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WildBot on talk pages

Hi -- is it really necessary to flag disambig issues on talk pages? I'm having difficulty seeing how fixing those is worth the effort. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 22:16, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

We have a difference in philosophy, then because I think ambiguous links show a lack of care with the crafting on an article. Josh Parris 01:59, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I stopped it

Hi, I stopped your bot. It is finding links where there are more than one link on a page but it is doing it on talk pages as well. I wonder if it should be doing that I don't think so. ~ R.T.G 14:11, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Can you give me an example? Josh Parris 14:13, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Just look at the contribs it is doing talk pages only hundreds of them ! ~ R.T.G 14:14, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
[1] ~ R.T.G 14:15, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

This behaviour is by design. Talk pages are the appropriate place to leave messages about the article. Josh Parris 14:17, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

See User:WildBot#Why a banner? Why not tag the article text, or leave a message on the talk page? Josh Parris 14:20, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I guess it is editing headers. why didn't you just say that? You know it didn't stop when I used the button. ~ R.T.G 14:21, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
You should put something like "Bot editing header" in the summary. ~ R.T.G 14:26, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi,

I've found WildBot really useful today, specifically in its finding redirects in links in books. Would it be possible to get the bot to do this same check on pages in Category:Featured topics, Category:Wikipedia fully featured topics and Category:Wikipedia Good topics? rst20xx (talk) 11:54, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

It wouldn't be hard to do, but as I read your question you're asking for a listing of redirects on the articles in those categories. In the normal case, using a redirect is perfectly acceptable. WildBot's normal tagging in article-space is for links to disambiguation pages, and broken #section links. Is this what you're after? Josh Parris 12:10, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Generally we try and avoid redirects in featured topics, and use pipes, like in books. It's not that having redirects inherently breaks anything, it's just useful for the reader to be able to see what the underlying article is. Also there should be no section links or disambig links AT ALL - rst20xx (talk) 16:13, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
I think I get it now; the pages aren't really articles, they're topics and thus fairly like books. Would you expect them to be treated exactly like books, or mostly like books? Have you discussed this idea with others active in WP:Featured Topics? Josh Parris 11:48, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Not exactly like books in that eg "Song name" would be acceptable (but in books this would have to become "Song name"). I haven't discussed this with anyone but think it'd be uncontroversial? At any rate I have all the FTs watchlisted so if you just give the bot a run through of them and get it to add the notifications to just the talk pages then I should see what it picks up and be able to fix everything - rst20xx (talk) 12:10, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
I'll have something for you within a week. Josh Parris 14:58, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion for WildBot template - include date/time added

This edit added {{User:WildBot/tag}} to a talk page, and the template expands to text including "... WildBot is a bot designed to remove this notice within a couple of minutes. If WildBot is malfunctioning ...". I suggest that the displayed text should include the date and time (and timezone) that the template was added, so we can easily tell if it has been there for more that "a couple of minutes". Mitch Ames (talk) 05:43, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Feel free to edit it; my brain melted trying to figure out how to get the date/time of the template's placement to come up, rather than the current time. Josh Parris 14:37, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Would something like "This template was added 14 years ago" (This template was added {{Time ago|~~~~~}}) work? Certes (talk) 23:06, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
No, that solved the wrong problem. All I can think of is to give the template a parameter by adding "This template was added at {{{1}}}". Then the bot can write {{User:WildBot/tag|11:25, 9 March 2010 (UTC)}} to the talkpage by supplying the parameter as ~~~~~. {{Time ago}} would be neater, but it can be inaccurate without ?action=purge due to caching. Certes (talk) 11:25, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Well, WildBot doesn't put {{User:WildBot/tag}} anywhere, it's users, so the template has to do it itself if you want a timestamp on there. Josh Parris 11:38, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
D'oh. Sorry for wasting your time. If it's any consolation I can't manage it either, even with two layers of template and includeonly subst magic. Certes (talk) 16:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

G7bot

...down for maintenance - upgrading to Win 7. Shouldn't be long (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 18:04, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

He's been up since about 6PM Eastern last night ... saw a few "unhandled exception" messages ... he's not running on Windows 7 - that install trashed the computer, and rebuilt it as an XP box from scratch. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 12:30, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Win7 didn't work so good? Surprised. Good old reliable XP.
Mind you, I'm running Ubuntu, and that's not giving me any problems. Perhaps to run your OS in a VM inside a Linux variant? Josh Parris 12:38, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I was surprised too - no error other than basically "something went wrong", then would not return itself to a working XP. I even had an old copy of Red Hat sitting around - just in case. I'm not that much of a computer geek that I could have necessarily got it fully running on Linux. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 14:35, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Minor config fix ... did a test talkpage and it deleted ok. Still contemplating what went wrong with 7 (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 22:27, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Gerry Priestley

Your bot keeps adding a message to the talk page that 'Halifax' is ambiguous but I believe I have fixed the dabs. Can you investigate? Thanks. Eldumpo (talk) 23:12, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

The Dab Solver didn't have any trouble fixing the problem, which was in the Persondata template. Josh Parris 00:50, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I was just looking at the article text and didn't think about the metadata section. Although any chance the bot in future can indicate the section the dab is in? Thanks. Eldumpo (talk) 08:11, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I'll keep it in mind, but that would be pretty hard. Josh Parris 15:19, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
sections_R = re.compile(r'^(={1,6})\s*(.*?)\s*\1\s*$', re.MULTILINE)
inSection = ""
for section in sections_R.finditer(text):
    if section.end() > link_position:
        break
    else:
        inSection = section.group(2)

More difficult to determine a common section for multiple links. — Dispenser 05:51, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks WildBot

Spotted WildBot for the first time on my watchlist today. Simple, efficient and highly useful - thanks and well done! As was also requested above, a useful addition would be to count the number of occurrences. Greenman (talk) 09:14, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Your suggestion was at the top of my "things to tweak" list; I've done #section links and hope to do links to dab pages soon. The idea may be simple, but the execution... golly gosh! Josh Parris 13:20, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
I've been able to add this in. Josh Parris 07:08, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The Royal Newfoundland Regiment

re this edit I assume the bot is making it's distinctions on which redirects are "bad" based on teh categories applied to the redirect page, which is no bad thing. However, simply removing "The" from the link in this case then left the article ungrammatical, which to me seems worse than having a marginally incorrect link. Could you add some checking for at least the case of redirects from article names starting "The" so that the "the" is not removed altogether from the article, but lower-cased and moved out of the link? David Underdown (talk) 10:42, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes. I'll halt the bot until then. Josh Parris 10:44, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
This change has been implemented. Josh Parris 13:58, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Inappropriate bot change for Madras

Please take more care: this change was completely inappropriate. The bot should not be changing articles in this way if it / you cannot spot that Madras was being used in a quotation from 1928. BencherliteTalk 13:43, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the link is inappropriate. Pipe it and this won't happen. Josh Parris 13:48, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Err, whatever happened to "don't fix redirects that aren't broken"? And why on earth would this edit be necessary? Changing all instances of "Chennai" indiscriminately to "Madras" is in some cases just historically wrong, since the name was not officially changed until 1996 (according to our article on Chennai). BencherliteTalk 13:53, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
More examples: [2] and [3] I'm going to block the bot until this is sorted. BencherliteTalk 14:00, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Could we also have these edits reverted? It will take case-by-case examination to see which changes are appropriate; most are not. Shreevatsa (talk) 14:02, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Bot blocked. Any admin may unblock without consulting me if satisfied that the bot operator understands that this particular bot run is a problem, agrees to stop it, and to revert all changes of Madras to Chennai that have not already been changed. BencherliteTalk 14:04, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 6)WP:NOTBROKEN specifically excludes unprintworthy and incorrect names, which Madras is tagged as being. For details regarding the reasoning, please see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot 4
Blocking the bot is inappropriate given:
  1. it's not currently editing (see above); and
  2. it's functioning within its approved task
Josh Parris 14:08, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
The bot account performs other functions, and you've blocked it when it wasn't performing the one you were complaining about. Did you use the manual shutdown? No. Why were your sysop powers necessary here? Josh Parris 14:12, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
10 minutes after Bencherlite, I also clicked the STOP botton and edited, and the bot continued to make its edits. Madras is not an "unprintworthy and incorrect" name. It is a valid historical name, that editors have used with discretion — what sense does it make to change "Madras (now Chennai)" to "Chennai (now Chennai)" as in this edit? Please STOP doing this, and revert all these edits. You will save a lot of editors a lot of time trying to fix this mess. Shreevatsa (talk) 14:20, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I suspect that this is because the Madras redirct was tagged as redirect from incorrect name, and redirect from unprintworthy redirect - which I've now removed. I.e. the problem was with the categorisation of the redirect, not the bot operation per se. David Underdown (talk) 14:09, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

It's not currently editing because I blocked it (last edit 14:01, blocked 14:01), not because it had stopped. It also failed to stop per the "Halt" page it has and you didn't respond to the message at 13:53, nor respond to the message I left at the halt page about approval for this task until now. Now that the Madras redirect has been untagged, of course, the bot would be failing to adhere to its approval if it carried on with that particular task, so I have unblocked it. Please now go back and undo all the Madras/Chennai changes and leave it for human editors to refix as necessary. I appreciate that the problem was not of your making originally, but you've got the bot so you're best positioned to revert its changes. And please check whether the "halt" page is actually working; the bot's block log suggests not. BencherliteTalk 14:16, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

And I've reblocked, because it's still changing "Madras" (despite your claim that it had stopped this task before I blocked it) and such changes are now outside the scope of its authorisation since Madras is no longer tagged as an unprintworthy redirect or a redirect from an incorrect name. BencherliteTalk 14:19, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah, crap. There were two instances running. I only killed one. Sorry. I'll go start cleaning up the mess it's left. Josh Parris 14:21, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Unblocked. BencherliteTalk 14:24, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Future editing will not include task 4 until the fix I wrote about earlier is in place. Josh Parris 14:27, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

"Did you use the manual shutdown? No." Yes I most certainly did. Is your bot out of control? BencherliteTalk 14:21, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

If it's not responding to manual shutdown, then it is effectively out of control. I'll figure out what's going on and resolve the problem. Josh Parris 14:27, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
The bot is a victim of its own success. There are 17,431 pages on its watchlist. I'm going to alter the code so that instead of having the halt page on its watchlist, it polls for changes. This will take a little while to code. Josh Parris 00:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
A code change is in place for the halt page. Josh Parris 02:39, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Inactive admin email "bot"

You said you wanted a test... it's not really the kind of job that we can trial in the traditional sense. The way that we were going to do it is to collate a list to email, mostly by hand, and then use a small script to email that list (run manually). What we can do is post the list for your perusal prior to sending email to it. That would let you check to make sure opt-out was being followed. Would that be acceptable? Gigs (talk) 14:06, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

moved to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/InactivityEmailBot Josh Parris 15:45, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Wildbot "fixing" "incorect names"

Just discovered WildBot and think it is a magnificent tool. It's easily one of the best bots on the pedia. However (and I don't know if this is a new function or not) but WildBot has been Changing incorrect name x to correct name y where X is a redirect to Y. While potentially helpful, the problem is that the "correct name" is not always the proper name just because it's not a redirect. Additionally, the redirect guidelines specifically say not to do this. Thanks Lost on Belmont (talk) 14:20, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. Did no one, at the time this feature was discussed (it was discussed, right?), realise the disaster that would result if a redirect was simply miscategorised as "incorrect"? These unconsidered changes are too much automation, I think, and too much reliance on categories: a mistake at one redirect can affect hundreds or thousands of articles; surely this is too high a risk to be done without examining each case. (Besides, even for "incorrect" names, an article may use one intentionally just to point something out, and this bot would go trampling along and obliterate the point being made.) Shreevatsa (talk) 14:33, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I intend putting a limit of 20 links to an incorrect redirect; if there are more I won't let the bot process that redirect without my approval. Being yelled at by multiple people and having to revert hundreds of edits at 2am is not my idea of fun. Josh Parris 15:02, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Aw. Sorry for yelling at you. :-) And thanks for taking the time to revert them. That limit sounds like a good idea, yes. The wrong name is more likely to be a real mistake, and even if it's not, it limits the harm. (Another thing may be to check if one of your bot's edits is reverted, but I don't know if that's easy.) Regards, Shreevatsa (talk) 15:21, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
If I can build a tool that can, before anyone stops it, make hundreds of edits that need reverting, then cleaning it up is my problem. I was given permission to do so, and I take responsibility for my (indirect, inadvertent, avoidable) actions. I'm just pleased I have rollback rights, otherwise I could have been here until dawn. Josh Parris 15:26, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
WildBot only performs this substitution for redirects tagged with {{R from incorrect name}}, the semantics of which are "this is wrong, don't ever use it". WP:NOTBROKEN specifically excludes unprintworthy and incorrect names. For details regarding the reasoning, please see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot 4. I'm making changes to it's substitution strategy and putting limits on it's activities; until those changes are complete WildBot won't be performing this particular task. Josh Parris 16:03, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Why is WildBot highlighting intentional dabs contained within hatnotes? –Juliancolton | Talk 14:28, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

See User:WildBot#This article is about ... Josh Parris 15:38, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Another incorrect change

See this edit: "Madras" is correct in this instance as it is the name of the locomotive (which was built, renamed and scrapped long before the city was renamed). —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) (logged on as Pek) 14:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I am currently undergoing penance regarding Madras. Josh Parris 14:46, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi Josh, The name change from Madras to Chennai was in 1996. So a lot of articles dealing with older history refer to the city as "Madras". Probably you can adjust the rules so that articles dealing with history prior to 1996 don't get changed.--Sodabottle (talk) 14:50, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
When the bot ran, Madras was a redirect tagged with {{R from incorrect name}}, the semantics of which are "this is wrong, don't ever use it". WP:NOTBROKEN specifically excludes unprintworthy and incorrect names. For details regarding the reasoning, please see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot 4. Since the unpleasantness, David Underdown corrected the tag to {{R from historic name}} which has different semantics. Basically, WildBot thought it was helping out, and I've since learned to put limits on just how helpful the bot will be. I've reverted all changes of Madras. Josh Parris 16:03, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

It's not a disambig anymore!

How long does it take WildBot to notice that a page isn't a dab page anymore? I edited Mise Éire yesterday to be a regular article rather than a dab page (the dab page is now at Mise Éire (disambiguation)), but WildBot is still tagging Talk:Irish syntax for having a link to a dab page. +Angr 15:06, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah, my most requested feature: stop refreshing the cache manually and do it properly. I'm off to refresh the cache now. Everything should be great in about an hour. Josh Parris 15:10, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Mistaken edit

FYI: I revered Wildbot's change to Template:Texas History Navbox. It attempted to change the link text to match the article title which made the Navbox clunky.

I don't know much about this bot but, as a general rule, changing link text to match article titles arbitrarily is a very bad idea. There can be any number of good reasons the two do not match exactly.

Thanks.

--Mcorazao (talk) 16:19, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The solution you came up with is perfect; you get to keep your concise text, but the bot won't want to change the link again because it's not being used. Josh Parris 16:23, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Why is the bot changing a link to a valid redirect anyway? This makes no sense - in many cases redirects exist because people need to, for some reason, use a different term than the article name. It also changed links in my userspace, which seems outside its realm. Karanacs (talk) 21:07, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I see now that in this case the redirect was tagged funny and I've fixed that. I would like to request, however, that the bot stays out of userspace. Karanacs (talk) 21:10, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Userspace

Why is Wildbot leaving so many messages in userspace? [4] Userspace does not have to follow the same rules as mainspace, and I didn't see anything in the bot approvals that allowed unrequested userspace changes. (I don't regularly follow the bot approvals, so if I missed that please let me know where it is and how I can contest that.) So far today Wildbot has messed with my user page (a change that was inaccurate for that page) and left a banner on my talk page about another issue. Please stop. Karanacs (talk) 22:30, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I can't win. I put protocols in place to prevent editing in user-space, and the bot won't shut down. I put lift that, and the bot goes crazy in user-space. I think I prefer a bot that won't shut down. Changing now. Josh Parris 00:32, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you! And thank you for keeping your cool in the face of complaints - it is much appreciated. Karanacs (talk) 14:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Merge discussion for Media planner

An article that you have been involved in editing, Media planner, has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Avicennasis @ 09:49, 11 March 2010 (UTC) Avicennasis @ 09:49, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

That's lovely, but I disambiguated two links on the page three years ago; I could hardly be considered interested. Josh Parris 11:46, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Failure to respect bots template

Please explain why WildBot processed the Electrical engineering article despite the presence of {{bots|deny=WildBot}} . Jc3s5h (talk) 18:15, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Just a guess, but maybe it needs to be on the talk page? –xenotalk 18:17, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I was going to guess that since the deny was added just yesterday ... and the bot runs on a cached version of the page ... that there was an overlap. I'm not sure why anyone would want to deny WildBot. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 18:19, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I did, in Template:MOSR-link, as the bot gave bogus warnings about broken section anchors (one of them was a template argument, and the others were examples of its usage pointing to a nonexistent page). The bot seems to heed the deny request just fine.—Emil J. 18:36, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
So there it is. Put the deny statement on the talk page. –xenotalk 18:42, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Well, that's not how it's meant to work. Or at least, I agree with Jc3s5h that if the page is tagged, the talk page ought to be left alone. I'll investigate. Josh Parris 00:40, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

 Done WildBot has been changed so that pages with {{bots|deny=WildBot}} get no edits, talk pages with {{bots|deny=WildBot}} get no talk page edits.

I've also taken the liberty of solving your WildBot problems with Electrical engineering per User:WildBot#I meant to link to a disambiguation page! Josh Parris 11:32, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Interesting feature suggestion

Since I notice it warns on incorrectly capitalized section header links. Why not have it just fix ones that need the capitalization fixed saving human work. -DJSasso (talk) 22:48, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The bot's perfectly capable of that, but I didn't seek approval to do so. I plan to expand its functionality when its behaviour is less irritating to others. Josh Parris 00:43, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Oh yeah I realized you didnt seek approval for that. Just something I thought you might want to consider to make it more helpful in the future. -DJSasso (talk) 14:02, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
BRFA filed Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot 7 Josh Parris 00:40, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Redditch

Redditch: WildBot had correctly changed Madras to Chennai. You (or another bot) reverted this. I have reverted it again to the correct name Chennai. I think this is obviously a bot problem.--Kudpung (talk) 01:06, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

When the bot ran, Madras was a redirect tagged with {{R from incorrect name}}, the semantics of which are "this is wrong, don't ever use it". WP:NOTBROKEN specifically excludes unprintworthy and incorrect names. For details regarding the reasoning, please see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WildBot 4. Since the unpleasantness, David Underdown corrected the tag to {{R from historic name}} which has different semantics. Basically, WildBot thought it was helping out, and I've since learned to put limits on just how helpful the bot will be. I've reverted all changes of Madras. Josh Parris 16:03, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Actually Madras was correct as at that point the article was talking about the 1950s, when the city's official name was still Madra - it makes it rather more obvious why the comapny was called Madras Motors too. David Underdown (talk) 11:07, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
That may be a fact but the city is now know known officially as Chennai, just as Bombay is now Mumbai, and Peking is now Beijing. In my honest opinion, an encyclopedia should strive to be both contemporary and accurate.--Kudpung (talk) 12:55, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Neither should we be anachronistic, msot British readers are still on the whole more familiar with the name Madras in any case. If they follow the link, they will be enlightened. Generally we use a historical name when the article context requires it. When writing an article relating to the current time, Chennai is of course correct, but it is nonsense to extend usage back before the name was officially adopted. (sorry for taking over your page Josh). David Underdown (talk) 14:01, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
David, I would be happy to acquiesce to your explanation if you would provide a link to the Wikpedia policy or guideline that governs it. Maybe I am biased because I go to India a lot.--Kudpung (talk) 13:47, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
This discussion belongs on the talkpage for the article to obtain consensus, not the talkpage of an editor who merely runs a bot :-) (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 13:55, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Wildbot bypassing talk pages with oldrfd tags.

I have added code to deny Wildbot access to the following page: Talk:Imma Be Rocking That Body.

The bot changed the talk page to a redirect, thus over-writing an oldrfd tag on it, which I don't think it should be doing. The point of the tag is to notify editors that the redirect was nominated for deletion in the past, thus if the bot just makes the talk page a redirect the user may not gain this information. I don't know if this has happened anywhere else, but could you take a look? The oldrfd tags should really be visible, rather than buried beneath a redirect. At the very least, make the redirect a soft redirect so users can read the oldrfd tag, then click to go forth to the other talk page.

Thanks, --Taelus (talk) 01:10, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I've disabled this functionality until I can come up with a better implementation. Josh Parris 01:36, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

WildBot misses duplicates due to redirects (Books)

See Book:Astatine, rev 346963677. There is astatane, and hydrogen astatide, which redirects to astatane. Only the redirect is reported, not the duplication. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:23, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

To think I was going to roll this out to User books today! Oh well, investigating. Josh Parris 02:48, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Fixed. Josh Parris 03:21, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
The error message might need some tweaking. Josh Parris 03:27, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
What message? What's the problem with it? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:43, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
I think the magicword #plural needs to be thrown into the template somewhere... can't think, tired... Josh Parris 12:50, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Fine tuning

Hi Josh! I have some suggestions for WildBot. Do not mark as broken any links to ep1, ep2, etc. (eg. Hannah Montana (season 2)) because these anchors are generated by {{Episode list}}. I also skip any section starting with top, cite, ref, fn, endnote. I skip as well red links because in my opinion they are enough visible. I also saw sometimes too long edit summaries. Cheers! -- Basilicofresco (msg) 07:56, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

The too long edit summaries are by design - I'm intentionally not trying to fix them.
As far as I know, there are no WildBot #section header messages on pages that have links to Hannah Montana (season 2):
select article.page_title from page article, page as talk, pagelinks, templatelinks
where pl_namespace=0
and pl_title='Hannah_Montana_(season_2)'
and article.page_id=pl_from
and article.page_namespace=0
and tl_namespace=2
and tl_title='WildBot/m02'
and tl_from=talk.page_id
and talk.page_title=article.page_title
and talk.page_namespace=1;
- I need something broken to validate against.
I use a different technique for determining if an anchor is valid. WildBot scans the article text as a quick hack, but if the ==section== headings don't turn up there, WildBot downloads the HTML and extracts the id="..." links, using those as its valid anchors. This is because editors put crazy stuff into headers, including <ref> links. There could still be bugs in how I do things - can you point me to somewhere WildBot is claiming an anchor isn't valid when the anchor is valid (I can think of occasions where it would produce a false negative, but not so much a false positive)? Josh Parris 11:19, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Request WildBot for articles

Your bot did a good job in ferreting out links to disambiguation pages, and broken-#section links for Tunable metamaterials. Could you have WildBot do the same for the following articles: If you need a category to work with, these are all in Category:Metamaterials

 Done seems like I need to add a tag for categories... Josh Parris 23:17, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

False Positives

Hey Josh. I saw you stopped DASHBot (F5). The false positives were remnants of the trial, when I had a code error. I was pretty sure I reverted all those but I guess I missed a few. Thanks! Tim1357 (talk) 21:05, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Weird edits at Book talk:Pinoy Telenovelas Winter 2008-2009 because of MfD

See [5], and [6]. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:27, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

My solution for this depends on the answer to this: how are books rendered? Do they print every page linked to by the book, or only those with raw wikilinks? When I PDFed the historic form of the book http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?oldid=348682678 I got the page names and the list of contributors - does the MfD tag surpress printing books, or do historic versions of books not print?
I think I'm asking: should I ignore all wikilinks inside templates? Is the rule: templates will never be used to list pages in books? Josh Parris 06:19, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
The only articles printed at those written as :[[Article]], although there can be more than one colon (aka :[[Article]], ::[[Article]], and :::[[Article]] will all get printed). The rest are ignored and templates are never used to generate content. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:10, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Sweet, an easy fix then. Please hold. Josh Parris 07:16, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
 Done reprocessing community books now. Josh Parris 07:23, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

7SeriesBot

We got a thanks here :-) (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 10:59, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, I knew we might the occasional user, but I never expected anyone to notice! Josh Parris 11:26, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Who would have thought we would have almost 1800 deletions already - we thought maybe 100 a day. That's a lot of work saved in a short time! (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 11:49, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

BLP sticky prod

Hi Josh Parris/Archive 6 ! The template workshop has now split off most of the long threads purely on policy to a new discussion page so that policy can be established while technical development of the template can continue in its own space. When the template functions are finalised, the policy bits can be merged into them. If you intend to continue to contribute your ideas to the development of the template or its policy of use, and we hope you will, please consider either adding your name to the list of workshop members, or joining in with the policy discussions on the new page. --Kudpung (talk) 06:37, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Deletion of blank talk pages

Just dropping by to ask your opinion on the behaviour of WildBot. I'm not saying that bots actions in the following scenario are wrong, but would appreciate your thoughts.

Scenario
  1. WildBot tags the talk page of MV British Cavalier as having a dablink to Sunderland (nothing wrong there).
  2. I see that the talk page of the article has now been created, and suspect it's because WildBot has been at work. I check the talk page and discover this is the case.
  3. I correct the dablink to Sunderland, Co Durham (correct county for period being discussed).
  4. By the time I get back to the talk page, it has been tagged for deletion by WildBot, and deleted by 7SeriesBOT.

It is this last action which I'm not sure about. I was just about to add WP tags to the talk page and thus ended up recreating it anyway. Maybe it would be worth considering a delay of say 1 hour before WildBot tagged the page for deletion because it was blank? What do you say? Mjroots (talk) 08:20, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

see User:WildBot#Why does WildBot want my article deleted? - basically, it was considered that blank talk pages would be confusing. Josh Parris 09:44, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
In addition to your scenario above, if you had tagged the talk page before editting the article, the blankness wouldn't have happened, and so the talk page would not have been deleted. - UtherSRG (talk) 09:52, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
In fact, WildBot is so conservative that even if you'd tagged it, and changed your mind removing it, leaving a blank page, because someone other than WildBot had edited the page WildBot wouldn't even ask to have it deleted. Josh Parris 10:00, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
In fact, I would look at the fact that the talkpage was gone before you even had a chance to go back to it is a sign of how well the pairing works. As Josh says, it was truly designed to be conservative - multiple editors means no deletion. WildBot is speedy and efficient with its DAB work! (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 10:25, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

KITT

Hi

I asked the bot to take a look at KITT for me before. It came up that link "(2x) KARR (Knight Rider)#Appearances" needed fixing. I've had a look and I've tried to fix the link I think the bot is meaning, but it keeps cropping up in the bots list. So either I've got the wrong link or I'm doing something totally wrong. I'm trying the link under the section KARR Redesign, I cannot see any other part the bot would be meaning. It could be something I'm doing wrong though as it's my first time doing this so I'm not really sure on what I'm doing. Can you have a quick look please and see if I'm doing something wrong? --5 albert square (talk) 02:46, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Your problems with this have prompted me to make some changes. At the moment Wikipedia is lagging, so you won't get normal response from WildBot, but if you look at the message left (the advantages of personal service) now it should be a little clearer and easier to fix - now it lists the actual string used in the article rather than some fancy-pants cleaned up version.
In this particular case, both links to KARR_(Knight_Rider)#Appearances appear within KITT#History. I presume they're meant to read [[KARR (Knight Rider)#"Trust Doesn't Rust"|"Trust Doesn't Rust"]] and [[KARR (Knight Rider)#"K.I.T.T. vs. K.A.R.R."|"K.I.T.T. vs. K.A.R.R."]] respectively. Josh Parris 06:45, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi, can you please look at this article again? I'm sure I've found all the broken links but the bot seems to disagree? --5 albert square (talk) 21:15, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi again, I'm sorry, have you had the chance to look at the article yet? I still can't get rid of the faulty links and can't see what's wrong --5 albert square (talk) 23:30, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Just noticed that you looked at the article, many thanks for that I just couldn't see what was wrong with it :) --5 albert square (talk) 03:13, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Your bot seems to think that all links to dab paghes are bad. However some topics are only covered on a dab page and thus references to them can only be linked to the dab page. Paul August ☎ 15:07, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

See User:WildBot#I meant to link to a disambiguation page! Josh Parris 15:08, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I see, thanks. Paul August ☎ 15:16, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi again. I read the link you provided just above, and I thought I understood it, but can you explain what is wrong with the first two links here. Thanks Paul August ☎ 20:55, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

You understood correctly; WildBot is running behind at the moment and so hasn't updated the messagebox. I manually forced WildBot to update List of cultural references in The Divine Comedy and the messagebox currently reflects the state of play vis-à-vis disambiguation links. Josh Parris 00:56, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I've noticed this, too, & I'm not sure there's a way to fix it. WildBot found a link to Texan, which by necessity is a dab. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 22:44, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
See User:WildBot#I meant to link to a disambiguation page! (which I've tweaked) Josh Parris 23:34, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Italics and WildBot

Hi Josh,

I just discovered a new problem with books. Namely that articles declared as :''[[Foobar]]'' are sometimes being skipped by the renderer; these need to be declared as :[[Foobar|''Foobar'']] instead. I don't think it is necessary to create a new {{User:WildBot/b01}} message, simply cleaning these up as the bot sees them, with a "fixing italics" edit summary, should be enough. Opinions? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:45, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Is this a good example of fixing the problem? If so, I'll reprocess. Josh Parris 01:51, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Looks good to me. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 08:02, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
 Done processing commenced. Josh Parris 09:03, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
I noticed things like this: [7]. The bot should not link the whole thing that follows the ":", it should only check for :Foobar and switch it to :Foobar. I've disabled the bot in the meantime. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:41, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
 Done I've set up a separate book-stopping page so a need to stop that function doesn't kill the rest of the bot's tasks, and changed the book-changing so that only ' and " are forced inside the link. Josh Parris 02:46, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Excellent. Thanks for the quick response. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:00, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

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