This is a page for requesting work to be done by bots per the bot policy. This is an appropriate place to simply put ideas for bots. If you need a piece of software written for a specific article you may get a faster response time at the computer help desk. You might also check Wikipedia:Bots/Status to see if the bot you are looking for already exists, in which case you can contact the operator directly on their talkpage. If you have a question about one particular bot, it should be directed to the bot owner's talk page or to the Bot Owners' Noticeboard. If a bot is acting improperly, a note about that should be posted to the owner's talk page and to the Administrators' Noticeboard. A link to such a posting may be posted at the Bot Owners' Noticeboard. If you are a bot operator and you complete a request, note what you did, and archive it. {{BOTREQ}} can be used to give common responses, and to make it easier to see at-a-glance what the response is. There are a number of common requests which are regularly denied, either because they are too complicated to program, or do not have consensus from the wikipedia community. Please see Wikipedia:Bots/Frequently denied bots for a list of such requests, and ensure that your idea is not among them. If you are requesting that a bot be used to add a WikiProject banner to the talkpages of all articles in a particular category or its subcategories, please be very careful to check the category tree for any unwanted subcategories. You might not expect Category:World War II to be a subcategory of Category:Thailand, but it actually is, and a bot will find it! It is usually safer to give a complete list of categories that should be worked through individually, rather than one category to be analysed recursively. Compare a successful request with a similar one that made a mess.
[edit] IUCN links The IUCN just changed the links to Red List pages, which are very widely linked in organism articles. They need to change as follows: - http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/XXXXX -> http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/XXXXX
where XXXXX is a five-digit code. Example edit here. I will notify WT:TOL of this. Ucucha 12:41, 3 November 2009 (UTC) - Sounds like an excellent case for using a template instead of a bare link, so future URL changes aren't a hassle like this. --Cybercobra (talk) 13:16, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
- Currently the old links redirect to the proper new links. Is there any reason to believe this will change? If not, there is no reason to go around changing a bunch of pages just to avoid a redirect. --ThaddeusB (talk) 13:39, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
- NM on that. After further examination, some links do redirect properly, but others do not.
 Doing... I agree that the best way to handle this is to set up a template system so that if they ever change again, we won't have to redo all the changes. I'll work on getting something set up today. --ThaddeusB (talk) 13:45, 3 November 2009 (UTC) - Also http://www.redlist.org/search/quick/* changed to http://www.redlist.org/apps/redlist/search/quick/ (works only with parameters e.g. [1]). Also species: has many of these links. Links to http://www.redlist.org/search/details.php?species= ({{Redlist}}) are broken. Merlissimo 16:44, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
- Unfortunately I'm not sure I can do anything about the details.php?species= ones. The reason being that IUCN seems to have changed their ID# a little while back and these links use the old #s. For example, http://www.redlist.org/search/details.php?species=48963 is now at http://www.redlist.org/apps/redlist/details/143867/0. I was only able to figure that out by knowing which species the link went to and doing a search. It might be possible to automate that search process in some cases... I will see what I can come up with, but anything tips you might have would be appreciated. --ThaddeusB (talk) 05:31, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
- It would be great if this could be solved automatically, but otherwise these links should be marked as deprecated in some way (by a hidden category?), so that people can go around and fix them. Ucucha 11:51, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
- If it comes to it, they can be marked with {{dead link}}. --ThaddeusB (talk) 16:47, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
- I should point out that there is already a template for this purpose, although I only created it 4 days ago (before the most recent change). The template is Template:Iucnredlist and Ucucha has already updated it to point to the current URLs. Unfortunately it is currently only used by two pages; although perhaps it could be added by a bot to the other pages? -Paul1337 (talk) 13:41, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- There is a number of such templates (Special:Prefixindex/Template:IUCN), and there are many other pages where the IUCN is cited in another way. That is an editorial decision that should be respected; we shouldn't force any particular way of linking to an IUCN page. However, ThaddeusB and I created a Template:IUCNlink to generate just the link and nothing else, which allows for easy updates when the URLs are changed. Ucucha 13:50, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks for the explanation; that makes sense. I have changed Template:Iucnredlist to Template:IUCNextlink to make it more consistent with the other ones, and to try and make it clear that it's specifically for the External links section. -Paul1337 (talk) 19:19, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
There have been two major changes at IUCN site ("136584" is parameter for id): Some of the old urls are redirected, others not. I've changed the missing Templates (e.g. Template:IUCN) to the current URL. The IUCN links for searching I've not yet explored in detail. The only URL I know that currently works is http://www.redlist.org/apps/redlist/search/quick/?text=homo. I suggest to use a template for that (see de:Vorlage:IUCNSearch). I would advise not to mix up the change of url an the change of the id of the birds an handle this changes separately. The change of the url can be handled by a bot easily for weblinks not using a template (for template usages there's no need). The change of the id of the birds can be handled by bot only for cases using templates, I guess, and this is not that easy. Hope that helps. --Cactus26 (talk) 08:04, 6 November 2009 (UTC) - Are you sure it is only the birds? I believe I also recall some mammal IDs being changed. Ucucha 13:50, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- I haven't found any changed non-bird yet. Do you remember any mammal?--Cactus26 (talk) 17:02, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
- I can't. Well, I may as well have confused something here. Please ignore my prior comment. Ucucha 15:48, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
- A template is better. Future changes are one edit, and "what links here" is also useful. Rich Farmbrough, 11:45, 13 November 2009 (UTC).
- I looked at this and found http://www.iucnredlist.org/search/details.php/XXXXX/all - note the /all. Since this seems non-trivial I have emailed ICUN asking them for information on the changes. Rich Farmbrough, 07:27, 14 November 2009 (UTC).
- That link is a 404 for me (when I substitute the above ID, 136584, and when I follow it plain raw). — This, that, and the other [talk] 09:43, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
- Update: The "easy" ones are all fixed now. (Log -- skipped pages). I haven't yet come up with a plan for the harder ID changed ones, but I am planning on doing something. --ThaddeusB (talk) 05:30, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
[edit] "Special district governments" page creations? Is there a bot that could take data from a spreadsheet and plug it into an article template to create articles? I have proposed using data mined from the Census of Governments to create stubs for about 1,700 municipal authorities--which are special-purpose governments (like water authorities and sewer authorities). Is this possible? --Blargh29 (talk) 06:10, 9 November 2009 (UTC) - Certainly such a bot is quite feasible to code; but there's no general bot for article generation as it tends to be very specific to the data source(s) used and the type of articles being produced. --Cybercobra (talk) 12:13, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- You'd also have to get a strong community consensus that these stubs should be created in the first place. I'd suggest taking it to WP:VPR, and also advertising the discussion on the talk pages of every WikiProject you can think of that might be related and maybe even Template:Cent. Anomie⚔ 20:58, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
- Suffice it to say there's been some controversy regarding bot-generated articles; particularly after a recent article-generating bot didn't go so well and significant clean up was involved. --Cybercobra (talk) 22:09, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
I have officially made this proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Municipal authorities/special district governments, which is probably a better place to hash out the notability question.--Blargh29 (talk) 23:07, 10 November 2009 (UTC) - Go ahead and archive this bot request. We took this in a different direction.--Blargh29 (talk) 05:24, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
[edit] New books alert Could it be possible to monitor the Category:Wikipedia:Books and produce a sort of daily "new books ticker" (uploaded at Wikipedia:Books/New books)? Something like: - Community books
- User books
Thanks. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 16:00, 29 October 2009 (UTC) - Where would you want said ticker to go? Would it only show daily changes, or would it be a list that's continuously added to? Fritzpoll (talk) 16:04, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:Books/New books would be a good place to upload. Just keep adding stuff to the lists (making sure the dates are correctly ordered). Stuff older than one month should be archived at Wikipedia:Books/New books/Archive/2008, Wikipedia:Books/New books/Archive/2009, Wikipedia:Books/New books/Archive/2010, and so on. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 16:10, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
- if there's a consensus for this at Wikipedia:Books, I'll happily write this one up. Fritzpoll (talk) 16:19, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
- Well I didn't ask per say, but I really don't see why anyone would object. At the very least the list will be used by WikiProject Wikipedia Books. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 16:34, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
- Why would user created books in their namespace matter and need to be included? Peachey88 (Talk Page · Contribs) 23:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
- To have personalized books where they control what article goes in, to test things, to have a draft version... Including them will allow us to give pointers and advice, correct obvious mistakes, and so on... Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 19:33, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
- De-archiving. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 17:41, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Any takers? Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 05:08, 16 November 2009 (UTC) - See User:TedderBot/New books alert for the request, User:TedderBot/New books alert/results for the output. Did you bring this up at WT:Books? tedder (talk) 18:47, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
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- It looks goods, although dates would be better in DD MMM YYYY format, and titles could be truncated to just the relevant part (aka Hadronic Matter, instead of Wikipedia:Books/Hadronic Matter, same for user books). Does archiving work? Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 01:29, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
- Changed the dates to your specification (did you mean MM or MMM?). I haven't done archiving or piping yet, the project page for it is here: User:TedderBot/New books alert. I'd suggest joining me there to discuss improvements and what needs to be done to make it live. tedder (talk) 01:39, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
- I mean MMM, as in three letters abbreviation (see example in the request). I'll continue in on the user talk, although it's not a very good idea to hold discussions on several different places for the same thing. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:27, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
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- Well I don't have much else to add, it looks good overall, so once the archiving is implemented it should be good to go. For it to be perfect, the dates would have to look exactly as written above (no bold, endash between dates and booktitle) so it matches the output of WP:AALERTS. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:36, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
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- I figured that's what you meant by the months when I went back and re-read it. So I changed to code to match that, tested it, and checked it in. Centralized discussions are best, but for longer "code projects" it's nice to have somewhere so it doesn't take over. In reality, WT:BOOKS might be a good place, but I still like having a technical "working group". tedder (talk) 02:34, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
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- Here's a good enough place. The final list would be uploaded at either Wikipedia:Books/New books (my preference), or Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia-Books/New books. I'll post a message on both to generate discussion. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:41, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Clear up messy category The category Category:Non-free Wikipedia files with red backlink gets full of pages that ought not to be there. The suggestion listed on the page is for someone to go through all the incorrect entries, and do a null edit (a very boring job). A bot (or an AWB job) could take up this cause. The category has been well above its backlog trigger of 25 items, hovering between 150 and 180 over the past few days. — This, that, and the other [talk] 09:33, 15 November 2009 (UTC) - Anybody about? — This, that, and the other (talk) 09:19, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
- Hi there this/that/other :). Sorry it's taken so long to get back to you. Anyway, I'm not sure this is such a good task for a bot. It's been suggested a few times before, and declined, see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Null edit bot. Best, - Kingpin13 (talk) 14:27, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
- Yes. I may ask at VPT for input. This issue makes checking of such categories almost impossible. — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:23, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
- Current build of AWB does not allow null editing... –xenotalk 14:40, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Maryland Historical Trust Links to the Maryland Historical Trust have recently changed from www.marylandhistoricaltrust.net to mht.maryland.gov. We have at least 1400 articles on National Register of Historic Places that link to the old address, and while this could be done with AWB, it seems like a job for a bot, as it's a simple find/replace operation. Examples done by a diligent IP can be found here [2] and here [3]. Acroterion (talk) 02:44, 20 November 2009 (UTC) - It's been pointed out to me that the find/replace will need to extend to the references as well, so the edits are now x2, more or less. Acroterion (talk) 03:05, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
- Doing... - I'll have User:DeadLinkBOT run through these later today. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:04, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
- Have you consider pestering the webmaster there? Dead links effect everybody else too. IIS 6 supports redirects, right? — Dispenser 01:21, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
- I wouldn't know where to start. Pretty much all Maryland governmental and quasi-governmental addresses are migrating to maryland.gov, and I doubt they care what Wikipedia thinks about it. Acroterion (talk) 19:04, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
- Email the contact address (Cory Kegerise) informing him that your project uses their website as a resource. The 1400+ links (listed at Special:LinkSearch/http://www.marylandhistoricaltrust.net) are dead since they did not use URL redirection and they should expect a lower Google ranking for their new site. Give them a tutorial link like How to Redirect a Web Page so the web guy can work quicker. Be sure to mention doing it will save everyone else a lot of work. It may be useful to include other contact information so they can stay in contact with the project.
- I completely disagree with the assertion that they wouldn't care what's on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is usually the first place where people turn to for information (high Google rankings), so it would be natural for them to want some input on what people are reading. "Palmerston North entry dissuades overseas professionals" is a good example of this IMO. — Dispenser 05:14, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks, I'll give it a try. My experience with state bureaucracies gives me little hope, but the MHT is, in fact, fairly responsive in other circumstances. If we make it simple for them and us, so much the better. Acroterion (talk) 22:58, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
- Let me know when you here something (or if you don't hear anything at all by the end of next week or so). I have held off changing any of the links pending the result of this discussion. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:57, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
[edit] On-Demand WebCitation bot I'd like to see a bot similar to User:WebCiteBOT that only runs on-demand. Or, to open it up more, archives references on an article that currently exist. I just went through a GA review where one of my articles from several years ago had a lot of dead links that I had to clean up, which is what sparked this request (not to mention WebCiteBOT hasn't ran since 11/1). I see this bot working a couple ways: - Runs on-demand only: The editor enters the article name, and the bot archives all working links. Dead links could be maybe be posted on the article's talk page.
- Delayed on-demand: The editor enters the article name, and the bot stores in memory or in a database the references. Then after 12 hours or so, it archives all references that still exist that are working. This would prevent a spam link from being archived in case somebody adds a spam link then runs the archiver. (WebCiteBOT currently monitors #wikipedia-en-spam to prevent spam.)
Granted, it would be nice if the bot ran through all articles but I don't want to step on WebCiteBOT's toes. Thoughts?—NMajdan•talk 17:34, 20 November 2009 (UTC) - I have long planned to add that functionality to WebCiteBOT. Unfortunately, I have had very little free time for the past couple months, but i should have some time on my hands in December. --ThaddeusB (talk) 18:34, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
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- I figured you were busy by the lack of activity with WebCiteBOT. And I didn't want to bother you any more than I already have. Hence, the request here. I don't want it to seem as if I went over your head with this request. Like I said, I was just reawakened to the issue with the recent GA review I went through. WebCiteBOT provides an invaluable service to Wikipedia and I figured your limited time would be better spent getting the primary bot working continuously rather than taking on new requests. If you feel you'll have time to get your bot up and running in addition to adding functionality, great!—NMajdan•talk 19:10, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
- No worries. I wasn't offended in the slightest. The only issue with two bots (besides the effort to reinvent the wheel) would be that the WebCite people requested no more than 1 query per 5 secs... In any case, I am restarting the primary task today. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:43, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
- Checklinks has a feature to archive individual links (click "(info)", then click "Request to archive this link" button) which will be easier to use in the future as well as replacing existing links with archived versions. It and PDFbot will also archive PDFs they come across, BTW. — Dispenser 07:58, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
- I can't figure out how to get Checklinks to archive a site. And it only appears to even allow archiving of a few references. And I don't see an archival feature to PDFbot.—NMajdan•talk 17:02, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
- Fixed the checklinks feature, wrong logic in regards to cache-control header. Additionally, I implemented an interface for using archive links. The archiver in PDFbot is a passive, only requesting after they've been tested. — Dispenser 01:14, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
[edit] De-euphemizing According to WP:EUPHEMISM, we should "Avoid clichés about death, such as "he died doing what he loved" or "his death was the end of an era", and euphemisms such as "gave his life", "passed away", "passed over", "left his body", or "returned to God". The word died is religiously neutral, and neither crude nor vulgar." Yet in a discussion, I was informed that just one of these euphemisms, "passed away", appears in 35,000 Wikipedia articles. Would it be possible to build a bot that would clean out any or all of these bits of squeamishness? --Orange Mike | Talk 18:06, 20 November 2009 (UTC) - In short, no. Many of the current uses of each phrase are appropriate, as they are either direct quotes or used as proper nouns. Also the 35K number appears to be way off. The internal search engine finds ~2600 in article space and Google estimates 4900 total, included many instances in other spaces. --ThaddeusB (talk) 18:41, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
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- Would it be possible to build a Twinkle tool which would empower the user to do this kind of ob-comp work? I do not have the programmer nature, but it seems like it ought to be possible. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:04, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
- See Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos/Archive 2#"Passed away", for the previous automated attempt. It might be worthwhile to haggle WP:WikiProject Check Wikipedia too. — Dispenser 22:40, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
I would like to request a bot to tag all articles, categories, and templates, within Category:Pennsylvania and its sub-categories with the {{WikiProject Pennsylvania}} project tag. I have checked that category, and all of the sub-categories seem appropriate. Thank you! --Blargh29 (talk) 07:00, 21 November 2009 (UTC) - I should be able to get this done with my bot if you like. But I'd prefer to wait a few days for some input from the project. Hope that's okay, - Kingpin13 (talk) 07:52, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
- I'm not sure whether by "and its sub-categories" you mean just the first level of subcats or you want to include all the subcats of those subcats (and so on). If the latter, you should probably check again: for example, Category:Cincinnati Bearcats football coaches is in there via Category:Cincinnati, Ohio, which is in Category:Settlements on the Ohio River, which is in Category:Ohio River, which of course is in Category:Rivers of Pennsylvania (which is ultimately under Category:Geography of Pennsylvania). If you want, I can provide a list of all 6183 categories under Category:Pennsylvania for review. Anomie⚔ 14:34, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
- Thanks! I was thinking that it should include all sub-cats, all the way down. I didn't realize that there were 6k of them, so maybe I ought to take a closer look at them. Can you produce a list of all of these? --Blargh29 (talk) 16:34, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
- Done, at User:Blargh29/Subcats of Category:Pennsylvania. With a list like this, I usually recommend that multiple members of the project look it over before anyone starts using it for tagging. Anomie⚔ 21:47, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
- Wow! Ok, so how should I designate which ones are relevant? Just delete them from that sub-page?--Blargh29 (talk) 00:08, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
- Delete all the ones that are not relevant, leaving only the relevant ones. Or you could move the relevant ones to a separate page, if you'd rather do it that way. The important part is that you end up with a list of categories Kingpin should process. Anomie⚔ 02:25, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
- Done! User:Blargh29/Subcats of Category:Pennsylvania. Just to be safe, I removed all sports teams and college-related categories, because those categories are filled with non-pertinent articles, like faculty, alumni, players, and coaches. --Blargh29 (talk) 06:21, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
[edit] I want some bot to add a particular Template to all users page. I am from Hindi Wikipedia. I dont know how to request to a bot for adding a Template on users pages. So somebody please help me to make such a request. This is the template which is to be added on Hindi Wikipedia users page PAGENAME. And this is users list http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/विशेष:Log/newusers. The users list shows only limited number of users but I want the template to be added to all users' pages till the first user if the user page is not present. Please insert the template I have specified in all those users' page which are red colored i.e theri user pages are not available. If there is any proper way of rwquesting then please let me know. Thanks a lot for help. हिन्दी (talk) 17:42, 21 November 2009 (UTC) - Note that this is the place for requesting bots to run on the English Wikipedia. If the Hindi Wikipedia has a bot requests page, you'd have much more luck asking there. Anomie⚔ 21:38, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
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- Although perhaps User:Tinucherian could help you. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 21:42, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Ensuring hatnotes from primary topics to disambiguation pages If there is a (disambiguation) page for a primary topic, the primary article should have a hatnote leading to the disambig page i.e. {{otheruses}}. For example, Bond Street's hatnote now links to Bond Street (disambiguation). However, there have been cases where the otheruses hatnote is missing from the primary topic, hiding the corresponding (disambiguation). Could a bot insert missing otheruses hatnotes to primary topics as applicable? Cases to avoid would be 1) where (disambiguation) page is not a valid disambig, most likely when it is a redirect back to primary topic; and 2) where the primary topic page is already a disambig (normally marked with {{disambig}} or {{hndis}} tags). Dl2000 (talk) 03:35, 25 November 2009 (UTC) - Ironically, I much more often see the opposite problem of pages violating WP:NAMB and having unnecessary disambiguation hatnotes. --Cybercobra (talk) 09:02, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
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