Misplaced Pages

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Overview Dictionary Bot policy Bot Approvals Group Guide Noticeboard Newsletter Bot Requests Requests for Approval Adminbots {{BAG Tools}} Creating a Bot List of bots Activity monitor Status report History Types

Commonly Requested Bots Frequently denied Anti-vandal Archiving Autoassessment Newsletter delivery Template substitution WikiProject tagging

• WP:BOTREQ
• WP:BOTR

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 Misplaced Pages community. If you are requesting that a template (such as a WikiProject banner) is added to all pages in a particular category, please be careful to check the category tree for any unwanted subcategories. It is best to give a complete list of categories that should be worked through individually, rather than one category to be analyzed recursively (see example difference).

Alternatives to bot requests

• WP:AWBREQ, for simple tasks that involve a handful of articles and/or only needs to be done once (e.g. adding a category to a few articles).
• WP:URLREQ, for tasks involving changing or updating URLs to prevent link rot (specialized bots deal with this).
• WP:USURPREQ, for reporting a domain be usurped eg. |url-status=usurped
• WP:SQLREQ, for tasks which might be solved with an SQL query (e.g. compiling a list of articles according to certain criteria).
• WP:TEMPREQ, to request a new template written in wiki code or Lua.
• WP:SCRIPTREQ, to request a new user script. Many useful scripts already exist, see Misplaced Pages: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 request	Status	💬	👥	🙋 Last editor	🕒 (UTC)	🤖 Last botop editor	🕒 (UTC)
1	Basketball biography infobox request	Needs wider discussion.	8	3	NotAG on AWB	2025-01-04 14:52	Primefac	2024-11-17 20:44
2	Replacing FastilyBot	BRFA filed	30	11	Usernamekiran	2025-01-03 03:59	Usernamekiran	2025-01-03 03:59
3	Deletion of navboxes at Category:Basketball Olympic squad navigational boxes by competition	Working	5	5	MolecularPilot	2025-01-01 04:45	Qwerfjkl	2024-11-20 17:32
4	Bulk remove "link will display the full calendar" from articles about calendar years		6	5	Primefac	2024-12-09 16:31	Primefac	2024-12-09 16:31
5	Province over-capitalization		10	3	Dicklyon	2025-01-01 07:12	Primefac	2024-12-11 22:00
6	Tagging Category:Cinema of Israel	Done	15	2	LDW5432	2025-01-07 20:00	DreamRimmer	2025-01-07 10:27
7	Bot to simplify "ref name" content	Request withdrawn	15	8	MolecularPilot	2025-01-06 08:12	Anomie	2025-01-04 15:10

Redirects to lists, from the things they are lists of

Please could someone do this:

1. For every article titled "List of foo"
2. if the article called "Foo" exists; do nothing
3. otherwise, create "Foo" as a redirect to "List of foo"

For example, I just created Birds of Tunisia as a redirect to List of birds of Tunisia.

This might usefully be added to a list of monthly cleanup tasks, for new "List of..." articles. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:06, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Doing... - Though I have messaged WikiProject Lists to check consensus first. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 12:54, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Please see also #Century-item redirects, below. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:36, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

BRFA filed - Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests for approval/MoohanBOT 8 It is just for this task as I had already generated the list of pages needed and there seems to be no opposition to it. I will have a look at #Century-item redirects in a few days but feel free to jump ahead GoingBatty as that one may be outside of my regex expertise... Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 11:05, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

It appears that User:Jamesmcmahon0 has dropped this. Can anyone else help, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:29, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

I see User:Jamesmcmahon0 has been editing again... Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:30, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

• The BRFA expired, this task is now open for grabs again.—_Chat:Online 20:20, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
• This is a two minute job. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 03:12, 16 October 2015 (UTC).
  

Coding... Should get this done soon. Philroc 20:10, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

BRFA filed All done! Philroc 23:01, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

The BRFA has been denied for reasons unrelated to the task itself. Another editor is welcome to take this on. @Jamesmcmahon0: Are you willing to reopen the old BRFA? — Earwig  23:15, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

@Jamesmcmahon0: And I have refiled the BRFA. Philroc 11:30, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Denied again... — Earwig  01:43, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

• Wanna just make a list of the pages and let someone else do the redirects by hand. A search of red-links on a page and creating those as redirects is simply enough for AWB to handle, even if it's a lot of pages. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:36, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
  • This is fine. We can start by working further on the list from Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests for approval/MoohanBOT 8. — Earwig  02:39, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
    • @Ricky81682 and The Earwig: et al - any chance of an update, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:55, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Container category diffusion

Category:Container categories, by the current definition of the notice box, only allow subcategories, no other pages. If possible, I think it would help the maintenance process if a bot could check container categories for pages, and if found, check if they are already categorized in a subcategory of the container category being checked. If they are, remove them from the container category, referencing the subcategory and WP:SUBCAT in the edit summary. --Slivicon (talk) 14:57, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

I also think, such a bot is required -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo 13:27, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

I would also like to see such a bot. Note: Ideally it would check not just immediate subcategories, but go down the category tree. Perhaps it could also generate a list of any that it can't fix. DexDor 07:11, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Update the lists at WikiProject Fix common mistakes

We really need a bot that updates the lists at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Fix common mistakes#Log. Right now they are being done manually, which is a very tedious process. Some of the entries have not been updated since November of 2014 and there are a bunch of errors that we haven't added because we can't keep up with the ones we list now.

Note: This was brought up before at Misplaced Pages:Bot requests/Archive 63#Bot to updated lists at WikiProject Fix common mistakes, where it was marked as resolved and archived, despite the fact that we are still doing this by hand. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:40, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

BRFA filed  Hazard SJ  03:28, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Texas Historical Commission atlas has changed information links

I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if this is possible to correct with a bot, but there are a considerable amount of articles that are affected by this. These atlas links have been used for NRHP citations, as well as other historical marker citations.

The home for the Texas Historical Commission atlas URL remains the same: http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us/

However, once you access information, those links have changed. Whatever is linked to THC as sources in articles are now dead links. I just made a recent change to an article. You can see by the diff how it's been changed. — Maile (talk) 22:25, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Copied from Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)/Archive 140#Texas Historical Commission atlas has changed information links:

Special:LinkSearch finds 718 links to http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us. The count includes all namespaces and cases with multiple links on the same page. There are around 370 different articles. http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us currently says: "Welcome to the new Atlas! The original Atlas, now located at http://atlas1.thc.state.tx.us, will eventually be phased out in the coming weeks. Please begin transitioning your use to the new Atlas." The links I examined work if atlas is replaced by atlas1 but it sounds like this is temporary. It would be good to find and update to new atlas url's while the old content can be seen at atlas1 (not all url changes are of the same form). PrimeHunter (talk) 22:40, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I guess somebody is working on this, because Battybot is currently running he fixes. Thanks. — Maile (talk) 20:02, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

@Maile66: BattyBot is working on the Handbook of Texas links such as http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ - If you still need fixed for http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us, please let me know and I can submit an RFBA for that as well. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 21:30, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

findarticles.com

Mark all links to findarticles.com as dead. The links are being redirected to a another website. However, they are not marked as 404, or soft 404. That includes links to https://web.archive.org/web/$1/findarticles.com etc. which has been deleted retroactively from the archives. Examples:

• http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_1998_Nov_18/ai_53365282
• http://web.archive.org/web/20050922160253/http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_1998_Nov_18/ai_53365282

See more detailed reasoning read this on my blog and FindArticles. (t) Josve05a (c) 08:25, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

insource:findarticles.com: 16,609 mainspace matches. (t) Josve05a (c) 08:31, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Josve05a so that I understand the request correctly (and to help guide the answer) what you're looking for is: For every occurrence where the pattern findarticles.com appears inside a ref block (i.e. regex 'ref>*?findarticles.com*?</ref') append a {{deadlink}} template (with appropriate year/month for categorization) just inside the close of the reference tag. Is this correct? Hasteur (talk) 18:36, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, unless one {{dead link}} already exists. (t) Josve05a (c) 19:12, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Doesn't just has to be in refs, but in all external links, but if that's to complicated, then the refs are good enough. (t) Josve05a (c) 19:13, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

More fun: some links are already archived via archive.is, e.g. "Sega farms out Genesis". Consumer Electronics. March 2, 1998. Archived from the original on July 9, 2012. - the bot would have to take this into account. Max Semenik (talk) 23:22, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

@Josve05a: Just saw cyberbot II tag some dead links and add archiveurls. Hope it will get around to these links soon! GoingBatty (talk) 22:04, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

BC births and deaths categorizations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Subthread 1 – undeletion of BC births and deaths categories

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Subthread 3 – repopulating BC births and deaths categories

(basicly reverting armbrustbot's dual upmerge edits)

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

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

Any editor can help with reverting the biography pages.

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

Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 May 25#1st to 5th century BC births

Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 May 30#1st to 6th century BC deaths

Misplaced Pages:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_22#6th-century_BC_births and 7th (below that)

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

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

Misplaced Pages:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_13#11th_century_BC

Misplaced Pages:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_May_8#12th_century_BC

Misplaced Pages:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_April_24#13th_century_BC

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

Misplaced Pages:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_April_20#17th_century_BC

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

The contribs for the last set of bot edits (on BC deaths) ended here. Working up from the bottom, I have completed that page so the current page to be worked on is here.

I have manually reverted from the bottom of that page of contribs up to: Boduognatus. After completing the top one click "newer 50" and carry on from the bottom again.

My workflow is:

1. Mouse over the page history for next diff up the list. Review history using WP:POPUPS to see whether there have been subsequent edits after the category changes by ArmbrustBot.
2. If no, use rollback.
3. If yes, open the history, and Undo the one or two contribs by ArmbrustBot. For an edit summary, link to Wikipedia_talk:Categorization_of_people#RfC:_BC_births_and_deaths_categorization_scheme.
4. If this creates a redlinked category,
   1. undelete it with the same edit summary,
   2. edit the category page to remove the old CFD template, giving the same edit summary, and
   3. undelete the talk page with the same edit summary.

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

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

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

This flags up a couple of points:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Progress marker

• Current page of contribs to be worked on is here
• Pages have been manually reverted from the bottom of that page of contribs up to: Xu Pingjun – Fayenatic London 12:48, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Century-item redirects

My request for someone do this:

1. For every page or category beginning with a cardinal number (e.g. 17th-, 21st-) century; or articles prefixed "List of..." matching that pattern:
2. Create a redirect from the equivalent title, with no dash
3. Create a redirect from the equivalent title, using words
4. Create a redirect from the equivalent title, using words, with no dash

was markred as "not done - no wider discussion" and archived. What wider discussion is needed?

For example, for the existing Category:20th-century war artists, I just created:

• Category:20th century war artists
• Category:Twentieth-century war artists
• Category:Twentieth century war artists

Other examples matching the above pattern would include:

• 20th-century music
• List of 20th-century religious leaders

This might usefully be added to a list of monthly cleanup tasks, for new articles and categories matching the above pattern. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:27, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Anyone? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:14, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Is there any reason this can;t be done? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:56, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Deadlink Fixing

Maybe a bot that fixes a collection of dead links? The Ohio Historical Society once maintained a few thousand pages with a well-maintained naming convention, http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/ohpo/nr/details.aspx?refnum=XXXXXXXX (the Xs represent an eight-digit number), but they took down these pages a good while ago. Now that OHS has renamed itself to Ohio History Connection, it's put up a new website, and these pages are once again good, but with different URLs, http://nr.ohpo.org/Details.aspx?refnum=XXXXXXXX. Could a bot go around and perform replacements? The work should be easy, and manual fixes will take a lot of work for a human but should be easy for a bot, given the careful adherence to the naming convention. A few of these links have been correctly marked with {{dead link}}; it would also help if the bot were to remove that tag when it's present. Nyttend (talk) 21:45, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Then my bot should come by soon and replace the tagged ones with a wayback link.—_{Trick or Treat:Limited Access} 02:54, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm confused: why would that help? Almost none of these are in archive.org (I've checked), and why would it be good in the first place for the bot to use an archive URL instead of the URL of a currently active page from the same source with the same content? Nyttend (talk) 04:42, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Sorry that was meant to be more of a general comment. Cyberbot II now attempts to attach wayback links to tagged links.—_{Trick or Treat:Online} 15:56, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

• It would be better to set up an external link template (like e.g. Template:Ofsted) for this, and editing the pages to use the template. Then, any future similar change to the external website could be dealt with simply by changing the template. – Fayenatic London 09:34, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

• Here's a complete list of pages that need to be updated, somewhat more than five hundred in total:

• Fayenatic london or C678, would either of you be able to run a bot to replace the old URL with the template that Fayenatic recommends? Again, it sometimes appears within <ref name=> tags or in the external links, so you'd just want to do a find-replace, and it would help if you'd remove {{dead link}} when it's present. I've not yet created the template; I'll create it once someone's agreed to run the bot. Nyttend (talk) 13:55, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
• Update — I've created the template at {{OHC NRHP}}. Nyttend (talk) 20:12, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

• Not me, I don't run bots, I just suggested a way to approach the task. – Fayenatic London 23:30, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

@Nyttend: Just to double check, this would be a one-time task to go through the list above and make the following changes:

1. Change url=http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/ohpo/nr/details.aspx?refnum=XXXXXXXX to url={{OHC NRHP|XXXXXXXX}}, and remove any associated {{dead link}} template
2. Change to {{OHC NRHP|XXXXXXXX|Words}}, and remove any associated {{dead link}} template

Do I have that right? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 22:25, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

That looks correct. I doubt you'll find many of these links in citation templates (I don't use the templates, and essentially nobody else writes articles with this website as a source), so the second option will be virtually everything. Nyttend (talk) 22:34, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

@Nyttend: There were only two articles in the list above that were tagged as dead links, so I just did those manually - see this edit and this edit. For the rest, BRFA filed. GoingBatty (talk) 00:56, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

@Nyttend: The OHC NRHP template doesn't seem to work in citation templates. From Lima Stadium:

• {{cite web|url=http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/ohpo/nr/details.aspx?refnum=02000219|title=Ohio Historic Preservation Office National Register|date=2008-08-15|work=National Register of Historic Places|publisher=National Park Service}}
  • "Ohio Historic Preservation Office National Register". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2008-08-15.
• {{cite web|url={{OHC NRHP|02000219}}|title=Ohio Historic Preservation Office National Register|date=2008-08-15|work=National Register of Historic Places|publisher=National Park Service}}
  • . National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2008-08-15. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)

Do you want to change the OHC NRHP template, or remove the citation templates in these articles? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:09, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

How many of these articles use the citation templates? I'm strongly inclined to remove the citation templates, if for no other reason than that the purpose of the OHC template is to ensure that all our links projectwide to these pages be in harmony, and I don't immediately see a way to resolve this problem without getting rid of that goal. Nyttend (talk) 01:11, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

@Nyttend: Only these six:

• First Hancock County Courthouse
• Adolph Boesel House
• Gaston's Mill-Lock No. 36, Sandy and Beaver Canal District
• List of George Franklin Barber works
• Hruby Conservatory of Music
• First Methodist Episcopal Church (Massillon, Ohio)

If you will fix these manually, then I'll change the bot request to do the remaining 460 pages that fall into #2. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:34, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Done. Nyttend (talk) 01:49, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

@Nyttend:  Done! GoingBatty (talk) 04:09, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Idea: WikiProject stale participant member remover bot

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

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

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

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

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

New French regions on 1 January

On 1 January 2016, the number of administrative "regions" in Metropolitan France (the part of France in continental Western Europe, excluding Corsica and overseas regions) will be reduced from 22 to 13. Six current regions will remain unchanged, while the remaining 16 will be consolidated into 7 new regions (new articles have already been created for the new regions). In France "regions" are divided into departments, which are divided into arrondissements, which are divided into cantons (this level of government generally doesn't have articles on en-WP), which are divided into communes (towns). With one exception (Lower Normandy & Upper Normandy will be merged to form "Normandy"), all of the new regions will be known by a provisional name until their legislatures meet after 1 January and decide on a new name (must be selected by 1 July). That name must then be approved by France's Conseil d'État (which has until October 2016 to approve the new permanent names).

A bot will be needed to change the name of the "region" in infoboxes of tens of thousands of articles for subunits below the region level (departments, arrondissements, communes, & the few canton articles that may exist). For example, there are 10 departments (infobox template for regions & departments), 44 arrondissements (infobox template), and 5189 communes (infobox template) in the new region Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine. That's a total of 5243 infoboxes (I don't know if any cantons in this region have articles) in this new region alone that will need their infoboxes changed from the current region (Alsace, Champagne-Ardenne, or Lorraine) to Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine. The new regions are based on combinations of existing regions (none of the present regions are divided between 2+ new regions), so it is simply a matter of replacing the name of the present region with the name of the new region. In the future, a bot will be needed to change the name to the permanent name for the region. Because of the multiple changes, I thought this could be a good test case for Wikidata integration into infoboxes and made a suggestion here (no support at the time of making the bot request here).

In addition to just infoboxes on articles about political subdivisions (departments, arrondissements, & communes), which seems like a simple find-and-replace task, the infoboxes of many other types of articles ought to be changed, but discerning when to change seems like a more challenging task (should locations be changed in articles for historical events?). In those cases, the bot should change the region when it is mentioned in the "location" parameter of an infobox, eg. on the article Saverne Tunnel "Alsace" will need to be replaced with "Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine" on 1 January. To be clear, this request is only for a bot to make the necessary changes on 1 January; I've mentioned the fact that they will need to be changed again to the permanent name in case that is relevant to this request. AHeneen (talk) 01:32, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

BRFA filed AHeneen (talk) 23:09, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Pinging when a "task" section is edited

First: sections of a page can't be added to a watchlist, and this whole subject has seen some pushback over the years; see for instance this Phabricator page, which I learned about yesterday at WP:VPT#Section-specific notifications. Misplaced Pages is hurt every day, significantly, when people check their watchlists less frequently because they're forced to check hundreds or thousands of edits just so they can monitor the particular sections that represent the task requests they're interested in. This happened to me just yesterday; I don't pull up my watchlist as frequently nowadays because I have to keep WP:ERRORS watchlisted in case anything shows up in the Today's Featured Article section, which represents a small fraction of the edits to that page. There are many editors who struggle with the same problem daily. I'm asking for a bot that runs frequently, takes a diff of WP:ERRORS if there have been any edits, discards everything from the diff above and below specific text markers, and notifies me in some way (a ping would be fine) if the relevant part of the diff has changed. (It would also be nice if it didn't keep pinging me with each edit ... once per 24 hours would be fine ... but that's optional.) If anyone is willing to code this simple bot to run at ERRORS and a few other high-traffic pages, a lot of people will love you for it. (A red herring sometimes gets thrown into these discussions that searching for sections is hard to do ... that's both dubious and irrelevant. All we need is a bot that can search for specific, perhaps hidden, text, and can discard the parts of a diff above and below that text.) - Dank (push to talk) 15:33, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Dank, simulating a watchlist via pings and other (ab)uses of Echo would be pretty kludgy. One of the solutions mentioned in that Phabricator task you linked to was breaking up the page in question into a bunch of transcluded subpages. In your WP:ERRORS example, all TFA errors would go into WP:ERRORS/TFA (or something), which would be transcluded onto WP:ERRORS and which you could watchlist directly. This would be a pretty good way to solve the problem you're talking about, and we'd only need consensus on WT:ERRORS. APerson (talk!) 23:33, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Wondering if it would be sufficient if you created a local tool that would email you or something like that editors could run themselves. You could do it as a bot that users could sign up to have this done automatically for them too. But seems more like something that should be added to the base wikipedia code. Lonjers (talk) 23:10, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Citation style

The citation style should be consistent in an article. A bot should automatically fix citations in some articles in Category:All articles needing references cleanup so that they will be consistent. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 02:30, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

How does the bot determine the right style for each article? – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:54, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Hmmmm I might start looking into this. I think this task is vastly to broad in scope to tackle all at once by a bot as Jonsey mentioned. But maybe there are some simpler sub problems that a bot could solve. Lonjers (talk) 02:47, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

• You could start with a bot run to calculate the citation style of each article and add an appropriate hidden category to those articles where the citation style is consistent. Subsequent bot runs could identify articles where a cite has been added in a different style, they might even be able to change the citations to match the style set by the hidden category. Though this would mean we needed to carefully monitor changes to that hidden category. ϢereSpielChequers 10:17, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Substitute all cite doi and cite pmid templates

Per the RfCs at and , the use of {{cite doi}} and {{cite pmid}} templates has been deprecated. We need a bot to go through all the articles that currently transclude those templates and substitute them instead. Kaldari (talk) 21:33, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

It looks like Dexbot may have already done this. Kaldari (talk) 22:02, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

@Ladsgroup: What's the status of Dexbot's clean-up of these templates? Can they all be deleted now? Kaldari (talk) 22:03, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Hey, Yes. I did what I could. All removed now :)Ladsgroup 01:33, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't think the following is controversial: All instances of {{cite doi/*}} and {{cite pmid/*}} with no incoming links, transclusions, or incoming redirects can be deleted. It will take at least two passes to delete as many as possible, since some {{cite pmid/*}} templates are redirects to {{cite doi/*}} templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:29, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Note that this is nearly 100,000 deletions, no small feat. I would like to see a bit of clearer consensus first as a sanity check. At any rate, I hope we can keep discussion centralized on the village pump thread. — Earwig  07:48, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

The VPT thread has been archived. My sense of the discussion was that there were no technical problems with deleting this many unused templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:50, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Tagging articles lacking a lead (extreme cases only)

I am running a competition (Misplaced Pages:Take the lead!) in January. I have been looking at Category:Misplaced Pages introduction cleanup and Category:Pages missing lead section. However this is only a minor portion of all articles missing or with too-short leads as I can come across them pretty frequently if I hit Random Page repeatedly.

What I was thinking of was a bot that might pick up the most extreme examples, say, articles of over 5 kb (or 10kb?) prose with leads of 1-2 sentences only. I was thinking this might be a good way to pick up large/important articles with crappy leads. I didn't want to go crazy with tagging 50,000 articles. Writing in a stream-of-consciousness type way and happy for input on this. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:26, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

One thing to consider is lists. They tend to have rather laconic leads "This is a list of X" (in violation of WP:BEGIN and usually accompanied with a chronic shortage of words). Do you think mass tagging lists will raise awareness about the importance of writing good leads? Finnusertop (talk | guestbook | contribs) 09:05, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

The hardest part about this is to determine which articles to tag. I've done some work on this, and have gone and excluded disambiguations. As Finnusertop said, however, the lists are going to still be a large number of the remainder. I've gone ahead and gathered a list of potential candidates so far here (excludes disambiguation, but nothing else, so some may have already been tagged; I didn't limit the size of the pages either). As you can see, over half of that list contains, well, lists. Therefore, the question would be how do we treat these?  Hazard SJ  00:50, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

@Hazard-SJ: thanks for doing that. Interesting quandary. Could go either way on lists. I am tempted to tag them. I think maybe asking some wikignomes to tag a few articles might be best. I don't really want to indiscriminately tag-bomb articles and yet would be good to point to a few broad/obvious fixes...hmmm.Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:59, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

@Finnusertop: after looking at 50 or so articles I am inclined to think that lists need leads....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:28, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

@Casliber: without a doubt your view is in agreement with our policies and guidelines. I, too, agree. It's just that this is one of those things that has never been enforced much and the community has developed bad practices. Tagging instances of this would affect a majority of list articles, and I'm wondering if this has the desired effect of raising awareness, or will it simply upset people. Finnusertop (talk | guestbook | contribs) 19:32, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, maybe just tagging a few high-importance and broad articles would be good. And hence better done manually. I am not a fan of tag-bombing Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:26, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

If this is something that would affect the majority of list articles, it is obvious that the MOS does not reflect the consensus of the entire community, and enforcing the will of a few MOS editors over the majority of list-article writers runs contrary to our basic principles. Nyttend (talk) 14:41, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

The actions of Casliber (talk · contribs) prompted me to do this. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:17, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

@Redrose64: I came across a few like that. @Nyttend: umm, I am not sure what the consensus among list article writers actually is...? Come to think of it, had to look at the MOS too...actually it doesn't say too much proscriptive at all (see Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Lead section).Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:21, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm not attempting to say that the consensus of list writers is for something, but enforcing MOS, written by just a small group of people, over different practices of the majority of list-writers is wrong. Policies being written to reflect what we generally do already, there can be no real basis for demanding that we follow MOS here, because there's definitely not a consensus of list-writers in favor of doing anything that can be bot-enforced, at least among suggestions made here. Nyttend (talk) 13:09, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Aah ok, I get you - that is a fair point and I concede that list-articles hadn't crossed my mind when initially thinking about this. The list of articles above that includes some lists is interesting, as it catches some articles that actually do have leads but that someone has slapped an Overview' section header at the top. Some definitely could do with decent leads however. In any case, I was just throwing this idea up for discussion and have already been tagging things manually anyway as the more I discuss it the more I am dubious of a bot's utility. Food for thought though....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:29, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Remove MiszaBot config

A bot should remove all transclusions of User:MiszaBot/config because the three bots have been replaced by Lowercase sigmabot III. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 03:56, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

There's no effective need to do that, as my bot searches for User:MiszaBot/config. That said, it wouldn't be hard to replace the MiszaBot template with a different one on the bot's next run. →Σσς. (Sigma) 04:00, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Also, if they weren't replaced (just removed) all the pages that use the MB configurations (my talk page included) would cease to be archived. --kelapstick 04:02, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

It's bad form to start this thread and less than a minute later file a MFD which pre-empts the outcome. See also WP:MULTI. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:12, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Moreover, this page is for tasks that already have consensus. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:26, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

This request has not been thought through, and the subsequently filed MFD is going down in flames for that very reason. Suggest this request be closed. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:38, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Not to prolong this request, but would it make sense to move and rename the (invisible) template to something like Template:Archiving bot configuration or even Template:Archive configuration? --Izno (talk) 22:42, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Request for Bot on Hak.wikipedia

Dear Sir,

I am the current Administrator of Hakka Misplaced Pages.

I would like to create a bot for use on Hakka Misplaced Pages which is programmed to create articles on small towns and villages of Europe (namely for the Netherlands, France, Spain, Poland, Germany, UK, etc). For example,

• this Dutch town (of this province)
• this French town (of this region)
• this Spanish town (of this Spanish region)
• this Polish town (of this Polish voivodeship)
• this German town (of this German district)

Of course, the articles on big cities would still be manually created by by real users but for small towns, it would save more time to have it automated so that other users can focus on editing the more complex topics.

Any help or guidance would be appreciated, Thank you. --Chrysolophus pictus (talk) 21:26, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

@Chrysolophus pictus: maybe Lsjbot bot can help you. You can contact bot owner at Swedish Misplaced Pages. But it should be possible to use Wikidata. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 17:06, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

@Edgars2007: Thanks! I will try and contact that bot owner to see how he could help. --Chrysolophus pictus (talk) 22:46, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Bot to tag orphaned SPI pages

I am an SPI Clerk, and this requested is related to a discussion held at the Clerks' Noticeboard. When a SPI case is opened (a page is created) using the process described at WP:SPI (or using Twinkle), the page is automatically tagged with the {{SPI case status}} template with no parameter (like this: {{SPI case status|}}). Then, a bot named Amalthea (bot) searches for such pages and adds them to the main list at Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/Cases/Overview. This is list is, in turn, transcluded to WP:SPI and used by clerks and checkusers to review cases. But, sometimes an editor who is not experienced enough does not follow the procedure and creates a SPI page with no {{SPI case status}} templates. Such a page is then not listed at the main list, and gets lost. We need a bot that would either:

a) search for SPI pages without {{SPI case status}} template and then add template to the page, or

b) search for SPI pages without {{SPI case status}} and add such pages to the list at Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/Cases/Overview with a status like "unknown" or similar.

Note that there are many pages in the SPI domain that are archived (example). Those pages should not be added to the list or tagged with the template. Here is an example of a page created without the template: . Vanjagenije (talk) 17:36, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

BRFA filed -FASTILY 04:01, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Bot needed to reverse contributions

As far as I am aware there is not yet a bot which will:

• undo contributions of another user/bot for a given date/time range
• write a list of diffs where it was impossible to Undo because of subsequent edits

One example where this is needed is #BC_births_and_deaths_categorizations above on this page, but there will be others. – Fayenatic London 13:37, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Wikiproject Women tagging

Could some AWB bot (pinging Magioladitis) do a little tagging? The list A is available here, list B - here.

Articles from list A needs to be tagged with {{WikiProject Women's History}}, articles from list B needs to be tagged with {{WikiProject Women}}. Although I did the basic check, the lists should be checked once more. Maybe some articles already have any of these banners in talk page:

• {{WikiProject Feminism}}
• {{WikiProject Gender Studies}}
• {{WikiProject Jewish Women}}
• {{WikiProject LGBT studies}}
• {{WikiProject Women}}
• {{WikiProject Women artists}}
• {{WikiProject Women's Health}}
• {{WikiProject Women's History}}
• {{WikiProject Women scientists}}
• {{WikiProject Women's sport}}
• {{WikiProject Women writers}}

Bot can skip them.

The consensus to tag articles is here. This is phase 1 (tagging those articles, which are also in German Misplaced Pages), there will be more phases later. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 19:57, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Question about WikiProject templates

@Edgars2007: I have seen talk pages that contain more than one of the WikiProject templates above. Are there any guidelines that state if a talk page has one of these templates that it doesn't need another template? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 20:30, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: Don't think, there is such guidelines. But the article can have let's say {{WikiProject Women's sport}} and {{WikiProject Women's History}}, if sportsperson is born before 1950 (margin for inclusion at {{WikiProject Women's History}}). But it isn't important in this proposal. Articles should contain at least one of those banners. In the very original proposal there was only {{WikiProject Women}}, but as it is easy to distinguish women by birth year category, the tagging is splitted to two banners. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 20:53, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I can help with this. I 'll read the request carefully. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:49, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Edgars2007 if I just go and add the banners in the two lists it would be a problem? -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:40, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Magioladitis not a very big problem, but the list comparing is so easy in AWB. Or I didn't carefully explain, what I want you to do? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 11:54, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Edgars2007 I would prefer if someone else was generating the lists to reduce complains against my bot. If something goes wrong I can always blame you :) -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:07, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Magioladitis The lists are already here - in the first line, you just need to do a simple check. Yes, you can send complainers to me :) --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:17, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Edgars2007 OK then I ll start tagging later today :) -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:24, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Just noting that Magioladitis is currently blocked so the bot is not operating. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:55, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

@MSGJ: User:Yobot isn't blocked though, right? GoingBatty (talk) 05:41, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Yobot it's not blocked atm. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:45, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Bot to create and update lists of most requested articles within a WikiProject

Is there interest in a bot that, at the request of a wikiproject, looks through the articles in its scope and compiles a list of "most requested" articles based on red links? I imagine it similar to how User:AlexNewArtBot creates a list of articles that project members can look through and include on a list. I got the idea from working on WP:Linguistics so I'll use that as my example here, but the bot could be useful for any number of wikiprojects.

I would imagine a bot would periodically (once a day? once a week?) look through the WikiProject category (Category:WikiProject Linguistics articles) and count the number of times various redlinks appear in those articles. So for example it would see that both Linguistic Society of America and List of presidents of the Linguistic Society of America both have a redlink to George Melville Bolling and put down that the article has 2 incoming redlinks. It would then put that down on a page that project participants can look at and decide whether those requested articles are within the projects scope and add them to the "requested articles" section of the WikiProject.

If there's interest, and something similar doesn't already exist, I would be willing to work on it. Thoughts? Wugapodes (talk) 21:19, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't think there is one for all WikiProjects, but there are some similar lists, like this one. Certainly worth looking into. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:58, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Similar redlink bots have been built over the years. Most fell out of use, and most dedicated to a single Wikiproject but I certainly can see the interest in such a bot that could work for any project. I know I would make use of it for WP:PHYS and WP:JOURNALS (as a supplement to our existing WP:JCW which Hellknowz mentioned, but that one is fairly unique to the project.) Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:27, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

If no one else is working on this let me know and I will take a stab at it @Wugapodes: Lonjers (talk) 23:09, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

@Lonjers: I haven't begun working on it, as I wanted to make sure there was interest (which there seems to be), and because I'm still reading the API documentation. I'd be willing to work together on it if you want. Wugapodes (talk) 03:31, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

@Wugapodes: Created an empty git hub repo for it https://github.com/utilitarianexe/requested_wiki_articles. I would just use pywikibot to create it but let me know if you would prefer something else.

Coding... @Lonjers: I've created the user ProjectRequestedPagesBot which can be used for the task. I know python so pywikibot should be fine Wugapodes (talk) 23:40, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Cited tweets

As noted in this blog post, we have some citations to tweets which "use the obsolete HashBang URls (e.g. http://twitter.com/#!/007/status/133679555167784960.) Some Tweets have been deleted." Can a bot fix these two issues? Or perhaps that's a job more suited to AWB? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:23, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

@Andy: So the two issues would be:

1. Change URLs of the form http://twitter.com/#!/foobar to https://twitter.com/foobar (with variations for URLs with https and www.twitter.com)
2. Fix dead Twitter links - I hope the bots that already mark dead links and/or add archiveurls would pick these up too.

Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 18:21, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, though your point about dead links and bots may be right. A third change might be to change links to accounts (not individual tweets) in EL sections to use {{Twitter}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:07, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

@Andy: BRFA filed for #1. GoingBatty (talk) 21:59, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

That's great; thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:27, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

@Andy: #1 is  Done - please let me know if I've missed any. Thinking about #3 - what would be the benefit in changing links to {{Twitter}}? (I have a guess, but I don't want to put words in your mouth). Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:52, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Two benefits: easier tracking; and we'd be able to pull the values from Wikidata. In fact, it might be worth converting the template, first, then replacing links and removing the Twitter handle (or moving it to Wikidata) in one go. Thoughts? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:52, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

@Andy: Changing {{Twitter}} to behave like {{Official website}}? Sounds like an interesting idea. Too bad you didn't get any response to your suggestion on Template talk:Twitter#Wikidata. I've invited a couple editors to discuss there (everyone else is welcome too, of course). GoingBatty (talk) 21:06, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Just saw cyberbot II tag some dead links and add archiveurls. Hope it would do it for Twitter links too. GoingBatty (talk) 22:01, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Removing bad merge requests

Over the years, I have come into situations where someone will slap a merge tag on an article, and then not follow through with adding a merge tag to the other article, if they even decide to mention why they want to merge the two pages at all. These tags can often remain up for years until they are removed, so I was wondering if there was a way to program a bot to remove these sorts of things, as I suspect a sizable chunk of merge request taggings are just that. This may be near impossible to do, but it would be worth looking into, if possible. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 17:33, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

@Kevin: I'm sure someone with better bot skills than I have could code this, but is there consensus to do this? You request does not seem to be in line with the instructions at Template:Merge#When to remove, and I don't see any discussion at Template talk:Merge. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 22:06, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

I'll go leave a note over there, but I suspect that it would not be all that uncontroversial. Either way, thanks for letting me know, and if anyone wants to start coding a bot just in case, feel free to do so. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:27, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Merge bot manages the merge tags. I might look into modifying that to add reciprocal tags, where only one of the articles is tagged. It may also be possible to mark those where there is no discussion. But the ongoing problems with this project area are an overabundance of drive-by merge-taggers who make low-priority WP:summary style merge requests, when there is nothing inherently wrong or broken about having separate detailed-subtopic articles, albeit stubs, drive-by managers who don't actually work on merges themselves but think they can fix the process, and a dearth of editors who actually work on merges. Bot requests come and go in this area; few are actually implemented. The last battle I was fighting was to stop editors from creating tags to request that section 5 of article "A" get merged into section 7 of article "B", and such silliness. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:14, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I've noticed those ones as well, especially as they make for some interesting discussions. I wonder if there would also be a way to auto-close ones like that that have not had a comment in a few months, which would lessen the burden even more. It does stink no matter what way you look at it, as we almost need a tag to tell people to stop abusing the template. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 17:47, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I would find it controversial to remove the tags. However, adding matching tags to the "other article" I would not find controversial. I've driveby-tagged an article here or there myself, and also worked on a merge request here or there myself. It's just another backlog. --Izno (talk) 19:02, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

What if we were to remove instances where there are tags on both articles, but no discussion? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 17:58, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

That only indicates that there is no discussion. You can't conclude from the lack of discussion what the consensus is regarding the merge request, and I see no reason why we should remove the backlog simply to remove the backlog. --Izno (talk) 18:16, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Articles update

A multi-lingual edit-a-thon. 70+ editors are participating from 18 Wikipedias meta:User:Titodutta/GI_participants. Is it possible for a bot to report on a Meta subpage the articles created by these editors in every 4-6 hours for next 1 week? @MZMcBride: --Tito Dutta (talk) 00:22, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Dead links

I am here again, I would like to inquire if we could create a dead links bot that searches for and tags dead links in articles. I find dead links from years back every day. I think that the system needs to keep up with the high amount of dead links that are not tagged as such. So that the bot that is currently archiving the dead links doesnt just take for example one dead link that happens to have been tagged but leaves behind 5 others.BabbaQ (talk) 15:54, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

@BabbaQ: Just saw cyberbot II tag some dead links and add archiveurls. Hope it makes its way to your favorite articles too. GoingBatty (talk) 22:03, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Request for bot to replace a string of code in applicable pages

I am requesting for a bot to perform a task that goes in line with my attempt to merge Template:Lc1 into Template:Lc. At this point, I have updated {{Lc}} to replicate the functionality of {{Lc1}} when a parameter by the name of cfd2 exists in {{Lc}}. So, I am requesting for a bot who can make the following edit on the pages that transclude Template:Lc1: Replace all instances of {{Lc1 with {{Lc|cfd2=y. Thanks! Steel1943 (talk) 07:36, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

BRFA filed — JJMC89 (T·C) 23:09, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Withdrawn by operator. Please file a new bot request if a solution is agreed upon. — JJMC89 (T·C) 23:11, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Modify links to Graph (mathematics)

Graph (mathematics) has been moved to Graph (discrete mathematics). I think that all mainspace links pointing to the old name (which has been redirected to a disambiguation page) should be retargetted to the new name. Petr Matas 17:09, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

A bot isn't necessarily the best idea here. Human checking with one of the dab solver tools will be necessary to ensure that the links are actually intended to go to the graph theory article (instead of graph of a function or something). Also: the requested move was closed as "no consensus". I admit I'm not a huge fan of this new title as an improvement of the previous one, but it's difficult to come up with a better one (although I suggested "Graph (discrete structure)"). Either way, that's wandering off-topic. — Earwig  00:02, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Template clean up

There are (many?) articles with malformed {{AllRovi movie}} values, for example {{allmovie|the-captain-is-a-lady-v86623}}, that should be {{allmovie|86623}}. Basically, it's "some symbols, then v, then several digits". Another popular pattern: "v and several digits" ({{allmovie|v86623}}), which should be changed to only digits. Less 404s and a little bit easier data export to Wikidata yes, I fully understand, that you don't worry about Wikidata problems :) Note, that template has redirects and value can be for |1= or |id=. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 14:17, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

In last few months, when I have imported some such IDs to Wikidata, I have noticed, that there are many garbage in those templates (malformatted values, copy-paste errors etc.) here and in other Wikipedias, so it may be a start for a larger template clean-up caimpaign. At least, tracking such errors in categories. But OK, it's another story. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 14:20, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

There is a TemplateData phabricator task that is awaiting development that would add a regex format similar to the Wikidata property format regex. Then a bot could be written to validate the values similar to the Wikidata validation bot. And VisualEditor could issue format warnings. --Bamyers99 (talk) 15:18, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Someone should be able to add a tracking category to that template to test for all-numeric values using #expr or something like it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:01, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Added request here. But in future it should all be done in one Lua module: format validation, getting data from Wikidata (if there are), data comparision to Wikidata (with categories) and maybe something else. Because the most of external link templates are quite the same in their structure. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 16:37, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

AllMovie titles with invalid value now has 639 pages. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 17:04, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

OK, now there are a little bit more :) I even have written F->R rules for AWB, so it should ease the work. The user, who does this, could keep an eye on changes, but basic testing looked good. Case sensitive button is unmarked.

• Search: \{\{(amg movie|allmovie movie|allrovi title|allrovi movie|allrovi\/movie|allmovie|allmovie title|amg title)(\s*)\|(\s*)*v(\d+)(\s*)()
  • Replace: {{$1$2|$3$4$5$6
• Search: \{\{(amg movie|allmovie movie|allrovi title|allrovi movie|allrovi\/movie|allmovie|allmovie title|amg title)(\s*)\|(\s*)id(\s*)\=(\s*)*v(\d+)(\s*)()
  • Replace: {{$1$2|$3id$4=$5$6$7$8

Of course, only articles should be fixed. It won't fix {{allmovie|america-3000-v1834}} and other rare type of errors, but those can be fixed later manually. Yes, I could do that myself, but I don't have rights to use AWB at enwiki. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:37, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

BRFA filed — JJMC89 (T·C) 04:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Replace specific PNG image with SVG version on specific pages

Requesting the replacement of all instances of with on the following pages:

Evan.oltmanns (talk) 00:17, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Doing... Only 55 pages, doing on main account. -- Cheers, Riley 02:00, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

• @Evan.oltmanns: Y Done, in the future a list with just one article per line is easier. -- Cheers, Riley 02:16, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

• Thank you. I will surely do that next time. Evan.oltmanns (talk) 02:23, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

• @Riley Huntley: I have another list for you if you don't mind. Is this how you wanted it formatted, or did you want the brackets so that it links to the article as well?

Evan.oltmanns (talk) 16:18, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

• Doing... Once again, not enough pages to warrant a bot. Slowly doing with AWB. -- Cheers, Riley 03:17, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
• Y Done Much better list, thank you! -- Cheers, Riley 19:07, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Orphaned Category:Cite doi templates

Template:cite doi has been deprecated but Category:Cite doi templates still contains over 58k pages at the moment. Could someone provide a table of the orphaned pages from that category (I'm aware that a number are not technically orphaned because, such as, Template:Cite doi/10.1029.2F2008GL034614 they show up in various orphaned template lists) and also probably the ones used the most. If possible, can there be a check if the creator was User:Citation bot? That way, I can list them in chunks at TFD and skip the notification part? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:50, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Doing... at least part of request. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 11:41, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Whatever you can. I'm making a request at WT:CSD to see if these could fall under G6. If so, I can basically mass delete these myself using AWB. Else, I'll be adding these to TFD depending on the number we're talking about. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 12:12, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Could another run be made for orphans over Category:Cite pmid templates as well? There's only about 8.7k there. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 12:19, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

By my current count (will check later, but it looks OK), there are 27908 cite doi templates, that are not linked and transcluded anywhere. After those are cleaned-up, we can move forward. Probably those templates, which are only linked somewhere, are also good to delete. About Citation bot - does Citation bot 1 and/or Citation bot 2 counts? For example, this was created by CB2.

I don't really care, but wasn't there some disscusion here or at WP:VPT about deleting so large number of pages and doing it in a better way? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:20, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Link to Google spreadsheets. There are 24816 templates (listed at 1st sheet), that were created by Citation bot, that don't have any links and transclusions to them. AFAIK, that also counts redirects. So those should be completely orphaned and safe to delete. If somebody wants to review SQL query, it's at 2nd sheet (Code). At 3rd sheet there are the most used templates. Nothing very much, only 1900 - I'm counting transclusions to all namespaces. Hope this helps. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 13:43, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Y Done also cite pmid scan. 7094 orphaned and only 4 transcluded cite pmid templates. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 13:56, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for taking this on. This deletion process will require at least two passes through both categories to get all of the actual unused templates. Some of the {{cite pmid}} templates are redirects to or from – I forget which – {{cite doi}} templates, so after all of the orphaned templates in both categories are deleted, you can go through both categories again and you should find another batch of newly orphaned templates to delete. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:16, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Right now, we just have a list right? We don't actually have a deletion plan here do we? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:45, 6 February 2016 (UTC)`

Well, I think the next step is to propose to delete those 24,8k cite doi + 7k cite pmid. And then go and delete them. We can think of next steps after this is done. BTW, finally found that disscusion I was talking about: Batch deletion. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 08:45, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

I think the consensus at Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Orphaned_Category:Cite_doi_templates is that deletion is proper. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 10:28, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Use of flags in transclusions of Template:Infobox national football team

I would like to request the use of a bot to remove all flags from any transclusions of Template:Infobox national football team. Per MOS:FLAG, flags should not be used for purely decorative purposes, and since the nations' names are included anyway, the flags do not aid identification of the nations in question. At the top of each national football team's infobox, a flag is often included next to the country's name; this should be removed, leaving only the country's name in plaintext (no link). At the bottom of each infobox, the team's first match is listed, usually using the {{fb}} or {{fb-rt}} templates; once the flags are removed, the opposition's name should remain linked, while the name of the team whose article it is should be in bolded plaintext. Please let me know if I haven't explained this properly; I can provide diffs for how the changes should appear once enacted. – PeeJay 10:48, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Note for others: consensus is here. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 11:37, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Edgars. I was going to note the sports exceptions for national teams, national team members, and other athletes in international competition per MOS:ICON, to wit:

• "They are useful in articles about international sporting events, to show the representative nationality of players (which may differ from their legal nationality)."

• "Flag icons may be relevant in some subject areas, where the subject actually represents that country, government, or nationality – such as military units, government officials, or national sports teams. In lists or tables, flag icons may be relevant when such representation of different subjects is pertinent to the purpose of the list or table itself."

• "As with other biographical articles, flags are discouraged in sportspeople's individual infoboxes even when there is a 'country', 'nationality', 'sport nationality' or equivalent field: they may give undue prominence to one field over others. However, the infobox may contain the national flag icon of an athlete who competes in competitions where national flags are commonly used as representations of sporting nationality in the particular sport."

• "Flags should never indicate the player's nationality in a non-sporting sense; flags should only indicate the sportsperson's national squad/team or representative nationality."

• "Where flags are used in a table, it should clearly indicate that they correspond to representative nationality, not legal nationality, if any confusion might arise."

If this has already been cleared with WP:FOOTY, I have no objections, but PeeJay should be aware that other sports projects routinely use flag icons for national team membership and for sporting nationality of other athletes in international competition, and such use is expressly permitted by MOS:ICON. Even if WP:FOOTY wants these flags gone, other sports projects use them in a similar manner and MOS:ICON permits such use. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 11:46, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

AnomieBOT is already approved to do this, but first you should advertise that discussion more widely (e.g. on the template's talk page) and give it some more time for people to comment. Anomie⚔ 17:07, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Tagg talk pages

Most of the Wiki pages do not have all of the WikiProjects tagged on their talk pages. On the basis of their categories this could be done. If a bot can tag the missing wikiprojects this saves a hell lot of time and makes it completer than it would ever become. Example: there are over about 4000 pages in the category category:Men's volleyball players and Category:Women's volleyball players that should all be tagged with {{WikiProject Volleyball}}. Is it possible to create a bot doing that? Sander.v.Ginkel 17:13, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it is possible. You should follow procedure described User:Yobot#WikiProject tagging or User:AnomieBot. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 17:44, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Might as well tag them with {{WikiProject Biography|sports-work-group=yes|sports-priority=}} if it's not already there. GoingBatty (talk) 20:05, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for you rely Edgars2007. I made a list of all volleyball categories and made a bot request at User talk:Yobot. Sander.v.Ginkel 16:40, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Bot to cleanup old article wizard comments

What would everyone think of a bot that auto-cleaned up the comments left behind by new articles created with the article wizard? For reference, I'm referring to these. --Nathan2055 04:25, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

@Nathan2055: Seems a bit like WP:COSMETICBOT, however, if it isn't, I'd be glad to do it. -- Cheers, Riley 06:06, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

@Nathan2055: I have find and replace rules set up in AWB to remove these when I'm making other visible changes to an article. GoingBatty (talk) 15:07, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

@Riley Huntley: Yeah, it shouldn't be too difficult. I was even considering coding it myself. I just figured that since it was borderline WP:COSMETICBOT I should ask here first. --Nathan2055 18:31, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

History merge old category renames

An adminbot should check each category page created by Cydebot with "Moved from" and authors in the edit summary and history merge the category in the edit summary into the bot-created category. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 15:54, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Bot to find missing year of publication category for fungus species

I was wondering if it would be possible to make a bot that made a list of all fungus species that do not have the year of publication category (e.g. Category:Fungi described in 2015). I would use this list to go through the articles by hand and add the missing cats where appropriate. I'm not quite sure how many articles would be included, but guessing less than 2000. Sasata (talk) 21:33, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

• While I didn't put much effort into the scan, and I'm running a dump thats at least three weeks old, these are the only results I got:

• Y Done @Sasata: Hope this helps! -- Cheers, Riley 05:09, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this for me @Riley Huntley:. This set is far less numerous than I expected; for example, missing are Hypholoma fasciculare, Clitocybe dealbata, and Clitocybe amoenolens. Any idea why these (and many more) weren't caught in the scan? Sasata (talk) 05:21, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

@Sasata: Actually, you can scan it yourself with catscan. Doing a scan of Fungi by country (category depth 3) gives 121 result. You can play with that field "Categories" to get other results. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 05:47, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

And scanning Fungus phyla (depth: 6) gives 7704 results. I have no idea, how good categories there are, so you also check that. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 05:56, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

That looks like a very useful tool, I will play around with it. Thanks both for the assistance! Sasata (talk) 06:27, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

ReminderBot

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

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

• This may work in the following way:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WikiProjectBanners

A nice easy job if anyone is interested. Pursuant to this TfD can all calls to {{WikiProjectBanners}} be replaced with {{WikiProject banner shell|collapsed=yes}}, which will allow the former template to be deleted or redirected to the latter. Thank you. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:58, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

BRFA filed — JJMC89 (T·C) 20:57, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

@Rjwilmsi: AWB needs to be updated accordingly. -- Yobot (talk) 00:37, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Merge talk page banners

I have noticed a significant number of article talk pages that use both {{article history}} and one or more of {{on this day}}, {{DYK talk}}, {{ITN talk}}, and other templates that could be combined into {{article history}}. Given the ever-increasing length of the pile-up of banners at the top of talk pages, I want to suggest that a bot could combine redundant talk page banners (like this, for example). Graham (talk) 21:56, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Graham, I did a quick estimate, and found that only 139 pages with {{article history}} have one or more of the other templates you mentioned. However, I wasn't counting other pages with two of the templates you mentioned that could be combined into a single {{article history}} conclusion. I've started to write some code to process pages like this. APerson (talk!) 04:43, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Fixing User:Jaguar's mistakes

User:Jaguar has been blocked for improper use of AWB, but the carnage still remains. for example, this edit screwed up the template at the top of the page. and, this one screwed up the template in the middle of the page. I was able to find/correct all of the ones of type two by checking transclusions of template:section, but the others remain. perhaps we can have a bot scan through all of User:Jaguar's edits to look for {{ |? Frietjes (talk) 20:15, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Doing... -- Cheers, Riley 23:48, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Y Done -- Cheers, Riley 00:59, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages bots
• Misplaced Pages requests