Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/Autowikibrowser
 | This page is part of the Military history WikiProject's online Academy, and contains instructions, recommendations, or suggestions for editors working on military history articles. While it is not one of the project's formal guidelines, editors are encouraged to consider the advice presented here in the course of their editing work. |
AutoWikiBrowser or AWB is a tool that allows editors to perform tedious and repetitive tasks quicker and easier than doing them manually.
It is essentially a browser that automatically opens up a new page when the last is saved and in doing so, suggests changes that the editor must review and decide whether the edit is appropriate or not because as with any tool it is not 100% accurate and the editor is in the end responsible for his or her edit.
Some examples of items that are accomplished with the use of AWB are typo fixes; formatting of dates, references and links; the ability for users to find and replace and others.
Rules of use edit
Because this appliction can perform many edits in a short period of time (as many as several a minute) there are rules and limitations for its use. Below are a some of the rules of use to consider when using AWB to perform edits:
- Check every edit.
Users must Check every edit before you save it. Make sure you understand the text and have NOT changed the meaning. When in doubt leave it alone.
- Slow down
Editors should refrain from editing too quickly. If you find yourself doing more than a few edits a minute consider opening a bot account.
- Don't make trouble
Some editors are sensitive to changes to articles that they actively edit and as such a simple well intentioned edit can turn into an edit war or controversy. If there is a chance that the edits you are considering might be controversial, consider soliciting comment at the village pump or appropriate Wikiproject before proceeding. Another good place to leave a comment is the AWB talk page. This will allow other AWB users and the developers of the application to voice their opinions.
- Make the edits count
Users should Avoid making insignificant or inconsequential edits such as only adding or removing some white space, moving a stub tag, converting some HTML to Unicode, removing underscores from links (unless they are bad links), or something equally trivial. This is because it wastes resources and clogs up watch lists. Also, consider marking the edits as minor edits, so that they do not clog up the Wikipedia:Recent changes page. Above all, abide by all Wikipedia guidelines, policies and common practices.
Creating lists edit
At present, AutoWikiBrowser can create a list of pages in multiple ways, from single or multiple categories, "what links here", the wiki links on a page, a text file, a Google search, a user's watchlist, or a user's contributions and number of others.
AWB also comes with a program to scan the database, several additional addins that have been created for sepecific purposes and the ability for users to build their own modules.