This is a summary of the various fixes DrilBot makes. The edit summary field isn't long enough to provide a complete description, so it links here for additional information.
General fixes edit
Most of DrilBot's major changes have their own section, below. However, it also applies most of AutoWikiBrowser's general fixes (other than a few that are unstable for bot use, e.g. most sort key additions). It also changes "/> to " /> (note the space) in calls to named references; this is more "standard" syntax, as it is used at WP:REFNAME. It also, IMO, looks better.
DEFAULTSORTs edit
DrilBot removes diacritics from the DEFAULTSORT, or adding a DEFAULTSORT without diacritics if there isn't one and the title has diacritics. This helps with sorting in categories; an article that starts with an "á"; in the DEFAULTSORT is listed after those that start with "Z", for example, so removing the diacritic properly sorts it with the "A"s.
DrilBot also removes whitespace from the start of DEFAULTSORTs, as this typically makes the article sort incorrectly.
Duplicate categories edit
DrilBot removes duplicate categories. That is, if an article has the same category more than once and they have the same sort keys, DrilBot will remove the redundant ones. These duplicate categories aren't needed.
Duplicate references edit
If an article contains multiple <ref> tags (and their corresponding closing tags) which contain identical content, DrilBot will try to determine a good name for the reference and merge them together. Doing this saves space when reading the article (by reducing the number of separate instances of a reference that there are), and often also reduces the page's actual size and increases readability in edit mode (by not having citation content repeated over and over). See WP:REFNAME for details on this "name" feature. When DrilBot is specifically looking for these redundancies on order to fix them, it will skip pages which contains the following regular expression: /ibid\.?|(op|loc)\.?\scit\.?/gi. This should catch articles where citation order matters so that they aren't changed, by finding things like ibid. and op. cit.. If there is a similar expression which is not generated with the RegEx, please let me know at User talk:Drilnoth and I'll add it (if it is a very commonly used string, instead report it at User talk:DrilBot to shut off the bot, too).
DrilBot tries to "guess" an appropriate name for the "name" attribute. If it can't figure one out, it uses a "generic" name like "ReferenceA", which should be renamed by hand. (In my opinion, renaming an undescriptive name is much easier than doing the whole reference merge, anyway).
Extra breaks edit
DrilBot removes uneeded <br> and <br /> tags, usually those located in bulleted lists. The list syntax automatically adds line breaks, so these tags have no effect and can usually be removed.
Header levels edit
If all of an article's headers are of level three or lower, DrilBot raises all headers by 1. In addition, when only "common" section headers are level 2 (e.g., "References" or "See also"), all other headers above them are increased by 1 level. It should normally skip disambiguation pages when doing so. It also fixes some other
Links edit
DrilBot simplifies link syntax by:
- If an internal link is piped but has the same text before and after the pipe, it is simplifed. For example, [[linkname|linkname]] becomes [[linkname]].
- If an internal link is piped but has the same text before and after the pipe, but with an additional suffix on the displayed text, it is simplifed. For example, [[linkname|linknamed]] becomes [[linkname]]d.
- If an external link has double brackets as though it were an internal link, one set of brackets is removed.
Selflinks edit
DrilBot removes links to the current article. For example, in the article Barack Obama, the text "[[Barack Obama]]" would be converted to simply "Barack Obama", but it wouldn't change "[[President of the United States]]" to "President of the United States". "Selflinks" like these are displayed in articles as bold text. This is almost always undesirable... italics should be used only for the following (per WP:MOSBOLD):
| “ | Boldface is used to separate the article name from ordinary text. It is typically used in the first paragraph of an article, used with proper names and common terms for the article topic, including any synonyms and acronyms. Do this only for the first occurrence of the term; for instance, you should avoid using boldface in both the lead section and the caption of the lead image.
... Use boldface in the remainder of the article only for a few special uses:
|
” |
- Exceptions
- If the removed selflink was either A) the first instance of the article's name in the article, provided it is also within a certain space of the article's start, or B) Within the
|this album=and|this single=parameters of the {{Infobox album}} and {{Infobox single}} templates, respectively, then the selflink is instead converted to being actual bold text, using three apostraphes rather than link brackets. - If a page includes a <noinclude>, <includeonly>, or <onlyinclude> tag (or one of their closing tags), DrilBot should not remove selflinks because these tags usually indicate that the article is being transcluded like a template.
Misplaced interwikis and categories edit
DrilBot moves interwiki and category links to their proper locations at the end of the article. These should be in the following order at the end of the article: Categories, stub tags, interwikis. See Wikipedia:Layout for details.
Note that unless DrilBot is specifically looking for articles with this error, it does not make this change because interwiki links are also sorted alphabetically at the same time. Having this activated, DrilBot may make essentially useless edits to simply sort interwikis.
Templates edit
DrilBot will attempt to add proper opening and closing brackets for templates missing them. It also replaced {{fact}} with {{citation needed}}, although this isn't a primary function and isn't usually the only edit that it makes to an article.
Unicode control characters edit
DrilBot removes Unicode control characters from articles. These invisible characters are usually not needed and can cause some problems.
- Note
- Custom regex: DrilBot finds /\u200E|\uFEFF|\u200B/ and replaces it with //. (in other words, removes the characters). When specifically looking for this error, DrilBot should ignore articles with {{IPA}}, as these characters sometimes are needed within that template.