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Archive 1←Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5Archive 6

Expansion of alerts?

Do you foresee a time when individual Editors could receive alerts like these on their Talk Page? It would be a great resource to keep abreast of AfD, CfD and MfD in areas of interest. Liz Read! Talk! 22:47, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

There are two things that you can do. One is to watchlist any AA pages that you are interested in; the other is to transclude them to your user page. I currently have three AA pages watchlisted; but instead, I could add the following three lines to my userpage:
{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Doctor Who/Article alerts}}
{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Greater Manchester/Article alerts}}
{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Article alerts}}
It's personal choice, really. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:59, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Keeps posting PRODs even though they are closed

Hi there. Just curious how long the bot is going to keep posting articles that have since been de-PROD'd, as seen here. It's sort of driving me crazy, so if I know when they will stop being mentioned I'll be able to sleep at night. (Just kidding :) ) Thanks so much for the great bot. SarahStierch (talk) 16:48, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Either a week or two. Then again, these were self-deprods, which I hadn't actually considered. I think I'll make the bot kill the prods deproded by the prodder (ha). —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 17:10, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

AFD for Pioneers of Alaska moved

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pioneers of Alaska (2nd nomination) is now Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pioneers of Alaska. Please update your bots accordingly. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:31, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

The bot is automatic, but I will mark that page for reparsing. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:23, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. It might be worthwhile to have the bot notify you or some other responsible party if it notices that some other editor, like me, has edited a page that typically only it edits, such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Organizations/Article alerts. When the Pioneers of Alaska AFD was moved without leaving a redirect, I went back through "what links here" and where appropriate I fixed up all of the red-links. Needless to say, I was surprised when a bot undid my handiwork. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:32, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
The alert pages are automatically generated and the bot would need to be very intelligent to detect human changes to those pages (which more often than not break or misuse the existing syntax making it much harder). So they aren't meant to be edited. I might report the changed ones somewhere, but they do get changed ever so often. Mostly it's something the bot fixes itself on the next run. Sometimes it's a weird issue, like this one. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 21:56, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
It shouldn't take too much smarts to see of the most recent edit was made by either itself or a known-whitelist of other bots (or humans, for that matter) that commonly edit the pages in a way that don't require your attention ({{REVISIONUSER}} or its coding-equivalent should do the trick). Now, telling the difference between an approve bot, a human, an unapproved bot (no "b") flag, or a human running a script is probably darn near impossible without using artificial intelligence, and even then, some humans are bot-like enough in their edits that they would "fail" any test to tell them from a bot :). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 23:13, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
Detecting other edits to a page is not a problem with the api. I can even easily tell if it was a bot flagged edit. I can even check the user for bot flag. But that doesn't really help me. The bot will still overwrite the page with its own data. Even if the bot is wrong, its logic worked for 99.9% other pages, so it's not exactly expecting there to be an issue. If there is, it's something only a human can fix and predict. Which is why I don't report these pages directly, but I have many filters that catch common problems with individual entries. The bot runs on IRC and we get syntax and procedural issues almost every day. Missing discussions is very common and it is almost always a page that hadn't been created, for example by an IP that couldn't and then just left. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:46, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Irregular updates

AAlertBot hasn't updated Wikipedia:WikiProject Elections and Referendums/Article alerts since 29 July. This has resulted in a rather important AfDs being missed by contributors! Any ideas how to get it listing regularly? Looking at the alert history, it's been fairly patchy. Given that AfDs are 7 day listings, a week off can have a big impact. Cheers, Number 57 22:24, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

As advised at the top of this page, have you reported this at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts/Bugs? --Redrose64 (talk) 23:04, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
No, I didn't see that bit. I'll copy it there. Number 57 23:13, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Discussion closed on 27 February 2014 for Template:Infobox Upper Hutt suburbs

Why is Template:Infobox Upper Hutt suburbs still listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject New Zealand/Article alerts? The deletion of the template is still in progress but the discussion closed on 27 February 2014, which is surely the relevant date as far as alerts go. Nurg (talk) 07:15, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

@Nurg: It's still being listed because although Plastikspork (talk · contribs) closed it as "delete" and marked the template accordingly, the actual deletion hasn't happened yet. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:53, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Continual tennis project alerts

How do we remove these particular tennis project alerts? They have all been discussed and merged or acted upon and closed, yet they are still being placed in the tennis project alert section for 9 months. Did the closer forget to tag something?

Templates for discussion

  • 30 Mar 2014 – Template:Tennis events 4 (talk · edit · hist) was TfDed by Pigsonthewing (t · c); see discussion
  • 30 Mar 2014 – Template:Tennis events 3 (talk · edit · hist) was TfDed by Pigsonthewing (t · c); see discussion
  • 30 Mar 2014 – Template:Tennis events 2 (talk · edit · hist) was TfDed by Pigsonthewing (t · c); see discussion
  • 30 Mar 2014 – Template:Infobox Tennis Grand Slam events (talk · edit · hist) was TfDed by Pigsonthewing (t · c); see discussion
  • 30 Mar 2014 – Template:Tennis events (talk · edit · hist) was TfDed by Pigsonthewing (t · c); see discussion
  • 30 Mar 2014 – Template:Infobox ATP Challenger Tournament (talk · edit · hist) was TfDed by Pigsonthewing (t · c); see discussion
  • 30 Mar 2014 – Template:Infobox defunct tennis tournament (talk · edit · hist) was TfDed by Pigsonthewing (t · c); see discussion
  • 30 Mar 2014 – Template:Infobox joint Tennis Tournament (talk · edit · hist) was TfDed by Pigsonthewing (t · c); see discussion

Thanks. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:17, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

This is in relation to Wikipedia:WikiProject Tennis/Article alerts. @Fyunck(click): These eight templates are all listed because they have a {{being deleted}} - this was added by Plastikspork (talk · contribs) several months ago, when the discussions that were initiated on 30 March 2014 about Tennis events infoboxes and Tennis tournament infoboxes were closed. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:44, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

When will the alerts appear in my project

When will the alerts appear in my project (Wikipedia:WikiProject Cosmology? It's been quite a while since some other user subscribed to AAlerts. Thanks Tetra quark (talk) 16:30, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Cosmology/Article alerts shows none. According to Wikipedia:Article alerts/Subscription list, article alerts are triggered by the presence of {{WikiProject Cosmology}} on a talk page. Are there any articles currently at AfD whose talk pages bear this banner? --Redrose64 (talk) 23:22, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
I don't think so. So that's the problem then. Thanks Tetra quark (talk) 15:50, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
@Tetra quark: It updated today. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:08, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Nice. So far there is only one item in it. Well, I do need to post the banner in some more talk pages. Thanks for letting me know of the update Tetra quark (don't be shy) 18:42, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

What do bold entries mean?

Some entries, such as "Margaritis Kastellis" in this edit, appear bold. Why? — Sebastian 06:42, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

I think they are new ones. A day later the bolding will be removed. See Tomska in that edit - it is one day old so had the bolding removed. Nurg (talk) 08:08, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
@SebastianHelm: New, or changed circumstances. In the example that you gave, there are four boldface entries: three are bolded because they are new additions to the report (Margaritis Kastellis and the first Celia Berrell were put up for AFD; Category:Dakar Rally winning vehicles entry was put up for CFD); the other one (the second Celia Berrell entry) is bolded because it was de-PRODded. When those two AFDs and the CFD are closed, these three will again get boldface, regardless of whether the discussion closes as "keep" or "delete". --Redrose64 (talk) 13:38, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
Great answers, thanks! Should we put this on the page somewhere? I don't want to confuse the bot. — Sebastian 17:22, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Why is there no CFD section in WikiProject Business?

Just curious to find out why wp: WikiProject Business does not have a section for wp:CFD in its alerts? Ottawahitech (talk) 19:22, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Presumably because none of the cats that have the WikiProject banner are currently at CfD. There are certainly a lot of categories listed at Category:Category-Class WikiProject Business articles - have you any examples of cats that you know to be at CfD that aren't being listed? --Redrose64 (talk) 23:21, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Bridges lacking alerts

Wikipedia:WikiProject Bridges which seems inactive has not had alerts added to the project. Just wondering if someone could create an alerts for it, or better still walk us through how alerts are created. Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 16:31, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

In the blue box at the top of this page, there's a link Subscribing. This should have everything that you need. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:20, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
Redrose64, Yes I know, I have tried to add alerts to projects in the past and managed to spend a lot of time and still got it wrong, sigh. I was hoping someone cleverer than me could lead the way for me and for others who would like to add Alerts to their project. I promise that if someone can shows me how to do it right, I will folloup by adding Alerts to wp:WikiProject Electronics which is also lacking Article Alerts. Ottawahitech (talk) 22:14, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
Really there are only two things to do, see Wikipedia:Article alerts/Subscribing#Done: add an entry (the {{ArticleAlertSubscription}} template) to Wikipedia:Article alerts/Subscription list#B, and add {{/Article alerts}} to WP:WikiProject Bridges. That will show as a redlink until AAlertBot (talk · contribs) next runs to completion. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:42, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

AAlertBot appears to be down

Hasn't edited since 2/12. --ThaddeusB (talk)

@ThaddeusB: We know. See #What happened to article alerts in WikiProject Taxation?. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:44, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
Ah, balls. I really need a better way to keep track of the bot's activity. It probably just had a network disconnect or something again. I'll ping Headbomb and get it running again. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:58, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

What happened to article alerts in WikiProject Taxation?

WP: WikiProject Taxation currently says No Article alerts at this time., but there is at least one article and one category currently in deletion discussion. Any speculation appreciated. Ottawahitech (talk) 19:35, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't know about the category (because you don't say which one), but as for the article, its talk page was given a {{WikiProject Taxation}} at 01:12, 12 February 2015.
AAlertBot (talk · contribs) normally starts at 09:00 (UTC) and takes just over 25 minutes to complete, but according to its status page, the 12 February run (which is where that AfD would have shown up for the first time) never completed, so it's presumably stuck at some point before Taxation. It appears that the bot hasn't done anything since 09:10, 12 February 2015 - the last page that it wrote to was Wikipedia:WikiProject District of Columbia/Article alerts, so presumably it's stuck in the D's. Once it's going again, the AfD should be picked up the next time that the bot runs to completion. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:43, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Thanks so much for your help, Sorry for not being specific enough. The category and article currently nominated for deletion are:
I just checked Wikipedia:WikiProject_Taxation#Article_alerts and but still says: ‘’’No Article alerts at this time. Ottawahitech (talk) 16:50, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
It won't change, until AAlertBot (contribs linked earlier) starts moving again. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:57, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

No AFD notification

Does anyone know why this bot stopped on February 12 and who can be notified to start it again? There's an AfD for an article included in a project I work on that hasn't been added as expected. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 14:17, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

I already sent a note to Headbomb (talk · contribs). --Redrose64 (talk) 15:18, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
Any indication the bot might be coming back soon (both owners are pretty inactive these days), or should someone start work on a replacement? --ThaddeusB (talk) 16:35, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
Answered by Hellknowz below, thanks. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:16, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
It's been started manually, let's see how far it gets. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:42, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
@Ottawahitech, Stevietheman, ThaddeusB, and Hellknowz: It ran to completion. --Redrose64 (talk) 01:13, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Just saw its latest update. Thank you. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 01:19, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

AAlertBot and RfD

AAlertBot should be changed to use Category:All redirects for discussion instead of Category:Redirects for discussion due to changes discussed at Template talk:Rfd#Edit request to alter category tagged page is placed. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:32, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for notifying. I really need to free some time now to get around to adjusting. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:51, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

AAlertBot down since April 14

As you can see, AAlertbot hasn't run since 04:39, 14 April 2015 (Eastern U.S.). Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 05:39, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

I'll give it a kick tonight when I get home. I could have sworn it ran over the week end, but I guess it didn't. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:13, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

AAlertBot hasn't run for 4 days

Last ran at 08:11, 18 May 2015 UTC. Nurg (talk) 07:48, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Right you are. I'll get on it. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:24, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Pure workflow lists? (not broken out by WikiProject)

I was wondering if a feature could be added to Article Alerts Bot generated lists? Adding a general listing of all events qualifying under each workflow as a subpage here, for each workflow. such as WP:Article alerts/list/Requested moves will list everything that the bot detects as a move request and list them in the bot generated manner. (and the same for WP:Article alerts/list/Proposed deletions, WP:Article alerts/list/Articles for deletion, etc) -- 70.51.202.183 (talk) 05:47, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

That might not be a bad idea, though these pages will be HUGE in some cases. Also, the bot ignores pages not belonging to any projects, so it will be missing entries. The subscription-to-page logic is very much tied together atm. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:48, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Hasn't run for WP Louisville since July 17

FYI... Wikipedia:WikiProject Louisville alerts haven't been updated since July 17. Rooster Run is shown as being deprod'd, but has since gone through an AfD which was closed. Thanks for looking into this. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 22:57, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

The AfD was opened and closed on the same day faster than the bot had a chance to see it. Closed entries can only happen if there ever was an open entry, which there wasn't for this page. "Closed" simply means it was detected active, but is no longer. The page is in no maintenance category, it is not flagged for AfD, etc. So the bot has no reason to visit it over any other.
This is an uncommon edge case. Usually even speedy closes are at least a day old. There's currently no easy or reliable way to detect these super-fast workflow entries. And it would drastically change how things like dates are detected. I would need separate logic for these. For example, parsing AfD log or something. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:46, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for the explanation. I was actually more concerned that maybe other items weren't being caught in the interim period. It all makes sense now. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 12:47, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia files for deletion

A category that this group involves itself, Category:Wikipedia files for deletion, has been proposed to be renamed Category:Wikipedia files for discussion. This notice has been placed as a courtesy in the event that the category is renamed per a note on the category (for a bot that collaborates with this page.) Steel1943 (talk) 21:23, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 22:52, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
Also, in relation to this notification, Wikipedia:Files for deletion has been moved to Wikipedia:Files for discussion. The daily subpages are now being created at the new base page name. Steel1943 (talk) 06:20, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
I have updated some templates that linked to the category, but not Wikipedia:Article alerts/Workflows or User:AAlertBot/Workflows. Over to you, Hellknowz. – Fayenatic London 07:48, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Updated the bot to new location/titles and the project pages. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:50, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Setting up alerts for a task-force

I posted this Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-02-23/Article_Alerts#Setting up alerts for a task-force - Can anyone help? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 19:45, 24 December 2015 (UTC)please ping me

Added it [1]. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:14, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
@Ottawahitech: Ran the bot too since it skipped today, report at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ottawa/Article alerts. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:56, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Bad TOC form

Over at WT:ELEMENTS, putting the TOC into the ArticleAlert frame produces a very badly formed TOC (needlessly reduced width). I want to have the TOC regular placed & formed, think have it by default (outside of boxes). Can that be done? -DePiep (talk) 11:06, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Width is controlled on the table directly. Currently the TOC is 40%, and AALERTS is 60%. You can play with these % values if you want, but I don't see what's awful about the current TOC. 50-50 might look more to your taste though. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:52, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Even medium length section titles are wrapped over multiple lines. That is not how TOC was designed. -DePiep (talk) 16:33, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
That's not AAB functionality, that's the table added to the talk page. It has the following code:
! width=40% | Table of contents
! width=60% | [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements/Article alerts|Article alerts]]
The 40% and 60% and the class of the table are what determine the layout. AAB page is simply transcluded, it could have been any content. Your best bet is to not use "ombox ombox-notice" table classes and tweak the width %. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:39, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
AFAIK, I'm supposed to have TOC inside the box because Article alert needs it. Fine (or else, tell me that TOC can be outside of the box -- solces).
The 40% you mention is of the reduced box with, 80%. So 40%×80%=32% of 100% page width. '50%' would still be only 40% of the page: not what TOC is designed for. At least, the AA message should be atop the TOC; now it is generating useless whitespace in its column. Useless and bad pagedesign. -DePiep (talk) 18:44, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Article alert doesn't (and cannot have) a TOC (it is not using sections). I'm not sure what you are trying to do? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 19:12, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Please take the TOC out of the box, it is an accessibility issue because there is content between the TOC and the first heading. Graham87, please let me know if I'm wrong. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:31, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Indeed. Thanks, Redrose64, for the note, and thanks, DePiep, for removing it. Graham87 01:10, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
re "Article alert doesn't (and cannot have) a TOC (it is not using sections)." -- OK! Now my initial OP assumption appears to be wrong. (I was assuming an Aa-TOC relation because of this editsummary by Christian75). Also moots Rr64 note I think. -DePiep (talk) 22:18, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Which was an answer to this "minor" edit. Look at the table it produce. Christian75 (talk) 22:24, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes it was "minor", even in retrospect here. Your claim that it was required in old form because of Article alert is wrong. Now do you excuse or keep diverting? -DePiep (talk) 22:45, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
You are and were wrong. It wasnt a minor edit. You left the page with a table which said "Table of contents" but contained an "article alert", and the other part of the table was empty. This is the page after you left it. And I didnt say anything about AA should be inside a box or not. (I know it can be outside, evidence, look at User:Christian75/aa). Christian75 (talk) 22:57, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

this feature in other language?

I want to use this feature on zh wiki, what are the requirements?

from my understanding I need at least a botPanintelize (talk) 12:44, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the bot is very English Wikipedia specific. All the workflows, templates, naming, checks and logic, not to mention output is based on English WP. The source code currently isn't public and probably won't be in near future. It would take a significant investment of time to convert it to another language. In other words--even if you had the source code--you would need to reprogram a lot of it. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:56, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Not updating WP:CHICAGO

WP:CHIAA has not updated since June 9.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 21:15, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Nor have any other AA pages. If you look at the contribs of AAlertBot (talk · contribs), you'll see that it's not running. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:05, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. Has the service been shut down permanently or is this a temporary situation?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 01:02, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
Whoops, didn't notice it stopped running. I've just ran it. This subscription managed to confuse the bot. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:25, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
Thanks.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:26, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Classical music alert

I wonder why GAN Ferruccio Busoni doesn't show in the alerts for Classical music. Is it the bot or something in the nom? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:51, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

The article is not tagged with WikiProject Classical music banner, so the bot doesn't consider it as belonging to it. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:34, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
@Gerda Arendt: It does show at Wikipedia:WikiProject Composers/Article alerts, because of {{WikiProject Composers}}; at Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Article alerts, because of {{WikiProject Opera}}; and at Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Arts and entertainment/Article alerts, because of {{WikiProject Biography|a&e-work-group=yes}}; so the Article Alerts system is working.
Just add {{WikiProject Classical music|class=b}} to Talk:Ferruccio Busoni and it'll show up in Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music/Article alerts at around 08:15 (UTC) tomorrow. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:05, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, done. I wonder, however, if the bot could treat "composers" as a sub-project of Classical music, as I understand it is, rather than adding another project to every relevant talk. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:24, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
Well, forget it, composers are probably all composers, classical or not, and composers for GA don't come often, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:26, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
@Gerda Arendt: And there you go. As far as subprojects are concerned, changes to the WikiProject banners are best discussed either on the talk page of that banner template, or on the WikiProject's own talk page - but not here. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:01, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

More than one category

Hi there, is there a way to subscribe to pages in more than one maincategory? I'm thinking of subscribing WP Anthroponymy to articles that fall in either Category:Given names or Category:Surnames. Uanfala (talk) 13:05, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Isn't Category:Human names the best choice? We would not want to omit most of the other subcats there. – Fayenatic London 13:58, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
It is! But does the bot recurse through the subcategories? Uanfala (talk) 14:02, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Currently, there's no way to subscribe to subcategories. The talk page subcategory logic is only there because enough projects don't have a banner or central category for their pages, and only have predicatble WP 1.0 importance/quality categories. It's usable, because it's only half a dozen sub-categories. However, mainspace categories can have dozens of subcategories and huge hierarchies. And then there are likely multiple categories to begin with. If projects started using this, this would increase the bot run time by hours to read them all and then to correlate each page to each project's each workflow. I would need to do a large rewrite to that logic to make something like that to work. The current design is that projects should tag their pages and then they get included. Things like mainspace categories would be needed if the pages of interest to the project aren't actually tagged by the project. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 15:37, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
The one project that I know of that doesn't tag most of its pages is Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation, but all of its pages sit at the root of a single category, which is what it's subscribed to, so the current system works fine for it. Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy seems to favour tagging all its articles (even though for the vast majority of cases (that is, list articles that by default don't receive any quality or importance ratings) the banner is somewhat superfluous). Still, some of its articles aren't tagged and most of them are placed (by a mainspace template) directly under either Category:Given names or Category:Surnames. So, recursion isn't necessary, as long as we can subscribe to both of these mainspace categories. But this isn't possible, is it? The alternative, of course, will be to try and tag all articles that haven't been tagged yet. Uanfala (talk) 17:00, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Both, currently no. One, yes. The "proper" way is to tag them of course. More flexible ways to find pages is on my todo list, but it's complicated due to how long it would take to gather and scan so many categories. It wouldn't be too hard to have multiple categories though. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 17:17, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Mfdx

Template:Mfdx has been nominated for deletion. The disussion is at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2016 August 9#Template:Mfdx, and I am posting here per the article alerts on that template's documentation. Pppery (talk) 14:35, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Template move discussion

See Template talk:Cfd#Requested move 8 August 2016. clpo13(talk) 19:38, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Taylor Swift/Article alerts

Can anyone see what is wrong that the bot has never updated this page? —IB [ Poke ] 12:26, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

I just added it to the subscription page. Did I do the correct way? —IB [ Poke ] 12:30, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
You added it correctly. The bot only runs once a day though, so it won't update the page until tomorrow. The page before that was not created by the bot, but by a user, that's why there's nothing there. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:33, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Article alerts/Archive 6

Has a bunch of duplicates in its AfD archives. czar 04:42, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

How AA associates with a WikiProject

@Hellknowz, how does AA determine whether a page is part of a project? It looks for a project template on the corresponding talk page? Or does it use categories? (Asking re: Template talk:WPBannerMeta#Excluding categories and files from MAIN CAT)czar 15:13, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Based on its subscription. Wikipedia:Article_alerts/Subscribing#Basic_subscription goes through the various ways. It can be either banner or category (or both or none). Banner has been historically preferred over category. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 15:29, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
Thanks—Is there any benefit to using one over the other? And if categories/files were excluded from the main category, those pages would then be excluded from AA's rounds? czar 15:59, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
No real difference. Occasionally, a project doesn't have a separate banner. Many projects don't have a single category. If there's no banner or category, then there's no way for the bot to associate those pages. If there's no category, but still a banner, then they would get picked up. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 17:38, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
@Czar: I thought I explained this here? --Redrose64 (talk) 21:27, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
@Redrose64, just clarification—wanted to know whether there was a reason for doing it this way czar 22:55, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Dated book prod

FYI, I've moved {{Dated book prod}} to {{book-prod/dated}} to be in line with the other PROD templates. — Train2104 (t • c) 19:43, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Gotcha. Thanks for reporting. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:22, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Alert archiving

The archivetime parameter of Template:ArticleAlertSubscription isn't documented - is it still used, and what's the default value when unspecified? Thanks, Batternut (talk) 12:38, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

WP:Article alerts/Subscribing#See also has a link to an old version, and in there the section #Setting_the_archive_time says 14 days for the default. I can't see any obvious sign of that parameter still being used. --David Biddulph (talk) 12:52, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
Hey! Thanks for pointing out I've not added any details on this. I added them now at Template:ArticleAlertSubscription#Archiving (technically, Wikipedia:Article alerts/Subscribing/Content#Archiving). The default time is 7 days after closure, it can be changed to any number. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:38, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
Great, thanks! Batternut (talk) 13:47, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Show promoted articles?

Would it be possible to also display articles that have been recently promoted to good or featured article/topic? Just like the requested moves section shows recently closed move requests. Now our best achievements unfortunately just silently disappear from the radar. --WS (talk) 22:15, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

@Wouterstomp: Isn't that what JL-Bot (talk · contribs) does? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:52, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
Well no, that bot generates a list of all recognized content, not recent promotions. It would be nice if article alerts included recently promoted content for a week or so after promotion. --WS (talk) 23:32, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
The report page (should) keep recently closed (in case or recognized content, promoted or not promoted) content for about a week. Was it at a specific page that the bot removed closed entries without keeping them reported for a while longer? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:59, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
One recent example here: [2] hypoglossal nerve was promoted to good article and was then removed from the article alerts within a day. This happens consistently: [3] (thyroid), [4] (esophagus). --WS (talk) 23:01, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikimania 2017

I will be making (assuming my proposal is accepted) a presentation on Article Alerts at Wikimania 2017, in Montreal.

If you are interested in attending, please sign up! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:28, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Update: This will happen on August 10th. I don't know the time yet. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:32, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Adding images used by a Wikiproject that are up for deletion by Commons

This would be hugely useful. Posted here Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Commons_deletion_notices. Not sure if there is a better place to bring this up. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:57, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

@Doc James: best place would be to make a Feature request. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:31, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Thanks and done. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:24, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Planning page move on HIStory/Ghosts

I recently split the content from HIStory/Ghosts to Ghosts (Michael Jackson song) and wanted to rename the article to HIStory (Michael Jackson song). I realize this could affect the {{GAR/link}} template and Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/HIStory/Ghosts/1, which I started. What to do about this? --George Ho (talk) 23:00, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Updates from Wikimania

Following my presentation at Wikimania (slides), both DannyH (WMF) (talk · contribs) and Kaldari (talk · contribs) have expressed an interest in taking over / converting / doing something with Article Alerts.

The general idea was, I believe (correct me if I get the details wrong), to re-create the framework and externalizing the workflow config on a per-wiki basis. In plainspeak, this would mean letting people be able to set up Article Alerts in other languages, and tell the bot how things are setup in those languages since how deletion discussions happen there may not mirror how it's setup in English. This isn't a formal announcement of anything, but I thought I'd give a heads up on things that may be coming in the future.

I was under the impression that this is a project that would need to be proposed on the upcoming 2017 Community Wishlist and garner support there before the WMF allocates resources to this project. So I'd like to use this space for Ryan/Danny/Hellknowz/Myself/others can coordinate on a strategy, create some outline of what needs to happen for this proposal to be successful, and have a proposal draft before the Community Wishlist survey goes live. Ryan/Danny, any input on where we should hold such discussion? I feel it will become rather large, so we'll either want a dedicated subpage like Wikipedia:Article alerts/Roadmap, or some other thing, like a phabricator thread, or a meta page somewhere.

I talked to Hellknowz (talk · contribs) this morning, and he was open to licensing the code under CC0, or some other WMF-compatible license. He also suggested implementing this as a extension rather than a bot.

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:17, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

This sounds great :) And, the preferred license of Wikimedia/MediaWiki projects is GPL, version 2 or later. Legoktm (talk) 03:35, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
Hi Headbomb! Yes, Ryan and I think this would be a very promising Wishlist proposal -- we've worked on similar projects before, and Alerts are really useful. Wishlist proposals don't actually need to be very long -- it's just a statement of the problem, a description of who would benefit, and a description of the proposed solution. In this case, you've got a working feature, so the "problem" would be the things that you'd like to do in order to make it better. (It doesn't work on other wikis, it's not being maintained, etc -- whatever improvements you think need to be made.) The proposed solution doesn't have to be super detailed -- we can help to figure out whether it should be an extension, after the survey is over.
The most important thing is writing a description of the problem and the benefits that sounds compelling enough for people to vote for it. As examples, here's the proposals from last year's survey that reached #1 (Global gadgets), #2 (Edit summary length for non-Latin languages), and #3 (Section URLs for non-Latin languages). -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 22:28, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
DannyH (WMF) (talk · contribs) Do you know when the submission process for items to be considered on the community survey will open up? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:23, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, the proposal period will be November 6th to 20th. Then there's a week break, and the voting period will be November 27th to Dec 11th. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
I'll put a reminder in my phone then. Is there normally a template / standard form to fill, or is it mostly free-form? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:07, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

@Hellknowz, DannyH (WMF), Kaldari, and Ryan Kaldari (WMF):: Proposal is up at meta:2017 Community Wishlist Survey/Bots and gadgets/Deploy Article Alerts to other languages. Feedback welcomed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:08, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Headbomb, that looks great to me; it's a really solid proposal. Feel free to let people know about it, if there are folks who would be interested in supporting it. :) -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 19:54, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

meta:2017 Community Wishlist Survey/Bots and gadgets/Deploy Article Alerts to other languages

Everyone who wants to see WP:AALERTS grow should support this. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:10, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

See meta:2017_Community_Wishlist_Survey/Tracking for where we currently stand. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:57, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
See also meta:Community_Tech/Article_Alerts_for_more_languages. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:06, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Alerts with every edit

Will I be alerted with every edit on Wikipedia? I've made 4 trivial edits. I've had 3 alerts, 1. Welcome to Wikipedia, 2. You've made your first edit, 3. A TLDR from Wikimedia. Is there a way to stop this? Trivial request, too; but I'm distracted by the pings which have no added value. --CoccoRockOh4 (talk) 20:45, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

That's related to WP:Notifications. You can ask questions about that to WT:Notifications if you want, but the short answer is that those are sent to new people to help them get around. Automated 'tutorial' notifications die fairly rapidly, however. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:49, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for something to look forward to ;). --CoccoRockOh4 (talk) 18:28, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
@CoccoRockOh4: Article alerts look like this. They're not sent direct to individual users. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:02, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
I don't know what this means, but knowing they eventually find a good number of edits to die answers my question. --CoccoRockOh4 (talk) 18:28, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

How fashion an alert?

I would like to use Wikipedia:WikiProject Catholicism/Article alerts for Talk:Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School#History. I tried placing it under "Requests for comments" though I have not formally requested comments. I modeled my request after KofC there, but it didn't take. My questions: 1) where do I put the "anchor|RfC" in connection with this request; 2) should I use some section other than Rfc; and 3) how do I make it compress as in the other entries on the page? My current effort (that didn't compress) is listed here:

Thanks for any help with this! Jzsj (talk) 00:06, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the helpful response. I'll hold off on the Rfc for now and hope that a neutrally-worded note on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Catholicism page will not be seen as canvassing. Jzsj (talk) 15:16, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

What's the template to notify a WikiProject?

Thank you Xinbenlv (talk) 08:07, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

@Xinbenlv: Notify them about what? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:46, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Redrose64, such suggest adding page to their watch list, maybe? or some talk page that is related to their topic. Xinbenlv (talk) 20:19, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
This is not what WP:AALERTS is for. Article alerts create reports of ongoing discussion by topic. You can watch individual article alerts reports to be notified of important discussion related to a topic, but as far as making suggestion for what interests you, that's not the purpose of this bot. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:35, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
However, if you want a bot to notify you/a project of new articles in a topic, see User:AlexNewArtBot. You can then add Wikiproject banners to the article talk page manually. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:37, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Change to Template:Requested move/dated

A small change to Template:Requested move/dated is proposed at User talk:RMCD bot#Shared talk page. This is not expected to be a breaking change for bots, but, as I don't know that for sure, I'm posting the requested notification here. wbm1058 (talk) 10:46, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Women/Women in Green

Can somebody check I've done this edit correctly? Basically I want the bot to add any current GA nomination for an article covered by Wikipedia:WikiProject Women to be logged in Wikipedia:WikiProject Women/Women in Green/Article Alerts. This can then be transcluded into the main Wikipedia:WikiProject Women/Women in Green project page. The last time I tried to add a subscription, it took several days of tinkering about before I got it right, so I'd like some advice up-front this time! Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:56, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

At first glance, it looks fine. Check tomorrow when the alerts are created and see if there's anything amiss. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:02, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
I changed the category from mainspace to talk space. Although it's redundant to the banner. Also, only GANs, not GARs? —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 15:33, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
@Hellknowz: I'm just doing GARs at the moment; once I know the workflow is running properly I can tweak it then. Alas, the bot skipped over the subscription, but I wonder if it's because the target page to write to didn't exist. I've created a placeholder for it now; maybe that'll fix it? Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 09:16, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
Oh, right. The project name has to be unique. The bot sees "WikiProject Women" twice and doesn't know what to do with the second one. I adjusted it. —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 09:27, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
@Hellknowz: Can the subscription cope with multiple projects? For example, Eusebia Cosme is not on the list because it's talk page is tagged with {{WikiProject Women's History}}, not {{WikiProject Women}}. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 14:44, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
It can, via talk pages categories. However, you'd need to update every Women-related banner to populate a category like Category:All WikiProject Women-related pages. Ask for help at WT:WOMEN and Template talk:Metabanner to set that up.Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:11, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
Okay, that makes sense. I can just update the banners myself as I'm an admin ;-) .... though I'd rather wait and check that a) the bot actually runs with the basic single project and b) test the template changes first Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 15:25, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
"Can the subscription cope with multiple projects?" Without additional changes, not at the moment. But, as Headbomb says, if all the relevant banners were to emit a talk category, it could use that. —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 20:10, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
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