User talk:JL-Bot/Archive 1

Balls 8

This BOT needs an update to improve its function. Early serials of USAF aircraft did have a 3 digit number after the contract year. Some time in the 50s it was exanded to a 4 digit sequence number. This BOT improperly changed BALLS 8 s/n from 52-008 to 52-0008 as Balls 5 has on its manufacturer's plate "52-005". LanceBarber 03:46, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

It really helps if you provide a link in cases like this. I assume you are talking about this edit? If so, the bot did not make any changes in that number. The error was in the text prior to the bot's edit. A review the history shows that change was introduced back in March[1]. -- JLaTondre 04:03, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Please honor {Nobots}

Your anal rententive adherence to 'stale template, no edit made in last seven days' in pages where a massive amount of data input is ongoing on various related pages is not a good thing. Among other things, {{underconstruction}} is a warning to casual readers that a page is NOT considered in top notch shape at the moment, and is in evolution. Were such policing given to {Inuse}, I've no gripe, but that page is more outline than stub, and your bots mindless intervention in 1632 characters as well, ignores the fact the top half of the page was deliberately "broken" (bypassed intro text) at the time.

With seventeen anthologies in the series, most of which have been stubs— or not even yet stubbed!— without anyone working towards a typical synopses article for the shear size of the tasking involved with tens of writers and hundreds of characters, much needed expansion work is finally progressing because I figured out a way to avoid hundreds of redirect pages ({{16char/doc}}), with the occasional delay necessitated to evolve the templates involved. Add in a whole lot of trouble keeping an internet connection when I took a much deserved vacation, and {underconstruction} was both apt and appropriate... which a BOT is too brainless to judge. So why are you ignoring {{Nobots}}??? Cheers! // FrankB 16:25, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

The underconstruction templates are for when editors are actively engaged in major editing or expansion of an article. Please note the third sentence of the template "If this article has not been edited in several days please remove this template." It is not meant to be in place for a considerable period of time. If the article is not actively being edited, then it shouldn't be there. Tagging an article as under construction discourages other editors from contributing to the article. They assume it is actively being edited. Every article on Wikipedia is still in development. This tag's purpose is to lessen the chance of edit conflicts or speedy deletion due to little content. Neither of which apply in this case.

If you are not actively editing an article, there are better suited templates for what you are trying to do (ex: {{incomplete}}, {{expand}}, {{expand-section}}, {{incomplete table}}). In particular, I would recommend the incomplete one vs. employing an underconstruction template in an unintended use.

As for the nobots, one of the purposes of the bot is to handle cases where people start an article, tag it as underconstruction, and then abandon it. When the bot first started, we had articles that had been tagged in excess of a half year. In this case, ignoring articles with nobots would allow that to happen once again and cause more harm. There is no benefit for this bot to skip nobots pages. If the underconstruction template is being used correctly, then the bot won't make an edit. If it is being used incorrectly, then it should be removed.

Thanks. -- JLaTondre 01:26, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Is the bot running?

I'm seeing quite a few stale "under construction" pages and removing them by hand. Then I noticed that your bot has done this in the past. Has it not been running for a while? Sbowers3 (talk) 14:02, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I run it a couple of time a week. The last time was about 4 days ago which is a bit longer than normal. I've just kicked it off again. -- JLaTondre 16:22, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Work page tag

Your bot seems to be removing the {{workpage}} template from article pages. The template does not specify that it is for user workspace only. Please review the template talk page regarding usage on non-article pages used to store editing notes and information to be incorporated into text of articles. Absolon S. Kent (talk) 02:32, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

As you yourself wrote, "regarding usage on non-article pages". The template does not belong in the article namespace. Notes pages belong in the Talk: namespace. I have moved Norfolk State University/Notes to Talk:Norfolk State University/Notes and deleted the subsequent redirect. Let me know if you have further questions. -- JLaTondre (talk) 03:09, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Orphaned articles

Hi, what sort of order does the bot process articles when checking for de-orphaned articles? I'm doing the same sort of thing by hand, but I don't want to bother removing the tag if the bot would've gotten to that article soon anyway. I'd rather go for the articles which are last on the bot's priority list, so I can work from that end instead.--Aervanath's signature is boring 03:19, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

At run time, it retrieves Category:All orphaned articles and processes it in alphabetical order. It records what it has checked before and will only re-check an article after 30 (currently, but I may bump that up again) days. As of that last run. it's at articles starting with "M". Let me know if you have more questions. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:36, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the info.--Aervanath's signature is boring 15:29, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Check for lists?

Does JL-bot check to see if any of the incoming links are from lists? Avocado brought it up over on Wikiproject Orphanage's talk page, since incoming links from lists don't count towards de-orphaning. You might want to check out the orphaned article criteria on the Orphanage project page.--Aervanath's signature is boring 07:27, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it ignores "List of ..." articles. Since that's not explicit on the description page, I'll update it. -- JLaTondre (talk) 23:58, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Avocado and I are both of the opinion that articles of the form "Year in Subject" (e.g. 1928 in music) qualify as lists, so ideally the bot would avoid de-orphaning articles like this, which JL-Bot deorphaned here. Could you do that?--Aervanath's signature is boring 17:07, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for pointing that out to me. If you see anything else, let me know. -- JLaTondre (talk) 23:54, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Will do. Thanks!--Aervanath's signature is boring 04:56, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Additional task re:orphans

Hi, I've asked on WP:Bot requests for a bot to patrol Special:Lonelypages, placing orphan tags on orphaned articles. Since you already are dealing with orphan tags, is this something you could take on?--Aervanath's signature is boring 17:44, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, apparently User:Addbot is already doing this.--Aervanath's signature is boring 18:28, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Query

I need help renaming about 200 articles. Doing this by hand would take me all day.

Can your bot rename articles, or be adapted to do so?

If so, please contact me.

Thank you.

The Transhumanist    22:41, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Bot requests should go to Wikipedia:Bot requests. You will get more eyes there and you'll have better luck finding someone who can do it. My bot cannot. -- JLaTondre (talk) 01:24, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

articleissues and do-attempt

Hey, look at this diff. You'll see that the bot removed the orphan param of the articleissues template, but not the do-attempt tag. Can you fix that?--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 21:31, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'll update the bot to recognize that case. Thanks for pointing it out to me. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:15, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Archbishop Maximianus of Constantinople

Hello -- JL-Bot keeps de-orphaning Archbishop Maximianus of Constantinople, which is still an orphan. I suspect it may be misinterpreting April 12 as a non-list article. Would you mind looking into that, please? Thank you! -- Avocado (talk) 00:10, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. It will now ignore date pages. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 00:48, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! -- Avocado (talk) 02:19, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Ak'sent‎

Hello, JL-Bot ... Your recent change to Ak'sent‎ (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) missed a point ... it is a redirect for Aksent‎ (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), which is apparently a Japanese talent agency ... check its "What links here", and compare with the "15" for Ak'sent‎ (the issue was the {{Orphan}} tag) ... Happy Editing! — 72.75.117.122 (talk · contribs) _{23:27, 3 September 2008 (UTC)}

Even without the redirect, it had sufficient links (7) to not be an orphan. Thank you for calling it to my attention, however. -- JLaTondre (talk) 23:45, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

 Done Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ak'sent makes it moot. :-) — 72.75.117.122 (talk) 17:58, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

misleading edit summary and incorrect removal of template

re: this edit [2], the edit summary claimed 520 article links exist. this is wrong, 1 article link is all there is. I have reverted the edit, but you need to check if it is making similar mistakes elsewhere. DuncanHill (talk) 14:21, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Here's another [3], since reverted. DuncanHill (talk) 14:28, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

There's a problem with titles containing a "&". I'll fix it. The second revert was by me, but thanks for calling it to my attention. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:57, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks. DuncanHill (talk) 14:59, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. I'll keep an eye on it just to be sure, though. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:52, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you. DuncanHill (talk) 16:53, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Similar bug?

Bot reverted orphan tag claiming 6 article lks. I doubt i'd have Orph'd a 6-er without thinking about it long enuf to stick in my mind, i don't think i pruned any bad lks to it, and it presently has 3. I think it's obvious that bots need to be more error-proof than editors; does this one need a independent code review?
--Jerzy•t 18:46, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

No, it has 6 links as the bot stated. Links via redirects count. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:58, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

• Ah, yes; it should, and i should be checking for them! (In theory, it shouldn't be double-counting the one lk'd both directly and via Rdr, but IMO that's too small a fault to correct.) Thanks.
  --Jerzy•t 23:38, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
  

"Jeffrery's sketch" *is* an orphan

{{orphan}} applies per Wikipedia:WikiProject_Orphanage#Criteria to any article with fewer than 3 lks from non-lists in the main namespace. Only 3 of the lks cited by the Bot are from main, and two of them are bare lists, while one is a list that has prose abt Jeffry's (duplicating the content of the article, however, so don't feel to good abt that one). Virtually all are from one Template page, which BTW is also a bare list. Restoring the tag.
--Jerzy•t 10:42, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

The bot found 142 article links and that's correct. The links may be via a template, but the are not from the template namespace. They are all from article namespace. The orphan template was correctly removed per the criteria and, next time it runs, it will remove it again. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:19, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Possible changes to Adopted orphans

Hi, following some discussion at the Orphanage, I'll probably be changing the script that fills up Adopted orphans. (See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Orphanage#De-tagging change.) There would be a one-time addition of about 13,000 articles to the list. Page/list layout wouldn't be affected at all, so it would not affect the operation of your bot, but I want to make sure you're aware of the (probable) upcoming change. --JaGa^talk 01:12, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

download's special barnstar

		download's special barnstar
		Just thanking our bots and their creators, whose contributions are so important but go quite unnoticed. -download | sign! 01:55, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Emily Elizabeth Douglas & Grandma's Gifts

Hey, I noticed that this bot removed an orphan tag from both of these pages. One of the pages only has 2 legit articles that link to it and the other only has three. The tag says that the article "has very few articles that link to it" and I don't consider 2 and 3 to be more than a few. I've had to revert the bot twice not. Is there a way to make it ignore these pages or be more surgical in its removal? I think it's essentially reported two false positives, twice not. Otherwise, it's a great bot. Thanks for your work on Wikipedia. OlYeller^Talktome 22:45, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

The orphan criteria is less than 3 article links excluding disambiguation pages and lists. Both articles currently have 3 links when the disambig page is excluded. As such, they don't meet the orphan criteria and the tag is not applicable. If you have questions on the orphan criteria, that would best be handled at WP:ORPHAN's talk page. Does that help? If not, let me know what other questions you have. -- JLaTondre (talk) 23:45, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

For Emily Elizabeth Douglas, I see here that there are only two (Worthington Kilbourne High School & Grandma's Gifts Inc.). The others are either redirects, user pages, or lists. I could see being confused by Emily Taft Douglas but that link is in place of a link to the diambiguous page as there are only two Emily Douglas articles on Wikipedia. While it's not a dismbig link exactly, their subjects are only linked by names. In my opinoin, the orphan tag is used so that pages link to each other through shared topics. As for Grandma's Gifts, you're right about it having 3 links. I wasn't awair that there was a number in the guideline for orphan tags. OlYeller^Talktome 19:30, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

re Emily Elizabeth Douglas: I understand your point about the dab link, but per the criteria it doesn't count. I'll exclude it for the moment, but you really need to take this up with the Wikiproject. My bot uses the Adopted Orphans report that is generated by a project member. It does not determine which pages to process on its own. There is a least one other bot that uses that page as well. It is also used manually by editors. So my skipping it isn't going to guarantee it won't be removed. This is something the project should weigh in on how to handle. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:19, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Park Plaza County Hall

Hi there, just to let you know I have undone the removal of the orphan flag from this article. The only things that link to it are a user talk page, a sockpuppet category page and a redirect page so whilst technically it does have inbound links I would argue that as none of them are from articles or lists then it is still an orphan. Could the bot perhaps be reprogrammed to ignore redirect pages? Cheers & kind regards, Nancy ^talk 06:02, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

You are correct. It shouldn't have been removed. My bot actually doesn't generate the list of orphans. It works off a toolserver report which only counts article links. I will notify the report generator, but it's not listed on the current report. This would leave me to suspect that it was linked, but those links were removed (possibly the article was added to a template which caused multiple links, but then the addition was reverted?). I will keep an eye on it and if I see any other oddities, I will add a check against the report results before removing the template. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:08, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Ashley Morgan (musician)

This edit was particularly pointless, as the article is still an orphan. Only article space links count. The bot needs to discount any link from a page that's not an article when determining if something is an orphan or not. DreamGuy (talk) 21:47, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing it out. I'll check into what went wrong as it is only supposed to count articles. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:54, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Michael Kehlmann

The orphan tag is applicable since most of what links to this article pertains to discussions about its notability and not other articles. 209.247.22.164 (talk) 12:56, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

The article is linked from 3 articles. Therefore, it does not meet the orphan criteria and is not an orphan. The bot correctly removed the tag. Let me know if you have more questions. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:04, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Deprod

I have removed the {{prod}} tag from [[{{{1}}}]], which you proposed for deletion. I'm leaving this message here to notify you about it. If you still think the article should be deleted, please don't add the {{prod}} template back to the article. Instead, feel free to list it at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. Thanks! I oppose to the suggestion of deleting this article as it introduces a valuable and novel topic in phonology. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fonologia (talk • contribs) 15:07, 6 July 2009

First, the bot didn't deprod anything. I suggest you revisit the page history to determine who actually did. You can consult the help or ask questions if needed. Second, you did not fill in the template so the page title is blank. I suggest you read the template documentation to understand how it should be used. Let me know if you have more questions. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:04, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Multiangle Light Scattering (MALS) and Differential Light Scattering (DLS)

An article that you have been involved in editing, Multiangle Light Scattering (MALS) and Differential Light Scattering (DLS), has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Multiangle Light Scattering (MALS) and Differential Light Scattering (DLS). Thank you.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. LightScatteringGuy (talk) 15:58, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Erroneous removal of orphan status

This bot has erroneously removed the orphan tag from Kris Williams (filmmaker). At the time of this writing, only two articles (Joe Swanberg; Young American Bodies) are substantive links as covered in WP:Orphan. The other two (Kris Williams (actress); Kris Williams) are for disambiguation. TJRC (talk) 16:12, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Strike that. I see WP:Orphan has been revised to recommend using the {{orphan}} template only for articles with zero incoming lings. As you were. TJRC (talk) 16:29, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

3D Ultra Lionel Traintown

Are you sure it's not still an orphan? Only about 5 pages link to it, excluding userpages and Wiki pages. 2J Bäkkvire Maestro ^{RQQ et al} _{favorite haunts} 23:55, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the orphan criteria is less than three applicable links. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:19, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Featured content: images

Is it possible to imrpove the current "recongized content" system, so that the images don't have to be tagged with the WikiProject's banner? Most images are on Commons, so WikiProjects don't tag them. Is it possible for the bot to analyse data on Commons, so that it looks for featured pics, quality images, valued images in a Commons category. For example, for WikiProject Devon, the bot could look for images with recognised content withing Category:Devon within Commons. Jolly Ω Janner 00:17, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I have been looking into this, but it seems a bit complex. On Commons, there is no single category or template that defines all content within a project's purview. For example, Commons:Category:Devon has 22 subcategories of which many of those have additional subcategories. While it's possible to recursively pull, that, the structure of the Common's featured pictures categories, and the way my code is currently structured means there is quite a few changes that are required. I'll keep this on the list of things to do, but it may take me awhile before I can get to it. If you watch the template page, I'll add an applicable parameter when it's implemented. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:58, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

List Limit

I posted this at User talk:JL-Bot/Project content, but I see now that I should have put it here:

Do you think it would be possible to add a feature to this bot that will limit the number of articles in the lists it produces? When the bot recently ran on WP:NRHP, it added ~50K bytes of lists, mostly DYKs. The project has a plethora of these DYKs, but the list would take over the front page if we included it. We removed the DYK function from the bot for now, but it would be awesome if there was like a "list_limit = ###" parameter. The bot would show only the first ### articles and then possibly include a total number, and if it was possible, include a link to a complete list. The complete list thing is asking a little much, but a parameter to stop the bot from listing 10,000 articles would be nice. Thanks! --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 00:52, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I also see the other people have requested additions, and I agree with them very much. Thanks for being such a cooperative editor! I do have a question, though. What can I put on my watchlist to see when you add features? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:46, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I can add the limit. If you want the full list on another page, you can just add the template to that page with the DYK content only. The bot will process both the main page and the secondary page. You can watch the template documentation to monitor changes. If I make a change, I'll make an update to the documentation describing it. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:42, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah thanks so much! I didn't think about just running the bot twice, but I do have a question. If you add the limit, how will it be shown? I think it would be necessary to add "...(see more)" to the end of a truncated list and probably add another parameter like "DYK_see_more_list = article". I guess this would also mean "FA_see_more_list = article", GA, etc. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:19, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

The maximum is implemented. I only did it for compact mode as this was the easiest (the impact on columns was much bigger as if you truncate the list, all the content would be in the first column) and it seemed logical. If you're trying to save space, compact is the way to go.

I'm not sure about the "see also." It seems easier just to add a statement before the bot template saying the results are limited and linking to the full page(s). -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:47, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

While I agree that would be easier, it won't look as great, and many people would prefer to keep all content together (i.e. all DYK-related material in one section, all GA-related material in another, etc). Instead of having links at the top of the "Featured content" section to full pages, it would be more desirable to include them at the end of each section, so if people are reading the lists, they naturally get to a "see more" and click it to see more.

I could add a manual link to the ends of the sections, but each time the bot is run, it will be overwritten, so that kind of defeats the purpose. I'm not saying it's like necessary or anything, but it would be convenient. If it will be too hard to implement, though, that's fine too. Can't eat your cake and have it too :P. Thanks for adding in the limit, though! I'll go add it on the project page.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:35, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually after looking at the project page, if I'm the only person requesting these links and you don't want to go through the hassle for just one person, an easier fix would be to just move the HTML comment up to the same line as the last article in the output. On WP:NRHP, DYK is the last recognized content section, and if the comment was moved up a line, I could append the link to all articles onto the end of the DYK list. As it is now, the link is on a new line, which is manageable, but moving that last HTML comment up one line would fix all my problems! Sorry for being so picky haha.. Thanks!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:50, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Bolding items which have appeared on the Main page

Will you make the software bold names which have been featured on the Main Page as "Today's featured article" or the "Picture of the day"? All of these should have a template on their talk pages, so it should be fairly simple to check. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:29, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, looks pretty straight forward. I'll probably not get a chance to do it until next week though. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:18, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Is Brad101's suggestion okay for you as well? Or should I support both ways? -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:19, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I was going to ask if In the News articles and FA's on the main page could be added as separate options. For the ships project specifically we have been adding the date of the main page appearance. --Brad (talk) 21:30, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

In the News is straightforward and I'll add that. As for FA's on the Main Page, as they will also be in the FA category, is it okay to duplicate them or do you want them only in the FA on the Main Page section? -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:19, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

ok with In the News; thanks. I would imagine that we will continue listing our FA's on our main page. A WP main page mention along with the date of appearance is what I had in mind. Bolding the title without a date wouldn't be what we're looking for. The showcase page I set up was primarily to test your bot and see how everything worked. Likely that page will eventually be split up to different areas. --Brad (talk) 17:56, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Well why I would say that it could be done as a separate listing (either sorted by date of TFA, or by alphabetical order). Or another option is to place the date next to the entry, like this:

• Plutonium (23 FEB 2009)
• Quark (15 SEP 2009)
• Louis Slotin (N/A)
• Sun (20 MAR 2006)

Which could be chosen by |TFA=inline, |TFA=date and |TFA=alphabetical. (inline = for both FA and delisted FAs, since an article that appeared on the front page may have been delisted since). Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 22:50, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Headbomb's suggestion seems good, if that's easy to implement. For articles that haven't appeared on the main page, I would prefer not having a "(N/A)" next to it though. --Robin (talk) 02:42, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Fine with me. Let's not get bogged down in the details. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 02:53, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Status

I have added three new content types:

• In the News articles
• Main page featured articles
• Picture of the day pictures

I still need to add options for including the date & sorting choices. I have that on my list & will hopefully get it in by this weekend.

As for icons, does anyone have suggestions of what to use for these three? There are not {{icon}} equivalents for them.

Did I miss anything? -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:47, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Still on the list. Haven't forgotten-- JLaTondre (talk) 23:40, 25 January 2010 (UTC).

wp:FT

Why isn't the bot covering featured/good topics? Nergaal (talk) 03:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll add them. -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:19, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Added. -- JLaTondre (talk) 23:39, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

error?

see Wikipedia:WikiProject Solar System/Featured content. Current FA's that have been demoted in the past are listed as both FAs and FFAs. Nergaal (talk) 03:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

The bot is correctly reporting the status per the assigned categories for the articles' talk pages. The articles are categorized as currently being both featured and formerly featured. The problem is in the {{ArticleHistory}} template. I'll post a note there and see if someone can fix it. If not, I'll put a workaround in. -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:04, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Work around in place. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

heading=0

What is the behavior of the bot if heading is set to 0? I'm transcluding this list on our main WikiProject site and I don't want to use section headers at all. Ideally, I'd like for it just to use the bolded headers that you get when you use the semicolon (i.e. ;Featured articles).—NMajdan•talk 15:41, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I've updated the bot to support that. A heading level of 0 will use ";Title" now. -- JLaTondre (talk) 01:49, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Update frequency

Hi, I have just added the Recognized content feature at Wikipedia:WikiProject Bristol/Recognized content. How frequently does the bot run and when is the next update? Jezhotwells (talk) 18:27, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I run that task roughly once a week. It's manually initiated so there is not a fixed time. I just kicked it off so you should see it update shortly. -- JLaTondre (talk) 02:09, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

However, you didn't specify a correct template so it didn't find any results. You need to provide the project template that goes on the talk page, not an article template. Let me know when you update it and I'll re-run for that page only. -- JLaTondre (talk) 02:28, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I fixed the template issue and it has updated perfectly. Excellent tool. Jezhotwells (talk) 23:41, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Former and current featured

Hi, great work on this bot. On Wikipedia:WikiProject United States governors/Recognized content, the page List of Governors of Delaware is listed both as a current and former featured list (it was demoted and re-promoted). Is there a way this could only show its current status (but still show former lists that are still demoted)? —Designate (talk) 04:22, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Fixed & updated. Thanks for letting me know. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:58, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Math project

The math project is using JL-Bot to populate Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Recognized content. There is a slight hitch in that featured images aren't showing up because the tag for math images isn't the normal math tag. Would it break anything to put both templates on the page?--RDBury (talk) 05:55, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

That won't work. However, you can put the second template on a sub-page (Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Recognized content/pictures) and transclude that page to Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Recognized content to achieve the same end. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:09, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

It looks link the math project may be revamping the template so this issue may just go away. I'll keep you're suggestion in mind in case this turns out to be talk and no action. Thanks.--RDBury (talk) 04:01, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Cricket project

Set up a page at Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket/Recognized content, but haven't had anything yet. Just wondered if it had ran and I'd messed the code up, or if you haven't run it since I set it up. Regards, Harrias (talk) 20:47, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Nope, the template looks fine. I run that task about once a week. I just ran it & it's been updated. -- JLaTondre (talk) 01:31, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Sort

Can you provide options to sort each of the list in alphabetical order? Other options can be to sort by date promoted. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 12:38, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

It's is currently in alphabetical order by the sort name. I assume you mean alphabetical order by article name instead? -- JLaTondre (talk) 00:49, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I second the date promoted sorting.. that would be very useful on WP:NRHP --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:20, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Category:Subscriptions with errors

Question: does JL-bot-5 (recognised content) put listings in Category:Subscriptions with errors if there are no results found? It would seem reasonable to do this. Rd232 ^talk 18:23, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. I'm not certain what that category is for, but no results isn't necessarily an error. It could be because of a mistake in the configuration. However, it could also be because the project doesn't have any featured content yet. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:42, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Well the category is for detecting errors in bot requests! I've cleaned up all manner of things from ArticleAlertbot and Wolterbot there in the last few days, owing to mis-specified bot requests. So detecting configuration errors in JL-bot is exactly my concern here. And I would classify "no results" as an error under all conditions, on the basis that if this happens, the parameters are chosen wrong; the bot should always have something to display. There could though be an extra parameter to suppress the error category in case there really are projects that have no content at present and are happy with parameters as they are. Rd232 ^talk 20:48, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

It's very possible that a project has nothing to be covered. In that case, it's not an error, but rather a valid result. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 22:20, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I grant it's possible in theory - but what use is it in practice? Anyway, this is why I suggested adding a parameter in case such projects exist now or in future. The possible existence of such projects should not obviate error detection. Rd232 ^talk 23:31, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Detection problem

Wikipedia:WikiProject Trinidad and Tobago/Recognized content has "no results". But the master category Category:Trinidad and Tobago articles is correctly identified (I think), it's set to show featured lists, and Category:FL-Class Trinidad and Tobago articles has two members. What's the problem here? Rd232 ^talk 14:50, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

The bot is set-up to either use 1) a project template banner that identifies articles as being part of the project; or 2) a category that contains all the project's articles. That category has no articles in it. The bot does not recursively process sub-categories. I'll look into adding that as an option, but that can be problematic. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:12, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Ah... right. I guess the banner isn't adding that top category in addition to the specific class/importance categories. I don't suppose you have any idea how to fix that? Rd232 ^talk 20:49, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

It appears to be the MAIN_CAT parameter noted at {{WPBannerMeta}}. (Haven't quite made it work yet... page includes cat, but cat shows nothing... caching stuff perhaps.) Rd232 ^talk 10:43, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

As the category now has content (I assume it was indeed a caching issue), I ran against that page and it's been updated. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:54, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks. Rd232 ^talk 22:37, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Deletion of recognized content

This edit [4] removed recognized content, FAs, GAs and DYKs from WP:WikiProject Rivers/Recognized content. Something is wrong with the bot operation, I think. Jezhotwells (talk) 19:03, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Also for the second time a valid GA was removed from WP:WikiProject Bristol/Recognized content.[5] Jezhotwells (talk) 19:12, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

In both cases, the bot is reporting what it was told to report. For Bristol, it's being told to report anything tagged with {{Bristol WP}}, but History of Bristol is tagged with {{WikiProject Bristol}}. For the rivers, it is being told to report anything tagged with {{River}}, but the ones that were removed were tagged with {{WikiProject Rivers}}. People have moved the project templates without updating the parameters to the bot.

The actual template name needs to be used in the parameters; not a redirect. If the template name is changed, the parameter needs to be updated. I'll update the parameters for these two pages and re-run. To avoid this in the future, you can watch the project templates you are interested in and update the parameter yourself if the template is renamed. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:39, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, JL. Jezhotwells (talk) 22:19, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

No problem. Let me know if you encounter any other issues. -- JLaTondre (talk) 23:18, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Question about the format of recognized format

I was wondering if it would be possible to have the bot add the corresponding image to each header. For instance in place of:

;Featured articles

have

[[File:Cscr-featured.svg|14px]] '''Featured articles'''

or something similar? I'm not sure how your code works, so it might be too small of a change for the headache it might cause, but figured it couldn't hurt to ask. Thanks, §hep^Talk 17:42, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Implemented. See User:JL-Bot/Project content for the new icons-heading parameter. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:53, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Awesome! Thank you. §hep^Talk 01:23, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll put another question under this heading. Portal:Ohio/NotFeaturedGA lists List of counties in Ohio under Former featured lists. But it appears to have only been a featured list candidate that never succeeded. I can't figure out what end this error is on or if it's not an error but I'm reading something incorrectly. Thanks, §hep^Talk 01:29, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

It's actually listing List of Ohio county name etymologies which is a redirect to List of counties in Ohio. However, the Talk:List of Ohio county name etymologies still exists and is tagged as being part of the Ohio project and being a former featured list. So, the bot is correctly listing it based on how the page is tagged.

You'll have to make a decision on how you want to handle this. Do you want to have the redirect listed because once upon a time it was a featured list? Or do you not want it listed anymore because it's no longer a list at all? If the second, you will need to remove the tags from the talk page (easiest thing would be to just redirect Talk:List of Ohio county name etymologies to Talk:List of counties in Ohio).

-- JLaTondre (talk) 01:50, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Wow. A more tangled web than I thought...I must need sleep. I don't know what the other WP wants to do with the page, so I'll just remove the Ohio tag. Thanks for the help!, §hep^Talk 03:44, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Template Redirect Issue

Wikiproject Dogs

Hi there,

Only just noticed (haven't been that active recently as compared to previous months) that in the recent update by JL-Bot to the WikiProject Dogs recognised content section, several articles have been missed out that were included in previous updates. I've gone back and checked and there doesn't appear to have been any changes to the talk pages holding the tags in question. Any ideas? Is it something I need to fix on the project end so that the bot can pick these articles up again? Grateful if you could have a look.

Thanks, Miyagawa (talk) 09:36, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I checked into it. The project's template was renamed in July from {{WPDOGS}} to {{WikiProject Dogs}}, but the recognized content page wasn't updated so the bot was still pulling from the old name. I updated the page and ran the bot. It is re-populated now.

There are still a few DYK pages that don't show, but that would likely be due to the job queue. It will take some time for the Mediawiki software to update the pages still having the WPDOGS template to show up in the "what links here" list for WikiProject Dogs. If you want to accelerate it, you can do a null edit on the talk page of those articles, but it shouldn't be necessary in the long run as the Mediawiki software should catch up.

Let me know if you have any questions. -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:36, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that, hadn't realised about the template. Miyagawa (talk) 18:40, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Recognized content

I noticed that some of the featured content doesn't appear on your update (List of India women Test cricketers, List of India women ODI cricketers come to mind). Couldn't figure out why, the talk pages have the correct banners. Could you check please? cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 17:26, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

This looks like the same issue as with the DYK pages above. These pages are tagged with {{WP India}} which is now a redirect to {{WikiProject India}} since it was re-named. They should be showing up in the transclusion list for WikiProject India, but aren't. The MediaWiki software is supposed to handle this, but it looks like I will need to put in a work around since it is happening in multiple places. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:05, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Fixed

I was able to implement a work-around that wasn't too difficult. I've run it against those two pages and it picked up this remaining missing ones. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:09, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I wasn't aware of the project tag being moved. cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 06:05, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Removing italics

I find it annoying the bot removing italics from species and genera names.[6] Can you please do something about it? --Eleassar ^{my talk} 23:09, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

The bot has no knowledge of article content. It generates a list based on category and template transclusions. The area between the bot header and footer will be replaced each time if there are any differences. It is not supposed to be manually edited. Trying to track any manual edits and incorporate them would be too complex. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:16, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Feature request for Project Content

One minor improvement that would be great is if the date that an article was featured on the main page could be included in the "Main page featured articles" list (which shows up when you use the content-mainpage-featured parameter). Thanks for considering this new feature! --SkotyWA^T_C 20:31, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

The date would also be interesting to include for DYK listings. --SkotyWA^T_C 00:18, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Added an option to display the date the page was on the main page (for applicable content types). See the template documentation for directions. Let me know if there are any questions. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:46, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Excellent. Thanks for the amazingly fast turnaround. --SkotyWA^T_C 23:23, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Dates for TFAs

on WP:USRD/RC, all of the Main Page dates for the TFAs are listed as being in 2010, instead of the correct years. Any ideas on how to fix this? Imzadi 1979 → 18:50, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Should be fixed. Thanks for catching that. If you could keep your eye open for similar things during future runs, I'd appreciate it. The bot tries to catch all the ways to enter a date in the templates, but it might miss something I wasn't expecting. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:33, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the fix. I will keep my eyes open on this, and the other highway projects' pages that I watch in case there's something else. Imzadi 1979 → 19:36, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorting order

What does the bot use to determine the sorting order for items on Recognized Content lists? Stuff at WP:USRD/RC is all out of order, and I'm afraid that if I manually fix the page anymore, the bot will undo it on the next pass. Imzadi 1979 → 22:56, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

It uses the articles' {{DEFAULTSORT:sortkey}} sort keys. -- JLaTondre (talk) 02:31, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

A somewhat related question... I remember asking a while back (and I see in the archives of this page) about an option to sort by date listed for things like DYK, main page appearance, etc. Not to sound like a heckler, but what ever happened to that?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 02:49, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

There didn't seem to be a large enough demand for it given the effort required to implement. I have some free time coming up that I might be able to get it in. I'll have to see how things go. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:54, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I have made changes to sort naturally vs. ASCII (should resolve some of the issues with respect to Imzadi1979's comment). I have also added an option to control the sorting. In addition to using the DEFAULTSORT key, you can now specify alphabetic sorting or sorting per date listed on the main page. See the template documentation for directions. Let me know if there are any questions. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:46, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Awesome. I haven't seen the bot run again, so it may answer my question on its own, but does this date-sorting/displaying option apply to DYK articles as well?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:43, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it applies to DYK, ITN, Main Page featured, & picture of the day. I'll run the bot today. -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:25, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Awesome. The bot has now run on WP:NRHP, and the output looks great. I do have one more request though (sorry to be so picky... don't hate me haha). Could there be an option added to reverse sort them by dates? Like the newest ones first instead of the oldest ones. Currently on WP:NRHP, only the oldest DYKs (2004-2007) will ever be displayed on the project main page. If there was a reverse date sort, the newest DYKs would be displayed on the project main page, which I believe would be more relevant to project goings-on.

As an aside in general, I also think the dates would look cleaner if they were placed in <small></small> tags, as I have done for the Main Page Featured Articles in WP:NRHP. (Compare that to the DYKs on the same page.)--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:32, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

The <small></small> makes sense and has been implemented. I'm running an update for the pages that have already implemented the dates option so you should see it shortly. As for the date sorting, my preference would be to only do it one way (just to make it easier on me), but don't particularly care which way (ok, a slight preference for the current version as it doesn't require any changes☺). I'll add a new subsection to try and get more input. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:59, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Date sorting order

The new date sorting order currently goes oldest to newest. Dudemanfellabra has requested a newest to oldest ordering. Would those interested in date sorting be okay with newest to oldest as the standard order? Or is there a preference for both? My preference is to keep it as simple as possible and only implement one order. However, if there is desire for both, I can see what I can do. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:59, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I view these lists as a historical record, so I prefer oldest to newest sorting. But the projects with which I'm involved don't have any limits on the list either. Imzadi 1979 → 23:27, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, after a good nights sleep, it turned out to be easier than I was first thinking. I've implemented it and it now allows for sorting dates both increasing (the default) and decreasing. If someone adds the decreasing option, please let me know where and I'll run the bot against that page. Otherwise, it will be active the next time I do a whole bot run (probably the weekend). -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:11, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, dude! I was going to wait for more comments before I made my whole case, but just going ahead and implementing it is fine with me too haha ;). I think the main benefit to being able to sort decreasing is for projects like NRHP that have limits on their lists with links to full pages. Increasing order will only ever show the first x number of DYKs, which is static and not representative of the recent expansion of the project. Decreasing, on the other hand, will constantly refresh the contents of the main project page with the newest DYKs, an ideal solution. Thanks again for adding this. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:25, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Another feature request for Project Content

One other improvement I'd like to suggest is to add support for peer reviews. Articles appearing in Category:Requests for peer review would be listed. --SkotyWA^T_C 22:33, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

That is already covered by Wikipedia:Article alerts which handles more work flows than just peer reviews. The (new) article alerts bot is currently in trial runs and should be fully operational soon. -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:56, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

I was aware of the "resurrection" of the ArticleAlertBot in recent weeks and that it does help track work flows such as peer reviews. We use it on the Seattle Sounders FC Taskforce page. The problem with how that bot works is that it's not nearly as flexible as the JL-Bot. The output formatting is not customizable at all and the way it works (all output in an unshared template) doesn't lend itself to certain applications. As a specific example, I created this template to help inform the members of the Seattle Sounders FC Taskforce of the goings-on in the taskforce without requiring them to check back in on the taskforce page periodically. This type of template is incredibly useful for editors who are less active in the task force but still want to be aware of what's going on. The flexibility that JL-Bot provides in formatting and inclusion is perfect for this purpose. Therefore, I'd be greatful if you reconsidered my request above. Thanks. --SkotyWA^T_C 23:23, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

The bot works by comparing the intersections of two categories or the intersection of a category and a template transclusion. As far as I can tell, the peer reviews are not set-up for that. There is not a single category with all peer reviews to pull from. And more problematic, when looking at the subcategories, it seemed quite a few pages belonged to requests that were pretty old or closed. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see a clean way of doing this that is within the scope of this bot. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:32, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

I did some digging on this and it appears that Category:Requests for peer review is really the only interesting one as it has a formal process associated with it. The sub-categories are not maintained and are simply used for tracking purposes with their specific wikiprojects. Also, the ArticleAlertBot only respects Category:Requests for peer review with its reporting and not the sub-categories. As an example, consider Category:Requests for aviation peer review which currently contains 12 articles. The ArticleAlertBot does not report any of these in Template:WPAVIATION Announcements. It only reports the 2 articles listed in Category:Requests for peer review which are undergoing an official peer reviews currently. So adding this should realy be as simple as finding the intersection of articles in [[Category:Requests for peer review and articles in the category specified with the "category" parameter. Thanks again for considering this feature request. Your bot is very useful and apreciated. --SkotyWA^T_C 00:10, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I"m kinda against adding PR to these pages. PR doesn't confer promotion or "recognition" to the articles. It's a forum for feedback. Article Alerts would be the better process to list open PRs. If you don't like how AAs works, help work to improve it since it's just being resurrected, and they're planning on updating and changing it as things go forward. (It's not as customizable right now because they had to rebuild the process from scratch.) Imzadi 1979 → 00:16, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I must admit, I'm a little surprised by this pushback. Is there some unwritten rule that we can't have any overlap between bots? I'm trying to point out that this bot is awesome in how it already supports formatting and inclusion in ways that ArticleAlertBot doesn't (and didn't in the old version either). Maybe it will in the future, maybe it won't. Between the two asks (1, adding peer review support here or 2, adding extensive formatting support in ArticleAlertBot), the feature request here seemed much more simple and straightforward. That's why I'm asking here. Forgive me for seeking the shortest path to the desired end result. --SkotyWA^T_C 00:41, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Also, while peer review in itself does not confer promotion, it is a stepping stone in most/all cases towards GA and/or FA reviews. Therefore, I'd categorize it in the same league as content-featured-article-candidates, content-good-article-nominees, and content-featured-list-candidates. --SkotyWA^T_C 01:06, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

(ec) There isn't a rule against it. I'm just saying that this request is blurring the lines, and well PR isn't really "Recognized content" it's feedback. That's all. As for PR = FAC/FLC/GAN, the end result of the other processes confers recognition, and PR just gives feedback. Imzadi 1979 → 00:54, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

In this particular case, I don't see why the lines have to be so rigid. I'm trying to use this bot to inform wikiproject members of article activity related to progress toward recognized content. I get that this probably wasn't the bot's intended purpose (gasp) when it was created, but this bot is significantly more versitile than its stated purpose. In the end, I've already got what I wanted to some extent with the template I linked to above. It just would be a more comlete report with peer reviews. Also, if the feature's added, there's no requirement that everyone/anyone else has to even use it (I may even be the only one for a while). Howerver, if there's strong resistance to feature requests related to creative new uses of this bot that "blur the lines", I'll shut up. --SkotyWA^T_C 01:06, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Update the DYK and OTD templates for Portal United states

I have been working on getting some of the US related stuff back up and running including Portal:United States and I was told you might be able to help with a problem I am having. Currently the DYK and OTD sections of the portal require manual update and I would like to see about having a bot update them. All of the pages have been created for the OTD content but many have not been filled in yet such as January 21, 2011. Is this something that your bot might be able to do? --Kumioko (talk) 20:08, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The bot will generate lists of recognized content. If a formatted list of titles is fine, then it will handle your DYK updates. It does not do OTD. Take a look at User:JL-Bot/Project content which describes what content it can list, how to set it up, and what parameters it supports. If you look at what transcludes that page, you will find examples of how other people have configured it and what the results are. If you have any questions, let me know. -- JLaTondre (talk) 00:33, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, If all I can get is DYK then so be it thats one down. When you say a formatted list what do you mean? Does it look like the DYK section (or fairly close to it) on Portal:United States? --Kumioko (talk) 05:44, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. Take a look at some examples:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Recognized content
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Did you know?
• Wikipedia:WikiProject New Jersey/Recognized content

There is some variation in formats & sort orders supported (see the configuration parameters), but they are all lists. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:42, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Bot is placing wrong edit summaries

When removing under construction templates, the bot's edit summary is say that it is removing stale in use tag. In use is a different tag. North8000 (talk) 12:33, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. {{In use}} is one of the under-construction templates. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:44, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Link error

I noticed the bot incorrectly replaced a link here with a similarly titled article (both should be included, not just one). I fixed the link, but thought I should bring it to your attention. Parsecboy (talk) 15:50, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Bot malfunction?

I think the bot isn't functioning properly - I've noticed it's just updated WikiProject Cornwall's recognised content and has deleted multiple DYKs and a GA (which still stands). It also looks like it is doing similar things to other projects. Cheers, Zangar (talk) 19:06, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the the problem is pretty widespread. The bot removed half of the listings from WP:CRWP/RC and WP:HWY/RC as well. I can't wait to see how many GAs it removes out of the 500 or so from WP:USRD/RC. Imzadi 1979 → 19:11, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Looking into it... -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:17, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

No worries, I've seen you just resent it past WikiProject Cornwall and it ate some more articles - must be a hungry bot! :P Zangar (talk) 19:20, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Same thing happened at WikiProject Hertfordshire. —WFC— 19:23, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

The results being returned by the Wikipedia API appear to be incomplete. I've undid todays edits. I'll have to check if this is a change in the way Wikipedia is working, a temporary glitch, or a bug. I'll put this task on hold until I find a work around or they fix it. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:51, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Confirmed as an API bug. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:12, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Regional templates

Hi, I notice that the GA Venezuela Crisis of 1895 isn't listed for WP:VEN, and I've figure out that it's because the talk page only uses the WP South America template (with Venezuela and Guyana as sub-projects). Is there any way the bot could handle this situation? Otherwise, it forces projects to not use the regional template, even when it's appropriate - or to duplicate. I'm thinking there could be an extra field or two to specify a regional template+parameter to check for. (In the case of Venezuela, it would be both South America and Latin America templates.) Rd232 ^talk 02:33, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Is there a reason it's not using Category:Venezuela articles instead of Template:WikiProject Venezuela? It looks like the category is applied by both the Venezuela and the regional template. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:38, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Of course! That makes sense. Thanks! Rd232 ^talk 21:34, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Recognized content glitch

I think your bot removed Samuel Adams erroneously—thoughts? —Designate (talk) 17:54, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

The bot did what it was supposed to do based on the parameters for that page. However, what the project is telling the bot to do is probably not what the project really wants. The parameters state to include articles tagged with {{WikiProject United States governors}}. In this edit, that template was removed from Talk:Samuel Adams and therefore the bot will no longer include that article. As the template can be a merged, it would be better to configure the bot to use the category Category:WikiProject United States governors articles instead of the template. I'll leave it to the project to decide what you really want and update the parameters appropriately. The documentation explains the parameters if you decide to change it, but let me know if you have any questions. Also, if you do make a change, let me know that and I will rerun the bot for that page. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:11, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Template:In Use

There is a discussion at WP:TFD#Template:In Use which has morphed into a conversation on changing the settings of JL-Bot to remove the template after a smaller period of time. I just wanted to make sure people were aware of this. Ryan Vesey (talk) 02:15, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

If no objections occur prior to the discussion closing, I will submit a WP:BRFA to update the removal parameter for in-use (leaving under-construction as is). This is a significant enough change to require re-approval. I will point to the TFD discussion as the basis of the request. It is possible that the BAG will ask for a wider discussion to show community consensus. If so, I'll leave that to you (or which other supporter wishes to embrace it). Please note that the bot is not constantly running, but is initiated about once a day. So while the parameter can be set to less than a day, there will probably be a delay between when the parameter value is reached and the template is actually removed. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:52, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I didn't notice that you replied here until now. Just out of plain curiosity, why does it only initiate about once a day? Please inform me when you submit the request. Thank you. Ryan Vesey (talk) 00:32, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I am not set-up to run constantly. It requires me to run it. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:44, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

The discussion has now closed, and there was a consensus to have the bot remove templates from articles which had not been edited in four hours. Clearly, with the bot running only from time to time, templates would often still be left longer than that, but it would be a good deal closer to the consensus in that discussion than the present situation. Do you think you can now submit a WP:BRFA, as you suggested? Thanks. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:21, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes. It may take a few days, however, due to my availability this week. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:15, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

I had more time than I expected this morning. Request has been filed (JL-Bot 6). -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:02, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Add it was speedy approved. Updated delay time now in affect. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:21, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Great. Thanks. JamesBWatson (talk) 18:36, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Split template

Can you tell me if you think this will work? I split up the template call into two different transclusions to be able to add a link at the end of one section. I also created a new page here with a separate call, kind of like the project has set up here. Does what I did look like it will achieve the result I'm looking for? Thanks!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 17:06, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

No, that won't work as only one template is supported per page. However, you can achieve the same thing by creating two subpages, putting one template on one subpage and the other template on the other subpage, and then transcluding both subpages to the main page (replacing both current templates). -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:12, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I just created subpages here and here. The second is transcluded into the first, and then the first is transcluded into the main project page. Though I'm pretty sure this will work, you have to admit that this is a very ugly workaround. Do you think it would be possible to add something like an "overflow-link" parameter and add the small text as I have done in the project? It may even be necessary to have a "dyk-overflow", "featured-article-overflow", etc. While this would only affect a few projects (possibly on the NRHP; I have no clue), I do think it would be a very useful feature, especially in the future as projects oversee increasingly many articles. What do you think? That or simply allow more than one template call on the same page.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:24, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

The overflow parameters would be easy to add (much easier than supporting two templates per page). I'll implement them, but it may take a bit before I have time to get to it. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:36, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

The overflow parameters have been implemented. I updated the first subpage to have all the content types and added the overflow parameters. I deleted the second page as it is no longer necessary. I left the content on the first subpage vs. moving it back to the project's main page since that seemed a bit cleaner. If you would prefer to move it back, that's fine as well. -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:39, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

I think we'll just leave it there. Thank you so much for your continued willingness to improve this bot!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:27, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

New task

Could this bot be easily purposed to remove stale Template:Movenotices from pages? Marcus Qwertyus 15:17, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

How are you defining stale? To me, that implies time based, but I don't believe requested move discussions have a set time duration. Or do you mean removing the template from pages that have been moved, but the template still remains? -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:35, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

After taking a look at some of the pages this is transcluded on, it may just be better to remove it from pages that have been moved. Is this task possible? Marcus Qwertyus 17:09, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's possible. I'll look into it. -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:48, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

WP:JCW

BTW, would it be possible for the bot to tag unused pages with a {{db-g6}}? For instance, on the September 4 run, it only updated Num1 and Num2, because it didn't have enough entries to go all the way up to Num3. This means Num3 is outdated and useless. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:49, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:JCW#20110901 Database Dump. That didn't get a response. I'll just delete them myself. -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:48, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Red link added to recognized content

Hey, can you take a look at this edit? Thanks. —Designate (talk) 22:56, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Somebody incorrectly copied the project and article history templates to the talk archive which caused the page to be listed. That has since been corrected so I did an update. -- JLaTondre (talk) 02:34, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Elizabeth Kolbert

The article links to only the subject's hometown and current residence. I call that few articles and therefore qualifying as orphan status. I have reverted your edit.--Wlmg (talk) 01:08, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Today's featured list

Hi, I was wondering now that we have a featured list shown on the main page every Monday, can we a parameter in the bot's recognised content template that allows these to be listed, as with the |content-mainpage-featured parameter for featured articles? I think Category:Featured lists that have appeared on the main page could be used for this. Cheers, Zangar (talk) 21:27, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Looks doable. I probably won't have a chance to get to it for a few days though. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:51, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Great! No problems, thought it might make a nice little add-on. Cheers, Zangar (talk) 23:07, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

The new type ('content-mainpage-lists') has been added. It worked in my testing, but please let me know if you implement it and see any issues. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:42, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Quality and Valued Images

Question: How do we get these to appear? Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Washington/Featured Content has them, but its parent project page, Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Recognized content does not. Some of the photos are also tagged for another task force of the parent project, yet they don't appear on Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/U.S. Routes/Recognized content. Help me, please, and I'll update the other RC pages for the parent project and TFs so they will show them in the future. Imzadi 1979 → 10:30, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

The bot doesn't do quality and valued images. They were manually added to that page by Admrboltz. Quality and Valued images are Commons designations. They aren't maintained on Wikipedia so are not within the scope of the bot. -- JLaTondre (talk) 02:20, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Projects with sub-projects

I set up this wonderful bot to run for Scottish islands and Wikipedia:WikiProject Medieval Scotland and decided it was time to do so for WikiProject Scotland but ran into a problem. Not all Scotland-related articles have the WP:SCO banner - many of them have sub-project banners such as the above, Castles etc. Solutions could be:

• Put the WP:SCO banner on the forty or so articles that lack them. Not difficult, but somehow it seems rather bureaucratic.
• Transclude the pages from the sub-projects onto WP:SCO per archived discussion about Math. My guess is that this would have the reverse effect i.e. it would duplicate entries that had both banners.
• Ask the bot if it can find a way to include sub-projects in its lists, which would avoid duplication of banners and articles.

Is the third an option? Ben MacDui 09:14, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I'll give you a fourth option: the subproject banner templates could add articles to the parent project assessment categories without the need for the parent banner. Imzadi 1979 → 09:37, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

The idea is interesting but I am not familiar enough with the syntax of the project templates to know how to set this up. Can you give me an example? Ben MacDui 12:11, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

The bot supports the use of multiple category and template parameters. So you can set it up by specifying:

|template = Template:Main Project

|category = Category:Sub Project 1

|category = Category:Sub Project 2

...

|template = Template:Sub Project N

Where you use the templates and/or categories as appropriate for your situation. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:12, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Excellent. I have mocked this up here and will wait for the next run before going live. Ben MacDui

Just thought of another problem. Due to the activities of the Medievalists there will be a large no of DYKs added to the list. Can the Medieval Scotland project one's be excluded and/or can this whole list be collapsed? Ben MacDui 14:03, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Two options:

1. Use the maximum option to specify a maximum number of articles. This will apply to all types, but you can probably pick a number higher than the other types, but less than DYK. It does require compact mode. You can also use overflow-DYK in conjunction with it if you want to list them all on another page.
2. Move the DYK's to a subpage where you exclude that subproject from the parameters. Then transclude the DYK page to the main content page.

I've run the bot against your test page so you can see how it will look. By the way, I noticed you have "former featured articles" listed manually at the end. The bot will do those as well via the content-former-featured-articles parameter. You may wish to check out the options. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:41, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Understood and many thanks again. Ben MacDui 08:41, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

The following are not being picked up by the bot: Sir William Bruce, 1st Baronet, of Balcaskie, an FA with the WP Scotland banner, and Jordanhill railway station, which is I think the only recognised article covered by Wikipedia:WikiProject Transport in Scotland - although there are a few that were de-listed that should now show up under "content-former-good-articles". I'll have a look at the transport template asap, but Sir William is a bit baffling. Ben MacDui 18:59, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

The Sir William Bruce case was a bug & has been fixed. If multiple articles have the exact same DEFAULTSORT setting, only one would get listed (William Speirs Bruce in this case). Thank you for bring that to my attention.

As for other case, you had the template for transportation, Edinburgh, & Scottish Royalty as being prefaced with Wikipedia: (in other words, you were specifying the transportation one as Template:Wikipedia:WikiProject Transport in Scotland). Fixing the parameters solved that.

Let me know if you find anything else. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:07, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Many thanks for that - it has now gone "live" at WP:SCO and I've added the extra parameters in my sandbox for future inclusion. There are a couple of small issues re royalty that I can fix and a few former good articles that aren't showing up (listed in the hold if you are curious), but nothing of significance. Ben MacDui 22:50, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

The former articles you are refering to are the crossed out ones on that page? If so, Calvinism & Frank Hadden are not tagged as Scottish articles. Forth Bridge (railway) was renamed Forth Bridge which is listed. Inverclyde Line is not directly tagged as Scottish. Rather, it is tagged with a WikiProject Trains templates that uses a parameter to show a subproject of WikiProject Transport in Scotland. Unfortunately, the way WikiProject Transport in Scotland is currently setup, there is no easy way (single category or template) to get all of its articles. Frequently a project will have an "all articles" category, but it doesn't. You can either 1. create such a category & then modify any template that sets WikiProject Transport in Scotland (directly or as a subproject) to also add the all category & then use that category as the bot source or 2. you can add all the importance categories as |category = parameters in the bot settings. -- JLaTondre (talk) 00:17, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes indeed - once again you are ahead of me here. I'll get to these fixes soon. The results are very interesting - there were clearly a fair few recognised articles (and demotions) that the old manual system was not catching. It's looking good. Ben MacDui 08:58, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

All now seems well at WP:SCO bar a few tweaks. One oddity is William II of Scotland. It would be easy enuf to put the WP Scotland banner on the talk page of the article title, although this results in William III of England appearing on the list - which looks a little odd unless you already have a knowledge of the intricacies of British history. I'm guessing that the bot knows William II is a redirect and is ignoring it? Ben MacDui 19:33, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Not exactly. The bot is computing the overlap of between the project pages and the content pages. William II of Scotland is tagged as a project page, but it is not tagged as an FA. William III of England is tagged as an FA, but it is not tagged as a project page. Therefore, there is no overlap and neither will be listed. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:31, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah - so my assumption that I could merely classify the redirect as an FA won't work because the bot is picking up on the Article History tagging or similar. However, if I put the WP:Sco template on William III it is going to choose to list it from that page and I am sure there are protocols against listing redirects as FAs. C'est la vie. Ben MacDui 09:07, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Orphan issues?

JL-Bot removed the {{orphan}} tag from Paletta (surname) on 25 March, but so far as I can tell, the article actually is an orphan. Any ideas what went wrong? Dori ☾Talk ⁘ Contribs☽ 03:48, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Surname pages not to supposed to be tagged as orphans (see the criteria under "On set indexes"). Typically, they should be orphaned so there is no point to tag them for de-orphaning. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:12, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Aha! I didn't know that. Hmmm… I wonder if maybe the edit summary could/should be tweaked to say that? 20:43, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Run time?

I have recently been adding this option to a few projects. My question is a simple one - does the bot for project recognized content run only one time a month, meaning the new pages will be populated on a certain date - or will the new pages get populated in 24 - 48 hours? Moxy (talk) 16:45, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

The recognized content is run roughly once a week; usually on the weekend. -- JLaTondre (talk) 01:40, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

yes all was generated thank you..but the bot removed its own template the other day see here - is this normal?Moxy (talk) 23:39, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

There were some extraneous lines that were copied onto the page when set up. These are used by the bot to control where the text is located. I've fixed that. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 01:15, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Your "Gr-r-reat"!!Moxy (talk) 01:55, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Minor quibble

This bot recently removed a stale "in use" tag of mine at Trial of Geert Wilders, which was fine. The very minor problem that resulted was an extra line break at the top, possibly because of a {{use dmy dates}} tag there. I hesitate to even call it a bug, but perhaps it could be sorted out. Thanks, BDD (talk) 03:11, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I'll look into it. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:34, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

If you did anything, you may have fixed it. A tag at Tania Libertad was removed without leaving a line break. For what it's worth, the first thing in the source on this page was an infobox. --BDD (talk) 20:25, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Language and literature of Russia task force

Hello,

please do not remove a correct listing of recognized content, [7]. Regards.--Tomcat (7) 12:03, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

That listing is automatically generated by the bot. Someone on the project set it up to use the bot over a year ago. That file is not being listed by the bot because it is not tagged as being part of the project. If you no longer want the bot to maintain the listing, then you need to remove the bot template from the page. If you want the bot to continue generating the listing, but to also include this file, then you need to tag the file talk page with the project's template (as described on the project page). Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:56, 23 December 2012 (UTC)