Wikipedia:Bot requests

For the policy on bot requirements, see WP:BOTREQUIRE.

This is a page for requesting tasks to be done by bots per the bot policy. This is an appropriate place to put ideas for uncontroversial bot tasks, to get early feedback on ideas for bot tasks (controversial or not), and to seek bot operators for bot tasks. Consensus-building discussions requiring large community input (such as request for comments) should normally be held at WP:VPPROP or other relevant pages (such as a WikiProject's talk page).

You can check the "Commonly Requested Bots" box above to see if a suitable bot already exists for the task you have in mind. If you have a question about a particular bot, contact the bot operator directly via their talk page or the bot's talk page. If a bot is acting improperly, follow the guidance outlined in WP:BOTISSUE. For broader issues and general discussion about bots, see the bot noticeboard.

Before making a request, please see the list of frequently denied bots, either because they are too complicated to program, or do not have consensus from the Wikipedia community. If you are requesting that a template (such as a WikiProject banner) is added to all pages in a particular category, please be careful to check the category tree for any unwanted subcategories. It is best to give a complete list of categories that should be worked through individually, rather than one category to be analyzed recursively (see example difference).

Alternatives to bot requests

• WP:AWBREQ, for simple tasks that involve a handful of articles and/or only needs to be done once (e.g. adding a category to a few articles).
• WP:URLREQ, for tasks involving changing or updating URLs to prevent link rot (specialized bots deal with this).
• WP:SQLREQ, for tasks which might be solved with an SQL query (e.g. compiling a list of articles according to certain criteria).
• WP:TEMPREQ, to request a new template written in wiki code or Lua.
• WP:SCRIPTREQ, to request a new user script. Many useful scripts already exist, see Wikipedia:User scripts/List.
• WP:CITEBOTREQ, to request a new feature for WP:Citation bot, a user-initiated bot that fixes citations.

Note to bot operators: The {{BOTREQ}} template can be used to give common responses, and make it easier to keep track of the task's current status. If you complete a request, note that you did with {{BOTREQ|done}}, and archive the request after a few days (WP:1CA is useful here).

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Please add your bot requests to the bottom of this page.
Make a new request

#	Bot request	Status	💬	👥	🙋 Last editor	🕒 (UTC)	🤖 Last botop editor	🕒 (UTC)
1	Implementing the outcome of Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television)#Follow-up RfC on TV season article titles	BRFA filed	18	9	Wikiwerner	2024-04-20 17:49	Primefac	2024-03-27 12:55
2	Auto-WP:NAVNOREDIRECT	Not a good task for a bot.	10	5	Wikiwerner	2024-04-28 12:22	Primefac	2024-03-13 18:37
3	Automatic NOGALLERY keyword for categories containing non-free files (again)		9	5	Wikiwerner	2024-05-15 18:43	Usernamekiran	2024-04-13 02:17
4	Can we have an AIV feed a bot posts on IRC?		6	2	Lofty abyss	2024-04-29 10:29	Usernamekiran	2024-04-15 11:27
5	Bot to sync talk page redirects with their corresponding page		10	5	Anomie	2024-04-17 11:40	Anomie	2024-04-17 11:40
6	Bot to update match reports to cite template	Coding...	5	2	Mdann52	2024-06-09 18:04	Mdann52	2024-06-09 18:04
7	Bot to mass tag California State University sports seasons	Doing...	4	4	Headbomb	2024-06-09 17:28	Headbomb	2024-06-09 17:28
8	Football league infoboxes		7	4	Bagumba	2024-04-25 13:43	Primefac	2024-04-25 12:01
9	Clear Category:Unlinked Wikidata redirects		6	3	A smart kitten	2024-04-23 10:56	DreamRimmer	2024-04-21 03:28
10	Find linkrot with a specific pattern		7	3	GreenC	2024-05-01 16:20
11	Fixing stub tag placement on new articles	Not a good task for a bot.	4	3	Headbomb	2024-05-19 20:17	Headbomb	2024-05-19 20:17
12	User:RetractionBot, v2	Y Done	8	5	Mdann52	2024-05-25 16:06	Mdann52	2024-05-25 16:06
13	Bot to change citations to list defined references	Not a good task for a bot.	3	2	Apoptheosis	2024-06-09 17:44	Headbomb	2024-06-09 16:56
14	Adding Facility IDs to AM/FM/LPFM station data	Coding...	5	2	HouseBlaster	2024-06-10 16:45	Mdann52	2024-06-10 16:44
15	Tagging women's basketball article talk pages with project tags		1	1	Hmlarson	2024-06-10 16:47

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Implementing the outcome of Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television)#Follow-up RfC on TV season article titles

This is a rather big and somewhat complex job. Per the RfC, we need to move all articles on individual TV seasons from, e.g., Loki (season 2) titles to "Loki season 2" titles (get rid of the parens and add a DISPLAYTITLE template to maintain the italicization scheme; and add "| italic_title=no" to the television infobox to avoid a conflict). BD2412 T 01:00, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

@BD2412: thinking about this, but not actively working on it. Per the RfC, this is not a task for blanket removal of brackets as Hawaii Five-0 (2010 TV series, season 10) is supposed to become "Hawaii Five-0 (2010 TV series) season 10". Am I getting this correctly? —usernamekiran (talk) 04:05, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

That is correct. My thinking is that we hold those off to the end. BD2412 T 04:12, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Apparently this will actually require retooling of the infobox first to avoid clashes, but once that is done, this can roll. BD2412 T 22:22, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

add a DISPLAYTITLE template to maintain the italicization scheme; and add " I think all of this will eventually be handled on the infobox level, so we shouldn't need a multitude of DISPLAYTITLEs (and thus that parameter in the infobox). - Favre1fan93 (talk) 18:47, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, the infobox sandbox version should be working with the new style. More testing by other editors is of course always appreciated. The display title and italic_title should not be needed to be edited by a bot. Other things mentioned in the follow-up still need bot work. Gonnym (talk) 13:17, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

This is technically two different tasks (first, move, second, cleanup). I'm happy to help out with the second half. Primefac (talk) 13:28, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

For the moves, the complete list of articles to be moved (original and new location) are listed at User:Alex 21/sandbox/NCTV. -- Alex_21 _TALK 00:49, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Just bumping this, to see if any available editors with bots are willing to help out. Cheers. -- Alex_21 _TALK 09:17, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Alex 21, I can take care of this. (The first part, moving the pages.) — Qwerfjkltalk 15:45, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl Fantastic, thank you! The complete list of articles to be moved are at User:Alex 21/sandbox/NCTV; the former link is the current location, the latter link the location to move to (some of which are already redirects and will require overwriting). Let me know if you have any questions. -- Alex_21 _TALK 11:00, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

I suppose I should have mentioned BRFA filed. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:57, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Just so as I can hopefully get to the "part two" as quickly as possible after "part one" is done (unless someone else feels like tackling it), my list of things to update after the pages moves are:

• Add |italic_title=no to the infobox
• Update talk page archiving to point to the correct location

I seem to be reading from the above that the DISPLAYTITLE issue is being fixed on the backend in the infobox itself, yes? Is there anything else that needs updating? Primefac (talk) 12:37, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

First trial is complete, for the record; extra eyes are always appreciated. Primefac (talk) 12:55, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

No to your first bullet. The infobox handles italics (or at least should if I didn't mess up the code). Once the moves are done Template:Infobox television season/sandbox and Module:Infobox television season name/sandbox2 should be moved to live. Gonnym (talk) 14:16, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

The main update that will need to occur after the page moves will be updating usages of {{Episode list/sublist}} (e.g. from {{Episode list/sublist|American Idol (season 1)}} to {{Episode list/sublist|American Idol season 1}}. This could be done through a bot or AWB, either works; the latter would need a find-and-replace with (\{\{Episode list\/sublist\|).+ to $1{{subst:BASEPAGENAME}} (regex enabled). This was a test edit of exactly that. -- Alex_21 _TALK 20:18, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello, please also see

• d:Wikidata:Project_chat#(5000)_unconnected_television_season_articles_in_the_english_language_wikipedia_after_pages_have_been_moved
• https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Wikidata%3AProject_chat&diff=2115427226&oldid=2114990113

Thanks a lot! M2k~dewiki (talk) 12:13, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

@Alex21 - See hastemplate:"Episode list/sublist" insource:/\{\{\s*[Ee]pisode list\/sublist[^}]*\(season/: 66 hits. Someone with AWB rights? Wikiwerner (talk) 17:49, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Auto-WP:NAVNOREDIRECT

Could we have a bot to automatically bypass redirects in navboxes? It would simplify part of the WP:POSTMOVE work that page movers have to perform. – Hilst [talk] 00:39, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Not all redirects in navboxes should be bypassed. WP:NAVNOREDIRECT recommends bypassing redirects which are synonymous with the target but not those which are subtopics or other related topics on which a separate article might be written. In some cases, bypassing everything might create a navbox for Garage Band where all the entries are of the form [[Garage Band|Mike Singer]], [[Garage Band|Obscure Single]], etc. Certes (talk) 11:19, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Not a good task for a bot. As indicated above, there are context issues. Primefac (talk) 18:37, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Alright, thanks. – Hilst [talk] 20:18, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

@Hilst: One could generate a report of existing redirects on navboxes, whether or not filtered by redirects containing {{R from move}}. Then the results can be processed manually. A nice one is Template:Districts of Cambodia: all districts have been renamed from "... District" to "... district". Wikiwerner (talk) 19:49, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, R from moves should be safe. Districts of Cambodia is one template where a bot or other process to bypass redirects automatically would be helpful. There may be other categories/templates of redirect which can also be bypassed safely. Others such as R from misspelling look tempting but might be mislinks where a topic with no article has its title redirected to an unrelated topic with a similar spelling. Certes (talk) 20:53, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

And those navboxes should go straight to WP:TFD for being pointless. Gonnym (talk) 19:17, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

And now this bot would have been very useful as all television season articles with disambiguation have been moved. Most of which have navboxes. Gonnym (talk) 12:36, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

I would certainly welcome some sort of tool to bypass redirects in navboxes in a semi-automated way, perhaps by presenting a table of link targets which are redirects alongside the article title to which each redirect leads and a tickbox or similar to authorise bypassing. Certes (talk) 20:56, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

One should also consider changing the link text. I may generate something like this:

== Template:Andy Warhol ==

Redirect title	Redirect target	{{R from move}}?	Link text	Change link target?	Change link text?
Athletes (1977 series)	Athletes (Warhol series)	Yes	Athletes (1977)
Blue Movie (1970 book)	Blue Movie#Aftermath	No	Blue Movie
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1982 painting)	Jean-Michel Basquiat (Warhol)	Yes	Jean-Michel Basquiat
New Andy Warhol Garrick Theatre	Garrick Cinema	No
Olympics (1984 painting)	Olympics (Basquiat and Warhol)	Yes	Olympics

and so on for all templates in the category:Navigational boxes by topic and subcategories. The latter columns must be filled manually. Then a bot can process the list. Wikiwerner (talk) 12:22, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Automatic NOGALLERY keyword for categories containing non-free files (again)

I'll raise this again, since last time the discussion fizzled out, and was archived without formal action from a BAG member.

The issue is that files in categories are displayed by default, and this violates WP:NFCC#9 if there are non-free files in the category. They have to be tagged with __NOGALLERY__ if you want to disable display of non-free files in a category. This is an urgent issue, as categories without this tag thatt contain non-free files are everywhere, and because we take copyright very seriously it cannot wait for a human user to find the category and add the __NOGALLERY__ tag, which is why this task requires a bot. Every other routine task involving non-free files, such removing instances without a valid fair use tag, is already handled by a bot.

The previous discussion stalled after a user objected and suggested adding a new feature to MediaWiki to disable category galleries by default, which is less convenient due to requiring WMF action, and it would create the opposite problem: we would need a bot to enable gallery mode on categories that contain only free files. Even though most files hosted locally are non-free, there is no reason why a bot couldn't handle the task of adding necessary __NOGALLERY__ tags at the required scale. Only one other person contributed to the discussion, who objected the suggestion for a new MediaWiki feature because it would hinder navigation of categories specifically for free files, and nothing else happened after that. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 05:58, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

User:JJMC89 has a bot that works with non-free images and might be interested in looking at this task. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:26, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Should I contact JJMC89 (talk · contribs) via their user talk page? –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 17:28, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

It's worth a try. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:39, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm aware I've been pinged, but I don't have time to look into this right now. Someone else can take this up, or I'll circle back when I have the time. — JJMC89 (T·C) 17:38, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

• @LaundryPizza03: I think I/KiranBOT can do this. Can you provide an edit/diff? Then I can be sure whether I can do it. —usernamekiran (talk) 18:01, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

  @Usernamekiran: The edits which add the NOGALLERY tag look like: [1]. I'm pretty confident that this category contains non-free files. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 19:05, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

  @LaundryPizza03: that means, first the bot would have to identify categories with non-free files. I am not sure how JJMC89's bot works, but I am guessing it works through recent changes patrolling. @JJMC89: Is the source code of relevant task public? —usernamekiran (talk) 02:17, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

  Free images mostly are moved to Commons, or not? So we seldom wil have a category containing only free files. Then the category identification is easy: all file categories should have the nogallery tag. Wikiwerner (talk) 18:43, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Can we have an AIV feed a bot posts on IRC?

I used to have one but then the toolserver changed and somehow an account isn't easy to come by, now (I posted before, but nothing came of it)... ~Lofty abyss 03:09, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

@Lofty: Hi. Do you have source code for it? Maybe I can do it. —usernamekiran (talk) 18:19, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

@Lofty abyss: lol. I pinged a different user in previous edit. —usernamekiran (talk) 19:53, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

No, I was hoping this page could be where bots are started from scratch, possibly, but I used some years ago, and on searching there seems to be several possibilities: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:IRC_RC_Bot https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:MediaWiki-Recent_Changes-IRCBot https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Administrator%27s_Handbook/Countervandalism_IRC_Bots

It's also, generally, what the cvn bots do already there, except this would need to be a more specific page that is watched. ~Lofty abyss 20:16, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

@Lofty abyss: your response reminded me, we have had this conversation before. I think User:Frostly was working on it. Maybe they have a partial code? —usernamekiran (talk) 11:27, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Obviously, I can't reply for them, but isn't there some way to do this collaboratively, like on github? One person doing it might be a bit much... ~Lofty abyss 10:29, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Bot to sync talk page redirects with their corresponding page

So, as I said in Wikipedia talk:Redirect#Deprecation of redirecting the talk page of a mainspace redirect, sometimes the talk page of a redirect is itself a redirect, most commonly after a page move. The problem is that sometimes, like in Acts of God (book) (before I corrected it in [2], 10 years later), someone retargets the redirect but forgets to retarget the talk page redirect, so any editor that tries to discuss the redirect is sent to the wrong place. I think that a bot should exist that retargets the talk page redirect to the talk page of the new target. One more thing that needs to be taken into account is that because of WP:TALKCENT, the bot needs to make sure it doesn't make a double redirect.

Just to be clear, despite what I wrote in the thread linked above, I would be against the bot changing every talk page redirect with {{talk page of redirect}}. I can explain the reasons why if necessary. Nickps (talk) 23:43, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

@Nickps: I am not sure what exactly you are asking. But if you want to change a major policy/guideline, or a longstanding norm, then it requires consensus through proper RfC. Until RfC is concluded, no changes should be made. —usernamekiran (talk) 02:26, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think my request requires a policy change. All I'm saying is that when the talk page of a redirect is itself a redirect, those two should point to the same place and a bot should be made to ensure that. In the example I provided, someone updated the mainspace redirect but not the talk page redirect. What happened then was that Acts of God (book) targeted Act of God (disambiguation) but Talk:Acts of God (book) targeted Talk:Acts of God (novel) which is obviously wrong. I don't think we need an RfC to tell us that. Nickps (talk) 02:34, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

We already have at least one bot performing similar tasks. For example, Bot1058 makes edits such as this. (BFRA page) Wbm1058 may be able to provide more information. Certes (talk) 08:15, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

My bot uses the categorization done by {{R from move}} to detect talk pages which are out of sync. The problem with Talk:Acts of God (book) was that when the page moved at 16:42, 8 May 2009 it was not simultaneously tagged with {{R from move}}. Detecting such un-tagged moves and properly tagging them is a project that hasn't been done yet. Maybe with a good database query we could find all such pages. In the olden days, the act of moving a page didn't automatically leave an {{R from move}} on the redirect. – wbm1058 (talk) 12:05, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Note that some talk page redirects are not {{R from move}}s like Talk:What is to be Done? (Chernyshevsky). Nickps (talk) 12:24, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

In addition to WP:TALKCENT, the proposed bot would also need to take into account cases where A is intended as a redirect to B (and so Talk:A should redirect to Talk:B), but B is a redirect with a non-redirected talk page. Anomie⚔ 12:30, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Good point, I think. Let me check that I've understood the example. Mainspace pages A and B are two redirects to the same target C. A is a {{R avoided double redirect|B}} but not necessarily tagged as such. Talk:B is an actual talk page rather than a redirect to Talk:C. Talk:A should redirect to Talk:B, rather than to Talk:C, even though A redirects to C. Is that correct? Certes (talk) 17:15, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

That's right. Anomie⚔ 11:40, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

yes, I was kind of thrown off because of the title linked discussion. I understood it after going through this post, and the linked discussion for the second time. —usernamekiran (talk) 00:34, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Bot to update match reports to cite template

Per this discussion on WikiProject Football, it appears to be the best course of action to edit match report external links to full cited templates because of WP:LINKROT. I am making a request for a bot that could automatically do this, as there are many football pages that use the direct link system. An example of a page that does not is 2024 OFC Nations Cup qualification, while a major page that does use the direct link is the 2022 FIFA World Cup page. Yoblyblob (Talk) :) 13:01, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

@Yoblyblob: is there any further discussion apart from that? There doesn't really seem to be a consensus there for this change. Mdann52 (talk) 09:03, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

@Mdann52 no, but it does follow WP:LINKROT, but I could make another discussion for further consensus. Is the best place for that on the project page? Yoblyblob (Talk) :) 12:16, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

@Mdann52 update: Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Football#Match_report_discussion_style for a seemingly unopposed discussion. The linkrot policy seems to be the best argument here. Yoblyblob (Talk) :) 22:00, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Archive link - Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Archive 165#Match report discussion style

Yoblyblob - happy to look at this, will be an AWB task but the wikitext has a few caveats. Coding... (for lack of a better option!). Mdann52 (talk) 18:04, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Bot to mass tag California State University sports seasons

Hi! This is my first request here, so please tell me if I did something wrong. As a part of the California State University task force, I'm looking to add {{WikiProject California|calstate=yes|calstate-importance=low}} to all of miscellaneous sports seasons' talk pages. The categories below contain the pages I'm looking to add the tag to, the bulk of the pages are from the football programs at each institution.

• Category:Cal Poly Mustangs men's basketball seasons
• Category:Cal Poly Mustangs football seasons
• Category:Cal State Los Angeles Diablos football seasons
• Category:Cal State Northridge Matadors women's basketball seasons
• Category:Cal State Northridge Matadors men's basketball seasons
• Category:Cal State Northridge Matadors football seasons
• Category:Fresno State Bulldogs football seasons
• Category:Fresno State Bulldogs men's basketball seasons
• Category:Humboldt State Lumberjacks football seasons
• Category:Long Beach State 49ers football seasons
• Category:Long Beach State Beach men's basketball seasons
• Category:Sacramento State Hornets football seasons
• Category:Sacramento State Hornets women's basketball seasons
• Category:Sacramento State Hornets men's basketball seasons
• Category:San Diego State Aztecs football seasons
• Category:San Diego State Aztecs women's basketball seasons
• Category:San Diego State Aztecs men's basketball seasons
• Category:San Jose State Spartans women's basketball seasons
• Category:San Jose State Spartans men's basketball seasons
• Category:San Jose State Spartans football seasons

SammySpartan (talk) 17:32, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

With ~800 pages to deal with, this might be worth an AWBTASKS request, but that's mainly because by the time someone other than me puts through a BRFA it could probably be done there (not saying this isn't worth a bot task, just thinking about timing). Primefac (talk) 18:13, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Doing... with JWB (non-bot). — Frostly (talk) 16:36, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

@Frostly: is this done? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:28, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Football league infoboxes

I've noticed a major past screwup that resulted in a significant number of people using an incorrect infobox for their notability claim.

There was formerly a generic {{Infobox gridiron football person}}, used on articles about players in gridiron football (NFL, AFL, CFL, etc.) regardless of their league — but because the two major American gridiron football leagues also had their own more specific infobox templates ({{Infobox NFL biography}}, {{Infobox AFL biography}}), in 2017 the generic "gridiron" template got unwisely moved to {{Infobox Canadian Football League biography}} on a faulty assumption that all American football players were using those infoboxes so that only CFL players were still using the generic "gridiron". But that wasn't the case at all, and in actual fact hundreds upon hundreds of NFL or AFL players who never had anything whatsoever to do with the CFL were still using the generic "gridiron" infobox.

I've recreated the generic gridiron template back to what it looked like shortly before the move, which has resolved the issue on some of the articles — however, there are still several hundred other articles where later bot or AWB edits had "genfixed" the template from "gridiron" to "Canadian Football League" despite the person's lack of any affiliation with the CFL. So I wanted to ask if there's a bot that could more or less generate a list of all articles that are using the CFL infobox but cannot be found under Category:Canadian Football League, and then wham through that list flipping {{Infobox Canadian Football League biography}} (or the {{Infobox CFL biography}} redirect) back to {{Infobox gridiron football person}} in those articles. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 18:55, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

The caution being to use the base Category:Canadian Football League and not the more specific Category:Canadian Football League players, as the reference category — as there are people (e.g. Frank Clair) who never played in the CFL but do still have CFL-related notability claims such as coaching or management. Bearcat (talk) 19:14, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

@Bearcat: Would it make sense to convert most of those to {{Infobox NFL biography}} instead if an individuals is only affiliated with the NFL? Or is it too complex too automate? —Bagumba (talk) 12:00, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I tried that myself in a couple of cases, and ended up with a radically shortened infobox because of too many parameters that the NFL box failed to recognize — basically, because the CFL infobox stayed patterned on the generic gridiron while the NFL one diverged from it significantly, switching back to gridiron will keep the infobox relatively intact while switching it directly to NFL will break large chunks of it. So I'd recommend leaving it to human editors to convert to NFL later on. Bearcat (talk) 13:37, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

(Not sure if this has any relevance or impact, but FWIW I think it worth noting that "Infobox AFL biography" does not apply to American Football League players; but to Australian Football League players instead – gridiron AFL seems to generally use NFL infobox). BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:55, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I think long-term, expanding {{Infobox AFL biography}} to {{Infobox Australian Football League biography}} and NFL likewise to match {{Infobox Canadian Football League biography}} would likely clear up a lot of the misuse. Primefac (talk) 12:01, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't believe there is any actual incorrect usage of the AFL or NFL templates. And at least for NFL, the National Football League is the primary topic.—Bagumba (talk) 13:43, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Clear Category:Unlinked Wikidata redirects

Currently has 1,000 entries. {{Soft redirect with Wikidata item}} (or its redirect {{Wikidata item}}) or {{R with Wikidata item}} should be removed from each of them because it's untrue. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:46, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm about to submit a BRFA as soon as possible. – DreamRimmer (talk) 03:28, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't know if just removing the template from each member of this category is ideal - I've worked through this backlog before, and (if I remember correctly) quite a number of the redirects in this category were intended to be linked to a Wikidata item, but for whatever reason weren't. My understanding of the point of this tracking category was to allow editors to go through and remove the rcat where there isn't a Wikidata item to link to, and to connect an item to the page where there is -- in at least some cases that I recall, the Q-identifier had already been passed as a parameter to the template, but the page just hadn't been properly linked to the Wikidata item. To take a random example from that category, {{Wikidata redirect|Q78588304}} was added to Hester Ford in this edit; but that redirect currently appears in the tracking category, as this connection was never made on Wikidata itself. Simply removing all the templates and losing this information isn't the best thing to do here, in my opinion. All the best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 16:12, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

You have a point if there is a QID that it may require manual review, but Wikidata redirect with no QID on an unlinked item has no useful information so can safely be removed. And I genuinely have no idea why i.e -ous should be linked to Wikidata - I couldn't find an item on it at all, so the tracking is useless. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:18, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Regarding templates with no QIDs passed, there's the possibility that an editor found a matching item but didn't properly link it; in which case a redirect appearing in this category would signify that there may be an item that can be linked - albeit limited information, but info which an interested editor could use to search for an item on Wikidata with a potentially higher likelihood of success than if they'd just chosen an unlinked redirect at random. However, there's also the possibility that a bot on Wikidata created an item for a non-d:WD:N-passing soft redirect, a {{Wikidata redirect}} template was added during an AWB run on enwiki, and the Wikidata item was eventually deleted (resulting in the page appearing within this category); as I speculate may have happened with -ous. I don't have the capacity right now to look that deeply into these scenarios, though, so I'll stick with no formal opinion on the removal of templates without a QID. All the best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 16:35, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Having thought about it some more, I'm feeling at least slightly opposed to removing QID-less templates - as, otherwise, an unnoticed vandal on Wikidata could disconnect an item and a redirect; and we'd be removing the flag on enwiki that could (in practice) be saying 'this page should be linked to an item on Wikidata, please reconnect it!'. There is a large backlog in this category (which, as with all backlogs, is less than ideal), but my thoughts are that the best course of action to clear that backlog wouldn't be to remove the rcat template from all the category's members; which might just have the result of keeping the same amount of work needed overall, but artificially reducing the backlog size. This seems like a maintenance category where manual review for each item is needed - on that note, I'll try and work through this category a bit myself today. All the best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 10:56, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Find linkrot with a specific pattern

In this edit I removed a link to http://www.mycoincollection.co.uk, because it's definitely not the intended page. At the top of the page, you can see The domain Mycoincollection.co.uk may be for sale. Click here to inquire about this domain.

Would it be practical to write a bot that examines bulk quantities of external links in some manner, and identifies links that begin with the text "may be for sale" or "is for sale"? I'm thinking of starting with a database dump (partial or complete, who cares), truncating to just the domain names, creating a page with a list of those domain names, and after checking each one, indicating whether it has this text at the top. Bonus points if the bot can be instructed to remove links after human review, e.g. a human checks a batch of links, marks some as "confirmed, rotten", and the bot goes around and removes those links from sections entitled "External links", and marks them with {{dead link}} if they're anywhere else. Nyttend (talk) 23:49, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Would only need the root URL. Like in this case, http://mycoincollection.co.uk without the "www" or any other hostname. That will reduce the number of URLs to check. The view source has:

href="https://www.trifega.com/contact.php?domain=mycoincollection.co.uk">The domain Mycoincollection.co.uk may be for sale. Click here to inquire about this domain.</a>

So really looking for https://www.trifega.com because that message "may be for sale" may change .. or not. It is common phrasing. There are a lot of sites like this around. Keep in mind, trifega.com is paying for the domain name and won't hang on to it forever. Eventually it will let it go, and the URLs will resort to 404, and be repaired by the bots as normal. Or someone else will buy it and the old URLs will return 404 since the new owner won't support them. In some cases, we have seen domains for sale this way, a new owner picks up the domain, then serves spammy content at the old URLs. It's a devious way to monetize (steal) the good name of an old site. Another scenario can occur, the old owners go out of business for a while, then reconstitute and bring it back the old URLs working again. -- GreenC 00:57, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm unclear: do you think this is a (potentially) workable idea or not? I know I've seen this happen heaps of times with various websites, not just trifega — otherwise I'd request something trifega-related — so I'm interested in anything where the site is for sale. Nyttend (talk) 01:04, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I've thought about doing this in the past, but for lack of time, the resources it will take, other hanging fruit, reasons I gave above (it might resolve on its own in time), I never did it. But go for it, would be an interesting experiment to see what you discover. It will probably be an exercise in edge case hunting for those 'for sale' strings without getting false positives or false negatives (the things we don't know). Also I just asked the WaybackMachine developers if they had a mechanism for detecting these, or a database of them, I don't think so, but if they respond I'll let you know. -- GreenC 01:57, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

How many mass domain squatters are there? The coin site has a privacy link to skenzo.com, who presumably now own the domain and many similar ones. If, say 90% of parked domains use one of a dozen standard formats, thenan option less prone to false positives is to look for the distinctive HTML behind each of them and to mark them as usurped so they can be treated similarly to 404s. Certes (talk) 10:17, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I come across them because I do a lot of manual link checking for soft-404s (essentially what these are). The pages and HTML change over time. Maybe we can start a project page off WP:LINKROT the purpose initially to record instances as they are encountered. Then we can determine how to best make matches, with keywords, or HTML patterns, or other ways. Worth noting they exist in the WaybackMachine also. And confirmed that Wayback does not do anything special to detect them. -- GreenC 14:32, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I created WP:SQUATTERS. Please add new cases here. -- GreenC 16:20, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Fixing stub tag placement on new articles

Since correct placement of stub tags is impossible using the VisualEditor, I've seen a tendency for articles created using VE to exhibit a jumbled mess of stub templates, categories and reference tags at the bottom. This is actually already an AWB genfix, but I wonder if it would be appropriate to have a bot routinely monitor VE edits and implement just this fix, which shouldn't need human supervision. --Paul_012 (talk) 09:39, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Not a good task for a bot.. Visually speaking there is no difference if a stub tag is placed before or after the categories, making it a cosmetic edit and a rather trivial one at that given that the wikitext is at the very bottom of the page. Primefac (talk) 11:14, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

The visible difference is that stub tags placed before categories will lead to stub categories appearing first, before the content categories. That's the only reason WP:LAYOUT puts them last. --Paul_012 (talk) 14:28, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

WP:LAYOUT is general guidance, enforcing that specific provision about stub template order is rather futile. Fine as part of other edits, but simply reordering the categories on its own serve very little purpose. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:17, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

User:RetractionBot, v2

Retraction Watch has made their database publicly available. See https://www.crossref.org/blog/news-crossref-and-retraction-watch/. In particular, you can download a CSV file here.

I would like for the bot to compare our citation templates ({{citation}}, {{cite xxx}}, {{doi}}, {{doi-inline}}, {{pmid}}) against the OriginalPaperDOI and OriginalPaperPubMedID columns of the database.

If the RetractionNature column list "Retraction" as the reason, add {{Retracted|doi=RetractionDOI|pmid=RetractionPubMedID|URLS ''Retraction Watch''}} as it applies.

If the RetractionNature column lists "Expression of concern" as the reason, instead , add {{Expression of Concern|doi=RetractionDOI|pmid=RetractionPubMedID|URLS ''Retraction Watch''}} as it applies.

If the RetractionNature column lists "Reinstatement" as the reason, remove {{Expression of Concern}}/{{Retracted}} entirely.

Lastly, if the DOI/PMID of {{Expression of Concern|doi=RetractionDOI|pmid=RetractionPubMedID|URLS ''Retraction Watch''}} now have a reason of 'Retraction', then change it to {{Retracted|doi=RetractionDOI|pmid=RetractionPubMedID|URLS ''Retraction Watch''}}

For example, if you find

• ...Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

change it to

• ...Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

The bot could run weekly (or maybe daily if it's a quick task?) in the Main/Draft spaces, possibly others, each time redownloading the CSV. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:42, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea. I don't think this comes up very often, so I doubt that we need daily runs.

Has anyone talked to @Samwalton9 about this? That bot hasn't run for years, and we would need to confirm that it still works and could be adapted to do this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:04, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree it's a good idea. I've got some time this weekend, so happy to contact the bot op and have a look at recoding this up again. Looks like it was stopped over edit warring concerns, so there might well be more work to do before starting this up again (unless someone else is super keen to do this!). Cheers, Mdann52 (talk) 09:01, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

I've just responded to your email - very happy for someone else to take this up since I haven't made the time :) Sam Walton (talk) 09:34, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Pardon the contentless metoo, but +1 to running it again. Perhaps even continuously? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:23, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Coding... - I've gained access to the existing toollabs instance and am upgrading the code to use the new datasource Headbomb has linked above. I'm planning to run within the previous approval for now (ie just flagging up DOIs), but I'm also ingesting PMED ids as well and I'm happy to look at expanding this in due course.

I've got a few additional changes I want to make (mainly because pywikibot has several extra features over the last few years(!)), so I may not be fully happy with this for a few weeks.

I note the request to add the extra columns, I think that would require an addition/update to the BRFA. Certainly happy to consider this as a slower task.

@Headbomb: I note you've suggested a report in that original BRFA - are there any you would be interested in having? Happy to host some reports/data on toollabs if this is of interest. Mdann52 (talk) 14:02, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Happy to have whatever tool helps with whatever! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:41, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Y Done - coding complete and loaded on toollabs ready to go. Will be running this under supervision initially with fortnightly runs (just until I find a more reasonable way to finding the references).

I don't think this will require a BRFA as it's an existing tasks and the bot is still flagged, however will do the inital batches under supervision just in case. Mdann52 (talk) 16:06, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Bot to change citations to list defined references

I'm writing this from the perspective of a new editor. I've been struggling a lot with the way citations are commonly inserted into articles, and I think it would be a good idea to automatically convert all articles to the list defined references citation standard.

As far as I understand this is only relevant for editors using the source edit mode (?). Here's my perspective: There's two main problems with the inline citation style. 1) It's very difficult to read the text and find the relevant positions in the article, since citations - especially several citations in a row - will create long breaks in the text. 2) The even bigger problem (especially for new editors) is that inserting an already existing citation (or citing something twice) becomes unnecessarily complicated. Finding the original citation in the text, inserting a name-tag, and then using that name-tag in the new citation is confusing and tedious. List-defined-references would alleviate all these problems and make the page source codes more readable and understandable.

I understand that while editing it can be tedious to go down to the ref list, edit that, and then go back to the position in the text. That's why I think a bot would be a good solution, that can clean up articles later without affecting the editors workflow. Apoptheosis (talk) 16:50, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Not a good task for a bot. Touching references is one of the most contentious areas on Wikipedia, and changing the manner and style in which citation are done is both a violation of WP:CITEVAR and will never have consensus as as task. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:56, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I should have figured this out earlier. Apoptheosis (talk) 17:44, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Adding Facility IDs to AM/FM/LPFM station data

Hi! Would someone be able to help implement Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2024 May 26#Template:AMQ and Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2024 May 26#Template:FMQ? In a nutshell, this would entail finding {{AMQ|<callsign>}} and replacing it with {{FCC-LMS-Facility|<Facility ID>|<callsign>}} and friends. There is also Category:Pages using AM station data without facility ID, Category:Pages using FM station data without facility ID, and Category:Pages using LPFM station data without facility ID, which have a similar problem which need a similar solution: replacing e.g. {{AM station data|<callsign>}} with {{AM station data|<Facility ID>|<callsign>}}.

Luckily, Wikidata has the facility IDs, so it should be a (relatively) simple job. Thanks, HouseBlaster (talk · he/they) 02:27, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

@HouseBlaster: - Coding... - I'll try and pop something together over the next few days. I'm assuming the Wikidata IDs are to be relied on? Looking at some articles (such as d:Q6325806 and KBFL (AM), I'm wondering if it's worth a parallel task to sync the callsigns with Wikidata as well? (although having them as page titles may make this redundant Mdann52 (talk) 06:06, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Mdann52, I don't love relying on Wikidata, but the few that I spot-checked were okay and I doubt anyone will systematically check the thousands of transclusions. I will note that some articles use the templates with a parameter other than the page title. Up to you if you want to work on the parallel task. Thank you so much for taking this on! — HouseBlaster (talk · he/they) 16:36, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

@HouseBlaster: I did spot the Wikidata entries, however the FCC (suprisingly) seems to have a decent API that I can query by callsign, so I can probably get up-to-date data from there to base the callsigns off... this will take slightly longer to code, however this should avoid me having to rely on Wikidata. Give me a few weeks and I'll spin something up, unless this is super urgent, when I can just use WD. Mdann52 (talk) 16:44, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Mdann52, not urgent at all. I am shocked that the FCC has an API. If we can use that, I am all for it. Thank you so much :) — HouseBlaster (talk · he/they) 16:45, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Tagging women's basketball article talk pages with project tags

I am requesting assistance tagging the talk pages of women's basketball articles with {{WikiProject Basketball|women=yes}} and {{WikiProject Women's sport|basketball=yes}} if not already tagged.

Hmlarson (talk) 16:47, 10 June 2024 (UTC)