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After coming across yet another user using AWB to introduce named refs to an article while using an edit summary mentioning only another and very minor part of the same edit, I am starting a discussion on WP:ANI about the issue. -- Hegvald ( talk) 14:20, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

In both the cases where you've noted AWB adding named references, it has done so to combine duplicate references into a single note. This seems to be to be a Good Thing. -- SarekOfVulcan ( talk) 14:40, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, I disagree, but I don't think this is the place to discuss that. -- Hegvald ( talk) 15:26, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Actual link: Wikipedia:ANI#AWB_users_using_misleading_edit_summaries. -- Izno ( talk) 17:26, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs#Named references implemented when none present GoingBatty ( talk) 18:59, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Under Rules of Use on this page, we have the statement: "Don't do anything controversial with it. If there is a chance that the edits you are considering might be controversial, consider soliciting comment at the village pump or appropriate WikiProject before proceeding.". Surely, we all know that anything that anyone edits in WP (whether by AWB or not) is going to be controversial to some editor or another. We even have editors stating that no AWB edits (General Fixes or editor-added edits) should be made without that editor's personal pre-approval! It seems to me that this controversy Rules of Use sentence is mostly just used as another means to criticize AWB editors and threaten them with dire consequences unless they roll over and do whatever the critic wants. Is there something better that can be done here to protect AWB editors and not just protect AWB from unwarranted criticism? Hmains ( talk) 04:47, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I completely agree. While AWB can do many other types of edits can may be controversial, what about the built-in fixes? We try to help by volunteering our time and computing resources in good faith, only to receive flak for our time and efforts. It is certainly disheartening. – SMasters ( talk) 07:18, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

In addition to changing the word "controversial" to "more controversial than other AWB edits", I think the community would accept the built-in fixes better if we more openly invited them to comment on those fixes. The words "general fixes" don't appear anywhere on the main page WP:AWB. I would think AWB people are experts on software, but not necessarily on Wikipedia style. Art LaPella ( talk) 21:22, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the need for more explanation of this, both as guidance for those wondering what's happening on their watchlists, and as guidance for AWB users on when it is (or isn't) appropriate to do general fixes in the absence of any other changes. For example, I thought that general fixes were to be applied only in conjunction with other , more substantial, changes? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs)

Why? Going by this logic, if I see a comma that is out of place, I am not to fix it unless I make other changes as well? Is this really in the interest of Wikipedia? I just recently went through a truncated list of the category for Living People that has over 200,000 entries. How long will it take to make these changes manually? – SMasters ( talk) 05:58, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

As far as I understand, an insignificant edit is the one that doesn't change the final rendering and the html code generated is the same as before. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 07:17, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I also agree in fact Im getting beaten with that rule at the moment. An editor is making the case that if any editor says they dont agree then its controversial and we have to stop. -- Kumioko ( talk) 05:28, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

 Done - added link to General fixes on Template:AWB, so it will appear on all AWB-related pages. Please reorder the link in the template if necessary. GoingBatty ( talk) 18:11, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. "General fixes" was a subpage of the manual already but now it's more easy to find I presume. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 18:19, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• As I originally indicated, the problem goes beyond General Fixes or letting editors know what such fixes are. The (over-)reaction of various editors to AWB changes is often very emotional. Sometimes it seems they react badly to anything they don't know about (AWB) and not knowing about it means they are obligated to not like and attack it. Sometimes it is that they don't want anyone or anything (AWB) touching one of the articles they have assumed ownership of (no matter that WP does not allow ownership; these editors own them in every sense of the term and there is no stopping them). And the offended editors are always ready to fight and will do anything to attack the editor who is offending them. Using threats of getting administrators to go after the AWB editor is par for the course. As is reporting that AWB is being abused because AWB editor edits are 'controversial'--meaning anything the offended editor does not like for any reason whatsoever. Hmains ( talk) 18:26, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

Whenever I open AWB, it immediately crashes with the standard dialog "AutoWikiBrowser has encountered an error and needs to close." This puzzles me because I am running .NET 2, am approved to use AWB and I am running a Windows 2000 VM, so none of the usual reasons why it would crash are the case here. Could somebody help me? thanks. Usb10 ^Connected? 15:41, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Never mind, got it to work. Usb10 ^Connected? 00:48, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

This edit is an example of AWB automagically introducing named references to an article that had none before. I'm happy for AWB to do this; but in the previous thread here, Magioladitis told everyone that it wouldn't do this. -- John of Reading ( talk) 14:37, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Does not occur for me with current AWB version. What is your version and settings file? Rjwilmsi 14:58, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Version 5.1.0.0 SVN 7268 (2010-10-13 23:10:26). I've posted my settings here. -- John of Reading ( talk) 15:13, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Confirm on 5.1.0.0 Magio's erroneous commit fixed in rev 7265 seems to be in the 5.1.0.0 build. It's fixed for all later versions. Rjwilmsi 16:14, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I still don't understand why this is a problem. As far as I can tell, it only introduces named references in order to combine dup citations. Don't we want' it to do this automagically? -- SarekOfVulcan ( talk) 17:56, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Poking around a bit, I find this in the Manual of Style - "This, like the use of named footnotes in the first place, is a matter for editorial judgment...". A pity; if AWB is taught not to combine duplicate footnotes in a newly-written article, no-one else will ever get round to it. -- John of Reading ( talk) 18:27, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

If a group of editors are working hard on improving an article to get it ready for FA review (for example), they may find consensus to switch the article to use named references. So in that case people may get around to it. The goal of the MOS language is to discourage people from randomly going around and changing styles on articles that they otherwise aren't working on. That sort of changing leads to nothing but endless arguments over which style is "better". AWB is particularly good at helping people randomly go around changing things, so AWB needs to be particularly conservative about what changes it makes automatically. Historically, the AWB devs have done a good job at this, which is why AWB didn't convert articles with no named refs to use named refs (apart from this bug). — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 19:05, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. Until today I hadn't seen the arguments at WP:REFNAME for not combining duplicate references. -- John of Reading ( talk) 19:21, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

  No, we do not want this done automagically, and it could be argued not at all. The elimination of duplicate citations is a marginal and even questionable reduction of text (disk usage?), and contra-indicated by increased difficulties in editing, and issues of style. E.g.: References ("citations") that link outside of a section being edited are not shown in the preview (unless one edits the article as a whole, which is a bad practice). Deletion or modification of the master named ref may impact (break) other sections not being edited. Adding a citation that has been previously "named" may require searching through the entire article to find the name used, could even lead to duplication of the ref under a different name. And it encourages the very dubious practice of burying bibliographic details in the text (rather than in a reference section), and makes the conversion to proper citations exceedingly difficult. I see little reason for named refs, and much against. Conversion certainly should not be automagically dictated, and I say not even an AWB option. - J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 21:35, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

The next release of AWB will, I'm told, not add named references to any article that doesn't use them already. Until then, I, and other AWB users I hope, are taking care to turn off the general fixes whenever the bug takes effect. -- John of Reading ( talk) 21:44, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

  I had been told it was done, but then there was more merging. Perhaps that was just someone using an old version. I have wondered if this "feature" could be conditioned on some kind of flag. (Perhaps {{mergeduprefs|no}} and {{mergeduprefs|ok}} templates?) I have also wondered if the real problem that this feature may originally been aimed at is the collection and replication of bibligraphic records in <ref> tags. I would have a feature that moves them out, but folks may not be ready for that. - J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 23:50, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser#Database scanner points to http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki, which is 404, and http://download.wikimedia.org/, which is down for maintenance for over a month (according to sublinked wikitech-l message). DMacks ( talk) 14:26, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

There isn't any alternates, as the server is down due to a hardware failure. So not a lot of point changing it, and as such, may aswell be left until it's fixed. — Ree dy 01:30, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

And they are now somewhat back. — Ree dy 21:06, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Major wootage. Missing current dumps bat at least having (some) of the historical documents available is good. Rich  Farmbrough, 01:34, 17 December 2010 (UTC).

The main thing was resurrecting them from broken hardware. They're waiting on some new storage boxes (next week or so). Hopefully they should do a new dump sometime after that! :D — Ree dy 01:49, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I did make an offer several years ago (when they were first dying) to take responsibility for the dumps. They have improved the technology considerably since then, but it still is a very low priority item. Rich  Farmbrough, 01:57, 17 December 2010 (UTC).

Incidentally I have been forced by space to delete old dumps on a recurring basis. Was there a project to create a shared archive? Rich  Farmbrough, 01:59, 17 December 2010 (UTC).

Here AWB wants to remove the uncat tag. Why? Rich  Farmbrough, 01:33, 17 December 2010 (UTC).

Maybe it wants to remove {{ Uncategorized stub}} because you replaced {{ stub}} with {{ -stub}}? Was that a typo, or is there a benefit to adding a hyphen? GoingBatty ( talk) 04:18, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I think you are right. Yes the advantage is that it helps stub-sorters. Rich  Farmbrough, 15:47, 19 December 2010 (UTC).

It likes to do this randomly. Normally Id attribute it to a loss of session data, but occasionally it seems to do it just for the hell of it. Each time the countdown gets longer, but everytime it reaches 0 and starts going again. How can I make this timer start at 1 second every time so that I don't have to wait 22 seconds for the program to wake up? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  ^τ _¢ 00:19, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

AWB rule 2 says "Don't edit too quickly; consider opening a bot account if you are regularly making more than a few edits a minute." I'd like to suggest that this should be firmed up. The gist (not the precise wording) would be that editors should use an alternate account if they regularly use AWB for making a substantial volume of edits, and that they should use an approved bot account if regularly making more than a few edits a minute. Rd232 ^talk 13:09, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

You are making two points here. The second point seems consistent with WP:SOCK#LEGIT, where editors are "encouraged" to create separate accounts for bots, and with WP:BOTPOL, where assisted editing at higher rates is "more likely" to be considered a bot task.

Your first point is a change of policy; at WP:BOTPOL#Assisted_editing_guidelines the wording is merely that editors making a high volume of assisted edits "may wish" to use a second account for them. Can you explain more of your reasoning for proposing this change? I use one account and do high volume typo-fixing, but never at "bot" speeds, so I would be affected by your first point. -- John of Reading ( talk) 15:57, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I'd be affected too; I don't use AWB that much, but on occasion I do, and it's merely laziness that stopped me using an alternate account (since it wasn't required). I think it would generally be better for such edits to be made with a separate account, because it would assist transparency, by not flooding the contributions history of a user's main account. Rd232 ^talk 16:19, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I personally don't see the point of either. Having a bot account is fine but why create a seperate account, making it harder to determine who did the edit, just for the sake of seperating regular edits by volume. This may increase transparency of the main account but since I do most of my edits with AWB I may as well use this as my AWB bot account and create a different one for manual edits. This would also make it harder on the editor doing the edits (cause now I would have to pay attention which account I am in for one) and the person who finds problems to notify the editor (because now I have 2 or 3 or more accounts instead of one). In my case I do a lot of edits but many (such as reordering certain sections) needs to be monitored even though I can do them 5-10 a minute. If I had to request a bot account then I would have a much harder time watching them as their scrolling by and thus I would have a much higher error rate. This also seems a lot like rule creep to me. -- Kumioko ( talk) 16:27, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

With appropriately named and linked accounts ( WP:SOCK#LEGIT), it shouldn't be any harder to understand what's going on. (I've also thought about how other accounts might be linked via Special:Contributions, but that's a separate issue.) Notification won't be any harder with talk pages appropriately redirected. Which basically leaves your last-but-one sentence - which I don't really understand - please explain more clearly. cheers, Rd232 ^talk 16:33, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I just don't see the point to it all and I don't understand whats wrong with things the way they are? If you want my honest opinion this seems tied to the ongoing issues between You, Fram and Rich and how Rich continues to use his main account to do edits. And a rather sneaky way of blocking him from editing if you ask me. If this was changed then his access to use AWB would be taken away. Thus ending the Rich using his main account to do a lot of edits problem. It may not be the case but the timing sure is strange and its the perception I get. -- Kumioko ( talk) 16:41, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:AGF. Yes, it's prompted by a remark in the recent Rich discussion that Rule 2 doesn't require an alternate account; but also several prior occasions where I've felt it should (including, as I said, from my own editing). And since creating an alternate account takes a couple of minutes, I fail to see how it's a way of blocking him from editing! Now will you please explain the sentence I asked you about? Thanks. Rd232 ^talk 18:01, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Which comment, the one about how an automated bot would cause the edits to go scrolling by rather than me have to manually hit save or the other comment about this being Requirements creep and my opinion that we have enough rules as it is and we don't need even more. Regarding the bot issue, to be honest, I had the intention of starting a bot to do a variety of things (I made a list of about 50 things I would like to do before I stopped writing them down). I even created it, its called Bob but the whole business with Rich made me seriously reconsider if I want that kind of drama in my life and spend the next several months in daily discussions with the same 2 or three editors nitpicking every edit I make. I am more inclined these days to just request the action in BRFA and let someone else deal with the drama. I have been talking to a couple of projects about some things that they want to do though so I may still give it a go. If I do start using my bot account it would be for edits that are not pernicious in any way and I would be able to hit Start and walk away in relative certainty that there would be no problems. Personally though If I have to use a separate account just to do some simple edits because a few editors don't like their watchlists filling up I may be inclined to stop using AWB completely (and I suspect others would as well). Which I think would be a shame because I think for the most part most editros do more help than harm using it. -- Kumioko ( talk) 18:37, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

OK, breathe, Kumioko, breathe. You seem to be confusing (i) a bot account (with attendant BRFA) used for (semi-automated) AWB edits (ii) an automated bot (iii) an alternate account for separating out AWB use. Go back to the statement that opened this thread, and review what I'm actually suggesting, which is merely that (iii) should apply for anyone using AWB regularly and substantively and that the existing recommendation on point (i) be firmed up from "consider" to "should". I'm open to argument on point (i) being not worth the bother, but point (iii) is hardly any trouble at all, is it? Now as to your sentence that confused me, it was "If I had to request a bot account then I would have a much harder time watching them as their scrolling by and thus I would have a much higher error rate." but I'm gathering now that it's arising from a confusion between points (i) and (ii). A bot account doesn't have to be an automated bot. Rd232 ^talk 19:42, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Ok on the first issue I still don't see how it matters wether I use 1 account for all my edits or have a separate one (KumiokoAWB for example) to do my AWB edits. I also didn't know that there was a semi automated bot so thats my bust. Good to know though, whats the point of it though? A bot is supposed to be able to, for the most part, make edits in an automated, robot like fashion, if I have to do it semi automated (with the exception of perhaps the initial test run to work out any hickups) whats the point, I might as well use my regular account. IMO this also makes other things more complicated (for example if I wanted to be an Admin I would have to say look at this account and look at this other (possibly more than 1) account for my other edits. Rather than just look here (period). I guess it just seems like a knee jerk reaction to a problem that isn't a problem to me. I seem to be the only one with a problem with it thus far though so maybe its just me living in my own wierd little world. I dunno. -- Kumioko ( talk) 19:51, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, AWB is a semi-automated editing tool, and as such is covered by the bot policy. As to why we should separate out AWB edits: essentially, because most of the time we don't care about AWB edits, so these are just noise in an editor's Contributions list - and because of the nature of AWB, it's probably a LOT of noise. A separate account solves that, and also (for the occasion when AWB edits are being examined) makes it easier to focus on the AWB edits. If there was any likelihood of being able to filter the contributions list to hide/show AWB edits, that would be neater and easier; but even the simplest of software changes is basically "don't hold your breath", and I'm not sure it's even worth asking (though ability to filter/search contributions would be amazing for all sorts of things). A separate AWB account does the job well enough. Rd232 ^talk 20:18, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

No, I also don't see any problem with having my contributions show a mixture of AWB and other edits; that's a correct picture of what I've been doing today.

Can someone who already has a separate AWB account run this little test for me? Open Wikipedia in a browser, logged in to the main account; start AWB, logged in to the AWB account. Double-click on a page in the AWB list to open it in a browser tab. Is the new tab logged in to the main account or the AWB account? I'd want it to be logged in to the main account so that the edit I make is credited to the main account; so if the new tab actually gets logged in to the AWB account this would be a hassle. I do this every few minutes while fixing typos. -- John of Reading ( talk) 20:13, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Don't see why AWB should affect login status in your browser, which is stored in a browser cookie, while AWB works via the Wikipedia API. Rd232 ^talk 20:21, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

• In general, I would support the suggestion that editors use a separate account for AWB work. There are things to be said about transparency of work by separating the two categories of work by nature, and I actually dislike seeing my janitorial edits (and edit count) 'pollute' my work on a different qualitative level. However, judging from the complaints I've seen about some AWB edits, I'm not convinced that such a policy would actually diminish the complaints about trivial and inconsequential edits. Also, a bot is a bot, and there is still an important distinction on a technical level which separates simple (but fast) AWB use from bot operation. On balance, I feel would be just instruction creep to make this a formal requirement. The fact that the policy encourages is it good enough, IMHO. -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:20, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
  • • This isn't about trivial edits - people shouldn't generally be making trivial edits anyway. The point is precisely that AWB edits should generally be boring and uncontroversial, and mixing them in with more contestable edits and substantive discussions (in contributions history) is bad for transparency. PS A bot is indeed a bot, and AWB is semi-automated editing; I don't get your point there. Rd232 ^talk 12:33, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
  • I don't see the benefit of having two accounts for me. I frequently switch back and forth between AWB and other tools such as HotCat, Dab solver, and Reflinks. I think it would be more transparent to people viewing watchlists to see my username as doing the back to back edits, instead of two different usernames. Hiding bot edits on your watchlist also hides recent edits to the same article made by human non-AWB editors. Instead of encouraging AWB users to register as bots, we should be encouraging them to be humans and provide meaningful edits that bots alone can't do. GoingBatty ( talk) 03:06, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
    • The usernames should be similar enough (eg User and User-AWB) that transparency in that regard isn't an issue. Rd232 ^talk 12:29, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

There's a script User:X!/hidehugglecontribs.js that adds an option to show/hide Huggle edits when you are looking at someone's contributions page. Something similar would give you an option to show/hide AWB edits. -- John of Reading ( talk) 13:01, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

That's excellent! I've asked X! if he can do it ( User_talk:X!#User:X.21.2Fhidehugglecontribs.js). With that script working and suitably promoted, we might even flip the recommendation on its head: don't separate out AWB edits with an alt account...! :) Rd232 ^talk 13:14, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion I believe conflates a number of dimensions:

1. "Automation" - this is a continuum from, if you will, typing, through pop-up suggestions, java-script search and replace, browser based spell checking, manual edits where the whole change (or most) is automated but the commit is manual, batch processes, continuous processes to automatic on-wiki processes (cat counters etc.).
2. "Simplicity" simple edits are not necessarily candidates for automation, nor are they necessarily automated.
3. "Speed" the assumption is that fast editing is automated, slow editing is manual. Personally I prefer not to wait between manual edits, automted edits can happen while I'm doing something else (like sleeping).
4. "Volume" not all automated tasks are high volume - notably daily updates, this is typical of FemtoBot - one of its tasks started at about 1 page per month. Similarly I manually tagged several thousand maps GFDL (because there was no AWB in those days) and did many thousands of AWB assisted album clean-ups (I forget which part I couldn't automate at the time).
5. "Application" You can make automated edits with Firefox and manual edits with AWB - and it can be a sensible choice of application.

For these reasons the apparently attractive idea that you have a main account, and an AWB account (and a bot account) doesn't really fly. Yes I have User:Megaphone Duck - I'm not sure if it has AWB approval - but that was just to put a thumb in a dike, while I tried (and failed) to write the encyclopedia. Rich  Farmbrough, 01:55, 17 December 2010 (UTC).

• I am a copyeditor at heart, but also like to gnome by doing multiple small edits which I regard as trivial and stylistically in a whole different category. Just like Rich, who uses different bots for different functions, I would prefer my latter ce edits to stand alone to be counted. Hence my advocacy of a separate account. I wouldn't much care if it's called "OhconfuciusAWB" or "Ohconfucius' dog" if that's what the community expects. -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:35, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

"Turning off "Show pictures" in Internet Explorer options can speed up page loading times especially when the Wikipedia servers are responding slowly. Also, editors who do not normally use Internet Explorer yet use a custom monobook.js javascript (godmode-light, popups, etc...) for other browsers may see better page load performance by disabling "Active Scripting" in Internet Explorer security settings. NOTE: Those who manually update Windows will need to enable Active Scripting when manually checking for updates. The Windows update page will mention this if it is disabled. You can create a custom security level such that Active Scripting is disabled for Wikipedia, but not for other websites."

This presumably is now obsolete? Rich  Farmbrough, 15:51, 19 December 2010 (UTC).

Killed. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 10:44, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi there. Currently AWB defines an article as needing wikification based solely on the number of wikilinks. However, the Glossary and the {{ wikify}} template go beyond that, calling for section headers, info boxes, and the like. Is there any way more of these requirements could be incorporated into the automated tool? The current task I am working on is weeding out the category of articles needing wikification. There are thousands of articles that are tagged for wikification that are actually ok. But I don't want the tool to be telling me the tag can be removed based solely on the number of wikilinks present. -- Diannaa ^{( Talk)} 18:23, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Wikilinks is only 1 criterion. What about "the current number of wikilinks + at least 1 section + at least 1 category"? -- Magioladitis ( talk) 13:11, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I think uncategorized articles should be tagged {{ uncategorized}} instead. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 13:16, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

True. The general problem with some tags is that they don't exactly tell what has to be done. I worked in the past with {{ Tense}} and I in most cases I was unbale to find the problem and fix it. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 13:20, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

There was a discussion here about sending a note to the AWB developers, asking them to change what Diannaa has asked here. I think it needs to be more then just three wikilinks, a section, and a category. Possibly Rich Farmbrough's criteria? and is it possible to only need, say, five of the six for the tag to automatically come off? Nolelover ^{It's football season!} 16:45, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Carl - it would be better to remove {{ Wikify}} and add {{ Uncategorized}}, {{ Lead missing}}, {{ Sections}}, {{ Unreferenced}} or whatever other templates are appropriate to specify exactly what should be done. GoingBatty ( talk) 17:53, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

We add most of them. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 17:59, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

So you're thinking of gradually phasing out the {{ wikify}} tag? Or just not using it in favor of more descriptive ones? Nolelover ^{It's football season!} 18:07, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the criteria put in Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Wikify#AWB_changes. Further work can be directed by other tags as the ones GoingBatty writes above. I was thinking that we could also create {{ Cleanup-Html}} or something to simplify Wikify more. Wikify in its current form doesn't really help willing editors to fix stuff. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 19:08, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Note, that after AWB usually the page ha no (unnecessary) html tags. We fix bold, italics and some more. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 19:10, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but obviously most users aren't using AWB to wikify. Nolelover ^{It's football season!} 19:20, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

So I say, we implement the new logic as it was discussed in WikiProject and create a new Cleanup-HTML for pages with html tags. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 19:22, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not thinking of phasing out the {{ wikify}} template. I'm in favor of not using it in favor of more descriptive ones. For example, if an article is not categorized, don't leave (or add) the wikify template - use {{ Uncategorized}} instead. GoingBatty ( talk) 02:41, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree, except I think we should consider deleting {{ wikify}} eventually. WikiCopter ( radio • sorties • images • simplicity • lost • defense • attack) 03:32, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, maybe let humans use Wikify and other agents smarten the tagging? Anything to make it easier for us dumb humans. Rich  Farmbrough, 23:18, 21 December 2010 (UTC).

Cleanup-Html

I created {{ Cleanup-Html}}. Please help improving it (or send to Tfd if you don't like it!) -- Magioladitis ( talk) 16:41, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Moved to {{ Cleanup-HTML}} :~) Rich  Farmbrough, 23:33, 21 December 2010 (UTC).

Okay, so I have this regexp for finding ranges of years: ([1-2][0-9][0-9][0-9](\]\])?)\ ?-\ ?(((\[\[)?[1-2][0-9][0-9][0-9]|[Pp]resent)). It works pretty well, but the main source of false positives is when there's a year range in a URL. How can I modify this so that it doesn't match URL strings?— Chowbok ☠ 03:39, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Could you give me an example of one. I have a couple ideas but I want to test it out on one. -- Kumioko ( talk) 03:59, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Sure, I get stuff like this all the time:

[http://www.example.com/history-of-foo-1967-1989.html History of Foo, 1967-1989]

So I want to match the second "1967-1989", but not the one in the URL.— Chowbok ☠ 04:19, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

If you only want to find ranges of years in prose, could you assume that there would always be a space in front of the year, and therefore add a \s at the front of your code? GoingBatty ( talk) 17:17, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

No, I want to match this in headers and tables as well, so that's not a safe assumption.— Chowbok ☠ 18:21, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

You need to use " negative look-behind" which I am not very good at... But you might wish to change your regex anyway to

([1-2]\d{3}(\]\])?)\ *-\ *(((\[\[)?[1-2]\d{3}|[Pp]resent))

(and look at other dashes [−–—-] (? should be minus endash emdash hyphen)

Rich  Farmbrough, 23:22, 21 December 2010 (UTC).

The latest general fixes are adding "date = December 2010" to every call to {{ coord missing}}, but the template documentation says nothing about a "date" parameter. Is this is a mistake? Is there a discussion somewhere? -- John of Reading ( talk) 17:31, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I've removed {{ Coord missing}} and {{ No geolocation}} from Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Dated templates, so AWB won't add the date parameter anymore. GoingBatty ( talk) 17:57, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

The simplest solution! Thanks. -- John of Reading ( talk) 18:27, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Historically {{ Coord missing}} was dated, but someone's robot (which was adding the coords) couldn't cope (!?) so we stopped doing it. Which is actually a "Bad Thing". Rich  Farmbrough, 23:24, 21 December 2010 (UTC).

Incidentally, observers might be interested to note that I had been dating a number of clean up templates for several years in advance of their supporting a date parameter. This proactive approach means that once a date parameter is added, the categorisation is not all into this months category. Rich  Farmbrough, 23:27, 21 December 2010 (UTC).

I noticed in this edit {{ Copy edit}}is not borged into {{ Multiple issues}}. Rich  Farmbrough, 00:13, 22 December 2010 (UTC).

Wfm in 5.2.0.0 and for Rjw too. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 00:58, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

Is there a way I can set the default behavior of the diff window to display as preview rather than show the diff? Currently the only way I know of to see what the change looks like is to hit the preview button after the diff window appears. I find that for some changes it is easier for me to view the change than the difference. -- Kumioko ( talk) 17:31, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

On the AWB menu, try Preferences > General > On load = Show preview -- John of Reading ( talk) 17:36, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Aww Awesome thanks. No matter how much I use this application i keep learning new stuff. -- Kumioko ( talk) 17:38, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

How do I make a list with any articles. So I don't need to pick an item in the drop-down list. Thank you.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 17:49, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

If you key the article names as wikilinks in a text file, you can load them into the list by selecting "Text file" as the source. See Wikipedia:AWB/MAN#Make_list -- John of Reading ( talk) 18:02, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

I am new to using the more advanced features of AWB. I have created articles before. I would like to collect data from articles in one project to use it in another project. Most data I am looking for is in templates. Using the database scanner I can find the articles I am looking for, but how do I go about it from there? EdBever ( talk) 08:05, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Can you give us a little more info on exactly what your trying to do? -- Kumioko ( talk) 14:55, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I create new articles in nl:wp by building a spreadsheet with various datacollections. Some data can be derived from other sources or categories on other wikipedia projects, but I would like to collect data from templates, such as coordinates and other stuff. So I would like to visit an article (from a list I created with the database scanner or any other way lists can be created) and find, for example, the text |lat= xxx.xxx and make a list (textfile) containg article=name;lat=xxx.xxx;lon=xxx.xxx etc. EdBever ( talk) 19:57, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I posted this under the Custom modules talk page but I thought I would have better luck here. I am using a custom module that uses the logic to allow multiple Custom Modules to process which is working for me. I cannot figure out how, or if its even possible to set one to process at the beginning (preferably before the Find and replace and general edits) and set another one to process at the end (after the find and replace and general edits). Is that something that can be done and could you point me in the right direction? My assumption is that I have to manually set each of the general preferences and or Find and replaces in the order I want it to process in the module but I wanted to verify that before I went to the trouble. -- Kumioko ( talk) 22:20, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Check Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Real_user_manual#Order_or_procedures. Custom module(s) is(are) always before the general fixes. Unless, you load your customised general fixes as a module too. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 15:06, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Note: I changed Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Real user manual#Order or procedures which erroneously showed Custom module after Find and replace. Custom module actually runs before Find and replace. MANdARAX •  XAЯAbИAM 19:49, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks I thought so too but was too chicken to change it. -- Kumioko ( talk) 19:56, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

The problem I am running into is that I need to change the order of precedence for some of the items in general fixes. One example that I ran into is with adding the WPBS template (this is just one example though there are are others). The current logic in AWB skips WPMILHIST and a couple of others (which also sometimes causes the banner to be tossed out of the banner shell). What I have been doing is tricking it by changing it to WikiProject Military history in the Module, then the general fix will allow it to be added to the wikiprojectbannershell (because it recognizes it as WikiProject vice WP), and I use another find and replace to change it back to WPMILHIST with the after general fixes box checked. This causes problems with some of the other fixes though that need to preocess before so depending on the changes being made to the article by the general fixes logic I sometimes have to make a second pass by the article later. -- Kumioko ( talk) 16:25, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Is there a way to pass a file name or a page name to an external pl script from AWB? Snowman ( talk) 23:30, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, an AWB custom module would allow you to use a C# System command to execute any program/executable on your PC, and you can pass in the article title and text from a custom module. Rjwilmsi 00:40, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

I have got the perl script working and it inputs the complete text of files. The text editing the script makes are shown in the AWB diff screen, and I have saved a few edits. I am still not clear on how to pass the file name to the script. Snowman ( talk) 11:28, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

%%file%%

— Ree dy 15:27, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Could you put a bit more detail with that please? Are you saying that AWB can write to the @ARGV array? I am using external program processing and I pass the article text to a file. I would like to use the file name in the script. Snowman ( talk) 15:44, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand User:Reedy's post either. But here is one way to get hold of the article title: on the "More..." tab, you can ask AWB to prepend some text to the article before passing it to your script. If this text includes any AWB keywords - as described about 25% of the way down this page, AWB will prepend the values of the keywords instead. Thus your code or script will see the article name as an extra line at the front of the article text. Does that help? I would hope there's a more direct way than this, though, and bear in mind that I've never written any AWB code or scripts myself. -- John of Reading ( talk) 21:48, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

That is how AWB can put various parameters onto the editing field, but an external script sees the file before AWB adds these parameters, so it is no use to the external script (as far as I am aware). I think that your method might work with two edits of the file - one to add the parameter and then a second to use AWB to run the script and process the parameter. I particularly want to avoid running AWB over files twice and do it in one step. Snowman ( talk) 22:35, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

                System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo psi = new System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
                                                              {
                                                                  WorkingDirectory = Path.GetDirectoryName(txtProgram.Text),
                                                                  FileName = Path.GetFileName(txtProgram.Text),
                                                                  Arguments = txtParameters.Text.Replace("%%file%%", txtFile.Text)
                                                              };

                if (radFile.Checked)
                {
                    if (txtFile.Text.Contains("\\"))
                        WikiFunctions.Tools.WriteTextFileAbsolutePath(articleText, ioFile, false);
                    else
                        WikiFunctions.Tools.WriteTextFile(articleText, ioFile, false);
                }
                else
                    psi.Arguments = psi.Arguments.Replace("%%articletext%%", articleText);

                System.Diagnostics.Process p = System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(psi);

It should pass whatever filename you've set in the bottom text box (if you're using the file operation) to equal the path you've set in the bottom text box. The only obvious omission I can see, is that there is no way to ascertain the article title. It will effectively do - "WhateverFileYouSaidToExecute.exe parametershere". I'm confused as to what you are saying about the external program seeing the file before AWB adds the parameters. When tested, MS word would open the specified text file, when closed, AWB would continue and read it in fine. — Ree dy 23:57, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

I have entered the file paths to AWB and so AWB can use my perl script and a text file containing the article code. I have saved changes made by the script, so my script is working fine with AWB. I am trying to pass the article name (or file name for images) from AWB to the script. AWB can add the article name to the article code with the %%filename%% expression, but this is added to the article after the script has finished with the article mark up code, and so the script can not use the article name, when it it entered onto the article in this way. I am using perl and have no idea what you have written above in C#. When a pl file is started, a string after the file path can be used as a parameter and it is saved in the @ARGV array. I have been looking for parameters here, but the array is empty. You say "When tested, MS word would open the specified text file, when closed, AWB would continue and read it in fine.", and that is what I am saying - that AWB processes the file after external applications. Snowman ( talk) 01:17, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Attempting to pass article name to perl's "@ARGV: "WhateverFileYouSaidToExecute.exe %%filename%%" in AWB's "Tools: External processing", AWB says "External program processing error ... the system can not find the file specified". Snowman ( talk) 11:43, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Feature request filed. Rich  Farmbrough, 06:54, 30 December 2010 (UTC).

Resolved

It seems that the inputs to 'Find and replace' must be fed one line at a time. Is there a less cumbersome way, like being able to substitute an entire block of F&R rules by externalisation (a la typo), copy and paste (as per Custom modules) or import/export? -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:01, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

They are saved to the "settings" file as XML, so you could try to edit them there. -- John of Reading ( talk) 08:35, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks, John. -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:36, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Long time listener, first time caller... :)

I am an expert at Microsoft Word's wildcard find and replace, but AutoWikiBrowse alludes me. I need a find and replace function which finds all gallery tags on my wiki, and adds File: or Image: to those lines which do not have File: or Image: between the tag.

So for example, I have this coding on my wiki:

<gallery widths=300>
Image:Hastings_Ismay.jpg
File:Hastings_Ismay.jpg
Hastings_Ismay.jpg
</gallery>

I need File: added to the last line.

As described here, Wikia gallery tags do not require file: or image: but every other wiki does. Wikia uses an extension, Photo Gallery, which creates unique gallery coding which is not used by anyone else. I left wikia, and I can't find this extension, and even if I could, wikia coding is designed only for wikia.

Any help would be most appreciated. Adamtheclown ( talk) 17:45, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Hello all, I am from the Arabic Wikipedia .. I seek the help

After updating to version AutoWikiBrowser5200

I figured the problem,

Where the following message appears "Aiman titi is not enabled to use this"

Although it allowed me to use AutoWikiBrowser ... please help

I also think that the problem is there are a lot of the users of the Arabic Wikipedia, if not all of them .... Thank you - Aiman Saeed أيـمـن. 11:05, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

It likes to do this randomly. Normally Id attribute it to a loss of session data, but occasionally it seems to do it just for the hell of it. Each time the countdown gets longer, but everytime it reaches 0 and starts going again. How can I make this timer start at 1 second every time so that I don't have to wait 22 seconds for the program to wake up? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  ^τ _¢ 00:19, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Post to avoid archival. Is there no way to do this? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  ^τ _¢ 15:50, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm assuming not. Can future releases incorporate a timer that doesn't increase exponentially, or some manual override? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  ^τ _¢ 23:44, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Currently working with svwp typos fixes, noticing the problem that common typos oftenly gives a few false positives. It might be in texts of other languages and can be excluded from typo fixing by the {lang}-template, even though this is often a blunt tool especially on non-English Wikipedias, since a lot of names and titles that is referred to is in English, meaning that with use of {lang} it would need to be used 10-100 hundred times in the same article. Even some typos in the same language as the language edition of Wikipedia may be intentional in names and titles. Sometimes a very common typo may be a correct spelling of a very uncommon word. This problem is probably common no matter what language version of the Wikipedia.

When just going through the typo list once, this might not be a big problem, but when going over the same articles which include these false positives over and over again, not just does it mean extra work to skip the suggested changes over and again, sooner or later a non observant user may click "save" creating annoying users who need to revert the edit. This has happened over and over again in the same articles, and it will happen again, unless the articles is rewritten or some special rule is added to the regex to exclude the typo.

So, when going through the history of this talk page, I can't see that easier solutions to these problems has been discussed. Has anyone of you continously contributing to the typos work, either by extending/fixing the typos list or doing the actual typo fixing by help from the list, thought about what changes in AutoWikiBrowser that could facilitate a work-around of these problems?

I am thinking of possible part solutions, and I would be interested to hear your ideas before requesting new features. Also to know which changes to AutoWikiBrowser that might be easier to make and what changes that might facilitate the work the most.

1. Adding more templates like {lang}, for example a template that is just stating that the word included is indeed correctly spelled (or could it be tagged some other way to not be processed by AWB?).
2. Can the typo list syntax along with find= and replace= add for example "excluded=<name of article1>, <name of article2> etc." so that certain articles may be excluded from certain typofix rules? This would allow for a simpler find=-regex.
3. Can the typo list syntax add "comment=<something that one should be observant about i.e. false positive situations etc.>". This would make it easier for people using AWB typo fixing to avoid mistakes. These popups needs to be possible to switch of at choice.
4. Can the typo list syntax add group names ("group=<group name>") to the typo lines, so that one can choose which typo fixes should be included. Using different groups (and that the users can choose which groups rules to be applied) can allow typos with a higher number of false positives to be accepted. Because if you choose to include this group in your settings, you are aware that you need to click skip more often. For those who don't want that, they will just use those rules which have no known possible false positives, being able to edit at a higher speed.
5. Can some regexes that do just small changes (adding a dot to a abbreviation, changing a spelling to a somewhat more suited spelling etc.) to be marked as "minor", so that they will be skipped unless some other typo is also made in the edit?
6. Creating a list of typos from a dump, matched regexes are included in the list, even if no change is made by the regex. Result is either you need to complicate the regex to not match the correct spelling, or you will get a list full of pages there will be no typos fix on when edited. If the list creator would take this into account, you don't need to worry about exclude the correct spelling from the regex rule.

I would appreciate if someone with deeper knowledge in AWB, AWB/Typos and AWB programming aswell as using more comprehendable English could help by formulate the result of this discussion to add it to AWB/T feature request. ~ Dodde ( talk) 13:18, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I always put false positives in the sic template, like so: {{sic|hide=y|exampleword}}. This will prevent it from coming up again in AWB.— Chowbok ☠ 14:55, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Imagine a user interface where you could ask for the current article to be re-processed with certain rules and fixes turned off. Example: A magic key pops up a dialog box that tells you which rules made changes to the article (general fixes A, B, C and typo rules P, Q and R), with tickboxes so that you can ask for the article to be re-processed with some of those rules disabled. -- John of Reading ( talk) 18:04, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

You can also use {{ not a typo}} to mark false positives. GoingBatty ( talk) 18:23, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

John, you mean if these settings were actually saved for the next user? Yes, that would be something! GoingBatty: Well, for enwp that might work, but for Wikipedias where English is a foreign language, it will result in a tremendous number of "not a typo" tags...

Wouldn't it be better to improve the typos mechanism instead of clutter the actual articles with templates keeping the typos-bot away? ~ Dodde ( talk) 18:59, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:AWB/T is for English-language corrections. For Wikipedias where the default language is not English, it would be great if AWB would allow you to specify a different page. It would also be nice to have some additional functionality on the Typos tab to revert individual typo fixes and one click to add {{ not a typo}}. GoingBatty ( talk) 19:10, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

By default, it just uses the same local page on that language. It can be overridden on the CheckPage though

Indeed, we use a custom page on the RuneScape Wikia, which is mainly Br Eng, with a few exceptions. Rich  Farmbrough, 10:18, 4 January 2011 (UTC).

Could someone please update the AWB documentation to include what the Set operations functionality in the List Filter screen does? Thanks! GoingBatty ( talk) 00:54, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Let A be your pre-filtered list. Load a text file with pagenames. Let's call it B. Then choose whether you want to take pages that exist both in A and B (intersection) or pages that exist in exactly one of A and B (symmetric difference). -- Magioladitis ( talk) 23:55, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

Whatever happened to the disambiguations solving function? Instead of loading the links on the page, AWB suddenly loads the links to the page, and presents those links as options for solving disambiguations - Quistnix ( talk) 15:12, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

API/Mediawiki bug I guess. ListProviders changed behaviour. I' ll inform Reedy. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 15:29, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

It works fine for me right now. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 15:38, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Here too. Something must have changed. Don't know what, just as long as it works again - Quistnix ( talk) 16:18, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

There's a lot of bloated See also sections, especially on popular pages. There is of course spam etc, but usually about half the links suitable for removal are links that already appear in the article. Removal would be MUCH faster if automated (AWB to the rescue!(?)). Is multiple wiki-links delinking feature suitable for this, or would this need to be a new feature? -- Wikiloop ( talk) 19:08, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I wonder if some regex could be written to capture this. It seems like something that might be possible but I can envison there being quite a few false positives so I don't know if this would be suitable for a built in function. Maybe though Ill let the AWB developers comments on that. It sounds like a good idea though in theory. -- Kumioko ( talk) 19:13, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, if I use a custom wiki and this don't have a page for typos (as Wikipedia), AWB invite to use English typos. But, in this case, I would use Italian typos. Is it possible now?-- B3t ( talk) 15:26, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

No, we don't support that in the released version, but if you compile your own copy of AWB you can change line 89 of RegExTypoFix to point at the it-wiki page. Rjwilmsi 17:34, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

OK, thanks.-- B3t ( talk) 17:48, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I can't open AWB even though I've downloaded it already. It keeps asking me "would you like to extract the files"? -- Perseus, Son of Zeus 18:21, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

If you've just downloaded something called "AutoWikiBrowser<version numbers>.zip" then your next step is to extract the files. You'll end up with a new folder named just "AutoWikiBrowser" and inside that will be the "AutoWikiBrowser.exe" that you need to run. -- John of Reading ( talk) 19:25, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

When I extracted the files, McAfee tagged it as possible spyware. Has anyone else had this problem? Aristophanes68 ( talk) 22:46, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

After I've upgraded to a new AWB version, McAfee asks me whether I should allow AWB to connect to the Internet. I don't think the McAfee message mentioned spyware, though. -- John of Reading ( talk) 15:34, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I'm starting to use AWB in the German Wikipedia this time. Now I've got one question on the "Find and Replace" feature. I am using the "Replace Special" window. My problem is that I want to mark the pagename bold when it first appears in the article - excepting there is already a word that is marked bold. My configuration is:

If not contains ''': Find %%pagename%%, replace with '''%%pagename%%'''. 

First I thought this works OK but I discovered it marks every appearance of %%pagename%% bold! Is there a solution to solve this problem? Thanks in advance -- Carport-en ( talk) 18:35, 22 January 2011 (UTC) P.S.: Sorry for my German Englisch ;-)

Bolding the title when it first appears in the article is already one of AWB's general fixes. GoingBatty ( talk) 18:39, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Having said that, I also reported a bug for the English Wikipedia that the article title isn't emboldened in the article if it is immediately preceded by a template. If you're seeing the same issue on the German Wikipedia, feel free to add some examples to my bug report. GoingBatty ( talk) 18:46, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

OK, but in some times I disable the general fixes... Is there a "normal" solution? -- Carport-en ( talk) 18:48, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Hey. I have a question. How do I find and replace all (-) to (—) in articles, BUT without touching (|-) ??? This is because in latvian language the only right dash is long one, but I don't want to touch templates and other lists where (-) is used. Any ideas? Thanks. -- -- Digital1 ( talk) 15:43, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

See if this works: Find ([^\|])- and replace with $1— with "regular expression" ticked.

That should find one character that is not a pipe, followed by a short dash, and replace them with the first character that you just found, followed by a long dash. -- John of Reading ( talk) 15:54, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it works! Thank You John :) -- -- Digital1 ( talk) 16:00, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I have a few queries on AWB. If they've been asked before please direct me to archives as appropriate.

The rules section [1] indicates that users should not make 'insignificant or inconsequential changes only' when using AWB. I assume this means that there is no way for AWB to automatically pick this up, although is there any scope to look into adding this functionality to AWB so as it could recongise this and flag it to the AWB user?

The section also uses the wording '...or something equally trivial'. I think it would be useful if a full list of what is regarded as trivial is listed, as I think potentially some other AWB changes could reasonably be regarded as minor (e.g. minor tagging changes, grammar and typos [2]). It should also be made clear that cumulative trivial changes would also still be regarded as trivial overall, except perhaps if a certain (approximate) number were made at the same time. Regards. Eldumpo ( talk) 12:30, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

There is an archived discussion here. -- John of Reading ( talk) 13:34, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing me to that previous discussion. I see there was some agreement on the need to clarify inconsequent although things did not really move to action. Would it be worth going through the main sub-sections of AWB and deciding (for the non-obvious ones) whether they are regarded as insignificant, in which case they should be added to point 4 of the rules list. As a starter, should entries which only insert or remove a comma in dates be listed? I note in the previous thread a question was asked about the program software being changed to recognise minor changes, although this was not answered. I'd appreciate any thoughts on these posts. Thanks. Eldumpo ( talk) 12:31, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

IMO anything that changes the rendering is OK. anything that doesn't is insignificant unless there is consensus to do it. We have options to skip if only whitespace is changed, if only minor fixes, etc. Editor's are expected to judge themselves if they want to save or not. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 12:38, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I se enough editors who agrevate me and my watchlist with the removal of whitelines or spaces from headers (Rich Farmbrough comes to mind) using AWB. These options should be disabled automatically if no other changes are being made. Debresser ( talk) 15:13, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

When adding a WikiProject template to an article talk page engenders the following edit summary I get irritated: "Assess, Importance, Add or Cleanup talk page templates, formatting template/section order &general fixes using AWB (7522)" [3]. Such summaries are less than helpful, imho. __ meco ( talk) 00:29, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Each person who uses AWB chooses what edit summary they want to appear on each edit. I suggest you follow up with this editor individually. Good luck! GoingBatty ( talk) 02:32, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Since I am the offender in question here what may I ask would be your suggestion for the statement I should use. For some back ground info, In addition to adding banners I also have approximately 2000 lines of logic that does things such as reorder templates (move things like article history about the Wikiproject templates or move Wikirproject Biography to top billing of projects if living=yes and the edits listed here that does things like standardize the talk page banners templates and fix invalid parameter problems. It would be impractical or technically impossible to provide a description that explains every change or that changes with every edit. I am open to suggestions though of a better summery if you have any. Here is one example of where it also changed a banner Category talk:History of labor relations in the United States and here where I did try and tailor the edit summery a little more specifically to what I was doing (although it still could probably stand improvement). -- Kumioko ( talk) 11:44, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I like GoingBatty's trick. I think they created two-three alternatives and choose one each time. Custom module can also help adding edit summary depending on the action taken. Well, there is always this problem to describe exactly what has be done. I myself fail constantly to do it. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 11:57, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I think part of my problem is that I am trying to do so many different kinds of edits at the same time that it becomes difficult to nail down exactly what I am doing. Expecially when you have a large page were there are a lot of edits being done. Which is of course a double edged sword. Do I do less things at once which causes more edits to be done to the article (and snice many of the changes are considered minor may not be done at all) or do I do more edits at once, allowing less changes over time to the article but causes the edit summery to be more ambiguous. -- Kumioko ( talk) 14:04, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I usually note the main change and then add "and [[WP:GNEFIXES|general fixes]]". Autogenerated edit summary helps with the rest. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 14:13, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Here's what I do.] Art LaPella ( talk) 14:54, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Magioladitis! I have 12 edit summaries I commonly use, which are various combinations of Added [[WP:PERSONDATA|Persondata]], [[WP:AWB/T|fixed typos]], [[WP:AWB/GF|general fixes]], and other cleanup, depending on what I'm doing for that particular article. I also have the Find & Replace option to add replacements to edit summary turned on. If I'm doing something special, I'll create another one for that project. Of course, I'm not using 2000 lines of logic, so it's a bit easier for me.  :-) GoingBatty ( talk) 03:00, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

One of the general fixes removes all <small> tags from image captions. I tend to reprocess the page with the general fixes turned off when this happens, because I can't find any justification for it in the manual of style ( MOS:CAPTION, WP:CAPTION). What am I missing? -- John of Reading ( talk) 09:53, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

The font size in captions is already small. What does the small tag make? This was also discussed in WP:CHECKWIKI at some point. This is error 66 of checkwiki. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 09:56, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I could add it to the manual of style if necessary. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 09:59, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Good idea. -- John of Reading ( talk) 10:02, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I added it here. Now someone has to correct my English and make clear, if necessary, that captions are in smaller font by default. I created a news shortcut too: WP:FONTSIZE. I hope this helps. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 10:37, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I found the archived Checkwiki discussion, but I'm not convinced that this should be added to the Manual of Style without a wider discussion. The example I found this morning was Ralph Flanders, where parts of the captions are clearly intended to be seen as less important. -- John of Reading ( talk) 17:02, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I asked some more admins before adding and they seemed to agree with that. I think your example is also against the last bullet where it reads that "Captions should be succinct; more information about the image can be included on its description page, or in the main text.". -- Magioladitis ( talk) 21:08, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

OK, I'll allow AWB to remove these <small> tags in future. -- John of Reading ( talk) 09:05, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

Currently, AWB has a hard limit of 25000 entries when it generates a list. This is probably fine for most projects. But on Wiktionary, categories can often become much larger than that. English nouns, probably the largest category that exists there, currently contains 133411 entries. I'm wondering whether this limit is part of the MediaWiki software itself or part of AWB. If it's the latter, I think it would be useful to have this limit user-configurable, so that it can be increased in cases where it's just not enough. And if having huge lists isn't feasible, could it be possible to allow the list to be generated in sections? So for example I could ask for all entries starting from 25000, so that I can go over all entries in chunks rather than not at all. CodeCat ( talk) 15:36, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

We have a plugin for that. It's called NoLimits. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 18:31, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Ooh thank you! That does just what I need. CodeCat ( talk) 23:16, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Hello. I want to define some exceptions, can someone please help me?

• How to define that between random digits point "." is chanding to "," comma (example 23.4 -> 23,4) ... maybe there is some formula, that tells AWB that it means some digit and letter (random digit point (that will be changed to comma) and again random digit)?
• The same: remove spaces that is between random digits and dash (example 25 — 27 -> 25—27) but do not touch space betweeen dash and words?
• How to define some exceptions to phrases. For example I am using (Fing: "-", Replace with: "—") but I don't want that phrase "t-veida" is changed to "t—veida"?

-- -- Digital1 ( talk) 18:36, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Try the following regular expressions:

Find	Replace
(\d+)\.(\d+)	$1,$2
(\d+)\s+—\s+(\d+)	$1—$2
\b([A-Za-z]+)-([A-Za-z]+)\b(?<!\bt—veida\b)	$1—$2

Good luck! GoingBatty ( talk) 04:07, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I believe (\d+).(\d+) should be (\d+)\.(\d+) otherwise the period will match any character. Art LaPella ( talk) 04:13, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

You're right - I've corrected the proposal above. Thanks for catching my mistake! GoingBatty ( talk) 04:33, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely amazing, Thank You so much!!! Maybe You need to make some section for regular guys, like me, where to describe how to build such formulas? Greetings from LV ;) -- -- Digital1 ( talk) 10:51, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

We have Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Regular expression, but I haven't always had time – or the certainty – to document features when I couldn't get them to work. Art LaPella ( talk) 22:29, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I am using the autowikibrowser on my wiki. As there are only 2500 pages, and an additional 1000 templates, I want to search the entire wiki, everytime.

I am very interested in how I could do this with the current options. The only option I think that would do this is adding every page to my watchlist, but this would be tedious.

All of the searches I have tried do not add the templates on my wiki.

Can someone please help me? Adamtheclown ( talk) 04:19, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Use the "Special pages" list provider, click make list, then use the all pages option on the window that pops up. Reedy ( talk) 11:04, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Reedy. this is very helpful! Errectstapler ( talk) 15:37, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Where do I discuss a user who is making controversial edits with AWB? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:13, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

It depends. Here? WP:ANI? -- Magioladitis ( talk) 11:01, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Have you raised the matter on that user's talk page? He/she might come back with a good explanation. -- John of Reading ( talk) 12:20, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I coubt it. This is one of the language reformers putting in one of the provisions of MOS (MOSNUM diagrees on the point in question, and as usual it's controversial). But I will follow procedure. Would you mind documenting it next to how to acquire AWB? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:29, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

• Please assume good faith. -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:17, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Start with their talk page. If the user is not an admin, and the issue is unresolved, it is possible to ask someone to remove their AWB access until the matter is resolved. That can be done as part of an ANI discussion. If they are an admin, there is little you can do except go to ANI. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 13:24, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

• IMHO, it would be highly inappropriate to seek suspension of AWB access at this stage. There is no demonstrable conflict, nor any attempt at directly contacting the user concerned. -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:17, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

• I got wind of this from the MoS talk page, where Mr Anderson has been very active in the past few days about several well-established stylistic matters in the MoS that are of great concern to him. I agree with Ohconfucius that this thread is premature. Tony (talk) 14:47, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Can everybodt please be more specific? What is the case exactly? -- Magioladitis ( talk) 14:57, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

• Yeah... pray, tell. Nobody here can read your mind, Anderson. ;-) -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:50, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

From today's New Scientist (page 44, UK edition)

Can data visualisation tell stories that have never been told?
MW: Sure [...] One example is a visualisation called History Flow, which shows individuals' editing histories on Wikipedia. We discovered all sorts of patterns we hadn't expected. For instance, people tend to edit Wikipedia in alphabetical order. Who knew?

At last, public recognition for whichever developer implemented AWB's "Keep alphabetized" option. Congratulations! -- John of Reading ( talk) 07:41, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

How do I search for something not in a defined set of strings? I thought [^(abc|def)] would work, but it accepts a,b,c,d,e,f, and not just the strings abc,def.

Also, is there a way to search for repeating characters, say a bb within a set string?

Thanks, — kwami ( talk) 02:21, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

For the first item you are talking about lookarounds, for the second b+ or b{2} will work, depending on whether you want a fixed number of repeated characters or not. Rjwilmsi 23:23, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not following the lookaround link. Could you give a simple example? Let's say I want to return a hit for any string that contains a sequence other than (abc|def)? (For example, a language has an alphabet in which several letters only occur in certain digraphs, like English qu, Swahili ch, Japanese wa, or Mandarin ji ~ ju; I want to find any letters which do not occur in that alphabet, but also any q which is not in qu, and any c which is not in ch, any w which is not in wa, etc.)

The other solution is too narrow. What if I want repetitions of any member of the set [A-Za-z]? Do I need to list each as a separate rule? — kwami ( talk) 11:58, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I noticed that when an article title and the defaultsort are different, AWB follows the defaultsort to add the name to the Persondata. This is of course useful when the only difference between title and defaultsort is word order, but when the title is truly different (through an error, a page move, or for some othre reason), I believe that the article title should get preference over the defaultsort instead of vice versa, or that AWB should just skip such pages. Examples: [4] and [5]. Fram ( talk) 10:38, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

AWB users should be reviewing all the general fixes, of course, but I admit I would not have spotted these discrepancies either. -- John of Reading ( talk) 10:46, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I guess the people who fix defaultsort can fix Persondata too. This kind of problems is possible to any automated process. If a page, for instance, is in cat living people, AWB will treat it as a living person even if the page was miscategorised. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 10:57, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh well, it would be nice if some easy check was possible to skip pages where the title and the defaultsort are really very different, like the ones above, but if it isn't really easy to implement, we'll have to live with it (an AWb users will have one more thing to check manually before accepting AWB changes :-) ). Fram ( talk) 11:04, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

What we can do, and I would like, is to generate a separate value for name at least when we are generating the defaultsort', because not all the defaultsort rules actually need apply to persondata name. But taking the functional definition (as I remarked elsewhere, al we really have) we should probably put the article name in the "alternative names" field - the implication from the documentation we had from the Germans (and the way we have been working) is that the "name" is in index format. Rich  Farmbrough, 14:17, 7 February 2011 (UTC).

I think what Rich says makes sense. -- Kumioko ( talk) 20:40, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I tend to agree with that (not with the use of lowercase prameters! :) ) but we have to discuss this in persondata's talk page. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 23:06, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Previously discussed September 2009, December 2009 and March 2010. All of the symptoms described are what I've been experiencing for several months now. Depending on what I'm doing I can work around it but there are some edits I just can't do unless I make the change and copy it to clipboard then let AWB run through its little error and start all over again. Then I quickly paste the change back in and save. Brad ( talk) 21:51, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't experience this on my home internet connection but have had this using other connections, where the limit seems to be about 10 seconds before the timout/connection closed problem occurs. On that basis I'm not sure it's an AWB problem. Rjwilmsi 23:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I wonder why this problem doesn't occur when I edit with a normal browser? Seems like it would. Brad ( talk) 01:01, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

I don't know if it's related to the above, but AWB keeps trying to add persondata to Deaths in 2011, which is clearly incorrect. —   Tivedshambo  ( t/ c) 18:16, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

rev 7502 Already fixed for next release. Rjwilmsi 22:16, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. —   Tivedshambo  ( t/ c) 23:00, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

I am also facing this issue. Just tried one single word to find and replace both advanced and normal settings aren't worked. Please help. version 5.2 -- Mahir78 ( talk) 05:12, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

You have to screenshot too I guess. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 08:24, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Please find it here Image:AWBFindReplaceIssue.jpg. Thanks -- Mahir78 ( talk) 15:11, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Check that you haven't put a space after "Tiruvarur". Epbr123 ( talk) 13:20, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

There is no spaces.. still no luck. pls help -- Mahir78 ( talk) 15:34, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Check that "Apply changes automatically" is ticked under the "Options" menu. Epbr123 ( talk) 16:01, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Great. that works. Thank you so much. -- Mahir78 ( talk) 17:38, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I object to the use of RegexTypoFix to "fix" things which are not typos. The specific issue this time involves contractions, but similar issues have been discussed before. There are two threads about contractions on WT:AWB/T, but they're mostly about how to do it, rather than whether to. Kumioko's objection there kind of got buried, so I've brought the issue here for wider discussion. Correct fixes of words which are truly typos should be absolutely uncontroversial. But I can easily see how editors could object to their words being changed just to replace a contraction. The MOS says that the " use of contractions ... should generally be avoided". That is certainly far from a strong statement requiring that they always be replaced. Plus, I detest false edit summaries, and that's exactly what is produced by this, when AWB says it fixed typos which are not typos. MANdARAX •  XAЯAbИAM 22:54, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Can you please be more specific? Example? -- Magioladitis ( talk) 23:26, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't object to any specific edit. I object to the general use of RegexTypoFix to "fix" anything other than typos, and to the resulting edit summaries which falsely claim that a typo was fixed when there was, in fact, no typo. Typo fixing should be for, well, fixing typos, not enforcing loosely suggested MOS stylistic preferences. MANdARAX •  XAЯAbИAM 00:15, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I've disabled those rules for now. Yes, I agree that these rules are in a different class to most of the others. I've posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors in the hope that we can get some input from a wider selection of copy-editors. -- John of Reading ( talk) 10:20, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I've been meaning to comment for some time that these changes aren't technically typos. However, despite occasional false-positives (as there are with any other changes), it seems to be doing more good than harm, and therefore I feel should be re-instated, possibly changing the default edit summary instead ("typos fixed" to "text errors fixed" perhaps?). In the longer term, possibly the expansion of contractions could be programmed into the software, as an selectable option. —   Tivedshambo  ( t/ c) 11:49, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 119#Contractions, again. I think the contractions, at least, should remain "out". -- JHunterJ ( talk) 12:21, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't see it as a problem that some things are being fixed despite not being typos. AWB fixes a lot of things, most of which aren't typos. Just because contractions are fixed by the part that is called a typo fixer doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. Why don't we change the name of the typo fixer if it's bothering people? McLerristarr |  Mclay1 15:12, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The MOS discussion is continuing at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Contractions.2C_again. I think we should leave the contraction rules off until/unless we see a wide consensus in favour of them. -- John of Reading ( talk) 16:37, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I emphatically agree that contractions should not be expanded mechanically. This is a matter of style, of tone, of cadence. Bots are ill-equipped to deal with such considerations. It is certainly appropriate to state, as a matter of style, that contractions ought to be avoided, but that is a general principle, not one to be obeyed dogmatically. Contractions are not errors; AWB has absolutely no business trying to "fix" them. —  Shmuel ( talk) 17:51, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Contractions aside, there are other fixes that AWB (rightly) fixes, but aren't typos (such as this). Will these be removed as well? I would strongly oppose such a move. —   Tivedshambo  ( t/ c) 18:40, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The example you cite, "comprises of", is unambiguously an error. Contractions are no such thing. (Targeting "comprised of" would be more questionable; I avoid that usage, as do many others, but there is legitimate support for it.) —  Shmuel ( talk) 20:04, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I also don't (like the well placed contraction there :-)) agree with the contactions "cleanup" IMO the replacement of Doesn't to Does not is more of a cultural english change than anything else. For example, British English is a bit more formal and using contractions is much less common. In most dialects of American English however it is more casual and the use of contractions is more evident and common. Additionally, I think to eliminate the contractions makes the article more difficult for most to read and in many cases I have seen when the contraction is removied the sentance doesn't flow right and ends up needing to be adjusted or rewritten. -- Kumioko ( talk) 20:38, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Do you have any source to suggest that contractions are more common in American English than British English? Contractions are much more common than expanded forms in casual speech and writing in both languages; however, in formal language, it is a general rule to avoid contractions. That may change once the old grammarians are gone (I can't see Generation Y caring about it really). McLerristarr |  Mclay1 04:01, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

In response to Shmuel's comment above: Is there a bot using AWB with RegExTypoFix turned on? I thought only human editors using AWB use RegExTypoFix. GoingBatty ( talk) 18:46, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure there's that much difference between humans accepting the changes advocated by AWB and actual bots—aside from speed—but you are correct. Please replace "bots" with "automated editors" or "scripts" or whichever term you feel best describes AWB above. My point is, contractions are not something that can be dealt with on a search-and-replace basis, and calling them all out automatically is counterproductive. —  Shmuel ( talk) 19:39, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Editors might be interested to known that there is currently a discussion concerning one editor's possible misuse of AWB going on at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Massive automated delinking by User:Hmains. Dolovis ( talk) 22:19, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

r7573-4 addition of BeforeOrafter broke "Skip if no replacement" condition. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 23:43, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Fixed in rev 7590 -- Magioladitis ( talk) 00:33, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

rev 7592 Default to a NotRun state, so we don't always get nochange. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 18:04, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

Okay, I've been banging my head against the desk for the last 30 minutes so it's time to ask what I'm doing wrong...

Brand new (freshly downloaded!) user of AWB. I'm trying to make a global change on Commons by replacing all instances of "Author= lasvegasvegas.com" with "Author= Photos by flipchip / LasVegasVegas.com". String is placed in the Find/Replace box, but when I tell it to Start it keeps coming back with No Changes. AWB does show me as logged on to Commons (according to the text at bottom right of the program window) and and yes I should have rights (admin on Commons).

What mistake am I making here?? Tabercil ( talk) 20:52, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

You'd better tell us all of your find & replace settings, or post your saved settings file, or post a screenshot of the find & replace entry. Rjwilmsi 23:21, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

See Image:TAWB Scn 1.jpg and File:TAWB Scn2.jpg. Tabercil ( talk) 05:25, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

There's a difference in whitespace around the equals sign on your rule and the page you've loaded, hence no match. You'll need multiple rules to handle the different whitespace, or to use a regular expression. Rjwilmsi 07:35, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

<Scratches head> Sorry can you spell that out for me? I read what you're saying but I'm not quite grokking it... (If I could, I probably wouldn't be in this fix to begin with...) Tabercil ( talk) 13:42, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

"Author= lasvegasvegas.com" is not the same as "Author=lasvegasvegas.com", due to the extra space in the first. Using the regex "Author(\s)*=(\s)*lasvegasvegas.com" would solve this, as "(\s)*" is code for "any number of spaces". Epbr123 ( talk) 13:50, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, no joy. Set the find up as a regular expression and it's still not working. See Image:TAWB sc 3.jpg and Image:TAWB sc 4.jpg. Tabercil ( talk) 13:12, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

You need to tick the "Regular expression" box and untick the "Case sensitive" box. Epbr123 ( talk) 13:20, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay, that partly seems to work. I try the Test button on the window and it properly makes the change, but the main window still doesn't show the changes... Tabercil ( talk) 13:34, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

You'll have to close the "Replace Special" window and press the main "Start" button to have the current page re-processed with the revised rule. -- John of Reading ( talk) 13:37, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Heck, I restarted AWB and rekeyed the replace terms - still nothing. Tabercil ( talk) 13:49, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Is the "Enabled" box ticked in the "Replace Special" window? Epbr123 ( talk) 13:55, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Yup - Enabled is ticked, Regular Expression ticked, Case Sensitive unticked, and the More, Disambig and Skip tabs have had nothing done with them. Clicking on Preview will bring up the page without any changes being made on them by my Find/Replace. Tabercil ( talk) 22:59, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Clarification: it's still not working... Tabercil ( talk) 12:41, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Is "Apply changes automatically" ticked? Epbr123 ( talk) 15:31, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

That did it - thanks. Tabercil ( talk) 03:26, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

I have just noticed that AWB is trying to replace dates written as "29th January 2011" with "29 January 2011". As far as I know there is no definitive standard for dates, and either form is correct if that's the style it's written in. Plus this sort of thing varies from country to country. I have been manually removing such edits when using AWB... but am I barking up the wrong tree? Thanks  —  Amakuru ( talk) 23:20, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

WP:DATESNO. We mention that in the manual as well. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 00:35, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I wasn't aware of that standard... now I guess I can leave such changes in, and have a place to point any irate users who complain.  —  Amakuru ( talk) 11:31, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

You could also consider adding [[WP:AWB/GF|general fixes]] to your edit summary, so that people curious about the edits you're making could go to the general fixes page and see what AWB is fixing and why. Happy editing! GoingBatty ( talk) 01:47, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi - me again (see above).

Another question regarding AWB behaviour: it seems to sometimes rearrange the ordering of references, particularly those that are repeats of earlier refs (i.e. <ref name="MyEarlierRef/>). Here is an example from an edit I just made: [6]. Why is it doing this? I would have thought authors of articles place the references in the order they intend to place them, and we shouldn't really fiddle with it...?  —  Amakuru ( talk) 23:50, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/General fixes. I tried to attach a policy to each single edit AWB does. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 00:43, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

This is a longstanding problem with AWB. The person using AWB is responsible for actually checking the references before saving an edit that rearranges them. Otherwise, per WP:CITE, the established citation style should be preserved. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 01:08, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi Carl - It seems that the AWB software reordered the references so they displayed in numerical order, per WP:AWB/GF. Could you please clarify what you think the user should have checked for in this case before determining whether or not to save the edit? Thanks! GoingBatty ( talk) 02:57, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I am in favor of adding an option to activate/disactivate Ref reordering. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 10:41, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

But without an agreed answer to the question by GoingBatty, an AWB user will not know how to use the option...

Wikipedia:AWB/GF#ReorderReferences_.28ReorderReferences.29 does not have a link to a policy page. Which page has, or used to have, the recommendation that the references should be sorted? -- John of Reading ( talk) 11:16, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Can I just clarify with this one - we should preserve number order for refs over and above the order of facts in a sentence? i.e. the correct style for example is:

• This first fact is supported by citation 2, my next fact is supported by citation 1 while my last fact is supported by citation 3.^[1][2][3] — Correct

rather than the style which lists refs by sentence order:

• This first fact is supported by citation 2, my next fact is supported by citation 1 while my last fact is supported by citation 3.^[2][1][3] — Incorrect

I gather from the Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/General fixes entry that this is a Harvard convention rather than any specific WP policy... is it definitely correct?  —  Amakuru ( talk) 11:43, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion, the correct would be:

• This first fact is supported by citation 2,^[2] my next fact is supported by citation 1^[1] while my last fact is supported by citation 3.^[3]
• This fact is supported by two citations^[1][2]

At least that's what I do when I add references. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 11:50, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I guess that would work, although per WP:INCITE it's probably only encouraged if the particular facts are very contentious, otherwise it can be placed at the end of the sentence to avoid clutter. The one proviso of that, though, is so long as it is clear which source supports which part of the text, which woudl imply that numerically sorting the refs is a bad idea in this situation.  —  Amakuru ( talk) 12:41, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

@Amakuru: It's not only in Harvard style. For a different example, look at the sample page of [7] which says "cf [6, 1, 8]" near the middle. Authors do this because they feel that reference #6 is the most relevant, then reference #1, then reference #8 for the information being cited. So if someone was going to rearrange the references, that someone would need to read them in detail to see if #6 really is more specific for the issue at hand then #1. There's no way to tell just by looking at the numbers what order they should be in. Because Wikipedia articles can use any style, they are free to use this style too. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 11:57, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

A much better style for articles that want to provide reader guidance on the relative importance/scope of citations is to include notes or commentary within the ref. A reader can't tell the difference between randomly/unordered refs and refs deliberately out of order without notes to explain why. Rjwilmsi 12:45, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps that would be more clear, but if someone has already adopted the usual "sorted by importance" style then it should be preserved. The idea that one style is better is not enough to change it: otherwise everyone would be going around changing styles to the ones they think are better. WP:CITE allows any style to be used. More importantly for this context, people using AWB will rarely have the knowledge or time to investigate the proper order of the footnotes, which is why AWB shouldn't be rearranging them. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 13:05, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

The "sorting by importance" is lost on the reader because it'll be confused with unordered reference which don't mean anything (the vast majority of cases). If one is more important than the other, it should be made clear explicitly with something like <ref>For the early history of foobar, see Smith (2005). Additional material can be found in Jones (1998) and Jones (1995).</ref> rather than through obscure methods. I suppose the option should be available to not sort references for the few who somehow have a problem with this, but it certainly should remain available for the rest of us. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:27, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

How about a Category:Articles with specially ordered references and a couple of lines of code in AWB to skip the re-ordering if the category is present? Then if someone raises an objection to a particular AWB edit, either the objector or the AWB user can revert the edit and add the category so that it doesn't happen again. -- John of Reading ( talk) 16:08, 10 February 2011 (UTC) reworded 20:29, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Why don't we do that for every other style variation? The norm is to just leave the styles alone. Footnote order is not an "error" that needs to be fixed; there is nothing in the MoS that requires a certain sorting. So editors shouldn't need to object to the edits, because the edits shouldn't be happening in the first place. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 20:35, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Having put three articles through FAC and observed many other FAC nominations you'd better have [1][2][3] order on your refs without a good reason not to. I use AWB to go through FACs and fix this exact problem. AWB is also good for correcting refs that have been used twice when they really need a <ref name="name"/> Brad ( talk) 22:27, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

This question may well have been asked before, but I could find no mention of it in a quick archive search. When editing articles complied via the 'New Pages' list, does AWB mark them as patrolled? Pol430 talk to me 16:05, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe so. It looks like it has been requested, though. ^Avic _ennasis @ 18:20, 13 Adar I 5771 / 17 February 2011 (UTC)

It seems that when AWB generates a Persondata block, it applies the DEFAULTSORT rules to names, which has the effect of removing diacritics. I can see nothing in the WP:PERSONDATA documentation or discussions, to suggest that it is a requirement, and it seems like a bad idea to me. I would think the Persondata ought to reflect the person's details as accurately as possible. This is raw data: it's up to anyone extracting the persondata to apply diacritic conversion/removals if appropriate to their requirements, not for us to try to anticipate what those might be. Colonies Chris ( talk) 11:21, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT is used in order to get the right name format (lastname, firstname and all variations). Perhaps I could make the logic take the DEFAULTSORT then reapply dacritics from article title? Rjwilmsi 11:27, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

There was the idea to just grab the pagename instead of the defaultsort. Let's see if there will be any discussion in WP:PERSONDATA's talk page and what's the result of it. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 11:51, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

The question was raised a few months ago here but there was no discussion or clarification. Colonies Chris ( talk) 13:47, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

The big problem with Persondata is that it is a solution in search of a problem - which is not necessarily a bad thing. But until we identify the problem, working out fine detail is hard. For example I have been going through a lot of the kings and queens setting up Persondata with XIII where I have previously set the DEFAULTSORT to 13, and the article name is of course XIII. But if, as has been said, the name is supposed to be sortable, and this means ASCII sortable, I am wrong. If it's a smarter sort I am right. The same applies to diacritics, I would be inclined to include them, but it is not based on specification, because a spec. can only be written when the needs are known. I would be inclined to process the name twice, once without diacritic removal. This would also help where the DEFAULTSORT has been messed with or set up to just the surname by a human editor. Rich  Farmbrough, 02:58, 22 February 2011 (UTC).

There's my problem: I have a settings file that contains settings for a plugin. Sometimes I forget to load a plugin, I load the settings file and I end up running only general fixes. Any way that I get a warning that a plugin was supposed to be loaded and it wasn't? -- Magioladitis ( talk) 20:12, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

This would be quite helpful. The underlying issue is that AWB bots need to avoid running just general fixes, but apparently it's not simple to just prevent AWB from saving the edit if only general fixes were applied. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 03:21, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

In fact, we have "skip if only genfixes" but it can be that my edits contain F&Rs too. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 03:24, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Some/many genfixes are worthwhile fixes in themselves, others only cosmetic. I cannot make a 100% fool proof version. Rjwilmsi 20:34, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't ask for that. I ask for "Settings file has data for xxx plugin which isn't installed. Press OK". -- Magioladitis ( talk) 20:38, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

While trying to pre-parse a large number of pages for typos, I keep getting the following error: "AWB failed to automatically remove the page from the list while skipping the page. Please remove it manually." Normally this isn't a problem, however, it seems I am getting this error every twenty pages or so - effectively rendering pre-parsing useless for me. Is there a know cause for this error's frequency, or a work-around? ^Avic _ennasis @ 20:43, 13 Adar I 5771 / 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I usually only see that when I have manually removed a page. Do you have duplicates? Rich  Farmbrough, 02:50, 22 February 2011 (UTC).

I don't. I generated the list from Special:AllPages, which shouldn't have duplicates, and I had AWB set tto remove any duplicates anyways. It's better now - it seems that most of the time a page couldn't be manually removed, it was related to Computers or Programming Languages. Once I got over those topics, it worked fine. Not sure what's in those types of pages that might cause this. This was over at Wikibooks. ^Avic _ennasis @ 16:59, 18 Adar I 5771 / 22 February 2011 (UTC)

If you can provide a list of some specific pages I could investigate any exact cause. Rjwilmsi 17:49, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Will do. Going through a similar job here on EnWp, it seems the pages that are unable to be removed are all redirects. Not sure if that's a known issue, or if I have a setting messed up somewhere. ^Avic _ennasis @ 02:18, 22 Adar I 5771 / 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I have noticed before that editors using AWB tag pages with both {{ dead end}} and {{ wikify}}. Wikifying includes creating links to other pages, so ain't the dead end tag utterly redundant?

A semi-related issue: Why the tagspamming on one line stubs at all? How is something like [ [8]] helpful in any way? (if the link goes dead, the article is a one line stub with no sources which gets tagged with wikify, dead end, uncategorised and stub). Yoenit ( talk) 21:49, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Well I am inclined to agree that adding both tags is overkill visually, but there is the categorization to think of. As far as the other tags are concerned the stub and uncat will be dealt with fairly promptly by expert stub sorters and categorizers so I wouldn't worry about them. Rich  Farmbrough, 10:29, 22 February 2011 (UTC).

We improved the wikify logic a bit too. Now we get less false positives. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 10:55, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I believe AWB is converting my _ in my username to a space. Everytime I try to log in I get "Michael miceli is not enabled to use this" even though my name is in Check Page. What should I do? Michael miceli ( talk) 06:32, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

{{ adminhelp}}

Could an admin please correct "michael_miceli" to "Michael miceli" in the "approved" list at WP:AWB/CP? -- John of Reading ( talk) 07:33, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

 Done -- Closedmouth ( talk) 08:06, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

A recent change to Rule 4 now includes text saying "Insignificant edits include, but are not limited to, edits which solely introduce changes which have no noticeable effect on the rendered page." One major exception I make to this rule is adding/changing {{ Persondata}}. When I asked about this during a similar discussion last October, the response I got was that it should not be considered insignificant. Should Rule 4 be changed to specifically exclude Persondata, or changed to be something like "Insignigicant edits generally include..."? Thanks! GoingBatty ( talk) 17:57, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

"Changes to the rendered page or emitted metadata" perhaps. – xeno ^talk 18:00, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Just a note that adding any of the following parameters to WikiProject banners would also now be off limits:

1. adding |listas= to WPBiography
2. Adding parameters of |priority=, |importance= or |class= to banners unless the assessment and importance was being added at the same time
3. Any changes that would add add userboxes or other things in comments to user pages, templates or categories with AWB so these would also need to stop.
4. Changing the DEFAULTSORT to Last Name, First name format if it shows as First name last name

I don't agree with the new rule and argued against it strongly but this unfortunately does seem to meet consensus according to the discussions on the talk page and at my ANI stating that any changes that don't render changes to the page are againt the rules of use for AWB. I'm not sure what will need to be done to change the bots and logic affected by this new change to policy but I wanted to let you know about these additional items as well. Unfortunately that probably also includes persondata because it does not normally render changes to the article. -- Kumioko ( talk) 18:08, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Some tweaks: [9]. – xeno ^talk 18:36, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I still don't agree with the rendering of the page rule and I think that by adding these new rules we are only overburdening the users who re trying to make improvements to the articles but that wording is better than what was there before. I also believe that there has been sufficient debate on both sides to indicate there is no consensus for the rendering of the page rule. BTW The rules would still exclude example #2 above based on the rendering of the page and these are just some examples. There are lots more. -- Kumioko ( talk) 18:52, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

By design, as your #2 is an unnecessary and insignificant edit: editors who are manually assessing articles know how to add the requisite parameters; editors who are assessing articles in a semi-automated fashion will have rules to add them as well while they assess. Consensus continues to exist prohibiting insignificant/trivial edits with AWB; that a few editors (who habitually edit in a manner contrary to the rules) have been vociferously arguing against the principle in recent times does not equate to a lack of consensus for rule. – xeno ^talk 19:06, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Noted. Although I believe I have seen Xenobot and others do edits like #2 above when they cannot determine the assessment or class of an article when doing assessment runs. Is that something that you intend to stop and simply skip the article rather than tag it or is that another exception to the rule? -- Kumioko ( talk) 19:42, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

It is something I make efforts to avoid doing (by using conditionals), and something I would be able to categorically avoid doing if this feature request were fulfilled. Not that I run Xenobot that often anymore, mind you. – xeno ^talk 19:46, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

BTW I wasn't trying to imply you were doing anything wrong (especially since I don't agree with the rule to begin with) I just knew that this new change would affect you and quite a few others. I jusst reread my comments and they are sorta pointy. BTW I transferred most of my F&R's into a module so I could better control the order they process and be able to mark them as minor, etc. Its also much easier to update and fix and find problems. Not sure how you are doing it now I assumed it was as a module but not sure now. Good luck and happy editing. -- Kumioko ( talk) 20:07, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I still don't know how to make modules, unfortunately. But luckily, someone else cloned Xenobot's functions into a new bot - so they pick up most of the tasks left for Xenobot. Thank you for your suggestion, all the same. – xeno ^talk 20:17, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Your welcome and no problem. -- Kumioko ( talk) 20:22, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for tweaking the rule, Xeno! GoingBatty ( talk) 01:18, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Seconded. I guess part of the reason the rule was so vague before was the trickiness of being more specific in a way that reflected practice. I hope it's OK now. Rd232 ^talk 07:25, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Hello. I've just started trying AWB out (downloaded today), and picked my watchlist. I hit start and Saved a couple of uncontraversial article changes. When I returned to the browser to check that those articles had been correctly updated, I found that they were no longer on my watchlist. Is that expected behaviour? Is there any way of switching it off? I couldn't see the option if so. Thanks... 212.87.66.130 ( talk) 09:34, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

There is a control for this near the bottom of the "Options" menu. -- John of Reading ( talk) 09:37, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Rule 4 includes the text removing underscores from links (unless they are bad links).

The linked-to page isn't much help; it is marked "inactive", and doesn't explain what a "bad link" is, nor why it is important that underscores should be removed from them. I propose that we remove "(unless they are bad links)" from rule 4. -- John of Reading ( talk) 08:03, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I suppose underscores or spaces added into a valid link could make it into a redlink, so fixing it back would be useful, but is this common enough to mention? Rjwilmsi 09:33, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd guess it's intended to prevent people just going through and decoding links to have no underscores. That being said, United_States_of_America displayed in an article should have its underscores removed and would be a significant and desirable edit. I think the intended meaning here is "remove underscores from piped links". – xeno ^talk 14:08, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree in part to what Xeno says that removing the underscores from his example is a good idea but I don't think we should pick and choose when the apply the rule and when not too. If its a rule, according to all the arguments I have seen then it should be followed. If the rule is no longer valid then we should discard it. -- Kumioko ( talk) 15:16, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Tweaked as such. – xeno ^talk 15:19, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Although I appreciate the rapid response on Xeno's part I'm not sure if the discussion had enough consensus for the change. -- Kumioko ( talk) 15:24, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there has been any change, simply clarification on what the example had meant to say all along. (I'd wager the "bad links" page used to give you such bad links like my United_States_of_America example above). – xeno ^talk 15:26, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Well I am certainly not going to undo the changes you made. For what its worth most of the underlined items I have seen are image names. -- Kumioko ( talk) 15:47, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

SVN 7602 is very significantly faster than 7571. It makes a huge difference. Did you remove a bunch of debugging code or something? Whatever you did, thanks! MANdARAX •  XAЯAbИAM 09:22, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Only performance change I'm aware of was rev 7552 which for some articles with lots of citation templates took ~2 seconds off genfixes, but that ought to have been in the previous snapshot too. Rjwilmsi 20:36, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

In addition to the greatly increased speed, I've also noticed that I no longer get the initial error which always happened when starting a second instance of AWB, and File/Recent settings correctly shows the recent files in both instances. If I recall correctly, those issues were due to a debug build. MANdARAX •  XAЯAbИAM 21:50, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the debug build creates a lock on the profiling.txt file that it writes profiling information to, which means a second instance of AWB in the same directory gets an error. This had annoyed me, and now that it's annoyed somebody else I'll change it round to not lock the file. I've got a local fix, just want to test it a bit more before committing. Rjwilmsi 09:30, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

rev 7619. Rjwilmsi 12:15, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

I love autowikibrowser. I am working on another wiki.

I see you can delete pages with autowikibrowser, but what about batch deleting images? I couldn't find anything on that here.

If autowikibrowser doesn't have this feature is there any that does? Adamtheclown ( talk) 03:20, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe AWB can batch-delete. If you are working on another WMF wiki, (or another wiki where you have the ability to add extensions) you can always use the Nuke extension. Hope that helps. ^Avic _ennasis @ 03:35, 24 Adar I 5771 / 28 February 2011 (UTC)

thank you, I am aware of nuke, it only deletes pages, not images. :/ Thanks anyway for answering. Adamtheclown ( talk) 03:46, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

hello,

how do I make changes only for one section and not to the whole article? Is there a way to change that? Thank you.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 18:10, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

What sort of change is it if I may ask? It would probably require some regex code. -- Kumioko ( talk) 18:19, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Unless you're able to write a custom module to pick out the section you want, make your desired changes and put it back in the article, I think you're going to struggle. There's no specific feature in AWB for this; there's a feature request page that you're welcome to add to. Rjwilmsi 09:35, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

That's very sad! Is it possible to edit only the sections "Studio albums" here? I want to replace the m-dashes with n-dashes, but m-dashes are in the references, but they should be there rather than replaced. Are there really no features?-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 15:10, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes it is possible to do that with regex (I just wrote the code) but I do not agree with that particular change and personally think that it is better as an mdash than ndash. Although I am not sure what the MOS says about that. If others agree with your change I will put the code out here for you. I don't have access to AWB anymore because I am basically reitred frmo editing though so someone would need to test it and you would need to be careful with it because its possible that it would occassionally have problems if the formatting of the article was different than normal. -- Kumioko ( talk) 15:23, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

In that section I found em dashes for dates, and also in tables to say "This table cell is empty". The MOS prescribes en dashes for dates ( WP:ENDASH), and to my knowledge does not prescribe what punctuation to use for an empty table cell. Art LaPella ( talk) 21:49, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

So I have to do that manually?-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 11:12, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

The standard is to use {{center|—}}. If you look at this list I got to Featured list status you'll see that is what I used. I couldn't find where I was asked to do that but that is currently the way that most of the emdashes are for the featured lists. -- Kumioko ( talk) 14:34, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Why are you posting? Your page says you retired. Brad ( talk) 15:32, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Only because I responded before I added the tag. I just wanted to finish the conversation. I am retired from editing. I am not making any more edits other than to close out any ongoing discussions or removing myself as a member of other loose ends that needed tieing up. After today I won't be responding to anything although I may respond to comments on my talk page. I haven't decided yet. -- Kumioko ( talk) 15:59, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Is there an easy way to figure out what this edit (and others like it) actually changed? tx. 71.141.88.54 ( talk) 17:03, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

It only removed two excess spaces (not really sure why the user bothered to save such a minor edit). The default Wikipedia diff is not good at showing these kind of changes, if you create an account you can use User:Cacycle/wikEdDiff instead, which shows the change nicely. Rjwilmsi 17:08, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I would like to recommend some of the language in the AWB rules of use. I believe this will reduce some of the open interpretation that some of the rules leave and what caused my access to AWB to recently be revoked. This will also allow us to fix some of the problems that the rules do not allow because of their limiting wording and make sure that the rules are clear for others so they don't fall into the same gray area trap as I did.

Rule 3

Rule 3 of the AWB rules of use currently states: "Don't do anything controversial with it. If there is a chance that the edits you are considering might be controversial, consider soliciting comment at the village pump or appropriate WikiProject before proceeding."

I recommend adding something to the effect of "One editor disagreeing does not constitute a controversy. If an editor does not agree with an edit being made they should also consider opening a comment on the AWB talk page, village pump or appropriate WikiProject."

I am perhaps the most conservative AWB editor I know of, yet my edits or parts of them are occasionally reverted, usually by an editor who insists he's smarter than the Manual of Style. So that makes everything controversial by the existing definition. Rule 3 only makes sense by inferring that it has to mean something it doesn't say. Art LaPella ( talk) 17:29, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

The RFARB on date delinking is relevant here. The point is that AWB is not for bold edits. AWB users need to stop immediately when there are complaints, to make sure that there is actually consensus for what they are doing. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 19:17, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

And my point is that not every complaint is a drama comparable to date delinking. The rule would appear to include every time someone reverts me, or even might revert me. That would outlaw AWB altogether if taken at face value. Art LaPella ( talk) 20:31, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Many AWB tasks are just fine, and nobody complains about them. AWB users simply need to gauge the general site opinion about the things that they do, and be ready to stop for discussion if complaints arise. In my experience, many AWB users have no problem doing that, or they choose tasks conservatively so they never have any complaints at all.

One type of AWB abuse is byeditors who realize that there is substantial disagreement with a particular task, but argue that since the MOS doesn't outlaw the change in question, they are free to make it. That is the same problem as the date delinking RFARB. In cases where many different things are acceptable, it's inappropriate to use AWB to force one's preferred solution by making it so broadly that it would be impractical to revert. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 22:54, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I don't defend everyone who uses AWB for MOS issues. Another hypothesis about AWB users who "never have any complaints at all" is that they don't watchlist their articles to notice reverts like this. I asked him why and never got a response. Waiting a while before proceeding with AWB is what I'd do anyway, but anything can be controversial. Art LaPella ( talk) 00:37, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I would go so far as to say that most AWB edits are good and most of those that aren't are usually victims of some Wikipolicy on minor edits or some such. Its also inappropriate to force an editor to stop without discussion for 1 editor who has a problem with it. -- Kumioko ( talk) 01:05, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I would just say that revoking AWB needs to be done with commonsense. It all depends on how many complaints they get compared to the number of edits they do which can be judged from the contribution history. Dmcq ( talk) 18:38, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

1) The MOS is a guide. While following it is strongly encouraged, simply claiming "MOS!" is an inadequate response to dealing with variations. (And don't forget WP:Ignore all rules.)

2) Disagreement by one editor in a group of editors might not amount to a genuine controversy, but if that one editor is the sole or primary editor of an article, then it is really disrespectful that someone driving AWB should have more authority, and the editor's only recourse is to file a grievance somewhere. I agree with Carl that "AWB users need to stop immediately when there are complaints." - J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 22:57, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with point one completely but the problem I see with that second is that if someone does 10 - 20 edits a day there's a good chance they'll go for a long time with no complaints. Whereas I do hundreds to a couple thousand a day so its common to get 1 or 2 a day for a variety of reasons. Most of the time I adjust my editing based on those comments but sometimes, such as the arguments provided by CBM are baseless and don't represent consensus or policy but an editors gut feelings and I don't. I ALWAYS tell them though that if they disagree they should start a discussion about it and if the consensus is that I am wrong I will of course stop. Back to the subject though I think we need to clarify rules three and four to ensure that they are understandable and as unvague as poissible. I also do not agree that any change that doesn't render the page is against the AWB rules and we should clarify what can and can't be done. -- Kumioko ( talk) 02:41, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

1) MoS is a guide to the extent that we don't expect people to follow it when writing - that is the point, to some extent of the wiki format - you can write about what you know, without worrying if you are dyslexic, can't spell, have limited English, don't know an em-dash from your elbow and never formatted a cite in your life. However reverting edits that make an article mossy, should only be done with good reason. ILIKEIT is not a good reason in this case.

2) The example you give is a little odd. If "the editor" of an article objects to an AWB change, they can simply undo it. If they leave a (polite - which is beyond many, sadly) note for the editor using AWB then doubtless the AWB editor will be better informed. There is no reason then for the AWB editor to either revisit that article, or necessarily to stop. Nor is their any reason for the first editor to file a grievance. Of course some will use whatever means they have to stop something they don't like, including using admin powers, making perverse interpretations of rules, and performing secret systematic reverts. This doesn't make them right, in fact it makes them more wrong. Rich  Farmbrough, 02:47, 22 February 2011 (UTC).

  Indeed, I have found a polite note generally works very well. I am more concerned about an editor having to go through some kind of bureaucratic process to undo what some bot driver is given a free hand to wreak. - J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 21:59, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Many of the problems are not for MOS issues; they're just things that an AWB operator thought would be nice. It's true that some parts of the MOS have more consensus than others, everyone knows that. But a more problematic sort of edit is where the AWB editor has on their own decided to make some pattern of edits. In that case, if there is disagreement, stopping immediately is in order. WB is not for bold edits or edits that are intended to push boundaries. It's for boring edits that have clear, widespread agreement but would be tedious to make by hand. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 02:59, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Like removing deprecated parameters from templates or unused parameters that now editors are having to do manually page by page rather than using an application that is perfect for that type of edit? Either way the edit is getting done, its just forcing a lot of extra pain and effort on the users actually doing the work. -- Kumioko ( talk) 03:11, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

The argument "if I can't do edits without consensus with AWB, I'll do it by hand" is not very compelling. If someone runs an unapproved bot job with or without AWB, they'll be asked to stop. A difficulty with AWB is that although it can be very useful, it tempts some people to use it to avoid getting bot jobs approved, or to run jobs that would not get bot approval in the first place. That's a problem that the AWB community needs to step up and address. The AWB rules are the main way they have addressed this so far. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 03:18, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I think your confusing consensus with what constitutes a minor edit. There is consensus to make the changes you just contend that they are not allowed because of rules 3 and 4 (which I don't agree but that's not for this discussion). As far as AWB goes if I took a couple hours I could by pass the AWB issues by rewriting my AWB code into a java script and do it that way...if I wanted too. Which I really do not want to do. Then rules 3 and 4 wouldn't apply and I could freely edit away. I also don't think that a user should need to spend months getting a bot approved for a couple thousand edits that would be done long before the bot was approved. Plus bots are good for automation but many of the edits that I am doing I wouldn't want to be automated. They need to be watched because from time to time something breaks and I have to fix it. Aside from that its the users time so if they want to spend it doing mundane tasks who cares, its their time to waste. Its also easy to interpret what we want because of the vagueness of the rules and that also frequently causes problems. -- Kumioko ( talk) 03:43, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

An edit is an edit. Fast editing is fast editing. Errors are errors. The tool is irrelevant. Rich  Farmbrough, 10:34, 22 February 2011 (UTC).

The tool is relevant in the sense that without AWB, an editor making a widespread changes needs to get bot approval or they will be blocked for running an unapproved bot job. Using AWB allows editors to run certain bot-like jobs without prior approval, but at the same time we need rules to ensure that the jobs that are run are uncontroversial. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 11:34, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Carl's point about unapproved bots is important. It might be better to address that specific point as a separate rule because it isn't mentioned in rules 3 or 4. Then we can avoid being distracted in this debate about how rules 3 and 4 can be improved. Lightmouse ( talk) 12:57, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

It's a common thing that comes up with AWB users. Because AWB users (are supposed to) examine every edit, they can claim that they are not "actually" running a bot. The bot policy is very vague about when a semi-automated job needs to get bot approval. But relatively few editors, historically, have gone to the trouble of writing unauthorized bots, because it takes quite a bit of technical knowledge, so there's not much need. We usually spot bots by the number of edits and the edit rate.

AWB makes it substantially easier for editors to run unapproved bot jobs, in its manual mode, because they don't have to have much coding knowledge. It allows a much higher editing rate than users can typically manage without it. But these users may not be very familiar with the actual bot policy and with the history of what sorts of jobs are or are not approved for bots. Rule 3, in particular, is meant to counteract any tendency of these editors to use this ability to do things that would not be approved for bots. We don't approve bots to do controversial things, and these things also should be avoided by AWB users. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 13:08, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

AWB editors do not get an automatic bye, nor will an editor making widespread changes necessarily need BRFA approval. A recent attempt to change botpol effectively required all fast sustained editing to get approval, it made no mention of exclusions for one tool or another, that I recall. And if we wish to extend BOTPOL to cover humans, then that's fine (wrong but at least clear). Conversely we expect bots to follow HUMANPOL as it were, not to commit BLP infractions, etc, and this is implicit in the main clauses of BOTPOL. But there is no special license given to AWB users, and the AWB "rules" are, as much as anything, a defence for and of the developers against rogue AWBers. The only thing that makes AWB special (apart from the fact that it is wonderful etc...) is that it is a tool that can be used by bots and by humans. If it is being used by a bot the bot must follow BOTPOL. If it is being used by a human, the human must follow HUAMNPOL. Certainly I am not adverse to common sense "cutting people slack" indeed as much as possible, whatever editing mode they use and whatever tool. Some manual editors almost never save without a typo (me, for example), others make MOS blunders, others still misformat templates. Similarly gnomes can save a percentage of edits with no major change (in my case I can categorically state that this is mainly because I look for actual errors on the diff, which is both easier and more important than looking for the elusive "no visible change" for example), and bots too may make non-harmful errors. To vigorously hunt down and persecute any of these categories is, in my view, contrary to the spirit of Wikipedia, and borders (at the very least) on passive aggressive behaviour, and is harmful to both the community and the project. Rich  Farmbrough, 14:18, 22 February 2011 (UTC).

First the bot comment only applies if its an actual bot. A semi automatic tool woudl be perfectly acceptable although it would also probably need to be tracked as a tool somewhere like the gadgets page. I also find it a little disturbing that Carl seems to refer to AWB users a fringe group with their own agendas. We don't all have programming expertise and even the ones that do may not be particularly good at it (like myself) so AWB is a good middle road. It is easy enough to use that even novice editors can do many things and has the capability for it to be used by bots and more advanced users with modules of code. I do not agree as you would indicate that all AWB editors should have to submit a BRFA to use AWB (unless your intent is to kill the application) for a couple reasons primarily though because the bot folks are not particularly responsive and even less to to users outside the normal clique of bot operators. It frequently takes months to get a bot approved by which time the chanegs could have long since been finished. If you do want all AWB users to have a BRFA then I would require the bot folks to approve or disapprove those requests within about 5-7 days. Additionall, AWB users more often than not are just trying to edit the articles. AWB isn't for fighting vandals, discussions, reviews, etc and although there may be some things it coudl do there its primarily useful in fixing articles. So if you are less interested in fixing articles and its more important that we tightly manage users who do want to do large numbers of article improvements to ensure that no minor edits are being done then I encourage you to add a rule six that says that AWB users are required to get a BRFA. If you want to encourage article improvement however and are interested in actually building an encyclopedia rather than building an Policypedia then I think its best just to not go the BRFA route. -- Kumioko ( talk) 14:39, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Rule 4

Rule 4 currently states: "Avoid making insignificant or inconsequential edits such as only adding or removing some white space, moving a stub tag, converting some HTML to Unicode, removing underscores from links (unless they are bad links), bypassing a redirect, or something equally trivial. This is because it wastes resources and clogs up watch lists."

• Avoid making insignificant or inconsequential edits such as individual changes that only add or remove some white space, move a stub tag, convert some HTML to Unicode, remove underscores from links (unless they are bad links), bypassing a redirect, or something equally trivial. This is because it wastes resources and clogs up watch lists. However, if the edit changes the article size by more than 25 bytes (increase or decrease) or if the change contains more than three different types of edits perceived to be minor at one time, then it can be considered to be more than a minor edit. (i.e., if the edit moves a stub tag, fixes some HTML coding or removes deprecated and unused or unneeded template fields).'

At the very least we need to clarify better what constitutes an insignificant or inconsequential edit. Its too vague and too open to interpretation and is too often being used as a means to stop an edit that another editor doesn't agree with regardless of its merits. Additionally, many articles with multiple "minor" problems cannot be fixed on articles because the change is considered minor regardless of how significantly the problem impacts the article.

Also the part that says "something equally trivial" should be clarified. What does trivial really mean? -- Kumioko ( talk) 13:49, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't really support such a rewording because it unnecessarily defines what "controversial" and "inconsequential" means; kinda defeats the object. I also do not support the idea of #4 being expanded to exclude three minor edits, the point of not doing minor tweaks is linked to #3; even minor tweaks (like caps templates) might be controversial and rushing round doing three or more per article is going to lead to some sort of issues, as well as being utterly un-needed. For #3; if one editor has a good faith and reasonable issue with the edits then, yes, they are "controversial" as defined and should not be done w/o discussion. I have no idea what caused you to have AWB privileges removed but I do not think that these new caveats would be helpful. -- Errant ^{( chat!)} 16:36, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I would normally agree but I have seen and am currently the victim of the vagueness of these 2 rules being used as a bludgeon. We should not be telling one editor that an edit they are doing isn't allowed but then let 20 other editors do it because we like them. Either its allowed or its not. I grant you that perhaps my wording isn't the best but I do contend that these rules need to be clarified. For example my AWB access was revoked because an editor told me that any change that didn't render a change to the article was a minor edit. Know where in he rules does it say that except for the vagueness of the insignificant or inconsequential wording. Maybe then what we need to do is list out the 10 or 20 things that are typically considered an insignificant or inconsequential edit. If new ones are determined then they can be added as needed. -- Kumioko ( talk) 16:54, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

If that is the situation you are in the solution is not to change the rules to clarify matters for your specific case (that won't work anyway) but to take things to the wider community and get input. Do you have some discussion links? I partially agree that we could clarify what constitutes minor, but what you propose doesn't really do that. Will think on it. -- Errant ^{( chat!)} 17:40, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately it is not just my case but many others as well I am only the latest victim. Frankly I agree that clarifying the instructions will mean that there are changes that need to be done to articles that won't get done because they will fall under the minor definition but thats better than users quoting vague references to further their own agendas. -- Kumioko ( talk) 18:12, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that this rule is ambiguous and is sometimes abused by people that are in a content dispute. I've even seen people quote this rule because they don't like the consequences of inconsequential edits, which makes no sense but I've seen such self-contradiction on at least two occasions. Here are other comments:

• Some people have suggested that changes need to be visible to readers. I think changes that are invisible (e.g. adding timestamps to categories) are often worth doing. However, visibility is an objective measure for the AWB user and the onlooker, so there would be less conflict.
• Wikipedia users are told not to worry about "waste of resources" at Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance.
• The term "clogs up watch lists" is value-laden. The watch list isn't 'clogged' up, that implies being stuck, but the watch-list isn't stuck at all. The edits are only visible for a few days. People that have deliberately chosen to watch pages will see edits to those pages. I've never understood why this is a problem, that's the whole purpose of a watch-list.

Regards Lightmouse ( talk) 17:34, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

The issue with watchlists is that (1) having lots of edits means that lots of other editors will check the diffs for; every edit has an associated productivity cost in people looking at diffs. (2) having lots of AWB edits on your watchlist makes it harder to spot the other edits between them. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 19:13, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Watchlists are good and a very useful tool for allowing users easy visibility of articles they care most about but one thing we shouldn't worry about is filling them up. IF the watchlist gets a lot of action then that means that someone is showing love to the articles. The more love they get the better they are so we should all be hoping that our watchlists stay full because that's how the articles improve. At least if you see AWB or its by a bot there is a very good chance that even if it is a minor edit its probably helping the article in some way. Not always certainly, but usually. -- Kumioko ( talk) 01:02, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Isn't there a gadget to supress AWB edits? Rich  Farmbrough, 10:31, 22 February 2011 (UTC).

I don't think so but it should be fairly easy to make one that would catch most of them. -- Kumioko ( talk) 14:24, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

General comment

I don't see a need to change the rules of AWB. A small set of editors should instead change their approach to AWB editing and think about whether they need to make trivial and inconsequential edits such as bypassing redirects, and other zero-sum changes such as changes to capitalization, spacing, and other minutiae. The fact that the same editors show up time and again at noticeboards with complaints about their (semi-)automated editing does not mean there is a problem with the rules, simply a problem with compliance with the rules - the vast majority of AWB users have no trouble understanding that certain things (in particular, wikiformatting issues that represent a personal preference) can and should be left alone. – xeno ^talk 13:46, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I think its interesting to note that the small group that you are mentioning also happen to be the ones that are the most active and much of the argument and fuss comes from broad interprettations of what "minor" means and is much the reason I am suggesting it needs to be clarified. So I find it odd for you to then say you don't agree with clarifying the language. I am simply suggesting that changes like this are not minor as Carl suggests and that we should clarify a rule that uses such vague languages as "something equally trivial" so that these rogue minor edit warriors have some clear language so that perhaps it will minimize month long conversations that span across multiple venues. I believe the language was left intentionally vague to allow for certain changes provided that knowone complains. Well that bag of worms is now open and since its more important that people don't do a minor edit than to fix the problems on th article we need to clarify it once and for all. My AWB rights got revoked because of a disagreement of a broad interpretation of a vague rule and I intend to see that broad specrtum approach is limited and the language clarified. The will unfortunately also mmean that some edits won't get done and problems will be left to rot on articles rather than being fixed because of minor edit concerns but that can't be helped now. As it is now I could reasonably argue that most of the General fixes that AWB does including typos and persondata fixes fall into the something equally trivial category and that needs to stop. If that means we have to build a table that lists the ten or 15 things that people consider minor edits such as blank spaces and moving stubs and add to it then so be it but the vague language needs to be fixed. -- Kumioko ( talk) 14:23, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

That one example is at one end of a spectrum; it didn't need to be done but I admit that was a lot of extraneous wikicode and your edit cleaned up the top of the talk page (though, that particular talk page has never been used for talking and therefore could probably have just been left alone too). On the other end of the spectrum, you have edits like this. Seems you either were 1) letting your main account run in auto mode (against the rules), or 2) manually saving changes that are exceedingly minor and unnecessary (against the rules). – xeno ^talk 14:29, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Some clarification wouldn't do any harm. For instance, add to Rule 4: Insignificant edits include, but are not limited to, edits which solely introduce changes which have no noticeable effect on the rendered page. If in doubt, or if other editors object to edits on the basis of this rule, seek consensus at an appropriate venue before making substantial numbers of edits. Rd232 ^talk 14:39, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes - clarification would be fine; but I am against changing the rules such that trivial changes would be permitted or a change that would place the onus upon the user taking issue with AWB edits to demonstrate consensus against the edits as opposed to the current position of the operator needing to demonstrate consensus for the edits. – xeno ^talk 14:42, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. There is a certain slipperiness though where a sufficiently strong consensus that certain edits don't breach the rule could declare those edits to not be "inconsequential", even if on paper it looks it. The bottom line is consensus - Rule 4 exists because of consensus, and sufficiently strong consensus could abolish it or declare limited exceptions. Maybe we should add a Rule 6: WP:BOLD does not apply to AWB use, and the onus is on AWB users to show or attain consensus for their changes if challenged. Rd232 ^talk 14:49, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

If you want to add that ok but I still argue that multiple minor edits on the page should be allowed. Are we going to kill the servers, NO. Are we going to add some edits to watchlists, maybe but who cares? Are we really editing to build articles or are we editing to manage watchlists? I would argue that the forer is true in most cases. I do wholeheartedly agree that the edit you identified that I did shouldn't be done enmasse but I also don't think that one edits amid thousands should be cause for long debates and discussions. I also do not agree that having no noticeable effect on the rendering of the page is a good argument. This will effectively eliminate many good edits like those to Persondata since it does not typically appear on the page, will make it much more difficult or impossible to delete deprecated template parameters or parameters that are added to templates in error because they "won't render any changes to the page". The consensus argument just means that it'll take days or weeks of debate and discussions before the edit can get accomplished IMO. We shouldn't need to have a long debate about consensus for things like removing deprecated and garbage characters when the documentation clearly states that it shouldn't be there in the first place. But I am not going to be editing anymore so as I mentioned above if its more important that no minor edits are done than to actually fix the articles go ahead cause it won't affect me anyway> I just want to get the rules clarified before I go so some other editor doesn't suffer the same fate that I did. -- Kumioko ( talk) 14:55, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

"if its more important that no minor edits are done than to actually fix the articles go ahead": you of course can fix those articles just as easily without doing these minor edits, so the choice you give is a false one. Fram ( talk) 15:06, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

You can't fix the problem if your not allowed to. -- Kumioko ( talk) 15:33, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

You would be allowed to if you would stop the minor fixes after people complained about them. You are not allowed to do the minor "fixes", and you insist on doing them at the same time as the real fixes, making the latter impossible as well. 15:49, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

So as an example of very recent edits, what is not allowed with AWB is changing reflist to Reflist, changing the capitalisation of parameters against consensus, changing the capitalisation and place of one parameter but leaving the rest alone, which isn't even internally consequent, and so on. Fram ( talk) 15:36, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes. This is bad use of awb but in fact this is a modified version of awb. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 15:46, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes thats not the best use of AWB I admit and its a little off topic but personally as long as there is a more significant edit being made I also prefer the Capitalized first letter on the templates. I just don't think that should be done as its own edit. I do understand that this is a contentious change that for some reason has stirred the emotions of several editors though and based on that should be avoided unless there is a very good reason otherwise (these cases should be specific and rare though). Personally its not worth the time to fight over, the template works either way. As for changing persondata to lower case I disagree with that and I think that its much easier to distinguish due to its special purpose use as all caps but frankly the template will work either way so again if there is a more significant edit being changed its not really something I would argue strongly about one way or the other. In fact on the persondata template I would argue more strongly that we shouldn't be wikilinking the information in the templates at all and should remove those as well but thats just me. Its the constant fighting over little things like capitalizing or not capitalizing templates and the like that I am getting tired of. It should IMO display as it does in the template. If the template shows first letter caps (whether a limitation of the software or not) then thats how it should be presented. Either way though its completely and utterly irrelevent provided that there is a more substantial edit being done because I do agree that its possible that some editors would change it from lower to upper case and then back again later to increase their edit count (im not saying thats the case here I am just saying its possible, just wanted to clarify that). -- Kumioko ( talk) 15:53, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Either it does matter or it doesn't matter. If it doesn't matter, it shouldn't be changed - even in conjunction with other edits - as it bloats the diff and pushes a personal preference. – xeno ^talk 15:57, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Well I would say that in this case you are correct in the statement that it doesn't matter. But I have to admit that I don't realy care about diff bloat or filling watchlists as I have mentioned before. If the change is useful then we shouldn't be worried about splitting the edit into multiples to minimize the diff noise or limit how many edits we do in a day because some editors watchlist is getting too full. We should be more worried about why articles go months without 1 edit, why some editors spend all their time in discussions and encourage them to do some edits or why users are more worried about whether an article is notable or an image is being used and submit them for deletion regardless of the quality or number of views a day it gets. These 2 me are just some of the issues that are far more important than diff bloat or watchlist filling. From a programming standpoint many of the edits are difficult to do without some collatoral minimal changes (at least for those of us that aren't particulrly good programmers) so I am able to live with a certain bumber of minor edits (such as by bot even) as long as the number is low in proportial to substantive edits or as long as a more meaningful edit is done at the same time such as the cases you pointed out above. Should they be avoided yes and I think that is true of several in Rich's examples. But I didn't review them in context of the other edits he is doing either so I don't know. I would say though that these chanegs ARE NOT the same types of chanegs I was making and really don't represent what I am trying to clarify. -- Kumioko ( talk) 16:14, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

And when the change isn't useful? (The rest of your comment seems to be a red herring) – xeno ^talk 19:18, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

So what you say is that it is better to spend ones time removing them manually of course taking much longer than to use a tool which will allow them to be done quickly? That seems rathter silly. BTW I like herring but the red ones are too spicy. -- Kumioko ( talk) 21:49, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I think we lost focus no the issue

Back to the matter at hand. I believe that the rules are too vague and need to be clarified. There is clearly just too much room for interpretation from both AWB users and those who would like to see AWB banned. We at least need to further clarify what a minor edit is and if having multiple minor edits on one article could be allowed. I do not support the idea that a change the doesn't render anything to the page be disallowed because it would cause us to slide back and have to eliminate some of the good edits were doing now like persondata. Any ideas? -- Kumioko ( talk) 16:14, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I would support any clarifications in the rules that make it clear what edits should not be done (as it appears a handful of editors are having trouble internalizing this aspect of the rules); but I do not support changing the rules to make zero-sum edits (such as those being complained about at ANI) or edits that push a personal preference onto the wikicode permissible. – xeno ^talk 16:22, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

A wild idea

I just had a wild idea and I apologize for making more work for the AWB folks of this gets some approval but would it be possible to create a minor edit page and if AWB recognized the edits listed there as the only edit being made then it would not allow the change to be saved? I realize it wouldn't work for everything but it might help reduce some of the problems anyway since not making minor edits has become so important.

For example if the only change being made was moving a stub, removing some white space, or something that AWB could determine is a minor edit and we all agree that its a minor edit then AWB would generate a message saying something like "AWB cannot be used for minor edits. Please check your change and skip if this is only a minor edit." -- Kumioko ( talk) 16:20, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I think Xeno's original comment was apt: the problem is not with the rules, which the majority of AWB users can follow without trouble. The problem is just a handful of AWB users who insist on using AWB inappropriately. The solution is not to clarify the rules, it's to stop those people abusing AWB. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 16:22, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

So based on your statment then it seems you would prefer that invalid, deprecated parameters be left on pages or removed manually from the thousands of pages where they exist? It also seems to indicate that users who are doing changes that you don't like are using AWB innappropriately. MY point is that we need to clarify what a minor edit means to be less vague so that editors with a very broad interpretation of minor are stopped from blocking any edit you don't agree with. I agree there are minor edits that shouldn't be done using AWB and I fully understand the rules. Our difference of opinions lies in our interpretation of a minor edit and I argue that others have the same problem. The issue of minor edits is clearly one that is growing, not getting smaller and the interpretations getting more and more vague and subjective. We need to rein them both in and calrify what a minor edit really means while still allowing users to fix and do maintenance on articles without having to stop and discuss every edit by an editor who cares more about a minor edit being made that the articles getting fixed. I think the common sense rule applies somewhat here. Does the change help the article? I belive that removing large chunks of deprecated parameters and standardizing the WikiProject banner templates (for the projects that accept it of course) does help the articles and the editors working with them. -- Kumioko ( talk) 16:43, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think AWB is the problem. We have a lot of editors who do low-value edits without it. We also have people who vandalise, etc. So I don't understand why we focus in AWB. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 18:46, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that AWB isn't the problem. AWB is an awesome tool. I just think that the current rules of use are too open to interpretation and allows both sides a huge amount of wiggle room to justify or fight whatever they want particularly using the grounds of what is considered a minor edit. For further example, I would argue that simply adding a comma to a sentance is a minor edit but based on the rules as they have been described to me repeatedly since it renders something to the page it is not. Yet, if I remove 1000 characters of garbage that clutters the talk page its considered a minor edit because it doesn't render any changes to the page. There is some logic to the rules I agree but we must advocate common sense over a black and white rule and we simply are unable to do that currently. Every edit can be contested and every nearly every edit that is part of the AWB general fixes including adding cleanup tags and adding persondata could be argued is minor and trivial. The rules are supposed to support us in our efforts of writing an Encyclopedia and to keep it from getting abused but instead editors are using it as a bludgeon to beat us into submission because of the vagueness of what is or is not a minor edit. -- Kumioko ( talk) 19:01, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

You can continue with your empty rhetoric, but the fact remains that, aside from a few editors who feel that AWB may be used to make edits of exceedingly low value, the vast majority of AWB users do not have trouble with these rules. Perhaps internal, rather than external, adjustment is called for - editing rarely used talk pages to remove deprecated parameters and bypass redirects is simply not necessary. If you happen to be there for some substantive reason (such as adding a project banner or assessing importance/class), then those edits may be done; otherwise, there is no need. – xeno ^talk 19:15, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I think I heard you say that we shouldn't waste our time with rarely used talk pages? Really, are you kidding? So because an article or a talk page has little traffic we should ignore the problem and maybe it will just go away. Trash in the basement is out of sight so we shouldn't worry about it? I may have been spouting some rhetoric but that statement is really absurd and frankly I am surprised to hear you say that. We should treat EVERY content page with the same rules of thumb. If the problem exists fix it (period)! Your examples are like saying we shouldn't do general fixes or typo chanegs unless we are adding a category or an Infobox template. Just silly really. Additionally I would like you to know that the "few" that you are referring to are also likely some of the same ones that do the most edits and fixes. So if I do 20 changes I'm ok with it but if I do 20, 000 I am abusing AWB! Most of the AWB users aren't doing 1000+ edits a day so they probably won't run into a problem. We should be advocating users to do more edits not trying to rein them in because they are doing too much. Its my time to waste. Let me waste it. Aside from that I have seen these rules used abusively on both sides and it wasn't until I myself was crushed under their weight and lost my access to AWB that I stepped forward and said something. For that I am in the wrong and I admit that. I thought about it back in October and several times since but I did nothing. Know here I am and whether the rule gets changed or not the laundry is getting aired and people are discussing it. Whether this will benefit the articles or hurt them is still to be determined but time will tell. -- Kumioko ( talk) 19:38, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

The issue here seems to be that you feel these edits ( [10] [11] [12]) are solving "problems", whereas other editors feel they are unnecessary "edits for the sake of edits", contrary to AWB's rules of use. – xeno ^talk 19:43, 22 February 2011 (UTC) (off-hand comment removed)

I never said they were a problem. I just said they were either deprecated and or garbage and the weren't needed. I personally don't care about how many edits I have other than simple curiousity (I don't have any hope of getting in the top 10 even if I stayed). They fact is these things are useless unless they are populated and even then some are useless such as nested. These aren't edits for the sake of edits they are cleaning up garbage and in some cases problems on the talk page. By your argument adding Persondata could be argued as unnecessary, as would fixing many of the AWB general fixes such as problems with citations and the like. Also when you say other editors you indicate that they are flocking in droves. Its 1 or 2 out of thousands of editors. In fact until now you never seemed to have a problem with them which makes me wonder why you consdider them such an issue now. Really in the end it doesn't matter. My AWB access has been revoked and I plan to stop editing after all this nonsense drys up. I have removed myself from all memberships and revoked all accesses. Since I am such a bothersome editor the place will be much better off without me. But this rule still needs to be clarified before some other well intensioned editor finds themselves on the cross as I did. BTW you should continue to assume good faith because whether you agree with them or not the edits were well intentioned. -- Kumioko ( talk) 19:59, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I do have a problem with unnecessary edits (and always have), but I only have so much time and energy to continually debate the matter with users who feel the need to continue to make them. Well-intentioned edits can still be undesirable. We don't remove everyone's appendix, even though it is a vestigial organ because that is unnecessary surgery. So too, is rolling through pages to only remove "nested=yes" or similar. I think your argument about "Persondata" amounts to a straw man; the persondata is apparently useful for the metadata it emits (so adding persondata represents a positive change). "Change to the rendered page" is just a litmus test. – xeno ^talk 20:10, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

dating {{ cleanup}} and {{ citation needed}} templates do not render in read mode, yet I believe are highly important. Based on that alone, the fact that an edit has no effect on the rendered page is a bogey litmus test, if you ask me. -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:02, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

In response to the "wild idea", the AWB Skip page has some interesting options. I usually have the "No changes are made" and "Only whitespace is changed" boxes checked. It would be great if someone would update the Skip section of the AWB reference manual to explain exactly what the "Only casing is changed" and "Only minor genfixes" do. I think it would be great if some combination of these (and/or other) checkboxes could correspond to AWB rule #4. GoingBatty ( talk) 19:48, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I usually have skip if minor, minor fixes and a couple of others. The problem at hand stems from the undocumented gray area definition of what constitutes a minor edit. Again if making minor edits is now such a big deal then AWB should just not allow them to be made. This will solve all the problems. -- Kumioko ( talk) 20:14, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

What you are asking for is a technical solution to a social problem. We shouldn't need to ask the developers to program the tool to prevent misuse. I just see that leading to a situation whereby a user makes some trivial changes that get past the "triviality censor" and subsequently using that fact to argue it is thus a non-trivial edit. – xeno ^talk 20:16, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

The triviality sensor as you put it was actually more of CBM's idea. I just added the bit about AWB not allowing the edit. Just as there is always a way to justify what constitutes a minor edit there is a way to argue it isn't. Thats my point, we need clarity. BTW more users than you think are making minor edits. I looked through the edits of over 100 active users recently and guess how many were doing something that could be construed as minor...84. At least 10 were bots. So the argument that only a few editors are doing it is hogwash. Only a few editors are showing on the radar due to the number of edits. But if you want to address the minor edit problem and your really as serious as you say then you need to stop all the minor edits. After a while the article quality will degrade due to those so called minor edits not getting done and everyonen will see how making a few relatively minor edits can have a longterm and incremental effect to the health of the articles. Like a wise man once said. "If you watch the pennies the dollars will mind themselves". The same logic could be applied to the articles. -- Kumioko ( talk) 21:27, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Be careful not to conflate minor with trivial. I make many minor edits that are not trivial. – xeno ^talk 21:30, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Kumioko I really find it hard to believe that you're defending edits like removing the nested parameter en mass from thousands of talk pages just because they exist. Certainly they don't need to be there but neither are they hurting anything by remaining. I can't help but agree that edits like that are useless and unnecessary. I remove things like that from talk pages but only if I happen to edit for another reason like adding or removing a project tag or doing B-class assessments. But besides that, I cannot understand why you're putting so much effort into this conversation so you can continue to do them. I think you have an AWB addiction and you need treatment. Brad ( talk) 20:48, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Lol, Your probanly right on the addiction thing Brad and I think some of my agitation is just the withdrawls from my AWB dependancy. My help will come soon enough when I quite editing I'm afraid. Its not the nested parameter itself but the argument that any edit that doesn't render changes to the page even if its 1000 bytes. Its like saying a broken spark plug is only a minor part on the car (but try starting the car without one. Sure it will probably run but its going to sound and work poorly and eventually someone is going to wonder why you didn't fix it). BTW there aren't that many articles with nested left. I already removed thousands and now am down to a couple hundred that I know of but it may be as many as a couple thousand total left. Most articles had other problems too but I have already fixed most of those. I was just down to the last few when I got my hand slapped. My effort is more in clarifying the rule because I am tired of seeing it misused. I guess its true it doesn't really matter if we have vague rules though. No different than the legal system here in America and that seems to work ok (unless your an innocent prisoner in custoday anyway...that was a joke). -- Kumioko ( talk) 21:20, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Metaphors, metaphors! Fixing "a broken spark plug" is clearly not inconsequential. Rule 4 territory is more like washing the fluffy dice. Rd232 ^talk 21:47, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Your right but I do not believe the edits I was making was in the washing the fuzzy dice arena. Maybe in the arena of rotating the tires, changing the oil and other prventative maintenance perhaps. -- Kumioko ( talk) 21:51, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Your edits were not fixing any problem or solving any issues. They were not maintenance and they didn't prevent any problems. They simply implemented your own taste about how you wished other people had formatted the source code of the talk pages, e.g. [13] [14]. That's the sort of thing we want AWB users to avoid doing, hence the rules. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 21:59, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Are you OK if a non-AWB user does them? Because this edits happen even anyway. For example I didn't see any action against the use of {{ Talk header}} in empty pages. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 22:09, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

If a non-AWB user made trivial edits to a large number of pages at a high rate, we'd block them for running an unapproved bot job. But few editors do run unapproved bots to do these things. The upside and downside of AWB is that it lets users make lots of edits quickly, and it is accessible to editors who wouldn't otherwise be able to make such large numbers of edits. But it isn't intended to replace the need to pre-plan jobs and make sure there is consensus in favor of them. It certainly isn't intended as a way for editors to make edits simply to satisfy their own taste. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 22:35, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

What can I say. I believe that your statement that you would block editors doing these types of edits because you don't agree with them is a blatant admission of abuse of admin powers. Additionally, since the template documentation states specifically that those parameters should not be there if not being used and since a discussion on the template talk page for the MILHIST template recently verified that deleting those parameters perfectly fine I see no reason to continue to block these changes other than trying to make your own point. Clearly you don't agree and that's fine but to then take the stance that you would use your admin access to block and editor who did these is absolutely unacceptable and more is expected from administrators. We should not have to take a knee and ask CBM's permission to use AWB. I hope that others who are watching would ad their comment as to how to deal with this situation. I am unfortunately at a loss and completely helpless against such obvious control over the situation. -- Kumioko ( talk) 00:23, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Editors have been blocked before for running unauthorized bot jobs. It usually just goes to ANI and, if the editor doesn't stop, someone blocks them. If you re-read my comment, you will see that I was directly talking about unauthorized bot jobs when I mentioned blocking. Editors who abuse AWB will normally just lose their AWB access temporarily, with no blocking. This is already stated in the AWB rules: "Repeated abuse of these rules could result, without warning, in your software being disabled." — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 01:30, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

And as it appears the terms abused can ve used rather liberally for those who have access to do so. -- Kumioko ( talk) 01:39, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

What to do about deprecated parameters and unneeded fields

Clearly there is little interest in changing the AWB rules so lets at least have a discussion about what to do with all the garbage fields and deprecated parameters. I recommend we allow these to be deleted with AWB. I realize and understand completely that the AWB rules are in place for a reason but I do not believe that forcing users to delete these fields manually or simply ignoring them entirely is in the spirit of those rules. Most of the debate seems to center around the minor edit rule and changes that don't render anything on the page but I think we need to decide whether deleting deprecated parameters (like nested) and garbage parameters should be allowed. There is no reason to force these to be done manually. -- Kumioko ( talk) 01:39, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

If there is consensus to get rid of them we should just run a bot one time to do it. Then we can test it properly, look for errors/mistaken edits, etc. The bot approval process exists for a reason.

Also, remember that:

1. "Deprecated" only means "isn't used on new articles". There is no reason that a deprecated template or parameter has to be removed if it is already in place. The usual philosophy with bots is that there's no reason to edit thousands of articles just to clean up the wiki source code.
2. Many times, the idea that a parameter is "deprecated" has no real discussion behind it. I have seen cases where the same person will decide that the parameter is "deprecated" and then go about removing it, when really there was not consensus to do that. Template documentation is often incorrect. This is one reason bot approval is useful - to make sure that the change actually has consensus.

— Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 01:44, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

A bot is fine but remember someone will have to program it, test it, run it and maintain it and the nested parameter is only one example of many. I am trying to get a general agreement that if a parameter is deprecated or useless it "may" be deleted using AWB. Even with consensus the rules as you state them prohibit that and you indicated that you would block any one who tried even to do it without AWB. So I believe that needs to change.

As for the deprecated comment. Nested is more than just deprecated, it is superseded and continues to be added by users who don't know better such as if they see it on another template on the same page. The functionality has been incorporated into the WPBannershell template so there is no reason to maintain the old data. The same goes for MILHIST taskforce fields that are equal to no or missing and fields like small, peer review, old peer review, etc. -- Kumioko ( talk) 02:06, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

My point is that if "removing" it means doing thousands of trivial edits, you need bot approval, even if you want to use AWB. AWB is not intended as a way to bypass the bot approval system, and "deprecated" is used too freely by some people who are eager to do something even if it has no effect on the pages being edited. The MILHIST project can handle their own templates, they don't need people randomly deciding for them. If they care about it they will do something. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 02:16, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

My point is that I do not agree they are trivial. Knowone is trying to bypass anything. This discussion will help to see if there are others who feel the same way. We are not going to hurt the servers and we shouldn't be concerned with that for this type of edit. You are also trying to argue that this has no effect but it does. It is eliminating unneeded parameters and will cleanup the talkpages so that the information that remains is useful and meaningful to the next editor who comes along. As for the MILHIST project comment. I am a member of that project and they are fine with the changes I was making. You comment also is out of place because anyone has the right to edit an article or fix things. Remember that the projects don't own the articles or the talk pages as you comment suggests. -- Kumioko ( talk) 02:29, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Projects don't own articles, but each project does own its own assessment system, and they can run it how they like. Each project can and will clean up the parameters if they want them cleaned.

Eliminating meaningless parameters does not have any effect on the rendered page. It also has little effect on editing the page, because most editors don't edit the lede section, they just edit the active discussion threads. So few people ever see the code for the assessment banners. Your proposal is really a fix in search of a problem. But if you can get bot approval to do it, by all means. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 02:34, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

We can argue this back and forth but were never going to agree with each other on this issue. As for the bot thing I tried to get a bot and the bot folks just ignored it for a month so I withdrew it. They don't seem to be very responsive to requests outside the usual clique of operators so there's no reason I should bother. As I mentioned before though I am retiring. Discussions like the ones that have been going on between us have shown me that there is no place here for me anymore. The policies are interferring with the development of the project. The only reason I persist now is because I want to clear these issues up before I go and I don't really count discussions as editing. They can be useful but not really a part of building an encyclopedia. -- Kumioko ( talk) 02:45, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

As a general remark, the older Wikipedia gets the more maintenance grows in significance compared to article creation, and use of semi/automated tools more and more necessary. What I can't quite fathom is why you find this particular task so important, given the "does it really matter" issues. There is so much indisputably necessary work to be done, which AWB can help with, why not just drop a task you can't get people to support? Alternatively, if you think BAG is broken (especially for approving rule4-skirting tasks), then suggest changes. And I do think it a shame your response to this is to retire, rather than take a break. Perhaps you'll reconsider later. Rd232 ^talk 07:03, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

This event is only the most recent but since october I have been flooded with every sort of complaint about every sort of edit or action. People don't like how fast I edit, the types of edits, They don't like that I restarted WPUS or that I was tagging pages with the WPUS banner. All these were done to try and better the pedia but no matter what I do I am running into brick walls. Everyone is too worried about their little cereal bowl getting knocked over, that I am filling up watchlists or some other meaningless banter. I DO NOT CARE about filling watchlists I care about cleaning up and building up content. So since the latter seems to be less important its time for me to move on. Maybe when folks are more serious about actually contributing and fixing articles then Ill return but since I see the policies becoming more burdonsome and more editors turning to things like deleting content for notability rather than adding or building it thats unlikely to happen. You are right there are plenty of tasks though...undoubtedly there would be someone who complains about each and very one of those for some arbitary and meaningless reason and I would have to stop that as well and try and appease and equally trivial complaint as "hey man your filling up my watchlist"!. -- Kumioko ( talk) 15:36, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

• Kumioko, the way forward for you is really quite simple: stop doing the stuff that people are asking you to stop doing. You can argue that "deprecated parameters" are causing "problems" and making pages less "useful and meaningful", but I simply don't think many are going to agree with you there. A "nested=yes" here and there makes not one bit of difference, and there is no need to set about to remove it unless you are editing the page for some other substantive reason. If it were to remain on a talk page indefinitely, it will not matter at all and no one should be getting themselves sanctioned in an effort to strike it from existence.
  The reason your bot did not get approved was because 1) it was filed before you had local consensus for all aspects of the task; 2) you filed it under your own name, rather than a bot's name and were resistant to changing this; 3) you were asking for permission to do stuff like remove the spacing around headers for which there is no general consensus; and, most of all 4) you withdrew the request. Come back to BAG with a well-delineated task for which consensus already exists under a proper bot's account and you will find greater success. – xeno ^talk 14:06, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Your statement seems overly simple but the fact remains as I stated above and elsewhere. Someone on Wikipedia has a problem with every edit. So since its obvious to me know after a week of discussions that an AWB user must stop editing at the first indications that someone has a problem with their edits regardless of how trivial or meaningless the complaint that the process is broken and knowone has any interest in fixing it so that if a complaint is raised and it is stupid then it shouldn't have to be drawn into debate for weeks until the user gives up in frustration. Well menaing or not the policies are supposed to help us not be used as a means to ensure that nothing gets done and that is what is occurring. Sorry but I'm not interested in that anymore. Thats interesting you bring that up Xeno about my bot since those points were never mention on the bot task. Perhaps if I would have knowone that I could have addressed them. But most did have consensus and I removed the ones that did not. I also apologize that I was very explicit and detailed in what I said I was doing rather than just saying the usual verbiage of "other minor changes" that is on all the rest of them that knowone ever asks about. Just to be clear I only submitted it because a user suggested I do it due to the number of edits I was doing a day. I never thought I needed it and I stated there that I created a bot account and would use that if required so if you are going to comment to discredit what I am saying you should relay the information correctly or it seems disingenuous. But thats ok Because I see that someone already updated the AWB rules to even more restrictive, in time I am sure that AWB users will be required to go through BAG to get approval further reducing the number of meaningful tasks that do get accomplished. Eventually I imagine that we will further reduce the useful edits by telling users that if they do more than X edits a day they need a bot and maybe even if it exceeds more than a few a minute (oh yeah thats already the case). So instead of encouraging more edits we are discouraging it and we handicap users with vague policies that we can tailor to our needs whenever the mood suits us. No thanks Im no longer interested. I think Wikipedia is a great tool with a great goal but its being crippled by the policies that are supposed to protect it and in time it will progress into such a complicated unmanageble effort that even less users will care to edit than already do. Good luck because youll need it. -- Kumioko ( talk) 15:36, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm against the bot-removal of several things, but I know I'm not sad at all to see all those damned |nested=yes removed. They clutter the banners, and make them more intimidating and confusing to newcomers, and if they aren't removed, they get propagated through copy-paste. It's one thing to complain about someone making purely trivial whitespace tweaks, or who only bypasses redirects. But it's another to complain about people who are cleaning up the edit windows and making them more accessible to people who don't speak temp glish natively. Going back in 2008 and I was a Wikipedia newbie trying to learn the ropes, I would have toyed with the nested parameter and see it does nothing. Then I would toy with the class parameter and see it does something. Then I would worry that I'm doing something wrong, or that I'm changing something which changes something I'm unaware of, and perhaps shouldn't change. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:43, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Yobot has been doing the same exact things you raked Kumioko over the coals for doing, and yet no one's throwing a fit. If anything, it's more problematic, as the bot is frequently making multiple, seemingly pointless AWB edits per minute, something I rarely saw Kumioko do. Can someone please explain to me why I shouldn't block the bot and remove its AWB access immediately? Parsecboy ( talk) 12:25, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

OK. I stopped it. I'll just remove it from my code if you think it's disturbing. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 12:33, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with the bot. I was just trying to highlight the fact that Kumioko has been unfairly treated. Parsecboy ( talk) 12:41, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

If you check the history of User talk:Yobot, you'll see that issues with that bot have been raised several times. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 14:08, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

If issues have been raised several times, and the bot continues to work in such a manner that violates "the rules," why hasn't it been blocked and stripped of AWB?

To be blunt, I think many of you handled the situation with Kumioko incredibly poorly. By nitpicking over silly rules (presumably for the sake of the rule itself, as I can see no real problem with Kumioko's edits), you've managed to drive away an editor who's contributed 15 pieces of Featured content. If he had been running multiple edits per minute over extended periods of time, then we might have had a problem, but as far as I saw, he wasn't doing that. Parsecboy ( talk) 14:51, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that something needs to be done about Yobot. Hopefully Magioladitis will simply fix it. That doesn't mean that Kumioko's edits were somehow acceptable. There are plenty of other things Kumioko could do; his departure makes it appear that making trivial edits with AWB wass the only thing he was interested in doing. Everyone can make of that what they will .— Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 15:05, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

You're missing (or ignoring) my point about Yobot. Let me spell it out for you: it's not a problem. Neither Yobot or Kumioko are/were creating a grievous drain on server resources. No one is breaking anything. There are times to enforce the rules, and times where it's better to let sleeping dogs lie. If I were to follow your logic, I should have you de-sysopped for using the tools in a dispute. Parsecboy ( talk) 15:31, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

If we eliminated or ignored the rule on trivial edits, we would eventually have every editor who suffers from certain compulsions making edits just for the sake of edits, to the demise of usable watchlists and recentchanges feeds. As you can see from both Yobot's [15] and Magliodatis' block log [16], his habit of making edits contrary to the rules of use has not gone unnoticed. That Magioladitis unfortunately continues with such edits does not mean others should be allowed make such trivial edits as well - at some point, an RFC/U may need to be filed, or an editing restriction may need to be proposed for Magioladitis/Yobot. Hopefully not. – xeno ^talk 15:38, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

As I wrote, I don't encourage these edits, I suggested Kumioko to fill in a BRFA for mass edits, I don't do it massivelly, hopefully I'll have the bugs fixed soon, right now I am now at home and we are making a lot of noice for less than 1,500 pages with leftovers of nested (plus some with invalid "nested-yes" with minus instead of equal sign). -- Magioladitis ( talk) 15:44, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Things like "a lot of noise for less than 1,500 pages with leftovers of nested" seem like mixed messages to me: are actually you going to fix the problem? The number of these pages isn't really relevant, but certainly if there are about 1,500 of them the bot should just leave them alone. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 15:59, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I noticed my name in this discussion when I was attempting to wrap up one I was involved in prior to retiring below. I just want to point out CBM, for what its worth, those edits I did that you had such a problem with represented only a fraction of the ones I was doing and had you not been so involved in the matter and actually looked at it objectively you probably would have noticed that. I still maintain that those edits were useful and helpful regardless of whether they were minor or trivial but it doesn't really matter now because it seems that its more important for the rules to be maintained than for garbage to be eliminated. -- Kumioko ( talk) 16:09, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I also wanted to add that if we have 1500 problems we don't just leave them alone. That is the wrong attitude to have. The fact is if I hadn't had my access revoked and gave up in frustration after my credibility that I had built up over the last few years was utterly destroyed in a bad faith move and I would have been done with them last week with thousands of other edits done by now. Thats over now and now and if I edit at all it will be in discussions like this to help offset some of the absurd things that are occurring Wikiwide. -- Kumioko ( talk) 21:38, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, first you have to decide if 10 characters that have no effect sitting around in a place hardly anyone ever sees is a Problem That Must Be Fixed! There are so many little trivial and insignificant changes one could make to templates and talk pages that if we didn't set out some reasonable limitations one could run run AWB 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, boosting one's edit count into oblivion - to the dismay of editors who actually use their watchlists or recentchanges. – xeno ^talk 21:52, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Theres no need to discuss an issue about consensus if knowone cares to tally the results when its clear that there is support on both sides of the argument (call that in itself a lack of consensus if you will). Certanily enough to plainly indicate that there is not a consensus or agreement on if all minor edits should be treated equally or if there is some wiggle room in the black and white world of AWB and WP policy for exceptions. Certainly there are many examples of what reasonable would be regarding minor edits (removing blank spaces or changing the casing of a template for examples) but I don't think that 1500 or so articles constitutes the problem that you are identifying. I'm not sure why people keep bringing up the editcount issue either. There are lots and lots of bots out there that are using Wikipedia and toolserver resources to do things that do not "render any changes to the articles". Yet they seem to be left alone because their owners have made them "exempt" from the rules. It also doesn't matter who does the edit, a person or a bot, but those edits are going somewhere so whether they count to the editor or a bot the edits are still being made and the pedia is getting a little better each time. Also, the ongoing assumptions of bad faith that all the AWB editors are going to start changing information and then changing it back just to jack up their numbers is just nonsense. -- Kumioko ( talk) 22:14, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I believe currently AWB is adding two spaces before stub tags, a change I heartily endorse for aesthetic reasons (they tend to squish up against the bottom-most text). Can anyone direct me to the latest discussion or MOS page where that change was implemented in the AWB code? Because I noticed that AutoEd is removing that white space. It seems silly to have two different editing programs at odds with each other, so I'd like to mention it to the AutoEd folks, but I'd like some proof this is the current standard. Or maybe some of the AWB folks are also AutoEd folks and can make this consistent? Thanks! Valfontis ( talk) 23:22, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

We've been using two blank lines before stubs for at least two years; it's not a new feature. It used to say so at MOS:LAYOUT but was removed in January. I've posted on the talk page there to confirm if that change was what was agreed. Rjwilmsi 08:09, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply the AWB adding two lines thing was new, but I do remember when it didn't exist. I guess by "change" I meant to say "I like it when AWB adds an extra space before a stub tag." Thanks for the info. I'll await an answer before I post at AutoEd. Valfontis ( talk) 15:05, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

There is a discussion going on about it now. ( I reverted the change to the MoS - I think. ) Post at Auto Ed and let them know what's happening. Rich  Farmbrough, 03:18, 2 March 2011 (UTC).

 Done, Thanks a lot. Valfontis ( talk) 03:49, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

 – -- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 14:39, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

hello,

is this possible to choose an article in another language in AWB, or is it only for the English Wikipedia? Thank you.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 18:36, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

In the drop-down list I chose "Text file" and then wrote "de:Miles Davis/Diskografie". But after I push the button "Start", it delete this item, why?-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 18:51, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I've never tried this, but I'm sure it can be used on other Wikipedias if you have been granted permission there. What have you selected at "Options > Preferences > Site"? -- John of Reading ( talk) 22:00, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

AWB could also be "deleting" the page if AWB doesn't find any errors that match your settings on the Options and Skip tabs. GoingBatty ( talk) 01:05, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

You are trying to load a text file of page names from your PC, called "de:Miles.." First change the site as GOP says, then type the name of the article (without the "de:") into the box right above the list, and click +. Or use any other method to fill the list box. Rich  Farmbrough, 03:22, 2 March 2011 (UTC).

Thank you for you answers! Please try to answer the question below, thank you.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 11:22, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

 – -- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 14:39, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

hello,

I want to replace "id" with "ID". The problem is, AWB searches for all "id"s in the article, for example "Sideman" he changes it to "SIDeman". How to change only "id" with "ID", and not all "id"s in the text. Thank you.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 11:22, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Turn on regular expressions and use \b as a word boundary: \bid\b -- JHunterJ ( talk) 12:26, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

hello,

is this possible to change the American date format M/D/Y to normal date format D/M/Y? If yes, this would be great. Thank you.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 11:25, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

That's "another format", not "normal format". :-) I don't think you can do this, since you can't tell which format 01/02/03 is in. -- JHunterJ ( talk) 12:27, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes it is possible but there is no reason to do it. As long as the article has a standard one way or the other its fine. What could be changed though is if you had some dates in an article in DD MMM YYYY format, others in MMM DD, yyy and others in YYYY-MM-DD, etc. Then you could change them to 1 standard. Otherwise I wouldn't bother with it. -- Kumioko ( talk) 14:18, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Neither M/D/Y nor D/M/Y should be used in articles. The month name should normally be spelled out, or in certain cases displayed as a 3-letter abbreviation. YYYY-MM-DD format is also acceptable in some situations (e.g. references), although it should not be used in article prose. Anomie ⚔ 14:21, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

The article is de:Miles Davis/Diskografie. German format is D/M/Y. For example "October 26, 1956" should be "26. October 1956". Is this possible to change?-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 14:35, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

You can use a regular expression search on "(January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December)\s+(\d{1,2}),\s+(\d{4})" and replace it with "$2. $1 $3". Just be sure you're verifying each edit. Replace or expand my English month names with German month names as desired. -- JHunterJ ( talk) 15:46, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

There should be no .(period or full stop) after the day! -- Kumioko ( talk) 16:17, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I was just coding to the request, since I have no idea what the German MoS on dates says. :-) -- JHunterJ ( talk) 16:30, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

No problem Sorry if it seemed like I was trying to point fingers I just wanted to let everyone know. -- Kumioko ( talk) 16:59, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

In the German language there should be always a period after the day, without it would sound very odd. Thank you for your code!-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 17:40, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Good to know thanks. -- Kumioko ( talk) 17:47, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

One of the most common things I see people use AWB for is to change [[wikilink]]s to [[wikilink|wikilinks]]. I always thought suffixes were a neat little trick myself, so I poked around for the rationale for removing them, to no avail. In fact, AWB's SimplyLinks fix appears to do the opposite (I've never used AWB myself). So what's the deal: is the "suffix trick" deprecated? Should I just use piped links to start with? — Joseph Roe ^{Tk• Cb}, 22:29, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Could you please give some examples? Have you contacted the editors who you see doing this? GoingBatty ( talk) 22:47, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Twice this has happened to me on the same article: [17] and [18] actually reversed the order of the refs from [4][5] to [5][4] which isn't following the MoS. This has only happened to me with this particular article so maybe there's something in that article that AWB doesn't like. Brad ( talk) 08:07, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Infobox field has |rebuilt= before |closed= in source, but renders them the other way round. AWB can only operate on the order of the refs in the source. If you reorder the infobox fields to match the display order it will sort the problem. Rjwilmsi 09:19, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Nice to see a rule change bulldozered through. Rich  Farmbrough, 18:18, 12 March 2011 (UTC).

<sarcasm>Yep Wikipedia can never have too many rules.</sarcasm> -- Kumioko ( talk) 21:04, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

One of the articles I work on ( Declaration and address) is periodically "cleaned up" by one editor or another using AWB. The problem is that that the article includes a number of direct quotations from a document that was written in 1809. It's not appropriate to modernize the orthography within direct quotations.

Is there any way to flag those quotations (or, barring that, the article) for exclusion from AWB's automatic edits? EastTN ( talk) 15:38, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Wrapping the quotations in {{lang|en|...}} should take them out of play, I think. {{ sic}} can also be used for quoted individual words or short phrases (just use "hide=y"). -- JHunterJ ( talk) 15:53, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! It looks like [ sic] is going to do the trick. It's clear that it's going to take some time - I need to check each of the quotes against the original text. EastTN ( talk) 19:39, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

FYI, {{ not a typo}} works too. GoingBatty ( talk) 22:43, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes {{ Sic}}, {{ Not a typo}} and {{ Typo}} (for deliberate typos) should all work. For really old English {{ Lang|ang}} might be considered. Rich  Farmbrough, 17:48, 15 March 2011 (UTC).

Since AlexNewArtBot ( talk · contribs) is often not working (been about a week now) is there any possible script that could be run in AWB to duplicate that process? I would be interested in running something similar but only to find new ship articles. I'm aware that I can load new pages into AWB and have had some minor success finding new articles but I'm limited to only 500 new pages. I suppose that I'm looking for particular keywords in the article text of new articles. Of course as I'm writing this post newartbot has started running again but it hadn't run since the 8th. Brad ( talk) 00:45, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

You may need to do it multiple times. I'm not sure how the logic works, when we move a ref. Getting frustrated with doing it manually. HELP! TCO ( talk) 22:52, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

 Done by Headbomb ( talk · contribs) in this edit -- John of Reading ( talk) 08:15, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Should I learn how to do this myself or just ask for favors periodically? TCO ( talk) 12:41, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I have no problem with doing this for you every few days - ask here or on my talk page. -- John of Reading ( talk) 22:17, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:MOSNUM advises to use a non-breaking space "in expressions in which figures and abbreviations (or symbols) are separated by a space". Why, then, is AWB inserting them between numbers and spelled-out unit names, such as "inch" and "gram"? Just today I have seen non-breaking spaces added to "1 gram projectile" and "9 inch gun". These should really be hyphenated, but I don't expect AWB to know when numbers are in adjectival form; I do think AWB should leave these alone. I'm not trying to flood the AWB developers today, but things just keep happening. Chris the speller ( talk) 01:30, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I received a complaint about the change this edit made to a reference name; in particular, it changed «Haresnape» to «"Haresnape25"» (the guillemets are mine). Quotation marks are not needed if the ref name consists only of A-Z, a-z, 0-9, period and hyphen minus. The addition of quotation marks only adds two characters, and makes no visible difference on the page. Your thoughts? Chris the speller ( talk) 18:06, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

The above is true; but the one I was actually thinking of was the change from <ref name=Reynolds> to <ref name="Reynolds">. -- Redrose64 ( talk) 18:37, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes. Quotes are optional if the name meets the HTML id rules. The edit removed quotes in one place and added them in another, so its a bit puzzling. Regardless, adding or removing quotes is an under-the-hood change that has nothing to do with style. ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  ^talk 19:25, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

True, it doesn't affect style: that's my point. When viewing a page diff, I need to hunt through trivia like this to find the real changes. -- Redrose64 ( talk) 19:43, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

There were two changes to reference naming from AWB's general fixes. The first changed the name from Haresnape to "Haresnape25" in order to merge duplicate references; the second changed a <ref name=Reynolds>...</ref> to a <ref name="Reynolds"/>, condensing a re-used named reference. In both cases quotes were added to the reference name as part of another change; I made the logic do it this way to avoid having to write something that determined when quotes could not be used (the optional quotes doing no harm as Gadget850 mentioned). Rjwilmsi 20:53, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Using quotes does make the name safe if you can't determine that the name follows the rules. ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  ^talk 11:10, 21 March 2011 (UTC)---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  ^talk 11:10, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes. it does have the advantage of recognising spaces, which I tend to avoid like the plague anyway because I can't see the point of the two if not more extra keystrokes. Based on the explanation above, I don't quite understand the substitution of <ref name=Reynolds/> with <ref name="Reynolds"/> when the citation is actually '<ref name=Reynolds>Reynolds (1943), pp. 155–156</ref>'. Should it not at least mirror the 'original' cite tag? The quote marks are completely redundant in the above case, whilst at the same time the change makes it inconsistent with the accessory tags, and puzzles those editors not familiar with the refs template. -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:53, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

AWB (general fixes) tried to change "(c. 1475 – 1542)" to "(c. 1475–1542)" in the article Giacomo Fogliano, but that introduces imprecision to the year of death. Where do I request a change to check that "c." does not precede the years before removing spaces? Chris the speller ( talk) 18:31, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Your statement does not match my understanding of MOS:DOB. Based on MOS:DOB I believe AWB's change was correct. Rjwilmsi 20:42, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I couldn't find that case at MOS:DOB. What I did find was at WP:ENDASH: "Disjunctive en dashes are unspaced, except when there is a space within either one or both of the items". I believe the first item is "c. 1475", which contains a space. I'll ask for comment over there. Art LaPella ( talk) 20:56, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:DOB says "When either date contains a space, the en dash is preceded by a space (preferably a non-breaking space, code  ) and followed by a space." According to my memory of older discussions, in the case of an approximate birth year the space between "c." and the year was counted as a space within that date, so "(c. 1475 – 1542)" indicated that the birth year was approximate, while "(c. 1475–1542)" indicated that both years are approximate, as the birth year does not contain a space, and the "c." applied to both years. The guideline has changed (somewhat recently) to encourage extrapolation, such as "(before 1475 – 1542)" in a case where, perhaps, the mother was known to have died in 1475. As this guideline is followed more and more, now fewer dates are in the form "(c. 1475 – 1542)", so it's probably not worth moving Heaven and Earth to observe this convention. But they may be of value to some editors and readers, if AWB hasn't already changed most of them. Chris the speller ( talk) 00:58, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

You may be right, but the MOS:DOB example of Aethelwalh doesn't seem to meet your rules. Please sort this out at the MOS talk page, then I'll be happy to adjust AWB to follow an update or clarification of MOS:DOB if one comes. Rjwilmsi 09:14, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I shifted the discussion back to WT:DATE#AWB date question. Chris the speller ( talk) 14:19, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, in more than two days no editors have contributed to that discussion, so I would say that the spaces are not nearly as important as they once were. Thanks, RJ and Art, for your time. Case dismissed! Everybody back to work! Chris the speller ( talk) 23:31, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

It might be useful to be able to load a group of Fund & Replace statements that another user has developed, or load a group that is more useful with one list of articles. However, when I tried to splice some (between <Replacement> and </Replacement>) into a settings .xml file, some characters got clobbered, such as en dashes. Tried Notepad and a proprietary editor that I have, but no success. Is there a freeware XML editor that would lend itself to such an operation? It would also be nice if AWB could load Find & Replace settings separately from all others. Chris the speller ( talk) 23:47, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I found that the foxe XML editor from firstobject (free) works well for splicing Find & Replace rules into an AWB settings file. I have a set of rules that works well for cleaning up some date formats, especially in bio articles. A good example can be seen on this edit. The code, and instructions on how to splice Find & Replace rules, can be found on my subpage User:Chris the speller/BioRegEx. Comments will be welcomed, especially if they consist of high praise. Yeah, right. Chris the speller ( talk) 02:15, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

You might want to change your last rule from "full" to "ful", so it finds "fully-" instead of "fullly-". This rule might also be a candidate for the RegexTypoFix list. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by GoingBatty ( talk • contribs) 02:27, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Nice catch! Chris the speller ( talk) 02:40, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

At Wikisource we do a lot of transcluding from our Page: ns (our workspace) to the main namespace. I want to grab a list of pages in a book, eg. s:Index:Dictionary of National Biography volume 32.djvu, so 449 pages in the Page: ns. I want to test whether the pages are transcluded or not, so a simple Y/N test. I can see two options, either to have a filter that could be run from the list for which I am not holding my breath as it is probably very WS specific, or the means to run checks against a list. Would this sort of thing be able to run from a custom module, and if so what is the sort of code/WikiFunction would one run? I have done a manual check against the api, and know that p+ve test returns <api><query>... and a n-ve test doesn't return and returns <api />. Thanks. To note that as I said to Magioladitis in IRC, I am not a hacker, I am just an adaptor of code to suit my purpose, with a little bit of nouse. billinghurst sDrewth 13:15, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Devs, Can the CSVLoader plugin be packaged with the AWB release? The latest DLL is available here. Thanks. — Ganeshk ( talk) 01:13, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Is AWB dictionary set for US or UK spelling of english words? I need to know in order to have my bot approved. Phearson ( talk) 04:21, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

It's set for neither. Anyone can edit the list of typos, but only spelling fixes that work on articles for both varieties of English would be tolerated for long. For example, right now the typo list would change "discoloued" to "discoloured", but it wouldn't change "discolored" or "discoloured" to the other. However, your bot could be given a list of articles in the category "Revenge class battleships", and you could set up your own "Find & Replace" rules to change "armor" to "armour", for example. Chris the speller  ^yack 05:28, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I've been having some issues using some of the sources for make list. Categories seems to work fine but almost nothing else does. I'm wondering if this is because I'm using it for a custom wiki and not one of the listed ones? For instance, attempting to use any of the what links here options returns 0 results. Also, I'm wondering if it's possible to get links from pages such as Special:UncategorizedFiles. 207.246.118.92 ( talk) 02:20, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I am copying this over from HJ Mitchell's talk page, as so far all I am getting is "because I said so" and guidelines which lightly tread upon the subject. An edit to WP:AWB made by User:Xeno without prior discussion is being misapplied by several administrators to block users from performing routine edits to the encyclopedia which improve it over time. This behaviour is not productive to a large base of editors, and, more importantly, one of the primary uses of AWB. Bypassing redirects is not grounds for removal of your AWB access or blocking your account. Switching outdated/redundant templates is not ground either. Most importantly, inserting non-breaking spaces is a requirement of the manual of style and does not constitute a minor cosmetic alteration. If administrators wish to keep doing this, they should seek consensus of the community by starting a centralized discussion.

Until further clarified following a discussion, the only part of rule 4 on WP:AWB which conforms to WP:Bot policy (the only half-applicable policy to this matter) is removing some white space, moving a stub tag, converting some HTML to Unicode. Please cease blocking users on grounds other than these three. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  ^τ _¢ 22:07, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the rules are becoming more and more restrictive and are keeping us from doing a lot of useful edits. I agree that there are things that we should be doing with AWB like removing blank spaces but some people are interpretting these rules too broadly. Especially when the recently instituted ones were implemented without a clear consensus. I'm not sure why we don't just revert them. -- Kumioko ( talk) 23:47, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

The rules have prohibited edits such as these [19] [20], along with other inconsequential edits, since at least 2009 [21]. The principle not to bypass redirects that aren't broken is at least that old, as well. This was discussed at length on this page in February 2011 [22] which resulted in the rules being clarified to be more direct about the sorts of edits that should be avoided. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 00:55, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

First I agree on principle that we shouldn't change redirects for articles but I do not agree that this should be followed for templates. Redirecting templates can have undesired consequences and makes it much more difficult to fix problems with parameters (because you have to account for multiple variations of multiple templates (WikiProject banners are a prime example here, Citation templates are another). Your also right that it was discussed in February however reading through and counting up the comments for and against I see a roughly equal vote with maybe 1 more leaning towards clarifying the rule. Most of the comments that many of us made were simply dismissed and written off as though we had no idea what we were talking about. -- Kumioko ( talk) 01:09, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Surely the whole point of automation is to perform small, necessary and repetitive jobs that nobody would in practice be bothered to do manually? Certainly, a great number of inconsequential type of changes can and ought to be built into the general fixes – like I try to do with my scripts. By extension, nobody who has been granted access to AWB ought to be denied the right to run AWB 'naked' (ie only for making general fixes). This blanket banning of making inconsequential edits is turning into a real blunt stick used to thwack gnoming editors. It really defies the raison d'être of semi-automated editing, and it's about time we stopped this madness. -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:41, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. The only reason against such a practise given so far is that it "clogs up watchlists", a ridiculous notion at best. Carl, that discussion is fine and dandy for starting a discussion on the editors talk page. If you want to block a user or prohibit their access to one of the several programs on wikipedia designed for performing exactly these minor edits, you need to obtain community consensus for that type of action. Consensus beyond the 10–15 editors that traffic this talk page. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  ^τ _¢ 06:50, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Since my last proper engagement in this rather fruitless discussion dominated by fundamentalism (for want of a better term), I note from the collapsed discussion that the rhetoric is now moved on from banning "inconsequential changes" to prohibiting changes that are "merely cosmetic". I'm aghast! Let me say I'm not one to go around making such edits with AWB. I value productivity, and want to pack in as much as possible into one edit – like this one – and I am sure there is a downside to this too, but I would still defend those who appreciate doing the minute changes because people work in different ways. -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:03, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

From Ohconfusius post above: "Surely the whole point of automation is to perform small, necessary and repetitive jobs": the often forgotten part of this is the "necessary": removing whitespace, removing redirects, basically nearly everything that doesn't change how a page looks, works and is categorized isn't "necessary" and shouldn't be done separately, and often not as part of a larger edit either. The fact that it "clogs up watchlists" is not a ridiculous notion. AWB edits need scrutiny just like any other edit, since they contain errors just like any other edit, but they get made a lot faster. Filling up watchlists (and page histories) with inconsequential edits has no benefit at all, and only takes time and resources. Furthermore, they often obscure other, consequential edits in watchlists, including vandalism (not by the AWB or bot editors, but by previous editors). Watchlists only show the last edit to a page, not all edits since the last time you visited a page. The "raison d'être of semi-automated editing", as it has been called above, is not and never has been making inconsequential edits, but making consequential but repetitive edits, like adding or changing categories, dating tags, etcetera. Removing whitespace from (or adding it to) section headers, changing the capitalization of template parameters, ... is an abuse of semi-automated editing to impose your own preference in violation of WP:STABILITY and WP:CONSISTENCY, and should result in blocks if this continues after ample warnings. Fram ( talk) 07:36, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify: Bypassing a redirect to come some hours later to update its parameters is not the same with changing the capitalisation of its first letter. For me the main problem is that some people expect AWB to do all in 1 edit while they don't expect that from normal editors or other semi-automated programs. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 07:41, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

When looking at Yobots edits after the unblock, the majority still seem to be inconsequential edits, including a lot similar to this, and things like this [25]. This has nothing to do with a run where a subsequent edit will change more things, this is just changing things for the sake of changing things, without any benefit at all. Fram ( talk) 07:50, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Fram says inconsequential edits "shouldn't be done separately, and often not as part of a larger edit either". That would seem to mean that they are undesirable, full stop, and one should not make any at all. I think that is quite different to saying they should not be done with AWB. That being the case, we should make it clear in the relevant guideline or policy, with a note in WP:AWB pointing to the relevant section. But I think it should be made equally clear what constitutes inconsequential – the "no effect on the rendered page" rule would tend to put date maintenance tags into the same category, although I would consider them "necessary" if not "essential". Without trying to be facetious, what about, then, a bot or AWB operator changing {{ cn}} or {{ fact}} into {{ citation needed}} when it is inserting the date parameter? -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:02, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The first diff Fram shows is a fix to the "wikilink equal to text" minor error and it's typically fixed by tenths of editors. It's now part of CHECKWIKI error fixes. This is a regular wikignome edit. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 08:08, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

And the benefit of this edit is...? Fram ( talk) 08:19, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Less screen clutter when in edit mode? Just imagine if more editors piped everything, or copy what they see... -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:26, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

If you don't want editors to make such pipe edits, talk to those editors. If someone is bothered by the screen clutter when they are editing the page anyway, they can remove this at that time. Wasting resources just for this is not beneficial. Anyway, I haven't seen a response from Magioladitis or you explaining the other kind of edits, changing template redirects to templates without any other change. Fram ( talk) 08:40, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm confused as hell by person templates, and am hardly likely to change any of them. They might do something, they may not. It's not something I care about. -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:01, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

If you don't want a clogged watchlist, don't use wikipedia. Mine is always clogged. Don't worry about resources; the editor making those changes is the only resource to worry about, and if those are the type of changes the editor wants to make, so be it. Until the relevant policy is updated (ie, not WP:AWB), stop blocking users based on this. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  ^τ _¢ 13:13, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

"If you don't want a clogged watchlist, don't use wikipedia." That's about as helpful as "if you don't want to get blocked, don't use Wikipedia"... Fram ( talk) 13:37, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Dating a tag does change the rendered page, since it is now categorized in a different cat. Combining this with a change of the tag from a less clear to a clearer template name is a good use of resources. Apart from that: if I state that they often shouldn't be done at all, I mean what I say, often, not always. Some inconsequential edits (like the removal of piped links which are identical to the linked text) are perfectly acceptable as edits combined with a consequential edit. Other ones, like changes to the whitespace in headers, should best never be done, as they have no benefit in any situation and only impose one editor's preference over another, equally acceptable one. Fram ( talk) 08:40, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad we agree on the dating tags, otherwise something is seriously wrong. You're saying category changes are therefore acceptable. I guess you would say a change of a deprecated function to a current one, such as changing [[image: to [[File: would be equally acceptable, but that changing {{cite to {{Cite would not be acceptable under any circumstances; both seem inconsequential to me... -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:01, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Images: "Note: The "File:" prefix may be used interchangeably with "Image:". What's the benefit of changing something that works to something else that works (not a function really, by the way, but a namespace)? But at least "image" is really the older one, and every new one should have "file" instead. This can't be said for "cite" vs "Cite", where the former is just as much in use as the latter, if not even more so, with the edit box adding e.g. "cite web", not "Cite web", and so on. As for the categorization, this is made explicit in AWB rule if use #4 as well: "With some exceptions (such as changes to the emitted metadata or categorization of the page)[...]" Fram ( talk) 09:21, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Consistency, so the old practise ceases. Same reason I change </references> to {{ reflist}} on any page I come across with it. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  ^τ _¢ 13:20, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

WP:CONSISTENCY: "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within a Wikipedia article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole." These changes you make "on any page you come across it" are contrary to an "overriding principle" of our manual of style guideline, so perhaps you should cease doing them instead of announcing them... Apart from that, if you believe /references is deprecated, first change Help:Footnotes, as that basic page clearly indicates that it is a perfectly acceptable alternative to "reflist". Fram ( talk) 13:42, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

How on Earth have you interpreted "not necessarily throughout Wikipedia" as contrary to the edits being performed? If we let everything stay as it is, things become messy. You are saying that the people that comes and sweep every so often are a burden on the system and your watchlist. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  ^τ _¢ 14:03, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

"If we let everytging stay as it is, things become messy". And so your preferred version gets to become the standard? What if another editor goes around and changes "reflist" to "references" on every page he comes across? That would be just as acceptable in your preferred reading of the MOS principle. Preventing such edits is put into place to avoid edut wars over things which have no "better" or "accepted" version, but where different accepted methods exist. This is not messy, this is allowing a bit of freedom, creativity, personality, variation into what is already an overly burocratic and rigid environment. If you want consistency across Wikipedia, first get consensus that the thing you are changing towards is the only accepted or clearly preferred version. Otherwise, stop it. Fram ( talk) 14:23, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

By the way, Yobot truly has a problem with the inconsequential edits, e.g. this and this are really not acceptable use of bots (only adding whitelines), neither is this (changing template "seealso" in "see also"), and putting categories before interwikilinks instead of after them is correct but pretty useless as well [26] [27] [28]. This is all from one group of ten consecutive yobot edits, so not really few and far between. Fram ( talk) 09:27, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I also have problem with the only whitespace and I am working to fix it. I find the category placement a very nice edit which is also suggested by checkwiki error fixes. One reason is that people prefer to see the stub categories to be rendered last. One more reason is that it's easier to interwiki bots coming from other wikipedia projects to find and locate interwikis if they have standard position. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 10:01, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

And I really don't understand this logic which says: Don't do minor edits now because we can do them in the next 6 months along with other edits. First of all, this contradicts with some people who come and complain of bots doing too much. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 10:06, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The examples I gave weren't about stub templates, and don't change anything to the order of the categories as displayed on the rendered page, so that's no argument here. As for checkwiki: I have checked their archives and the page on :de, and I can't find any discussion of this "interwiki before categories breaks interwiki bots". Your second reply: there is no contradiction if you remember that apart from bots, we also have something called editors doing edits. The request is not for bots to do more, but to do less. Fram ( talk) 10:27, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

So it,s ok if we do them using AWB as semi-automated edit or we should do them completely manual? Recall that AWB is just a browser like Firefox. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 11:32, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

It's OK if you do them (if by them you mean the replacement of X|X with X) by any means you like, as long as you combine them with consequential edits. The compalints about bots doing too much in one edit mainly come from edits removing 50 trailing spaces, adding spaces between "*" and whatever follows them in a list of items, assing and removing some whitelines, changing the capitalization of some templates, and somewhere doing one "real" edit, making it extremely hard to find the actual bot edit among the clutter of inconsequential tidying changes (never mind the discussion whether all these changes actually have consensus or not, and are actually tidying things or not). But including some, clearly superior changes (even if they have no effect on the rendered page and categopries, like the X|X example) in a bot run that does some actual improvements shouldn't be a problem. Fram ( talk) 13:00, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

• If you want to come to some kind of consensus on inconsequential edits and whether the community-at-large feels they are permissible to be done en masse, I'd suggest a different venue than this one. Here, we are just getting the two polar opposites - those who feel that these edits should not be done on their own, and those who feel that they should be permitted to make these changes any time, even if they have no effect on the rendered page.

  A thought experiment: We remove the restriction on insignificant edits. Editors become thus permitted to make any kind of tiny little change they feel like using AWB, even if it's just a wikitext change that suits a personal preference of theirs. One editor feels that templates should always have the first letter capitalized and there should be spacing around headers. Another editor feels that templates should always use lcfirst and there should be no spacing around headers. The result is not good. Do you see why? – xeno ^talk 12:52, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

  Sorry, but community consensus hasn't been obtained to forbid such edits. You'll have to obtain that first, before continuing to block accounts and bots based on an unwritten rule, which has still only been reinforced with the "clogged watchlist" notion. If edit wars happen, they are dealt with in the same fashion as an non-automated editor performing them; these types of changes could just as well take place amongst a normal non-minor edit. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  ^τ _¢ 13:20, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean about community consensus? The AWB rules have long prohibited this sort of thing for AWB users, and the bot policy prohibits it for bots. The AWB rules were discussed just two months ago, and the wording was tightened, not loosened. It seems like there is indeed consensus for the AWB rules. The date delinking arbitration case has additional findings about proper and improper use of semiautomated editing like AWB. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 13:26, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

( edit conflict) The edit did not change anything, it simply made clear the consensus that has developed over a number of years regarding such edits. You should feel free to initiate a community discussion at an appropriate venue if you feel that editors should be permitted to make insignificant edits on a mass scale. – xeno ^talk 13:27, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Bots can easily be blocked for such edits, unless they can show that they have approval for them. Unapproved bot edits are a reason for blocking a bot. Bot policy contains "Cosmetic changes should only be applied when there is a substantial change to make at the same time." And multiple lines making it clear that things like AWB may be equated with bots, like "Note that high-speed semi-automated processes may effectively be considered bots in some cases, even if performed by an account used by a human editor. If in doubt, check." This is precisely the reason that AWB has its rules of use, and this is also the reason that people violating them can be blocked. Fram ( talk) 13:37, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I think we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. Gnomes edits aren't controversial case change. We can form a consensus on that. Both editors and bots can go under WP:STABILITY etc. But preventing WP:LAYOUT fixes because they aren't "good enough" makes not much sense. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 13:45, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Which layout changes are prevented? A layout change that doesn't change anything on the rendered page isn't really a layout change... Fram ( talk) 13:57, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Here is an example of one layout change I did to a talk page a while back that got my AWB rights revoked. In this edit I removed 1030 characters of useless fields from a talk page banner. Now these fields were either equal to no or missing so they wouldn't display. Removing these unused or unneeded fields though makes whats left easier to read, reduces the size of the page and reduces the size of the page in any susequent saves, it reduces the chance of errors by others and one very imprtant point it removes parameters and feilds that the WikiProjects themselves state specificially in the documentation for the use of the template should not be there. No it does not render any changes to the page but I would argue that for the reasons I mentioned and potentially others it is a meaningful edit and should not be considered equal to removing a blank space. -- Kumioko ( talk) 14:25, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand why you would want to mess with such stuff on the talk pages. As far as I am concerned, they are like attics. Although I wouldn't necessarily disagree with removing the redundancies your example showed, such cleanups are probably best left until when you have no space. -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:55, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

As I stated on HJ Mitchell's page, the bot policy SPECIFICALLY mentions several scripts which should not be used without performing other edits. These scripts include whitespace removal, changing the spacing in headers, and converting HTML characters to unicode. This is being used as a guise to block bots/editors based on personal interpretation of what constitutes insignificant (and I'm not arguing that those three things should be allowed). But fixing up outdated templates, changing Image to File, etc are changes that are years behind because some editors, when we first made these adjustments, decided to be lazy and make a rule against it rather than... you know... actually cleaning up after themselves. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  ^τ _¢ 14:03, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The bigger problem with many of these arguments is that the rules themselves are completely open to interpretation. For instance we the bot rules are written in such a vague manner that anyone who uses AWB would be considered a bot! I think it says something about 25 edits. Thats hogwash because many editors with or without AWB do that many in an hour.

I also think the AWB rule that states inconsequential edits is too vague. I think we can all agree that there are things that shouldn't be done as a stand alone edit like removing blank spaces and moving stub tags (I think there should be exceptions here too). We need to identify these things individually not create one vague and sweeping rule that can be interpretted many ways by many users. We need to be specific!

If we don't want users to remove blank spaces thats fine we should say that not "Do not remove simply blank spaces and other minor edits". As editors make the edits that the community feels are inconsequential and innappropriate to be done with AWB then we can add them to the list. What we also shouldn't do is restrict one tool over another. All tools and bots should have the same restrictions, not restrict AWB when we let Twinkle or other tools do it because we don't like AWB.

Another problem is that there are a lot of AWB editors but the fact and truth of the matter is that its the same 20 editors or so (myself included) that use it the most and many of these problems boil down to volume. We spend a lot of time, doing a lot edits, to a lot of articles, that show up on a lot of watchlists. So we catch the attention more. The only way to fix that is to not edit, which hurts the pedia. We shouldn't be punishing the users who are spending the most time making improvements, regardless of how small (within the approved rules anyway).

I also concur with what Floydian stated about some of the edits we have procluded. If a field is deprecated then it should be eliminated, via a bot or otherwise, regardless of wether its actually changing the display. If we make changes like changing Image to File that affects huge amounts of articles we should establish some sort of rule that says that for a while we will only do it when its being down with a larger edit (maybe a year) then depending on the remaining number just do a bot and be done with it, preferably a bot that does other things as well). We shouldn't be hanging onto these things. People copy them to other articles thinking thier valid, they make it confusing because youhave multiple differing things, etc. -- Kumioko ( talk) 14:10, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Was the rule not recently made more specific as to what changes are considered insignificant? The problem here is that a handful of editors feel that it is perfectly fine to run through articles making changes to the wikitext that have no effect on the rendered page, and seem to be wilfully ignoring the rule (in manual mode) or looking the other way when their bots happen to make these changes in an automated fashion. This discussion between polar opposites is going nowhere. We need a wider discussion that includes the middle. – xeno ^talk 14:23, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with a wider discussion but I don't agree that the new rule made it more specific but it did make the rule more restrictive. More so than that applied to Bots or to other tools or scripts. I do agree that we shouldn't just do every little edit but we need to be specific not simply make the rule more restrictive so that using the tool is more trouble than its worth. Using the issue of removing White spaces for instance isn't even cut and dry. I would argue that removing a white space after a section header or a space after a sentance is different than if someone adds 20 blank lines to an article or if I remove the space between the end of a sentance and an inline citation (which the MOS says there should be no space). There may be exceptions to rules and we need to note this in the rules if there are any. As the rules are written now they can never be done, thereby forcing them to be done manually...Ugh who wants to do that. We need to get away from the Vague "its minor cause I say so" mentality. -- Kumioko ( talk) 14:35, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

There really is an easy way to avoid any warnings, blocks, or sanctions (such as removal of access to AWB): avoid making insignificant edits. There are countless AWB editors who use the tool day-in-day-out and never had a problem obeying the rule. I assume they simply realize that AWB should not be used as a blunt instrument to push their personal wikitext preferences onto the wiki. – xeno ^talk 14:41, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

That's about as stupid as saying "if you don't want to make a mistake, don't do anything", or "if you don't want to crash your car, don't drive". Who said anything about blunt instrument to push their own preferences? Removing white spaces between citations like Kumioko said is a necessity, but is clearly prevented by your interpretation of the rules – it's tosh, if you ask me... -- Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:08, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Err, a better analogy than "if you don't want to crash your car, don't drive" would be "if you don't want to get ticketed, don't speed" - Kingpin ¹³ ( talk) 02:43, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Of course, if you use that analogy the speed limit would be "fast", with the officers making their own interpretations. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  ^τ _¢ 02:50, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

And to continue the analogy even further, in this case the offender would have been driving at 400mph, and the conversation would have gone something like:

Officer (HJ Mitchell): "You were going too fast."

Passenger (yourself, Floy): "Yeah, stop getting at him for going too fast, that's what cars are for!" ("Stop hounding people for making cosmetic changes with a bot, that's why we have them")

Officer (Me): "Going too fast generally results in a ticket." ("I suggest you review [this past case] which resulted in [user] being banned from making such changes")

Passenger: (yourself, suddenly realising they might get ticketed) "Only for going fast, which we weren't doing!" ("[The policy only] mentions not using specific scripts")

You see why this is a bit odd, a second ago you were going fast, now you're not, just because of an exclusive list in policy, which fairly clearly applies in the case we were talking about... - Kingpin ¹³ ( talk) 03:03, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

(ec)"The only way to fix that is to not edit, which hurts the pedia." No, the only way to fix that is to only make changes according to the rules. When in doubt, ask. When some changes get opposed, ask, and get a consensus for them (or a consensus that the objections aren't valid, which is basically the same thing) before proceeding. But if editors continue to edit without consensus and despite requests to stop and discuss those edits, then they (or in the case of a bot the bot) get blocked. This is the same that happens with other editors that edit against consensus and without discussing edits that are questioned. Fram ( talk) 14:42, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

You are both missing the point completely. My point is that we need to clarify what is an insignificant edit. Not that we don't need a rule limiting doing them. As the rule is written I can basically call anything an insignificant edit and its up to the editor I am challenging to prove otherwise. That insignificant edit rule BTW doesn't seem to apply to bots or to many other tools and seems to be unique or at least most often enforced, on AWB. Additionally, I make mistakes, sometimes I accidentally hit save instead of skip. I would like to think its infrequent but it does happen. If its an actual problem I revert it but if its a minor edit I just leave it and go on. I don't need to get beat down every time that happens and some editor wants to comb through the last few hundred of my edits until they find one. You will find some I am sure. My point is we shouldn't be using the rules as a bludgeon to smack down every editor who accidentally does an insignificant edit and especially not when the edit falls into the vague gray area. Xeno how can I avoid making an insignificant edit if the rule says and other significant edits, what does that mean...It means any edit I want! and that needs to change. We need to stop the AWB bashing. If we are going to enforce the rules we need to do it across the board. AWB, bots, twinkle, scripts, etc. It needs to be a standard rule not a whim. I still contend that edits like this are not minor and inconsequential regardless of wether or not they render a change to the page. -- Kumioko ( talk) 15:03, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The edits for which Yobot was recently blocked (the proximate cause of this thread), were not of that character. They were sustained and persistent insignificant edits such as [29] [30] [31] [32] [33], and the bot was seemingly just left to its devices. And there is a clear pattern of Magioladitis letting his bot run loose like this. – xeno ^talk 15:32, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Some blocks are really stupid. Like the "I am not sure if what you do is OK. Let me block you and then we discuss it" or the "Hey, you edited my page twice let me block your bot so it won't touch my page again". I wonder if you will also block editors who don't do the whole procedure edit at once and keep saving a page without using the preview button. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 15:59, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

@Fram. WP:LAYOUT says that interwikis go under categories. You tell not to fix it because it doesn't matter if they don't. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 16:01, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Even though it is included in WP:LAYOUT, it doesn't change the actual layout, does it? There is e.g. also a prefered order of the "for" template and the "protection" templates, but changing an article only to switch those two would be utterly pointless. Yes, when you are writing an article, or completely wikifying it, this is one of the additional things that can be done, but it shouldn't be done in isolation or with other inconsequential edits. Fram ( talk) 19:06, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

@Xeno, Frankly I am on the fence about some of the edits that have been argued about but those edits I think are valid. Redirecting templates though is different than redirecting an article. If we redirect an article its no big deal but when we redirect templates it can cause problems. It can cause problems because of the complicated logic that some templates employ, it also causes problems with people copying the Infobox to use on another article and thus they expand the problem. In addition to the previous its confusing to new users who copy the Infobox and replicate it on other articles thinking its areal template. Another problem with redirecting templates (and this also stems from the coding of them) is that when an outside site uses Wikipedia data they sometimes do not work and causes the data to display incorrectly. This can also be seen in some of the Sister projects like Wikibooks. So what seems like a simple redirect, when dealing with templates, is not necessarily so. Another problem is that it helps when the developers are writing code for bots and AWB. Its much easier to identify one template (Infobox person for example) than to try and account for every possible combination. -- Kumioko ( talk) 16:07, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Any actual examples of articles where there were problems because a redirected template was used instead of the actual one? Not AWB or bot problems, but actual problems with the article? Fram ( talk) 19:06, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

@Xeno: Yobot may be the catalyst to this thread, but it is irrelevant now. This is to discuss this issue in general, and I agree: This discussion should be taken to somewhere centralized where the community as a whole can add their input, instead of the same several editors that have created, written, and now impose these rules.

@Fram: I'll see what I can find

@Everyone: All I continue to see here is assertions of "this is what the rules are", yet no guideline or policy (note that the AWB page is an informative page, and neither guideline nor policy) to validate that assertion or why or what the problem these edits cause are (aside from being inconsequential and flooding watchlists). Now we're starting to uncover MOS requirements that are contrary to the actions being performed by some admins here. The manual of style supercedes the "rules" placed on WP:AWB, full stop.

Here's a thought. Why don't we change the coding of the redirect handler so that double redirects work, then we can leave all those hanging around and give editors crap about cleaning up. The fact that editors are creating rules to increase redundancy and reduce the work they have to do (whilst blocking those that do take the initiative) is beyond me. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  ^τ _¢ 19:51, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The rules of use have been in place since early 2006, and I don't think any of those now enforcing them were involved in creating them despite your claim. As regards "policies", the Bot requirements section of the relevant policy requires that bots be "useful", "not consume resources unnecessarily", and only perform tasks "for which there is consensus". – xeno ^talk 19:59, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

"A template would have to be screwed up in order to provide this evidence. We're not here to do that." No, nothing of the sort needs to be done. Just show which earlier version of an article doesn't work because it pointed to a redirect to a template instead of an actual template. This problem must have occurred, and probably regularly, to be stated here with such certainty. Otherwise, such an argument should not be used here. As for the "no guideline or policy", as had been said before, and has been repeated here, the bot policy is the relevant policy. Fram ( talk) 20:17, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

WP:AWB is not a rules page, not a guideline, not a policy. It is not grounds for blocking users. Period. WP:AWB can ONLY remind users of guidelines/policies already in existence which apply to ALL editors, and NOT just users of AWB, which is NOT subject to a different set of rules than the rest of the community. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  ^τ _¢ 20:16, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Users of AWB are subject to the rules of AWB. If they violate the rules, they may be blocked for disruptive editing, or, as a lesser sanction, their access to the tool may be revoked. If their access to the tool cannot be revoked for technical reasons (e.g. they are a sysop), they may be blocked to enforce the rules of AWB as they are engaging in disruptive editing. Note that this is codified at Wikipedia:Bot policy#Bot-like editing. – xeno ^talk 20:20, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Before we go too far, which users are we talking about - bots, or non-bots? Also, WP:AWB is a rules page in the sense that it has a section called "rules" that AWB users are required to follow. These rules are the reason that AWB use is limited to approved users. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 21:52, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

If the AWB's rules end up to prevent editors from doing edits they would do with a normal editor, using FF for example then we should not have these rules. As I wrote before I understand disagreements with controversial edits (I expressed my disagreements too and I can give examples of what I mean) but we should not stop editors from gnome edits. I like to think of AWB as the browser every wikipedia editor has to use to write pages. Gnome editors become more efficient with AWB. I try my best to report and fix every single bug and I think I reached a point that Reedy and Rjw won't like to hear from anymore. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 22:27, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

"Gnome editors become more efficient with AWB." - this is exactly why AWB has stricter rules. An editor who manually makes a change to 10 pages that she regularly follows can be reverted if someone disagrees. An editor who uses AWB to edit 1,000 articles cannot easily be reverted. The general principle of Wikipedia is that people can edit freely because other people can always undo edits they disagree with. Since AWB breaks that principle (making it hard to undo large jobs), the types of edits that editors can do with AWB are more limited. — Carl ( CBM ·  talk) 00:45, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Although that statement is true CBM I believe that the occassion of the problem you are bringing up is very very rare. Whats more its off point a bit. This conversation is based on a disagreement of what types of edits should be done and what constitutes a minor edit. So if the edit is so minor it shouldn't be done with AWB then it definately doesn't need to be reverted. -- Kumioko ( talk) 00:51, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

And in general, we indeed don't revert the edit, but prevent the editor from making any more of these edits ("prevent" in the sense of discuss, warn, and only if that fails block or revoke AWB access or use any other means to achieve the same result). Fram ( talk) 07:22, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

... let's take Yobot again as an example: looking at the last twenty edits, we have [34] (presumably a space removed?), [35](template capitalization changed) and [36] (template redirect changed to template). Less problematic and more useful edits than yesterday, but still, when taken into account the number of edits such a bot makes, quite a lot of useless edits. What percentage of such edits is acceptable (since obviously errors and mistakes are unavoidable, zero-tolerance is not realistic)? Actual errors of course can't be as easily tolerated as the edits above, which don't make the pages worse. But even so, the percentage of useful edits must be high enough to accept the useless edits as well. Fram ( talk) 07:39, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Yobot's efficiency depends on some facttors at the moment. Most determinant is the toolserver at the moment. The toolserver detects the pages with potential problems and Yobot runs on these pages.

• If the problem is fixed during the time the toolserver reported the page and Yobot ran there 'll be a "blank edit". This is rare now because I run the bot daily.
• If Yobot runs second time on the same database scan. you should expect no problems to occur but still are things not fixed on a single run by AWB. I work a lot on this part.
• If the problem is there but Yobot fails to fix it so may also see some stupid ting like redirect bypassing. This happens usually when trying to close unbalanced brackets where the logic isn't 100% successful. I worked on this direction but my approach is the following. Run Yobot in the list, usually 400 pages, and then manually fix all the pages not fixed by Yobot. This helps report the cases not automatically fixed. I.e.you'll usually see a stupid bot edit followed by a clever manual edit. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 07:55, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

To answer Fram's request: It's in my plans to work on a custom module which will reduce the error rate even more. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 08:33, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't really expect to be contributing to this discussion a lot, but I just wanted to explain why I didn't reply on HJ Mitchell's talk page: The reason was a lack of energy for debating policy with a user who thinks "OTHERSTUFFEXISTS applies to the Rich discussion," and does not appear to understand the use of exclusive lists to provide simple examples when explaining a policy (note the use of the phrase "such as"). I still don't have the energy to get into this arguement again, as nearly all my thoughts have been explained previously in the earlier discussions, which I suggested Floydian read, but am not convinced they did. My stance is still the same: users should not be imposing their own preferred styles on other users through the use of mass-editing tools such as AWB and bots, unless there is a clear community consensus that the style is preferable and is urgently needed, this especially applies when those style changes do not do anything for the reader (i.e. do not change the page output) or are otherwise cosmetic. The community's stance on this is fairly clearly the same - but apparently OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, so what do I know? - Kingpin ¹³ ( talk) 19:46, 24 April 2011 (UTC)