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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Yuyudevil (talk | contribs) at 15:56, 7 October 2007 (→Adding hundreds/thousands of people to a single category). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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This is a page for requesting work to be done by a bot. 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 to see if the bot you are looking for already exists. There are also quite a few "frequently denied requests", for various reasons, such as a welcoming bot, as it would de-humanize the process, and an anti-vandalism bot, as several already exist. If you want to request a bot to populate a category for a wikiproject, please create a subpage with a full list of categories to be used, as most bot operators who can complete this task will not go into all subcategories, as some members may be irrelevant to your project. Also note that if you are requesting that an operator change or add a function to an existing bot, you should ask on his talkpage, if you have questions about certain bots, they should be directed to the bot owner's talk page to the Bot Owners' Noticeboard, and that if a bot is acting improperly, it should be posted to the owner's talk page, the Administrators' Noticeboard, or AIV, listed in increasing levels of severity, and a link to the discussion may be posted at the Bot Owners' Noticeboard if appropriate. Please add your bot requests to the bottom of this page.

If you are a bot operator and you complete a request, note what you did, and archive it. Requests that are no longer relevant should also be archived in a timely fashion.

See also: Current policy on bots and Wikipedia:Bots/Frequently denied bots, to make sure your idea is not listed.

Template:Unreferenced bot request

Hello,

We need someone to write and maintain a bot that will police the use of the controversial Template:Unreferenced.

This template, currently on over 10,000 articles (Maybe it's 100,000; I don't know; I clicked "next 500" until I tired of it), says, "This article does not cite any references or sources." The problem is that this is almost always untrue, and the tag has therefore lost credibility. There is steadfast opposition to changing this statement to say "sufficient" instead of "any"; some other editors enjoy pointing out that there are other template tags such as Template:Refimprove that complain about references without complaining that the article has no references, as "Unreferenced" does; and that the "Unreferenced" tag is needed, despite the widespread inaccuracy of its use (past and ongoing).

It occurred to me that a bot could be written that would fix this problem. It would run through each article that is tagged with Template:Unreferenced, and if there are any single-bracket links in the article at all, the bot would assume it's a reference, and change the template to Template:Refimprove. The run would occur every few days, ideally, and subsequent runs after the first one would involve far fewer tags, since I expect 80% of the thousands of Unreference tags to be converted in that first pass.

This would strengthen the integrity of Template:Unreferenced. Any volunteers?

Thanks - Tempshill 23:40, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Might bring this up on the 'Pump to get a consensus that this is something that's needed. Q T C 02:40, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Le Pump sent me here. I think the need is self-evident since there seem to be several editors who are steadfast in insisting that the wording stay as-is, and it's on, you know, 10,000 articles. Tempshill 04:08, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's on 79,228 articles, i.e. mainspace pages. I agree with OverlordQ, please get consensus that it's needed. --Erwin85 10:58, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The project Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles exists in part to manually remove {{unref}} and replace it with {{refimprove}} as described by tempshill. Consensus for the project was formed at Template_talk:Unreferenced in general and at details worked out at Template_talk:Unreferenced/Archive_2#Project_Proposal. A look at the progress on Wikipedia:Unreferenced_articles#Tasks will indicate the need and the project should indicate consensus. For this proposed bot an article with an external link or a <ref> would qualify to change to {{refimprove}}. The bot could also check for and add the reference section as discussed in #reference_bot Jeepday (talk) 12:52, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We can't trust the inclusion of a <ref> tag - those are used for footnotes in general, not just references. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:31, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For clarification, this was sent from WP:VP/T to WP:BOTREQ, however if discussion needs to occur for this proposal, the proper "Pump" is WP:VPR. Oh, acronyms.... Cheers. --MZMcBride 19:50, 5 September 2007 (UTC) I can get my bot to do it, but I'd need consensus first. And perhaps 2 external links instead of one. ^demon[omg plz] 17:07, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please describe what would constitute consensus for you. Per Template:Unreferenced#Usage {{Unreferenced}} should be used only on articles that have no sources. The {{Refimprove}} template is appropriate for articles with some sources but not enough. There is a whole list of conversations here that talk about "any" vs "Adequately" the end result is, if there is even a single reference, use {{Refimprove}} if there are no references at all use {{Unreferenced}}. Jeepday (talk) 04:06, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good to me. I don't have my bot on this particular PC, but I'll run it the next time I'm at work (Wednesday). ^demon[omg plz] 05:04, 11 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Great :) Jeepday (talk) 02:06, 12 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Which Wednesday? Jeepday (talk) 02:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Today actually. I got sidetracked and forgot. I'm actually about to run the bot right now. First run will change for anything containing at least one <ref>...</ref> ^demon[omg plz] 17:49, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I just did a random check of some of User:^demonBot2's most recent changes looks great :) Can you set it up to run periodically (maybe weekly)? Jeepday (talk) 22:55, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I hit a minor snag in doing it, so I'll be fixing it soon hopefully and then it'll be back to work. ^demon[omg plz] 23:05, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
User:^demonBot2 did more today then I could do in month. But there are still many more to do by hand so back to work I go. Thanks :) Jeepday (talk) 23:25, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's a great idea and I fully support it. Go demonBot2! SilkTork *SilkyTalk 23:46, 23 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Teething problems: The bot is not differentiating between a tag placed in an article, and a tag placed in a section, as here: Kidbrooke. The section has no references at all, but the tag reads that it needs "additional". SilkTork *SilkyTalk 23:51, 23 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Will this be started up again? The original suggestion here was unsure of the size of the category, for everyone's information it is listed at 83,256 at WP:WATCH. I don't know how this bot works but if it could go through Category:Articles lacking sources from June 2006 and Category:Articles lacking sources from July 2006 first, that would be most helpful. --BirgitteSB 22:43, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, instead of the bot, why can't we merge with another template? Or, we could run a manual patrol, which seems a better idea. Laleena 12:23, 30 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure what you mean. Not all articles in this category fit within the parameters the bot is running. We need to weed out the ones that do so we can deal with the articles that are truly lacking a single reference. The problem has been that over time when people add a reference to these articles, they do not remove or change {{unreferenced}} to something more appropriate. The reason we need this category to be accurate is because that exposes articles like the one discussed here. That article was a hoax that has existed for over a year and a half. I only discovered it through this category. As for going through the category manually, that is on-going but it take several months to go a single month in the category. We are losing ground. This bot task would basically grab the low-hanging fruit and allow us doing the manual work to concentrate on the most problematic articles--BirgitteSB 13:09, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Unusedimages

A bot should be created to sift through Special:Unusedimages. There are many images there, some likely without copyright information, some orphaned copyright, many copyleft. I'd imagine this could be sifted in three waves, finding and tagging images without copyright information, then when those are deleted or attributed, finding and tagging those tagged as copyrighted as {{orfud}}, and finding and tagging images with an appropriate copyleft tag to be transwikied to commons. Then, it would be a simple matter to have a bot move the copyleft images over. Doing this will make local management of images easier, as the remaining backlog at Special:Unusedimages will be manageable by a single admin on any given day, making finding prohibited, forgotten, or cv images a lot easier, and as it is, commons is the repository of potentially unused copyleft media, not us. Thoughts? --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 10:55, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If I remember correctly, scraping unused images for candidates for the various image speedy deletion criteria was done by BetacommandBot. ^demon[omg plz] 01:23, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah BCBot does ORFU tagging. βcommand 01:25, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm talking about tagging the unused copyleft images for migration as well. Also, maybe a bot to find images that have no copyright tag at all, because recently I came across an image being used ina n article that was untagged for more than a year and a half. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 12:08, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'll have my bot sift through it. CO2 18:42, 30 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

AfD notification bot

See this thread - anyone think they could do this? Dihydrogen Monoxide (H2O) 01:55, 30 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

First, I think bots to provide notification for xFD have been shot down before, but I could be wrong. Secondly, unless PARC has updated their system, I wouldn't want to use it for such a mass-querying bot, as they were (at one point) working off the live Wikipedia, rather than using a db dump. This is a bad thing. ^demon[omg plz] 14:27, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Non-free images lacking article backlink backlog

Could a bot help clean up the backlog at Category:Non-free images lacking article backlink? This requires simply adding a parameter. The best may be a double verification, first by the article the images is used in and then see if there is a link to that article in the rationale. See Image:3dlemmi screen003.jpg, where both 3D Lemmings is both listed on the page and is the page where the image is used. Then since they match, the bot would just need to add "Article = 3D Lemmings" as a parameter. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:51, 30 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not possible via bot, there is no way for a bot to check and see if the rationale is valid for that article. βcommand 23:24, 30 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not asking about the validity of the rationales. There are already rationales there. I'm just asking about a bot adding in the article parameter. I understand if someone says, as a matter of policy, they'd rather have someone checking these by hand so that we can also check for invalid rationales as well. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:05, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Im saying that It should not be done via bot. it just makes a lot harder to check. it would make checking for valid rationales via bot impossible. Also it would introduce a large number if invalid rationales. βcommand 01:09, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, this needs to be done by a human. Just because an article has a rationale and is used in an article does not mean the rationale and/or usage is valid. Videmus Omnia Talk 01:50, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, that makes sense; I understand. Thanks anyways! -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:47, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What if the bot added "|Article =" to the template. This would make it easier to clean up this category. 129.177.156.248 14:32, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That was the original request, which was declined. — madman bum and angel 15:45, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a more modest idea that shouldn't be controversial. Sort through the images in this category to look for articles missing the "article=" parameter, that (1) have a single blue link to an article somewhere inside the template, and (2) are used in that single article as per the file page. You can safely assume that the blue link in the template refers to the article use, so add the name (without brackets) to the Article= field of the template. Wikidemo 08:44, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bot to help fix #10c image tagging (if this is even within the realm of reason, though I doubt it)

The video game project has a special template Template:VGrationale that substs the Template:Non-free use rationale template to help mark images used in articles. However, with the change of the template and the recent push for getting non-free images up to snuff through Betacommandbot and apparently others, the FUR templates generated by VGrationale lack the new Article= field and thus these images are being tagged as #10c violations. I've fixed VGrationale so that new instances of it are fine, and I think there's a possible issue with BCB not looking into the headers, but regardless, there's still a manual job of adding the article name to apparently 100s of images that have already been tagged.

Or, is it really a manual job? VGrationale adds a h2-type header as: "Fair Use rationale for use on [[Page Link]]", followed immediately by the FUR, when the subst is done.

So, the question becomes:

Can a bot identify "Page Name" above and add in the value as the article field in the immediately following FUR template?
Is it even sane to consider the idea of having a bot go through every image on every page that's within the VG project scope to look for this situation, instead of what would likely be a couple hours of manual work to correct, save for the current fault that I don't believe there's a singular page that lists the problematic images?

I'm thinking this is more on the "insane" side of a requests, but one never knows...--Masem 15:12, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It would probably be easier to just do it manually. That backlog will be cleared... eventually... — madman bum and angel 07:02, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like someone's already done it manually and deleted the template. Is that true? If so we can close this one.Wikidemo 08:19, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interwiki of the List of asteroids subpages

Starting with List of asteroids/1–100, check the interwiki links and match the pages going up by hundreds. Right now, there's only the ast (Asturian), an (Aragonian), ca (Catalan), eu (Basque) and ru (Russian) pages (als is out of sync, hr has just the one page):

One should be careful of keeping the interwiki links within the ending <noinclude> block. Ideally, th ebot should create the interwikis both ways (ca seems to have all the links to en in place already). Other projects (such as fr, pl, etc.) use a different page step, and will therefore be linked to a different set of en pages. Urhixidur 18:12, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Generically creating a non-existing, but populated category.

is this possible? It seems to happen a fair bit. For instance - the "Category:Suspected Wikipedia Sockpuppets of Bob": cats like that are populated, but redlinked. Is it possible? -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 09:37, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Should be possible with Special:Wantedcategories, I'll try and do it once I have Chris G Bot 3 completed, unless anyone else has the time? --Chris  G  10:08, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would suggest this should only be done for non-article categories because those in mainspace may have another category covering the same purpose and people do not normally intentionally add things to a redlinked cat. :: maelgwn - talk 10:59, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And of course the bot won't recreate deleted cats. --Chris  G  11:33, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

this isnt a good idea, many many of these shouldnt exist. βcommand 14:15, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, and you can see what would be in the category without creating it. Also, how would the bot know what to create for the category description? CO2 20:47, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Something extremely generic. I'll give an example when I tihnk of one. -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 12:43, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be fine for creation of maintenance templates because they are nearly all the same but get updated created monthly or wever. :: maelgwn - talk 11:17, 3 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How will the bot know what to use as a parent category? Creating orphaned categories is probably not a good idea. --After Midnight 0001 11:26, 7 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A bot to check for the insertion of text immediatly before a reference

Hello,

At least one (anonymous) editor of New Orleans has developed a habit of inserting contradictory (POV) text between a fact and its citation. This has the obvious effect of changing the meaning of the article and appears to come from the reference when it does not.

Example:

Hurricanes also pose a severe threat to the area, and the city is particularly vulnerable because of its low elevation. According to a recent report by The Weather Channel, the city is the most vulnerable in the country when it comes to hurricanes.[1]

Becomes something like this:

Hurricanes also pose a severe threat to the area, and the city is particularly vulnerable because of its low elevation. According to a recent report by The Weather Channel, the city is the most vulnerable in the country when it comes to hurricanes. The Army Corps of Engineers is going to build more levees so that future disasters will not occur.[2]

Except, of course, that the reference number is still 1.

I wouldn't have the foggiest idea about writing or running a bot, but looking for new text immediately preceding a reference should not be hard. It could draw attention to a lot of misinformation. Thanks, Sagredo 20:44, 3 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If the anonymous editor is using the same IP every time (or not), maybe you can start treating it as Wikipedia:Vandalism? Jeepday (talk) 02:00, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I actually only saw one occur, when it was done to a change I made, but picked up on other places in the article where edits were fit in in this way. Again because the text no longer fit the reference. But any edit stuck in in that way is likely to separate the fact from its reference and be unintentionally damaging. Perhaps the answer is not a bot, but something in the software, that asks the editor "did you mean to place this text between the previous text and the reference? requires them click on a button. Then if "yes" is clicked that change should be carefully checked. Maybe this should be done for all editors, because the potential for harm is so great. I'll read the section on vandalism. Sagredo 04:09, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]


http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_Orleans%2C_Louisiana&diff=prev&oldid=162195813 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_Orleans%2C_Louisiana&diff=prev&oldid=162196274 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_Orleans%2C_Louisiana&diff=prev&oldid=162195813 Three vandalisms to population numbers. Sagredo 08:04, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is an interesting idea... I have seen the same problem, and dealing with it as vandalism is not always feasible because I think it's often not intended. My concern would be too many false positives, though... Like if someone was adding more info from the same reference.
At a minimum, I think it should not revert, but it might be interesting to have it move the citation back where it was. i.e. if "Sentence A. (cite)" is changed to "Sentence A. Sentence B. (cite)", then the bot would not remove sentence B, but rather change it to "Sentence A. (cite) Sentence B." Maybe. --Jaysweet 15:32, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Moving the citation back occurred to me, too. It should work even when the new text was an addition to a sentence, although the citation would end up in the middle of a sentence. I think in case of the NOLA article, there's a definite intention to insert POV without being obviously vandalism. My feeling is that some have done so much of it to have become quite good at it. Sagredo 01:55, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As pointed out above there is a lot of judgment (and reference checking) to decide if it is vandalism or updating. Maybe the thing to do is search for new content placed directly before <ref></ref> where the <ref></ref> preceded the new text by more then 24 hours. This would probably be fairly complex to do real time, so might have to be run off the data dump, then you would need to identify the specific change and list it so a person could manually review it. Or I could just be making things needlessly complex. Jeepday (talk) 02:15, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So you think it would be more work that it would be worth? Sagredo 02:43, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"LoveBot"

I've got an idea for a very simple, very narrow-purpose bot, I was thinking of writing myself for fun -- so this is not really a bot request, but I couldn't find another good place to bounce ideas off people to see if this even makes sense.

The page for Love constantly gets vandalism of the form "Randy loves Amy," etc. A very high percentage of it neatly fits the pattern "<Surname>/I loves/LOVES/love/LOVE <Surname>/you". So I was thinking maybe having a bot that would check for edits only on Love that fit that specific pattern and revert them.

I know, it's only marginally useful, but this would almost be more a learning exercise for me than anything else. I am just trying to think of any way in which it would be destructive... I dunno, is this a dumb idea? --Jaysweet 15:40, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a bad idea, and it's possible. The love page is heavily watched, though, and there would be quite a few false negatives (and, possibly, some false positives) that may outweigh the benefits of having the bot. However, maybe we could make a bot that infers social networks from love vandalism, and finds matches so that vandals can live happily ever after in matrimonial/non-marital/extra-marital/what-have-you bliss (instead of vandalizing). GracenotesT § 15:50, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
ha ha ha, that's a good idea. Sounds like a PhD thesis ;D
Yeah, I recognize that false negatives will abound, and yeah, the page is watched pretty heavily (by me, for one!). I'm having trouble coming up with a situation where there'd be a false positive, though... Like I said, this would be as much an exercise for me as anything else, so as long as it would be considered at least marginally useful and does no harm, it would be worth it to me.
Can you think of a false positive situation? Because if there's even one false positive, it is probably a bad idea to make such a bot, because of the negligible benefit (i.e. if the bot even makes one or two mistakes, then the bad it does probably outweighs the good). --Jaysweet 15:55, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hm. The page does have I love you in the See Also section, which isn't vandalism. GracenotesT § 18:12, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I think there is a lot of stuff already in the article that would get dinged, but I am having trouble thinking of something that is not already in the article that would be a false positive.
Although, that raises a good point: If somebody reverts a page blank, gotta be sure that LoveBot doesn't think the revert is a love note! heh.... --Jaysweet 18:24, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

ArtyBot

I would like to make a bot that looks through a users contribs back one month, and determines if a user has made any contributions to an article that is classified as an Artemis Fowl article. This is so that we (Coordinators) can make sure that the Active/Inactive section is constantly updated. This is because it is a pretty menial task that is long and boring. Can I get some feed back on this? Your Grace Lord Sir Dreamy of Buckland tm 12:36, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This can easily be done using a script on the web. No editing is involved, so it's not really a bot per the bot policy. I may slap this script together sometime today (I'll be bored in transit) and put it on the Toolserver. — madman bum and angel 12:56, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for sounding like an idiot, but how will I be able to use this script? Your Grace Lord Sir Dreamy of Buckland tm 01:09, 6 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ever used Interiot's wannabe kate edit counter? It will be something like that. --Chris  G  13:04, 6 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Find/Kill Spam Bot

Not so much on Wikipedia, but on other Wikis on the internet I have noticed a lot of spam on inappropriate material. I propose to create a bot that scans past New Pages and Edits for key words such as "Free Gold" or "Live Sex" and rolls back the page to a earlier edit where the spam is no longer present; some new pages get past extension filters I'm sure, so having a bot to search them out would make things a lot easier.. This would lessen the amount of work that admins on Wikipedia and other wikis would have to do in order to erase past spam in the database.

I know that there are some extensions that do this for posts being posted such as "SpamBlacklist" but I have not seen one that will scan Past pages for this inappropriate content.

If this bot does well, I would like to openly share the coding so that it can be implemented on other websites using the Wikimedia setup to host their own Wikis.

I have limited programming knowledge, and wouldn't know where to start. Even still, I am willing to contribute what I can for this project.

I look forward to everyone's input on this.

GusJustGus1 20:00, 6 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So you want a bot to fill links from the spamblacklist, then surf the wiki to find and remove those links? Carbon Monoxide 00:53, 7 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Adding hundreds/thousands of people to a single category

Category:Fellows_of_the_American_Academy_of_Arts_and_Sciences is extremely underpopulated despite there being 4000 members in the Academy. Can we add some of these members to this category using a bot? --Yuyudevil 02:43, 7 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A list of people in a PDF file which only contains last name and first initial probably won't be enough to go on. --After Midnight 0001 11:23, 7 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Then would the job be more feasible if we were to either get a proper (and more readable) list from the Academy, or the existing list was somehow (rather painstakingly) made in to a bot-readable DB? (I'll need some technical assistance for the latter option.) --Yuyudevil 15:56, 7 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Template:French commune

Would it be possible to create a bot to go through articles using the Template:French commune and removing some formatting that was imported from the French wiki? i.e. would it be possible to create a bot to do an edit like this one. An image and caption have been placed in the parameter for the name of the town. There are optional parameters for these now. The template is currently used in upwards of 2000 articles and would be tedious to go through so many articles. It needs to be done so that the name of the town be made more promiment and to standardise the format of the template infobox. --Bob 15:13, 7 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  1. ^ "The Weather Channel's Special Report: Vulnerable Cities - New Orleans, LA". Retrieved 2006-10-26.
  2. ^ "The Weather Channel's Special Report: Vulnerable Cities - New Orleans, LA". Retrieved 2006-10-26.
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