Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive 5

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From Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage

> users with fewer than 500 edits in the article namespace ... ' Do only English Wikipedia edits count here? I have 1800 edits in the German Wikipedia, 150 in the English edition, but despite me pointing that out I have been rejected. If edits are seen as an indication for the user's reliability (which is a weak measure anyway), IMHO the edits of all languages should be considered. -- H005 22:59, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes it is not the best measure, but do you really expect me to check everyones history as well as actually make the software? The fact you have experience on another wiki does count, I'll add you now. Martin 12:44, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Of course I don't expect any admin to check all Wikis worldwide for all applicants; that's why I explicitly asked to check dewiki_p, and was a bit surprised that this did not seem to be considered. Thanks for adding me! -- H005 12:58, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I some how missed your note about de wiki. Martin 13:02, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
No worries! :-) -- H005 16:15, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

de-indenting Cant it be coded into AWB to check if the user has crossed 500 edits. This waiting after downloading the software is rather boring.... -- thunderboltza.k.a.Deepu_Joseph |TALK 09:11, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

That would allow for people to hack the software to use the program, enabling them to cause a lot of damage. This seems to work well. What's the current waiting time? – Cambrant 10:04, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
I waited less than 24 hours, was fine with me! Thank you for adding me, this program is a blessing :) --Naha|(talk) 19:30, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
There's another problem; it encourages editcountitis to have JUST a 500+ edit count as a qualification. And you can artificially inflate your edit count anyway. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Matthew Platts (talk • contribs) . 19:39, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
"As a rule of thumb, users with fewer than 500 edits in the article namespace will not be added to the list." You don't need 500 edits. In fact, when I consider whom to approve, I look at their edit count, their talk page, their block log, and their contributions. What the phrase means is that, if you have less than 500 edits, you haven't been on Wikipedia long enough for us to see how valuable your contributions are and whether you would misuse the software. It's easier to scan people before approving them than it is to scan every edit made using AWB and approve everyone by default. After all, better safe than sorry! --M@thwiz2020 20:44, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

If my names has been removed from the request list but has not been added to the list of authorized users, can I use AWB? --Think Fast 21:16, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

It has to be on the list of authorized users. The software checks for your name on that list when you try to use it. --GeorgeMoney T·C 23:05, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your help. --Think Fast 02:21, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Admins

A new template has been created at my request called {{listadmins}} which automatically lists all the admins. Do you think that would be a good thing to use on the checkpage? --GeorgeMoney T·C 15:00, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

The Check page is just a list of usernames ... that template contains a lot more. Plus, being authorized to use AWB and being an admin are two separate things that may not necessarily always coincide. --Cyde↔Weys 15:03, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Before Posting here...

  • If you disagree with an edit someone has made with this software, take it up with them.
  • If you have a bug to report or feature to request, consider doing so on the Sourceforge page.
  • Remember that this is a free, open source piece of software designed to make your life easier.

Things to do

  • Remove categories.
  • Add spell checker. (waiting for next release of WinFX)
  • Ability to create list from searching the database dump. (done - see User:Bluemoose/DataBaseSearchTool)
  • Disambiguation tools
  • HTML entities to unicode No point in duplicating User:Curpsbot-unicodify done anyway.
  • Integrate the diff engine - long term goal (probably difficult).
  • Make compatible with other wikimedia projects/languages - long term goal (not very difficult, but too much complication for now)
  • Port to Linux and Mac. FreeBSD and several other more minor OS's should be easy to port to as well once Linux is ported. Difficult, the mozilla activeX control doesnt have the functionality.

Need help getting started

OK, I've downloaded everything, I just need to know how do I activate/use it for the first time? Much obliged, --D-Day(Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?) 13:53, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Try Opening a page by adding what a Wiki-link would have into the Blank box above the word add in the (1) Make list aria and then clicking the item in the big box on the right and then going to (3) Start and Start Process. During One of These Steps It may ask you To log in (I use Firefox so I had to go into IE and add Wikipedia to my safe sight list)--E-Bod 16:37, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm having a little trouble understanding what you're trying to say. Could you put into less technical terms? --D-Day(Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?) 17:55, 22 April 2006 (UTC)--D-Day(Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?) 17:55, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Note For FireFox Users

Note For FireFox Users. If it Tells you that you Need to Allow Cookies try Setting your IE Preferences to allow Cookies.

Or add it to your Safe Sight list--E-Bod 16:33, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Self Links

I Think Instead of Removing Self Links AWB should Make them Bold or leave them the way they are because they already are viewed as Bold. Some Templates to navigate pages have the page it is on in Bold because it is a link and removing the Wiki-link will just mess up the template so it will be harder to copy it to other pages.--E-Bod 23:29, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

And this is why you should check every edit. AWB suggests some things you might want to change, but it can't possibly suggest right all of the time. Can you give me an example of a template designed for articles with a self-link? I'm not sure that they should exist - an 'edit' link to a template is useful, but I can't see a need to link to the template. SeventyThree(Talk) 10:03, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry i looked back and realized this was the Exeption not the rule. What i had in mind was

List of Fads and Trends
2000s fads and trends
1990s fads and trends
1980s fads and trends
1970s fads and trends

I was referring to this box on 1990s fads and trends. I did manually undo that part of the edit on AWB Before i saved it

I can remembered similar boxes on the bottom of any closely linked page But now that i come to look at them more closely only the one above was the only one that didn't use a template. Retina#External_links {{Retina}} {{Eye}}

Google#Google.27s_content_links {{Google_services}}

I guess the Appropriate thing would be to make a template and that would fix the problem.

Why I mention this is that one mistake on a template that is made in the page and not on a template pate will get copied to relate articles and you have to go back by had to fix it. I guess

For normal templates, editing a page which they are used on doesn't edit the template. The first example you gave is something which looks like a template, but really isn't. I guess there's a clever way of making a template which changes the dates like that, but I'm not a template wizard. So yeah, for that sort of article it's just checking carefuly. SeventyThree(Talk) 08:17, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Don't edit too fast

Is Their a built in Warning if you edit too fast. Is the time it takes to check each edit long enough of a waiting time between edits (Sorry for so many Questions)--E-Bod 17:12, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

There is a built-in timer. Menu bar at the top, General --> Show timer. The counter appears just below the 'Save' button, and counts the time since you last pressed save. SeventyThree(Talk) 10:05, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Yah I Saw the timer but it would be nice to have a popup if you go too much over. I realized I miss read the page. It say a few edits a minuet not an hour so I’m not as worried about editing to fast any more because the time I spend checking a few pages is more than a minuet. And I third are lodes of non AWB edits to make in the meantime if you go over and want to stoop to make up.--E-Bod 23:12, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I aim for an edit every 20 seconds, or 3 edits a minute. --mboverload@ 08:15, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Open Page in IE or Firefox

It would be so cool if there was a button In AWB that let it open the page it is editing in your Default Browser (ex. a new tab in Firefox). This would be helpful for those pages, that you come across while going though the list AWB generates, that require more personal attention or you want to make sure you don’t miss anything AWB changed that just doesn’t make sense for that page. Let’s say you want to get to the page’s talk page or you want to fallow a link on the page because it looks like it could use a lot of disambiguating or you need to add some formatting from the browser toolbox.

Other features I would expect that aren’t here.

  • When I use AWB I sometimes get the urge to click on the middle bar as if to drag it down to see more of the page only to find out it is unmovable
  • I try to highlighting parts of the preview page (up top) and hit copy only to remember that you can’t copy from the preview page
  • No Toolbox like the in the browser

Absolutely Love AWB Leave a message on my talk page if you get sick of my comments--E-Bod 03:32, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

As far as the Firefox request, AWB has always worked that way. Right-clicking in the edit area brings up OPEN PAGE IN BROWSER which opens the page in your default browser (new tab in my own standard configuration) Let me know if it does not open a new tab and we can get your Firefox to do it that way.
—-- That Guy, From That Show! (esperanza) 2006-04-24 04:03
Thanks Is there an FAQ somewhere or a Tips and Tricks Page for AWB?--E-Bod 04:58, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

New bug in version 2501

This relates to the Find button - the cursor moves to where the find text was when the edit box was first opened - even if the text has since been moved by a manual edit. If one is doing a number of manual edits, things soon get all out of sync. This did not happen with earlier versions. Gaius Cornelius 10:11, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, will be fixed next release. thanks. Martin 16:30, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Key shortcuts for main buttons

It would be nice some keyboard shortcuts for at least buttons like;

  • Remove (from list), hiting 'del' key on a list item, should work also...
  • Start the process
  • Stop
  • Save

--Joanjoc 16:12, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

"Stop" will be escape, what would the best key combos be for the others? Martin 16:59, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Maybe we should employ standard abbreviations. For example:
Save - cntrl+S
Load - cntrl+O (as in open)
And so on... As for start, I would say "S" except that S is too often pressed while typing in the edit box. Maybe cntrl+enter while in the edit box? --M@thwiz2020 20:21, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Improved Find & Replace list

With 5 columns instead of 2... I think it would improve a lot AWB :-)

  • Column 1; Boolean; active? If no, ignore the replacement until new order...
  • Column 2; Boolean; Regular expression? instead of a switch for the whole list.
  • Column 3; Boolean; Case sensitive? instead of a switch for the whole list.
  • Column 4; Text, Find
  • Column 5; Text, Replace with

It should work also delete an item with 'del' key... --Joanjoc 16:18, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Cool. Like that. I take it the 1 2 & 3 columns are check boxs. It would be nice to be able to change the order of the rows. what I have been doing is adding a space to the bottom one and deleting it got get a new row and then copy, delete, past the "find replace" I want to go last to the bottom.--E-Bod 20:28, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Piped link

To create the pipe ("|") character press (SHIFT + BACKSLASH) on English-layout and other keyboards. Piped link

I just found this out (I'm that out of it). Well I know this will save me lots of time now Expecially for AWB becoe it doesn't have the little insert bar on the bottom (i used to coppy and past the pipet in). Am I the only one who disn't know this? (I already new about "[" & "]" & "{" & "}")--E-Bod 01:16, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Helping to explain your AWB edits

I recently got a message inquiring about one of my AWB edits and I thought it would be a good idea to make a page where people could find out commonly asked questions about my edits. Well, they weren't common yet but I thought that if people saw a whole page dedicated to their concerns making what I do a transparent process people would be more comfortable with me. Thus, User:Mboverload/AWB. It's VERY much a work in progress. Any comment welcome. --Mboverload 07:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Documenting what you are doing is a good idea. --Ligulem 07:34, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Google wikipedia in ca

This function doesen't work in the catalan wikipedia. I would really appreciate if you could solve it. Thanks!--Xtv - (my talk) - (que dius que què?) 21:48, 25 April 2006 (UTC) Sorry, I hadn't seen that the basic catalan support was only added 5 days ago. Take your time... :-)--Xtv - (my talk) - (que dius que què?) 10:37, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Mass talk page edits

Will AWB or some other program allow me to create a username distribution list, create a talk page notice with it, and automatically post said message to each user talk page in that distro list? Rlevse 01:28, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it has ana option to append a message to a talk page. Martin 08:30, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
I think in general though (and this also applies to manually done talk page postings) you should consider whether you have to have people on a spamlist and post it on their talk page or whether it's easier to just make a subpage of your userspace to update with the new info and have all interested users just add that to their watchlist since spam postings fill up talk pages and make them harder to read even if the person who's talk page it is requested the notice, and it is also considered better practice to avoid leaving bulk messages in general if at all possible. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 19:08, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
That would presuppose they bother to watch and/or read the announcement page, whether it is a user talk page or WikiProject page, etc. Rlevse 17:14, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Grammar

Not sure about how AWB works but it has altered several pages where I had entered "a RAF" to "an RAF". This is incorrect and can be easily checked by looking on the RAF website where they use the correct "a RAF". Not sure if this is built into the spelling checker or what? jmb 21:29, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

No, it is not built in at all, there is no spell checker. Plus, the user made the edit, not "it". Martin 21:34, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
My understanding (working from The Cambridge Guide to English Usage) is that it should really be "an RAF". Normally abbreviations which start with vowels and F,L,H,M,N,R,S and X are proceded by "an" whilst everything else gets "a". However, it you wrote it in full it would be "a Royal Air Force". The difference is due to the way the pronunciation of the single letters. However, as Martin points out the edit was done manually and would be down to your AutoWikiBrowser settings so it can easily be stopped.--MarkS (talk) 07:37, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Some requests...

Hi, I've been trying this program for a while and it is wonderfull! I have some possibilities to improve it:

  • To add an option, such that the program corrects when there are two capital letters at the begining of a word as a typing mistake. FOr example -> For example.
  • When we don't choose case sensitive in the search and replace field, it would be good (ar at least that exist the option) to leave the capital letters as they were. So, if I look for "oficial -> official" and it finds at the beginning of a sentence "Oficial", it should change to "Official" and not to "official". (if I put case sensitive, then it works but then I have to add to my list two entries: "oficial -> official" and "Oficial -> Official"... or even more, maybe the whole word is in capital letters: OFICIAL and if I put case sensitive it will not find it and if I put this intermedium-case sensitive I propose, it will change it leaving as it was...
  • (this one I don't know if it already exists): when you make the elements of a category, to see if an element is in this category and, at the same time, in a subcategory (and then delete the first category).
  • To see if an element is in a category, but not in another whose name is the name of the element (so, for example as if the article "music" were in "entertainment" but not in the category "music").
  • To list all the elements of not only a category but also of all its subcategories (if you want to make a change related to an specific field and not having to look for all the subcategories).
  • In the edit part (down-right), to add some of this buttons that there are here in the normal edit page such as the quick link to make internal links on the wiki (this one that when you press appears this: [[Link title]]. This is because if you see a page that has many links to add, you can go faster adding them.
  • Add an option such that if the article doesn't have the {{commons}} template, and in commons there is a page with the same title as the article we are editing, add the template {{commons|TitleOfTheArticle}}. The user should then of course verifiy that this page corresponds with the article.

And now two maybe more difficult things...:

  • Adapt the program for other browsers (with the log in) and also for other OS...
  • Simplify the log-in process for the other wikipedias: we first have to log-in to the english, and then log in again to the regional one if we want our contribuions not to be anonymus. This probably is still not possible because of this restriction list in which we have to appear to use the program, but maybe it could exist one list in each wikipedia and then the program should check the list in the one you want to work (and then there would be no more problems of contributions in another wiki because everyone would have the permission only in the wiki he/she works). By the way, now when I want to work with the wiki in my language firs I always have to make a search in the english one, and then I already can work with mine, but if I directly choose to work with mine, does'nt appear any message telling me that I have to log in. Simply starts looking to fill the list and never stops...

Well, sorry for so many requests and english mistakes... I hope you find some of this suggestions interesting. By the way, to translate the program to the other wikipedias couldn't you ask help them (everyone makes his own work)? I don't know much about programming, so maybe this is stupid, but I think it would be less work for you and many people would collaborate with it...

Despite all my text, I want to thank your work because I really think this program is a great help for all of us. --Xtv - (my talk) - (que dius que què?) 23:52, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Case sensitive appears to be broken

The new version (2600) of AWB appears to have a non-functioning "Case sensitive" switch for regular expressions. I'm having problems obviously related to matching irrespective of the case specified in the regular expressions. This was not happening in the previous versions and I have not changed any settings since then. And yes, the "Case sensitive" box is checked. - Emt147 Burninate! 00:50, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Bunch of weird errors

I just picked up AWB after not using it for a while so this all could be user error! I downloaded 2600 to make sure I had the latest. I noticed that [[image:smiley.png]] has a note asking that it be replaced with [[image:smiley.svg]] so I decided to see if I could do a few... So I tried to do a make list from what links here for the smiley.svg page. I got nothing from AWB. The page, being an image page, and being an image actually kept on commons, may have some special characteristics? It has a list of pages using the image, as do all image pages though. So I tried make from links on page and got nothing as well. So I made up a text file to import, selecting some pages from the list.

I have all options/cleanups/changes etc turned OFF except for one find and replace , which as you might expect is Find: "image:smiley.png" Replace "image:smiley.svg" case sensitive turned off, regexes turned off. I got some changed just fine, but am getting odd results for some articles. It's not always finding them. I can find them by hand in the right window though and change them by hand. A page that exhibited that was Talk:Sheffield. Thoughts? Thanks! ++Lar: t/c 01:35, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

oh, I changed that page so you may need to go back in the history to see it as it was... ++Lar: t/c 01:38, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Same problem as above, I introduced this bug when I added some other features, whoops. I'll release a fixed version later today hopefully. And I'll look into the image listing thing as well. thanks Martin 12:02, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thanks! Will be watching. ++Lar: t/c 23:16, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


CVS

Hi, it would be nice if someone could update the CVS version in SourceForge... the source files are old... I'm triyng to locate some errors, but with an old CVS is difficult... Another option is to include the latest source files inside the ZIP distribution of the executable... Thanks :-) --Joanjoc 01:22, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

CVS is up-to-date if you check the files out properly, the files it displays when you view them are out of date because sourceforge has some kind of problem. Martin 09:49, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
It should be working properly now. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 03:17, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

A couple of things not quite working

  1. Seems like AWB is no longer fixing self- referential wikilinks.
  2. Unicodification is incomplete, &times in particular is missing.
  3. Custom edit summaries does not appear in the pulldown list. They occasionally disappear altogether and the only way to reacquire them is to reload the settings. - Emt147 Burninate! 17:28, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
1. Seems alright to me.
2. Yes, there are a few html entities it deliberately does not convert, as they look too similar to other characters (e.g. the letter x) so should only be substituted very carefully.
3. I'll look into it. Martin 17:59, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
If you're looking into the edit summaries and have the time: once I've started the process and finished a list, the edit summary is greyed out and unchangeable until I start the process again. It's not a big thing for me to restart a process so I can change it if needed, so no time pressure on this. --Syrthiss 18:05, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
Seems like AWB is no longer fixing self-referential wikilinks.
I asked for it to stop doing that Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Self Links--E-Bod 22:34, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

A question

Is there any way to get AWB to recognize the links on a page like this? I might just be missing something, but so far I can't get it to pull any of the links from that page. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 01:46, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's built-in. You could view page source, and then do a search-and-replace to reformat to give wikilinks to the pages. I've just done that for the link above (see User:SeventyThree/Sandbox 1). SeventyThree(Talk) 00:20, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
I thought so. I've been using a similar technique. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 00:22, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Latest version is AWESOME

THANK YOU CODERS! It's so fast now! You're gods! --mboverload 02:38, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

AWB is awesome, indeed. Thanks to Martin once again for giving us this tool. BTW I (finally - I'm a bit late :-) discovered how cool that "paste more" submenu in the context menu of the edit window is. And it is saved in the settings! Just great. --Ligulem 14:37, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Huh?

Could the first paragraph pleasebe rewritten in normal English?: For example,what does "When set to" mean? I have no idea what awb is, but at an article discussion, awb was mentioned as a justification for an action. Kdammers 12:08, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Serious unicodify problem

User:Mipadi has brought to my attention a problem with the system. Although in theory it is doing what it should, it interferes with a "wikihack." He said in my talk page: "The ' needs to stay, because changing it to a normal apostrophe interferes with the italics wikicoding." It is kind of hard to explain, so please see these two edits:

My edit

reverted edit with correct formatting

--mboverload 18:18, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll add it to the list of items not to change. thanks Martin 19:06, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Categories listing

I'm trying to load entries from a category (for instance, Category:War films or Category:Vegetarians, etc) but then I get a error "There was a problem making the list" and no entries are loaded. this is selecting "Category" on the dropdown menu and then typing the category name below. However, "whatlinkshere" , "Links on page" etc, they all work, It's just categories which can't be loaded to be processed. Any idea why? -- ( drini's page ☎ ) 19:22, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

It won't work if you are entering the "category:" prefix, i.e. enter "War films" not "Category:War films". I'll make it so it removes the prefix automatically now. Martin 19:36, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I was doing it properly, the problem is that I had logged in on IE with my main a ccount for a moment. And since I just wanted to make a list and save it, didn't bother to relogin the bot -- ( drini's page ☎ ) 20:13, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Possibly not a good idea to automaticly remove the prefix, because there are some pages with awkward names out there. Category:Category:Official residences in Hong Kong, for example. They shouldn't exist, but they do. SeventyThree(Talk) 20:48, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm experiencing the same problem as above where the "category" tab won't work but the others are. Can anyone help, please? Craigy (talk) 22:36, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Few improvements

Hi, a few things to improve this grat software :-)

  1. Using AWB in catalan Wikipedia AWB always show the alert No category, but in the catalan wikis the categoris are like that; [[Categoria:XXXXXXX]].
  2. It would be nice a link to the sourceforge project page.
  3. What about a default settings XML, automatically loaded every time the software starts... and a warning when closing AWB about saving the preferences...?
  4. Tooltips on the keys with shortcuts.
  5. On the article list a copy command on the contextual menu.
  6. On the edit area, adding a Insert > Page name option on the contextual menu will be useful.

Thanks. --Joanjoc 21:34, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Underscores in "Remove category:"

Using the "Remove category:" drop-down box, an underscore in a category name is treated as a different character to a space. AFAIK they are the same in links, so they should be treated the same. It looks like a space in the AWB text will match a space or underscore in the article source, but an underscore in the AWB text only matches an underscore in the article source. SeventyThree(Talk) 23:08, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Problem

Whenever I try to open it, I get a message "The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application." I have downloaded it from many different places, and I still get the same message. I am listed on the check page. Does anybody know what's wrong?--GeorgeMoney T·C 08:02, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Do you have the .NET framework version 2 installed? Martin 20:49, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Where can I install it? Duh! I should have just read the page. --GeorgeMoney T·C 21:35, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Two Questions

  1. I keep getting a message that says "The Version is Not Enabled, please download the newest version. If you have the newest version, check that Wikipedia is online." I just downloaded the newest version however!
  2. Can you use AWB to subst templates?

Muchos gracias, --D-Day(Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?) 16:11, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

(I removed a newline in your comment to make the numbering work) To subst specific templates, try a search-and-replace from {{templatename to {{subst:templatename. Hope that helps, SeventyThree(Talk) 18:31, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
The template deal makes sense. However, I'm still having trouble with the update. --D-Day(Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?) 18:58, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
For subst'ing multiple templates, you can do a regex case-insensitive find-and-replace to find {{(test|unsigned|NPOV|PROD) and replace with {{subst:$1 . As for the "not updated" thing, click on the "help" menu and then choose "about" and tell me what version number it says. --M@thwiz2020 20:46, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

feature request: demo mode

A demo mode would be nice for those of us who won't aren't registered to be able to see what the program does and how it works. Maybe allow the program to work normally, but disable the save button? f(x)=ax2+bx+c 18:32, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Ooh, I love your signature! I think that the demo mode might be a good idea, but Bluemoose has the final word. --M@thwiz2020 20:48, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the demo mode, but ONLY if it is very simple to do. --mboverload 21:04, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Add all to watchlist

I just wanted to check something. Using the "Add all to watchlist" and running through a category and clicking "save" without making any changes will not end up having the edits appear in recent changes, is that correct? I want to add several hundred pages to my watch list but don't want to annnoy people by a whole bunch of null edits. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 20:01, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Null edits don't appear in recent changes. Have fun ;-) Martin 20:30, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Martin. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 22:48, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

All articles get added to watchlist

I have a similar question. I have the Add all to watchlist off but I still get them into my watchlist. What could I be doing wrong? Thanks. Gadig 22:47, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
I've actually got the same problem. --ZeroOne 20:31, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Try deleting all your cookies and browser cache in IE then try again.--mboverload@ 21:20, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
If that still Does not work go under My Preferences (Between the my talk and my watchlist link on the tipy top pf this page and uncheck it there.)--E-Bod 23:29, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Shorter edit summary code

Why not change the edit summary from "using [[Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser|AWB]]" to "using [[WP:AWB|AWB]]" It could save some space and lessen the Chance of loosing the AWB addition such as i did (Alternative rock Disambiguation link repair - You can help! & clean up (Remove Excess White Space) and added stub tag using [[Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser|AW)

I Haven't made that mistake again but It would allow a better edit summary. Or you can impose a limit on the edit summary in AWB.--E-Bod 23:44, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Querying category/stub order apparently used by AWB as default

Hi,
Taking my cue from here, I'm wondering if this [categories then stubs] order is an AWB default...?  If so, I'd ask for it to be reconsidered, as I think almost every page I've ever edited on Wikipedia places stubs before categories – a sensible convention, in my view, as this mimics the order in which they appear on an article page.

If this behaviour isn't an AWB default, my apologies for thinking it might be.
Regards, David Kernow 16:00, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Putting the stub first makes it so the stub category is the first listed, but categories are normally listed by importance. Plus it makes it less likely the stub will join on to the above text if it is placed at the very bottom, e.g. see Lamiya Abed Khadawi, where the stub is apparently an external link. Martin 16:14, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Maybe it's late, but I don't understand what you're saying, Martin, especially your first sentence. Sorry if I'm being dense or missing something obvious... would you rephrase it, please?  Looking at Lamiya Abed Khadawi as it currently stands, it's exhibiting the same stub-after-categories layout that I – and I reckon many – find counter-intuitive. Thanks, David Kernow 03:10, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Stub templates often include code to add a page to a category - if the stub templates are placed earlier in the article than the normal group of categories, then wikipedia finds the stub-template-given categories first, so they appear at the start of the list. If the stub templates are placed after the main block of categories, then the stub-template-given categories are found last by wikipedia, so they show up last in the list of categories on the final page. People seem to prefer having the stub-categories after any other categories. I think that's the main point. I found it confusing at first - but this way gives a better article because the categories are in a better order. SeventyThree(Talk) 05:11, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
It is only actually a problem when interwiki links are added as well. I find the order categories + stub templates + interwiki links rather messy. I prefer to use the order: stub templates + categories + interwiki links. The code looks nicer that way, especially if the article already uses succession boxes or other templates. People often just add new stub templates to the bottom of the page without checking if a stub is already located further up. Because of the stub templates, I normally disable the "fix minor errors" feature. Apart from this, AWB is a very useful tool. Valentinian (talk) 07:42, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I was referring to this example, it was changed after I found it! Martin 08:40, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

(Copied, with opening amended, from here:)
Thanks to all for the above. Having just read it, however – and I think I'm now more awake! – it seems to me that there's no consensus for the order categories-then-stubs. Martin links to this, where the order is stubs-then-categories (albeit poorly spaced); and Valentinian states his preference as "stub templates + categories + interwiki links", i.e. stubs-then-categories(-then-interwiki). I'm puzzled by SeventyThree's observation that "People seem to prefer having the stub-categories after any other categories" as my experience of Wikipedia thus far overwhelmingly indicates the reverse; on those few occasions I have found stubs following categories, it's been on very stubby article pages that have poor/no formatting anyway. Whether editors place stubs above or below categories in a page's source, the software displays the categories at the bottom of the page, so it seems to make sense to me to mimic that ordering. (I suggest all this in lieu of Bugzilla:167, for which I and others have voted, but I guess the powers that be are kept so busy...)

...As an experiment, I've just examined the first five pages with stub/s offered by Special:Randompage: Stjerneborg; Llan Ffestiniog; Naming taboo; Peter Kraus; and Sun Television and Appliances. All have their {{X-stub}} entries placed above their [[Category:...]] entries. I'll try another five anon...
Regards, David Kernow 12:44, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Categories are normally sorted by importance, putting the stub first puts the least important category first. Martin 14:29, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
  1. Is there a consensus recorded somewhere that (a) stub categories are "least important" – but, more importantly, that (b) [[Category:...]] entries are better placed before {{X-stub}} entries?
  2. Using Special:Randompage again, these were the first five stub articles it delivered: John Hutson (quite long for a stub!); Golian; Quebec Agreement (again quite long); Howard Lotsof; and William Perlberg. Once again, all {{X-stub}} entries appeared before [[Category:...]] entries... As this stubs-then-categories order mimics the order that stub templates and the category list appear on a page, this seems a sensible norm – so I don't understand why AWB reverses it...?
Puzzled, David Kernow 18:14, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I have outlined the reasons for the ordering, I think they are perfectly sensible, the fact that the stub tag message appears before the categories is of little importance. Stub tags are of least importance by virtue of common sense. Martin 18:32, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't think anybody here disagrees on the issue of importance. Nevertheless, the other order is by far the most used on Wikipedia, and it makes stub sorting a little easier. Valentinian (talk) 21:43, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
My experience doesn't tally with your believing "the other order [categories-then-stubs] is by far the most used" but I realise I've become attached to working with {{X-stub}}s preceeding [[Category:...]]s, so I'm going to try working the other way. I think AWB should still offer the option to switch on or off individual "Apply general fixes" options, so I'll suggest and try to encourage this development at sourceforge.net. Thanks for sharing your wavelength. Best wishes, David Kernow 00:43, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, my last post was unclear. We both have the same oberservation David, [stub-then-category] is the most used format. Valentinian (talk) 11:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Unicode that should not be changed

When using the unicodify option, some changes will result in IE showing boxes. I am compiling a list of these as I go and I will be posting updates here when I find more. User:Mboverload/AWB#Codes_found_that_do_not_translate_for_viewing_in_IE Thanks! --mboverload@ 17:09, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

ok thanks, should be useful. I just tried them, the first 2 on that list both work in my IE6 ok (and all in FF of course). thanks Martin 17:57, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Hm, that's strange. I know I have my settings right. Oh well, good thing you checked them! Glad I could help --mboverload@ 18:18, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

w00t!

<mboverload> I see you improved the difference-finding code ALOT
<mboverload> It used to be such a complete bitch when it would prompt me to change an article by removing 2 lines
<mboverload> or not even change an article at all!

--mboverload@ 03:58, 18 May 2006 (UTC)</nowiki>

False Positives

Do I post them here or something?

#[[Tatian]]
#[[Risk 2210 A.D.]]
#[[Slapper]]
#[[Freefall (Wildstorm)]]
#[[Schenck v. United States]]

--mboverload@ 17:35, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

No, the false positive thing is for your own use, for example, so you don't repeatedly check the same articles for typos, as some articles have typos for genuine reasons. Martin 19:01, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you

Another demonstration of the power of open source projects. Nice work guys, keep it up. --Roy Laurie 22:39, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

No text in edit box

AWB 2.9.01 loads fine. I can create a list (e.g. Googe "very unique"), and set Options (e.g. Search/Replace). I then Start Process and the first page from the List loads in the top panel, but nothing appears in the bottom right edit text pane. The bot timer counts down and restarts. I'm using IE 6.0.29. Any suggestions? Rillian 11:28, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

delisting

I cannot find a place to request a person be removed for violating the rules! Please list this prominently on the project page!

Kashk just

  1. made hundreds of edits,
  2. at a few seconds a piece,
  3. in the middle of a busy server period,
  4. with edit summary "(clean up using AWB)",
  5. that consisted of nothing but moving blank lines and spaces around, and
  6. claims "They don't make changes to layout when you view it, but when you edit it, it all looks nicer and tidier. --K a s h Talk | email 13:56, 23 May 2006 (UTC)"

Please suspend this user for at least a day while s/he learns the rules.

And while I'm thinking about it, stop removing blank lines after section headers, and spaces between sentences, and blanks at the end of lines, these are all pointless edits.

--William Allen Simpson 14:21, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
I do not need to be suspended, I had stopped before this user even messaged me. All it takes a civil notice; I said I will take what you said on board --K a s h Talk | email 14:47, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, but I don't think you need to use this software, I have removed your user name from the list. Martin 15:03, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Interwiki AWB

Lets say if I wanted to remove the quote sections of all the articles for a particular TV series, add a link to wikiquote in the external links section, and create a wikiquote article consisting of all the quotes with the link redirecting to the section about that article, would there be any way to do that? savidan(talk) (e@) 05:59, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Help:Interwiki linking

[[q:Page Name]]

--E-Bod 21:31, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually this is better done by hand if it it uses Different Quotes, However it if is the same quote over and over again you can move it to WikiQuote and then have AWB find "XXX" and replace with [[q:Page Name]]. However if you wanted to have it create a page it seems similar to things Popups might do, however I don't use Popups so i won't know how to do it there.--E-Bod 21:49, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I would recomend you do it by hand so you can properly say "Jaksons favorite "quote" talks about X Y & Z" --E-Bod 21:52, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Piped links and brackets don't seem to be working

I'm using the latest version of AWB, and I'm currently replacing "[[Bill Lawrence]]" with "[[Bill Lawrence (producer)|]] on all of the Scrubs episode pages. The problem is that the program seems to add a space between the | and the end ]], meaning that the entire wikilink disappears.

In Set and replace I have [[Bill Lawrence (producer)|]] so there's no space there, it appears that the program is adding it. --Doug (talk) 07:24, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I didn't check if AWB behaves as you said, but why don't you just insert [[Bill Lawrence (producer)|Bill Lawrence]]? [[Bill Lawrence (producer)|]] is converted to [[Bill Lawrence (producer)|Bill Lawrence]] by the MediaWiki software anyway when saving the page (example: [1]). --Ligulem 08:15, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
I'll tweak it so it doesn't do this, but like Ligulem says [[Bill Lawrence (producer)|Bill Lawrence]] is probably a better replacement anyway. thanks Martin 09:20, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Huh, I didn't realise it did that. And all this time I've been occasionally 'correcting' [[x (y)|x]] to [[x (y)|]]! Thanks! --Doug (talk) 12:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Category:Airports in Greece

Can someone give the above category a try. There should be 10 pages but this is what I get using 3.0.0.0:

  1. List of airports in Greece
  2. [[]]
  3. Ellinikon International Airport
  4. Ioannina National Airport
  5. Kalamata International Airport

So far that's the only one that came up like that. Any ideas as to why? CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 17:06, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, it's the airports that have " as part of the title such as Athens International Airport, "Eleftherios Venizelos". CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 17:08, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
I get 10, try clearing your IE cache. Martin 17:09, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Martin don't know why I din't think of it. 205.234.33.235 19:56, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Oh the logged out bug strikes again. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 06:38, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

A new interface design, just for you!

I'm pretty amazed how easy it is to modify the GUI using just C# Express Edition! Holy crap! Anyway, I have always been mad about how I can never see much of the preview. Well, I have a solution just for me, and maybe you too =) --mboverload@ 08:15, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

:-) (Probably somone will come up with different skins. Oh noes! :-). Just in case this is integrated in the main code line: I need the save timer ("Show timer" in "General" menu. Was below the save button). This helps me not to go too fast with AWB. Just in case you nuked that one :] (I can't see where that could go on your screenshot...). --Ligulem 08:30, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Is there a problem with certain letters?

I created a text file from several categories and some of the articles have letters in like ö or ê. However when I feed the file back into AWB it appears not to read them correctly. As an example it save Östersund-Frösön Airport correctly from the Category:Airports in Sweden but when fed back in I get Stersund-Frsn Airport. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 10:21, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I can't reproduce a problem, did you open the text file with another program before trying to re-load it, and if you look at the saved file (with notepad or something), does it appear correctly? Martin 11:09, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I need a break if I can't think of the obvious. I had merged several together with EditPad Pro and that's what caused the problem. It does look as if I can edit them with MS Word though. Thanks. Also thanks for the option to choose browsers to check the messages. 21:56, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

"not approved"

I have used AWB, and I am most certainly approved. I decided to start it up again today and find that it says I'm not approved to use the program and it sends me to the check page. I am staring at my name on the list through the AWB browser as I type this. — ßottesiηi (talk) 01:20, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

There was a new release... are you sure your AWB version is still approved? Titoxd(?!? - help us) 01:24, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Could be it. I'll check. — ßottesiηi (talk) 02:12, 27 May 2006 (UTC)


Posible new feature (or I'm missing somthing again)

I just wondered if a new feature would be possible that would fit in with the request for a trial version asked about before. I have a list of 3500+ articles that I ran through AWB to look for a certain phrase, which wasn't there and was what I wanted to see. What I would like to see is a second option on AWB that when you choose it turns all editing capabilities off. From there you would have two other options. First you could run through your list, stop on each article and see what the results of your potential edits would be but you would be unable to save them. The second option would run through the list searching for a word or phrase. When it found the phrase AWB would not stop but continue on searching. However, it would not remove the particular article from the list. When it had finished you would have a list of articles containing that phrase (or if you preferred, not containing the phrase). This can of course be done manually with AWB but it requires that I sit and watch it to move onto the next article. The 3500+ list takes over 5 hours to process and it's perfect to do on a spare computer at work. The list I have is for airports and I want to update my User:CambridgeBayWeather/Airports with no infobox 01 lists. Of course one of the currently available bots may already be able to do this but looking through the list it's not clear if they do. or AWB can do it and I just didn't notice it. Thanks. 22:34, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Download the wikipedia article namespace (few gigs) and use wikipedia dump searcher. --mboverload@ 23:07, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
It is much easier to scan the database, and saves a lot of bandwidth as well, if you want I could do that for you, otherwise the program I made to do that is here. Martin 09:42, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
I'll get the file later at home (enwiki-latest-pages-articles.xml.bz2 this one I assume) and run it. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 10:47, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
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