Deactivated
This bot is no longer active on Wikipedia.
AilurophobiaBot
This user is a bot
(talk · contribs)
AilurophobiaBot is trained to attack cats in the userspace on sight
OperatorAmeliorate! (talk)
Approved?Yes
Flagged?Yes
Task(s)Escaping article-space categories in userspace pages (details)
Edit rate6 edits per minute
Edit period(s)Randomly
Automatic or manual?Automatic
Programming language(s)AWB, Regex
Exclusion compliant?No
Emergency shutoff-compliant?Yes

Information edit

Task edit

AilurophobiaBot escapes categories that should only be used in articles but have been used in userspace pages. "Escape" in this context means to add a colon before the category link. For example [[Category:Living people]] becomes [[:Category:Living people]]. The result of this is that the page no longer appears in the category listing, but instead a link to the category is produced.

Why? edit

According to the Categorisation policy "User pages do not belong in mainspace categories ...". This includes 'sandbox' drafts that are being developed in the userspace, they should be categorised after they are moved. It is, however, acceptable to categorise a userpage into subcategories of Category:Wikipedians, which AilurophobiaBot should ignore.

When the page is moved into the article-space, the category links can be reactivated by removing the colon. For example; [[:Category:Living People]] would become [[Category:Living People]]

The reason for this is so that user pages or unfinished articles are not included in article categories, as this could cause confusion for a person using the categories to navigate or someone downloading Wikipedia content based on categories.

Think of a category as an ordinary list-type article; if you would not edit a list to include a link to the page then you should not include it in the category using a category link.

Ownership of the user space edit

According to the userpage policy "Other users and bots may edit pages in your user space".

Name edit

The bot's name is a play on words; Ailurophobia is a fear of cats and in Wikipedia terminology "category" is usually abbreviated to "cat". Also, in modern contexts a fear usually correlates to a dislike of something. Therefore "AilurophobiaBot" is an automated process that dislikes cats.