DrilBot

Welcome

Resolved

 – DrilBot would thank you, but it can't speak. :) –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:32, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Welcome...

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

• Introduction
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page
• Help
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there.  Again, welcome! Marek.69 ^talk 18:23, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Bots can't really respond... :). Thanks. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 18:21, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but they should be made to feel Welcome anyway :-) Marek.69 ^talk 18:23, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. :) –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 18:24, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

May 2009

Resolved

 – Not an error –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:28, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia. Your test on the page Catherine Falls worked, and has been removed. If you would like to experiment further, please use the sandbox. You may also wish to read the introduction to editing and its related help page for more information. Thank you. ^StormRider 21:15, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Tediosity

Resolved

 – A most excellent discussion. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 01:03, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

"It performs tasks that are too tedious for Drilnoth, its owner." Oh come now. We both know there is no task too tedious for Drilnoth.

P.S. I hope you like the image. If not, feel free to revert. – Quadell ^(talk) 14:10, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, the userbox already existed. :) It makes more sense to have a bot do what a bot can do so that I can do stuff a bot can't do.

And thanks for the image; I hope to create one at some point, but that one is appropriate for now. Thanks! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 15:49, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh man, the new image is a good one. – Quadell ^(talk) 16:37, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Really? Thanks. (do you know if SVG always kind of moves the text around like that? My local copy is spaced correctly, but if you look at the full view there's a bunch of extra whitespace?) –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 16:49, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I thought that was intentional! Just say it symbolizes how it "juggles" so many tasks, faster than the eye can see. :) – Quadell ^(talk) 17:08, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh I like that... good idea. :) –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:29, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Skip if only general fixes

Resolved

 – Kind of. Work around implemented until AWB can be improved. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:33, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Please turn on ^ this option, to avoid edits such as [1]. –xeno ^talk 21:06, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm actually not using real "general fixes" at all; rather, I've just selected certain general fixes to apply. Thanks for mentioning this; it could take some time to go over the various files and find the right place to fix this. I'll keep the bot stopped for now. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:13, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I have filed a request to make this easier to fix. For the time being, would it work for met to turn off the MetaData fixes? Interwiki sorting is by far the most common pseudo-false-positive, so if that is deactivated there should only be a handful (it'll just be restricted from making certain other fixes at the same time). Would that work? –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:01, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I have also deactivated a number of other general fixes which could cause this kind of problem, although they don't have other, wanted fixes associated with them. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:32, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a chewy problem. Obviously it's not good to make hundreds of nigh-unto-useless changes, but you don't want to turn off too many features either. Unfortunately, I don't know much about what AWB is capable of, or how to integrate plug-ins and scripts into it. Is it possible to "count" the number of changes made, and skip those that don't have more than a certain number? I know AWB by default can skip records where there's no (for instance) bad links fixed or headers fixed. Can your additional functionality do something like that? – Quadell ^(talk) 02:39, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately there isn't any way to count changes at this time. AWB's built-in "skip if x isn't changed" thing actually can't be used at the same time as you have individual general fixes deactivated (because deactivating general fixes actually involves copying code and commenting out the fix, and telling AWB to not make any real "general fixes"). The main problem here is that the interwiki sorting is grouped together with category and interwiki relocating, both of which are errors at CHECKWIKI, so they either need to all be on or all be off. Until I or AWB's developers can figure something out with this, would it be okay if I just deactivated all of those changes and used other lists to find errors? Things like "title linked in text" or "cateogry DEFAULTSORT with special characters" can be fixed even if it is deactivated, just not the things like "interwiki before last headline". –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 02:57, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

• Not quite sure if I follow, but you can go ahead and test out these proposed solutions... Insignificant changes aren't a huge deal if they happen here or there, but they're best to be avoided. Would it not be possible to write a statement "skip if (particular checkwiki fix not made)" ? –xeno ^talk 13:02, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Eh... it might be, but I don't know much of anything about programming in C. I'll run DrilBot with these modifications and will check edits semi-regularly until we know if it is stable. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:06, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
    • Sounds good. –xeno ^talk 13:08, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
      • Great; I'll start that later today then... I need to log off for awhile now. It also looks like there is some progress being made at WP:AWB/FR#Better general fix customization –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:21, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
        • Based on what diffs I looked at, it seems to be good now. Maybe I'll just reactivate the MetaDataSort fixes whenever some of them would be required to repair the errors in the specific fix I'm working on, and leave it off the rest of the time. Then there might be a few edits like what xeno mentioned above, but they'd only occur when working on a smaller selection of articles and therefore wouldn't happen too often. Does that sound good? –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 14:58, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
          • If it's something like 1 in a 100, it probably won't be a big issue. The only reason I noticed is because it was an edit to Jack Bauer. And as you may know Jack Bauer doesn't put up with insignificant edits and the like. He will punch your bot right in the face. ;> –xeno ^talk 15:05, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
            • That's probably about how many there would be. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 15:56, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Trun, Orne

Resolved

 – Confusing diff, but ultimately not an error. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:30, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Your bot stamped over the article. Fix it or disable it. I am getting fed up with this.

Stop the thing until you get it working

SimonTrew (talk) 19:35, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Umm... it was working perfectly here. There were duplicate interwikis on the page; DrilBot removed doubles which shouldn't be there. [[es:Trun (Orne)]][[es:Trun (Orne)]] is the same as [[es:Trun (Orne)]], the other set of interwikis just wasn't visible in the diff. If it has made any other errors please don't hesitate to tell me, but please be more careful when checking to see if the edit was accurate... I agree that that one looked like it was a bad edit, but it was constructive. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 19:41, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

The bot appears to have been confused by the fact that there was both a "Notes and references" and a "References" heading. –xeno ^talk 19:44, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure... there was an identical set of interwikis in both the "notes and references" and "References". They were redundant; interwikis should all be at the end of the article and having two identical interwikis is bad. See this revision in edit move to see what I mean; the bot just moved a stub tag (correctly) and removed extra interwikis that didn't really do anything anyway. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 19:49, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah I fixed that, I removed the "References" which was kinda wrong

Please excuse me for being a bit grumbly, and thank you very much for your efforts to improve Wikipedia, it just gets a bit annoying when an article you've made (very much a stub) gets a kick by a bot. I love bots they do good work bit when they get it wrong it can be frustrating.

No problems all fixed and if the bot runs over it again, having removed that section heading, I don't think it will have any probs? But you should look into fixing the bot there.

Best wishes and keep goood faith SimonTrew (talk) 19:51, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

By the way I checked the Interwiki links for most of em, and they work.

Thanks; I understand that that edit looked really destructive. Anyway, I don't think that the section headings caused any problem; the diff just looked weird because it seemed like the bot removed interwikis, when the ones it removed were really just duplicates. It does that regardless of what section headings there are. Thanks for your understanding! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 20:01, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Æ turns into Ae not E (most of the time)

Resolved

 – AWB bug report filed; bad edits reverted. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:40, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Most of the time the Æ character turns into Ae, so Æthelnoth is Aethelnoth, not Ethelnoth. Or Jænberht is Jaenberht. (There are a few exceptions). Can we try to figure this out so I don't have to go behind and change them all? Ealdgyth - Talk 22:20, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Oops! That must be a bug in AWB. I'll fix those five that started with Æ (it's probably not worth the effort to go through 8000+ edits to find those which contain the letter elsewhere) and will report the bug. I'll stay away from specifically working on the DEFAULTSORT error lists until that is fixed. Thank you for letting me know! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:25, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see that you already got those. I'll do a search through the contribs to fix any others. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:27, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

If it makes you feel better, I hate those stupid characters a LOT too! Thanks! Ealdgyth - Talk 22:29, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Happy to hear it's not just me. :) I've filed a bug report. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:40, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

University of the Nations

Resolved

 – Rare error; not nearly common enough to worry about. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:41, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

As you can see in this diff, the bot tried to fix the problem, but left a space which had the unfortunate result you can see in the preview. Just wanted to let you know... Viriditas (talk) 13:04, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. This would appear to be caused by weird article formatting (the template programming elements, notably). I don't think that there is really a way for a bot to detect this because it isn't just related to a space before the paragraph; the three brackets would mess that up. Because of the situation, I think that this sort of thing is very rare and generally just happens because the article isn't formatted correctly. I don't know if this can be fixed, but I think that it is rare enough (there hasn't been another report of this happening, and the bot has made over 10,000 edits) that it isn't something to get to worried about. Based on this, I'll restart the bot in a half an hour or so unless there are objections. Thanks! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:14, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with your assessment. It looks like Martious (talk · contribs) introduced the error here. Very strange. Viriditas (talk) 13:24, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Okay; I'm marking this as resolved for now. This seems to be just one of those cases where there is a weird error in an article which messes up some bots (similar to this, which is a little more obviously poor article formatting). –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:41, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Strange

Resolved

 – Slight oddity... bot just didn't do all of what it should have, but it didn't make a real mistake either. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 19:07, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

In this edit I saw you moved up the references section to above the categories. Which is only half of the work. See Wikipedia:Layout#Standard_appendices_and_descriptions that references should be put in front of external links. Debresser (talk) 05:09, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Could you link to the edit in question? I don't know which article you're referring to. Thanks! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 15:36, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I'm guessing that you're referring to this edit? I think that I might have had "fix headlines" deactivated at that time because of the list (template not correct end) which I had been working on before. I'm not entirely positive, but that seems like the most likely thing at this time. Do you think it's okay for me to run the bot again? –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 16:04, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry to have forgotten the diff. Yes, that is the one. The bot works fine, yes. I just don't see the point in making an edit for the sole purpose of moving up the references section. Of course that has to be done, and I regularly do it, but only when I have to make another, more crusial, edit as well. Debresser (talk) 16:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I find it strange that the bot didn't actually organize those sections... huh. Anyway, I use the lists at WP:CHECKWIKI to find errors in article layout and formatting. Minor stuff like moving categories and interwikis to their proper locations is useful because it helps keep the article organized; running AWB through all of the articles at the CHECKWIKI lists would be pointless if done by hand, but by bot I feel that it can help to reduce confusion and keep everything organized. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 18:58, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

fyi

I described my concerns with this bot on WP:AN/I... Geo Swan (talk) 02:07, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 02:10, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Geo Swan there recommends more specific edit summaries. Is it feasible to add the CHECKWIKI list you're tackling to the edit summary when DrilBot runs? – Quadell ^(talk) 14:00, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I had thought that the edit summary was fairly clear with what list I was working on... in this case, "title linked in text". I can try to make this more specific. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 14:10, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Moving location of lifetime template

Resolved

 – Will report bug in list creation before next run on that list. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:08, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Why does the bot move the location of {{lifetime}} as part of "gen fixes", as it did here? Is there any actual MOS or categorization guideline stating that the birth and death categories belong at the end of the list of categories rather than at the beginning? Thanks, –BLACK FALCON ^(TALK) 20:34, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

This in AWB's (and, therefore, my bot's) gen fixes because there should be a standard location where they are located, just as there should with normal DEFAULTSORT keys. My bot isn't designed to intentionally move this template without making other changes... I had been going through the WP:CHECKWIKI list of articles with diacritics in their titles but no DEFAULTSORT, and apparently the list doesn't yet register {{lifetime}} as having a DEFAULTSORT in it (it's been reported as a bug), so that article was on my list and when the bot got to it it moved the template but didn't add a DEFAULTSORT in this instance, since the list of articles doesn't register {{lifetime}} but AWB does. :/ In short, the bot shouldn't normally be making edits simply to move {{lifetime}}, as there isn't an actual guideline either way to my knowledge. I'll restart the bot in ~30 minutes because this doesn't seem to major unless you think that the bot needs a longer pause so that this can be discussed. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 20:42, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your very quick response. So basically the issue will go away once the bug is fixed? If that is the case, then I don't really see a reason to pause the bot's activities. I generally prefer to have the birth and death categories at the start of the category list (it's just a personal preference to have it alphabetized, with numbers being listed before letters), but I don't consider the order of categories to be something worth 'correcting', unless maybe it's done as part of a broader edit. Thanks again, –BLACK FALCON ^(TALK) 21:02, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. As I said, I shouldn't be going through that list again anytime soon and before I do I'll try to nudge the WP:CHECKWIKI operator to try and fix this. Thanks! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:08, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Bot glitch

Resolved

 – Reported to AWB devs; will check edits if shutting down seems at all odd. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 01:02, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Please see this edit, where the bot blanked the entire page. I think I can safely assume that is not intended behavior. - TexasAndroid (talk) 23:40, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, wow. Now that is interesting. I will look into this; thank you for letting me know. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 01:56, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Aha, I think that I figured it out. That was the last edit that the bot made before I shut it off for awhile; it had been a little ornery and I had to click AWB's "stop" button a number of times for it to actually stop. I'm guessing that it started editing the page and my telling it to stop (possibly in the middle of its determining edits to the article) got it confused. My apologies for this; I will keep an eye on the "last edits" for awhile to ensure that this doesn't happen and will let the AWB developers know. Thank you! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 02:00, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to restart the bot with the assumption that this only happens when turning it off, which I will check for. This is most likely the first time this has happened since there haven't been any other reports. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:28, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Could you please explain further...

Resolved

 – Fix deactivated for DrilBot until AWB can be fixed. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 01:02, 30 May 2009 (UTC) Further discussion needed. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:23, 2 June 2009 (UTC)DrilBot should not add DEFAULTSORTs to articles which contain common Arabic names. If it still sets a DEFAULTSORT on an article about someone with an Arabic-style name, and the name contains elements common in Arabic names, please report it here to stop the bot. If none of the name's parts are common, please report at User talk:Drilnoth instead. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 16:15, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Drilbot has been shoehorning Arabic names into the European style of inherited lastname-surnames, as in these examples.

• Hintif, Fadil Husayn Salih
• Ahmed, Faruq Ali
• Mahdi, Fawaz Naman Hamoud Abdallah

But traditional Arabic names don't use inherited surnames. So, could you please explain the value sorting on nonexistent surnames?

Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 23:35, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Geo Swan has given the values you assigned to the following pages:

• Fadil Husayn Salih Hintif
• Faruq Ali Ahmed
• Fawaz Naman Hamoud Abdallah Mahdi

The policy you are following is Euro-centric and, more specifically, Anglo-centric. Arabic names that are formed according to tradition have the format "given-name + lineage" and should be sorted on the given name with no change in capitalization and no additional punctuation. Please reprogram the bot.

JimCubb (talk) 00:44, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, this is easy. I believe that AWB was recently modified to "correct" names in DEFAULTSORTs, but it doesn't have this exception built in. I will deactivate this edit for DrilBot so that it doesn't set DEFAULTSORTs and will report it to the AWB developers so that it can be fixed. Thank you! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 01:02, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Okay, having looked into this further I have learned a few things:

• AWB tries to add "correct" DEFAULTSORTs for all articles about people. For names like "Joe Smith" it adds "Smith, Joe", correctly. For names like "Faruq Ali Ahmed", it adds "Ahmed, Faruq Ali", incorrectly, since it can't tell what names are Arabic.
• If AWB did not replace these names, it might be adding incorrect DEFAULTSORTs for articles on people anyway... e.g., adding "{{DEFAULTSORT:Joe Smith (Footballer)}}" to "Joe Smith (footballer)" because of sort key capitalization guidelines. This would also be incorrect. However, it may add correct sort keys to Arabic names whilst fixing capitalization.
• I think that there are many more articles about people with names which do use the "last, first" convention than there are about those which have Arabic or Chinese-type names. So when this change is made, it will more often be correct than incorrect.
• There seems to be no way for a bot to detect which style a name uses.

Ugg. So whether or not this change is made, there will be some errors. A current solution is to stop bots from adding any DEFAULTSORT keys, but this seems a bit drastic since human names are the only things which seem to be causing problems. And then, only some human names cause problems. If the name-detection change is activated, then Arabic/Chinese names will be messed up. If it isn't, then some other names will be messed up. So, something's going to get messed up unless DEFAULTSORT additions are turned off completely.

The question, then, is what to do? I see four options:

1. Never add DEFAULTSORTs. Period.
2. Never add DEFAULTSORTs to articles which appear to be about people, but otherwise add them when relevant.
3. Always add DEFAULTSORTs when relevant without regard for whether an article is about people. This can cause problems with non-Arabic names if it adds something like "Joe Smith (Footballer)".
4. Always add DEFAULTSORTs when relevant, trying to determine the correct structure for articles about people. This can cause problems with Arabic and Chinese names as we have discussed.

I personally think that 2 or 4 would be the best options. What are your thoughts? –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:23, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into this further.

Well, you saw User:Raven1977's comment...:

:If you look at the edit summary that includes "AWB", it means that it was actually Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser that suggested that, in the attempt to add the "listas" section to the template. I didn't know it was incorrect, so I let the tool do its thing.

Humans, like Raven1977, who should be the "human in the loop", who over-rides when bots guess wrong, place too much trust in the robot to over-ride them.

Since humans, like Raven1977, can't be relied upon to over-ride robots, robots like AWB shouldn't make wild guesses.

In my opinion, bots should never add DEFAULTSORTs to articles about people. Geo Swan (talk) 15:05, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay; I will suggest this to the AWB devs when I have some more time later and will not have DrilBot add any DEFAULTSORTs until this can be implemented. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 16:01, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

AWB has been updated; DrilBot should now be adding the proper DEFAULTSORT to most articles which include common Arabic names (see [2] for a list). Other Arabic names will still be altered, however. The AWB devs said that it wasn't feasible to reliably avoid adding DEFAULTSORTs to articles about people, so they have implemented this and have added an easy function to deactivate all DEFAULTSORT additions. I feel that this list of exclusions is a good compromise which should minimize the false positives while still allowing DrilBot to add correct DEFAULTSORTs to many articles. I am going to be starting the bot momentarily with the DEFAULTSORT adding turned off... if you feel that this makes sense, I will activate the DEFAULTSORT additions (please post to User talk:Drilnoth to avoid shutting off the bot; thanks!) –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 20:48, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Removing needed selflinks

Resolved

 – Once I download the next AWB snapshot, DrilBot should not remove selflinks from any pages which have "include"-type tags on them. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:06, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Drillbot removed selflinks from the page List of newspapers in New Hampshire. However, this selflink was needed as the page is transcluded into List of newspapers in the United States. Other pages, including others transculded into that page, are in a similar position. Could Drillbot be made to ignore selflinks between "<includeonly>" tags? --bjwebb (talk) 16:03, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

(I fixed your comment's code). Hmm... well my first thought is "Why is an article being transcluded?" If it's only being transcluded onto one page, why not just have it on that page and make the currently transcluded articles into redirects? Anyway, I will report this AWB bug and will tell my bot to skip pages including any of the "include"-related wikitext. Thanks! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 16:10, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Thankyou. As it happens, its sections of pages (but not all of them), being repeated on other pages. Mostly seems to be list pages. It does seem messy though. It wasn't me who set it up that way, and its too much hassle to change it all. Thanks again. --bjwebb (talk) 20:02, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Happy to help; I'll keep this in mind. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:31, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Mass-removal of links in one recent edit

Resolved

 – Once I download the next AWB snapshot, DrilBot should only remove links from headers if that link is already in the article multiple times. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:05, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

This edit had two undesirable consequences: (1) it removed all the links to the plant families (I'm not sure whether this is intentional or not, but removing the links, rather than perhaps reformatting them somehow, seems destructive), and (2) it removed the bolding of "P Q" (I don't really care whether the bolding takes place via a self-link or via wiki markup but getting rid of the bold by bot seems like a bad idea). Kingdon (talk) 18:26, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

That's a problem.

It seems that AWB removes links in headlines. I don't know why and will look into fixing this. I will not run the bot until I can figure out a way around it or the AWB devs fix it.

Also then, does the "P Q" really need to be in bold? I think that the article looks fine without the bolding there, and it is also more technically correct (without the selflink).

Thank you very much for this report. I will look into it further and will revert the bot's edits on pages similar to the one you mentioned. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 19:15, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I'm going to start the bot again but I'll remove any changes that could cause this and other as-yet-unfixed errors. Unless the bot continues making problematic edits during its next run, please post on User talk:Drilnoth instead so as to avoid stopping it needlessly. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 19:38, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Messing around with refs

Resolved

 – Bug in AWB's custom module; now fixed. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 23:18, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

In some articles on my watchlist, Drilbot has done nothing but reshuffle refs when they occur in groups - for example here, here and [3].

I think this behaviour should be supprossed, because:

• I've just had to spend time checking diffs that apparently caused no problems. I don't know about you, but I don't take it for granted that bot edits are always harmless.
• There may be a reason for ordering of the refs in the prior versions. So the re-ordering may cause trouble, for zero gain that I can see - i.e. it's all downside with no upside. --Philcha (talk) 07:46, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Oops! My bad... it seems that I forgot to turn off that change. I have no deactivated it again. Thank you for mentioning this! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 23:18, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Was this really necessary?

Resolved

 – Edit wasn't unconstructive, just not constructive. Will look into preventing. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 23:48, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

[4] had no effect on the display. --NE2 23:35, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

No it didn't. :) It seems that the WP:CHECKWIKI list that I was working on had a false positive in it, so my bot applied gen. fixes but it couldn't do what it was specifically supposed to. I'll try to configure it to fix that... it might not be possible with the current status of AWB, but even if it's not I don't think that this kind of edit comes up too often. Thanks! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 23:48, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

_ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.177.247.178 (talk) 01:28, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT

Resolved

 – I've stopped the bot's addition of DEFAULTSORTs altogether until some bugs can be worked out both in it and (hopefully) in MediaWiki itself. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 03:16, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

The bot is adding DEFAULTSORT to the bottom of article is below cats and interlanguage links. Convention, if not guidelines of policy is to add it directly above the list of categories. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 02:24, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Ugg... I just realized this too. I'll look into it; thanks! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 02:27, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Same here. And anyway, why was the edit even made? DEFAULTSORT is used to change the article's title in the category listing. The bot's edit did absolutely nothing to the article's placement in the categories; it just added redundant code! Octane ^{[improve me?]} 12.06.09 1744 (UTC)

Capitalization issues; see the FAQ (viewable by clicking [show] on the green bar in edit mode on this page). The DEFAULTSORT was misplaced because I hadn't activated "Sort metadata", which moves it to the proper place; I did soon after Alan Liefting's post. I've also put a full stop on the bot's addition of DEFAULTSORTs wince it seems to be slightly controversial... I plan to file a bugzilla request about the category sorting in the near future, and will not have my bot do anything with DEFAULTSORTs until that is resolved. (if this particular topic needs further discussion now, please post at user talk:Drilnoth so that the bot keeps running; it's not doing anything related to this problem since I turned off that "fix") –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 17:48, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Command by English Wikipedia User:Drilnoth proccessed. (Comment: Deactivating setDefaultSort per discussions)
Code added:
While(a.SetDefaultSort(Variables.LangCode, false, false); == "deactivated") {

(!add DEFAULTSORTs).

}

--DrilBot (talk) 17:56, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Damage

Resolved

 – DrilBot should now skip pages containing imagemaps... AWB developers have been notified. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 03:17, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

The bot did some damage here. Can you investigate please Victuallers (talk) 22:19, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah, an imagemap. I'd thought that that was fixed; I'll tell DrilBot to skip articles which contain imagemaps until this can be fixed in AWB. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:21, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Could you also go through and cleanup any stragglers that haven't been fixed? –xeno^talk 14:36, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Now that will be a trick. It could take some time... give me another day or two and I should have them fixed (AWB just needs to scan back through all of the bot's contribs). –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 14:37, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, AWB only gets the past 25,000 edits. I'll have AWB make a list of those articles which contain that RegEx and I'll look at them manually in order to fix them. I think that most, if not all, of these should be within this number of edits anyway. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 14:57, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

 Done Of DrilBot's last 25,000 edits, 30 of them affected articles containing one or more image maps. 3 of these image maps had been broken by the bot and were fixed by other users. The remaining 27 were unharmed. All's good with those 25,000 then... there may be a few scattered further back in the contribs history, but it would be very few if there are any. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 01:20, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Problem regarding delinking of self-linked articles

Looks like the emergency stop button was already pressed, so I'm the first one with a complaint...

Many Tree of Life (biology) articles are being inadvertently damaged through the un-self-linking process.

The self-links that appear in ToL articles should be replaced with bolded text. For example, see the Montealtosuchus article. Montealtosuchus happened to have a link, but the fact that it was linked created a bold text feature as well. The self-link actually happened during the course of a page move from Montealtosuchus arrudacamposi. Several species/genus/etc taxons have been moved to higher-level pages as a result of monotypic taxa, causing these self-links...but the text should remain bolded if the link is removed.

Another example happened at Notharctinae, and again at Neomura. These pages contained links from poor habits developed by ToL editors, but nonetheless, the text linked was supposed to appear bolded, and linking served that purpose. (ToL editors realize that self-linking creates bold text and do not worry about bolding text in the taxoboxes).

I have repaired all three articles.

Thanks! Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 03:10, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Ooh... thank you for this report. That's one that I hadn't seen before.

I'll ask the AWB developers about it tomorrow; I was just about to shut off the bot for the day anyway. This (making the links bold instead of links) was already done for parameters of other templates, so I don't think that this would be too hard to code. My apologies for this error... I will work on other lists or will skip articles containing {{taxobox}} while I'm working through this error list. Thank you very much for notifying me of this. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 03:15, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that should solve that problem. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 03:21, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Inappropriate adjustment of heading levels

This edit seems wrong to me. The headings that were adjusted are intended to be subheadings within See also. This is unusual but not wrong. Colonies Chris (talk) 09:28, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Oops! That slipped through the cracks in AWB's recent improvements, it seems... AWB is made to check if an article has only level 3 headers and change all of them to level 2 (since except on dab pages, level 3 headers shouldn't be the only header level). However, it is programmed to ignore sections like "See also", "References", etc., since they are often level 2 even when the sections before them are all level 3 or below. I will request a fix for this and will deactivate the bot change until then. Thanks! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 20:30, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

DE

I wish that someone would create a page that would give information on DailyEthiopia.com, a development news site. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Meqdim (talk • contribs) 07:10, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

You should probably ask about this at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard, since the page is currently protected from being created. This bot isn't approved to create pages. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 14:12, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

You also might want to admit you conflict of interest when asking for pages to be created. Ridernyc (talk) 18:38, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

shutdown —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.104.83.51 (talk) 12:32, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Question about an edit

Hi there; I'm slightly confused about edit. Why are you adding non-english words in wrong spots on articles? :-P GrooveDog (talk) (Review) 23:36, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah, this is simple... DrilBot is designed to move {{Stub}} templates below all other content except for interwiki links as per common convention (I'm pretty sure it's in the MOS somewhere); in this case, the foreign-language text had been below the stub templates, so they were moved under it. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 01:01, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

you fucked up the icarus page

[5] –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 15:22, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

you fucked up the icarus page —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.245.101.94 (talk • contribs)

Oh... wow. That wasn't supposed to happen. Must be some bug in the API version of AWB. I'll report it and won't do anything with the bot in the meantime. Thank you very much for mentioning this! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 15:22, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I've switched to the non-API-edit version until this bug can be fixed. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 19:11, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Undocumented and unnecessary change to alt= syntax in images

A recent edit to Daylight saving time changed this:

[[Image:End CEST Transparent.png|thumb|left|120px|
alt=Diagram of a clock showing a transition from 3:00 to 2:00.|
When DST ends in central Europe, clocks retreat from 03:00 CEST to 02:00 CET. Other regions switch at different times.]]

to this:

[[Image:End CEST Transparent.png|thumb|left|120px| alt=Diagram of a clock showing a transition from 3:00 to 2:00.|
When DST ends in central Europe, clocks retreat from 03:00 CEST to 02:00 CET. Other regions switch at different times.]]

I don't see how this is an improvement. The version before the change is slightly easier to edit. The change doesn't affect the HTML generated. The change is not documented in User:DrilBot/Summaries, as far as I can see. Eubulides (talk) 02:30, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

This is really just personal preference, and is actually done by general fixes; since it also isn't a major change, I don't have a specialized section for it on the summaries page. AWB removes what it perceives as being unneeded whitespace, and it picked this up because it was a single linebreak, in addition to being in an image description. If this feels controversial, I can post a request at WP:AWB/B, but I think it's just one person's preference over another's. I prefer the entirity of an image's description, including its name, size, position, alt text, and description, on the same line. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 20:24, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Browser crash

The bot was crashing my browser (Firefox) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.201.73.77 (talk) 16:33, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

How? I can't see how the bot could cause browser problems any more than a human editor's editing could. Could you please elaborate? –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 19:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Test

Emergency shutdown —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.246.40.144 (talk) 19:23, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Why? The bot wasn't even editing... –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 16:45, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:07, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:10, 24 November 2015 (UTC)