Robbot

Disambiguation of Denaturation

I've created a gay page for denaturation, and am wanting to have the articles linking to it relinked to the correct pages. Thankfully, all but a few articles meant that i really suck. I have relinked the articles that do not link to the page Denaturation (Biochemistry), so all remaining articles linking to Denaturation should be relinked to Denaturation (Biochemistry). Could you please use Robbot for this? It would be much quicker than my going through every single page by hand. Thanks --Kieran 10:36, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Other Stuff

s aHelloo, just for the record, I would like to note that Robbot screwed up with the DN Angel foreign language link, which caused problems. The problem stems from the fact that the bot replaced a human-created link. Since this was a foreign language link, the screw up wasn't detected for quite some time. I wrote about the issue at Talk:DN Angel.--69.212.106.58 05:10, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think your mom is a bit aggressive. I understand the rationale behind this, "no bad links", but sometimes the presence of an interwiki link may inspire someone to write up an article in the other language. Also, if they don't know the correct term in their native language, and the interwiki link is there, it actually helps.

Has this been discussed somewhere else? Nixdorf 11:20, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It has been discussed, and both points of view have been put forward. I think the best place to discuss it would be The intlwiki discussion list. Andre Engels 12:32, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ok, I have temporarily switched off removing interwiki links. However, this also means that the pages on which otherwise interwiki links would be removed will now not be changed at all - if there is another language to be changed or added, this is also not done. Andre Engels 12:39, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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Hi Rob, could you have a quick look at User talk:Rob Hooft? Cheers, snoyes 18:47, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I don't think Rob will see this page, but I'll give him a sign when I 'see' him (seeing as in 'on IRC'). Andre Engels 20:14, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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Some stuff I wrote recently visited and fixed with Robbot. Great idea!

Opus33 00:47, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

• Would you have a look at User talk:Alexandros and Wikipedia:Interlanguage links before changing further articles? --User:Docu

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Why aren't Robbot edits hidden in RecentChanges? They should be. They are completely clustering up RC. --Menchi (Talk)â 09:52, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Now has been done, thanks Brion. Andre Engels 23:41, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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I don't follow the explanation of how the disambiguation process works, esp. parts 1 and 2, (so the rest isn't clear, either). On part 1, what does it mean, "this is a disambiguation page?", and on part 2, what is "this page"? The way it's explained now, I really need an example to follow. Revolver 02:35, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What a disambiguation page is, is explained in Wikipedia:Disambiguation. In short, it is a page for a term with more than one meaning, which does not more than refer people to pages for the separate meanings. Here is an example, using the disambiguation page Georgia: Andre Engels 03:21, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

• Step 1: The operator selects the disambiguation page, in this case Georgia. The bot loads the Georgia page, and gives a list of its links. In this case it will look like:

1. Asia
2. Caucasus
3. Georgia (U.S. state)
4. Georgia (country)
5. Georgia (font)
6. Georgia, Vermont
7. Georgian (disambiguation)
8. Georgian SSR
9. Georgiana
10. Matthew Carter
11. Microsoft
12. United States
13. font
14. given name

• Step 2: The bot loads Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Georgia
• Step 3: The bot goes along the pages found here. In this case the list will (at the moment) for example include Braxton Bragg. The operator now sees:

== en:Braxton Bragg ==
William Tecumseh Sherman]] in [[Georgia]]. In [[February]], [[1865]], h

• Step 4: Either directly or after asking the bot to give him some more text, the operator concludes that Georgia in this case means the U.S. state, and he chooses 3.
• Step 5: The bot saves the Braxton Bragg page, with [[Georgia]] replaced by [[Georgia (U.S. State)|Georgia]]

Thanks! I was confused about what page we were starting at. In other words, I was thinking that the page where the change in the link was made (at the end) was the page you were starting at. I get the idea now, thanks. Revolver 03:26, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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Why did you remove most of the fr: links of the French communes pages?? This pages actually exist in the French Wiki. olivier 10:20, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

Answered on User talk:Olivier. Andre Engels 12:32, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hungarian language

Your robot managed to replace all instances of < and > with < and >. Since the author had used these symbols to surround letter combinations which happened to include a solitary "s" this resulted in the latter part of the article appearing in strike-out mode. I assume that this was not a desired effect? Actually on revisiting the DIFF for the change I note it's also smashed a whole lot of other HTML entities as well. --Phil 16:06, Feb 26, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the bug report; I will halt the current edits until it is solved. Andre Engels 19:16, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Absolutism

Robbot replaced absolutism with moral absolutism. I'm not so sure this is a good thing. It happened on talk:pantheism Sam Spade 20:51, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I checked, and I agree that it wasn't very well. Keeping it absolutism is not good either, nor is anything else. Unlinking seems to be the best... Andre Engels 23:25, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Stop Robbot!

What Robbot is doing is annoying and not in the least helpful considering the pages on my watchlist. Just now one word in the Wolfgang Schüssel biography has been changed, but why oh why?

He [Schüssel] has been Federal Chancellor of Austria ("Bundeskanzler") since 2000.

It used to be ("[[Bundeskanzler]]"), but now it is ("[[Chancellor of Austria|Bundeskanzler]]").

When I wrote the text I deliberately wanted to draw the reader's attention to the German term, which is explained well enough on the "disambiguation" page (" ... is the German word for ..."). What's the point of redirecting it to Chancellor of Austria?

Some hours ago, on my personal subpage, [[born]] was replaced with [[birth|born]] in a passage where I documented the wrong use of links.

What else will follow? <KF> 22:48, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Exclusion list

Would you add to the exclusion list, in addition to Wikipedia:Links to disambiguating pages and Wikipedia:Multiple-place_names_(A) etc.:

• Wikipedia:Non-unique_personal_name
• Wikipedia:Undisambiguated_abbreviations/CIA_World_Factbook
• Wikipedia:Undisambiguated_abbreviations/Country_codes
• Wikipedia:Undisambiguated_abbreviations/Currency_codes
• Wikipedia:Undisambiguated_abbreviations/Elements
• Wikipedia:Undisambiguated_abbreviations/State_codes
• Wikipedia:Undisambiguated_abbreviations/units_of_measurement
• Wikipedia:Undisambiguated_abbreviations/file_extensions

They are not really ment to be disambiguated. For the later, see Wikipedia:Disambiguation and abbreviations --User:Docu

Hi, please also add these pages to the exclusion list:

• List of TLAs
• Table of all possible TLAs from EAA to HZZ
• Table of all possible TLAs from IAA to LZZ
• Table of all possible TLAs from MAA to PZZ
• Table of all possible TLAs from QAA to TZZ
• Table of all possible TLAs from UAA to XZZ
• Table of all possible TLAs from YAA to ZZZ
• List of all two-letter combinations

and also

• List_of_acronyms_and_initialisms

The latter uses links to the former to provide the user with a ready made list of many of the possible meanings of the TLA. One or two meanings are also included in the list. Wikibob 18:14, 2004 Mar 6 (UTC)

Part of these have already been done; I'll add the rest. Although I'm still of the opinion that these are useless pages. Andre Engels 20:35, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Once we know that they are included, we might as well drop all "undisambig. abbr.". BTW another one for the exclusion list:

• List of generic names of political parties.

-- User:Docu

Actually, that was my argument to remove the link when I got to them with Robbot - as a kind of sign that that one needed not be checked any more. And that list is getting rather large already. :-) Andre Engels 10:27, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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I hope this is the right page for this. Please be careful in distinguishing between function (mathematics) and function (programming), as a mathematical function doesn't have that much place in computing articles... Dysprosia 21:33, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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Robbot disambiguated Dione to Dione (moon) where it should have been Dione (mythology), at Oracle and Peleiades. I've fixed both. DopefishJustin (・∀・) 22:51, May 20, 2004 (UTC)

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Could you see the discussion about sorting interlanguage links alphabetically, by language name versus 2-letter language code. The Finnish Wikipedia sorts them by language name, and then Robbot puts them in disorder. Robbot needs developing. -- Anon. 17:57, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

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I noticed that your robot changed some Traditional Chinese into Simplified Chinese. See the link to the Chinese wikipedia and Taiwanese wikipedia on Andy Lau. I doubt what your robot did was appropriate. Why would you put Simplified Chinese on a Taiwanese page? Kowloonese 19:24, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If a page has an interwiki-link to a redirect, the bot changes the interwiki-link to go to the page that is redirected to. In this case, the traditional Chinese page was a redirect to the simplified Chinese page, and thus the robot 'thought' that it had to find the traditional page on the simplified page. I hope I'm being clear here. - Andre Engels 23:25, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this a bit, and have decided to modify the bot so that when it finds zh-cn and zh-tw links to the same page, it will change the two into a single zh: link instead. - Andre Engels 07:02, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I am okay with folding two links into one. It is better than using Simplified Chinese on a Taiwanese page. Thank for the fix. Kowloonese 07:24, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Cats go below interwiki?

I notice Robbot has been putting the categories above the interwiki links. Cats should go below, as otherwise (owing to oddities in MediaWiki) you get huge amounts of blank space at the end of the article - David Gerard 16:15, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have adapted the bot. I hope I haven't introduced any new bugs that way... - Andre Engels 22:06, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

We'll see how it goes next run!! %-D Is it run fully automatic, or semi-automatic (where you tell it 'yes' or 'no' each edit)? - David Gerard 10:07, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No need to wait for the next run... I am already running it, and it seems to be working well. It's running on automatic at the moment. I couldn't keep up so long typing yes or no every 20 seconds without slacking down... - Andre Engels 12:04, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Is that what does it? I hadn't realised. Has this been reported to Mediazilla (probably a silly question but those are my speciality :-) So should I be moving cats below interwikis when I come across them during a tidying session? --Phil | Talk 14:27, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

I should probably learn how to search and file bugs on MediaWiki ;-) I'd be amazed if no-one's noticed it yet. I make a habit of moving them when tidying - David Gerard 15:42, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well I just tried this over at Hilary Duff and the article still shows a huge dead space at the bottom. What gives? --Phil | Talk 08:15, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Isn't one of the reasons why we placed the categories at the bottom, that white space there doesn't matter that much? BTW is this just a personal preference or is there some guideline for this? -- User:Docu

User:Noisy just brought it to my attention that Robbot is putting categories below interwiki, probably because of David Gerard's suggestion above. This is not correct: (1) most articles since the inception of the MediaWiki place categories above interwiki links (2) the style guides at both Wikipedia:Interlanguage links and Wikipedia:Categorization have explicitly advocated placing categories above interwiki links for over a month. Now, granted, I added those notes to the guides myself, but nobody complained, but only in response to the de facto state of most of the articles on Wikipedia; furthermore, no one objected to it for the entire period. Most importantly, David Gerard's comment that placing categories above interwiki links results in whitespace is not correct. The additional whitespace results when there is a blank newline between the final text of the main body and the interwiki links or categories, regardless of whether interwiki links or categories go first. Please update Robbot to putting categories above interwiki. Besides being the de facto standard on Wikipedia even before this style was added to the relevant style guides, this is intuitive, because Categories are at the bottom of the page, immediately following the text, whereas interwiki links appear off to the left side, in a column removed from the text of the article. —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 21:00, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

To elaborate further, I added a note about positioning of interlanguage links and categories to both Wikipedia:Interlanguage links and Wikipedia:Categorization. I did so because as I was editing articles, I was wondering which format (cats before interwiki or interwiki before cats) was preferred. After searching the relevant articles, I could find no explicit recommendation. I therefore then hit "Random page" a lot in order to determine the de facto standard, and found that overwhelmingly, Wikipedia articles placed categories before interwiki links. Therefore, in order to save time and effort searching for the answer to the same question on the part of others, I added the recommendation that categories go before interwiki links on the two relevant style guide pages.

At that time, I went with cats before interwiki only because it was the de facto standard. In the time since, I have concluded that it also makes intuitive sense. —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 21:09, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

Why Robbot, why?

[1]? Sam [Spade] 22:31, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Robbot does not handle sub-pages in interwiki-links correctly. But I personally agree with it there, because Wikipedia does not handle them correctly either. - Andre Engels 09:19, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If robbot is doing things wrong, he should be stopped, and reprogrammed. Also, why would you agree with it there? I think the inter-wiki there is very helpful. Sam [Spade] 16:40, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The page is on a different subject. When you scroll down two pages, there is a paragraph about the same subject, but you don't get on the right place, and even if you did, I still don't agree that it's a good idea to make such a link. - Andre Engels 13:14, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The situation is different than I thought. Both Wikipedia's and Robbot's error are not caused by the # in the link, but by the fact that the text after the link was wrong. I have now corrected it, and Robbot now accepts the link without problems and does not try to remove or change it (although I personally still am of the opinion that it's a bad idea). - Andre Engels 17:05, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You mean you don't like this particular link? I agree its not perfect, but its the best we can do I think, and it was very helpful and informative to me when I followed it and read the article, which does have similar content (albeit only in a specific section). As far as robbot, I'll take your word on it, I don't understand inter-wiki links very well, and bots not at all ;) Sam [Spade] 10:49, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I can give a bit more explanation as to why it was removed: If the bot finds an interwiki-link to a subpage, it will only consider the link as valid if the subpage header actually exists. In this case the page name was correct, but the subpage link contained a typo, and thus Robbot did not find anything. - Andre Engels 08:32, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Czech characters

See Roman Sebrle diff. Robbot removed good interwiki links (de:Roman Šebrle, et:Roman Šebrle). --Michal Jurosz 06:52, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The problem here is that 'Š' is not a character in Latin-1. Because of this, the bot is not able to correctly convert latin-1 to UTF-8 to find it on a UTF-8 Wikipedia. Because of this I am going after Robbot's edits, and check all places where it has removed a link. Sometimes it's cases like this (I got some more cases with the Estonian Wikipedia), sometimes a spelling error or typo that I can easily correct. - Andre Engels 08:34, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Change links to comments?

Robbot removes links, but it might be better to change them to comments so that later, when articles get written, they can be reinstated. Also, by putting in a comment like "Robbot found that this link was dead on October 20 2004" it would save the person who edits a page the labor of searching for the article (e.g. on a foreign-language Wikiepedia) which can be tedious and time-consuming. They can simply copy and paste the link into the search box of the foreign-language WP and seach to see if the page has since been created. Fg2 22:48, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)

Japanese characters in Haydn's 104th symphony--why remove link?

Hello Robbot, why did you remove the link to the Japanese version of Symphony No. 104 (Haydn)? I can't read Japanese, but superficially it looks legit. Opus33 18:35, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The link goes to a non-existing page. - Andre Engels 09:20, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

AE, quite to the contrary! I've checked twice. Please exercise care in your robot activities so you don't revert legitimate changes. Yours very sincerely, Opus33 15:44, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've checked twice too, and it is still a non-existing page. Just compare the contents of the page with ja:Complete and utter nonsense such as asdfjgnpasdfijgo9r hgphboadgasidgo9aweuhgftvioasp. - Andre Engels 09:18, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hello AE. I've investigated further. Of the two computers I use, one displays the Japanese article as the "utter nonsense" you describe. The other displays Japanese characters. The clear inference, I think, is that the article is legitimate, and that all of your computers, and one of my computers, lack the software needed to display Japanese characters.

I'll wait a bit for a reply and if no further light can be shed on the question, I'll revert again--it seems the only fair way to deal with whatever person put up the Japanese article.

With all respect, may I recommend more caution in robot-assisted editing? Since you're getting just a quick peek at articles that other people have been working on for much longer, it would seem that the right policy is: when in doubt, don't change. Yours very truly, Opus33 20:59, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The robot just strips interwikis to the Japanese Wiki. I don't think it's working at all well. It'll take ages to repair all the crap. Noisy | Talk 21:14, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I now think AE is probably right on this particular one. I got a Japanese Wikipedia editor to help me, and (s)he says the page is really empty. Perhaps something funny is going on with my cache.

There are Japanese characters there, yes. But those are the Japanese Wikipedia variant of 'there is no page on this subject - Andre Engels 18:28, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

On other hand, AE seems to be getting enough criticism about robot edits elsewhere that I think I would like my general request to him ("when in doubt, don't change") to remain unaltered. Opus33 22:19, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Broken bot?

Removed links on Star Trek Why? I'm not sure. It also moved around a lot of stuff that was unecessary (lnaguages in aphabetical order. It did a lot, I don't know why this was classified as a "Minor Edit" Mostly Reverting changesMcKay 22:51, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm... Klingon interwiki links don't work, so the bot removes them... But now I see they do work, but look like normal links?!? I'll see what to do about it.... - Andre Engels 09:11, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yep - it seems to be broken. It is contravening policy by putting the category and interwiki links in the wrong order. There must be hundreds of articles that need repairing. Please stop it and correct it so that categories come before interwiki links. Thanks. Noisy | Talk 17:48, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC) (Add policy reference. Noisy | Talk 22:33, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC))

I was wrong. It's broken thousands upon thousands of articles! Didn't you think to check what it was doing before launching it? What a disaster. Noisy | Talk 19:05, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If you read higher up on this page, you see that I put it that way ON EXPLICIT REQUEST!!!!!!! - Andre Engels 07:10, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Interwiki link deletion

This edit claims to be "Modifying:fr", but its only effect is to delete the link to the fi page.

Explanation? Smyth 13:07, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The French one is changed - from 'XVID' to 'XviD'. The Finnish one is not deleted, it is only moved downwards. - Andre Engels 18:13, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Whoops, sorry. Smyth 17:02, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Please do NOT substitute redirections!

Dear Robbot, dear Andre,

if a link points to a redirection, this may be a "temporary fix" waiting for the truly adequate page to be written.

If you substitute such links by the redirection pointer,

1. this will prevent people from writing the adaequte (maybe "disambig") page
2. this created a loss of information almost impossible to recreate

E.g. you changed the link "de:Exponentiell" on exponential to "de:Exponentieller Vorgang". The latter means 'exponential process', and this is of course not at all the same than 'exponential' in geneal.

I assume that in 90 % of all cases, the changes you made (regarding this issue) are NOT an improvement, so please, STOP THIS, or at least, Robbot, ask Andre for explicit individual confirmation before doing THIS.

THIS IS IMPORTANT ! - Thanks, in the name of all wiki users. MFH 14:35, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Albert

I reverted Robbot's edits to Albert, where some perfectly fine interwiki links were removed. Martg76 21:04, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Are you also operating Robbot user on sk wiki?

If yes, please get a bot status. Thanks --Maros 12:17, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Please explain your bots edits

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=At_sign&curid=710197&diff=18898095&oldid=18622271 your bot removed a link to a page that did exist on sr and it re-ordered the interwikis in a way that had no obvious pattern to it please explain these edits. Plugwash 01:02, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

The Serbian page is removed because it is a disambiguation page rather than the intended subject page. The actual subject does not have a page yet. The ordering is on language name, which I understood is the standard in the English Wikipedia. - Andre Engels 09:24, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

I was under the impression that the sorting was on the interwiki code (i.e. links to the fi wiki are sorted under f even though they display as Suomi). This is to avoid collating problems with non-Latin scripts: should they all be sorted to the bottom? do we assume that people just know that "فارسی" means "Farsi"? "中文" is sorted to the end because its code is "zh": I don't know enough to say whether that is Cantonese, Mandarin or something else, but it looks kind of odd using different collation styles for some links. Is there actually a policy page for this? —Phil | Talk 12:27, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

No policy, but there has been a proposal for policy for at least 1 1/2 years. See Wikipedia:Language order poll. It used to have a majority for this order, but it seems the majority has switched over in early July. Not sure whether that means I should change the bot too, though (although I voted for the change myself). - Andre Engels 08:56, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

General relativity interwiki links

The interwiki link for general relativity in Greek was wrong. It is now corrected in the English version, but (probably beacuse of this robot), the error is all over the wikis. The correct link is [[el:Γενική Θεωρία Σχετικότητας]]. Thank you in advance for helping to fix this. --EMS | Talk 22:19, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Robbot is correcting the links now. - Andre Engels 08:58, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm getting an error now, might take a bit longer... - Andre Engels 08:59, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

It's being done now, though, the bug has been repaired. - Andre Engels 09:28, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Justify removing links

Please explain your removal of interwiki links on Degree (angle). The nn one exists. Gene Nygaard 18:14, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

The fr: and it: ones exist too. I'm starting to get pissed off. Gene Nygaard 18:25, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

They have been removed because they were general links about degree, and not specifically about degree (angle) - Andre Engels 08:50, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Bullshit. That certainly wasn't true in the nynorsk case; that only mentions degrees of temperature as being covered under the nn:Temperatur article.

Your action is even more atrocious in the French case, since there the fr:Degré article covers only the meaning related to angles, and you need to go to the fr:Degré (homonymie) disambiguation page to get other meanings.

And even if it were true, why would that be a reason to remove them? This isn't required to be a one-to-one relationship. Can you cite any authority for doing so? There is nothing about this at InterWiki nor at Interwiki link standard nor at Wikipedia:Interlanguage links.

Nor is there anything about that on Wikipedia talk:Interlanguage links—except for the fact that andy makes the same point I just made above, before I ever found that talk page:

• "However this does not need to be a direct 1:1 translation of the article title - sometimes the article in one WP is split into several related articles, while in the other language it is all covered in one (as in that language it does not have enough text to allow to split it); sometimes the two wikipedias have different naming conventions."

So just where did you come up with this rule?

I'm no longer just "getting" pissed off. Gene Nygaard 11:23, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Just revert me then. Why should I care? - Andre Engels 13:50, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Because when a bot (even with some human interaction) runs amok, it needs to be throttled down—pronto. Maybe it is time for me to look into the procedure to get a bot banned. Gene Nygaard 13:56, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Making a different decision from what you should have made is something else as "running amok". - Andre Engels 14:06, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Making it a zillion times as a bot is running amok. I note specifically that you have cited no policy or guidelines in support of your "rule" here. Gene Nygaard 14:26, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Third (or nth?) opinion

I've come here from WP:3O, though it seems to me that there's already a number of concerns broadly similar to Gene's that have already been expressed here. On the specific question of whether interwiki links should be deleted if they're not exactly 1:1 correspondances; I think a better criterion would be whether there's a useful degree of overlap between the linked articles. Hope this was of some help. Alai 16:33, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree strongly. Furthermore, these bots run amok have never cited any policy or guidelines in support of their misguided deletions, as far as I have seen. Robbot's handler certainly didn't do so, even when I specifically asked him to do so above. Gene Nygaard 16:54, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Appeal

Hello. Can your bot help with one issue? The issue is double-interwikis in "births" and "deaths" categories (for example look at Category:1983 deaths and Category:1847 births). Some of the interwikis are already in the "birthyr" and "deathyr" templates. - Darwinek 10:52, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

I have this on my todo list, but I am afraid I will not have much time to do something about it because I (finally) have a real life job again. Basically, what should happen is that the bot gets a list of templates that might contain interwiki links, and not include interwiki links to languages that have one in these templates. The exact implementation might get ugly at some points though. - Andre Engels 14:34, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Mcdonald's Cheeseburger not the same as cheeseburger

Hi, I saw the robot added da:McDonald's Cheeseburger to the cheeseburger page, but the two are not the same. McDonald's Cheeseburger is a type of cheeseburger, and it wasn't the first cheeseburger. I removed the reference. --Awiseman 21:22, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Robott made an error

In the article Manufacturing Execution System Robott changed the NL wikilink incorrectly. The NL wikilink used to work, and now it is broken. The bot changed the link from " ... systems" to "... system", while "... systems" is the name of the article in the Dutch WP. S Sepp 13:01, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Error on Maluku (province)

I reinstated "sv:Maluku" which was removed - seemingly in error. [2] regards --Merbabu 03:04, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

It was removed with reason: sv:Maluku is a redirect to sv:Moluckerna, which is about Maluku Islands, not Maluku (province). - Andre Engels 04:44, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Interwiki bot

Hi! I noticed that you are listed as running an interwiki bot here. If it is still active, and you are editing alphabetically, please visit WikiProject Interwiki, which I created as a project to coordinate the bots to decrease overlap. If you like the idea, sign up there and visit Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Interwiki to let me know you'll join up. You can also say that you're working on a section in User:ST47/WikiProject Interwiki/Assignments, then follow the directions there when you've finished. If the sections I've made are too large, feel free to split one up. Thanks! ST47Talk 11:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I run the bot either from Dutch or from a smaller language, not from English, so I don't think I will join in the project for now. - Andre Engels 02:30, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Publieke Omroep

The bot removed de:Publieke Omroep from the page Public-service broadcasting in the Netherlands. I'm confused as to why. It seems a perfectly valid interwiki link. Although the english article is a bit broader then the Publieke Omroep entitiy in itself, the Dutch counterpart page is also called: nl:Publieke Omroep. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 02:52, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm.. That looks like a mistake, not sure what happened there... - Andre Engels 02:27, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Recent edit to Rank (linear algebra)

Robbot recently added simple:Rank to the linear algebra rank page. These two articles are not about the same thing.

This is the second bot that has added this link to the linear algebra page. Please do not do it again.

Thanks, Lunch 03:21, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you seem to be right. I will remove the link from the other languages as well so this error won't happen again. - Andre Engels 02:28, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

This is a automated to all bot operators

Please take a few moments and fill in the data for your bot on Wikipedia:Bots/Status Thank you Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 19:45, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Automated message to bot owners

As a result of discussion on the village pump and mailing list, bots are now allowed to edit up to 15 times per minute. The following is the new text regarding bot edit rates from Wikipedia:Bot Policy:

Until new bots are accepted they should wait 30-60 seconds between edits, so as to not clog the recent changes list and user watchlists. After being accepted and a bureaucrat has marked them as a bot, they can edit at a much faster pace. Bots doing non-urgent tasks should edit approximately once every ten seconds, while bots who would benefit from faster editing may edit approximately once every every four seconds.

Also, to eliminate the need to spam the bot talk pages, please add Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard to your watchlist. Future messages which affect bot owners will be posted there. Thank you. --Mets501 04:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

odd edits

To the owner of this bot, why is this bot removing interwikis to articles that exist? → ar:بن_هور for Ben-Hur (1959 film)? (→Netscott) 22:34, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm... That's a weird one indeed... I can see two reasons:

• A problem with the site/bot combination where the site gave out 'wikipedia is temporarily not available' messages and the bot did not recognize those, and therefore thought all pages it sought did not exist. This has since been repaired in the bot code.
• I was working on splitting out links that should be there and those that should not be there (but were about Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ or some such), and chose the wrong one for the Arab page

However, in both of these cases, I would have gotten a warning from the bot that it would be deleting a page, and normally I would be checking the page before such a removal, in which case I should have seen this was a correct page, thus I cannot do otherwise but to admit that this was a mistake of mine. - Andre Engels 07:27, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Stop this crazy thing.

Your bot vandalized Joker (comics). Doczilla 05:04, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Naturism

I have repaired the damage your bot did twice now. The problem has been discussed for about three years- and a consensus reached- your bot is leading us back into a serious flame fight. Would you please white list this page so I don't have to write a bot to correct yours. ClemRutter (talk) 19:57, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:AubreyBeardsley.png

Image Copyright problem

Thank you for uploading Image:AubreyBeardsley.png. However, it currently is missing information on its copyright status. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. It may be deleted soon, unless we can determine the license and the source of the image. If you know this information, then you can add a copyright tag to the image description page.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thanks again for your cooperation. DrKiernan (talk) 17:55, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Bot is removing correct interwiki links

Why did your Bot remove this interwiki link to the Simple English article? It is an exact match. --MarsRover (talk) 03:41, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

It has to do with the page being a disambiguation page. Normally what happens when the bot finds a disambiguation page (when working on a non-disambiguation page) is that it gives me the choice to include the page, exclude it, or include another page instead. Usually the latter option is the correct one (in most cases a link to a disambiguation page should have been a link to one of the disambiguations instead, but in this case, as you say, keeping the link would have been correct. However, if there already is a non-disambiguation page linked, the bot will skip the disambiguation page silently, thinking that it has already been resolved. In this case, that was done because the link to simple:October Revolution had already been found. After all had been loaded, I had to select which page, if any, to use for each language (because there were links to both the Russian Revolution of 1917 and more specifically the October Revolution in various languages), and for simple: there was only "October Revolution". Maybe the simple page should not have been a disambiguation page. Maybe I should have watched more precisely which changes were made in the end. Probably both. - Andre Engels (talk) 09:10, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at this. I thought it might have to do with simple:Russian Revolution of 1917 being labeled a disambiguation page. The "Simple English" article is perhaps mislabeled since the "English" article proves the topic can grow into a full article. But since it merely points to the two parts of the revolution, calling it a disambiguation page is correct for now. I would not have whether the interwiki link is from a non-disambiguation page to a disambiguation page be a criteria of it being valid. I would only remove them if the topics are different. For example, the removal of the ru:Октябрьская революция в России 1917 was a good move. --MarsRover (talk) 19:44, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Why did your bot remove this one too? It's a correct link. The ja article is about the book and the movie. I'm restoring it. Oda Mari (talk) 09:03, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I had looked at the page, and saw the infobox for the book. Scrolling down I see that you're right, and that the film is there as well. I have now changed the link to link to the subpage. - Andre Engels (talk) 10:28, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. It was stupid of me that I should have added the subpage to the link. Regards. Oda Mari (talk) 13:40, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Don't call yourself stupid, you're not. And thanks for your notification so we could get to the best solution together. - Andre Engels (talk) 09:38, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Group (mathematics)

Please stop your bot removing de:Gruppe (Mathematik) from group (mathematics). It is exactly the right topic. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 17:44, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

It's a redirect to a page already connected to Group theory. If group (mathematics) and group theory are the same topic, then they should be combined. If not, then they should not be interwiki-interlinked. - Andre Engels (talk) 09:52, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Bot removing correct interwiki links

This edit by Robbot removed valid links. I've reversed that one. Please check what it's up to and reverse more if necessary. - Fayenatic (talk) 19:07, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

What it's up to is removing interwiki to something that is not the same subject. If that is something that should be reversed, then I'd better not have the bot run at all. The kept pages are about the biblical story, the removed ones about the feast day about this event. To me those are very different issues. - Andre Engels (talk) 06:55, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

There would generally not be enough distinct content to justify separate articles for Biblical stories and the feast days that commemorate them. The English article covers both, with a whole section about the feast days. Some foreign-language Wikipedia articles major on the feast rather than the event, but in my view it is clearly appropriate to link them.

Does your bot rely on categories to discern whether the subject is the same? - Fayenatic (talk) 09:09, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

No, when there is a conflict (more than one link to one language), I check which ones to include and which not by hand. - Andre Engels (talk) 15:27, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Can we make love?

Make love to me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.5.142.22 (talk) 03:51, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect interwiki links

Is there a tag I can add to Karara, Queensland to stop bots (including this one) adding incorrect interwiki links like these? Thanks, Mattinbgn\^talk 04:07, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

No, what needs to be done to make that work, is to remove not only the links on the English Wikipedia, but also those on the other Wikipedias leading to it. I have removed the link on the Chinese Wikipedia now [3], you already did it on the English one and someone else on the Japanese [4], so it should be resolved for this case now. If you find any other cases, feel free to send me a message! - Andre Engels (talk) 17:00, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

And another

Hi there, I just reverted the incorrect interwiki-link which this bot tagged on to An Leabhar Breac, which is about the manuscript, not the publisher. Regards, Cavila (talk) 15:00, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The page originally was about the publisher; you changed it to a page about the document, but the Irish page, which is about the publisher, was still having an interwiki link to it. - Andre Engels (talk) 13:52, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Another (recurring) one

Last year I've removed all interwikies in other wikies referring to Reportage (album) instead of reportage to stop bots from adding incorrect interwikies and now for some reason Robbot does it all over again? I don't see where this is coming from this time but don't feel like revisiting all of those other wikies to undo the damage this time. Please clarify what's going on here. The Seventh Taylor (talk) 11:46, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Please stop bot

It keeps on undoing my actions on articles within Category: Public housing estates in Hong Kong and its corresponding article in zh;WP. Ohconfucius (talk) 02:25, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

• The problem is that it seems to be going about circular changes (see here, leading to the edits here). Although it seemed that I could not break the circular action, I think it has slowed down now. Ohconfucius (talk) 04:14, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

• I have a number of articles which were merged into a main one grouping all the different articles. These all exist as independent articles in zh:wp, and therefore share a many-to-one relationship with with the corresponding (merged) article in en:wp. The en:wp redirects were each tagged with the interwiki link to the respective zh:wp article in order to preserve that relationship. However, your bot seems to be adding an interwiki link to the zh:wp article, and then to the merged article so that it would now have many zh:wp interwikilinks (if I hadn't removed them). Could you put these articles on an exclusion list for your bot or have some sort of workaround for the issue? Thanks. Ohconfucius (talk) 05:04, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
  • My proposal would be to change the redirect on Sheung Lok Estate to direct to Public housing estates in Ho Man Tin#Sheung Lok Estate instead of Public housing estates in Ho Man Tin. Another option would be to wholly remove the interwiki on zh:. I think it's not a good idea to make an interwiki to a redirect page when you don't want to have that interwiki point to the redirected page, because that is where people will end up when they use the interwiki link. - Andre Engels (talk) 13:46, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

• • • Thanks, I'll try that. Ohconfucius (talk) 14:51, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

bpy.wiki does not contain an article on Jalalabad city. and, probably, never will

Please, ignore any occurrence of [[en:Jalalabad]] on any article of bpy.wikipedia.org. Or do not walk through bpy.wiki at all. Or, better, do not propagate bpy:-interwikis. They do not think when put their interwiki. See talk:Jalalabad. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:33, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Interwikiing of article on Nigerian drumming to city in new Zealand

Robbot has happily interwikied the yoruba article yo:Dundun, on West African drumming, to artiles on the New Zealand city of Dunedin across various language Wikip[edias. The reason is that someone created in incorrect redirct from Dundun to Dunedin - it now points (correctly) to the drumming style, which is at Dunun. I've made some of the changes necessary to get things running smoothly, but it'd help if Robbot could finish the job... Grutness...wha? 22:25, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Carrotkit (talk) 10:42, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Mafia

The Italian Wikipedia has two articles relating to the Sicilian Mafia: one on the organization itself (Cosa nostra) and one on the term "Mafia." How shall I go about trying to link in [5] with Sicilian Mafia without getting reverted? --Lenin and McCarthy | (Complain here) 22:15, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

The problem actually is not in Italian Wikipedia, but in English one. For some reason the article Mafia is missing, although it exists as a WP:CONCEPTDAB in about sixteen languages (it:Mafia and so on). Here we have only Mafia (disambiguation), and Sicilian Mafia has interwiki which should belong to "Mafia" concept-dab. First of all, interwiki at Sicilian Mafia should be changed to it:Cosa_nostra and equivalents in other languages. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 22:57, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Looking over it again I think our equivalent is actually Organized crime in Italy --Lenin and McCarthy | (Complain here) 22:55, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

July 2012 Study of authors of health-related Wikipedia pages

Dear Author/Robbot

My name is Nuša Farič and I am a Health Psychology MSc student at University College London (UCL). I am currently running a quantitative study entitled Who edits health-related Wikipedia pages and why? I am interested in the editorial experience of people who edit health-related Wikipedia pages. I am interested to learn more about the authors of health-related pages on Wikipedia and what motivations they have for doing so. I am currently contacting the authors of randomly selected articles and I noticed that someone at this address recently edited an article on Dubin Johnson Syndrome. I would like to ask you a few questions about you and your experience of editing the above mentioned article. If you would like more information about the project, please visit my user page http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Hydra_Rain and if interested, please visit my Talk page or e-mail me on nusa.faric.11@ucl.ac.uk. Also, others interested in the study may contact me! If I do not hear back from you I will not contact this account again. Thank you very much in advance. Hydra Rain (talk) 19:51, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Bot introduces invisible unicode characters

Check line 226 and most probably many more. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:56, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
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Hello, Robbot. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority 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 in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. Mdann52 (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Robbot. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority 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.

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Question

Please sir, can you explain to me the position of this article Draf:Ya'u Usman Idris ?:I am a novice contributor Sadeeqzaria (talk) 01:51, 11 August 2020 (UTC)