To run a bot on the English Wikipedia, you must first get it approved. Follow the instructions below to add a request. If you are not familiar with programming consider asking someone else to run a bot for you.
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Create a userpage for your bot, linking to your userpage (this is commonly done using the {{bot}} template) and describing its functions. You may also include an 'emergency shutoff button'.
II
Filing the application
easy-brfa.js can be used for quickly filing BRFAs. It checks for a bunch of filing mistakes automatically! It's recommended for experienced bot operators, but the script can be used by anyone.
Enter your bot's user name in the box below and click the button. If this is a request for an additional task, put a task number as well (e.g. BotName 2).
Complete the questions on the resulting page and save it.
Your request must now be added to the correct section of the main approvals page: Click here and add {{BRFA}} to the top of the list, directly below the comment line.
For an additional task request: use {{BRFA|bot name|task number|Open}}
III
During the approvals process
During the process, an approvals group member may approve a trial for your bot (typically after allowing time for community input), and AnomieBOT will move the request to this section.
Run the bot for the specified number of edits/time period, then add {{Bot trial complete}} to the request page. It helps if you also link to the bot's contributions, and comment on any errors that may have occurred.
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If you feel that your request is being overlooked (no BAG attention for ~1 week) you can add {{BAG assistance needed}} to the page. However, please do not use it after every comment!
At any time during the approvals process, you may withdraw your request by adding {{BotWithdrawn}} to your bot's approval page.
IV
After the approvals process
After the trial edits have been reviewed and enough time has passed for any more discussion, a BAG member will approve or deny the request appropriately.
For approved requests: The request will be listed here. If necessary, a bureaucrat will flag the bot within a couple of days and you can then run the task fully (it's best to wait for the flag, to avoid cluttering recent changes). If the bot already has a flag, or is to run without one, you may start the task when ready.
For denied/expired/withdrawn requests: The request will be listed at the bottom of the main BRFA page in the relevant section.
Function overview: Fix template values in pages that end with break. Leaving this unfixed can cause pages to have whitespace errors. I do not see an active bot currently addressing this issue. WP:CHECKWIKICW Error #59
Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):
Edit period(s): Once backlog is reduced the bot will run at least monthly
Estimated number of pages affected: 14606 CW Error #59
Function details: At the end of a value in a template there is a break. (For example {{Template|name=Mr. King<br/>}}) This break should be inside the template but not in the value; you can delete this break.
I plan to manually load this list of pages with this error into AWB.
Discussion
Question: How will the bot know to avoid false positives? Having never encountered this error flag before, I went to the Checkwiki page for error 59 and clicked on a page at random, 2015–16 Ulster Rugby season. That page has an error flagged as |lineup1 = '''Ulster lineup''':<br />, but the actual code on the page, which looks fine to me, is:
|lineup1 = '''Ulster lineup''':<br/>
1. Callum Black, 2. Rory Best (c), 3. Wiehahn Herbst,<br/>
4. Dan Tuohy, 5. Franco van der Merwe,<br/>
6. Iain Henderson, 7. Chris Henry, 8. Nick Williams,<br/>
9. Ruan Pienaar, 10. Paddy Jackson,<br/>
11. Craig Gilroy, 12. Stuart McCloskey, 13. Darren Cave, 14. Andrew Trimble,<br/>
15. Louis Ludik.<br/>
Replacements:<br/>
16. Rob Herring (for Van der Merwe 66'), 17. Kyle McCall (for Black 58'), 18. Ricky Lutton (for Herbst 70'),<br/>
19. Robbie Diack (for Williams 66'), 20. Roger Wilson (for Henry 49'),<br/>
21. Paul Marshall (for Pienaar 75'), 22. Ian Humphreys (for Jackson 70'), 23. Peter Nelson (for Ludik 73').
}}
The above appears to be valid, and renders fine. Removing the first br tag would change the rendered output in an undesirable way.
I then clicked on 2019 Women's PSA World Tour Finals, which has a br tag after "Qualification" that does not render unwanted whitespace. If the bot removed the br in that template, it would be a cosmetic edit, which is generally frowned upon.
Given that I was 0-for-2 in choosing articles listed in the report that demonstrated the usefulness of removing the identified br tag, and 1-for-2 in finding a removal that would make the page worse, how should this proposed task proceed? – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:36, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I have raised a couple of issues about this "error" at the WP CW talk page. This is looking very much like it would produce a lot of cosmetic edits, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. Maybe, if there are legitimate edits to be made, the bot would need to constrain its scope to specific templates or template parameters. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:17, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Jonesey95 That's a really great point that I didn't taken into account so thanks for bringing it up. I moved over to WP:CLEANER instead of AWB and ran some test edits. There are whitespace errors are present on the 2015–16 Ulster Rugby season page in the Rugbybox collapsible2 template that cause the edit section links to not display. I made the edit and included a screenshot of what I'm talking about. The right side is the old version with the whitespace error and the left side is after correcting the error in the Rugbybox collapsible2 template. As for the 2019 Women's PSA World Tour Finals article the br isn't causing any display issues so both WP:CLEANER and WP:AWB ignore it. It appears that WP:CLEANER knows not to edit infoboxes but the bot that is tagging CW Error #59 errors is including articles that have br tags but that aren't breaking anything. So the number of articles that need to be edited will be much lower. For my quick example here I checked the first 30 pages and only 6 needed edits done. Dr vulpes(Talk) 21:05, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Are you sure about the lack of an edit link? Pages that are not the current page do not have section edit links. Also, I find it hard to imagine a mechanism in which a stray br tag way down the page causes an edit link to go missing up above. I copied the old version into User:Jonesey95/sandbox and edit links are visible. What were the six pages in which your bot edits appeared to have an effect? I looked at half a dozen of your edits in the time range around your edit to 2022 F4 Brazilian Championship, and I see no visible effect on the rendered page from this edit. The more I look, the more I think there will be very few actual errors. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:18, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Well I learned something new today, I guess your right @Jonesey95 I can't really see any improvement these edits would make. Sorry for taking up your time with this. When I saw the edit link disappear I had a real light bulb moment, now I feel a little silly! I'll take another crack at this and see if I can find any sort of edge case where this would be useful but if I can't then I'll pull the BRFA since it wouldn't really be improving anything. Seriously, thanks for pointing this out and for taking the time to follow up with it. Dr vulpes(Talk) 22:55, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
On hold. Please disable this tag if the task is to proceed, or add {{BotWithdrawn}} if you plan on withdrawing. Primefac (talk) 13:23, 1 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
No worries. I had just never seen this CheckWiki "error" before, and I've seen plenty of harmless br tags in my gnoming, so I had fun digging into it. I have yet to see a case where it causes a problem. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:02, 1 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Applying a {{backlog}} template to the page when there are more than 4-5 requests without a hold, that are less than 7 days old.
Informing autoconfirmed users who make a request on this page that they are free to upload their files themselves, but not changing the status of the request in case more help is needed.
(Optional) Informing registered users who make a request on FFU, who have a request with a free content license, that they may upload their own image, as long as the license is correct, to Commons. (Likely using {{ffu|commons}})
(Optional) Informing users of the robot clerk comment for tasks 2 and 3 on the requestor's talk page.
(Optional) Adding a request for a {{Non-free use rationale}} if none is provided for a request that has a non-free license in their request. This would require Task 4.
Comment This is a really neat idea that I wish I had thought of. Have you thought of any other ways to expand this task into areas that might have higher need? It's ok if you haven't I was just interested in hearing about how you found out about this problem and if you're thinking about any next steps. Dr vulpes(Talk) 07:01, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I find that I cannot outright deny this request because I have been involved in discussions related to this in the past. I am extremely opposed to tasks where the only point is to remove empty parameter values, and I honestly think that this functionality in Module:Check for unknown parameters should be removed. While this does throw pages into a maintenance category, somewhat alleviating the COSMETICBOT issue, simply setting |ignoreblanks=1 does exactly the same thing, saving potentially thousands of edits. Primefac (talk) 08:30, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
To be fair, there really isn't any visual difference between filled out unsupported parameters and unfilled ones. They both don't change the display. Any rational for removing filled out parameters is just as valid for the unfilled ones. As an anecdotal, since clearing out 5 or so years ago a large amount of unfilled parameters in Infobox television, the amount of unsupported and strange filled out parameters has dropped almost to zero. Gonnym (talk) 17:18, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
As a separate thought to the above - the above two categories mentioned have (at the moment) a grand total of 2 pages in them, indicating in this particular instance the "blank parameter" issue has been solved. Primefac (talk) 08:32, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
As a third thought, my bot already does non-blank invalid-parameter removal. Primefac (talk) 08:32, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
There was discussion of this at Help talk:Citation Style 1, and this does appear to be the correct thing to do; the parameters are useless/confusing when the domain to which they pertain is dead. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 17:18, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@GreenC: Am I reading your comment here right in that you and other editors would object to this task? I don't have very strong feelings about this, but I can see value in indicating an archived URL requires a subscription; even if said subscription is no longer available, the full content remains unaccessible at the archive URL. — The Earwig (talk) 05:27, 17 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes, during discussions 3 or 4 editors objected. There were actually two threads, the first was Help_talk:Citation_Style_1#Subscription_and_via,_when_link_is_dead. The more we know about the original source the better it is to verify. If the source was subscription, it can be assumed the archive version won't have the full (or any) content which makes it a higher-value target for editors doing verification work. Particularly in the future, when AI can help with verification. -- GreenC 22:10, 17 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yeah, I think it's helpful information as well. Easier to know when the source was accessed in the past. I don't think it should be removed at least. PARAKANYAA (talk) 00:24, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@PARAKANYAA: This bot task would NOT remove the |access-date= parameter which contains the value to know when the source was accessed in the past. This task is to remove the |access-date= parameter and/or {{subscription required}} only in those cases where there no longer is a registration/subscription option to view the source. GoingBatty (talk) 00:55, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
To me this sounds like it requires more discussion. Primefac (talk) 12:56, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
On hold. Formally putting this on hold until the above gets replies and/or traction can be indicated. Primefac (talk) 08:33, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Function details: With PkbwcgsBot not being online since 2020 my goal is to pick up this task. This is admittedly a minor task with a low number of pages popping up each week. I felt it was better to offset this to the bot to run at least once a week instead of just doing it on my personal account and clogging up my edit history.
The bot will use AWB to fix error 86 (External link with two brackets).
The bot is going to remove the double brackets around the link and apply general fixes.
Discussion
I am of two minds here. On the one hand this is taking over an already-approved bot task. On the other hand, the error count for #86 is currently 17, indicating that this might not be as "big" of an issue as it was three years ago. I'm not necessarily opposed to sending this to trial, but if it's only going to be making a handful of edits every once in a while it seems like it's more useful to do manually or with an AWB-specific account (if "clogging my edit history" is really that much of a concern). Primefac (talk) 08:27, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Primefac yeah that makes sense, I only submitted this because the previous bot owner hasn't run it in ages. Would it be more appropriate to change this BRFA to once a month/quarter and from automatic to supervised? Dr vulpes(Talk) 09:32, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
If the bot hadn't run in a while and the numbers are that low, that's why I'm thinking this might not be a task that needs a bot any more. If this is currently done manually or semi-manually (i.e. with AWB) by other editors (i.e. there is regularly a number of pages that needed fixing) and they are indicating they do not wish to do this any more, then it's more likely we can "revive" this task. Primefac (talk) 14:08, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
If the goal of Dr vulpes is to take over more CheckWiki errors and is just starting with this one, then (in my non-BAG opinion), the current low number isn't that big of an issue, as its still better for a bot to waste its time than editors with these simple fixes. Gonnym (talk) 17:13, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Fair enough, especially if this does turn into a CW-fixing bot.
Approved for trial (25 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.Primefac (talk) 08:13, 12 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Edit period(s): Checks the daily TfD subpage once an hour for new discussions, actually edits a few times a week. Also a large one time addition for all past discussion.
Estimated number of pages affected: Maybe 2000-2500 when applying boxes to discussions retroactively (one time only). When in continuous use maybe a dozen a week.
Function details: The bot consists of 3 parts. One script that goes through all Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log subpages and scrapes what templates were discussed (linked in {{Tfd links}}), the result and the link to the discussion. This information is added to a 14 MB python dictionary. Relists are ignored. Part two goes through all the same pages and adds an {{Other TfDs}} box if one of the templates has been discussed some other time (either previously or later) as determined by the dictionary. There are up to ~3000 discussions out of ~56,000 that could get such a box, but the real number will be less due to identical mass noms and templates nominated more than twice being double counted. The third script would check the TfD subpage of the day for new discussions each hour and adds them to the dictionary. If any discussion needs a box it adds one there and updates previous discussions to include a link to the new one. This script isn't written yet, but will mostly consist of parts from the other two scripts. These user pages have a small number of successful test edits: 1, 2, and 3.
Discussion
Linking older discussions from new ones is fine, but I don't think modifying older discussions to link to the newer ones is a good idea – the archive headers say to not modify the closed discussion. – SD0001 (talk) 20:59, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@SD0001 On AfD the corresponding feature uses Special:Prefixindex. This results in links to future discussions being automatically added. This is useful and in no way alters the contents of the discussion. I believe we should do the same here. Trialpears (talk) 21:08, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I agree with SD0001 on this matter; past discussions do not necessarily need to have a link to further-past discussions as all discussions in question are already closed; in other words I see no tangible benefit (though as I stated in the BOTREQ I think this is a good idea going forward). Primefac (talk) 08:22, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
On the other hand why not? Retroactive is not the sort of task that I would see as actively worth doing, but if someone wants to do it then more power to them. "Please do not modify it" on closed discussions has never been an absolute rule. I would have the template clearly state it was added retroactively, but the addition is IMO useful and causes little harm. * Pppery *it has begun... 05:02, 11 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
It's also two different sets of code, but I see your point. Primefac (talk) 19:00, 11 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Approved for trial. Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. I want this to be run in two separate batches. One batch will be "50 edits or 14 days, whichever comes first" and will only deal with new nominations. The second batch will be 25 edits to historical log pages to see proof of concept. Ideally if you could run them that way so the contributions are easier to split, that would be great. Feel free to start with the second batch first since it's not time-dependent. Primefac (talk) 19:00, 11 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Function details: Making use of regex {{ct\|(.*?)}} to replace transclusions of {{ct}} with {{UCI team code}} in the article namespace, in preparation of usurpation of {{ct}} redirect for {{Contentious topics}}.
Going by the linkcount tool, there are currently 11,400+ articles to be worked on, and 200-300 non-article namespace pages to look at. This bot will primarily work on the article namespace as the usage of the {{ct}} template is pretty much direct there, whilst the non-article namespaces will be worked on either manually or semi-automated manner in case of surprises.
As for the result of the regex application to find and replace the template, I have worked on some of the pages which can be seen at Special:Contributions/RobertskySemi.
If this passes, I would like to request for AWB perms for the bot account as well. Can it be granted through here, or I will have to request at the AWB perms board? – robertsky (talk) 07:32, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Discussion
Hmm. This will make old revisions very annoying to read on 11,500 articles for the benefit of creating a short redirect for {{Contentious topics}}, which is a disambiguation template and not even something we'd ever use directly? I admit I'm not a big fan of this. — The Earwig (talk) 06:26, 17 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I would agree with Earwig. Template:Contentious topics is a placeholder template as well. I'd be suspicious that the benefits of having that at {{ct}} outweigh the negatives of breaking old page revisions. I know we'd generally give up support for old page revisions where this materially improves our ability to present or deliver content (eg appropriate TfDs), but there's definitely a weighing of pros/cons that needs to be done. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:33, 18 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I am willing to disagree. It might break old page revisions in the short term, which will be a little annoying for anyone viewing an old ID, but in the long term it will become less confusing. We could also have the Ct page read this:
<includeonly>{{UCI team code}}</includeonly><noinclude>[disambiguation stuff]</noinclude>AwesomeAasim 16:31, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. There seems to be a disparity where two different templates are using the same prefix, so that should be fixed. Primefac (talk) 08:36, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Function details: Major WMF announcements go to WP:VPM because it's listed at m:Distribution list/Global message delivery. Users cannot subscribe there because it's for noticeboards. The bot would repost any MassMessages from VPM to a new MassMessage list. Example: Special:Diff/1179359075.
Discussion
Thanks for working on this, Qwerfjkl. Much appreciated. I think this could wind up being really helpful. Best, KevinL (aka L235·t·c) 16:40, 9 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Approved for trial (50 edits or 30 days, whichever happens first). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. I think it would be a good idea to get this onto the Admin Newsletter and/or crosspost somewhere so that users know this is an option. Primefac (talk) 09:21, 24 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@@L235, could you set up a MassMessage list for this? — Qwerfjkltalk 14:43, 24 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@L235, okay, thanks. I've started the trial now. i'm not entirely sure if the code actually works, so ping me if there's a message at VPM that doesn't get sent. — Qwerfjkltalk 14:00, 26 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Honestly the whole point of MassMessage was to remove bots from the message delivery process. Having users subscribe to WMF notifications seems like a reasonable use case, have you asked them to use a different delivery list in addition to the main one? Legoktm (talk) 03:18, 11 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Legoktm: Hm, the thing is, I want every MassMessage posted to VPM, but there are quite a few different lists that include VPM in the list. Best, KevinL (aka L235·t·c) 21:52, 11 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Primefac, you can see from this that there haven't been any messages since the trial started. Not much I can do about that. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:24, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Function details: Simple bot that precisely figures out the pages needing a purge (see quarry:query/77493) and only purges them.
It's not clear if the existing AfC purge bot operated by User:ProcrastinatingReader works. As of writing there are 874 pages that should have been in Category:AfC_G13_eligible_soon_submissions but are not.
Approach used by the existing bot is to try purge all pages in AfC categories which are too many in number so has caused issues. The approach followed here is more scalable, and also avoids triggering a re-purge if ProcBot has already been through them.
I don't know much about bots and how they operate but I will add to this discussion that SDZeroBot's list for expiring drafts (CSD G13) turns up a great deal more drafts and user page drafts than those that appear in Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions. I don't know why there is this discrepancy but SDZeroBot's list is much more complete. Because admins handling CSD G13s stay on top of their expiration dates, the AFC G13 category isn't as important as it used to be. Previously, regular editors would use this category to tag expiring drafts for speedy deletion but this practice doesn't happen as frequently as in years past. But still, if this category is going to exist, then it's best that it's up-to-date. LizRead!Talk! 00:35, 24 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Approved for trial (30 days). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. I realise this has no tangible output, but I suppose that's kind of the point. As long as it's doing what it should be doing, and not what it shouldn't be doing, I have no issues with approving this at the end of the trial. Primefac (talk) 09:18, 24 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Much of the code was written but the trial wasn't started. I came to know that the API supports a forcerecusivelinkupdate=1 param, which purges all pages transcluding {{AfC submission}} in one request. That makes the usefulness of this bot task rather questionable. It might be better to have a more generic and user-controlled bot. I am thinking of having a bot task that listens to edits to User:SDZeroBot/Purge list and purges any pages that people put in it. The {{database report}} template can be used to feed any list instead of just quarry:query/77493. The above can't be done with User:ProcBot/PurgeList as it doesn't support one-off purges (which from an implementation perspective is quite different from periodic purges). Even if it could be supported there, I'm seeing some scope here for a second purge bot given the generally troublesome nature of purge bots (they always seem to run into issues) – people can use one if the other doesn't work. Besides, I have quite a bit of the code written out ;) @Primefac let me know if this is okay for trial with this revised functionality. – SD0001 (talk) 16:33, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Function overview: This task checks the Top 25 Report page frequently to see if the current report has updated. If it was updated, then it will go through all pages in the new report and add or update the Template:Top 25 Report template on their talk pages.
Function details: This task first checks the page Wikipedia:Top 25 Report to see if the transcluded link was modified. (This should mean that the report was updated.) If it has, then it uses the first revision of the transcluded page, which is always a basic list, to get a list of article talk pages to modify. It then goes through each talk page, updating the Template:Top 25 Report template if it exists and adding it if not. As for exclusion compliance, I have not added that feature in yet.
Discussion
The Top 25 report is updated weekly. Why does this task need to run twice a day? Primefac (talk) 09:08, 14 June 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I wanted to ensure that the template is added quickly. I've changed it to daily, and if it should be longer then you can tell me. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 14:24, 14 June 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Additionally, some reports (including the one for last week) are finished late, and do not get added until later on. I wanted to ensure that the pages on the report get the template on their talk page. If the next report is done on time, then the maintainers of the report will replace the transclusion to the late report with the new one less than a week after the old report replaced the one before it. I agree that twice a day was a bit too excessive. Daily should be fine. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 14:28, 14 June 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Capsulecap is right about this. And task need to run twice a day.--BabbaQ (talk) 15:58, 14 June 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Capsulecap: Hi. What would happen if the same article comes in top 25 report again, say with a gap of four months? —usernamekiran (talk) 17:21, 21 June 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
If that happens, then there will be no difference from if it was featured twice with more than a four month gap. There is nothing that says to do anything different for pages on T25 which are featured multiple times in a small timespan, and pages like Talk:ChatGPT feature multiple such examples. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 23:56, 21 June 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Approved for trial (1 days). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. I'm trying to wrap my head around what's this bot supposed to do exactly, so I'm going to approve it for a one-time run of 1 day. This should give me (and perhaps others) a better idea of what this is about. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:34, 2 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Headbomb: Although I did a trial run, the bot made test edits with numerous errors. I have fixed the code causing these issues, and will (with permission) restart the trial when the next report comes in. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 19:51, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
See edits 4 through 29. Note that the newest three edits were a test run for a fix to something which happened in Talk:Elemental (2023 film), and that many incorrect edits were caused by other editors modifying talk pages to add the template before the test run was done. Although the bot will not add redundant templates assuming that nobody adds the top 25 placement before it, I am considering adding redundancy protection. One problem — the one on the page about the Titan submarine incident — was one I didn't think of, as the talk page was moved with the main page, causing the top 25 report template to be placed on a redirect instead of the actual talk page. This is a problem I am working on fixing, as I have noticed that "current events" pages that show up on the report often frequently get moved. The bot also ended up creating the page "Talk:Errible things in Russia, the North Atlantic and HBO have the most attention this week.", but I fixed the source issue and tagged the page for CSD. few of the edits are fine, and most would be fine if there was redundancy protection or if the top 25 templates didn't already have the week in there. One question, though — since the bot will run daily, and people wouldn't need to modify top 25 templates anymore — should I implement redundancy protection? Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 02:46, 4 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
"Should I implement redundancy protection" I would say that's a good idea, regardless of how often it comes into play. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:52, 4 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I just finished implementing the redundancy protection along with the redirect traversal stuff. The bot should work just fine now. Do I have to redo the trial? Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 04:35, 4 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Trial complete.See 21 most recent contributions. Out of the 25 pages in the June 25th to July 1st edition, 21 pages were correctly edited, two pages (Talk:Money in the Bank (2023) and Talk:Titan submersible implosion) were not edited because of unexpected and likely erroneous formatting in the report's first revision (a space was in place of the usual tab after those two pages' titles), and two pages were not edited as they already had this week in their templates. For context on those two pages which didn't get the template on accident, the first revision of the report is always an imported set of tab delimited data — in this case, spaces were in place of tabs for the names of those two articles. The bot created two new talk pages on accident, which I quickly tagged for CSD. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 05:48, 7 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Update: I've come up with a solution to this problem and will be implementing and testing it soon. This is the last issue which I will have to fix. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 16:26, 7 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Approved for extended trial (25 edits or 7 days). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. One week's worth, or 25 edits, whichever you need. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:16, 7 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Trial complete. See See 25 most recent contributions. This time, I verified that all edits the bot would make would be correct on a script that had editing commented out. They were all good edits, so I ran the full script. All 25 pages on the report had the template added or changed on their talk pages. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 01:57, 15 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Most seemed fine, but there was this that stood out.
I noticed that and didn't pay much attention to it as it was merely cosmetic. Since that was considered problematic, I'll get to fixing that and keeping the collapse as the last edit. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 14:57, 21 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
For testing you can revert to a prior state and unleash the bot on it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:17, 21 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Well... the collapsed stuff is handled correctly, but now it's inconsistent the other way around. It should list the ranks when they're there, or omit them when they're not.
Or, probably a better idea, update old listings to list the ranks, e.g. [1]. You might need some discussion before though. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:18, 21 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I think it's a good idea to retroactively add the rankings to the templates, but I'm not sure of where to obtain consensus for that, and it would either require a bot task or lots of manual work. The other way you listed is probably easier, but causes inconsistency between pages. Something else I thought of is a Lua module that automatically grabs the placements, but I'm not sure if such a thing is supported. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 20:30, 21 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
What if it deleted what was there first, then re-added the template with all dates and ranks? In the same edit that is. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:46, 21 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
It could work, but I think I would have to submit a separate bot task for that. A separate (and much simpler) approach would be to add a "ranks" parameter that does nothing to the bot category. If set to yes, then the bot will add ranks when it updates the report. Otherwise or if unset, the bot will only add the date. This maintains consistency within talk pages, but not between talk pages; the latter would require consensus strongly towards either using ranks or not. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 21:03, 21 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Approved for extended trial (25 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Indeed, consistency within talk pages is usually a lesser threshold to clear. I'm giving you trial for that (make sure to include a mix of both types of edits), but if you want to have that (should we always rank things) discussion first, you can also wait for consensus to emerge before trialing. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:11, 21 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes, I am. Have taken a long break from editing but I never canceled this bot project. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 15:44, 21 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes. As I said a long time ago, I wasn't really maintaining activity onwiki or paying attention to this page. I've decided to come back to wikipedia at some point in the near future (within 1-2 months) but I can add the features to the project. Thanks for reaching out. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 22:27, 5 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Primefac: I've added support for that ranks attribute, as is seen in the 5 most recent bot edits, all of which are to my test pages. I've also created support for converting preexisting top25 templates of the alternate form into regular form top 25s, and made it so top 25 report templates longer than 800 bytes are collapsed. I will test the bot once the report is switched to the current week, which should be on Saturday or Sunday. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 01:34, 6 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Primefac: Status: Current run had too many problems to use as a final trial. Fixed 2 bugs here. Should be ready to be released any week now. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 03:27, 15 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Function details: Go through Category:Unassessed articles (only deals with articles already tagged as belonging to a project). If an unassessed article is rated as a stub by ORES, tag the article as a stub. Example
Discussion
Note: This bot appears to have edited since this BRFA was filed. Bots may not edit outside their own or their operator's userspace unless approved or approved for trial. AnomieBOT⚡ 00:10, 28 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
^. Also, may potentially be a CONTEXTBOT; see Wikipedia:Stub: There is no set size at which an article stops being a stub.EpicPupper (talk) 23:04, 30 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The Bot run only affects unassessed articles rated as stubs by mw:ORES. The ORES ratings for stubs are very reliable (some false negatives – which wouldn't be touched under this proposal – but no false positives). Hawkeye7(discuss) 00:03, 31 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Sounds reasonable as ORES is usually good for assessing stub articles as such. – SD0001 (talk) 11:41, 1 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Comment: Some behavior I found interesting is that the bot is reverting start-class classifications already assigned by a human editor, and overriding those with stub-class. [3] and [4]EggRoll97(talk) 03:28, 18 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The question is: what should be happening? The article were flagged because some of the projects were not assessed. Should the Bot (1) assess the unassessed ones as stubs and ignore the assessed ones or (2) align the unassessed ones with the ones that are assessed? Hawkeye7(discuss) 04:21, 18 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Per recent consensus assessments should be for an entire article, not per WikiProject. The bot should amend the template to use the article wide code. If several projects have different assessments for an article it should leave it alone. Frostly (talk) 05:03, 18 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Hawkeye7: Courtesy ping, I've manually fixed up the edits where the bot replaced an assessment by a human editor. 6 edits total to be fixed out of 52 total edits. EggRoll97(talk) 07:16, 18 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
{{BAG assistance needed}} This has been waiting for over 2 months since the end of the trial, and over 4 months since the creation of the request. Given the concerns expressed that the bot operator has since fixed, an extended trial may be a good idea here. EggRoll97(talk) 05:19, 8 August 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
My apologies. I have been very busy. Should I run the new Bot again with a few more edits? Hawkeye7(discuss) 18:57, 15 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Approved for extended trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. – SD0001 (talk) 19:10, 15 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes. I wrote the bot using my C# API, and due to a necessary upgrade here, my dotnet environment got ahead of the one on the grid. I could neither build locally and run on the grid nor on build on the grid. (I could have run the trial locally but would not have been able to deploy to production.) There is currently a push to move bots onto Kubernetes containers, but there was no dotnet build pack available. The heroes on Toolforge have now provided one for dotnet, and I will be testing it when I return from vacation next week. If all goes well I will finally be able to deploy the bot and run the trial at last. See phab:T311466 for details. Hawkeye7(discuss) 22:54, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Function details: Using the AmputatorBot API, replaces AMP links with canonical equivalents. This task runs on all pages with citation templates which have URL parameters (e.g. {{cite news}}, {{cite web}}, etc).
Discussion
Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.Primefac (talk) 10:27, 8 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Just noting that I'm working on this but it may take some time. EpicPupper (talk) 23:01, 30 March 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Been a bit busy IRL, but will get to this soon. Frostly (talk) 20:33, 25 June 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Primefac, my apologies, this flew off my radar. I'll work on setting up the bot on Toolforge this month and should have the results soon. — Frostly (talk) 06:13, 5 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Essentially just a find/replace to chuck in the AFR10k param before the closing parens of the WikiProject banner. No other changes (other than AWB genfixes) will be made. Also noting that I will check to make sure the template doesn't already have the parameter (to avoid double parameter issues).
Discussion
Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. — xaosfluxTalk 20:58, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Trial complete.Edits. Note just for the sake of making the checks easier I decided not to run genfixes. Primefac (talk) 21:22, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Ermm, Primefac, Xaosflux, where's the consensus for this change? Outcome of this discussion of all of these templates existing at that time was not to merge, with the sole exception of the Canadian one. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:51, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Justlettersandnumbers I assumed the ask was uncontroversial, but still only approved the small technical trial; full approval should include a stronger showing of support especially considering the concern raised now. — xaosfluxTalk 22:54, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Justlettersandnumbers, to address the banner question - I did not know the Africa template existed, and it was clearly not included in the original TFD. Given that the Canada template was deleted, one cannot necessarily say there is no consensus to keep these banner templates individually, but since the TFD on the Africa template has been started I suppose that will answer that question. Primefac (talk) 07:00, 4 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I note that Justlettersandnumbers did not even bother to comment at the TfD, after stalling this simple task — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:45, 12 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
No one is obligated to do anything on Wikipedia. I don't necessarily find any issue with it. Primefac (talk) 12:47, 12 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Honestly people get so up in a bunch about banners I was just going to run the task without any modules or genfixes; I'm tired of getting shouted at for these sorts of things when they're largely window dressing. Primefac (talk) 07:00, 4 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Primefac: Thanks for your reply. I hope you don't think I'm shouting at you - just trying to be friendly to help prevent others from shouting at you. Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 18:13, 4 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Oh, totally! To be honest didn't know that module existed (and/or didn't clock its purpose) and "do nothing extra" seemed like the easiest path. Primefac (talk) 18:20, 4 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Note: changed request to simplify the parameter to |10k=yes. The AFR bit seemed redundant — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:39, 12 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Function details: This task supersedes the previous one by enlarging the scope of its operations. This bot task can:
Create Article history templates on talk pages with a GA/FailedGA/FA/etc template where information about DYK/ITN/OTD/peer review/etc can be folded in together
Remove standalone DYK/ITN/OTD/peer review templates by adding the information into an existing {{Article history}} template.
I will be gradually implementing additional functionality supporting more information to be folded in as time goes. As always, I will do some supervised edits before letting it process everything when I add new things, so consider this as a pro forma about its enlarging scope. Here are some supervised edits that I have carried out to test some of the new behavior: [5][6]
Discussion
Just a note - other approvals for same or similar tasks:
Glad to see this effort ongoing! Some questions and comments:
How will Deadbeefbot handle those many cases where the GA closer failed to add the oldid ? (It happens often.) Gimmetrow (Gimmebot} used to use an old Dr pda script which was able to look up the oldid based on the timestamp; it's not critical to have them if the closer didn't provide them, but just raising this for the sake of completeness.
Separately, maybe we can get someone to fix the GA template/script so that it won't allow a GA pass without providing an oldid. Not sure who to ask on this; Mike Christie?
The bot does try to add an oldid if the closer forgot. I just had a look through the last few passes and couldn't find a case where the closer didn't add an oldid, but as far as I recall it works correctly. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:38, 2 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Is it possible roll otd date and time into one line ? See Talk:Guy Fawkes Night for a sample of how long they can get.
I am unclear why DYK is numbered; is more than one allowed and has it ever happened?
Before a certain date, DYKs did not have nom pages (just raising this for completeness).
Would it be better to fully spell out the GA link? That is Talk:Articlename/GA1 rather than just /GA1 so that the link won't be lost when pages move ?
I am confused about the role of APersonbot ... are they still doing anything? MilHistBot is Hawkeye7, so still maintained, but not sure if APersonBot is still doing any articlehistory stuff.
Approved for trial (100 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. – SD0001 (talk) 07:42, 5 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Will come back to this probably this weekend. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 11:59, 6 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Trial complete. - detailed analysis here. Some specific notes about the trial:
Old peer reviews are hard to handle. Whether it was reviewed in the end cannot be determined through the template. I've come up with a heuristic that if the PR page has 6 or more edits, then it is definitely reviewed. Otherwise the bot will just not handle the talk page entirely. Old PR also doesn't always include an oldid of the article and date when the old PR was completed. The bot currently will carry over oldid if specified, but won't error out if not. At start of the trial, the bot automatically determined the date of the closure of old PR based on the timestamp of the last edit at the PR page, but this can be inaccurate since MalnadachBot and others may have made edits after the closure, so I made it to reject handling a page if OldPR doesn't have a date set (in the future i might turn it back on explicitly ignoring MalnadachBot or any other edit made over a year since the PR page was created)
If I understand it correctly, demoted FAs don't regain GA status even if it passed GA before. The bot made an error with this, but I noticed and fixed the bug.
I'm not entirely sure if we should fold in any article that doesn't have FailedGA/GA/Article history already, but has multiple of OTD/DYK/ITN. An example can be found here.
Currently handling always puts Article history right before the WP banner shell. This works on most cases but some articles don't have the WP banner. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 17:26, 20 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Function details: {{Wikisource author}} recently was updated to allow for a |lang= parameter to link directly to non-English versions of wikisource for an author. A similar template, {{Wikisourcelang}}, links to a generic search on said language wiki for said author. This task will change {{Wikisourcelang|<lang>|otherstuff}} into a {{Wikisource author|lang=<lang>|otherstuff}} call.
Discussion
{{BAG assistance needed}} valid request not attended by any BAG members for almost two months. —usernamekiran (talk) 23:02, 29 June 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Approved for trial (25 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.
This seems pretty straightforward. Let's go to trial.
Trial complete.Edits. As a note, I did not run genfixes just to make the proposed change more obvious, but if this task does proceed I will be running genfixes alongside them.
Piotrus, I think this request is a little more convoluted than initially requested. Languages such as de do not use an "author" prefix (see e.g. Adolph Friedrich Johann Riedel and his corresponding page on de Wikisource), but I can't figure out which languages it holds to. I am not necessarily seeing a specific pattern between what languages do and do not. My thoughts are of two possibilities - run this task only for languages where the proposed change has the intended effect, or just scrap this BRFA and do these changes manually. Primefac (talk) 12:52, 4 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Primefac I think we can run it for some languages that we can determine now, it shouldn't be that hard as long as it is consistent for each language (ex. German never uses, Polish always uses it, etc.). We could create a list for all languages that wikisource exists on, or just run it for now for some editions that are the biggest (ex. the ones with interwikis here). I did some checks and it seems it's pretty consisten - just a wikisource naming convention. Note that depending on the language, the "author" prefix is different - Polish is "autor". Swedish is "Författare", etc. In the end, what we need to fix is not the outgoing links but the text on our side. Consider this case, similar to the German one you quote, where we improved the language or our template but messed the link: before, diff, after. Since the links work, can we just figure out the way to change the wording in the template but retain the same link as before? The older template was able to do it, somehow, seems we are introducing a new error somehow? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:48, 5 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
If you wouldn't mind making a list of which languages use the Author (in whatever language) prefix, I can hard-code their use into the template so that there isn't any issue.
This wasn't a problem before because {{wikisource author}} only linked to to the English version so no translation or odd coding was necessary. As mentioned in the original discussion, {{wikisource lang}} just links to a general search (which does sometimes turn up the author page directly) and thus does not require the "Author:" prefix. Primefac (talk) 08:06, 5 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
On hold. Just for now, while we deal with actual template issues. Primefac (talk) 08:31, 5 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Primefac See talk, is this helpful? Those are most larger Wiki source projects, should be enough to get most of our stuff sorted out. We can take a look at what, if anything, is left after dealing with those languages? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:06, 7 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Should do, thanks for that. Going to keep this on hold for a bit longer, there's a TFD for merging all of these together and I might be able to enact these proposed changes during the merge process. Primefac (talk) 08:13, 7 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Somewhat stalled, been rather busy myself and it doesn't look like anyone has started work on the template merger. I think I might have cleared my on-wiki plate somewhat (touch wood) so I'll see about prioritising the merger. Primefac (talk) 10:51, 22 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Approved requests
Bots that have been approved for operations after a successful BRFA will be listed here for informational purposes. No other approval action is required for these bots. Recently approved requests can be found here (edit), while old requests can be found in the archives.
Bots that have been denied for operations will be listed here for informational purposes for at least 7 days before being archived. No other action is required for these bots. Older requests can be found in the Archive.
These requests have either expired, as information required by the operator was not provided, or been withdrawn. These tasks are not authorized to run, but such lack of authorization does not necessarily follow from a finding as to merit. A bot that, having been approved for testing, was not tested by an editor, or one for which the results of testing were not posted, for example, would appear here. Bot requests should not be placed here if there is an active discussion ongoing above. Operators whose requests have expired may reactivate their requests at any time. The following list shows recent requests (if any) that have expired, listed here for informational purposes for at least 7 days before being archived. Older requests can be found in the respective archives: Expired, Withdrawn.
On hold. Please disable this tag if the task is to proceed, or add {{BotWithdrawn}} if you plan on withdrawing. Primefac (talk) 13:23, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
On hold. Formally putting this on hold until the above gets replies and/or traction can be indicated. Primefac (talk) 08:33, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
Approved for trial. Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. I want this to be run in two separate batches. One batch will be "50 edits or 14 days, whichever comes first" and will only deal with new nominations. The second batch will be 25 edits to historical log pages to see proof of concept. Ideally if you could run them that way so the contributions are easier to split, that would be great. Feel free to start with the second batch first since it's not time-dependent. Primefac (talk) 19:00, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
Trial complete. See 21 most recent contributions. Out of the 25 pages in the June 25th to July 1st edition, 21 pages were correctly edited, two pages (Talk:Money in the Bank (2023) and Talk:Titan submersible implosion) were not edited because of unexpected and likely erroneous formatting in the report's first revision (a space was in place of the usual tab after those two pages' titles), and two pages were not edited as they already had this week in their templates. For context on those two pages which didn't get the template on accident, the first revision of the report is always an imported set of tab delimited data — in this case, spaces were in place of tabs for the names of those two articles. The bot created two new talk pages on accident, which I quickly tagged for CSD. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 05:48, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Approved for extended trial (25 edits or 7 days). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. One week's worth, or 25 edits, whichever you need. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:16, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Approved for extended trial (25 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Indeed, consistency within talk pages is usually a lesser threshold to clear. I'm giving you trial for that (make sure to include a mix of both types of edits), but if you want to have that (should we always rank things) discussion first, you can also wait for consensus to emerge before trialing. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:11, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
Note: This bot appears to have edited since this BRFA was filed. Bots may not edit outside their own or their operator's userspace unless approved or approved for trial. AnomieBOT⚡ 00:10, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Sounds reasonable as ORES is usually good for assessing stub articles as such. – SD0001 (talk) 11:41, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
