User talk:RedirectCleanupBot/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Welcome!

Hello, RedirectCleanupBot, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question and then place {{helpme}} before the question on your talk page. Again, welcome! --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 00:17, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Contents

Your RFA was successful

Congratulations, you are now the first fully automated administrator! --Deskana (talk) 20:55, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Yayy!!! Congratulations, RedirectCleanupBot. If you need any help with anything, just a ...... oh, wait! :) - Alison ❤ 21:02, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
go forth and destroy!
:) EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:06, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Excellent. :) Acalamari 21:46, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
The first step of the robot colonisation has just begun, first the internet then the world, yeah we are pretty much doomed :o - Caribbean~H.Q. 04:00, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
It has begun. Seriously, I for one welcome our robotic deleting overlords! — xaosflux Talk 04:13, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Oh yeah? Just wait until BureaucratBot makes landfall . . . -- But|seriously|folks  06:25, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for clearly up the misconception that we restrict membership to humans. We welcome automated folks into out mix. 1 != 2 15:50, 12 October 2007 (UTC)


Thank you for your support. My master said I had to make an edit so that my "contribs" were no longer a redlink. RedirectCleanupBot 08:00, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

zOMG!!! It talks :) - Alison ❤ 08:26, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
At one edit you hold the record for the least edits of any admin, just beating Clifford Adams who has 4 edits. 1 != 2 15:03, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

When will it be operated?

Melsaran (talk) 19:28, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Its approved for a trial that will hopefully be run next time Special:Brokenredirects updates. Updates are usually about every 3 days... WjBscribe 19:29, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Links in edit summaries

I was scanning the first few edits and was about to ask for links to the redirect destination, and then they started appearing later in the deletion log! Good to see the human overlords are debugging the bot, be it admin or no. Carcharoth 10:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

We try our best :) ... WjBscribe 10:41, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
How about training the bot so that it can say something like "deleting redirect to dead article "X", which was deleted per this CSD/AfD"? :-) I guess that would be more a mediawiki feature request. Maybe I could hover my mouse cursor over the redlink in the RedirectCleanupBot edit summary, and a deletion log summary will mouse-up for me to click on. That would save a few steps. Or I could just watch AfD/the deletion log instead... I guess my point is that some people are happy to see the redirect deletion as a separate housekeeping thing to take place after the AfD/CSD, whereas I think that an AfD should consider the redirects at the same time as the article is up for deletion. And people who do CSD without tidying up after themselves, well, this bot will just encourage them to think that all they need to do is press delete and then sit back and wait for the bots to scurry around deleting redirects and removing redlinks. Though if that means more time spent correctly judging AfD and CSD, then that is good. Even better would be a script hardcoded into the mediawiki system that forced admins to give informative edit summaries with links that work and take you to the debate that took place, or somewhere that clearly explains the reason for the deletion. Anyway, that's enough armchair polemics for today. Carcharoth 11:29, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
When we delete a page, if it has a talkpage we get a message asking whether we want to delete that too. One day maybe it'll also tell the admin if there are redirects pointing towards that page... WjBscribe 12:04, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Broken redirects that are linked to

I just restored a redirect Brian Froud (illustrator) that was deleted by RedirectCleanupBot. The situation is that a double redirect was created by moving the Brian Froud (illustrator) page to Brian Froud (a), then Brian Froud, but the middle redirect was speedily deleted before the double redirect could be fixed. Another article in the main namespace linked to the (illustrator) page, so the speedy deletion of the (a) page caused a broken link. I don't really fault RedirectCleanupBot for deleting the broken redirect left on (illustrator) after this mishap, but I wonder how easy it would be to detect situations like this and either fix automatically or flag for a human to figure it out. More generally, should RedirectCleanupBot check whether the main namespace contains links to the redirect it's thinking about deleting? —David Eppstein 18:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Since the bot is an admin, it could check for the presence of deleted revisions on the redirects target. It could also check "What links here". 1 != 2 18:40, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm a little confused by your actions here. If I'd been the Bot, I would also have deleted that page. Restoring a redirect to an improbable target (Brian Froud (a)) so as to then to retarget it to a valid one (Brian Froud) seems rather pointless. Why didn't you just replace the deleted redirect with a redirect to the correct target? WjBscribe 03:31, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I did just replace the redirect, but then I thought maybe the older history should be visible again, so I restored the deleted version into the history. The restore part was pointless, maybe, but harmless, too. I'm more interested in whether it's possible to automatically detect situations like this and fix the redirect instead of just deleting it. —David Eppstein 04:28, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Note for confused people

When I've done broken redirect cleanup in the past I've always gotten a few people coming by my talk page saying, 'why did you delete my article?'. Usually this happens because the article was first moved and then deleted (often because the move caused it to 'pop up' on the radar for recent changes patrol)... then the original creator goes looking for it and finds the person who deleted the broken redirect rather than the deletion of the actual article. With this bot now doing almost all such cleanups those people will be coming here for answers. It looks like the bot was updated to include links to the redirect target pages. That should help, but you might also want to say 'more information may be available at <link>' and/or put a notice prominently on the user and talk pages explaining that the bot only deletes redirects to non-existent pages and thus that any 'missing articles' must have been deleted earlier and more info might be found at the page linked in the bot's deletion notice. --CBD 12:42, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I have the same experience from having performed this task. I plan on adding more info to the Bot's user and talkpages before it does its next run. WjBscribe 12:44, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Interwiki Redirects

This is the one case where the bot could make a muck up as the media wiki software thinks of these as broken redirect(which they are because of a bug), I doubt the bot will run into any, but if it does the page should be replaced with {{Softredirect}} not deleted. --Chris  G  12:48, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I dunno, I've run across a few so far, doing the same task. Does the bot ignore these? SQLQuery me! 04:41, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
If the template is used, the Bot can't even tell a soft redirect is a redirect - it looks for something like "#Redirect [[" or "#REDIRECT [[" - it wouldn't know that "{{Softredirect|" was a redirect at all so will leave it alone. If they're done the old fashioned way I don't think the Bot will delete them either - (a) they don't show up as broken on Special:Brokenredirects I don't think because they really confuse the software - it usually thinks of it as a redirect to some random internal page and (b) I don't think the Bot's own check for a deleted/non-existent target would be satisfied (though I'll check with Eagle). I certainly don't think its deleted any cross-wiki redirects so far and am keeping a pretty close eye on it. The delete log makes it pretty obvious what its doing. WjBscribe 15:00, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
The Bot definitely doesn't delete cross-wiki redirects even if they don't use the template. See entry #9 on Special:Brokenredirects (User:Duden-Dödel) - it shows up quite differently to a broken redirect. The Bot has run through that list but didn't delete it (even though it only has one edit). WjBscribe 15:09, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
That's interest I thought I would have deleted it though look at the edit sum here, a bug just fixed? --Chris  G  01:02, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't think so - they still appear in the list unless the template is used, just not in the same way as a broken internal redirect. Changing redirects to the template helps to keep the special page shorter. WjBscribe 14:34, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Odd situation?

Noticed [1] and wondered whether the Bot needs to be deleting redirects from a user page to a talk page. The situation will only arise rarely, of course (when an editor (perhaps with previous Wiki experience) redirects user page to talk page before anyone has left a message at his talk page) but it might come across as a little "bitey" for a brand-new user when that does happen. Just a thought... Regards, BencherliteTalk 22:35, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Mmm, I'll give that some thought. Those tend to be deleted by human admins as well. If anything, it may seem less bitey if done by an automated account. Might be better if we simply keep a look out of those and leave a welcome message on the usertalk page before the Bot gets to the redirect, which solves the problem in the most friendly way. WjBscribe 19:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Move

I hope doing this was alright? Maximillion Pegasus (talk) 00:16, 19 February 2008 (UTC)