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How to create a bot · Bot Approvals Group · Bot policy · Bot status page · BAG tools
Requests for work to be done by a bot · Bot owners' noticeboard · Requests for bot approval

This is a page for requesting work to be done by bots per the bot policy. 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/Status to see if the bot you are looking for already exists, in which case you can contact the operator directly on their talkpage.

If you have a question about one particular bot, it should be directed to the bot owner's talk page or to the Bot Owners' Noticeboard. If a bot is acting improperly, a note about that should be posted to the owner's talk page, to the Administrators' Noticeboard. A link to such a posting may be posted at the Bot Owners' Noticeboard.

If you are a bot operator and you complete a request, note what you did, and archive it. {{BOTREQ}} can be used to give common responses, and to make it easier to see at-a-glance what the response is.

There are a number of common requests which are regularly denied, either because they are too complicated to program, or do not have consensus from the wikipedia community. Please see Wikipedia:Bots/Frequently denied bots for a list of such requests, and ensure that your idea is not among them.

If you are requesting that a bot be used to add a WikiProject banner to the talkpages of all articles in a particular category or its subcategories, please be very careful to check the category tree for any unwanted subcategories. You might not expect Category:World War II to be a subcategory of Category:Thailand, but it actually is, and a bot will find it! It is usually safer to give a complete list of categories that should be worked through individually, rather than one category to be analysed recursively. Compare a successful request with a similar one that made a mess.

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

Click here to make a new request

Commonly Requested Bots
Newsletter delivery · Talkpage Archiving · Template substitution · WikiProject tagging · Article autoassessment

Archives (Index)

Archive 1	Archive 2	Archive 3
Archive 4	Archive 5	Archive 6
Archive 7	Archive 8	Archive 9
Archive 10	Archive 11	Archive 12
Archive 13	Archive 14	Archive 15
Archive 16	Archive 17	Archive 18
Archive 19	Archive 20	Archive 21
Archive 22	Archive 23

About archives

1 Allmusic links
2 Bad music charts
3 Saint Categories
4 Superscript exponents
5 Messenger bot
6 IfD/RfD/etc. discussion closing
7 Historical "What links here" function
8 Need help filling in data
9 Project Monitoring Bot
10 Repeat edit
11 WP:WikiProject Iran football assessment tagging
12 Category:Unknown-importance anime and manga articles
13 Add SharedIPEDU notices to User Talk pages (Specifically: University of Waterloo)
14 tagging sockpuppet categories
15 Paris metro coords
16 Template substitution
17 IMDb and AMG links in the film infobox
18 Image renaming

Allmusic links

A few months ago, AllMusicGuide changed its name to Allmusic. Apparently, at the same time they dropped all their sub-servers and are now using only the "www.allmusic.com" address. This leaves all sorts of orphan links all over Wikipedia to http://wm06.allmusic.com, wm07.allmusic.com, wm08, and wc03 -- these are the ones I've noticed so far, all of which have over 200 links apiece. Can someone make a bot to go around and fix any wXXX.allmusic.com link to www.allmusic.com, where XXX is a wildcard to cover any of these various server links? Because, while I edit a lot of music articles, I really don't want to spend my time making this little change if it can be automated. It would be a one-time only change. (well, unless Allmusic changes itself again.) Thanks for help please!! Salamurai (talk) 03:50, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

If no one beats me to it (or has objections), I'll start coding for this sometime tomorrow. Anomie ⚔ 04:32, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Salamurai (talk) 16:05, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Preferably drop the www, see no-www.org. — Dispenser 05:01, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Point taken, I agree Salamurai (talk) 16:05, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Is this "no-www.org" a reliable source? ;) Anomie ⚔ 16:43, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Coding... Anomie ⚔ 16:43, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

BRFA filed Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT 9 Anomie ⚔ 18:43, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Doing... Anomie ⚔ 12:08, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

doing nicely as it looks --Say Headcheese!-- 12:53, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Greetings Bots and All, I noticed on my watchlist that this bot was fixing broken links, but just by chance I happened to add an allmusic link to Ben and "Sweets" today - perfectly OK (I checked it) and suddenly it appears that AnomieBOT had to fix it. This is way over my head, but maybe someone out there can look into it. Cheers! --Technopat (talk) 22:58, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I looked. The bot done good. The URL you used has what appears to be a redundant sub-domain in it - wc08 - which certainly worked at the time you used the link, but which cannot be guaranteed to continue to work. The bot is standardising on a convention for minimal allmusic links, against a supposition that these will survive whatever reorganisations of subdomains go on within that organisation. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:22, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The link AnomieBOT fixed in that article was added almost a year ago. The link you just added wasn't touched, although if it weren't for a bug the bot would have removed the "www." as requested above. Anomie ⚔ 23:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanx for checking that! I hadn't noticed. Regards, --Technopat (talk) 00:20, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Y Done 5037 pages were edited. Anomie ⚔ 01:21, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Bad music charts

We have a list of charts that have been deemed unreliable in WP:BADCHARTS. Unfortunately, we are having to take care of enforcement manually, and it is a neverending job: new editors are constantly adding these charts to articles.

What I would like is a bot that can take care of the two major cases: the one chart per row format (see Womanizer_(song)#Charts), where the bot should delete all rows that correspond to bad charts, and the one chart per column format (see Pussycat Dolls discography#Singles. It should detect the more complicated cases, where formatting has created double rows or columns and flag them somewhere without attempting the edit directly.—Kww(talk) 15:15, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Agree, this would be very helpful. — Realist² 15:20, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Would someone comment on this? Excessively difficult? Poorly defined? Overly controversial?—Kww(talk) 16:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Saint Categories

Can someone populate 1th - 5th century Saint Categories from my lists at User:Carlaude/Sandbox2 and remove pages from the Parent Category:Ancient Roman saints as the occur?

User:STBot was made at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/STBot_13 do this sort of stuff but the bot owner is MIA to my reqests. It maybe a bot someone else can use? --Carlaude ^(talk) 01:06, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Coding... On it. • 01:12, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Doing... Check progress here. • 01:22, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Process halted I ran across this diff, I do not believe all of these saints are 2nd century. Task will continue when I can get verification that you don't have any disambig pages in your lists. Thanks. • 01:31, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I have finished checking by hand all the pages of form Pope Name (no number) and Saint Name and found no more disambig pages. Please comlpete this task for me-- thank you. It look like many are already done but please be sure to do the 5th cent list as beforre they were all put in the 6th cent cat. --Carlaude ^(talk) 19:07, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Seems another bot added a bunch of these categories on the 9th. At this point there might not be anything left to tag? • 20:57, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Looks like User:STBot is back. If there is a category they didn't do let me know. Other than that is looks

Done. • 17:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Superscript exponents

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but it seems like a bot could be useful in replacing unicode exponents like this ², with superscript exponents like this ², per WP:MOS. This would save a large amount of time and effort on many articles such as the larger magnitudes in Template:Area, where there are long lists of areas that use solely the unicode exponent. Wrelwser43 (talk) 02:51, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

It would be useful if the code to do it could be added as an AWB general fix too. 00:06, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I would say that this would be too minor a change for anything but something like AWB general fixes. 17:31, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Messenger bot

I need a bot to send a talk message to everyone at WP:BARD. Wrad (talk) 03:17, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd point you to the template above, but here you go. Take your pick. • 03:32, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm wary of using one. I tried to send a message out on one of those before and it's just sat there for months and was never sent. I see one of the bots is yours, though. Does it deliver? Wrad (talk) 03:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Yep. Do you have a specific date or would immediately be best? • 04:09, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Woohoo! It was even in alphabetical order. That was so cute. Wrad (talk) 04:24, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Done Glad you enjoyed it. hehe • 04:30, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we should remove inactive bots from the category... – () 19:29, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Ya, good to keep it weeded to those who are active. • 20:57, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

IfD/RfD/etc. discussion closing

Some pages, especially WP:IFD and WP:RFD, have huge backlogs at times. Now you cannot write a bot to assess consensus and act upon it. But especially on IFD, many images are deleted but their relevant IFD sections are not closed by the deleting admin. See this page for November 1 for example. Most links are red, indicating the image is gone but yet the sections are not closed using the appropriate instructions. It is a tedious task to close them all by hand. So I want to request a bot that does these simply yet tedious tasks:

Check the sub-article for nominations for which discussion has ended (5 days period)
Follow each redlink to an image
Check if it has been deleted and if so, copy deleting admin's username
close the section down (following the admin instructions and adding something like "result was delete; deleted by {{admin|<adminname>}}"
- If there is no open discussion anymore on this page, it should also:
  1. Remove the link to the sub-article from the main page (for example from the "Old discussions" section of IfD)
  2. If the old discussion section is empty after doing so, it should remove the adminbacklog-notice.

I think that should be easy to do and it would save a lot of manual work there. Soooooo...any takers? :-)
Regards So Why 13:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Coding... for the WP:IFD part of it, anyway. Anomie ⚔ 22:00, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Comment: Thanks. I think adding "plugins" for other XfD boards can't be too hard once the basic code is done.

Oh, I forgot this above: Is it possible that the Bot determines whether the deletion reason contains a WP:CSD criterion and if so, includes it when adding the "deleted by xxx" part (e.g. "deleted (as WP:CSD#I1) by xxx")? Regards So Why 22:11, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

It depends. The IFD code I've written depends on the section header being the link to the image being discussed and everything being on a daily subpage. If the other XfD board commonly doesn't have such an easily-bot-parsable way to find the thing being discussed it would be more difficult, and if it does like AfD and uses a subpage for each thing that would need adjustment too. The CSD detecting isn't too difficult, as long as the admin uses "CSD [GI]n", "db-[gi]n", or one of the named db-* template names in the comment it'll pick it up. I also added in some code to detect if someone nominates an image that doesn't exist or is on Commons. Anomie ⚔ 03:45, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

BRFA filed Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT 11 Anomie ⚔ 03:45, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Historical "What links here" function

I am interested in "what links here" feature of wiki. But it seems that we can only check the latest information of the backlinks to one article. Can we get the historical information of it like the revision history of main articles and talk pages? Yuzhong 21:00, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I guess the content listed in "what lins here" is chronological. How can I retrieve the exact date about when those wikilink were created? I am doing a study about wikilinks now. I have to check backlins for 200+ articles. And better to get the yearly backlink data for each individual article. It would be to tedious to do it manually. So I hope there could be a bot to help me. Thanks a lot.Yuzhong 15:00, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

The best solution is to get the full database (you can either download it or get a Toolserver account). Then you can query the current state, this is also be done to a lesser degree via the API. However, if you want information about when it was linked you'll need to parse the revisions and it will likely be unlinked and relinked in many revisions because of vandalism. — Dispenser 14:59, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

There is no log of any of the following:

When categories are added and removed from articles. For articles that are in a category, the most recent time they were added is available.
When templates are transcluded or untranscluded in a page. No dates are available.
When links are added or removed from one page to another. No dates are available.

The only way to get historical data would be to download the complete set of revisions of an article and then parse each revision. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:12, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. I have tried to download the "pagelinks" dumps. But it seems that the earliest one is to March 2008. So how can I get the dump before 2008, see 2001-2007? Yuzhong 02:00, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Alternatively, I have a rough idea.

I use the "what links here" function of article "A" to get the list of articles linked to article "A". And then search the key word "A" in historical versions of thoes articles linked to "A" to see when were they linked to article "A". I am now doing it manaually. It is very slow and tedious. Anyidea to make it automatic or semi-automatic? Thanks a lot for your suggestion！ Yuzhong 02:00, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Need help filling in data

Under construction is a set of country outlines or profiles - one for each country of the world (247 pages). This will greatly expand the coverage at Portal:Contents/Lists of basic topics, which is part of Wikipedia's table of contents system, intended to make it easier to browse subjects and see how they are structured. So far, twenty-nine of these outlines have been completed enough to move to article space and are listed on the Portal:Contents/Lists of basic topics page.

For your convenience, the country outlines are all listed at User:The Transhumanist/Country list.

There is a huge amount of work to be done on this set of drafts, and I believe much of it can be automated. That is why I'm turning to you for help.

What I need help with right now are two items in the "Geography of x" section (where "x" is the name of the respective country) that need to be filled in.

Can you use one of your bots, or create one, to pull pieces of data from one set of pages and place them on another set of pages? (into the "Geography of x" section mentioned above)

The two items are:

"Population: "

And

"Size: "

A few of them are already filled in. (I hope that doesn't present any problems).

The data is located in the infobox on the corresponding country articles.

Is this something you could do?

If so, it would sure save a lot of man hours. I don't currently have access to a machine upon which I could use macros or learn and apply Python, and I'd really like to avoid having to do these chores manually.

I requested bot approval at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Worldbot and was told that these tasks don't need bot approval - we can just go ahead and create and use bots on 'em.

The desired format for the data is presented at Topic outline of Algeria#Geography of Algeria, Topic outline of France#Geography of France and Topic outline of Germany#Geography of Germany.

I look forward to your reply.

00:00, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I should be able to help you out. A few questions though. Is this for just the population and size fields or are there others that need to be filled in as well? --T-rex 00:24, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

There are other entries/fields that need to be filled in, but I don't know if they can be done automatically:

Pronunciation:
Form of government:
Head of state: (title, incumbent)
Head of government: (title, incumbent)
Commander-in-chief: (title, incumbent)
Currency of x: (where "x" is the name of the country)

And in the International organization membership section, it needs a list of the organizations the country belongs to.

Are those automatable? I think it would depend on if there was a standard method of the information being presented with some kind of format element you could key off of.

05:54, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Some of these probably are. I'll try to do as many as possible. --T-rex 16:34, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. I look forward to seeing what you come up with. 23:13, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I've gotten the task approved. Hopefully I can get this running soon --T-rex 17:48, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

~~Question? do we want to use population_census or population_estimate?~~ These figures vary greatly --T-rex 18:16, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I should be able to do the population run shortly --T-rex 19:10, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Project Monitoring Bot

Would it be possible to create a bot that would keep track of statistics for the various projects on wikipedia and generate a list of the top ten or so most active projects on a month by month basis? It seems that this would be best left to a bot, and in light of the fact that I can find no statitistics on whoch wikiproject is most active I dare say such a bot may well be overdue for an appearence on Wikipedia. For example, it would be nice to know which projects:

Have (at present) the most members
receive the largest amount of new members each month
Have the largest collection of GA/A/FA class articles
Promoted the most articles to GA/A?FA class each month
Add the most new articles to wikipedia each month
Have the most DYK metions for any given month
Have the largest collection of FP or other audio/visual media
Promoted the most FP or other AudioVisual media each month

...and so forth in that manner. Would anyone out htere be interested in creating such a bot to moniter these statisitics? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.108.230.99 (talk) 00:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Only some of these will be amenable to a bot, I think. See related discussion at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index#Master scorecard of wikiprojects? and Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous#What are the largest projects on wikipedia?. And note a first result: Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index/Comparison. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:55, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Repeat edit

I actually wanted to check to see if this already exists, but I didn't see a listing. I understand that spell checking bots are problematic. As I was editing an article that said "the first and only" to "the only," I thought this is really something that could be automatically applied to all of Wikipedia. Barring a direct quote, it should be an improvement wherever it is applied. To mitigate the quotation problem, would it be possible to check for the opening quote and skip all of the string until it finds another quote? It would also have to skip the citations, since titles of books and articles can be something we would not want to change. If the quotation is improperly punctuated, there is an existing problem that is not made worse, IMO. This is something that has to be entered manually, the list has to be very carefully selected, but I would think that there are many similar instances. 75.3.225.43 (talk) 08:27, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

There are over 5,400 occurrences of that phrase, at the time of writing, according to Google: http://www.google.co.uk/search?&q="the first and only"&sitesearch=en.wikipedia.org including may as "the first (and only)". However, there are over 65,000 for "first and only": http://www.google.co.uk/search?&q="first and only"&sitesearch=en.wikipedia.org These include such uses as "its first and only", "India's first and only", "the band's first and only album", "His first and only" (also "his first -- and only --") & "Frank's first and only". However, I think there would be too many false positives to allow a bot to fix this; for example First and Only (book) and "the first (and only the first)". Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 11:09, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

It is definitely a common phrase, but it is redundant and not encyclopedic language. I agree with you about the false positive problem. I think "first (and only" should definitely be excluded from any search. The string should only be the exact characters "first and only." If such a bot were created, I would be willing to hand check a random 3% of the occurrences identified. Those could be changed immediately, and if the false positives are not too high, the bot could be automated.

I do think the bot would be useful for other possibly suspect phrases to be checked, possibly with less likely chance of false positives or simply needing a flag. For instance, I did a search for "would of" (5,520,000 total google, 1,990 on wikipedia using google, 96 wikipedia's own search engine). Google's results have a much larger instance of false positives since the bot could be programmed to exclude titles of articles, lists, redirect pages, talk pages, policy pages, etc. I checked each instance by looking at the search page's quoted text. All the true positives should have read: "would have", "would, of course," or "would, of necessity,". 1 false positive: "as they would of any other." 1 false negative: inside quotation marked text that is not a quote.

I think that a nomination and approval process would be required for such a thing. At the very least, it could be implemented as a tool. I would really have appreciated a replace function that would search for a certain string, quote the complete paragraph or complete page, and allow me to manually provide the correct string or choose it from a list without having to visit and edit each by hand.

As a first step, though, I think it would be helpful to have a bot that simply finds and provides a list of pages with suspected phrases. It would be harmless to implement. People could simply include phrases the consider suspect with some instruction as to why it is suspect and what the replacement would be. If the bot can maintain a list of all the suspect phrases with 1 or more instance found with a count, provide a sub-page that has the reasoning on top and just a link to the pages, manual editing would be a lot easier. Such a thing may exist already, and what I am proposing could build on it. 71.156.33.248 (talk) 21:25, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd suggest you lobby whoever maintains Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos since the phrases appear to be patterns that are mostly inexcusable. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:32, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

And I've left a note for them. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:44, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

WP:AWB/FR#Snippets from DB search. — Dispenser 15:35, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

WP:WikiProject Iran football assessment tagging

I would like a bot to please tag the talk pages of articles in any of the following categories with {{Football|Iran=yes}} retaining original assessments if any.

Categories:

Thanks —Borgarde^talk 02:59, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Category:Unknown-importance anime and manga articles

I would like to have a bot add |importance=low to {{anime}} or {{WikiProject Anime and manga}} of all of the pages in the above mentioned category. Converting {{anime}} to {{WikiProject Anime and manga}} would be a bonus, but is not essential. This parameter should be added after the |class= parameter, or after |B6= parameter (where applicable). The recommended edit summary is Automatically assessing importance as low per WP:ANIME/ASSESS.

I have am using AWB to do this for me during the tag & assess, but find that I can do the T&A much quicker if I do not have to add the importance parameter to almost all of the articles.

I will correct all instances where importance ≠ low during the tag & assess. (Please do not add parameters or comments that the assessment is automatic, as these would have to be removed, leaving me with the same problem as currently).

Regards,

05:50, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Doing... Lego K^ontribs T^alkM 00:28, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much:) 04:35, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

About 531 articles remains in this category. It seems that this is due to the use of {{manga}}, or the use of multiple lines in the template. 08:09, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Done as far as the bot can go. Lego K^ontribs T^alkM 05:24, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Add SharedIPEDU notices to User Talk pages (Specifically: University of Waterloo)

The block of 129.97.*.* IP addresses belongs to the University of Waterloo. (http://samspade.org/whois/129.97.0.0) Looking in the Special:PrefixIndex page for those IP addresses (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3APrefixIndex&from=129.97&namespace=3), many don't display the {{SharedIPEDU|University of Waterloo}} notice. Some of these IPs are static and tied to public computers in labs, or individual network ports in residences, etc., so there's a high probability that many of these IPs will be used be different people over time.

Are there any bots able to tag them with {{SharedIPEDU|University of Waterloo}}, so that moderators can immediately recognize that the edits are coming from a shared computer on the University of Waterloo's network?
03:40, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

tagging sockpuppet categories

I wish we had a bot that would go through and add {{sockpuppet category}} to any sockpuppet categories (and suspected sockpuppet categories) that don't already have it. - Stepheng3 (talk) 08:17, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Is there a parent category? • 17:24, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

There is, but not all sockpuppet categories are in it. Part of the reason for wanting the categories tagged is to keep them from showing up in the Uncategorized categories report. The way you recognize these categories is by their names, which always begin with either the phrase Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of or the phrase Wikipedia sockpuppets of. - Stepheng3 (talk) 18:08, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Paris metro coords

Hi,

Someone recently filled all coords based on nl wiki (example Châtelet (Paris Métro), Raspail (Paris Métro)), I don't know why, but the fact is that they're even more incorrect than googlemaps, and not complete. Paris metro network is very dense, so precise coords are important. fr:Projet:Transports en Île-de-France is working to enhance quality of french articles on this matter, hoping it will be a quality source for other languages.

We are using «region:FR_type:landmark_scale:2000|format=dms|display=title» parameters (closer view, dms) in fr:Modèle:Station du métro parisien, all stations are localised.

Could you change the coords taking french wikipedia as source, and marking it as such?

Thanks...

Gonioul (talk) 22:48, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Template substitution

Hi all. A few months ago, WikiProject Aircraft started splitting the parameters of our old {{Infobox Aircraft}} between two templates of a modular system: {{Infobox Aircraft Begin}} and {{Infobox Aircraft Type}}. The new system has now been implemented on over 500 articles, and no opposition was raised to a suggestion that we recruit a bot to convert the rest (archived here).

In practical terms, it means we need a bot that will go through all articles that include {{Infobox Aircraft}} (around 4,000 articles) and split that template's parameters appropriately. There are no new parameters to add and none to rename – should hopefully be straightforward. Any volunteers? --Rlandmann (talk) 01:50, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Can you provide a diff of what needs to be done? Thanks. • 01:52, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Sure - take a look at this. The only cases where this wouldn't be as straightforward as this example would be instances where the order of the parameters in the article differs from the norm (which of course doesn't affect the output, but means that a bot has to be able to sort the parameters, not just insert }}{{Infobox Aircraft Type in front of every instance of |name=). --Rlandmann (talk) 02:13, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

If §hep doesn't want to do it, AnomieBOT could do that easily. Anomie ⚔ 04:34, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I'll happily code it. Just tell me if you want me to do it... 15:42, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I actually object to the fact the way it's coded it required a table to be placed in the page. This is not good practice. — Dispenser 16:24, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree. The {| should clearly be part of the first template. Please stop and think about what you're doing here. — CharlotteWebb 16:36, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree as well. I'm also not quite sure I see the point in splitting it into separate templates, when each article uses both templates. Besides being more confusing and increasing server load from loading 2 templates instead of 1, how is that any different from just having 1 template? If there is actually a reason for using 2 templates, it should be done like the {{userboxtop}}/{{userboxbottom}} system and not require wrapping it in a table. 18:22, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

@Dispenser: the table elements have been placed outside the template to allow different elements of this system to be placed in different articles as appropriate; for example, articles that require {{Infobox Aircraft Type}}, {{Infobox Aircraft Career}} or both. Did you read the documentation?

@CharlotteWebb: I guess the opening {| could be placed within the first template; but I think that would be confusing when the closing |} can't also be placed within a template (since there's no way of knowing how many or which template(s) will be following in any particular article.

@Mr.Z-man: The point is that each article doesn't use both templates. With respect, if you'd actually read the docs, you'd know this...

The approach was actually borrowed from WP:SHIPS who have just such a modular system of Infobox templates working well right throughout their scope. A read of their documentation might prove further illuminating. We don't have nearly as many elements to choose from as they do yet, but we're slowly growing. --Rlandmann (talk) 19:23, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't want this one right now, I was just curious what was needed. I couldn't get what I thought someone here would need from the text; so I asked for a diff. Good luck, • 19:44, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Just because other projects are doing it doesn't mean its a good idea. It doesn't matter if you have an unknown number of intermediate templates if you use a start-inner-end approach, which is why I linked the userbox templates - they work the same way but don't require people to add tables to the page. The top template starts the table, the bottom template finishes it. There are several other types of templates like this. Most of the discussion archive templates ({{at}}/{{ab}}, etc.) work this way. It doesn't matter how many templates are in the middle. With respect, if you had looked at my examples, you would have known this. 20:00, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Where did I say that just because WP:SHIPS is doing it, it must be a good idea? I simply pointed out that they've been using this model with success for some time (and across around 13,000 articles) and they sky hasn't fallen - it's demonstrably not too confusing.

I did look at your example; but it seems strange to me that if you're concerned about transcluding two templates instead of one, that you would now be advocating transcluding three instead of two. An extra template simply to add a "|}" seems unnecessary. --Rlandmann (talk) 20:54, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

BRFA filed Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT 12 Anomie ⚔ 01:53, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

IMDb and AMG links in the film infobox

Following various discussions, the links to IMDb and AMG that were contained in the film infobox have now been made hidden. One of the arguements against having the links in the i/box were that they were contained in the external links sections on film articles. I've noticed that a fair few film articles with the infobox didn't have the IMDb/AMG links in the ex links section (if that section existed on the article at all). I wish to propose a bot to go through all the film articles that have those links in the infobox and don't have the ex. link, to have the IMDb/AMG links added to their articles. Thanks. (talk) 15:33, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Image renaming

Well, long story short: Since Betacommand (talk · contribs) won't be doing this with his restriction to not run bots anymore, someone else should take on this task. We need a bot to go through Category:Media requiring renaming and process the requests generated by {{rename media}}. Any takers? Regards So Why 11:55, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

It would be wise for the bot operate only with human assistance or to establish a "white list" among users adding the "rename" tag. Otherwise it may unintentionally aid and abet vandalism, e.g. moving "George_W._Bush.jpg" to "Penis.jpg" or vice versa.

Additionally it will want to reject good-faith requests which are guaranteed to cause problems such non-matching file formats, or uploading over any image which already exists (either locally or on commons). — CharlotteWebb 16:46, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

The first is actually covered in the category description: if {{rename media}} was added by a "trusted user" the move is supposed to be done by the bot, while if it was added by an "untrusted" user then the bot is supposed to be somehow changed to put it in Category:Media renaming requests instead. Who these "trusted users" are and how exactly to change the category is not clear. It's also not clear if the bot should re-upload all old versions of the file or just the most recent, what exactly the metadata is that should be preserved (Upload history, of course. Also the page history? The talk page? Anything else?), whether the bot should try to correct references to the old image, and whether the bot should tag the old image with {{isd}} or another deletion template.

I also wonder whether bug 15842 will be resolved any time soon, which would make the task as specified obsolete. Anomie ⚔ 18:21, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

@CharlotteWebb: You are correct of course. I posted it short here because I am sure that someone who is around bot noticeboards more than me knows what this bot was planned to do. SO yes, there should be a whitelist, maybe restricting it to admins and everyone on a certain list. Can't be too hard to do.

@Anomie: See above. I think someone knows more about this than I do. And yes, bug 15842...I doubt it will be enable anytime soon and even if it does get enabled, there will be restrictions on the users who may do so. And even in this case we'd need a bot to clear aforementioned categories, just in a different way... So Why 20:00, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

The 'trusted user' list it at WP:Image renaming. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 20:32, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

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