepalm.

My issue is Resolved

Thanks!

Milo8505 _(talk) 06:42, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Wheel arrangement

This edit was flagged up as an error, see edit summary of following edit. John (talk) 20:56, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Redrose64 pinged me on a couple of these as well, however they are hard to spot against various other edits. Perhaps the regex could be rejected if the article contains the string 'locomotive' or similar? Neils51 (talk) 00:39, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

As that's from typo fixing, I suggest the issue is raised on typos talk page. Rjwilmsi 09:40, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

What does "new" mean?

On the bottom right there are the numbers "pages/min", "edits/min", "edits", "skipped" and "new". What does "new" mean? I've read the manual but can't seem to find it in it. ―Panamitsu (talk) 00:04, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Number of pages created i.e. new pages. Rjwilmsi 15:22, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Do you mean creation of a page on Misplaced Pages? That's odd. It said 1 new page for me yesterday but I had not created any new pages. ―Panamitsu (talk) 22:29, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

That is what it means. AWB increments the new page count before doing the page save (new page creation), so if new page creation fails (e.g. page is salted) then the count could be falsely high. Also, given that the MediaWiki API doesn't raise edit conflicts for self-edit conflicts, one way this could happen would be to prepare an edit to a non-existent (new) page in AWB, in the meantime actually create the page and save an edit in browser, return to AWB and Save. I think the API will accept the second edit via AWB without error, and AWB will think that counted as a page creation as the page didn't exist when AWB loaded it. I'm not saying you did either of those, they're just examples of how the New pages count in AWB could be off. Rjwilmsi 10:48, 11 January 2025 (UTC)