User talk:AnomieBOT/Archive 1

Welcome, Bot

Just saying "Hi" to the bot so the redlink will go away. You're showing up in my watchlist a lot. Keep up the good work. Katr67 (talk) 19:36, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

AnomieBOT says "thank you" as he moves on towards his 200th article removed from Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting. Then I get to look and see if we can teach him to get any of what he misses in the first pass. Anomie⚔ 23:55, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Blessthefall

For this article, the bot actually autocorrected what amounted to vandalism (the removal of sourced information). Can we get it to revert rather than cleanup? Chubbles (talk) 20:27, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that's a hard problem. How is the bot supposed to know if the removal of "Screamo" was a legitimate correction or not? Anomie⚔ 23:55, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I just don't want to see the bot hiding vandalism; it contradicts the dictum to do no harm. Chubbles (talk) 14:01, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

How exactly is the bot "hiding" anything? Anomie⚔ 17:53, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

If a user deletes content sourced by a multi-ref citation, and the bot comes by (in a matter of minutes) to restore the ref naming, it masks the deletion of the sourced content. We'd want the broken refs to stick out, so that it's apparent to another user that someone has been monkeying with the article's sourcing. Chubbles (talk) 17:59, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Other bots and even human users do the same thing; I've rather often seen someone revert the latest vandal edit in a series but leave the previous edits that were just as bad (for example, [1]; not that I blame the vandal fighters for missing it, they do good work). The solution isn't to not fix things, the solution is to look at more than just the single previous edit when you're looking at changes to the article. Anomie⚔ 20:10, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

My problem is that a bot is doing it. I can tell a user about his mistake; bots don't learn unless their owners do. Chubbles (talk) 20:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm impressed by this bot's ability to rescue orphaned references

EVCM (talk) 21:48, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, he's a hard worker. Anomie⚔ 23:55, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, you did a great job, Anomie! -- ReyBrujo (talk) 21:00, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

It does seem, though, that many of the orphaned refs are orphaned because of vandalism. It seems nearly every time this bot touches an article on my watchlist, it's because of vandalism. Perhaps you could take a look at what the bot is doing when it fixes the orphan, and fix the vandalism properly.... - UtherSRG (talk) 05:19, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

If you have any specific suggestions, you're welcome to make them. Please be sure you address the issue of false positives in your proposal; the Wikipedia community has a very low tolerance for false positives in automated vandalism reversions. Otherwise, AnomieBOT will continue its current practice of "wait 5 minutes or so for ClueBot and the RC Patrollers to look it over". Anomie⚔ 12:10, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps take note of the article sizes around the edits the bot makes? Note the loss of about 10% of the American Black Bear article on 22 Sep 2008. This was vandalism. The bot only cleaned up the orphaned ref, burying the real issue. Only today did someone notice and restore the 3k of text. (I wasn't noting this bot's work back then, or I might have caught it...) I just think you need to have the bot spit out a status report for you, so that you can eyeball its work. - UtherSRG (talk) 05:37, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

So if someone (maybe a POV-pusher, or maybe just a fan adding a ton of plot and other statistics to a fiction article) adds a bunch of junk to the article and then another editor revises it to remove the junk (and accidentally breaks a ref), AnomieBOT should revert that good editor? I don't think that would be wise.

If you want to volunteer to go through AnomieBOT's contribs looking for vandalism, feel free. I do a semi-random sample most days, but I'm not going to investigate every edit. Anomie⚔ 12:01, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

How about a status page with more information than the contribs can do? (Other bots spit out status pages ever X edits or X hours or for each run, etc.) The status should include the refs that were fixed, the size of the article before and after fixing, the size of the article where the bot found each reference, and the size of the article where the reference first goes missing. Then perhaps we can come up with some metric for flagging questionable size differences, indicating possible vandalism, which you or I or anyone else can then reasonably eyeball. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:07, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

This would be very nice. I think even more important would be the name of the editor who broke the refs and especially the edit summary they gave (if any). —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:10, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Indeed! Yes! - UtherSRG (talk) 10:52, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

 Done User:AnomieBOT/OrphanReferenceFixer log, currently set to update every 6 hours or so and persist for about a week before being deleted. Feel free to mark patrolled pages however you want if you want to use the page directly for vandal patrol, just don't add extra second-level section headers. Anomie⚔ 00:19, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

USS Nevada (BB-36)

This edit broke the reference! Sorry, ^-talk- the_ed17 ^-contribs- 23:30, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Nope, I lied...the ref was off (a typo by me), but it did point it to the wrong <ref name=> thing....it should have made it point to <ref name="Naval Engineers"/>, not <ref name="Naval"/> ... Sorry for my confusion!! ^-talk- the_ed17 ^-contribs- 23:36, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

That might be a common typo, and I have already added code to correct <ref name=foo bar> to <ref name="foo bar"> instead of just <ref name=foo> so this wouldn't be that much of a stretch. Thanks for letting me know. Anomie⚔ 01:29, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Excellence

I've got an annoying tendency to accidentally orphan refs, so seeing this bot fix Valerie Plame gave me a big grin. Cheers! Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:26, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

AnomieBOT says "You're welcome!" Anomie⚔ 14:25, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

This bot is F.G. It rescued some orphans that resulted from my exchanging portions of two articles, and when it did not know which of several identically-named sources to use, it left a comment on the talk page. Quick to respond, too! Hats off to you, sir. --Adoniscik^{(t, c)} 01:53, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, it's always nice to know people appreciate what my bot does! What is "F.G."? Anomie⚔ 03:04, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

A goof?

In Mount Hood, this edit by the bot suggests it thinks it is fixing a reference, but it deleted the cite reference—which didn't have a problem. It might have been triggered by a reference I forgot to provide in the previous edit. Could a missing definition for [17] confuse the bot whether [9] was valid? —EncMstr (talk) 05:01, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

It's actually an invalid reference, someone left out the "=". I'm actually shocked that the software accepted it at all; it actually interprets the ref as <ref name="name">. I suppose I can add yet another special case to try to catch this sort of error.

The missing definition on #17 was what flagged the page with Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting and attracted the bot, but otherwise it had nothing to do with the issue. Anomie⚔ 12:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Need to be kept under control

Twice in the last 2 days I've been reorganising content, including refs, and AnomieBOT has caused edit conflicts. In the second instance, Physiology of dinosaurs (see hist), I'd put an "in use" template on the article. This bot should be house-trained to edit only articles that have not been edited for a while (e.g. 1 hour), and to leave strictly alone articles that have "in use" templates. -- Philcha (talk) 12:49, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

AnomieBOT does only edit articles that have not been edited for a while, see lines 135–141 of the source. Looking for {{in use}} is a good idea, and I will add that feature later today. You could also use {{nobots}}, which is specifically designed to exclude bots. That template doesn't have a timeout like {{in use}} does, though, so you would have to remember to remove it when you are done. Anomie⚔ 16:04, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Your first statement is false - AnomieBOT edited Physiology of dinosaurs while I was in the middle of an edit that took me 19 minutes, including looking up and formatting refs - see article's history.

Suggesting another "bots keep out" template is unhelpful, as there as very many templates and they are hardly indexed at all. AnomieBOT should respect all "keep out" templates, as well as waiting for longer after the last edit.

The edit summary for your last comment in this thread, " Hey, don't lose your cool," is mildy insulting. The language of my initial comment was polite and quite unemotional, it simply explained how AnomieBOT's behavior caused inconvenience annd needs to be modified. -- Philcha (talk) 16:35, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I can confirm that this bot does not wait very long before making a fix. In the article McLaren F1 it fixed references that were broken by vandalism just 14 minutes prior. I had to spend extra time looking at diffs to make sure my reverting of the vandalism was correct. If the bot had just waited a hour or so the vandalism would have been reverted and no change would have been necessary. swaq 18:30, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

On the other hand, "hours" is a rather long period of time to wait to fix non-vandalism-related reference errors. This was discussed at the BRFA, and it was determined that 5 minutes was sufficient to allow anti-vandal bots and RC patrollers sufficient chance to catch the vandalism. Beyond that, it might be days until a "normal" person catches the vandalism. If you can provide useful vandalism time-to-reversion statistics I will review them and consider adjusting the wait time. Anomie⚔ 18:52, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I understand the problems with waiting too long, but I feel five minutes is too short. I just went through my watchlist and made a note of how long it had been since the vandalism each time rollback was used. 27% of the rollbacks occurred between five minutes and an hour after the vandalism. Most of the rest were recent change patrollers, bots, and repeat vandals that were vandalizing again immediately after being reverted. This was a sample size of 26 rollbacks. Only two (8%) of the edits were longer than 15 minutes. Perhaps a wait time of 30 minutes might be a good compromise? swaq 19:36, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Philcha, but you are completely incorrect in your first statement; go read the code as I suggested instead of accusing me of lying. As for templates, {{bots}}/{{nobots}} is the only standard bot exclusion mechanism that I am aware of; if there are any others they are not mentioned at WP:BOT. {{in use}} is intended for human editors, not for bots, but I do intend to implement checking for it in the near future anyway. As for my suggesting you keep your cool being "mildly insulting", I find your comment that my bot "should be house-trained" more than mildly insulting. If you cannot be civil and constructively discuss this issue, please do not post here again. Thank you. Anomie⚔ 18:52, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay, can we all just calm down here? I think Swaq's suggestion is sensible: if 5 minutes is causing edit conflicts, the delay should be raised. 30 minutes sounds reasonable to me. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 05:12, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I wrote a quick script to watch the IRC recent changes feed and gather some statistics. The script watches for edits by ClueBot and edits beginning "Undid revision # by", "Reverted edits by", "Reverted # edit[s] by", and "Reverted to revision # by", and reports how many minutes it was since the previous non-reversion edit. Based on over 3200 reversions at the moment, 58% were 0–5 minutes, 12% were 6–30 minutes, 5% were 31–59 minutes, and 25% were 60+ minutes. Is making less than 12% of reversions slightly less confusing worth waiting 30 minutes to fix any reference error someone introduces?

As for edit conflicts, there will always be edit conflicts no matter what I set either of the time limits to. I see in AnomieBOT's log that the new {{inuse}} detecting has already fired twice, so perhaps that is doing some good. Anomie⚔ 22:38, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Nice one

Just wanted to say I'd never noticed your bot before this, but nice one! rootology (C)(T) 05:16, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow, what a great bot! Thanks! ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 23:29, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

AnomieBOT thanks you both for your encouragement! Anomie⚔ 11:45, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Just wanted to add my thanks to the pile. This is an extremely clever idea for a bot! Tracking down flattened named references is a huge pain to do manually. -Verdatum (talk) 19:11, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Bot has trashed an article

Er, your bot has made a horrible mess of Joseph (Hebrew Bible). Just so you know! -- Oh, my mistake: actually it looks like the article was broken before the bot's edit. 86.154.56.36 (talk) 23:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it was 165.29.183.254 who trashed the article. Anomie⚔ 00:47, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Nice work

I know we've had differences, but this diff is a really clever piece of work - well done. -- Philcha (talk) 11:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. Although it was not quite right ;) Anomie⚔ 01:44, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Good bot[2], have a cookie. -- davidz (talk) 20:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

List of best-selling books

On this article, you "rescued" an orphaned ref[3]. However, it worked perfectly allright before (as far as I can see). Any reason why the bot makes this addition? It still works of course, but adding bites to an article without good reason seems a bit pointless... Fram (talk) 04:36, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

77.102.193.254 deleted some text that included the body of the reference (see it broken here), and AnomieBOT fixed it. Six hours later 216.138.178.87 restored the deleted text; 216.138.178.87 could have also reverted AnomieBOT's edit if they had wanted to, to save those few bytes. Anomie⚔ 11:23, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

You are quite correct, and I somehow misread the diffs as if the version before your bot edit worked allright, which it didn't. Thanks for the explanation! Fram (talk) 11:41, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Minor complaint

Hi,

AnomieBOT you are helpful and hard-working but it concerns me that you don't pay attention to the very cause of ref being orphaned. If the previous edit is a deletion of some text by an anonymous user you should take more care of possible underlying vandalism. Otherwise, in a way the vandalism actually gets masked by your hard work.

Take care,
Kpjas (talk) 06:46, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Not every IP edit is vandalism, some people just have no desire to create an account. Similarly, not every logged-in edit is not vandalism. Do you have a workable suggestion for determining if a previous edit that deletes content is vandalism versus a cleanup of unnecessary information from an article? Keep in mind that Strong AI is not available.

Also, what exactly is this "masking" that you mention? Is it just that people don't think to look beyond the most recent revision when checking their watchlists, or is something else being referred to here? If it's the former, I can't tell you how many times Cluebot or a human editor hasn't reverted far enough to get all the vandalism, which I why I normally check the cumulative diff from the last revision I have reviewed. Anomie⚔ 11:43, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, the watchlist (in normal mode at least) doesn't show more than the most recent revision. Given the number of pages on my watchlist (currently 2,720, as it happens), I at least don't really feel like clicking on every bot edit I see (and some people have them hidden, anyway), so it would be nice if your bot at least gave some indication of what the previous edit was (see my suggestion above) so that I could pay more attention to the suspicious ones. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:08, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

In other words, for you it's "the former". Does this "and some people have [bot edits] hidden" also hide any previous non-bot change, or does it work sanely? Anomie⚔ 16:16, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

See bugzilla:9790. Technically, it should be fixable, but it might be hard to do without making the normal mode as costly as the "all applicable changes" mode (which has a hard limit of max 1000 total changes shown to avoid killing the servers). The problem is that MediaWiki explicitly keeps track of the latest change to each article, but not of the latest non-bot change to each article. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:59, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm having the same difficulty as Kpjas here. Please don't take this personally, but this bot seems to make reverting vandalism more difficult, not less, especially as it does not revert all of the previous edit, just selected bits which then have to be ferreted out by hand. Perhaps it could confine its edits to infrequently edited pages? or just revert the edit which orphaned the refs? There might be some discussion as when this bot, although clever an well intentioned, becomes more problematic than helpful. T L Miles (talk) 19:02, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

There is really no need for AnomieBOT's changes to be "ferreted out by hand", just revert AnomieBOT's edit along with the vandal edit. If that restores the article to Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting, AnomieBOT will come back and re-fix it without complaint.

There is no reason an active page like Sarah Palin shouldn't have its reference errors fixed; in fact, an article that is undergoing active editing as current events change is likely to have more orphaned references as sections are summarized or refactored.

AnomieBOT will never just revert the edit which orphaned the refs, as that would revert good edits; such a task would never make it past BRFA, and if it did it would be blocked within hours. I'm open to adding code to revert cases that actually are detected as vandalism, but the vandalism detector must have a near-zero false positive rate and I am far from familiar enough with vandal fighting to create such a detector. Unless someone can supply me with convincing algorithms, AnomieBOT will stick with its current method: delay a few minutes to let ClueBot and the RC Patrollers have a chance to revert it. Anomie⚔ 21:10, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Rescue of orphaned reference at Apple Cider page

Hello, Anomie(BOT). Question: was the orphan reference at the Apple Cider page (that I was careless in not finding another place in the article for) rescued automatically by a BOT or did it require human input to decide where to work it in (and generate a title for the edit)?Wikiuser100 (talk) 01:42, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

It was done completely by a bot; if you speak Perl you can check out the code at User:AnomieBOT/source/tasks/OrphanReferenceFixer.pm. In English, it happened something like this:

1. Your edit removed the content of the existing reference named "proposed regulations", but left a contentless ref in the Pasteurization section. Part of the error message (see it here) for that situation is to add the page to Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting.
2. AnomieBOT periodically loads the list of pages in that category, and looks in each page to see if there are any reference errors it can recognize. In this case, it saw <ref name="proposed regulations"/> in the Pasteurization section and couldn't find content for the ref anywhere in the article.
3. So, it started going back through the page history revision by revision until it found one that did have content for a ref named "proposed regulations". It found this, of course, in the revision just before your edit.
4. Then it simply replaced the contentless reference in the current revision with the version from the old revision, a simple copy-paste job. The edit summary is simple enough to generate, as the bot always knows what it is trying to do.

So you see, the bot didn't do anything all that smart, just tedious. If that other use of the "proposed regulations" reference hadn't already been in the article, the bot wouldn't even have looked at the page in the first place. Anomie⚔ 02:21, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I see how it works now. Pretty slick. Question: In the version of the page I edited there were two successive cites of the same source. It doesn't matter (for the purposes of this question) that they had been successive, only that they cited the same source, numbered 3 a & b in that version. Is there a simple (button-type) command to insert the language and control characters necessary for Wikipedia page code to recognize the same source cited repeatedly (as appears in the edit (i.e. ASCI text version) of that page) or must an editor know how to rework a cite to include it? (i.e. the "name=" stuff, so that the second cite does not need the full URL, just a reference (that triggered your bot) to the orginal citation of it)? Curious, as I would like to be able to make this sort of edit in the future, rather than having successive footnotes citing the same source as separate entries (as using the Insert Reference button provided creates). Thanks.Wikiuser100 (talk) 03:30, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Much explanation is available at WP:FOOT. In short, you just give one reference with content and with a "name" attribute: <ref name="whatever">content</ref>. Then anywhere else in the page you can use a contentless ref with the same "name" to refer to it again: <ref name="whatever"/>. There's no button as far as I know, just enter the "name" attribute on the <ref> tag as shown. Anomie⚔ 03:56, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. That's just the way it looks. Great job on the BOT. Keep up the good work. Appreciate the time spent in thoughtful response.Wikiuser100 (talk) 13:08, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Masking of vandalism by bot

The bot picked up an orphaned reference here. Unfortunately the reason for the discrepancy in the reference was due to vandalism and the insertion of a copyvio by the previous editor. The bot, intent on its work, picked up the orphaned ref, but, of course, (not being programmed for it), missed the vandalism. The intervening edit by the bot evidently made it harder for subsequent editors to spot the vandalism. I'm not sure what could be done about this, but it is a problem, IMO. Sunray (talk) 18:37, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Please read the information box at the top of the page, and the several sections above regarding this issue. Anomie⚔ 19:00, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I had read your talk page was well aware of the bot's purpose and capabilities. The problem—which evidently has occurred before with this bot—was that vandalism interfered with some of the refs in the article. The bot dutifully repaired one of the citations affected (see my previous diff). Then an IP editor came along and apparently tried to fix some of the vandalism (but apparently had no idea what the real problem was, due to the bot's intervention). What should have been a simple revert, instead became a problem of having to go back and find the problem, revert to the pre-bot version and then check that later edits were also dealt with. I am saying that relatively straightforward vandalism was made more difficult to deal with by the bot's intervention. Would you be willing to consider how this might be dealt with to prevent further problems of this nature? Sunray (talk) 20:34, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I thought you hadn't read any of the above because you didn't say anything that hasn't been discussed to death above. As noted above, feel free to revert the bot's edits along with the vandal's, the bot won't be offended. And as I said above several times, I'm willing to entertain specific suggestions, but they must have a near-zero false positive rate (and they should not be anything already discussed above). Do you actually have any, or are you just here to complain?

I would love to see how you would have the bot determine that the edit you cite is vandalism rather than a legitimate revision. Anomie⚔ 20:57, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Err I'm going to suggest something -- delay bot behaviour to only edit after an autoconfirmed user's edit or increase the edit delay time period, or use a dynamic time period based upon edit history (constant*average edit rate or 90 minutes, whichever is less) -- perhaps some vandalism studies would be useful here User A1 (talk) 13:41, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Why should IP editors not have their errors fixed? Just below is a section where an IP editor came to thank AnomieBOT for correcting a reference error they couldn't figure out. And what happens if it's a quiet article that is not being heavily watched? The brokenness stays for an arbitrary period of time just because no one in the "privileged" class decided to edit? No thanks.

As has been mentioned above, ClueBot and RC patrollers get most vandalism within 5 minutes, waiting for longer periods of time doesn't tend to gain much. The "dynamic time period" idea might work, but I would have to be convinced with specific analysis that there is a useful correlation between some "activity" metric and time to revert vandalism. If you want to do some vandalism studies, feel free. Anomie⚔ 16:14, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

As I understand A1's comment, his first suggestion is only to delay the bot until after an autoconfirmed editor edits the article. The bot would still make the correction. There might be a significant time-lag in some lesser-patrolled articles, as you suggest, but would that really be a significant problem? The bot has plenty else to do meantime. Sunray (talk) 16:27, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the bot spends a decent portion of its time these days idle. ;) Seriously though, the "significant time-lag" could theoretically be forever. I also see no reason why an IP or non-autoconfirmed editor's edit needs to be somehow "approved" by an autoconfirmed editor before being corrected (remember, not every IP is a vandal), especially since the autoconfirmed editor may not even know they are "approving" anything. Anomie⚔ 18:58, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, most vandalism does come from IPs and most vandalism patrols are conducted by autoconfirmed editors. It wouldn't be the end of the world if the occasional ref didn't get dealt with, IMO. Sunray (talk) 20:03, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

IMO, it's not the end of the world if someone has to revert one extra revision to clean up the vandalism. Anomie⚔ 22:19, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

It was for me!  ;-) Actually, it did take awhile to figure out what had happened. There were four edits, (including the bot's), after the vandalism and I had no way of knowing that the vandalism had occurred immediately before the bot's edit. I had to narrow it down. It took much more time than I like to spend correcting simple vandalism, hence my report to you. But you don't seem to be too concerned about it. Oh well, I tried. Sunray (talk) 00:57, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

(undent) And so I step in to say that I had similar incidents of having to work harder on vandalism reversion because of the bot's actions than if the bot had behaved in a different manner. I think the delay is a god idea, as it takes me up to a day to do vandalism patrol on my 4000+ watchlist. Hell, having the bot wait a week wouldn't be earth-shattering, and it would save at least two people from this kind of headache. And there's always the unreported headaches... - UtherSRG (talk) 05:45, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much

Hi there ANOMIE, VASCO from PORTUGAL here,

Just want to say the following: Regarding MALICK BADIANE (basketball player)'s article, i was trying to fix/compose/correct his page when i screwed up something i could not fix. I sent 3 messages asking for help, you were not one of them, but i take advantage of this opportunity to say: TY VERY MUCH FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTION!!!

Happy weekend(s), from PORTUGAL VASCO AMARAL - --217.129.67.28 (talk) 03:46, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Another thank you

Another thank you. You just fixed my poor copy and pasting here. What a great bot - checking up on all the little details people often fail to notice and then actually fixing them! Thank you for putting so much effort into this tool. -- SiobhanHansa 12:13, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Wow, we have a bot for retrieving misplaced references? Thanks, –thedemonhog talk • edits 00:21, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Incomplete job?

Hi,

I think the bot may have not fully completed its assigned task with this edit. Shouldn't the <ref name=autogenerated2/> been translated to <ref name="autogenerated2">URL</ref> rather than <ref name=autogenerated2>URL</ref> ? Otherwise good idea & thanks for the bot! User A1 (talk) 13:38, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it is not an error to leave off the quotes (as long as the value is drawn from a small set of characters), or to use single quotes instead of double quotes. AnomieBOT uses whatever formatting was used in the revision the reference was rescued from; as you can see in rev 244119749, quotes were not used there either. Anomie⚔ 17:43, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Too fast?

I am not sure, but the bot is sometimes quick to resque references, which were damaged in vandalism. E.g.:

• 09:36; diff vandalises Force
• 09:42; diff Rescues refs.

I may be whining, but now I can't rollback the editor anymore, and if I undo the vandalism, the document may be strange. And this is the second time this happens to me on the same article. Is there a way of solving this? Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:10, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

It looks like you did the right thing there, no one minds if you undo the bot's edit too. I've yet to see any real workable suggestions avoiding your issue. Ilmari Karonen did suggest a log to make it easier to watch the bot's contribs to catch the missed vandalism, which I implemented, but I haven't yet heard how well that is working out. Anomie⚔ 11:06, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Quite nicely, thank you, but I don't really have the time to review it more than occasionally and I don't know if anyone else is actively patrolling it (yet). The only bit that's slightly annoying is that the part that mostly interests me — who broke the refs and what summary they gave — is in small type, while things like recovered ref names and revision numbers that I couldn't care less about are in normal type. But that's a minor issue, and something I could fix with a bit of custom CSS if I really cared enough to bother. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 03:03, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Dirk Beetstra that the bot occasionally kicks into action too quickly after blanking of sections. Time delay of 30 minutes? Log + patrolling? I dunno. JFW | T@lk 06:51, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd suggest a longer delay. I think it depends on how fast people check watchlists. For me it's typically about hourly when I'm on Wikipedia, but that's not all the time! 24 hours might sound like a lot, but woudl allow for watchers to have lives, and also for the occasional massive restructure of singl eartciles or groups of articles.

On the subject for structures, can editors run AnomieBOT for themselves on one or more specified articles? How about on every article that links to X or is linked by X? -- Philcha (talk) 10:57, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Requesting that the bot visits a page

Hey, I've just come across this bot's activities repairing orphaned references. First off, it's a great idea, and the bot's doing an awesome job! You should award yourself a barnstar or something. Anyway, I came here to enquire whether it was possible to ask the bot to take a look at a specific page - quite a bit of editing involves restructuring articles into multiple articles, and tracking down the "parent" reference manually is often a bit of a chore. But I also wondered whether I could help out with calculating the equivalence of references, so that the bot can work out when multiple references found in linked pages are equivalent, and when that one different digit is of large significance. I've got quite a few citation-handling functions built as part of my Citation bot toolkit and I'm sure I could adapt them to plug in to your bot if you wanted. All the best, Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 23:36, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! I wouldn't know which barnstar to pick, though.

The bot already checks any page linked from the problem page and any page that links to the problem page if the dig through the page history comes up empty; I guess the situation would be that the "source" articles don't exist anymore or don't have the reference left in their current version? It would have to be some sort of invisible template on the page pointing to the pages (and oldids) to check. I'll have to think about that. If you have a sample of a page AnomieBOT didn't find the references for, let me know; maybe there's something else I can do to find the source automatically.

Sure, I'm happy to accept code donations! ;) I see in Citation bot's BRFAs that it is written in PHP, and I speak PHP so that works out well. If you speak Perl, you can see what I have now at User:AnomieBOT/source/tasks/OrphanReferenceFixer.pm (search for the comment "To help minimize false dups"). In English, what I have now strips "Retrieved on [date]" text, access(day|monthday|daymonth|year) parameters from templates, and whitespace, and sorts the remaining template parameters. When I did a sampling of messages posted a while back, the remaining false dups were mainly due to people using slightly different values for the title or other parameters of the citation templates. Anomie⚔ 00:38, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Check for vandalism

Like the topic says, AnomieBOT should be checking for previous (and fairly obvious) vandalism rather than overwriting the article in question with so-called fixes. See the following revisions for an example. I realize that a bot can't check for everything, but near-page blanking from an IP user should be a priority; else, it can easily cause problems when users don't notice, as I'll point out with this former revert of a month's worth of edits (masked by an AWB user's edit on an IP user's vandalism). - Io Katai (talk) 01:01, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Please read the big notice at the top of the page. Thanks. Anomie⚔ 03:35, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but I'm not suggesting you change it into an anti-vandal bot, however I do believe that to a certain extent, AnomieBOT should be verifying basic things such as page blanking before moving on to correcting references and whatnots. This is not for the sake of vandalism, but for actual users to be able to detect the vandalism. And judging by AnomieBOT's history of contributions, this isn't a one-time thing, but a recurring issue. - Io Katai (talk) 05:57, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Feel free to make specific suggestions. For example, how exactly is the bot supposed to differentiate "page blanking" from "cleaning up the article to remove excessive trivia and other cruft" or "splitting per WP:SUMMARY" or "removing WP:POV/WP:BLP violations"? The latter are exactly why this bot exists.

If the bot is somehow "masking" vandalism from you, perhaps you should reconsider your processes. As you noted earlier, human editors can easily "mask" edits too; I can't count the number of times a vandal has replaced a section with garbage, and then a well-meaning editor just removes the garbage without restoring the deleted section. I've even seen some vandals try to "mask" their own vandalism in that way. None of that is a problem when people look at more than just the most recent edit. Anomie⚔ 12:11, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I nearly missed some vandalism to seed (deletion of 80+% of the article, spread over 4 edits) because of a subsequent edit by AnomieBot. For a specific modification to the bot which we alleviate the masking problem, the bot could refrain from making edits to an article that has been modified in the last, say, 24 hours, which would provide a window of opportunity for anti-vandalism bots and human editors to identify and correct the damage. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:50, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Discussed and rejected above; there is no pressing reason for heavily- (or even moderately-) edited articles to never have their references fixed. Anti-vandalism bots already have a window: 5 minutes, which is really about 4 minutes more than they need.

A better way to not miss edits is to not assume any edit isn't covering up earlier vandalism. For example, several times I've seen multiple vandalism edits in a row and then someone only reverts the last bit, and several times I've seen someone replace an entire section with something like "poop!" and then another well-meaning editor removes the "poop!" but doesn't restore the deleted section. Anomie⚔ 13:24, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

What the heck…?

Can you tell me what the deal is with this edit to SS Mauna Loa? The inclusion of references in ship infoboxes—which are rendered via templates—is a standard practice, especially for minor items that may not be worthy of mentioning in the text of the article. This is an article that is at WP:FAC right now and the last thing that is needed are "fixes" to non-existent problems. — Bellhalla (talk) 04:33, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

…And it did it again. What's up? — Bellhalla (talk) 10:27, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

It's hardly "butchering" the references in the article. Did you actually look at the bot's revision before over-reacting? Despite all the moving of reference text, the output of the page looks exactly the same with the exception of reference #35 ("DDC", not one of the ones used in the infobox).

The references "Colton", "LAT-case-oil", "LAT-tribute", "LAT-sn19251215", and "Miramar" are all used in both the infobox and the body of the article. It happens to be somewhat common that people will use an infobox parameter that the infobox doesn't actually display, and if the named reference is given content only in that parameter then it won't be parsed at all and will therefore display as broken on the page. The bot moves the content to the copy of the reference in the article body to fix that problem; in this case that wasn't actually necessary, but it's still good preventative maintenance. Anomie⚔ 12:14, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, in that case if it ain't broke… don't fix it make a trivial edit. — Bellhalla (talk) 13:15, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

You do realize that you've left the article with a broken reference? Also, without hardcoding the intricacies of every infobox template on Wikipedia into the bot, it's hard for it to tell which infobox parameters are safe to define references in and which aren't. As Anomie notes, moving the reference definitions outside the infobox also protects against future breakage, should the infobox be changed e.g. to deprecate one of the fields that contain reference definitions. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:50, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

(outdent)My apologies for the overreaction and my failure to assume good faith. That happened at the end of a couple of really long and hectic days and I should have just stayed away from the computer. If I'd looked more closely at the edits I would have seen your correction of the ref that I broke when I commented something out of the article. Again, please accept my humble apology and my thanks for the work that you do in fixing broken refs throughout Wikipedia. — Bellhalla (talk) 19:18, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

It's no problem at all, apology accepted. Anomie⚔ 22:33, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

TY, TY

Thanks much for fixing the refs on Geneva Conference (1954). I hope that section will finally put to rest the use of the word 'partition' to describe the Geneva Agreements' ceasefire zones. Anarchangel (talk) 07:08, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

More thanks, beautiful bot with its archived refs rescuing Sherurcij ^{(speaker for the dead)} 03:58, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I also wanted to thank this bot for its help in fixing references. Good job! 75.111.198.59 (talk) 21:47, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

W. G. Grace

Unfortunately, at the same time as making a valid correction the bot seems somehow to have deleted an entire section from the article, so I'm reverting its edit. Oops. Just seen that it was the previous edit that deleted that section, not the bot. Sorry! JH (talk page) 19:01, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Ronald DeWolf

[4] and [5] - Please have the bot stop adding these links back. These are links to an inappropriate source. Thanks. Cirt (talk) 18:30, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

In your first edit, you removed one instance of the named reference but left an orphaned reference to it elsewhere in the article. AnomieBOT fixed it by copying the content from the previous revision into the orphaned reference. Then, instead of doing the smart thing and removing the other instance of the reference, you and User:DragonFire1024 just kept reverting it back to the broken state. I have no sympathy for such counterproductive actions. Anomie⚔ 21:45, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I did not realize that was the case, thank you for explaining it to me. However please be more polite in the future in the corrective language. Thank you, Cirt (talk) 22:06, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Please accept my apologies for any offense. Anomie⚔ 22:09, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay thank you. Cirt (talk) 22:13, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

what a great bot

"rescuing orphaned refs" is an excellent idea for a bot task. dab (𒁳) 19:56, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

The BOT damages other tags in a WPBS

I noticed on multiple places that the BOT damages other tags in a WPBS Wiki Project Banner Shell, see for example Talk:Edsger W. Dijkstra.

I just experienced the same problem with these three articles:

• FitzHugh–Nagumo model
• John A. Dillon (talk)
• Mark Newman (talk)

I hope you can fix this. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 13:21, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the report. I'll run something over the bot's contribs to find any other articles with this problem. Anomie⚔ 13:41, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

It turns out there are some few articles that did not follow the WPBS instructions to use {{WPBS|1=...}} (they leave out the "1="), and the bot code foolishly assumed the "1=" would always be there. All pages the bot broke seem to have been fixed, and I've fixed the bot code (it'll be uploaded later). Anomie⚔ 21:45, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Ok sorry, I guess I created this myself. In the field of systems science I assessed some 1700+ articles, using the WPBS. But indeed I didn't use the "1=". The WPBS template works without this code just as well, so I don't understand, that extra coding!? -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 22:05, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

No problem, I should have taken it into account in my code. Since it works now, I suspect that the old parser would see {{WPBS|{{WikiProject foo|class=FA}}}} as being the parameter {{WikiProject foo|class with value FA rather than the first unnamed parameter with value {{WikiProject foo|class=FA}}. The new parser still has the same "problem" with constructs like {{foo|http://www.example.org?foo=bar}}. Anomie⚔ 00:50, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Homosexual readings of Jesus and John

The bot keeps adding a dead link to this page (″rescuing orphaned refs″). Please fix the problem. Thanks, --Dr. Bobbie Fox (talk) 12:20, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

In this edit, you removed one instance of the reference named "Norton". However, you neglected to remove the other three uses of the reference later in the article, which left it broken. AnomieBOT did its job and fixed the reference by copying the old reference text to one of the remaining instances. You then started arbitrarily reverting the bot instead of fixing the problem. Please pay closer attention in the future. Anomie⚔ 13:04, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Tagging for WP:Canada

Could anomie bot tag

A)Category:Years of the 18th century in Canada, Category:Years of the 19th century in Canada, Category:Years of the 20th century in Canada, Category:Years of the 21st century in Canada (no subcats tagging is necessary) with {{WikiProject Canada|class=XXX|importance=mid|history=yes}} where XXX is whatever the bot can figure out.

B) Same for Category:Elections in Canada by year (all 1st level subcat articles), but with a twist. Most of these article are named according to "Jurisdiction" "type of election", "year" scheme (example Nova Scotia general election, 1867). If the jurisdiction is a province, then the bot should tag them as part of that workgroup as well. Aka default behaviour is {{WikiProject Canada|class=XXX|importance=mid|cangov=yes}}, but if a province is part of the title, add

• Newfoundland and Labrador → nl=yes
• Prince Edward Island → pe=yes
• New Brunswick → nb=yes
• Nova Scotia → ns=yes
• Quebec → qc=yes
• Ontario → on=yes
• Manitoba → mb=yes
• Saskatchewan → sk=yes
• Alberta → ab=yes
• British-Columbia → bc=yes
• Yukon → yt=yes
• Northwest Territories → nt=yes
• Nunavut → nu=yes

Thanks. I've already contacted WP:Canada btw.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 23:16, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

For clarity, the discussions at WP:Canada are at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Canada#"Years in Canada importance" and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Canada#Election in Canada. I've asked a question at each for confirmation and clarification. Unless someone objects, I'll start running it in a few days. Anomie⚔ 03:41, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Kudos

Very intelligent bot. Dc76\^talk 14:30, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Sheesh, and here I show up thinking this bot is well due some praise and I have been beaten to it several times! Seriously, this bot is genius. Bigbluefish (talk) 23:03, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Bot tag flag

Hey there...

Your bot has taken over some very teadious work at IfD... thanks.

One thing tho, the bot's edits are not coming up with the bot flag which I can then filter out of my watch list.

Thanks. --Jordan 1972 (talk) 04:48, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Anomie⚔ 12:08, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

New task for AnoimieBot

Given the success of the bot's work at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion, do you think the same work could be added for the deletion process at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images. Generally the page heirarchy exists, so I'm hoping that it wouldn't be too difficult to transfer the code/process to the these pages. Skier Dude (talk) 05:52, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm actually waiting on any reply from the denizens of PUI at WT:PUI#Bot request; is there a better page than that to ask those questions? Anomie⚔ 12:08, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Orphaned refs

Is it possible to ask the bot to fix the refs on a specific article? That way I only have to name the refs and AnomieBOT will copy about two dozen of them for me, ie from Don Tallon with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 to Ron Saggers with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948. I did link them mutually but the bot didn't detect this one! :) If this works I don't have to fill in the refs on the other articles in this series and just quote it and it will be autocopied and pasted? Great says the primate!YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 23:45, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

At the moment, there is no way to tell the bot to check a page besides making sure there is a reference error on the page. It should have picked up the refs from Don Tallon into Ron Saggers, but (according to the User:AnomieBOT/OrphanReferenceFixer log it skipped Ron Saggers because a reference contained another ref inside its parameters. Hopefully my edit here is enough to get the bot to process the page. Anomie⚔ 04:58, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, ping again for Doug Ring with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948, Colin McCool with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 and Ron Hamence with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948. Thanks YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 01:32, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I found a bug thanks to your queries! The detection of whether a reference found in multiple linked articles is a duplicate or not was wrongly including the <ref> tag, so using quotes around the name in one article and not the other was causing false detection of differences. Anomie⚔ 03:17, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Well that's good. Is that why it is saying "I don't know which of these is correct" even though the "sched" refs were the same? YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 03:24, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, probably. Anomie⚔ 20:36, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Bot rm. 40k of text

See diff of Cinema of Iran. FUBAR? feydey (talk) 04:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

API bug, actually. Apparently certain API queries in certain conditions will truncate the page text. Anomie⚔ 12:30, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Handy bot

Thanks.[6] --KP Botany (talk) 03:31, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

biographybase.com

Please don't have your bot add references to biographybase.com back to articles when they are correctly removed.[7][8] Biographybase.com is a copy of wikipedia from around 2004 and is not a WP:RS reliable source. 24.177.121.141 (talk) 04:56, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Please remove the references completely, instead of leaving orphans. Thanks. Anomie⚔ 05:10, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

What are you talking about? 24.177.121.141 (talk) 06:05, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I see now. I don't know how I missed those pieces. 24.177.121.141 (talk) 06:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Zion Levi

Hi, I know I was having problems with inserting those references, but how does it help that your bot deleted them altogether? Please reinsert the Mishpacha Magazine references correctly. Thank you, Yoninah (talk) 23:26, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

You were missing the quotes: <ref name="''Mishpacha'' Magazine">. You should also look into WP:CITE#HOW, you'll likely need to include the article name, author, publisher, issue number/date, page numbers, and so on in your reference; {{cite magazine}} can help you with all that. Anomie⚔ 01:41, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. I was trying to copy and paste the format from another article into this one, and I see it didn't work. I will look up the explanation page you suggested and learn how to do this once and for all! Yoninah (talk) 14:25, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Tagging for WP:SPIRITS

Hey, I'm from WikiProject Spirits and I'm looking to see if you could get the bot to tag all articles in Category: Distilled beverages and all its subclasses with {{WikiProject Spirits}} and change all existing instances of {{WPSPIRIT}} to {{WikiProject Spirits}}

I've posted a discussion on the project talk page here Thanks! Cabe6403 ^{(Talk•Sign!)} 21:08, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

The issues you raised have been addressed in the project talk page. Cheers Cabe6403 ^{(Talk•Sign!)} 12:26, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Hey, just wondering if you could give me a rough date the bot will start its runs? Much Appreciated --Cabe6403 ^{(Talk•Sign!)} 10:09, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I normally give the discussion a week, which would be tomorrow. But I may start it today, I haven't decided yet. Anomie⚔ 12:12, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Wow!

You know, being at work and all, I had planned to go chasing those orphaned references when I got home today, but that was such a seriously huge help to me, I just had to come and say a big thank you!

AnomieBOT thanks you for the barnstar. Anomie⚔ 17:17, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Wow with knobs on!

Amazing, is all I can say. I was scrabbling round to find the missing ref data, and hey presto! it was done for me. Ty 07:26, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

		The da Vinci Barnstar
		Fixing the orphan refs by bot is just - brilliant! Ty 07:26, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Cricket request

Could the bot have another look at Sid Barnes with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948, Neil Harvey with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948, Bill Brown with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948, Lindsay Hassett with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948, Sid Barnes with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948, Donald Bradman with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 and Ian Johnson with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948. I have added some more seealos/main links that should trigger the remaining orphan refs that are identical to the others in the set. Thanks again. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 02:28, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

More (film)

I don't know a lot about these boxes at the top of talk pages, but I'm wondering why the box at the top of Talk:More (film), which your bot updated, says "needs-infobox=yes" and "needs-image=yes" when it has both. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 03:54, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

"needs-infobox=yes" was there since April 2007. The bot's current task is to replace the obsolete {{filmimage}} template (which was also on the page since April 2007) with the new "needs-image=yes" parameter to the {{Film}} template. I see the infobox and image were both added to the article in April 2008, but the person who added them did not update the talk page. You can go ahead and remove those parameters, since as you note they are no longer needed. Anomie⚔ 04:17, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Recovering refs from other articles

Wow, you are one awesome bot! I had moved parts of 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict‎ to 2008 Israel-Hamas ceasefire, lost some named refs in the process... Then you come along and make it all look so easy :)

Cheers and many thanks! pedrito - talk - 16.01.2009 14:17

Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

I requested in Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 24#IRC a bot and I should ask you. There are three templates called

• Template:IRC networks
• Template:IRC footer
• Template:IRC bots
• Template:IRC clients

the first three should be removed, the 3rd renamed in Template:Internet Relay Chat, and on every page should add the template (some pages have no template at all). Can you do that for me? mabdul 0=* 15:54, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

• added one more template mabdul 0=* 15:59, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm currently working on these, and none of them should be removed. The final version of the footer will be transcluded from these templates which also handle placing articles within the various IRC categories. Tothwolf (talk) 02:43, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Just in case someone stumbles across this later, it's pretty much complete now. I just forgot to leave a comment here as I did on the WikiProject Computing talk page. Tothwolf (talk) 00:54, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Amazing bot

Your "rescue" of orphan references is deeply appreciated. Thanks --Incidious (talk) 01:15, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Similar comment as previous sections

I just read through the comments here about the bot fixing references broken due to vandalism. As a suggestion would it be possible for the bot to leave a comment on the talk page of the article that it has just fixed rather than, or in addition to, creating the log file? CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 22:00, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

It would be possible, but I'm not sure it would be a good idea; that would have been 2400+ talk page comments in the past month for little real gain. It would also require a new BRFA. Anomie⚔ 02:40, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

OK. No problem. It's really only an issue when the bot fixes the references and a month or more goes by before someone notices that there is a whole section missing. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 15:11, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The same happens to articles when the bot doesn't have anything to fix; chances are that a bot note on the talk page of an unwatched article isn't going to get any more attention than the original problem edit did. Wikipedia would be better served by recruiting for Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol. Anomie⚔ 16:22, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

You're probably right. Hard to believe that that on an article that gets a lot of edits the removal was missed. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 19:22, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

In response to the featured article Chad having its History section disappear for two weeks after its removal got buried by the bot and vandalism and reversion six minutes later, a proposed procedure:

Bot notices broken ref

Did the last edit remove a section header?

If no, fix ref.

If yes, wait 24 hours before checking again.

Thoughts? - BanyanTree 03:19, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Or better yet, just don't erroneously assume that just because some bot edited the page that there is no reason to see what other edits have been made recently. Sometimes even human RC patrollers will revert one vandal's edits but accidentally leave an earlier vandal's in place. Anomie⚔ 04:28, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

The "Suck it up, you lazy bastards"-type responses on this page are not particularly helpful. If the functioning of a bot requires long-time editors to change how they interact with the site (e.g. whether or not bots edits are hidden), the bot has a flaw. Not the humans. I find it weird that your solution to an issue with a bot, which I thought were created to take the workload off the fallible humans, is to urge the humans to be less fallible.

In this case, I think the 5-minute wait coupled with the "BOT" in the name is confusing patrollers who are used to bots that swoop in right after new edits to do some sort of cursory due diligence that they're not compounding a problem. In the case of Chad, the article had gone well over a year in FA status without a major problem, despite having the misfortune of being both obscure and having the same title as a relatively common Anglophone first name, which results in an unusually large amount of vandalism for a relatively tiny number of watching editors, up till this bot came in and apparently confused an RC patroller. - BanyanTree 05:00, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

"I want to do things in a way that has well-known failure modes, so your bot shouldn't do its job"-type complaints are not particularly helpful either. Why are you not complaining about any of these?

• [9] Vandalism "hidden" by ClueBot reverting a later vandal.
• [10] Vandalism "hidden" by ClueBot reverting a later vandal.

Or these, for that matter?

• [11] Vandalism "hidden" by User:A new name 2008 reverting a later vandal.
• [12] Vandalism "hidden" by User:IcewedgeHugglesGoats! reverting a later vandal.

Apparently you can't even count on bots or humans specifically reverting vandalism to not "hide" other vandalism. You're welcome to join Ilmari Karonen in checking the bot's log to catch vandalism the RC patrollers missed. Anomie⚔ 13:41, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't have any respect for the WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS argument, in all of its forms, or straw man arguments. I get the feeling that we've reached the point of diminishing returns in this discussion. Cheers, BanyanTree 13:56, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Point Betsie Light

Footnotes 6 & 8 could be cojmpbined with Footnote 1, I think. Happy editing. 7&6=thirteen (talk) 00:48, 4 February 2009 (UTC) Stan

Thanks...

...for catching this. Good work. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 14:52, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Some advice

Hi, Your BOT seems to be providing a useful service, but it seems to have some issues that could use improvement. Reading through some of the give and take on the criticism above, and without being judgmental, I'm not going to offer the observation that I came here to offer but I am going to offer some advice. It may apply or it may be off base, so take it for what it is worth. I've worked in the software industry for a long time and I see this sort of thing all the time with developers who have only had a few opportunities to create. They are understandable proud of what it is that they have created and part of their self identification includes that creation. Then people start to use it. Those people, most of whom could not create the thing themselves, offer feedback that ranges from ignorant to insightful in manners that range from insulting to genuinely helpful. Less experienced developers get defensive and try to either educate the user or otherwise negate the input. More experienced developers just thank all of them for their patience and their feedback then try to glean out the useful tidbits from the garbage. ("That arrogant moron says it keeps shutting itself off, maybe I should put a cover over the power switch.") There is no profit in telling people that they are wrong (and they usually aren't, they're just not right.) The profit comes from accepting all the input and finding both the patterns and the details that show you how to improve your creation. Celestra (talk) 16:56, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your input. Anomie⚔ 01:29, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

OrphanReferenceFixer: Blacklisted orphaned reference in Annette Obrestad - Fixed

When trying to fix orphaned refs in Annette Obrestad, MediaWiki's spam blacklist complained about http://www.pokerverdict.com. This probably means someone didn't properly clean up after themselves when blacklisting the link and removing existing uses, but a human needs to double-check it. The attempted changes were:

• Annette Obrestad revision 271953855:
  • Rescued "hipwell" from rev 271715480
    Removed in revision 271953295 by 79.193.59.168 (talk • contribs • logs) with comment "/* Online poker */" (removed 458/7350 bytes, 6%)

AnomieBOT⚡ 08:06, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Removed problem refs, and notified the blacklisting-requester that post-blacklist link cleanup is needed. Anomie⚔ 12:07, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Strange edit

What happened here? It seemed to add something from the Wilco discography to Fleet Foxes. Strange non? Sillyfolkboy (talk) 13:55, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

There was no reference named "UK" in any revision of Fleet Foxes. So then the bot checked all the pages Fleet Foxes links to, in case a section was split out, but that didn't work either. Then it tried pages linking to Fleet Foxes, in case it was a poorly-done merge, and found a ref named "UK" in Wilco discography.

When I look into it, the reference was added in this edit as a copy-paste from Dream Theater discography and not well corrected (considering that ref 27 still links to a page about Dream Theater's discography). Anomie⚔ 00:42, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Hilarious. I'll be sure to give Lyriani the hair-dryer treatment in the post-match dressing room. PS: That's one smartly designed but you've got there! Sillyfolkboy (talk) 12:26, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

(edited:) Misguided warning

Section title edited, as it was originally the entire contents of the below message.

Welcome to Wikipedia, and thank you for your contributions, including your edits to Jad_Choueiri. However, please be aware of Wikipedia's policy that biographical information about living persons must not be libelous. Any controversial statements about a living person added to an article, or any other Wikipedia page, must include proper sources. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattswartz (talk • contribs) 03:14, 1 March 2009

You do realize you're warning a bot, right? And the edit the bot made was this, which only restored the text of a reference to an Egypt Today article that was removed by User:129.13.72.198 in the previous edit? I suggest you take a bit more time to look at the situation in the future before tossing off warnings randomly. Thanks. Anomie⚔ 04:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

My bad. I see your edit now. I do hope you can see where I was coming from. Read the current version of "Jad Choueiri" and see what I mean. I couldn't care less whether Mr Choueiri is gay or not. I happen to be gay myself. But come on, this is ridiculous. Did you catch some of the translations for his songs? As a former journalist, and future librarian, I couldn't let this go. You seem to know more than me when it comes to navigating Wikipedia and understanding its cryptic, long-winded policies. (Notice how 129.13.72.198 is very quiet now! And how does an IP address contribute to articles anyway?) If you know how to fix this idiocy, your help would be appreciated.Mattswartz (talk) 14:53, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

No problem. One of Wikipedia's central tenants is that no one needs to sign up for an account in order to edit; when someone doesn't bother to create an account, the edit is credited to their IP address instead. Many vandals seem to fall in the "I'm drunk" category, FWIW.

The easiest way to fix the vandalism is to use the page history, click the "cur" link on the line of the last non-vandal edit, verify that nothing good was added, and then use the "undo" link in the header of the right-hand column. In cases where there are good edits interspersed between the bad ones, you'll have to merge those back in by hand (or, equivalently, remove the vandalism by hand). The people at Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit should be able to give you more help. Anomie⚔ 21:38, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

"fixing" links in vandalized pages

Please think about making the bot a bit smarter and more careful when editing vandalized pages. I am tires to repeat again and again that bots running after anon edits create more problems and work than fix. - 7-bubёn >t 17:03, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

As the box at the top of the page says, if you have specific suggestions I will entertain them. Random complaints do not help. Anomie⚔ 22:21, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Mistake in Retribution (film)

This move [13] by AnomieBOT seems to be a mistake. The rationale for the diff is: "Moving deprecated website, amg_id, and imdb_id from {{Infobox Film}} to External links per request". but the web site is not deprecated, and the amg_id, and imdb_id still belong to the "Infobox Film" template. I think it is a mistake. Hervegirod (talk) 00:48, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, my mistake. I just saw the part about that on the Template page. It's OK. Hervegirod (talk) 00:53, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

No problem. Anomie⚔ 01:07, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Duplicating links

Is it possible to have the bot check to see if the external link being moved from the infobox already exists in the external link section? In this edit, it duplicated the link. cheers, –xeno (talk) 17:11, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

The issue there is that those aren't exactly the same link; one has a "/" at the end that the other doesn't and I didn't think to tell the bot to count it as the same if that's the only difference. I think I already have that fixed as of 2009-03-04 01:20 (UTC), let me know (and drop a note here to stop the bot) if you see the bot do it after that time. Thanks! Anomie⚔ 18:03, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

gotcha. cheers. –xeno (talk) 19:10, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Victoria Falls

I suggest that the references restorec by the bot in this edit are not actually helpful, one is more or lessOR. Babakathy (talk) 13:10, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Then remove them. What happened is that someone deleted the content of the named reference but left other uses in the article; i.e. someone removed the <ref name="Google">...</ref> but left <ref name="Google"/> elsewhere, which results in a in the article. The bot detected this situation, and replaced one of the remaining <ref name="Google"/> with <ref name="Google">...</ref>; note it did not add the reference back to where it was deleted, it added the content to one of the remaining uses in the article.

If you want to remove the reference named "Google" completely from the article, make sure you go through and remove every <ref name="Google"/> so as to not leave any . Same goes for the other two. Anomie⚔ 13:30, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Babakathy (talk) 15:32, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I had thought the bot was inserting new refs, now I understand. However, somehow it was collecting a different title for the <ref name="Google">...</ref> - referring to a guide to Egypt instead of Zambia! Anyway, I have now sorted it manually. Babakathy (talk) 15:43, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm thinking of adding some code to the bot to detect when an article is broken because someone reverted the bot's edit like you did, and have it post a note to the person's talk page with a slightly more detailed version of the explanation I gave you above. Specifically, it would detect if the current revision is the same as the current-2 revision, and the current-1 revision was done by the bot (and is the same as the edit the bot is going to make). Would that be helpful?

BTW, did you mean the Spectrum ref rather than the Google ref? I see in the page history that an IP user changed that in February and (I guess) no one reverted. Anomie⚔ 17:29, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes! Google issue was something else - I rather think referencing the length of something to "measurements I made on google earth" is original research. Babakathy (talk) 17:43, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

New task request

Would it be possible for AnomieBOT to close PUIs automatically where the image is a fair use image? This could be detected by looking for the text {{non-free or membership in a subcategory of Category:Fair use images, and the closure text could be "The result of the debate was: Out of scope. This image is declared to be a non-free image; PUI is for processing images that are claimed to be free but the claim is doubted. Images that have a disputed fair use rationale should be tagged {{subst:dfu|reason}} or listed at WP:NFR." Stifle (talk) 16:10, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Would Category:All non-free media work for the check? It's much easier to check for membership in just one category than for membership in an entire subtree (just because the bot has to load every category in the subtree looking for subcategories). Anomie⚔ 00:59, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

That seems like it would be fine. Stifle (talk) 18:21, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Please see the query at WT:PUI#Non-free images listed here. Thanks. Anomie⚔ 03:51, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

There are no further objections there; can you please add this task to AnomieBOT when you have time? Stifle (talk) 10:16, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure. You're second in line, though ;) Anomie⚔ 23:56, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Possible new task request

I'm not sure if this is possible, as it's a rather odd combination.... I am doing a lot of organizational stuff for WikiProject Florida, and one of the rather frustrating things is that almost all of the talk pages (which contain the template for the project) list under "T", for "talk", which is sometimes frustrating when working on groups of articles alphabetically. I can use the "listas" parameter in the {{WPFlorida}} template to fix that, but with over 6200 articles, that could get just a tiny bit tedious if done manually. The part that makes this tricky is that not all of the listas parameters are the same; we'd like to file people under "last name, first name", while places would be filed alphabetically. I'm not worried about the people yet; I'd just like to start with places. Is there any way to take the list of articles in the subpages in Category:Settlements in Florida (it's quite recursive, but there are no surprises; everything inside is a place in Florida), and add the "listas" parameter to the {{WPFlorida}} template on the talk page? I'm hoping that I've made my request clear, and that it is possible. Horologium (talk) 20:00, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Why not just make the default value of the "listas" parameter {{PAGENAME}}, and/or try to get the sysadmins to fix T18552? Anomie⚔ 22:50, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

<MEGO> I had trouble following that discussion, but a)it's a couple of months old and b)it doesn't seem to directly address what I had proposed. However, the WP discussion appears that the task is even more hopeless, since it has to be applied to every template on the page in the same way (if I'm reading that correctly). Gahhh. Horologium (talk) 23:18, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

The bug is a couple of months old, but it seems to directly address your problem: it proposes changing a configuration setting so the namespace is ignored in the default category sortkey. In other words, instead of sorting [[Category:Whatever]] on Talk:Florida under "T" for Talk, it would sort it under "F" for Florida which would eliminate the need for most of those listas parameters. Anomie⚔ 23:25, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, now I understand. I went ahead and registered at Bugzilla and voted for T18552. It now has 10 votes, whatever that means... (Poking around, it appears that there are 63 bugs with more votes, so it's not high on the priority list.) Oh, well. Horologium (talk) 23:52, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

wrong BR tag

Robot [14] wrote external link into two rows. It can be written in one row. It used <BR> tag but correct is <BR/> tag. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Check Wikipedia for details. --Snek01 (talk) 12:00, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

It copied what was already entered in the infobox title. Anomie⚔ 22:57, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Error?

[15] - I don't think this makes sense. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 13:53, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Hooray for file redirects. I've proposed a course of action at WT:FFD, unless someone comes up with a better idea I'll implement it in the bot "soon". Anomie⚔ 16:40, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

OrphanReferenceFixer: Trial complete

The trial of Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT 27 has ended. Please check my log file and update the BRFA accordingly. When you have fixed this issue, please change the section title (e.g. append " - Fixed") or remove this section completely. I will repost the notice if the page is still broken or is re-broken. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 06:47, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

External links in {{Infobox Film}}

Hi, is AnomieBOT still working on this? Any indication as to how much has been done or is left to do? Thanks again! PC78 (talk) 22:02, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

At the moment, AnomieBOT has processed 34637 pages for this task, and there are 39146 transclusions of the template in namespace 0. According to the log file, 12779 pages have had links moved, although that could include cases where the edit of the page subsequently failed (the bot would then try the page again later). Anomie⚔ 23:48, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Is the bot only removing these two parameters from articles when they need to be moved to an external links section? Or is it also removing these two parameters from every article? Garion96 (talk) 20:12, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

If at least one of the three needs to be moved, it will remove all three parameters from the infobox. If none need to be moved, it will not edit the page just to remove the parameters. Anomie⚔ 22:26, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Is it handy/practical (bot owner willing) to remove the parameters from the other articles. Not that important I guess but it does clean up. :) Garion96 (talk) 22:36, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I could change it for the remaining articles, but based on the numbers (it's up to 37166 now) it wouldn't have much effect. It might be better to see if it can be added to AWB's "general fixes" or something like that; bot runs to remove template parameters that have no effect are generally not done, as it would be a waste of resources for zero gain. Anomie⚔ 00:00, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, guess you're right. Templates in general change too often anyway. To add it to the AWB general fixes is a good idea. Garion96 (talk) 08:58, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Reflist

Anomiebot seems to have removed the reflist when moving IMDB on Caboblanco. I hope this is not a recurrent problem. [16] Paul B (talk) 16:40, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Bot stopped. Anomie⚔ 16:57, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Damaged pages fixed. Anomie⚔ 21:48, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Bot fixed, restarting. Let me know if you see any other problems. Anomie⚔ 01:11, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for adding the external links to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader article of mine. Fo your information, I've moved the article (Not really moved) to The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. But, I've not so satisfied with your work. The ImdB, Website and Amg are actually apart of Infobox Film template. You can check it there. Anyway, if you like, I thought of, why not you and I come together to write the The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader article ? Answer me on my talk apge.

World Cinema Writer (talk) 11:37, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

And also can you help me find a good film poster for this article. Thank you. World Cinema Writer (talk) 12:00, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I think you have misunderstood the situation here. User:AnomieBOT is a computer program that performs simple, repetitive edits that are too tedious for a human to do. In this case, AnomieBOT spent almost a month (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) checking over 39000 pages using {{Infobox Film}} (and over 6000 using {{Infobox Television}}) after WikiProject Film and WikiProject Television each decided to remove the external links from the infoboxes. Now that the bot is done making sure every article has the links in its External links section, the infobox templates will be edited to ignore those parameters. Anomie⚔ 13:26, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Tagging for WP:GLASS

Hi AnomieX, it's me again. This time for a newly set up taskforce, WP:GLASS.

• Could you convert {{Glass pre-project}} into {{Glass}}?
• After this is done, could you run your usual assessment things like you did for WP:PHYS many times now (tagging redirects as redirects/NA, categories as categories/NA, assessing from other templates (with |auto=yes), etc...)? The template for these categories is {{Glass}}. Relevant categories (no subcats) are:

• Category:Glass
• Category:Glass applications
• Category:Glass art
• Category:Glass engineering and science
• Category:Glass history
• Category:Glass in nature
• Category:Glass makers and brands
• Category:Glass types
• Category:Glass-ceramics
• Category:Glass stubs
• Category:Crystallophones
• Category:Glass architecture
• Category:Windows
• Category:Car windows
• Category:Glass artists
• Category:Glass engravers
• Category:Glassblowers
• Category:Glass forming
• Category:Defunct glassmaking companies
• Category:Glass museums and galleries
• Category:Glassmaking in ancient Greece and Rome
• Category:Ancient Roman glassware
• Category:Glass makers
• Category:Stained glass
• Category:Venetian glass
• Category:Glass containers
• Category:Beer glassware
• Category:Drinking glasses
• Category:Teaware
• Category:Glass bottles
• Category:Glass jars
• Category:Laboratory glassware
• Category:Non-oxide glasses
• Category:Glass trademarks and brands
• Category:Lenses
• Category:Lens manufacturers
• Category:Photographic lenses
• Category:Optical fiber
• Category:Optical filters
• Category:Optical filters
• Category:Prisms
• Category:Refractometers
• Category:Glassmaking companies
• Category:Glass science institutes
• Category:Glassworks in the Czech Republic
• Category:Optics manufacturing companies
• Category:Amorphous solids
• Category:Amorphous silicon
• Category:Materials with minor glass phase
• Category:Stained glass artists and manufacturers
• Category:Stained glass artists and manufacturers of the United States
• Category:Irish stained glass artists and manufacturers
• Category:French stained glass artists and manufacturers
• Category:German stained glass artists and manufacturers
• Category:Australian stained glass artists and manufacturers
• Category:British stained glass artists and manufacturers

You can find the consensus here. Thanks. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure, I'll start the bot in a few minutes. Anomie⚔ 01:48, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Could you also add the "|importance=" as you tag articles? It makes it easier to assess when you don't have to type these 12 characters every time. Thanks.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 02:58, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't it already do it? Anyway, part 1 (assessing existing {{Glass}}/{{Glass pre-project}}) done. Part 2 (replacing any remaining {{Glass pre-project}}) in progress. Part 3 will be releasing the assessor over the categories. Anomie⚔ 03:09, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I just checked: it does seem to add empty class= and importance= when tagging, so we should be good. Anomie⚔ 03:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Part 3 starting. You can R3 {{Glass pre-project}} now. Anomie⚔ 04:05, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Some of these were inappropriate. Not all prisms are glass, for example. Nor are all lenses or optical filters.--Srleffler (talk) 16:34, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh I know. The purpose is twofold: 1) To quickly build a bunch of core of articles which likely fall in the scope of WP:GLASS so that WP:AAlerts can catch PRODs, AfDs, etc... 2) Saving time. "Surgical precision tagging" is very time consuming compared to detagging. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:31, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

imdb link

Hi Anomie! I have found 2 cases in which your bot when removing imdb links from Infobox Film your bot added them to External links, but Imdb title was already there (e.g. Southland Tales, The Woodsman). --Jaqen (talk) 10:56, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

The bot checked for the presence of the IMDb link, not the {{imdb title}} template; this way, it would also detect cases where people added the link using plain wikitext. I was not aware that http://www.imdb.com/title/tt405336/ and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405336/ are equivalent links, so I didn't check for that case. Anomie⚔ 11:54, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Greater delay?

The bot edit (diff) probably obscured the preceding edit from vandalbots. Maybe there should be a delay of many hours/days before AnomieBOT tries to tidy up. That would also reduce the previously mentioned edit conflicts. -- SEWilco (talk) 05:26, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I highly doubt that AnomieBOT "hid" the edit from vandalbots; ClueBot normally triggers within seconds, and I've heard VoABot sometimes beats ClueBot. AnomieBOT didn't edit that particular page until 10 minutes after the vandalism! More likely ClueBot and the others decided not to trigger on that edit for whatever reason, maybe you should ask their bot ops if you're that concerned about it.

I don't think "hours or days" would be particularly useful, especially since AnomieBOT would then never get to edit moderately active articles. AnomieBOT won't get upset if you revert his edit along with the vandalism, even if you use an uncivil edit comment to do so. I collected some statistics above, and it seems the majority of reversions happen within 5 minutes of the previous edit (which is AnomieBOT's current wait time). I'm still considering whether making things slightly easier for less than 12% of reversions would be worth leaving normal edits broken for that much longer. Anomie⚔ 13:59, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Again AnomieBOT processed a vandalized article (diff). Maybe you should coordinate with the vandal bots. -- SEWilco (talk) 05:52, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

This is getting tedious. Sure, in that edit Virus09 was pushing a POV, but without solving the Strong AI problem the bot has no way to know if that was really the case or if Virus09 was fixing the article by removing excessive detail, existing POV-pushing, or even grammatical nonsense. Please let me know which vandalbot would have reverted that edit, I would like to see its code. Anomie⚔ 11:12, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I think a bigger problem is that AnomieBOT's edit also hides the previous edit from watchlists of human editors. I just had an idea, though: SignBot solves the same problem by repeating the author and edit summary of the previous edit in its own summary. AnomieBOT's situation isn't quite the same, but perhaps something similar would work, like:

"Rescuing orphaned refs ("ul") lost in edit by User:Virus09 on 22:27, 16 September 2008 (UTC) (-2,038 bytes): /* Criticism */"

I guess that exact format would only make sense for the cases where all the recovered refs come from a single revision of the same article, but the bot could always revert to a more compact (but less informative) summary for the cases where that isn't true. You might want to also consider a similar format for cases where multiple references are lost in a series of consecutive edits by the same user, e.g.:

"Rescuing orphaned refs ("foo", "bar") lost in 5 edits by User:Example up to 11:38, 22 September 2008 (UTC) (total -24,370 bytes)."

—Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:38, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

That's a great idea, this modified edit summary would solve a long-running problem with this bot. Tim Vickers (talk) 15:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Just adding to the praises ;)

Here, a glass of yummy oil for the bot!

Hi! I was going to give AnomieBOT a cookie for fixing the broken ref on SSRI discontinuation syndrome - I would never have known as I just went straight for a single section, but I'm not sure he actually eats cookies. So I decided to give him a glass of motor oil instead; I hope he likes it! (And, for those who think I should have been a bit more environmentally sound, giving a bot a glass of oil is akin to give a human a cookie in terms of healthiness, no? :-) WnC? 15:52, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

AnomieBOT thanks you! Anomie⚔ 03:11, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Two Things

Well it seems to be your lucky day. I noticed that you just worked on pages concerning the New Castle Air National Guard Base right before I created the page today. I hope that this means that everything will be alright. On another note, I was wondering if you could assess articles in Category:Unassessed Massachusetts articles. Any help would be much appreciated. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 23:47, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

To tell the truth, I have no idea what AnomieBOT may have done on pages related to the New Castle Air National Guard Base. I do see an OrphanReferenceFixer comment on the article's talk page (which you already took care of, good!), or I suppose it could have had to do with the recent WikiProject NATO tagging run; either way, I don't see why anything wouldn't be alright.

The tagging could certainly be done, but I'll need to see a discussion (or at least a lack of objection) at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Massachusetts. If you just copy what Optigan13 did for WikiProject California (see the section just above), that would be sufficient. I have the same question, too: Are you wanting other projects' assessments copied (and if so, min or max assessment if they differ?), or just stub/dab/redirect? Anomie⚔ 03:11, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Tagging for WP:LONDON

While the discussion taking place here has only been going for a couple of days so I'll leave it a bit longer, can I check whether the bot will be able to handle multiply nested subcategories? Category:London contains a lot of categories that are nested very deeply (the Category:Grade B listed churches in London → Category:Grade II* listed churches in London → Category:Grade II* listed buildings in London → Category:Listed buildings in London → Category:Buildings and structures in London → Category:London architecture → Category:London seven-deep nesting isn't at all untypical).

Consensus looks likely to be "tag all articles in all subcategories of Category:London, unless the articles are already tagged as falling under WikiProject London Transport"; will the bot be able to handle this level of nesting? Obviously, if you'll require a list of all the subcategories, that will take some time; because this is one of our older projects it's acquired huge numbers of subcategories over the years (I guesstimate between 500-1500). – iridescent 17:05, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll reply at WT::WikiProject London in a little bit, after I (re-)run some preliminary analysis. Anomie⚔ 01:01, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi

Hi. I've seen you in action a few times. You're doing good work. You were a few minutes quicker than I was today, fixing the broken reference in Paul Young (Sad Café).

As one of the active editors in cleaning out Category:Wikipedia pages with broken references I can tell you we need some bothelp this time. I am only talking about templates, which at this moment constitute about 99% of the pages in that category. Please have a look here, and tell me if you can help out. I'll wait for your answer here.

n.b. Please note that the most fitting text for the needed fix is in that same section too (and that the <noinclude> tag should be straight behind the end of the template, on the same line even). Debresser (talk) 19:07, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll take a look, tomorrow if I get the chance. If I don't reply in a few days, feel free to ping me as I may have forgotten. Anomie⚔ 03:11, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I didn't want to bother you, and checked with another user who has offered his help in the past with regard to botwork, but he is a little busy with exams. Perhaps you could have that look after all. I am talking about a one-time (I hope) adding of a few lines to some 700 templates. If you have any questions, I'm monitoring this page for the meanwhile. Debresser (talk) 05:34, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if it's worth making a template to contain the appropriate references section, so if you decide to change it only one edit is needed. I guess the insertion should be at the end of the doc page (if any) or at the end of the template, before any interwiki links and such? Anomie⚔ 00:12, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

That is a great idea. Out-of-the-box-thinking. We would need a bot to fix the instances that have already been fixed "the old way" though. If that is at all possible.

Yes, right at the end of the template, see e.g. this diff how close it should be. Debresser (talk) 00:44, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Most of the templates here don't have a documentation page. Those that do are a separate case (see my talk page) and I think you'd best leave them for me to fix manually. Debresser (talk) 00:47, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

I have started working with Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser today to start fixing all these template. I just tried it out with three edits.

Such a template would look like {{Templaterefsection}}. It would have to be used inside <noinclude> tags. Debresser (talk) 00:58, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

After some discussion I started using this template and fixed 420 articles with AWB, which I started using just yesterday. So I'll fix the last 250 or so articles tomorrow. No botwork any more.

This still leaves the question whether a bot could change all the templates I fixed before to make them use {{Templaterefsection}} too? Or would I have to do that with AWB too? Debresser (talk) 02:53, 26 April 2009 (UTC) I've checked, and this can be done with AWB too. Since that is at most some 195 templates, I think that's what I'll do. Thanks anyway. Debresser (talk) 03:12, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I saw you mentioned elsewhere that you had just got AWB, and I decided to wait a day or two to see if it turned out you'd use it to take care of this; glad to see I was right ;) Glad I could help with the suggestion about the template. Anomie⚔ 17:33, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

imdb_id

Could you please run your bot once more to removed imdb_id parameter from Infobox film? Today I found tenths of these parameters in infoboxes. Thank, Magioladitis (talk) 08:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

And if possible run it in {{Infobox Television film}} as well please. We have a consensus there as well. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:21, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Note: Referenced consensus discussion is at Template talk:Infobox Television film#Bring inline Infobox film

When {{Infobox Television}} had the same done to it recently, someone added hidden tracking categories so the bot could go through just the relevant articles rather than through every transclusion across Wikipedia. Separate categories are not actually necessary, just Category:Television film articles with deprecated links in the infobox (or Category:Television film articles using deprecated infobox parameters) would suffice. Could you also do the same to {{Infobox Film}}? That would make the bot run go a whole lot quicker. If you need me to supply diffs of the necessary changes, just let me know. Anomie⚔ 11:06, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I experimented a bit but I was unable to add it in any of these templates. Can you help? -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:17, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

On a second look, is another run for {{Infobox Film}} really necessary? They already removed the parameters in question from the template, and AnomieBOT should have gotten all the ones that matter in the previous run. But if you really want and consensus on the template's/project's talk page is for it, the necessary diff is here.

For {{Infobox Television film}}, I suppose I should have checked and seen that there are only 388 transclusions, not worth a tracking category. I'll start that one in a few minutes, and it'll probably be done in an hour or two. Anomie⚔ 00:54, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

For Infobox Filml: I see many of these around. Your bot seems that never touched this one and many others. -- Magioladitis (talk) 01:04, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

When the task was originally requested, no one cared if the soon-to-be-useless parameters were left in place when the External links already contained all the necessary links. So I didn't have the bot make those edits.

I decided it would be better to request approval for the other run than to stretch AnomieBOT 26 to cover it, hopefully someone will speedy it like AnomieBOT 25. Anomie⚔ 01:31, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Tagging for Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Taskforces

Hi, it's me again. Could AnomieBOT...

• Mark the following (no sub-cats) with {{physics|class=|importance=|fluid-dynamics=yes}} (keeping class and importance ratings when found)?

• Category:Fluid dynamics
• Category:Boundary layers
• Category:Aerodynamics
• Category:Bubbles
• Category:Computational fluid dynamics
• Category:Convection
• Category:Discrete-phase flow
• Category:Equations of fluid dynamics
• Category:Flow meters
• Category:Fluid dynamicists
• Category:Aeronautics
• Category:Helicopter aerodynamics
• Category:Wind power
• Category:Wind tunnels
• Category:Winds
• Category:Wing design
• Category:Vortices

• Mark the following (no sub-cats) with {{physics|class=|importance=|relativity=yes}} (keeping class and importance ratings when found)?

• Category:Relativity
• Category:Frames of reference
• Category:General relativity
• Category:Relativists
• Category:Special relativity
• Category:Relativity stubs
• Category:Black holes
• Category:Effects of gravitation
• Category:Exact solutions in general relativity
• Category:Lorentzian manifolds
• Category:Mathematical methods in general relativity
• Category:Tests of general relativity
• Category:Theorems in general relativity
• Category:Minkowski spacetime
• Category:Aether theories
• Category:Theories of gravitation

• Mark the following (no sub-cats) with {{physics|class=|importance=|acoustics=yes}} (keeping class and importance ratings when found)?

• Category:Acoustics
• Category:Ultrasound
• Category:Sonar

• And tag these categories with {{physics|class=cat|importance=NA|relativity=yes}} / {{physics|class=cat|importance=NA|fluid-dynamics=yes}} / {{physics|class=cat|importance=NA|relativity=yes}}/{{physics|class=cat|importance=NA|acoustics=yes}} as appropriate. Thanks a bunch. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 10:01, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

BTW, I got no link to the discussion on these wikiprojects for the simple reason that they are inactive and were are trying to revive them.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 14:25, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Doing... They're all WP:Physics, and I know you're the one who heads up the tagging department for that project. Anomie⚔ 00:13, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Got three more for fluid dynamics

• Category:Water waves
• Category:Tides
• Category:Fluid mechanics

Thanks for this BTW, it's really appreciated.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 05:48, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

No problem. Anomie⚔ 17:20, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Some more from stubs (Acoustics doesn't have any associated stubs)

• Category:Fluid dynamics stubs
• Category:Relativity stubs

Assess as stubs (or remove stubs when they are rated start and above). Same rules as above otherwise.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 06:47, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

AnomieBOT can assess the unassessed ones as stubs, but is not approved to edit the pages to remove the stub template. I'm not sure that's such a great idea, either: is the article really no longer a stub, or did someone incorrectly change the assessment? I could easily enough have AnomieBOT output a report of the difference or symmetric difference of Category:Fluid dynamics stubs and Category:Stub-Class fluid dynamics articles, if that would help. Anomie⚔ 12:05, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, well then running the bot as usual is OK. (If you didn't already ran it).Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 19:14, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Already did. Anomie⚔ 03:51, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

What a clever bot!

It fixed an orphaned reference by copying it over from an entirely different (linked) article; very impressive. Great bot! Shreevatsa (talk) 00:48, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

funny behavior, nonexistant error fixed with spaces

AnomieBOT flagged a putative error in my new contribution Olaf Swenson, claiming no content between <ref> and </ref>. I could not see a problem. I fixed by putting spaces between successive references. There are five references in this string. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dankarl (talk • contribs) 18:41, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I guess you are referring to this edit. It's not a bug, and your addition of spaces was not necessary. Look closely at what AnomieBOT did: just before your 5 real references, there was one "<ref></ref>" that AnomieBOT removed. Anomie⚔ 21:47, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

okay then how do you clear the error message? open for edit and save? or any change? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dankarl (talk • contribs) 22:06, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

How do you clear which error message? Anomie⚔ 23:57, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Spelling error

I noticed that AnomieBOT uses edit summaries that say, "Closing discussions for deleted/nonexistant files" (for example, [17]), and I thought I'd point out that the correct spelling is "nonexistent." —Bkell (talk) 16:27, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. For some reason, I always misspell that word. Anomie⚔ 19:48, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Physics biographies

Hi, we recently created the WP:PHYSBIO taskforce, and there's some tagging needed to be done. Namely:

The template is {{physics|class=|importance=|bio=yes}}

• Every 1rst level subcategory ofCategory:Physicists by nationality
• Every 1rst level subcategory of Category:Nuclear physicists by nationality
• Every 1rst level subcategory of Category:Geophysicists by nationality
• Category:Biophysicists
• Category:Cosmologists
• Category:Geophysicists
• Category:Experimental physicists
• Category:Neutrino physicists
• Category:Nobel laureates in Physics
• Category:Nuclear physicists
• Category:Opticians
• Category:Particle physicists
• Category:Physicists
• Category:Physical chemists, but ONLY if the physics banner is already present
• Category:Polish physical chemists, but ONLY if the physics banner is already present
• Category:Quantum gravity physicists
• Category:Quantum physicists
• Category:Semiconductor physicists
• Category:String theorists
• Category:Theoretical physicists
• Category:Thermodynamicists
• Category:Turkish theoretical physicists
• Category:Weak interaction physicists
• Category:Women physicists
• Category:Physicist stubs (and it's first level subcategories)
• All intersections between {{physics}} and {{biography}} (or {{blp}})

Same as above, but on top of that set |fluid-dynamics=yes

• Category:Aerodynamicists , but ONLY if the physics banner is already present
• Category:Fluid dynamicists
• Category:Computational fluid dynamicists

Same as above, but on top of that, set |relativity=yes

• Category:Relativists

Since these are all biography articles, the bot should also take the opportunity to place the {{WikiProject Biography}} with the standard parameters (what these are I don't know exactly, I could find out if you don't know either). The bot should also do any assessment, redirect tagging, template tagging, etc... it can, as usual. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 20:02, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll drop a note over at WT:WPBIO just for good measure, although I expect no objections since we did the same thing back in December. Anomie⚔ 03:48, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Just a note in passing. WP:WPBIO templates usually use the "priority" parameters instead of "importance". They should be tagged with {{WP Biography |living= |class= |priority= |s&a-work-group=yes |listas= }} if {{WikiProject Biography}} is going to be added. Wildhartlivie (talk) 04:05, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Additional tagging (pub, hist)

With {{physics|class=|importance=|pub=yes}}

• Category:Physics books
• Category:Physics literature
• Category:Physics journals
• Category:Institute of Physics journals
• Category:Optics journals
• Category:Physics review journals
• Category:Semiconductor journals
• Category:Physics journal stubs
• All intersections between {{physics}} and {{WPBooks}}.
• All intersections between {{physics}} and {{WikiProject Magazines}}.
• All intersections between {{physics}} and {{WPJournals}}.
• All intersections between {{physics}} and Category:Journals.
• All intersections between {{physics}} and Category:Journal articles.
• All intersections bewteen {{physics}} and Category:Scientific journals.
• All intersections between {{physics}} and Category:Scientific literature.
• All intersections between {{physics}} and Category:Academic publishing.

With {{physics|class=|importance=|hist=yes}}

• Category:History of thermodynamics
• Category:History of physics
• Category:Physics timelines
• All intersections between {{physics}} and {{HistSci}}.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Headbomb (talk • contribs) 17:57, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

That last one is equivalent to "Category:WikiProject History of Science articles but only if {{Physics}} is already present", isn't it? Also, I assume that if, for example, a page has both Category:Aerodynamicists and Category:Relativists but is not already tagged, it would be appropriate to add both fluid-dynamics and relativity despite the restriction on Category:Aerodynamicists. Anomie⚔ 19:49, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, hum yes, that's equivalent. Don't know why I phrased it the way I did. And yes that would be appropriate.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 03:53, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Any estimate as to when this can be done?Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 12:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Db7 is lagged right now, preventing maxlag-compliant bots like AnomieBOT from running; once that's fixed and I do a quick test run I'll begin. Anomie⚔ 20:40, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Q: What is Db7? The server? Any ideas when that'll lagging problem could be fixed? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:05, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Around 20:00 UTC it started lagging, got up to around 1500 seconds, and finally came back down around 23:30. On #wikimedia-tech, they suspect it had something to do with the long-awaited enwiki dump. Testing now (1 error fixed so far). Anomie⚔ 01:30, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Doing... Anomie⚔ 03:58, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

It looks like the bot may be done (I'll check more carefully later). So far, 4040 pages tagged for Physics, and 741 for WPBio. Anomie⚔ 15:01, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Excellent! Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:21, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

OnThisDay

AnomieBOT you are a good bot but the {{OnThisDay}} on your messages is really unhelpful, I think you are checking dates not just generally cleaning up (and when did that change?)

Best wishes SimonTrew (talk) 23:07, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Selected anniversaries#Tagging talk pages of SA articles. Other than that, I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Anomie⚔ 23:18, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

References within templates

What are the reasons to move references out of templates? Is there any consensus? This bot has twice moved the definition of much-used and often-updated (daily) named references from a convenient and deliberately chosen location in a template near the beginning of "2009 swine flu outbreak in the United Kingdom" to a location buried deep within the body. This has been discussed in that article's Talk, and nobody has opposed the original position or even mentioned the existence of a guideline regarding this. (In this particular case it could be argued that, even if there is a guideline, it is just that, not a rule.) (Later) have just noticed that this has been discussed under the meaningful heading "What the heck?". I don't think it invalidates what I say. Clarification: one of the references points to a current "daily update" (on flu cases) and the target of the reference needs to be changed daily, hence the wish to keep it near the top. Pol098 (talk) 20:08, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

There isn't a guideline; it's there for cases like when an infobox is edited to no longer display a parameter and pages happen to have the named ref defined in that parameter (this has happened several times with different infoboxes). But you present a good case, so I've adjusted the bot: If you put a comment <!-- AnomieBOT: Don't move --> anywhere inside the <ref></ref>, AnomieBOT will not move that ref out of the template. Anomie⚔ 22:16, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Fast response, fast action! I see the reason for moving references out of templates in many cases, but it's useful to be able to prevent that from happening. Pol098 (talk) 13:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Quote characters in reference names

This is not directly related to AnomieBOT, but arises from a brief exchange above. I know that the name of a named reference can be quoted in single or double quotes; or not quoted if it only uses a limited set of characters, much like file and variable names in a computer environment. Anomie⚔ commented: "Unfortunately, it is not an error to leave off the quotes (as long as the value is drawn from a small set of characters)..." I have always made it a habit to omit the quotes, and to use only alphanumeric characters and underline (no spaces) in names. I suppose that my thinking, as someone who works with computers, is that this is an identifier, rather than a text string. For my enlightenment (and that of others), is the omission of the quotes generally deprecated? Is there a guideline or policy? If there is, I will follow it in future. Pol098 (talk) 20:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

No, no guideline or policy. But it does make things more of a pain to parse: I have to check for a name in double-quotes containing anything besides a double-quote or a "<", a name in single-quotes containing anything besides a single-quote or a "<", or an unquoted name containing any of the following: a-zA-Z0-9!#$%&()*,-./:;<>?@[]^_`{|}~ Except MediaWiki can't rely on sane parsing either, so even though any of those could technically contain ">" they won't get that far because the ">" is eaten earlier.

IMO, it's easiest to just use the double-quotes so you don't have to worry about anything in the name besides double-quotes and angle brackets. Otherwise, you'll be surprised when you copy-paste some author's name that contains diacritics without noticing it's not plain-ASCII and it doesn't do what you expect. Anomie⚔ 22:27, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. I've often wished when developing stuff that it would be less of a pain if we could get rid of al this user-friendly idea and get back to "Press 0 for no, 1 for yes, then press Return. If you try to do anything else I will not let you out of this loop (or abend if having a bad day)". But no, I have to let users do anything that's not explicitly forbidden and cope with it. So I understand exactly what you mean. Many thanks for your answer; I don't think I'm doing any actual harm or even violating guidelines by my reference-naming habits (alphanumerics plus underline). Pol098 (talk) 13:45, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Dropping by to say thanks

You did some good work on Eurostar today bot, an early reference learning mistake of mine resolved, making those references more compact and taking up less bytes while having all the functionality of before. Nice bot :) 81.111.115.63 (talk) 21:24, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Was your bot supposed to ...

... tag a redirect page (Talk:Stable limit cycle) ? Gandalf61 (talk) 08:34, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Why shouldn't it, if that's what the project wants? But in that particular example, it didn't tag it; it just updated the existing tag to indicate redirect-class.[18] Anomie⚔ 11:12, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Who's this

Who's this AnomieBOT? This bot has done absurd editing in the article 2008 attacks on North Indians in Maharashtra. It has edited the quote of 'THE HINDU' in the references list. This edit is completely wrong. Kesangh (talk) 17:40, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

AnomieBOT is an automated process that performs edits that are tedious for human editors to do. For example, it watches for articles to be added to Category:Pages with broken reference names and goes through the article's history and linked articles to see if a reference with the broken name ever existed. In the particular case you complain about, User:59.163.89.69 broke the reference named "TH_clash" in this edit, and AnomieBOT fixed it by replacing one of the broken usages with the needed reference text. Compare this and this: the statement in the former is cited using reference #1 and in the latter using reference #37, but the text of the reference is exactly the same in both cases. Anomie⚔ 18:01, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion

To overcome the problem this bot has of masking vandalism in people's watchlists, would it be possible for the bot not to edit an article if the previous edit has been tagged by the abuse filter? That would avoid problems such as this. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:14, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

At the moment, this is not possible as there is no API call to efficiently retrieve those tags. Also, I note that "references removed" is currently the tag most often used (according to Special:Tags), which is exactly the type of edit AnomieBOT is intended to process.

I hadn't mentioned it outside of the bot's ChangeLog yet, but note AnomieBOT waited a full hour for a human to fix that edit. A while back I decided to have the bot wait longer before correcting IP and newbie edits in the hope that people would stop complaining so much; it seems to have worked, to some extent. Anomie⚔ 18:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

OK then, just an idea. If it were possible in the future for some of those tags to be incorporated, you could probably choose a subset, taking the ones that are almost always vandalism (such as "repeating characters"). Tim Vickers (talk) 20:59, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Auto-assessment of California articles

When requesting a bot assessment of project articles. Is asking for only articles on Category:Unassessed California articles ok? At this point I'm not really interested in adding any more pages to a near dead projects scope. I've just started the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject California#Auto-assessment of California_articles and didn't want to give anyone wrong info. Thanks for any help in advance. -Optigan13 (talk) 22:43, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Completely ok. Are you wanting other projects' assessments copied (and if so, min or max assessment if they differ?), or just stub/dab/redirect? Anomie⚔ 03:11, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Please auto-assess all pages in Category:Unassessed California articles for WikiProject California at your earliest convenience. It has been just short of a week with only myself and one other person commenting in the discussion. Consensus is for taking the higher of any other projects' assessments (he is in favor of it, I barely care). Could you please canonize any uses of ({{WPCA}}, {{CWP}},{{WPCALIFORNIA}}). I might need your assistance with possibly merging daughter projects into WP Cal in the future, but I haven't placed any notices at the relevant projects yet. I just manually assessed everything in the auto-assessed category so that should be empty. Thanks, Optigan13 (talk) 05:14, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Doing... Anomie⚔ 19:24, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the work so far on this. Is it possible to modify the task to replace all instances of {{WikiProject Southern California|importance=foo}}(also {{WPSC}} and {{WPSOCAL}}) with {{WikiProject California|southerncalifornia = yes |southerncalifornia-importance = foo}}. The highest of the two assessments as before. Discussion for this one is here (just under a week old). I was planning to do this on a couple more projects so let me know if you want to hold off or need more info on these. Thanks for all your help, and no hurry on this so whenever you get the chance. -Optigan13 (talk) 03:46, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Easily possible. If the other projects you mention have a significant overlap with WPSOCAL, it would be better to hold off so the bot can make one edit per talk page with multiple banner adjustments instead of multiple edits with one change each. If the article sets are basically disjoint, it doesn't matter. Anomie⚔ 11:27, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Alright just go ahead and hold off I was looking at the WP:WikiProject University of California and WP:WikiProject Santa Barbara County for possible merging seeing if there are several in there The UCLA and UCSB article are good examples of the overlap. I'll go drop notices on the project pages and see what the responses are and get back to you, thanks. -Optigan13 (talk) 03:35, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok, per Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject California/Southern California task force#Changing to task force of WikiProject California and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Santa Barbara County#Changing this project to a task force of WikiProject California can you

• replace {{WikiProject Southern California|importance=foo}}(also {{WPSC}} and {{WPSOCAL}}) with {{WikiProject California|southerncalifornia = yes |southerncalifornia-importance = foo}} and
• replace {{WikiProject Santa Barbara County|importance=foo}}(also {{WP SB County}} and {{WPSB County}}) with {{WikiProject California|santabarbaracounty = yes |santabarbaracounty-importance = foo}} at your earliest convenience.

Do you need any additional information on this one? Thanks again. I think once the initial changes on these pages are done WP Cal may need an ongoing request, since we appear to be gaining over a hundred articles into our scope with every update of our statistics. -Optigan13 (talk) 08:59, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Doing... Anomie⚔ 23:38, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Y Done There are two uses of {{WikiProject Southern California}} on some user talk pages that will need to be handled manually. Anomie⚔ 02:17, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

		The California Star
		Thanks again for all your help over these last couple months Optigan13 (talk) 02:31, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! Anomie⚔ 03:32, 1 June 2009 (UTC)