Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/User manual

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AutoWikiBrowser - v3.3.1.0
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General information about AutoWikiBrowser and directions for installation.

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The full user manual.
Developer Talk Page · Typos · Plugins · IRCMonitor · AWB Projects · Changelog · AWB Sandbox

This is the user manual for AutoWikiBrowser.

This documentation is not complete; please help expand it.

Contents

[edit] Basic Procedure

Screenshot of AWB
Screenshot of AWB

The basic procedure for using AutoWikiBrowser (AWB) is as follows:

  1. Make AWB log in as a user
  2. Make a list of pages to modify
  3. Set the options (specify what to do to each page)
  4. Start the process (AWB takes you through each page, previewing the planned changes, and letting you make further changes, such as adding a template)

[edit] AutoWikiBrowser User Manual

[edit] Login

  • AWB uses the Internet Explorer engine, and uses the IE login. If you have different accounts, you'll have to log out of Wikipedia in IE and log back in as your other account. If you want to run AWB and do manual edits at the same time using 2 different accounts, use IE for your bot and do your manual edits in another browser like Firefox or Opera

[edit] "Make list"

  • Make from:
  • Note: Make lists from multiple pages by separating them with a pipe symbol, e.g. from a category, entering "Cats|Dogs|Fish" will get all the entries in Category:Cats, Category:Dogs and Category:Fish.
  • Category — Gets a list of sub categories and articles from the category.
  • What links here — Gets a list from the "what links here" of an article. To get the "what links here" of the articles "Cat" and "Dog" in one go, type "Cat|Dog".
  • Option: Inclusion only - same as What links here, but only gets pages that link by inclusion (i.e., {{PAGENAME}})
  • What transcludes here -
  • Links on page — Gets all the wiki-links from the given page, all namespaces.
  • Text file — Gets a list from a text file (the articles in the text should be [[wiki linked]]).
  • Google search — Gets a list from a google search of the wiki.
  • User contribs — Gets articles edited by a specific user
  • Special page — Enter "Lonelypages" to get a list from Special:Lonelypages, you can also enter "Lonelypages&limit=500&offset=500" to get more or from an offset. If no limit specified, the limit will be 1000.
  • Image file links — Gets a list of articles that use the given image.
  • Database dump — Opens the Dump Scannner program to scan the database dump (which needs to be downloaded, ~1.8 GB). See Wikipedia:Database download
  • My Watchlist — Imports your watchlist (using the account you are logged into Internet Explorer with).
  • Wiki search — that gets list of pages from wiki's internal search engine. Typically, Google search results are better but Google rescans Wikipedia only around once per month, and cannot search for specific wikisyntax.
  • Redirects -
  • Make list — Makes list based upon given options
  • Remove selected — Removes selected item from list.
  • Remove duplicates - Allows you to filter duplicates from the list without having to open the filter box
  • Clear — Clears entire list.
  • Filter — Allows you to filter the list by a selected list of namespaces, inclusion of selected words. Can also exclude items that exist in another list and remove duplicates.
  • Save List — Save the current list to a text file. Since version 3.0.6.1, two formats are supported: wikitext (default), useful for publishing lists on wikis); and plain text, useful for exporting lists to other tools.
  • Add — Adds item in the text box to list.

[edit] "Set options"

  • Apply general fixes
    • Fixes common mistakes in "see also" and "external links" sections, removes excess white space.
    • Sorts interwiki links alphabetically (individually selectable in menu), and puts them at the bottom of the page with stubs.
    • Unicodifies interwiki links.
    • Removes duplicate interwikis and categories.
    • Puts categories after article body, followed by interwiki links and stub templates. Recognises some comments as cat and interwiki headers.
    • Adds bullet points to external links after the ==External links==.
    • Replaces italic and bold html markup with wiki markup.
    • Repairs bad links.
    • Simplifies links like [[Dog|Dog]] to [[Dog]].
    • Simplifies links like [[Dog|Dogs]] to [[Dog]]s.
    • Adds bold text to the first occurrence of the title of the article (if there is no other bold text).
    • De-links self referencing wiki-links.
  • Auto tag — Appends {{Wikify}}, {{Uncategorised}} and {{stub}} tags when appropriate. Removes stub tags from long articles. Adds the date parameter to the by-date sorted templates.
  • Unicodify whole Article — Replaces wiki like ° with its unicode equivalent, °. Note that for symbols which could be easily confused with others, the conversion is not applied (for example: ′ ″ and × which map to ′, ″, and × and could be confused with symbols like ', ", and x.)
  • Skip Articles - Skip if no
  • Unicodification
  • Tag changed
  • Skip if no header error fixed
  • Titled boldened
  • External link bulleted
  • Bad link fixed
  • Find and replace — Enables multiple find and replacement. Can specify case sensitivity and Perl-style regular expression patterns. The keyword %%title%% represents the article title. For information on setting options such as multi or single line see here. See here for substitution syntax.
  • Advanced find and replace (Replace special) — See MWB Replace Special.
  • Template substitution (subst:) — substitutes templates you chose. This is a more convenient and reliable way than simply entering regexes in Find and replace — AWB will automatically generate regexes.
  • Enable RegexTypoFix — Turns on RegExTypoFix — which automatically fixes >1000 common typos. Please read and understand the RegExTypoFix before using. The typos can be modified on Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos.
  • Skip article when no typo fixed — Will skip articles that have no typo to be fixed
  • Skip Articles
  • Case Sensitive
  • Are Regexes (Regular expressions)
  • Skip if contains/doesn't contain — Skips articles that do or do not contain the given string/regex.
  • Skip articles with no changes — Skips article that it doesn't automatically change (i.e. make a "general fix", find and replace etc.).
  • Skip non-existing pages — Causes AWB to automatically skip pages that don't exist.

[edit] "More..."

  • Append/Prepend message — Appends/Prepend the given text to the bottom of the page (talk pages only).
  • Auto-mode — Will make saves automatically at given interval, only for accounts registered in the Bots section of the checkpage.
  • Delay — The delay in seconds before saving the page after loading, (normally loading takes about an extra 8 seconds or 3 seconds with quick save enabled).
  • Quick save — When using auto-mode, avoids loading diff to save time/bandwidth/server load.
  • Suppress "using AWB" — Stops addition of "using AWB" to the edit summary, as registered bots do not need this.
  • Images - Replace/Remove/Comment out Images
  • Categorisation — Add/Remove/Replace categories (replace only available when making a list from a category), enter the new category name minus the Category: prefix. When entering a category for "Add new category" use the keyword %%key%% to insert the reversed human name key, e.g. entering "Economists|%%key%%" might insert "[[Category:Economists|Smith, Adam]]".

[edit] "Disambiguation"

This feature is intended for quick user-supervised fixing of links to disambiguation pages.

  • Enable Disambiguation
  • Load Links — loads all links to the aforementioned page(s) into "Variants" edit box (see below).
  • Variants — all possible variants to disambiguate to (the list can be edited to add or remove links). Don't forget to decapitalize links when needed (e.g. matrix (mathematics) should be lowercase, but not Matrix (TV series)).
  • Skip article when no disambiguation made — ignores the article when it doesn't require disambiguation or user pressed "Cancel" in disambiguation dialog.

[edit] Disambiguation dialog
Disambiguation dialog
Disambiguation dialog

Once the disambiguation feature has been enabled using the above process and an article list loaded using "What links here" in the "Make list" section, the dialog box shown in the image will appear when an article has been loaded and a link to disambiguate found. In the image shown, two links in the page have been found to disambiguate. For each link:

  • Left box — contains the link in bold and some of the surrounding text.
  • Selection box — select the change wanting to be made from the following options:
  • [no change] — default.
  • [unlink] — remove the link.
  • {{dn}} — adds [disambiguation needed] next to the link. Should be used when the correct disambiguation cannot be determined.
  • Variants — as specified in the "Variants" box in the "Disambiguation" tab.
  • Right box — editable box that displays what has been changed. Default change creates (or alters) a piped link. In the image, [[matrix|matrices]] is changed to [[matrix (mathematics)|matrices]].
  • Unpipe — unpipes the link. This would change [[matrix (mathematics)|matrices]] to [[matrix (mathematics)]].
  • Reset — clears the changes made for that link.
  • Undo — reverts all manual changes to the right box, including unpiping. This is equivalent to reselecting the current item in the selection box.

The following options are along the bottom of the box:

  • Open in browser - opens the article in your default web browser
  • Reset all — clears all the changes made.
  • Undo all — reverts all manual changes to the right box for each link, including unpiping. This is equivalent to reselecting the current item in the selection box for each link.
  • Abort — stops the editing process (like the 'Stop' button).
  • Cancel — closes the disambiguation dialog, making no changes, and loads the diff (to show other changes made e.g. general fixes).
  • Done — makes the changes in the dialog and loads the diff. Other changes can then be made before saving the page.

[edit] "Start"

  • Summary — The edit summary, either select one from the drop down, or enter your own text.
  • Lock Summary - Allows the user to select to 'lock' the edit summary, so that it cannot be accidently changed
  • Article statistics — Various statistics, such as number of characters and images.
  • Alerts — Displays alerts when, for example, the article is uncategorized, is long but tagged as a stub, etc.
  • Start the process — Starts the process when you have a list of articles. (Shortcut key - control + S)
  • False — Adds article to a list of false positives, in a file called "False positives.txt"
  • Stop — Stops the editing process. (Shortcut key - escape)
  • Preview — Changes the view to preview (and updates any extra changes you made).
  • Show changes — Changes the view to the diff (and updates any extra changes you made).
  • Move - Allows you to move a page to another location. Upon pressing this button, a windows appears asking for the new location, and a summary of the change, which is then confirmed by pressing move again.
  • Delete - Allows you to delete a page. Upon pressing this button, a windows appears asking for a summary of the change, which is then confirmed by pressing delete again.
  • Ignore — Moves on to the next page without saving anything. (Shortcut key - control + D)
  • Save — Saves the page, including any extra changes you made, then moves on to next article. (Shortcut key - control + S)

[edit] Menus

  • File
  • New setting file
  • Open settings — Loads settings from specified path.
  • Reset settings — Sets AWB settings back to the first run/program defaults.
  • Save settings — Saves the current settings to the file they were loaded from.
  • Save settings as... — Saves the current settings to a specified file.
  • Save as default — Saves the settings to the default.xml, these will then be loaded automatically when AWB is opened.
  • Log In — Takes you to the login page for the Wiki.
  • Log Out — Forces logout of the current user.
  • Exit — Quits the program.
  • List
  • Filter out non main space — Removes all non-main space articles.
  • Filter — Allows you to select which pages in the list box you wish to keep. E.g. Article, User, Talk...
  • Convert to talk pages — Changes list of article/template/userpage to their relevant Talk pages.
  • Convert from talk pages — Changes list of talk pages into their relevant article/template/userpage.
  • Sort alphabetically — Sorts list alphabetically.
  • Save list to text file — Saves list to text file (which can be used later on to create new list, as described above).
  • Launch Database Scanner — Launches the Database Scanner, see here.
  • Launch List comparer — Allows you to make or open 2 lists, and AWB will tell you the entries that appear in both lists, the entries only in list 1 and the entries only in list 2.
  • General
  • User project and preferences
  • Project
  • Project - Allows you to choose which wikimedia project (or even custom!) you would like to work on.
  • Language - Allows you to select which language of Wiki you would like to work on.
  • Other
  • Enhance Diff View
  • Scroll Down on Preview
  • Set text box font
  • Diff Font Size
  • Low Thread Priority - Sets CPU Thread priority to low, this means it will only use CPU if other processes dont need it.
  • Minimize to system tray - When AWB is minimized, having this option selected will close AWB into the notification area of Windows.
  • Allow AWB to override watchlist settings -
  • Flash - The AWB tray icon will flash when AWB is out of focus, and userinput is needed.
  • Bleep - AWB will cause a beep when AWB is out of focus, and userinput is needed.
  • Save Article List on saving settings - Allows the user to choose whether they want to save the current article list in with the settings.
  • Timeout Limit (seconds) - The timeout limit of the web browser. Min 30 seconds, max 120 seconds
  • Enable the Toolbar - Displays a simple toolbar below the menu strip, allows easily usage of basic start features. Includes:
  • Show or hide the panel - Shows and hides the main part of the AWB window at the bottom (Hidden Shortcut key of Ctrl+H - This works when the toolbar is enabled or disabled).
  • Start - Starts the Process, like Start.
  • Stop - Stops the Process, like Stop.
  • Save - Saves any page changes.
  • Ignore - Ignores any page changes, and moves onto next page.
  • Show preview - Shows in the browser window what the updated page would look like - like manual edit 'show preview' button.
  • Show changes - Shows the changes between the current revision, and your intended changes.
  • Articles - Number of Articles in the List Box.
  • Bypass redirects — Instead of editing pages that redirect to another page, AWB edits the page to which it redirects.
  • Do not automatically apply changes — No changes are made, instead you can use the "re-parse" option selectively.
  • On Load: - AWB will:
  • Show changes - Shows the changes between the current revision, and your intended changes.
  • Show preview - Shows in the browser window what the updated page would look like - like manual edit 'show preview' button.
  • Show edit page
  • Ignore {{bots}} and {{nobots}}
  • Mark all as minor — Marks all edits as minor.
  • Add all to watchlist — Adds all edited pages to user watchlist.
  • Show timer — Shows timer in the lower right corner of the window so user can monitor interval between edits.
  • Sort interwiki links — Sorts the interwiki links in same order as pywiki bots (if "Apply general fixes" is selected).
  • Enable button to log false positives
  • Edit Summaries - Allows the user to edit the saved edit summaries for AWB.
  • Refresh Status/Typos - Allows you to refresh the typo list if you have had AWB open a long time and want an updated typo list (only if RegexTypoFix is enabled!). Also reloads the checkpage to check enabled users and versions.
  • Advanced
  • Make Module - Allows the user to make a simple 'module' or add on for AWB. The user is able to enter C# or VB .NET code to enhance functionality of AWB - See Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Plugins for more information
  • Test regex — Displays interface for testing searching and/or replacing text with regular expressions.
  • Plugins - Only displayed if a plugin module is loaded. If it is loaded, any selectable options for the plugin will be displayed here
  • Help
  • Help — Links to this page.
  • About... — Shows about box showing creators, maintainers, version of AWB, IE Version, Windows Version, .NET version, and a disclaimer.

[edit] Web Control context Menu

The web control context menu is the menu that appears when you right-click on the web control.

  • Copy — Copies the selected text to the clipboard.

[edit] Edit box context menu

The edit box context menu is the menu that appears when you right-click inside the edit box.

  • WordWrap — Wraps the text in the edit box at bottom-right.
  • Undo — Negates the last action.
  • Cut — Copies and then deletes the selected text.
  • Copy — Copies the selected text to the clipboard.
  • Paste — Pastes text from the clipboard to the selected area.
  • Paste more — Enter text into the textboxes, then double click one to paste it's contents.
  • Select all — Selects all the text in the edit box.
  • Go to line — Enter the line number and hit return.
  • Insert... — can:
  • Guess birth/death cats — Guesses the birth and death years of the article's subject and inserts the appropriate categories. (For biographical articles only.)
  • Meta-data template — inserts the persondata template. (For biographical articles only.)
  • Human name category key
  • Insert tag — Inserts the tag selected from the submenu to the selected area of the article. If {{stub}} is selected, the user can optionally change the type of stub by typing into the box.
  • Convert list to
  • * List — (Bullet pointed list)
  • # List — (Numbered list)
  • Unicodify selected — Converts any HTML entities or URL encoded characters in the selected text to unicode.
  • Bypass all redirects — replaces all links to redirects with direct links. This feature shouldn't be used in most cases, therefore it's restricted to admins only.
  • Fix all excess whitespace
  • Re-parse — Re-applies all the functions (general fixes, re-categorisation...).
  • Open page in browser — Opens the article in the default browser.
  • Open page history in browser — Opens the article history in the default browser.
  • Open text selection in browser - Allows the selected text to be opened as an article, as if it was a wikilink
  • Replace text with last edit

[edit] Article list box context menu

The list box context menu is the menu that appears when you right-click inside the list box.

  • Filter out non main space — Removes all non-main space articles.
  • Filter — Opens the advanced filter options.
  • Convert to talk pages — Transforms the list into talk pages, e.g. "Cat" => "Talk:Cat".
  • Convert from talk pages — Transforms the list from talk pages, e.g. "Talk:Cat" => "Cat".
  • Sort alphabetically — Sorts list alphabetically.
  • Save list to text file — Saves list to text file (which can be used later on to create new list, as described above.)
  • Cut selection - Cuts the currently selected article (only does 1!!)
  • Copy selection - Copies the currently selected article
  • Paste selection - Pastes whatever is in the clipboard
  • Select all - Select/Highlight all the articles in the list
  • Select none - Unselects all articles in the list
  • Add selected from list... — When an item is selected, the following can be added to the list
    • From category — Adds the contents of a category when a category is selected.
    • From whatlinkshere — Adds the articles that link to the selected article.
    • From links on page — Adds the articles linked in the selected article.
    • From image links — Adds the articles linked to an image when an image is selected.
  • Remove — Removes the selected article.
  • Clear — Clears the list.
  • Open article in browser — Opens the article in your default browser.

[edit] Database Scanner User Manual

[edit] Menus

Wiki Database Scanner - Part of AWB
Wiki Database Scanner - Part of AWB
  • File
  • Open XML dump — Opens a dialog box for you to browse to the database dump which you want to search
  • Save results list — Saves the list of articles found from the database dump
  • Reset settings — Sets all settings back to their defaults default
  • Exit — Closes DB Scanner Dialog
  • Options
  • Ignore Redirects — Excludes redirect pages from the results
  • Ignore image namespace — Excludes Image: pages from the results
  • Ignore Category namespace — Excludes Category: pages from the results
  • Ignore Wikipedia namespace — Excludes Wikipedia: pages from the results
  • Ignore Template namespace — Excludes Template: pages from the results
  • Ignore main namespace — Excludes normal articlepages from the results
  • Ignore <!-- commented out text --> — Prevents searching inside comments
  • Other
  • Thread Priority — Let's you choose the thread priority. This is a measure of the amount of time your computer will work (per minute) on this task.
  • Help
  • About — Shows about box containing version number, etc

[edit] "Text Matches"

  • Are regexes
  • Case sensitive
  • Singleline
  • Multiline
  • Article does contain
  • Does not contain
  • Characters
  • No. of links
  • No. of words

[edit] "Title"

  • Are regexes
  • Case sensitive
  • Title does contain
  • Title does not contain

[edit] "AWB Specific"

  • None — will just list all the articles in the database dump
  • Has title AWB will embolden
  • Has links AWB will simplify — allows you to search a DB dump for links that can be simplified e.g:
  • Simplifies links like [[Dog|Dog]] to [[Dog]].
  • Simplifies links like [[Dog|Dogs]] to [[Dog]]s.
  • Has bad links AWB will fix
  • Has HTML entries
  • Section error
  • Unbulleted links — Will search a database dump for any articles that have external links which are not bullet pointed
  • Typo — Allows you to search a database dump for spelling mistakes, in the same way that AWB can when RegexTypoFix is enabled

[edit] "Get Results"

  • Start — Searches the selected database dump based on the settings set in other option boxes
  • Limit no. of Results — Limits the number of results that will be found displayed from the database dump
  • Start from article — Starts from an entered article name. Very useful feature if you do not have time to finish a DB dump scan, you can carry on from where you had reached before without having to start again
  • abc... — Puts the list of articles from the DB Dump into alphabetical order
  • Filter — Allows you to filter the results found from the DB Dump. The options are the same for the normal AWB list filter
  • Clear — Clears the list of articles from the DB Dump

[edit] "Make wikified list from results"

  • Add headings every - Adds a heading ever x lines
  • # - Makes a list with # before each page name, if placed on a wiki page, this will number the lines
  • * - Makes a list with ** before each page name, if placed on a wiki page, this will bullet point the lines
  • A B C... headings - Adds headings == heading == for article names beginning with that letter
  • Make - Makes the list
  • Copy to clipboard - Copies the list to the users clipboard for copying and pasting into another document
  • Save - Saves the list as a text document
  • Clear - Removes all articles from the article list in the DB Scanner
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