Wikipedia:Bot requests

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Bot pages:	Bot policy | Currently running bots | Requests for bot approval | How to create a bot | Bot Approvals Group
	Requests for work to be done by a bot | Bot owners' noticeboard | Bot status page | BAG Admin Tools

This is a page for requesting work to be done by a bot. This is an appropriate place to simply put ideas for bots. If you need a piece of software written for a specific article you may get a faster response time at the computer help desk. You might also check Wikipedia:Bots to see if the bot you are looking for already exists. There are also quite a few "frequently denied requests", for various reasons, such as a welcoming bot, as it would de-humanize the process, and an anti-vandalism bot, as several already exist. If you want to request a bot to populate a category for a wikiproject, please create a subpage with a full list of categories to be used, as most bot operators who can complete this task will not go into all subcategories, as some members may be irrelevant to your project. Also note that if you are requesting that an operator change or add a function to an existing bot, you should ask on his talkpage, if you have questions about certain bots, they should be directed to the bot owner's talk page to the Bot Owners' Noticeboard, and that if a bot is acting improperly, it should be posted to the owner's talk page, the Administrators' Noticeboard, or AIV, listed in increasing levels of severity, and a link to the discussion may be posted at the Bot Owners' Noticeboard if appropriate.

Please add your bot requests to the bottom of this page.

If you are a bot operator and you complete a request, note what you did, and archive it. Requests that are no longer relevant should also be archived in a timely fashion.

This talk page is automatically archived by Werdnabot. Any sections older than 5 days are automatically archived to Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 11. Sections without timestamps are not archived.

Archives
August 2004 – September 2005 June 2005 – November 2005 August 2004 – January 2006 February 2006 – April 2006 November 2005 – February 2006 February 2006 – April 2006 May 2006 – July 2006 August 2006 – December 2006 January 2007 (Part A) January 2007 (Part B) February 2007-current

Contents 1 External Links => Incline Citation Bot 2 "As of..."-bot! (-.-;) 3 Fair use removal bot 4 Formating bot 5 Bot Desperately Needed on Wikipedia:Request an account 6 Bot 7 BoolCatBot? 8 Create a List? 9 Vandals 10 U.S. County Cleanup 11 "Stub of the Day" 12 Tagging articles about places, but with no coordinates 13 ISBN-10 ->ISBN-13 14 Introduction reset bot? 15 Adding Type field to "Extra tracklisting" template

[edit] External Links => Incline Citation Bot

• In many wikipedia articles, there are external links after a sentence which is used in a number formating (so the external link has no extra info attached to it); example [1].

• Would it be possible for a bot to remove "[" replacing with "<ref>" and remove "]" replacing with "</ref>"?

• After that the bot would search if there is <references/> in the article.

• If it cannot find it, the bot would make a new sub-section "==References==" and place "<references/>" below that.

• The bot would have to make a list from the last dump of all the mainspace articles, and perform the operations (hopefully it will get over within one week).

--Paracit 23:24, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

In my view, end of section references are preferable when there is a textual description of the reference. For a pure html link, the reference section just obscures matters, requiring an extra click-through. However, putting raw links into a reference section might encourage people to change them to proper citations. That's a testable proposition, and if it's true this would be a good idea. Derex 00:12, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Some editors might consider it controversial to change an inline link to a cite.php reference. Even if it encourages adding full citation info, some will view this as a short term detriment, by making the link one step removed. Gimmetrow 01:34, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

It is possible to create such a bot and not very complicated actually. But I share the concerns mentioned above. Maybe you should see if you can reach a consensus in a discussion on this question at WP:CITE and/or WP:EL. Perhaps this has already been decided on and you can provide a link to it? I'd be interested in helping with the bot / programming it, if there's such a common agreement. I suggest continuing to talk about a bot when we are sure your suggested changes are supported by the community. — Ocolon 08:33, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Example Nonvolatile_BIOS_memory --Paracit 05:17, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I've run across other articles where an editor has manually (I assume) converted embedded links to references/footnotes, without adding anything else. I suppose that encourages editors to work the references to improve them; I'm not sure (because I didn't systematically follow up over the months) that anyone actually did.

As far as starting a discussion, I also support that before a bot is written and approval for it requested. I note that WP:EL is the wrong place, however; that policy has to do with the "External links" section, which isn't an issue here (except that the bot should be programmed to stay out of that section). In addition to) WP:CITE, it's worth noting the proposed change at Wikipedia:Embedded citations (which isn't a policy or guideline) and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:33, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I would almost suggest to just be bold, and manually do a few articles and see the reactions. Do the links get improved? Do you end up just annoying people? etc. —— Eagle101 ^{Need help?} 04:03, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

See m:standardize_notes.py. Needs modification for <ref>. (SEWilco 04:11, 2 April 2007 (UTC))

[edit] "As of..."-bot! (-.-;)

I noticed that many articles in Wikipedia say things like "As of 2007", "As of September 2006", etc., referencing to things that have not yet happened but could happen soon or other similar situations. The problem is that many of these references are terribly outdated: I have found some that say "As of January 2005" and the like. I wondered if it was possible for a bot to update all these situations, so that they remain up to date until those things actually happen, and people can simply remove the "as of"s when it is adequate. The bot would only have to detect the phrase "as of" and if it is followed by a date, then it could update it to the current month and year. (I believe there are no situations where "as of (a specific date)" wouldn't need an update, do you??...) Just my humble first bot proposal... Kreachure 23:11, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

What would happen if it said, "As of January 2005, the population is 2500". If a bot updated that, it would be inaccurate. —METS501 (talk) 23:17, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, the problem is that some of the "As of"'s refer to facts or statistics that are themselves outdated, so there could be instances where updating only the date would be inaccurate. I guess there's no way for a bot to ignore these while updating the others which deserve updating. But what if people put some sort of special marker or template along with the "As of"'s that would actually need an update, so that the bot would recongnize these and update them once in a while? That's the only way I could see this bot working... thanks anyway! Kreachure 00:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

If they put a template next to the as of — couldn't they alternatively update the as of by hand? I think this would be easier and less work. I also think you only use as of in an article to indicate that something could change in the future and the provided information might not be up to date when read anymore. Wouldn't a bot updating the date automatically exactly cause what the author meant to prevent? I'm not a native speaker though, so in case I'm wrong: Can you please clarify or give an example where it would make sense? — Ocolon 16:16, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

No, you're right. The "As of ..." links are meant to identify data (typically statistics) that are expected to change in the future. As far as I can tell it's not the date that should be changed, rather the statistics or facts should be updated. Gimmetrow 16:24, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

It may be useful if a bot could add some kind of tag to the articles that have (or that it thinks has) outdated info, then they could be addressed manually by users Akubhai 20:36, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:As of. Get more people to work on that project, and there won't be a problem. --Rory096 22:36, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use removal bot

There doesn't seem to be a bot that does this, so I'd like to request one.

The bot I envision would check the "File links" on images which include {{screenshot}}, {{logo}}, and other fair use templates. It would then remove the images from the Wikipedia space, template space, portal space, and, most importantly, user space. In the case of user space it would leave a message along the lines of "I have removed a Wikipedia:fair use image (or images), Image:Example.jpg, from your userpage (or user subpage) because Wikipedia policy doesn't allow them to be used on any pages besides articles. If you believe this removal was in error because the image was not a fair use image, please ask at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions."

Overall, it would function something like OrphanBot. How does this sound? Picaroon 21:44, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BJBot 3 :) Martinp23 21:46, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I've realized I'm able to tell my good ideas from the ideas of mine which I think are good but aren't by whether someone has already thought of them. Picaroon 21:55, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Ha - c'est la vie :). Please remember that you are free to (no, encouraged) to add your suggestions to the current BRFA candidates, if you have any suggestions/things to add. Martinp23 18:07, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Formating bot

I need a bot for my talk page that moves the </div> tag to the bottom of the page every time the </div> tag is not at the bottom. This is needed to combat the issue of new sections being placed below the </div> tag. This is an example of what I need it to do: User Talk:Andrew Hampe ^(diff) --Andrew Hampe | Talk 16:33, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Shoot. Sorry, screwed up. I need it to do this instead. Sorry about the goof up. --Andrew Hampe | Talk 16:48, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

What about using this as end of your talk page:

<!-- please add new sections above this comment -->
|}
</div>
<!-- please add nothing below this comment -->

:-) Ocolon 17:02, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

You dont get that when you use the + tab to add a new section. I'll put your idea on the page anyway though. I still would like a bot to do this. --Andrew Hampe | Talk 17:16, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I've edited your user talk page to correct the issue. ST47Talk 18:00, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, it works. I was avoiding that because it's bad code to not close the style and </div> tags --Andrew Hampe | Talk 18:34, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bot Desperately Needed on Wikipedia:Request an account

We really need a bot to start tending to the newly created Wikipedia:Request an account page. At present, it takes several minutes to complete the clerical work surrounding an account creation. Specifically, the bot needs to check whether a user account has been created (either by a user, or by an admin to meet the request). If it is already created when the user posts the request, the bot should tag that account as already existing and post that in the user's entry. If the account is created by an admin, the bot should move that request to the relevant archive (current archive using the formatting illustrated on that page.

Let me know if you need further clarification. I'd sincerely appreciate anyone's help with this. (There's a barnstar involved :D) alphachimp 18:56, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Looking into this. ST47Talk 21:31, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I think I have working code, however it takes long time and still gets throttled at times, I'll get back to you if it works. ST47Talk 22:18, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

It works! I'm going to run one (1) live test then try a brfa. ST47Talk 23:08, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bot

I need a bot. Can somone create one for me that will search out words or mispellings on a page and replace them with a different word? Silverpelt 00:51, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

If you have windows, AutoWikiBrowser does exactly what you described.--Dycedarg ж 00:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] BoolCatBot?

Is there a bot that does boolean logic on categories? I'd like to be able to say things like:

IF an article is in a subcategory of Category:Calvinism AND is NOT in Category:WikiProject Calvinism THEN dump the list to such-and-such a place

Is there any bot that will do this sort of thing?

-- TimNelson 06:24, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I only went 3 levels deep into Category:Calvinism, and here are the results. ST47Talk 10:23, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Wow! That'll be useful. One question; is there any way I can do something like this, or do I have to ask you every time?

Thanks again,

-- TimNelson 12:56, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I used WP:AWB (you don't even need access to do this) I made a list out of each category and saved it, then click tools-> list comparer, load them up and hit go! ST47Talk 20:46, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

For intersections, a really useful tool is m:CatScan. (Can only handle "and") -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:46, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the information, both of you. Unfortunately AWB doesn't run on Linux, but it's good to know that it can do that. I'll be using CatScan, though.

-- TimNelson 00:46, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Create a List?

As I mentioned on the Patel Talk Page, the list in the article is not comprehensive. Can a bot search through Wikipedia and create a page such as List of Notable Patels (with the criteria being they have a wikipedia page) with a link to each page. I'm guessing the bot will pick up extraneous pages such as Patel but I can go through and remove those pretty easily. Thanks.Akubhai 20:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vandals

Where is AntiVandalBot? I found lots of test edits in pages listed in the "File Links" of [[Image:example.jpg]]. Although I am using VandalProof to track them, but they keep vandaling (the vandals are mostly by IPs). --Jacklau96 09:06, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] U.S. County Cleanup

A while ago, a bot was created that added {{infoboxneeded}} to several U.S. County articles (need to use {{Infobox U.S. County}}). Somewhere during the bot's work, a user commented that the infoboxneeded banner need to be on the TALK page and not the article itself. Recently there has been some discussion about this, and is is quite clear that we get results when the banner is placed ON THE ARTICLE, and not on THE TALK PAGE. As an example, see any South Dakota county. Spink County, South Dakota, for example, had the infoboxneeded banner placed on the talk page on February 23 by the bot. Nothing happened. I put the infoboxneeded banner on the article itself on March 8, and on March 18 someone had updated the article to use the infobox. Now it is March 29 and you can see that the "infoboxneeded" banner was STILL on top of the talk page, quite unnecessarily.

My request for a bot is to help cleanup the US County articles. The bot needs to:

1. Remove the Infoboxneeded banner from the talk page if it exists
2. If the article has the correct infobox ({{Infobox U.S. County}}), nothing more needs to happen.
3. If the article already has an "infoboxneeded" banner, nothing more needs to happen.
4. If the article does not have the correct infobox, or if it has no infobox at all, add the infoboxneeded banner requesting the {{Infobox U.S. County}}) template to the top of the article.

Please let me know if you can help. Right now there are several articles that unnecessarily have "infoboxneeded" on the talk page even though the article is using the correct infobox. Thank you. /Timneu22 12:59, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

That would have been my bot :). can you point me to that discussion where the opinion was changed? this is a simple request and I should be able to do this fairly quickly. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 18:41, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Discussion on Template talk:Infoboxneeded, however it's not the biggest discusison. The real point is that you can see that articles with infoboxneeded on the article itself get edited; articles with the banner on the talk page do not. (See articles where Betacommandbot added to the talk page, then I added to the article itself, and then the article got updated, but infoboxneeded still appears on the talk page because no one ever looks there!) /Timneu22 21:13, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Can you point to the other conversations? just because we might agree doesn't mean that we can override consensus and place it on the article. As a Bot Op we have to follow community consensus even if we disagree with it. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 22:12, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know where else to point you. This seems like a no-brainer to me. It's all about improving wikipedia. WP:Bold... I don't see how it is useful to wait around to have others agree that this helps improve articles; I also don't see where it has been stated that infoboxneeded should be on talk pages. Even if it did say that, again I cite that we improve articles by placing it on the article itself. Looking at all the current articles that now have an infobox yet still have infoboxneeded on the talk page is evidence that the talk page is the wrong place for this template. This is not one or two articles — I personally went through a few states and added infoboxneeded to the articles, and you can see the results are far better than using it on talk pages. If nothing else, a bot needs to remove infoboxneeded from talk pages where the article now includes the appropriate infobox, but I suggest moving the notice to the article because this clearly gets results. Timneu22 00:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

WP:BOLD and WP:IAR dont apply to bots. Please get consensus to place the tag on the artilce and Id be glad to do it. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 00:00, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Can you at least remove infoboxneeded from U.S. County Talk Pages when the articles already have the correct infobox? It certainly makes no sense to have these pages tagged when the appropriate work has already been done to the article. Additionally, as for concensus, it seems that the best policy is just to wait and see if the page gets any more edits. Is there another way to attract users to the talk page and discuss concensus? /Timneu22 14:39, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I can do that, A suggestion drop a note on the WP:VP and see what the opinion is. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 23:03, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Stub of the Day"

I'm not sure if I'm posting this request in the correct place, if not can you direct me to the correct forum.

I would like a program/template/(bot?) that will generate a link to a random stub-article in a prescribed category.

The idea is to place a simple template in a user's homepage. That simple template will then generated a box with a link to a random stub e.g.

"Stub of the Day" = Thioether

Hopefully the template dropped into the user's homepage should be simple and tweakable e.g.:

{{Stub-of-the-Day|[Category:Chem-stubs]}} <-- this is just by way of illustrative example.

The category that I'm specifically interested in is chemistry stubs, but I hope that other editors might like the idea and use the program/(bot?) in their user homepage for other stub-categories e.g. stubs in the category "1960s music groups" - hence the requirement that the template/bot is easily tweakable to a specific category.

Finally - (if at all possible!) I'd quite like the stub to be fixed for 24 hr period (e.g. midnight to midnight GMT), i.e. to be a stub-of-the-day, that way a person coming back to the user-page will see the same stub and will be more likely to act to add information to de-stub the article!

I think this program/template/bot? would be a great tool and motivation to improving stub articles!!!

If the above make sense, and you can do it, want to do it, then that would be wonderful thanks! -- Quantockgoblin 22:16, 29 March 2007 (UTC).

Generating a random stub would not be hard but identifying said category would be hard to program Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 22:21, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I think without a category option then it is just a link to another random article. I have a strong background in chemistry and so would like stubs to be suggested in my field of interest. I know I could go to the chem-stub list every day and pick an article - but where is the fun in that! I guess if a general bot can't be made, could a specific bot be made if I fix the category?

However if a general & tweakable bot could be made I think many people would be interested not just me!!!! The creator would be showered in glory!!!! Thanks -- Quantockgoblin 22:32, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Well if you can find a template genius to give us a hand I think I can get the bot to work. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 22:36, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Sadly, that is not me ... any idea how we might find one? Do I dare ask what sort of information you might need? -- Quantockgoblin 22:40, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

What sort of template work would this need? Sounds like you just need a template with a little text and a link to an article. Couldn't the bot simply change the link in the template? Gimmetrow 22:43, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I see the number of requested categories growing very fast. It would far simpler to code a bot to simpley output data to a subpage of its userpace with the categor's name as the subpage. that way users can use a template with parser functions to select the proper page. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 22:50, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

To my mind I pleased to see that the conversation has escaped my understanding - keep it up, maybe there is a solution in there somewhere, again thanks for your efforts -- Quantockgoblin 22:59, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

It sounds like you want the template to be roughly something like

<includeonly>Stub of the day is [[:{{ThisTemplate/{{{Category}}}}}]]</includeonly>

and there would be article names at Template:ThisTemplate/Category for some set of categories that would get updated daily by a bot? Gimmetrow 23:31, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Basically Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 23:35, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

If the bot is going to be working with a specific list of categories, couldn't it generate an entire template based on a switch function, with the appropriate page for each potential option? Is it better to create 100 tiny subpages, or to use a switch with 100 options? Gimmetrow 23:42, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I dont know templates that well that is why I asked for a template maker :) . I just make bots Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 23:43, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I can make templates :) My inclination is to avoid zillions of tiny subpages - but this would mean the bot would generate the entire template and replace it daily.

Stub of the day = {{#switch:{{{1}}}|Chem|chem=[[Some article]]|Math|math=[[Some other article]]|improper category}}

This would be used as {{Stub-of-day|Chem}} or {{Stub-of-day|math}}. Invalid categories would fall through to the default text. Or something like that. Gimmetrow 23:52, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I love the high-tech banter - does this mean we are getting somewhere? Or is this so above my head that you have already come to a conclusion, and I just haven't realised yet !! :) -- Quantockgoblin 00:11, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

You chaps given up on me ... maybe your still thinking???????? Did I mention the Gory?! -- Quantockgoblin 19:45, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Im coding Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 00:02, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Brilliant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -- Quantockgoblin 16:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

can I get a list of cats that I should start with? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 01:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm doing a straw poll on the Chemisty Project to see what cats are of most interest. If you need just one cat for testing, I'm sure {{organic-compound-stub}} - organic compounds will be in the list of cats of most interest. If it no big deal then I guess Category:Chemistry_stubs is the 'umbrella stub', but people might want further refinement so as to be able to select a sub-category(s) from the 'umbrella cat' list. Hope the above makes sense - will report back soon, again many thanks -- Quantockgoblin 09:37, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tagging articles about places, but with no coordinates

There's a new, template, {{LocateMe|April 2007}} (for example), for the talk pages (or main pages?) of articles which are about places, but have no coordinates. We need a bot to run through all the articles which fit the former category (perhaps by category, or by use of info boxes) and determine which have no coordinates (not sure how - perhaps by looking for a link to http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/geo/geohack.php ?), then apply the tag to the talk page. Any offers, please? A trial run, to determine the best method and the numbers involved, might be good idea. Andy Mabbett 23:26, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Andy! Do you have a set of categories in mind for this project that you can pull together on a user-page? And what coordinates would you be looking for — {{Coor dms}} and the like? Can you come up with a preliminary list of either templates that show the coordinates you're interested in or links like the geohack one you mentioned? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 00:03, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

{outdent}

I'm working on this but I have some concerns. For instance, Category:Visitor attractions looks a likely candidate, as do all of its child-categories, such as Category:Visitor attractions; and, in turn, it's child category, Category:Miniature parks - then we see that the later includes Category:30" Railways & Modelling and thus articles which are clearly not about places.

It seems to me that there are several options:

1. Proceed anyway, with a note in the template, or on the talk page or edit summary, to apologise for any possible mistake, and invite revert (my mean more bad than good edits; cause bad-will, have the baby thrown out with the bath water)
2. Change pages which include on of a list of appropriate info boxes (but that misses articles about places, but having no infobox)
3. Manually list all the individual categories to check (but that's far too long-winded)
4. Automatically build a list of possible categories, then manually edit it (ditto, but less so)
5. Start from, for example, [:Category:Visitor attractions]], but only include sub-categories with the string "visitor attractions" in their names. (May fall down if "Visitor attractions in Anytown" is sub-divided into, say "Museums in Anytown" and "Theme parks in Anytown"

The latter seems to me to be the best of these options. Has anyone come across similar issues elsewhere? Or know of an alternative solution?

Andy Mabbett 18:53, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

You've run in to exactly the issue we have with bots running through categories and their subcats. In my experience (and others chime in if you have suggestions), the best thing to do is #4. You can start with something like

FYI, that's "<categorytree>Visitor attractions</categorytree>"

When I was doing this, I started with that, hit the "+" next to every one and followed down through until the cat didn't make sense - I used the guideline that if the category wasn't at least 80% accurate, I didn't include it. And try not to duplicate, but don't worry about that too much. Then I selected the text (the code doesn't expand, so select it on the web page) and copy/pasted it into a text document, where I cleaned up duplicates and such.

It's work, but the alternative is a ton of messages from irked users that the bot is running amok. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 19:06, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. That doesn't seem very "automatic"! If there's no way to get the machines to do more, might we be able to work in it in stages? Andy Mabbett 20:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Certainly! I don't like to run the bot on more than 50 cats in a run anyway, so that's fine. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 20:12, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, Here's a Pathfinder. Note that "Theatre in London" is to be omitted, but two of its children included. Please let me know if the format is OK for you (or whether you can let me have a copy of the bot, for Windows XP, preconfigured, into which I can drop such lists). Please log the number of sites checked an the number of those tagged. Thank you. Andy Mabbett 08:53, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Also, we could run against some lists, such as anything matching "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*_postcode_area" on [[2]]. Andy Mabbett

See also Wikipedia-DE's "maybe checker"Andy Mabbett 09:27, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry; I missed your "And what coordinates would you be looking for" - I think the GeoHack link covers everything. I don't know of any coordinate templates which don't put it on the page. Andy Mabbett 20:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

At maybe-checker you can also filters some areas over categories.

A good way, for searching in a special area is Catscan Berlin Example. Unfortunaly the english language is not uptodate on Toolserver. de:Benutzer:Kolossos 09:51, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ISBN-10 ->ISBN-13

Changing all ISBN-10s to ISBN-13s (per International Standard Book Number and http://www.bisg.org/pi/index.html) seems like an obvious and necessary thing to do. It might also, if there's no dissent (wishful thinking?), give the opportunity to standrardise the formatting, so that only one of these (or another other) styles:

• 978-81-7525-766-5
• 9788175257665
• 978 81 7525 766 5

(et al) is used. Andy Mabbett 19:20, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd be willing to code a bot for that, if I can figure out exactly how to convert them :-) Also, according to the official site, it's 5 groups separate by hyphens, so your first example would be correct. —METS501 (talk) 19:48, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Andy Mabbett 19:54, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

From an external website:

1. Drop the check digit (the last digit) from your existing ISBN-10.
2. Add the prefix “978” to the beginning of your 9-digit number.
3. Recalculate your check digit using the modulus 10 check digit routine.

I can get the bot to do this perfectly, but the problem is placing the hyphens. How should they be placed? It's seemingly random. —METS501 (talk) 19:57, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

pywikipedia has a bot already coded for this. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 23:01, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Conversion. I don't think you will quickly get a consensus for converting all ISBN-10s to ISBN-13s. (SmackBot started doing that in December, 2006 but was persuaded to stop). Consider these reasons for us not to convert:

• There is no mandate from isbn.org for all *users* of ISBNs to convert to ISBN-13. Contrast this with the requirements on the publishers and book dealers that kicked in on 1 January 2007. They must handle ISBN-13s correctly and need to print *at least* an ISBN-13 on each newly-issued book. Nothing rules out issuing *both* an ISBN-13 and an ISBN-10 for the same book, and many publishers do that. ISBN-10s will continue to circulate and be recognized as valid.

• The reference lists of Wikipedia articles are full of older books that were originally issued with ISBN-10s and have no official requirement to change, and probably no practical benefit either.

Hyphenation. Since hyphenation of ISBNs depends on the set of publisher codes that are currently in use, to hyphenate an ISBN correctly requires either a very big set of regular expressions, such as the set used by SmackBot, or an official conversion site like the one at http://www.isbn.org/converterpub.asp. Since Rich Farmbrough's SmackBot has been making regular passes through Wikipedia to hyphenate newly-added ISBNs, I don't see the immediate need for another bot to do this. EdJohnston 00:39, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, fair enough. No new bot :-) —METS501 (talk) 05:21, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction reset bot?

Hi, I think we need a bot to reset Wikipedia:Introduction to a clean state, every 15 minutes. It appears that EssjayBot used to handle this, but is (obviously) no longer active (Wikipedia talk:Introduction#How about a bot?).

(2 notes: The main discussion page for the intro is at Template talk:Please leave this line alone. And, I'll point Trödel towards this thread too, as I think he's the most knowledgable admin concerning the intro's history, and might have better info/suggestions.) --Quiddity 21:33, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Ask AllyUnion to have Sandbot do it. Very simple extension of Sandbot's current code. It already resets the main sandbox automatically every 12 hours and resets the intro page on request, so combining the two functions and having the intro page be reset automatically should be trivial. —METS501 (talk) 05:24, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adding Type field to "Extra tracklisting" template

{{Extra tracklisting}} has recently been changed so it employs a Type field, so you can designate a background colour to the template, exactly like {{Infobox album}}. The problem is now this leaves many articles using the template without the type field there, and the background being in peachpuff colour. Now from what I've seen, this has shocked and confused editors, as they are unaware of the change to the template, and they dont know what to do. All of these templates are automatically put into Category:Non-standard Extra tracklisting templates. I need a bot to go through that category and just simply add the type field. An example from New Year's Day (song):
Before:

{{Extra tracklisting
| Album = [[War (album)|War]]
| prev_track     = "[[Seconds (song)|Seconds]]"
| prev_no        = 2
| this_track     = "'''New Year's Day'''"
| track_no       = 3
| next_track     = "[[Like a Song...]]"
| next_no        = 4
}}

After:

{{Extra tracklisting
| Album = [[War (album)|War]]
| Type           = 
| prev_track     = "[[Seconds (song)|Seconds]]"
| prev_no        = 2
| this_track     = "'''New Year's Day'''"
| track_no       = 3
| next_track     = "[[Like a Song...]]"
| next_no        = 4
}}

This would probably clear up much confusion with the numerous song articles with this problem. Thank you, and contact me with any questions or comments. --Reaper X 23:46, 1 April 2007 (UTC)