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Any discussion can follow as normal. Please use the feature request button to add new feature requests. This format allows the developers to keep track of feature requests. Take some time to search the archives to check whether a similar request was dined on the past. Once the feature requests have been added, after a short period, they will be moved to /Archive 8.
Another common pattern is word [http://en.--whateversite--.org/wiki/word] which should be replaced by [[whatever:word]].
I would be wary of implementing the [http://en.--whateversite--.org/wiki/word] versions on their own. I have seen quite a few cases where that is used as footnotes. That may not be the correct usage, but converting it to an interwiki link would be worse as it would result in an unintelligible sentence.
Example: Alfred Tennyson's works[1] are should not become Alfred Tennyson's workss:Author:Alfred_Tennyson are.
I needed code for my tool since people didn't know which form to enter in. It has since become convenient to just paste the URL in and watch the magic happen. I hope the AWB devs implement this for the list maker parts of the interface.
Javascript fixTitle code
functionfixTitle(e){// Convert from the escaped UTF-8 byte code into Unicodes=unescape(decodeURI(e.value))// Convert secure URLs into non-secure equivalents (note the secure system is considered a 'hack')s=s.replace(/\w+:\/\/secure\.wikimedia\.org\/(\w+)\/(\w+)\//,'http://$2.$1.org/')// Convert http://lang.domain.org/wiki/ into interwiki formats=s.replace(/http:\/\/(\w+)\.(\w+)\.org\/wiki\/([^#{|}\[\]]*).*/i,'$2:$1:$3')// Scripts paths (/w/index.php?...) into interwiki formats=s.replace(/http:\/\/(\w+)\.(\w+)\.org\/.*?title=([^#&{|}\[\]]*).*/i,'$2:$1:$3')// Remove [[brackets]] from links=s.replace(/[^\n]*?\[\[([^[\]{|}]+)[^\n]*/g,'$1')// '_' -> ' ' and hard coded home wikis=s.replace(/_/g,' ').replace(/^ *(w:|wikipedia:|)(en:|([a-z\-]+:)) */i,'$3')// Use short prefix form (wiktionary:en:Wiktionary:Main Page -> wikt:en:Wiktionary:Main Page)s=s.replace(/^ *(?:wikimedia:(m)eta|wikimedia:(commons)|(wikt)ionary|wiki(?:(n)ews|(b)ooks|(q)uote|(s)ource|(v)ersity))(:[a-z\-]+:)/i,'$1$2$3$4$5$6$7$8$9')// Put back ine.value=s}
A general implementation (suitable for general fixes) for foundation links from the code above:
Find \[http://(\w+)\.(\w+)\.org/wiki/([^{|}\[\]<>"\n]+) +([^]]+)\] replace with [[$2:$1:$3|$4]]
Find \[\[(?:wikimedia:(m)eta|wikimedia:(commons)|(wikt)ionary|wiki(?:(n)ews|(b)ooks|(q)uote|(s)ource|(v)ersity))(:[a-z\-]+:[^{}\[\]]+)\]\] replace with [[$1$2$3$4$5$6$7$8$9]]
Would be good to implement this.. Not sure why the first one is needed in the ListMaker...? If you can elaborate/be a bit more specific Dispenser, i shall get this implemented. —Reedy17:44, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Partially implemented. rev 3036 (code exists, but not in use. As per the discussion page, it doesnt seem to actually work as a general fix or in list maker.......) —Reedy22:20, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
While the code I provided above is good what I had coded it for (a user page input routine) it wasn't good enough for a general fix (potential language issues). Thus I've coded the following which should be nearly problem free:
Python white list code
familiesIWlist={'wikipedia':'w','wiktionary':'wikt','wikinews':'n','wikibooks':'b','wikiquote':'q','wikisource':'s','wikiversity':'v',}forminre.finditer(ur'\[http://([a-z0-9\-]+)\.(\w+)\.org/wiki/([^{|}\[\]<>"\s?]+) +([^]\n]+)\]',text):ifm.group(1)=='commons':iwPrefix='commons'elifm.group(1)=='meta':iwPrefix='m'elifm.group(1)infamiliesIWlist:# don't allow http://sources.wikipedia.orgcontinueelifm.group(2)infamiliesIWlist:iwPrefix='%s:%s'%(familiesIWlist[m.group(2)],m.group(1))else:# TODO: Prevent iw linking on [[Wikipedia]] where it's used as referencescontinuetext=text.replace(m.group(0),'[[%s:%s|%s]]'%(iwPrefix,m.group(3),m.group(4)))
I've implemented the above code in my commonfixes.py library. Over time I've noticed a few problems:
Due to the haphazard way naming was done the above code will try to make download.wikipedia.org and sources.wikipedia.org into invalid interwikis. This can be solved using interwiki table, which would include more links than we can cover in regexes.
Edit on the "Wikipedia" article raises question wheather those links can be linked. And I think I read somewhere that they aren't suppose to be directly, but it still doesn't answer the question about interwiki.
[ { | } ] and more are not valid characters, as well as their escaped counter parts like %7B. However, this highly unlikely since people typically don't link to invalid pages anyway.
For those of you still interested in linking I've come up with a set of regex. The whatever.wikipedia.org glitch is avoid by only allowing languages with two to three letter character codes.
However you should likely add (?<![*#:;]{2}) to the beginning to avoid changing lists and (?![^<>]*</ref>) to the end to avoid changing links in references. — Dispenser01:56, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
According to WP:WAWI, AWB would have to detect the difference between a convenient link to material like wikisource page and a reference link like a wikisource policy page. Luckily that's why we created namespaces. — Dispenser08:07, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
then could AWB ensure that the sections are ordered as per the Guide to Layout? If it is possible to make the parameters restrictive enough, then it should be possible to avoid complex situations where mistakes could be made, such as: one appendix is a subsection of another, the appendices have non-standard names, two or more appendices are combined under one section heading (e.g. "References and external links"). –BLACK FALCON(TALK)19:51, 18 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
rev 4619 Move the 'see also' section to be above the 'references' section, subject to the limitation that the 'see also' section can't be the last level-2 section. Rjwilmsi17:33, 27 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In accordance with the MOS there is a certain order that sections should be in at the bottom of the articles and in many cases these sections are out of order. Two examples are that the see also section should be above Notes/Sources/References, Further reading and external links. Another example is that Further reading should be above External links. This request would add logic to AWB to reorder some of these sections. I previously submitted this request and in the case of the see also section it was, understandably added as an alert due to the complication of determining were it should go. Through research and experimentation (and the Regex help of another user for the first one) I have found that it is possible to capture at least some and move the section to its proper location. I have provided some code that could be used as a guide. I have tested this no about 20 or 30 articles in the Medal of Honor recipients category without errors but I also admit that it doesn’t capture 100% (usually for the bottom section that has stuff under it like {{Persondata, {{Defaultsort, [[Category:, templates and tables).
I have attempted to correct this case by using (.*)[[Category: to capture everything down to the first category (because presumably most articles will have a category) but I just haven’t figured it out yet. Maybe you will have better luck and if we can't do this case then thats fine but we can at least do some I think. Again the first one is done as an example of what has worked for me.
Have care with this suggestion. There are some cases where the ol's deliberate (say, when there is also a colstart or style attribute) rather than as holdovers from some person marking his content up in HTML. --Izno (talk) 17:56, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There are a number of edge cases where line breaks, comments, templates, and attributes are involved that need to be kept in mind. Some of them may even occur in articles. E.g. (see source):
Foo barLorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.bat
I know about the "custom module" method of customizing general fixes, but it really isn't all that flexible. I'm sure that it's been mentioned before, although I don't see it on this page, but would it be possible to have a page (in options or preferences) that allows you more complete customization of what gen fixes are applied? This would be very useful for bots... DrilBot, for example, needs the MetaDataSort general fix because that repairs a number of errors at the CHECKWIKI lists, but that same fix sorts interwikis. DrilBot should not be making edits solely to sort interwikis, but this happens because there isn't any way to deactivate that without deactivating the wanted fixes, too. This would be much appreciated and I think that it would be useful for many users and bot owners. Thanks! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:59, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
I don't think we need customisation of what runs per se as bots should generally apply all general fixes to improve articles as much as possible. What you need is better skip options and control, so if you explain what you need further we can make better use of the 'significant' vs 'minor' general fixes logic. Rjwilmsi13:04, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, okay. In this case having the following available as significant fixes should work, and the rest as minor: Interwiki and category moving (but not just interwiki sorting), reference sorting, identical reference combining, "see also" and "external links"-type section renaming, self-referential de-linking, bullet points in X-links, DEFAULTSORT improvements, adds missing {{reflist}}, removing duplicate interwikis and cats, and wikifying HTML.
A better idea might be to actually have a "checkwiki" skip setting, which would skip articles if no CHECKWIKI fix is made.
Regardless, it would also be nice if you could deactivate just some of the gen fixes while still applying most of them, without using a custom module. Specifically with bots, the "date ordinals" change shouldn't be applied because it is kind of a spell checking fix, which bots should not be doing. If you could have that as an option in the drop-down options menu with "sort interwiki links" and "replace reference tags" that would basically fix the problems that I'm having... not completely, which would need something more like the options above, but it would let me easily deactivate the two fixes that bots really shouldn't be doing... the date ordinals, and interwiki sorting (which is generally a good thing, but its pointless for bots to make edits just to sort interwikis).
Another consideration is that you normally have the option to apply Find & Replace rules either before or after genfixes. When you customize genfixes in a module, you no longer have that option. Genfixes in a custom module would always be performed first, which is the opposite of the default for "regular" genfixes. Considering this and many other factors, a feature allowing selective application of genfixes would be extremely useful and greatly appreciated. Schmoolik (talk) 01:38, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A simple find and replace that finds <br> at the end of a value in a template, and removes it as it is un-nescesary. See Error 59 in WikiProject: Check Wikipedia.
If Not: honorific prefix
Find (with regex multiline, case sensitive) :[\t ]*<[\s\/\.]*br[\s\/\.]*>[\t ]*([\t\n ]*?)(\]\]|}}|\|)
Replace (with regex and multiline, case sensitive: $1$2
We just need to avoid: honorific prefix, honorific-prefix as the request says. I left a note to Infobox officeholder and they 'll probably fix this too. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:55, 12 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The point with hon-pref and hon-suf is that in some circs they want the pref and/or suff on the same line as the name, in others they don't. It would be bnest for the template to have the smarts to distinguish, but that would need work and consensus. RichFarmbrough, 16:35, 22 October 2010 (UTC).[reply]
Previously, succession tables could be coded in a variety of ways. However, because of print versions, the way to write succession tables need to be more rigourous. Before something like this was fine:
{{start}}
{{s-bef|before=[[Gerhard Schröder]]}}
{{s-ttl|title=[[Chancellor of Germany (Federal Republic)|Chancellor of Germany]]|years=2005–present}}
{{s-inc}}
{{s-bef|before=[[George W. Bush]]}}
{{s-ttl|title=[[List of United States Republican Party presidential tickets|Republican Party presidential candidate]]
|years=[[United States presidential election, 2008|2008]]}}
{{s-inc|recent}}
|-
{{s-vac|last=[[Alfonso XIII of Spain|Alfonso XIII]]}}
{{s-ttl|title=[[List of Spanish monarchs|King of Spain]]|years=22 November 1975 – present}}
{{s-inc|heir=[[Felipe, Prince of Asturias|Crown Prince Felipe]]}}
{{s-new|Championship}}
{{s-ttl|title=[[World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts#Current Champions|WAMMA Heavyweight Champion]]
|years=July 19, 2008 – present}}
{{s-inc|current}}
{{end}}
Now, this needs to be followed
{{s-start}}
{{s-bef|before=[[Gerhard Schröder]]}}
{{s-ttl|title=[[Chancellor of Germany (Federal Republic)|Chancellor of Germany]]|years=2005–present}}
{{s-inc}}
{{s-bef|before=[[George W. Bush]]}}
{{s-ttl|title=[[List of United States Republican Party presidential tickets|Republican Party presidential candidate]]
|years=[[United States presidential election, 2008|2008]]}}
{{s-inc|recent}}
{{s-break}}
{{s-vac|last=[[Alfonso XIII of Spain|Alfonso XIII]]}}
{{s-ttl|title=[[List of Spanish monarchs|King of Spain]]|years=22 November 1975 – present}}
{{s-inc|heir=[[Felipe, Prince of Asturias|Crown Prince Felipe]]}}
{{s-new|Championship}}
{{s-ttl|title=[[World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts#Current Champions|WAMMA Heavyweight Champion]]
|years=July 19, 2008 – present}}
{{s-inc|current}}
{{s-end}}
Fixes 1, 2, and 5 do not fix anything, but they could prevent lots of problem in the long run and should probably be made alongside other edits. However, fixes 3 & 4 are required so the print version displays as intended. Note that this should ONLY affect succession boxes. A good way to ensure that is to search for {{start}}/{{s-start}} and {{end}}/{{end box}}/{{s-end}}. Everything starting with the former AND ending with the latter can safely be considered the "succession box code".
To ensure that bots using the CHECKWIKI list (such as the hopefully soon-to-be approved DrilBot) are sure to fix only articles with the error chosen at the time, having a RegExp "If ... is not changed" box would be useful. E.g., if \{\{|\}\} isn't added to or removed from a page, skip the page; this would help with the "Template not correct begin" and "Template not correct end" errors, where some of them can be fixed by bot and others can't, so that the bot doesn't make edits which aren't actually fixing what it is supposed to. I'm not sure if this is possible or not, but it would be nice. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 15:33, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
Better to provide your own regexes for inclusion in AWB's general fixes, and then use the core 'skip if only minor general fixes'. If you have good regexes and test cases/examples of fixes I'm amenable to getting them in AWB. That way we can all benefit from your efforts. I've been doing similar work myself. Rjwilmsi17:08, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I fixed my post; it got messed up. Anyway I don't really have that much experience with RegExp (and absolutely nothing with C), but I'll keep your suggesstion in mind as I learn more. Thanks! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 20:26, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It would be useful to have an explicit AND function else we have to do "..REGEX1 .. REGEX2.. OR .. REGEX2 .. REGEX1.." with 6 combinations for three things, etc. But this is very low priority. RichFarmbrough, 20:02, 31 August 2009 (UTC).[reply]
Added in revision
It would be great if it was possible in the skip section to be able to select more words so that if any of those are present then the page is skipped. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mephiston999 (talk • contribs)
A better phrasing would be... "it would be great if AWB could do more to help people who are entirely n00bish about regex" =) Separating it such that you could have a list of the skip log of which word it matched would be nice as well. –xenotalk19:21, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Required. Trying to skip if contains 'Category:Living people' or 'Birth date and age|1900|1|1'. I know no way of doing that with regex because | is the separator and thus (Category:Living people|Birth date and age|1900|1|1) don't work. Regards, SunCreator(talk)02:50, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I found another way around this if anyone is interested. If you use the pre-parse option, you can specify a skip option, then you pre-parse the list again with another skip option. Basically you can recurse your list as many times as you want and doing this is the same result as having multiple skip options, although it is somewhat slower because you reload the article multiple times. Regards, SunCreator(talk)23:29, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly the point. You have to do ( Word1.*word2.*word3| Word1.*word3.*word2| Word2.*word1.*word3| Word2.*word3.*word1| Word3.*word1.*word2| Word3.*word2.*word1) (Or (1(23|32)|2(13|31)|3(12|21)) )
This is bad enough but if you have 4 its even more complex . (In fact you can skip all with word 1, delete the list and copy back the skip list, skip all with word 2.. etc... and even mix these methods reasonably getting 6 "ands" in 2 passes.) So it is do-able but it would be nice to have — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rich Farmbrough (talk • contribs) 15:50, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
John(George(PaulRingo|RingoPaul)|Paul(GeorgeRingo|RingoGeorge)|Ringo(GeorgePaul|PaulGeorge))|George(John(PaulRingo|RingoPaul)|Paul(JohnRingo|RingoJohn)|Ringo(JohnPaul|PaulJohn))|Paul(John(GeorgeRingo|RingoGeorge)|George(JohnRingo|RingoJohn)|Ringo(JohnGeorge|GeorgeJohn))|Ringo(John(GeorgePaul|PaulGeorge)|George(JohnPaul|PaulJohn)|Paul(JohnGeorge|GeorgeJohn)) - testing... takes up to 6 paramters. You really don't want to go to 7. RichFarmbrough, 05:49, 28 September 2010 (UTC).[reply]
It would be extremely useful for me if AWB has the option to skip pages that do not contain redlinks, redirects, disambiguation pages, etc. It would greatly facilitate the maintenance of Wikipedia books and of several lists. Of course each option should be individually selectable. Let me know if I'm not being clear with what I mean here. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books}07:11, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Currently we fix dashes in limited circumstances. I think there are several other cases that we could cover:
Use of an em dash rather than an en dash in dates and page ranges (there are a surprising number of these)
Spaced em dashes, though whether that should preferably be corrected to an unspaced em dash or a spaced en dash I don't know
Spaced hyphen, in the circumstances where we currently correct a spaced double hyphen. Since these frequently occur in lists, we should fix to a spaced en dash, though many occur in date and page ranges and would need to be ordered before corrections for spacing.
I don't think any of this would be controversial. The spaced hyphen in particular is aesthetically rather unpleasant to a lot of editors. — kwami (talk) 00:51, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The ability to apply the four generic settings (ignore links, ignore templates, add to summary and apply after general fixes) individually to the different rules. mattbr17:15, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
is that so hard to implement? i mean't split "ignore templates, refs, link targets, and heading" into separate options, and improve "ignore images" to ignore "images target" not the whole image section --84.234.42.68 (talk) 17:34, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In the Advanced "Find and replace" rule list, allow the easier replacement or removal of HTML attributes on tables. Currently, I'm running all code through a rule to quote all the unquoted attributes and then doing the processing that I want, but every so often a flaw comes up as it quote non-html text. —Dispenser03:44, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
For some find and replace tasks it's useful to ignore certain parts of an article, like <math>...</math> or [[Image:...| (so the name of the image can't get changed). A new tab in Replace Special, in addition to "Replace" and "If", would be nice, so that it's possible to define parts of the articles in which these rule doesn't work. – 84.179.33.6523:21, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Add in the subrule a new type, like "Entire text" and "Inside template call {{..}}", but it only does the regex on the match from the parent rule. It call it something like "Matched from parent in $1". Implementing this would likely knock out some other feature requests, like my HTML substitution —Dispenser02:26, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Rule: Find the body
RE find: (<body>.*?</body>)
Sub-rule: Use what was captured in parent
RE find: String1
RE replace: RE1
While the example is a little simplistic, it allow greater flexibly. The String1 in the title tags will never be parsed and there can be many String1 in the body without turning the recursion as with (<body>.*?)String1(.*?</body>). Hopefully that simplifies things. —Dispenser (talk) 04:16, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
AWB currently has a built in Typo Fixing. Could we have the ability to have separate pages each for a different project rule set? Using an interface populated with category of regex fixes for AWB. Example include HTML formatting , CSS formatting, ISBN fixing, unit fixing, wiki syntax. —Dispenser (talk) 05:21, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
For some processing jobs, such as adding templates to articles, it would be very useful to be able to use variables generated from the filename. E.g match /^List of fooers in foo, ([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])$/ or /^List of ([a-z]+) boxing champions, [0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])$/ and then use %%FN1%%, %%FN2%%, etc. Currently, it seems that the only way of doing jobs which could benefit this is to insert the values manually, which has a higher error rate than would be generated by a carefully set-up regex. For safety, it might be helpful to include some display of such generated variables, but I don't think that's essential (AWB users are accustomed to having to test their regexes very carefully). --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 00:30, 25 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
You can use the %%title%% variable. RichFarmbrough, 13:23 19 January 2009 (UTC).
Just a simple option to make replaces only happen when something else is being changed in the article. This could either be for all the replaces or a tickbox next to each find and replace (thats my preference). ·Add§hore·Talk To Me!20:03, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This is a more general request: Skip only if F&R is performed and nothing else happens (tagging, genfixes, etc.). Minor fixes works in the context of F&R. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:40, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
We have "Append/Prepend text" feature and "advanced Find-Replace" with "If Not Contains" feature. I could really use a merge of those two: a "If not found Append/Prepend" feature. I would suggest adding it "Append/Prepend text" as a 3-rd tab in advanced Find-Replace to allow using it in rule and sub-rule making. One use would be "if category ... not found than add it". Now I have to do it either by "if category found than remove it" and "append a category" which might be making unnecessary changes. Or through 2 pass approach with pass 1 appending a dummy text like <!-- Anchor --> and second pass doing if not found [[Category:XYZ]] than find <!-- Anchor --> and replace with [[Category:XYZ]]. (A third solution of selecting a list of files belonging to a category does not work in my case since categories are often added by templates. ) --Jarekt (talk) 18:47, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
would be very nice to have available substrings for the %%title%% variable. I had to sort articles in the categories, the title is like "Obstina Aito" but I need to fill with "Category:MyCategory|Aito", not with "Category:MyCategory|Obstina Aito". Substrings in general would be nice, but at least for the title should be much easier to implement. Ark25 (talk) 09:21, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
replace Category:MyCategory|(?:\w+) (\w+)\]\] with Category:MyCategory|$1\]\]
Hitting one of the headings can break an order-relevant settings file beyond repair - the ability to sort is "nice" but I have never used it (my XML generator does some sorting though). (Often I am working with hundreds of lines of standard code and a few handfuls crafted for a specific problem only affecting a score of articles.) RichFarmbrough, 07:13, 22 September 2010 (UTC).[reply]
Run "sort A-Z" and "remove duplicates" on seperate threads to prevent the user interface locking up
Check that the listmaker buttons and menu items (which remain enabled when a background thread is running) don't cause an error if they fire when a thread is active; if they do, disable them, or implement a queuing system.
The parser will have to be multi threaded as well as the IE component thing. The program will have two threads. One thread displays the result of the computation and the other thread will be working on the next item in the list. This will waste less of the user's time wasting for the page to load. Throttling will need to built in so that the program will slow down if it loads to many pages in a minute. —Dispenser18:55, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Bump this because with large lists the sorting of the already sorted list can make it very hard to get enough attention from AWB to turn the sorting off. Also by sorting the list when an item is added we can use a fast insertion sort, only doing a big sort when the menu item is checked. The same logic could then handle "Remove duplicates", which in some circumstances one has to unclick and click repeatedly. RichFarmbrough, 15:19, 22 August 2009 (UTC).[reply]
I have not tried AWB and I don't really want to set myself up on it since I am on semi-wikibreak. :-) But based on what I have read about it, I have an idea. It seems AWB makes users wait while it loads articles. Why not preload several dozen articles in the background? The server impact would be minimal. (Please feel free to close this or my other requests if they turn out to be based on invalid assumptions.) Cheers, ----unforgettableid
I presume AWB makes users wait while it saves articles. Why not save them in the background? This would make AWB more pleasant to use. ----unforgettableid
How about a visualization like the pre-parse mode? Pages that are saved without problems are just removed from the list and pages with errors, conflicts and so on are just marked with orange or red background and kept in the list. This way errors are handled gracefully and the fast workflow without delays is still preserved. Penguin (talk) 16:41, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It will happen, just i've been busy for the last few months. Its on my summer todo list, most of the stuff IS implemented, its just making AWB fully use the API for editing.. —Reedy16:28, 20 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What I suggest is to bunch up this request and the top request into a server request queue sort of thing. As in, let the user queue up some pages for processing and generating diffs. The user then can do something else, while it queues. Then, the user comes back, and queues up the saves after checking each page. The queue will empty itself as the user is checking the page. That way, your diffs preload, and your saves get executed a bit later, but then you get a continuous stream of pages, instead of a broken one. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk18:37, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Another idea. Allow the "make page" button to some how automatically reload. For example, if you use Special:Recentchanges to make a list, have an optional timer that you could use to automatically reload the list. ~Wikihermit01:19, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
And like this idea. Sometime we need make a list from many source. Like "Links on page" from 70 page or/and "from text file" from 10 texts files in one folder. That's hard by hand. --OsamaKBOT16:35, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As a point for any that are just allowing you to type things into the text box, you can type "Page1|Page2|Page3.....Page55|Page56"
Automatically have AWB do multiple things for bots
I'm guessing this is way too hard and the reason people write their own scripts, but here goes anyway: To start my bot, I must make a list from one place, filter it, make from transclusions and filter. Though it doesn't take long, I'm requesting a way to automate this and put it on a timer. For my other bot, it does take a little longer What I mean is a timer that automatically runs a bot every x minutes, and then performs the things you set it to do (ie. filter, then do this, then filter, then start with appending y). Basically, just tell AWB exactly what you normally do by hand, and have it do everything at the same time with just one click or automatically.. Like I said, probably pretty hard, but mines well request it. --(Review Me) RParlateContribs@(Let's Go Yankees!) 02:04, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The ability to set up multiple tasks (for example, several template replacement runs), do a test edit with each task to make sure they do what you're expecting. Then hit "run tasks in sequence" and have AWB go through each task in turn. – Mike.lifeguard | talk18:47, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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Well, in theory there isnt... If we could build some form of an instruction set that awb can follow... and all the functions are software call-able, its viable... Reedy Boy08:54, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like you're talking about a sort of basic scripting language. If it is an itch someone wants to scratch make sure there are commands/points where you can prompt for user input. --Brianmc12:12, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, this is very convenient to run two scripts subsequently each with its own settings file and its own input data file. A command line parameter will be fine for script name definition. Mashiah23:29, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Things like this can in theory already be done with plugins or modules. However, I think that AWB does need this as a standard feature. I'd like it to be able to automatically check certain categories periodically and run a bot job (with seperate settings for each category) too. I was thinking more of keeping it all in the UI and using XML to define tasks myself. Anyway, if at some point I'm looking for something to do I might investigate this further. --kingboyk (talk) 23:22, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Now we also have the "call external script" functionality, just adding enough to allow AWB to start log on (log on used to work with profiles?) and run would do the trick. RichFarmbrough, 11:03, 11 August 2010 (UTC).[reply]
Possible plugins
Allow easy way to add missing parameters to a template, and also a way to reorder parameters
I'm in the process of doing some massive infobox and other template conversion for standardization purposes. The feature to rename template parameters is extremely useful in this process, but it would another big advantage to have a way to add in missing parameters (and set a default value to them if they are missing). It would also be convenient to have a way to reorder all of the parameters so that similar ones can be grouped together, or so that every template instance can have the same ordering as every other one. I guess I'm envisioning a dialog with a grid with three columns: in the first column goes the parameter name, the second column gets the default value, and the third column a checkbox signalling whether to add the parameter (along with its default value) if it is missing. The parameters would then be automatically ordered according to their order in the grid, and added in if missing. Buttons would include "Move up", "Move down", "Delete", and possibly "Don't reorder" for cases when adding missing parameters but no need to reorder. The dialog would be perfect as a new type of rule in the Advanced Find and Replace dialog. Note: this would be used to add infoboxes to every city/town in the US, and add missing data to existing ones. Thanks, --CapitalR12:07, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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Display more info for images and coordinating image tags added to menu
When a page is in the Image namespace it should check to see what other pages are using that file and also include the uploader history for ease in contact (boxes similar to Alerts->Multiple wikilinks). Would help for determining if Fair-use images are being used outside the main namespace, if an image is orphaned, if image is being used in articles it is not intended for. Tags to be added under an Image menu would be {{redundant}}, {{no license}}, {{no source}}, {{notorphan}}, and {{or-fu}} (with date auto-inserted) -ΖαππερΝαππερBabelAlexandria05:36, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There are currently 55 other AWB feature requests, 3 dev's inactive, and a v4 to sort. This would be a major new feature, requiring quite a lot of work, as the actual html of the page would probably be needed to be loaded to get the file links, as with images being here and on commons, it doesnt make life easy. Requests that questions are needed to be asked, or input gained, have had replies...Reedy Boy20:22, 25 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
sorry if i sounded antsy... i wasn't aware that four of you were currently inactive during the newest upgrade. I actually had posted this a while ago when there were relatively few features being asked for so I was hoping for some sort of a response. Letting me know that loading the file links by html rather than query.php (i think that's how you typically retrieve the data, right?) presents a large issue helps me put my request into perspective and I appreciate your response :) On the other hand, tacking on a couple more template options to the right-click menu is likely a relatively simple addition. If you guys need the help, i do know c++ and can wade through c# pretty well, but i can't do much that's complicated. I never offered to help before b/c it seemed you guys had things well covered and only recently ported the code into OOP format, right? I'm confident i could actually implement my changes myself (the menu additions) if i knew exactly how to go about it... never worked on a sourceforge project before. -ΖαππερΝαππερBabelAlexandria00:07, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It was sort of OOPs before, but the code wasnt the best. Kingboyk has done a lot of reworking of the code to add functionality, speed it up, and make it generally better. I have helped with this also, adding some major new features and so on.
If you wanted to add this yourself, i mean, if you want to do it, or at least make a start, and we can help out as and when, that would be fine. It may be worth looking and having a play with query.php and api.php to check and see if they do what you need to. We do use both the query.php, api.php and loading the actual edit pages to pull off the text, we tend not to really load the actual user view of pages too often for pulling off data. If you checkout a copy of the SVN version, have a play and see where you get.
As for the developer side, our "main/lead" developer, MaxSem, has been away from wikipedia for nearly a month now. Feature requests and bugs tend to really just get done by whoever knows how to do it, or wants to attempt to do it, ie personal preference, not really priority/importance of them.
v4 Beta (Alpha + a few changes) should be pushed out to most users this weekend... (Force upgrade... :D) so we'll see how that comes about. Reedy Boy09:32, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Add a function or plugin that fixes double redirects similar to how pybot does. Nobody likes to do these manually, and some people prefer AWB over pybot. --Charitwo(talk)21:24, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Wikinews is quite different from the reference wikis such as Wikibooks, Wikipedia, Wikiquote, etc. Part of our mission is to provide a historical record. As a consequence of this we have a policy of protecting articles when they are about 2 weeks old. Much of the final cleanup to articles is done with the aid of AWB, but there are two key parts of the process that the tool does not help with. Firstly, prior to typo and link correction the history of an article must be reviewed. Edits days after the published tag are added need undone if they impact the content. Second, when all the links, typos, cats and other changes to make a archiveable article are done the article needs protected. Full details of the archiving process we try to apply on Wikinews can be found at WN:ARCHIVE. --Brianmc11:49, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As is the move functionality, but it's unfinished and untested as of now. It'll most likely be in the next version. —METS501 (talk)16:03, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Without checking the code, does grabbing the history result in extra calls to the server? If it does, shouldn't it be turned off by default? --kingboyk16:08, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just to add a reminder about the protect; this is full protection. Once we archive an article only administrators can edit, and should only do so with some consensus or review. --Brianmc12:15, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
History is there and working. I think work moves fine.. I dont think protect does.. Or doesnt completely... We really need to go through and update some of these requests! —ReedyBoy11:59, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Skenmy has poked me about ressurecting this. Partial implementation has been added for the auto protect, but we've encountered an issue. So it is disabled for 4.2.0.0/4.2.0.1, pending a fix —ReedyBoy19:31, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
None of the protection is currently enabled.. But yeah, would be able to... I think we're still experiencing the same issues as before, but i havent actually looked at it! —Reedy21:10, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yup, works fine for me, I can make a list of pages and assign no changes, and I can choose to either ignore, protect/unprotect, or delete an article, just no option for cascading. --Charitwotalk18:51, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ignore me. I was getting confused as i was thinking of the watch option... But there is the above.. A job i will complete when i've some more free time.. But its gonna be hard to do as i dont have admin anywhere else than here.. Hmm —Reedy21:47, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
22:38, 11 June 2008 Reedy (Talk | contribs | block) changed protection level for "Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Sandbox" ([edit=sysop:move=sysop] [cascading]) (Change)
When there is more than one word is highlighted in yellow on a line in AWB, and one of the highlighted is not a typo (i.e Cristian vs Christian both are correct but AWB recognizes it as a typo) when the non-typo is double clicked, it removes everything in that yellow box instead of the specified word, maybe have it where it only removes the highlight because more than one typo could exists on a line or paragraph dputig0700:54, 12 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I am using AWB in ml.wikipedia. The Find & Replace option is not displaying Unicode characters. Edit box is working fine. If Someone can add this functionality in next update will be appreciated. --Sadik-khalid (talk) 10:12, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There are lots of them that don't display on different machines (especially running XP, I suppose). The problem is that there is no standard Unicode font that every user has. Arial Unicode MS comes only with M$ Office (and is too wide to be simply used w/o other changes). Other variants are even less standard. Also, many of them are not suitable to be used in interface, cf Code2000. MaxSem(Han shot first!)19:22, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Note, this image was tagged for deletion by the bots. I extended it for a week, but someone may want to declare it as free if that is true, or make sure that they look at it before it is actually deleted by someone else. --After Midnight000113:42, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've just started using NewPageWatcher and really like the auto-prod and notify and auto-afd and notify buttons. Could they be made an extra module in AWB when I scan categories like OR or essay it would be most useful. MBisanztalk17:13, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
Sounds like a good idea. It would be easy enough to do for Wikipedia EN. I guess it could be a feature which is invisible if the settings say we're on another wiki. --kingboyk (talk) 23:33, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I presume users must make multiple mouse clicks to operate the disambiguation repair dialog. Why not allow them to use just the numeric keypad on their keyboard to make their choices from 1 through to 9? Then you could mention this fact in the manual and perhaps onscreen. ----unforgettableid
Just by numbering the first nine options 1 to 9... Typing 5 will use the fifth option. Now you can use home/end and the first letter, which can be annoying if multiple options have the same starting letter. My request on disambiguation: the [done] key has no hot-key likt alt-D. Now I am forced to use the mouse (the tab key will only activate this button after many many button presses). It would be cool to have alt-Done and alt-Cancel available, so you can operate AWB to solve disambigs without the mouse. Yeah, sorry, I hate that mouse and I want to keep RSI/CTS away by keeping on hating it. Edoderoo (talk) 10:58, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Do you program in C#? Or are you capable at least of designing Windows Forms* in Visual Studio? If you are, perhaps you should join the team. Judging by our efforts up to now we don't have any UI artists aboard. *Or we could go with WPF, which would necessitate a move to .net 3.5, a jump I personally feel we will have to make at some stage... --kingboyk (talk) 12:17, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know anything about C/C++/C#, yet. But I'd be willing to give the GUI thing as free time becomes available. I assume its part of the Visual Studio package I use to compile AWB. — Dispenser22:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it is. Windows Forms in Visual Studio is fairly simple if you're sticking to design, don't really need to be able to code much to do the visual part.
The .Net Framework 3.5 introduced design/code seperation I believe, a replacement for Windows Forms called Windows Presentation Foundation and a new markup language (XAML?). I've not tried any of these features yet and we're currently using .Net 2.0 with AWB so we're stuck with Windows Forms unless there's a compelling reason to "upgrade". Visual Studio can do both types of design anyway. --kingboyk (talk) 19:17, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If you can do the graphical side.. It wouldnt be too hard to tie the backend code into it all... I suspect, looking at that, we're gonna need to make a custom control, probably inheriting from listview/similar... As a list view can do the different types of view like you see in Windows Explorer - Large Icon, Small Icon, Details... I may have a play later on —ReedyBoy19:33, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Bit of googling/looking about. We are certainly going to need either a custom control, or to write our own. As list views by default do not accept images in the sub items (ie columns other than the first) —ReedyBoy20:56, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are quite a lot of typos that have had to be rejected for the RETF page because either the correction isn't unambiguous (e.g. 'distict' could be a typo for 'district' or 'distinct', or because it's valid in one context, but not in another e.g. 'Valparaiso' is correct when referring to Valparaiso, Florida, but should be corrected to Valparaíso when referring to the city in Chile.
I'd like suggest an enhancement to AWB to help with situations like those. There would be a new 'Ambiguous Typos' list, much like the current 'Typos' list, with entries along the lines of
AWB would read this list and, on finding the RegEx value in an article, would present a panel much like the current link disambiguation panel, for the AWB user to select from the listed replace options. Colonies Chris08:22, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This would be a useful feature, provided that users had an option to 'ignore ambiguous typos' i.e. AWB would not change a word matching an ambiguous typo and would not prompt the user for the correct correction. Otherwise I could envisage users being regularly pestered by message boxes ;) Rjwilmsi (talk) 11:15, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The ability to view block logs and page logs without leaving AWB, for example, if I'm viewing a User_talk page, it would be useful to be able to see whether the user is blocked or the page protected. Even better if this could be done as part of a search parameter (e.g. "skip if indef blocked") but that would probably be pretty complicated. Right now, I have to open my regular browser to view the logs then return to AWB to complete my edit.--Doug.(talk • contribs)19:19, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It would be extremely helpful if I could just keep the find and replace dialog box open all the time, and have it stay on top of the main AWB window. Right now, however, if I want to scroll down in the edit box when the find and replace dialog is open, I have to close the dialog, scroll down, and then reopen the dialog to continue editing my regex statements. Thanks, --CapitalR (talk) 01:56, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It would be very useful to be able to see both the preview and the diff at the same time using a split screen setup. This is actually so useful that I recently hacked AWB to allow it (using one of those splitContainer controls), but I think it would be a great option to have available to everyone. Even better than that would be to allow seeing the original page, the new preview, and the diff (or any combination of the two) all at the same time (which would probably only be possible on wide screen monitors, but it would be quite useful). --CapitalR (talk) 02:00, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Do you think you could make it so that you can scroll through the entire window? I use a laptop with a 1024 * 600 resolution, so some of the window gets cut off. I really like AWB and I just want to be able to use all the features. Oracle Techie 16:40, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
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To be honest, im not sure about making the whole window scrollable.. Should be doable, would need to try having a play... That a 9/10" screen by any chance? —Reedy22:37, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Right now, it is only possible to force Find&Replace to be before/after General Fixes. But it's not possible to set when the External Processing will be executed, Add/Replace/Remove Category, Template Substing etc. I guess it'll be hard to implement, but I believe in your skills.
(rest below, {{AWB feature}} breaks pipes in preformatted box)
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How I imagine it to look like: it would be a little window like F&R one, with rows like there, and easier possibility to move row up or down (=make it be executed earlier or later), delete or temp disable operation. Also, a button "Add operation...", which will allow to add custom bunches of replaces or, if they were deleted form list earlier, General Fixes, External Proc. and others from another list.
#Options_list, its a good idea.. but there are some that are supposed to be run before others (but this could be catered for).. All that would technically be necessary would be to turn most of the stuff into individual modules that could be added to a list for processing or similar... —Reedy10:54, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Aw, I was looking for request like mine, but I couldnt find it (I suggest to archive requests more often ;)). What is supposed to run before others? I have no idead what it can be. And, well, I said it'll be tought, but - I repeat it - I believe in you, developers. Matma Rexpl.wiki talk11:11, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Haha. People get annoyed if we archive non finished ones ;). I'll combine them later. However, i think this is more a v5+ request.. Hopefully where we'll have *maybe* changed to .NET v3... and can look at improving the gui with the new toys it gives us! —Reedy11:27, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Move 'Make list' to new dialog. The model that I have is that an AWB list is like a file in many applications. I can create a new list, open an existing list, work with it, and/or save it. In Microsoft Word, I can create a new file, open an existing file, work with it, and/or save it. In Microsoft Word, I use items from the 'File' menu: 'New', 'Open', 'Save'. I suggest that AWB has similar items in the 'File' menu, although they might have to be appended with 'list' e.g. 'New list'.
Description: 'New list'. Produces a dialog. All the items in the current 'Make list' group would be moved into this dialog. The list itself would be duplicated so that it is in the 'New list' dialog and the main AWB interface as it is now. An advantage is that the main AWB interface could have a longer list due to the removal of six elements (the two fields for source and the two buttons).
Description: 'Open list' or simply 'Open'. Produces the usual dialog for opening a text file.
Description: 'Save list' or simply 'Save'. Produces the usual dialog for saving a text file .
I defined 'New list' but not 'Edit list'. An 'Edit list' function needs an 'Edit list' button beneath the list where the 'Filter' button is now.
'New list' and 'Edit list' should produce the same dialog. A working name for the dialog should be 'List'.
The 'List' dialog is the main place for editing lists but removal of articles should be possible in the main AWB interface.
The right-mouse menus throughout AWB could do with a review. The right-mouse menu in the current list has 'Filter', 'Save list', and 'Sort alphabetically'. If this design idea goes further, I suggest eliminating those three options.
Sometimes its useful to be able to tailor the messages you leave at user talk pages based on when that editor last edited. The tab would only need to display when working in the User: or User talk: namespace. I've drafted a possible patch that would do this. - Jarry1250(t, c)15:54, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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I wouldn't want to use a separate browser for this... Im wondering about combining the history and WLH here ones and having like radio buttons to select or something... —Reedy17:06, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, having one browser would be simpler. You could then disable the user contributions option for non-user (talk) space. It's not urgent, I can use my local version to do the few I'm interested in at the moment. - Jarry1250(t, c)17:17, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Over on the right set of tabs, after History I could really benefit from an "actual" view of the current page. While the current Preview method works fine for articles, it's completely useless for categorizing images - which don't display in any diff/preview page view. I'm not sure how hard this would be (I'm aware that AWB briefly performs an "actual" load immediately after saving), but if possible it would save me from having to manually "Open in browser" every single image i look at (plus it would be a nice workaround for the lack of "Articles using this image" list). To reduce server strain it should operate like the History tab, only loading when the tab is active. -ΖαππερΝαππερBabelAlexandria20:22, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are many WP-specific things which are highly annoying when using AWB on other wikis. They should probably be removed for other wikis, though it'll be a big task to find them all. If you decide to do this, I'll be happy to help you in that regard. —Mike.lifeguard|@en.wb14:35, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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It can be done fairly easily... If theres stuff you definately want disabling for non-WP, we can do that. —Reedy20:52, 11 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have just one - on Wikiquote, we use spacing, indentation, and line breaks that AWB is always wanting to get rid of. It should ignore those. bd2412T13:51, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Add an option which would help to prevent edit summary mistakes. In my preferred method, an option would be provided to set a default edit summary. Every time a new page loads, the default summary would be in place instead of whatever the previously used one was. A less desirable option would be for a dialog box to pop up, warning when the edit summary is not locked. More info below. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM20:22, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
My usual edit summary in the main window is just a blank, with various actual summaries supplied by a module. I often perform additional manual edits before saving, and I change the edit summary, which would just end up being blank otherwise. The problem is that occasionally I'll forget to restore my default edit summary, and then my next few edits have duplicate or, worse, conflicting summaries until I notice my oversight. When I'm not using a module, I also sometimes accidentally end up with an incorrect summary after similarly editing and changing summaries. This usually happens when saving is slow and I go off in another window while I'm waiting for the page to save, or I'll just get distracted by some shiny object, and when I return to AWB I absentmindedly neglect to restore the summary. I feel that an accurate edit summary is important, and this is just another way that AWB can help to prevent human errors. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM20:22, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I know just what you mean, but sometimes it is useful to have the edit summary carry over. I think that it would help a lot, if the edit summary had a different colour background (a light shade behind the text), if the edit summary was anything else but the default "clean up". Snowman (talk) 13:08, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Provide ability for edit summary to change dynamically based on what custom Find & Replace changes are made
Allow a field in an Advanced "Find and replace" entry to modify the edit summary. The edit summary would allow for numerous variables and these would be filled in by the Find/replace entry. –xenotalk14:12, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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Example: "(Bot) Tagging for WP:FOO - Inherited $1-class assessment from other projects"
One space-saving measure would be to remove the spaces surrounding the arrow in typo replacements: "againt→against" instead of "againt → against".
Some (most?) people prefer the visual appeal of "using [[Project:AWB|AWB]]" to "using [[Project:AWB]]". With this feature, the prettier version could be used most of the time while not wasting those valuable characters when necessary, and the space-saving version could be even further shortened by removing "using". Make it simply " ([[Project:AWB]])".
I already do something similar. When I'm fixing typos, my normal edit summary is [[WP:AWB/T|Typo patrol]]. When there are so many typos that the list is truncated, I clear my edit summary to allow more of the list to show. Note a bug in my example diff: the "[[Project:AWB]]" got lopped off. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM22:05, 17 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If I understand how edit summaries work currently in AWB, if I change something either by directly editing the text of the article or by double clicking a line in diff, AWB uses just the default edit summary, not specific changes, because the user might have undid them. I think it would be better, if the edit summary would be smarter, so if AWB suggest two fixes and I undo one of them, the edit summary would still contain the other. Svick (talk) 23:35, 21 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If the 'add to edit summary' feature is enabled, have a box for the user to define a summary addition other than the default 'foo → bar' for each rule. This would be particularly useful for long or ugly replacements. mattbr17:15, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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That would be very useful. Many AWB users are reduced to using only very brief desciptors such as "Clean Up". I can see some problems, but the best implementation might be to apply this only to the advanced settings and have the option of adding a user-specific description of an edit to a rule that will be used if one or more of its sub-rules are applied. Gaius Cornelius (talk) 12:32, 11 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think this would be worth doing for all the wiki's where we have the different namesapces. It would only require a few code changes, ie instead f Replaced, use Variables.Replace (or whatever), and then have the local word for each... Reedy Boy08:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
1) The {{saved book}} and these four parameters (in this specific order) should always be present at the top of the book. There can be other parameters, but they should all be after |cover-color=.
{{saved book
|title=
|subtitle=
|cover-image=
|cover-color=
}}
2) If a level 2 header isn't present, add one (=={{SUBPAGENAME}}==)
3) The |title= and |subtitle= of {{saved book}}, if empty, should be filled with the level 2 and 3 headers respectively (==Title== and ===Subtitle===)
4) :''[[Foobar]]'' and :"[[Foobar]]" should be replaced with :[[Foobar|''Foobar'']] and :[[Foobar|"Foobar"]], respectively. Likewise for
:''[[Foobar|Barfoo]]'' and :"[[Foobar|Barfoo]]" which should be replaced with :[[Foobar|''Barfoo'']] and :[[Foobar|"Barfoo"]], respectively.
5) As in articles, :[[Foobar|Foobar]] should be replace with :[[Foobar]]. However, unlike in articles, :[[Foobar (barfoo)|Foobar (barfoo)]] should not be replaced by :[[Foobar (barfoo)]]
6) Articles found in Category:All disambiguation pages should be tagged with {{dn}}, except those with an explicit (disambiguation) in the title, such as :[[Foobar (disambiguation)]]
These categories should not be hidden categories, maintance categories nor stub categories. Any rule when exactly the article is considered "categorised"? -- Magioladitis (talk) 02:59, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If it's in at least one true content category, it's considered categorized (though {{cat improve}} may still be appropriate, such as if an article's only content categories are birth/death years.) You're correct that hidden/maintenance/stub categories don't count toward the article being considered categorized, if they're the only categories present. Bearcat (talk) 03:56, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A simple idea really – all articles should have lead sections and many don't. There are a couple of situations when AWB should intervene, in my opinion. On any occasion when the article begins with a header (==Whatever==), then {{intro-missing}} should be added. If the article begins with a header that matches the article title exactly, then the header can just be removed. Potential stumbling blocks might be infoboxes and so forth. Either way, I hope this is construed as a decent idea and that it might spur on some constructive discussion. Seegoon (talk) 22:20, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Check if the article lacks intro >> if yes, check if the headline of the first section of the article's body match the name of the article >> if yes (example) >> remove that headline. Sole Soul (talk) 17:00, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Add a window to allow editors to choose which part of autotagger they want to enable/disable. A window similar to GF skip options with the following options:
Add/remove the following tags if applicable:
☑ stubs ☑ expansion (remove only)
☐ uncategorised
☐ orphan
☑ deadend
☑ wikify
☐ ibid
Notes:
AWB should not add expansion tags, only remove if article is a stub thus the "(remove only)"
The above list could be expanded with two columns Remove / Append
When editing the article for Laurie Lea Schaefer I noticed it had {{BLP unsourced}} but it also had <ref> and {{reflist}} with the reference in it as well as having |bot==yes. I recommend logic be added to AWB to do the following:
convert {{BLP unsourced}} to {{BLP sources}} if the article contains a references. Per the instructions at Template:BLP unsourced articles with at least one reference should not have the BLP unsourced tag.
Also, if {{BLP unsourced}} and {{BLP sources}} are both on the article err on the side of it being unsourced and delete {{BLP sources}}. If the above code is implemented at the same time AWB will convert teh BLP unsourced to BLP sources anyway (as long as AWB processes them in the right order at least). --Kumioko (talk) 22:29, 18 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
True. But I think if it starts with certain things like Cite something, Http or www then its probably a reference. I have been doing these edits for a couple days now and havent had a problem yet. --Kumioko (talk) 02:02, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have recently found quite a few articles were {{One source}} is no longer needed. Can logic be added to remove this template if more than three references is used? --Kumioko (talk) 02:30, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I would first like to see the template documentation provide a complete list of what is and isn't permitted HTML tagging in Wikipedia. Currently it's unclear. Rjwilmsi10:14, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
On exit, check for changes to settings and query whether user wants to save the changes. When I exit most applications, they check if changes have been made. If no changes have been made, they exit immediately. If changes have been made, they ask if I want to save the changes. Look at how MS Word behaves. AWB does not do this. I know that AWB cannot test for everything but I would like it to be able to save my javascript changes as a first priority and my skip options etc as a second priority. Lightmouse (talk) 22:05, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
This is a very useful proposal, however checking for changes the right way (e.g. by serialising settings and comparing against saved ones) is a heavy operation. Needs more thinking. MaxSem(Han shot first!)08:23, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Perhaps we could divide the request into several pieces. For example, changes to the 'Make module' could be one problem piece to solve and changes to checkbox options in the tabs could be another problem piece. I would regard it as a useful advance if you could solve either of those problem pieces. Lightmouse (talk) 08:39, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hold on. I often make incremental adjustments to "Find & Replace" while processing a list of articles, and don't want to save new settings until they are tested on a few articles, so I would not have 'auto-save' turned on in that situation. Before exiting AWB or before loading a new settings file, I would like to be reminded that I have unsaved "Find & Replace" changes to the current settings file. This part should not be difficult to implement, especially if the request for "Unwanted saving of Find & Replace changes" is taken care of by dropping the "Done" button and adding "Apply" and "Cancel" buttons. If the "Apply" button is pressed, just make a note that the settings file has changed and may need to be saved on exit; the heavy operation of comparing settings against saved ones would not be necessary. A similar technique could be used to mark changes to skip options, etc., and all the checks would not have to be added at once. Christhe spelleryack14:53, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The filter button currently applies the selected filters on the artice list. Can it be setup so that the user can select filters ahead of time and then click "make list". For example, I would like to load "only categories" from when I click "Make list" using "Category" make from option. Right now, I having to load a bulk of articles first and then select the filters (this takes a lot of time). Try pulling the categories under Category:Unassessed-Class India articles. Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 22:26, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
Hmm. Something like List --> Filter out non mainspace and Filter duplicates (they run when new stuff has been added).. —Reedy22:35, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Tried that...when I selected "filter non-mainspace", it returned nothing. I wanted the categories alone to pull up (select category check on the List - filter option). Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 22:47, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps it might be worth considering have a separate list maker dialog. This would be equivalent to the 'Open' file dialog in other applications. Then you could have more room for options such as this request for pre-filtration. I would suggest merging it with the similar functionality of the 'List comparer'. I am always looking for improvements that will firstly make the terminology and interaction similar to other applications and secondly give more space for the working areas. Lightmouse (talk) 11:01, 1 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It would be easy enough to add on the special filter a checkbox to say, apply this filter whenever new articles are added to the List Maker... That saves other real-estate, and puts it in a relevant place? —Reedy22:57, 1 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Search within 'Make module'. I sometimes want to change a small detail but can't find the text. Would it be possible to use 'Control-F' to search within the module? Lightmouse (talk) 17:46, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
Code already exists to do this (just not on the custom module).. Any suggestions how to do it designer wise? Do we need a Find form creating..? —Reedy19:28, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting predecessors include
the method that AWB already has below the 'Save' button. Perhaps you could just copy that or update it with ideas from the other predecessors below.
MS Word is interesting in that 'Find' and 'Replace' are just tabs combined into one dialog. So it is easy to start with Find and then decide to use Replace.
MS Notepad is very simple but can be irritating - it does not search the whole thing like MS Word does. You have to search forward from where you are, or then backward from where you are.
Firefox is instant search and has a very small field tucked away
You could add some menus to the 'Make module' page and then have the 'Find' menu item in one of them. I instinctively use 'Ctrl-F' to get 'Find' or 'Ctrl-H' to get 'Replace'. Lightmouse (talk) 20:09, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think a dialog like the MS Word dialog would be good. You could enable it on Ctrl-F even without menus for now. You could use the same dialog in both places. This would allow you to remove the field from below the Save button. Lightmouse (talk) 20:48, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Dialogs are so passé. Firefox's find toolbar is what we should be aiming at, but safari has such cool effect (it dims all non highlighted words). Visual Studio has some cool options, but isn't as powerful as notepad++. I believe I had add Ctrl-F and a few other shortcuts in one of my uncommitted patches. — Dispenser04:44, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You are right, Firefox is better, although MSWord integrates 'Find' and 'Replace' very well. It would be good if the AWB solution could do that. Lightmouse (talk) 12:50, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What i dont get, is why the .NET framework doesnt have a standard FaR contorl that can be reused. I suppose, its probably worth trying to make up a decent one we can reuse throughout AWB... Hmmm —Reedy12:55, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
AWB is not an IDE for development of plug-ins or custom modules, therefore I don't think that this feature should be a high priority. Anybody who wishes to improve their custom module can use their own text editor or IDE to work on it. Rjwilmsi19:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It would be very great if AWB will allow us to move many pages the same way (e.g.: moving Goldfinger article to Goldfinger (film)), there is yet 2 pywikipedia scripts (movepages.py and pagerename.py), but movepages.py does not append words to the title and pagerename.py does not convert to UNICODE, especially when using special characters (as French é, è, à... and also Arabic letters). So, please, such a feature on AWB is highly recommanded, thank you. --DrFO.Jr.Tn (talk) 20:05, 15 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The needed actions are :
Prepend (to titles), i.e.: prepending a word to titles (in a list of articles), e.g.: USS Michigan (for the USS ships). (this is just an example)
Append (to titles), i.e.: appending a word to titles (in a list of articles), e.g.: St. Louis, Michigan. (this is just an example)
Find and replace (in titles), i.e.: finding a word in the titles (in a list of articles) and replacing it by another, e.g.: Goldfinger (cinema) to Goldinger (film). (this is just an example)
Delete (from titles), i.e.: deleting words from the titles (in a list of articles), e.g.: State of North Carolina to North Carolina. (this is just an example)--DrFO.Jr.Tn (talk) 20:18, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
AWB can't work on a private wiki requiring authentication because SiteInfo can't get past the request for login and the custom wiki is rejected as incompatible (even though in fact the wiki in question is perfectly compatible). Once logged in it ought to work because IE will store the authentication details. In other words, we need to add authentication options for custom wiki on the prefs form and use them then we first query the site. I have set up a staff-only wiki for my employer so can help with this and test it. kingboyk (talk) 15:54, 15 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Allow the user or hardcode an agreed distance where by Multiple links are shown
If we had:
Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser is a semi-automated Mediawiki editor for Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista designed to make tedious repetitive tasks quicker and easier. It is essentially a browser that automatically opens up a new page when the last is saved. When set to do so, it suggests some changes (typically formatting) that are generally meant to be incidental to the main change.
At present, Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser can create a list of pages from single or multiple categories, "what links here", the wiki links on a page, a text file, a Google search, a user's watchlist, or a user's contributions.
Distance =2 lines . This would return false
Distance =10 lines . Would return true
Distance =1 paragraph would return true Gnevin (talk) 14:14, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Lines depend on resolution... Hm... an idea would that in the Multiple wikilinks box to have not only number of occurrences but minimum distance in terms of words too. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:25, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'd appreciate AWB remembering the size/position of windows such as "Find & Replace" between sessions (and also, if possible, the widths of columns within). I guess it could be something saved along with the other settings..? Hope it's straightforward to implement and sorry if it's already on the to-do list. Sardanaphalus (talk) 01:26, 14 October 2008 (UTC)[reply] PS Thanks for the recent upgrade.
It checks the syntax of the regex to ensure that it is valid. For example, an invalid expression containing to many unbalanced parentheses or brackets will change the background of the box to a light red. Additionally, it could warn over common errors such as having pipes outside of capturing groups. Or warn when matching an empty string or just whitespace. — Dispenser17:43, 18 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
50% of the WMF traffic is not English. If this software is useful for other languages, it should be possible to use the software in this other language.
As an aside. We have thought about it, and it would be a good idea. It just would require a lot of reworking of the code, and the interface changing to cater for the larger text aswell... Getting translators would be easy enough, i suspect... —Reedy11:13, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Currently, the disambiguation dialog box only has a short excerpt of the text. This is often not enough to determine context for the correct replacement, and you have to open the page in an external browser. It would be nice if you could drop a webbrowser control in the blank space in the bottom of the dialog so we can read the article without opening other windows. Thanks for a great tool Phil153 (talk) 05:48, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Now that we can mark pages as patrolled even if we don't get to them from special:newpages, is there a way to allow this to be done in AWB?--Fabrictramp
Dekimasu has come up with a neat tool to find all disambiguation pages linked by an article (in short, you put in an article like Lyndon B. Johnson and it lists all the disambiguation links on that page). Can this be parsed through AWB to generate a list like the list of entries with multiple links? It would be neat and functional. Better still if the individual links could then be picked and disambiguated from the list on that disambig page. Cheers! bd2412T18:03, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it could, but some form of API output would be better (possibly worth requesting). Just a list of pages in an xml list style like the MW Api gives. Im not getting into having to parse HTML un-necesserily —Reedy18:07, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I "specifically" want to be able to select articles which I know are likely to have many disambig links, and use the tool to pick out all of those links and fix them to point to the proper pages. bd2412T23:03, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I need to rewrite that tool to use the more efficient SQL queries (It was my first SQL tool). It provides multiple page output using API query and has simple html scrapers for use certain pages structures. And it also reports other link oddities like self redirects. The "likely go away" is in reference to the rewrite which will significantly change how things works. So if the devs could describe what they'd like in the format option (JSON, XML, YAML) I'd be willing to add it to the new tool. — Dispenser11:41, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This feature would be very useful for bots to filter out articles that it has already edited so it can avoid editing an article for a second time. For example, in some scenarios the bot makes a false positive edit, then a user reverts the bot, then the bot makes the same edit again. I would like to be able to see if the history contains the bot user name but it would be useful to test for any string in the history. I imagine the interface as similar to the 'article contains', 'article does not contain' code. Is it possible? Lightmouse (talk) 07:38, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It probably depends on whether the mediawiki API has a feature whereby it will tell us how many times a given user (or bot user) has edited a page. If that's available then we could certainly have an option "skip if I've already edited this page". Searching a history for a string doesn't sound feasible: the history of some pages is 50 edits per day, so AWB could easily spend several minutes working through the last two months of a page history. Rjwilmsi22:27, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Also, you'd probably want some time constraint on it. You may have not touched it for 2 years, so missing out on those edits would therefore be bad... It may be possible to query the API (ie have to ask Roan nicely to do it), to be able to specify a date, and a username and return whether the user account has touched that page since that date... *May*. As per prior mentions, i'm NOT html scraping. I'll stick a bugzilla request on and see (or ask Roan on IRC).. —Reedy11:25, 20 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
omitting rvstart (prop=revision&rvend=timestamp&rvuser=username&rvlimit=1), will give all (if any) edits by that user to the page since the date. It's possible —Reedy11:28, 20 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible to include the removal of such characters in the list of general fixes of AWB? Parser functions in templates generally don't work well with them (whitespace is stripped, but not control characters). Recently we cleaned up up a series of characters found in {{coord}} templates (see Template_talk:Coord/Archive_9#Parser_function_errors_(Antelope_Valley_College). -- User:Docu
These are four I had found back then. As they are never used in wikitext, I suppose we could always remove them. If there are any others, I suppose we could add these too. -- User:Docu
That should have been fixed under rev 4235 some six weeks ago, but versions in the 4.5.2 series are still enabled and have this bug. Perhaps the user should update their AWB version. Rjwilmsi10:51, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a bit confused now - this is marked as a new feature request, not yet enacted, so how can there be any effect from a bug in it? The problem I reported was with a bot running under the Check Wikipedia project, which as far as I know isn't the same as AWB (or is it? I don't really know what's going on here.)--Kotniski (talk) 11:29, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This feature request has not been actioned, but there was a separate bug report over zero width spaces which was fixed under rev 4235 some six weeks ago such that AWB (the tool used to make the edit in question) now won't change zero width spaces. It could be that D6 was using their own logic, so the bug fix isn't actually relevant. Rjwilmsi12:34, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
D6 is not using AWB. There is an AWB user that inserts them (possibly through some custom search and replace). I asked him for full details on this. -- User:Docu
We're waiting on [6]. As said before, i am not HTML scraping (not worth the hassle). So this will be resolve when the bug gets sorted on the MW side —Reedy12:23, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The ability to use it on a localhost wiki would be really nice. I would use it quite often. I know that it's designed for Wikipedia, but... Thanks, Genius101Guestbook12:18, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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I'm presuming it whinges about the domain name/similar? (Tbh, never tried a localhost server... Have you tried 127.0.0.1 also?) —Reedy19:01, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I've tried both localhost and 127.0.0.1, and the error message it gives is: "An error occured while connecting to the server or loading project information from it. Please make sure your Internet connection works and that combination of project/language exist. Enter the URL in the format en.wikipedia.org/w (including the directory where index.php and api.pho reside)." Thanks, Genius101Guestbook20:25, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
When using AWB manually (or rarely automatically) a session time-out can occur. AWB will continue as if the page had been sucessfully saved. WIBLI it auto-resaved unless the page had been edited, in which case it re-offered the diff? RichFarmbrough, 11:01 12 May 2009 (UTC).
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In regards to session timeouts I am still having a lot of problems with AWB starting the 60 second clock on every edit and on every couple pages when I use the pre-parse mode. Do you think the 2 issues might be related?--Kumioko (talk) 20:09, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
With the introduction of custom user rights in MediaWiki, I think that a "AWBuser" right would be easier to manage than a long page of names. I find that checking a box takes a lot less time than trying to add a name in an alphabetical list and the rights log allows for notes to be added when removing/adding a right. Nakon14:31, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Couldn't we just look for the intersection of AWBUser and Bot flags? (with perhaps a check page for bots running w/o a flag...) –xenotalk17:47, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
AWB is probably the best tool already set up to handle this sorely needed ability. it already sits on a user's computer and can directly access the relevant pages and templates. the only problem i foresee is updating articles with the new name automatically would be unallowed for non-bot accounts (technically). -- ΖαππερΝαππερBabelAlexandria17:58, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
well i figured that since AWB is running on the client side, it could work around MW's constraints. The image and info would be stored temporarily on the user's hard drive. of course maybe this is better handled by a script like twinkle or friendly. --ΖαππερΝαππερBabelAlexandria23:29, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To list the links in only one section of an article. This is because some pages have a list in a section, and it would be useful to check these pages with AWB, without a lot of other links on the whole page. Snowman (talk) 13:04, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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Wasn't there a request for this before.. I seem to recall there was as i spoke to Roan about a way to do it.. —Reedy13:36, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I remember that this issue was raised several months ago—though I'm not sure whether it was on this page—and there seemed to be support for the idea, but I can't seem to find the original discussion right now. Could AWB be used to clean up the appearance of infoboxes in the edit window. There are a number of things that could be done, from making parameter values readily identifiable by standardizing spacing so that all equal signs are in a straight vertical line (see Example 1) to clearly distinguishing between different parameters (see Example 2).
Example 1
Change
{{Infobox person
|name = Auto Wiki Browser
|image = AWB Banner2.png
|occupation = Semi-automated Wikipedia editor
}}
to
{{Infobox person
|name = Auto Wiki Browser
|image = AWB Banner2.png
|occupation = Semi-automated Wikipedia editor
}}
Example 2
Change
{{Infobox Person|
name = Auto Wiki Browser|
image = AWB Banner2.png|occupation = Semi-automated Wikipedia editor|
}}
to
{{Infobox Person
|name = Auto Wiki Browser
|image = AWB Banner2.png
|occupation = Semi-automated Wikipedia editor
}}
My personal opinion on this is that the second change is very good. Much needed. The first one seems a bit more controversial though... I prefer that the whitespace isn't present, and I think that opinions are pretty divided on that. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:27, 18 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you that the whitespace is annoying, and that the latter change is good (but only in infoboxes, not in cite templates where it breaks the flow of paragraphs). --NE222:34, 18 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to see evidence of a discussion in favour of this non-visible change before any implementation of it. Also, it seems like a fair amount of work for a non-visible change. Rjwilmsi08:01, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
AFAIK there is no consensus for adding whitespace. In fact I personally am removing it because it adds extra space to articles and makes no good. The only thing that I find really useful for editors is that every parameter starts in a new line with a vertical line. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:07, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Based on the response so far, I withdraw my request for example 1. I agree that AWB should not be used for something that largely boils down to personal preference when editors have vastly different preferences. –BLACK FALCON(TALK)17:17, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I know I come to this a bit late, but I do have thoughts on it. Specifically, I like the two proposals as they stand, but I also appreciate that not all editors do. I would go further and say that I personally like indenting the pipes on each new line just by one space for visual ease, and also the same new-line/indented/aligned style when doing cite templates, as there are many possible parameters. However, I do see the point of view of those who prefer things to be in-line. What about having a formatted editor purely as a UI within AWB but writing it back to the servers in a "least-change" format? ClickRick (talk) 18:20, 27 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I rather like the idea of something like that. IMO, example 2 should be enabled by default, and then whitespace one can be enabled on a per-editor basis (certainly not a general fix, but this would fit in the assisted editing). Also incredibly useful would be the standardizing (not enabled by default) of the presentation of citation templates as detailed in here. This would save reference gnomes tremendous ammounts of time. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 10:46, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Infoboxes could be cleaned up to remove the pipes (and spaces) after the template name and the parameters and put pipes before the parameters like here. McLerristarr | Mclay1 22:42, 2 November 2010 (This comment was moved from another feature request.)
Most people assume that you've got to keep the case that the source is using, but the MOS advises changing this to standard title case. So, may I suggest pushing a citation's title parameter through:
When do you propose to convert the case of citation titles? Just when all in uppercase? Do you have some example articles? Rjwilmsi10:27, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, in a perfect world, a citation title of "EXAMPLE: Lorem ipsum" would be converted as well, but the false positive/pointless edit rate would be too high I fear. So yes, just when all in uppercase for maximum efficiency. I would like to see this as a general fix if possible, though I haven't tested the FP rate myself yet. I shall set about finding you an example now. - Jarry1250[ humourous – discuss ]10:31, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I've had some experience programming reflinks with this, you can get most of the cases right. Here some edges cases
Newspaper Archive: MINOR STORY OF THE DAY; MAN BITES DOG
65_PDF.pdf
SPACE PROBE 56T LAUNCHES
A.I.D.S. EPIDEMIC STILL SPREADING
FOREIGN AIDS STILL MISSING
ATLAS USER EQUIPMENT INTRODUCTION
FIRST ROBOTICS GIVES HOPE
NAVSTAR GPS
J P PENNY
Those are some example I can think off the top of my head. It also a good idea to apply it to the author/first/last/publisher fields as well. — Dispenser12:13, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, thanks Dispenser. As written, the code doesn't touch .pdf (lowercase), capitalises "Of", and turns GPS to "Gps". The rest it gets right; hopefully, a few tweaks and it should be read to roll. - Jarry1250[ humourous – discuss ]18:58, 30 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a much improved function for converting to useful title case, which is more palatable than block caps (I personally prefer sentence case, but that would be more controversial / less widely deployable. It works on all the examples above (and some more I invented), with the exception of acronyms that could be words UNICEF, etc. GPS has no vowels, and is therefore easy to capitalise.
publicstaticstringProperCase(stringTextToFormat){List<String>smalls=newList<String>{"and","of","the","but","in","to","a","an"};if(TextToFormat.ToUpper()==TextToFormat){TextToFormat=newCultureInfo("en").TextInfo.ToTitleCase(TextToFormat.ToLower());//Ignore first wordsStringFirstBit="";if(TextToFormat.Contains(" ")){intIndex=TextToFormat.IndexOf(" ");FirstBit=TextToFormat.Substring(0,Index);TextToFormat=TextToFormat.Substring(Index);}foreach(Stringsmallinsmalls){TextToFormat=Regex.Replace(TextToFormat,"([^a-zA-Z0-9])"+small+"([^a-zA-Z0-9])","$1"+small+"$2",RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);}TextToFormat=FirstBit+TextToFormat;String[]Bits=TextToFormat.Split(" ".ToCharArray());for(inti=0;i<Bits.Length;i++){//Capitalise consonant only words, plus a few obvious onesif(Regex.IsMatch(Bits[i],"^([BCDFGHJKLMNPQRSTVWXZ]{2,}|UK|USA)$",RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)){Bits[i]=Bits[i].ToUpper();}}returnString.Join(" ",Bits);}else{returnTextToFormat;}}
Maybe you should use a dictionary from a spellchecker to ensure words like GNU, LIDAR, and CBDTPA stay uppercased? You might also be able to capitalize names Ted Stevens. — Dispenser18:37, 2 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah... it's a question of how much in the way of resources one chooses to give over to such a minor (albeit intensely annoying to me) thing as capitalisation... hopefully the major acronyms can be hardcoded, and the rest left to the individual editors to catch. As the default Is This Sort Of Capitalisation, We Needn't Worry About Names Of People. - Jarry1250[ humourous – discuss ]18:41, 2 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And no matter how much effort we throw at the problem, there will always be "yet another exception", e.g. CAT scan
This could be implemented as a general fix that users would have to explicitly turn on via the options menu (off by default) and could be disabled for bots. Question then is just what fields is this required on beyond the 'title=' field of a citation template? Rjwilmsi 15:38, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
I think this was added to AWB. Not sure though but we might be able to archive this one. --Kumioko (talk) 00:47, 26 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
When entering a regex in the Find/Replace dialog, it's easy (ahem) to forget to tick the Regex checkbox. Could a test be made when clicking Done for [, * and ?, and if Regex is not checked then prompt the user with something like "This appears to be a regular expression. Did you mean to tick the Regex box?".
Too many false positives would get irritating, so deliberately keeping the list simple like that means that newer users, who are more likely to restrict themselves to simpler regular expressions and also more likely to forget, will be the ones who will more often be prompted.
ClickRick (talk) 10:12, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
Any false positives would be extremely annoying. This would have to be explicitly turned on somewhere, which would probably make it of little value for new users. Rjwilmsi15:29, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"a*" could be a regex or a literal search. Any warnings would have to be explicitly turned on somewhere, which would probably make it of little value for new users. Rjwilmsi09:43, 30 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I would personally take Jarry's suggestion with a pinch of salt for exactly that reason. To your earlier concern, though, I would say that the prompt should be turned on by default but include a "Do not show this prompt again" checkbox, which should be remembered for that user, so an advanced user will only be prompted the once. An option somewhere else (Options|Preferences..., perhaps?) to turn it back on might be appreciated, too. ClickRick (talk) 10:20, 30 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe make the default for the regex box, checked? Most non-regex (for a loose value of the word most) also wokr aas regexen, e.g. "Horse" RichFarmbrough, 21:55, 21 April 2010 (UTC).[reply]
It would be very useful to be able to restrict searches to individual templates. For example, suppose I'm using advanced search for cleaning up an IPA template, including reformatting stress and length marks <ˈ>, <ˌ>, <ː> for apostrophes, commas, and colons. Now, if the IPA template is embedded in an infobox, as it is with the planet infobox, or even if there are both an IPA template and an infobox on the same page, then every apostrophe, comma, and colon in the infobox will also be replaced and need to be deselected, making maintenance very time consuming. It would be nice to only replace things in the template I'm searching for. kwami (talk) 19:26, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Interestingly, I'm currently working on a plugin which will focus on doing things in specific places within templates, with a UI to help define the template, parameter and values which need attention. Might this be of interest? ClickRick (talk) 23:37, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that looks like it might do it. But it would still be nice to have a simple check box to restrict the find-replace to the template that matches the if/not conditions. kwami (talk) 08:53, 2 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If I want to make changes in a specific template I am doing the following: Find and replace -> Advanced settings -> New Rule -> If contains -> Infobox Example and then I am creating subrules. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:29, 2 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
But if the page contains a template that contains your search string, then the substitution will be made in all templates on the page, not just the one that contains the string. So if I change apostrophes, I mess up formatting in all of the info boxes. kwami (talk) 08:53, 2 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Try a regex like \{\{IPA\|([^\}]*)\ˈ([^\}]*)\}\} to $1[whateveryou'rereplacingˈwith]$2. I'm sure there are much more elegant ways. --NE221:07, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That works! Thanks. A feature option would still be nice, but with this I can at least take care of some of the more grievous problems. kwami (talk) 07:56, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have a list of about thirty-thousand disambiguation pages which contain links to other disambiguation pages (see Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Disambiguation pages that link to disambiguation pages) - in most cases, these are intentional (for example, Ease says "See also, Easy", so in order to avoid clogging up the "what links here" section for disambiguators, I've been piping the links through the intentional disambig term (so on Ease I would change [[Easy]] to [[Easy (disambiguation)|Easy]]). Did I mention there are thirty-thousand of these? An AWB feature that automatically picked up disambig page links and helpfully offered to convert them from [[Foobar]] to [[Foobar (disambiguation)|Foobar]] would be invaluable. bd2412T17:20, 5 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
Wouldn't that just be replacing a link to a page with a link to a redirect to the page? In other words, the opposite of WP:R2D? I don't really see any point in changing links in thirty thousand pages to point instead to longer names using pipes. How many disambig pages would this allow you to find which include incorrect links to other disambigs? A few thousand? Maybe? That seems a tad pointless. As an alternative, you could use AWB's pre-parse mode to go through all of those pages and pick out the correct ones (probably wouldn't be too hard to code). –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 17:12, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There is a method to this madness. You may know that cleaning up erroneous links to disambig pages is one of our perpetual nightmares. One complicating factor is that some disambig pages will generate a list of hundreds of incoming links, but disambiguators must take the time to review each link (and, bear in mind, different people will attack links to the same disambiguation page as they build up again and again over time). If the link is incoming through a redirect, this will be clearly indicated on Wikipedia's "what links here" page and won't show up at all on AWB's basic "what links here" report. This, in turn, will save a substantial amount of review time because we won't need to look at links that redirect to Easy to Easy (disambiguation) because we will know that those are intentional links to the disambig page (in fact, implementing this change through the list I've requested would save about thirty-thousand of these page views presuming we get around to disambiguating all those pages). The principal I'm pursuing here is that nothing should ever link directly to a disambiguation page except maybe a talk-page discussion on that disambiguation page. In most instances, by the way, disambig links on disambig pages are in the "See also" section, and are indeed clearly intended to link through to another disambig page. bd2412T07:02, 7 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ah... I see. This still doesn't seem entirely worth it to me (and it would be better done by bot than AWB if it is done), but I won't oppose it, either. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 03:09, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
With the new requirement to include alternate text to all images (so that people who cannot see or are using devices to read text about a picture rather than seeing a picture) I have a couple of suggestions for new featureds in AWB.
Remove any HTML from within the alt text string. The alt text feature does not support HTML.
Remove any wikimarkup from within the alt text string. The alt text feature does not support wikimarkup.
It would be very useful if the advanced find/replace features allowed you to: A) skip that particular find/replace from being made on an image page if the image was uploaded after a certain date and B) make that particular find/replace only if the image was uploaded before a certain date. This is needed for commons:Commons:Bots/Requests/DrilBot and User:DrilBot here to fully help with the image license migration. Specifically, images can be relicensed only if they were uploaded to a Wikimedia project before August 1, 2009, and if it was published elswhere under the GFDL it must have been uploaded to Wikimedia before November 1, 2008. This would probably be best as plugin if possible, but I know zilch about C# so can't really make it myself. If AWB could be made to detect image upload dates for find/replace in this way, then DrilBot could relicense images tagged as (non-self) {{GFDL}} and can continue relicensing images after August 1, 2009. Thank you! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 19:56, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
Do you still need this? If yes, what on an image page shows the upload date (i.e. how would a user find it?). Off that I can write a C# function to find it or return whether it's before/after some fixed date. You could then write a custom module to update the template parameters based on the returned answer. Rjwilmsi12:52, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
When a page can't be saved right away due to timeout, connection problems, or whatever, the page is reloaded. This is a problem because any manual edits which were made are discarded when the page reloads. If I make more than a few trivial edits, I've gotten in the habit of copying the page text so I can paste it in the event this happens. I believe this only applies to the API versions. I'm currently using SVN 4973.
On the plus side, this version does seem to solve a problem in older versions; if you tried to save when it had timed out, AWB would just move along to the next page as though the page had been saved, without any indication that it really hadn't been. Hopefully a solution can be found which fixes the current problem while keeping the old one solved too. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM01:01, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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I don't really consider AWB a tool for making significant manual edits to a page – rather to make the same or very similar edits to a number of pages. Still, others could use it this way. Rjwilmsi09:37, 15 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I want this feature badly ;-). I frequently encounter this problem. Rjwilmsi, talking about significant edits, edits like balancing unbalanced brackets, correcting a unique typo, etc. could still be saved. Thanks. --Siddhant (talk) 20:19, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have also had this problem often. It only happens when it has the worst possible effect – after I've worked on something for about an hour. The way I use AWB is explained here. Art LaPella (talk) 23:02, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've been able to avoid losing my edits by quickly copying the entire text of the page when I see that AWB is restarting. With the cursor in the edit box, Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C will select the entire text and copy it. After the reload, Ctrl-A, Ctrl-V will select the entire (reloaded) text and replace it with what you copied. HTH. --Auntof6 (talk) 03:10, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that AWB isn't for major edits, but even making a few minor edits takes a minute or two. And it really pisses me of when I don't make it in the 30 seconds (or whatever) and my work gets erased. Why is this reloading needed at all? Debresser (talk) 22:01, 26 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree - every now and then, in the course of performing some routine edits, I'll come across an article with a lot more problems and spend some time fixing them, and it's infuriating to see all that hard work lost because of a timeout/reload. Like Auntof6, I've got into the habit of manually saving any large article before I hit the Save button, so that I can recover my work if necessary - but it would be much better if AWB could remember my changes and reinstate them, rather than just reload the original page. Colonies Chris (talk) 23:55, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Provide a separate checkbox for "Incorrect phrases" during Regex typo fixing
Well there's some disagreement as to whether phrases should be included with typo fixing. I'm leaning towards the no side, but some people like them. So I figured the best of both worlds could be included with a further check box. I would say suggest default to off. –xenotalk12:39, 14 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
FYI, someone at the discussion was concerned that Fronds was in its infancy and thus wouldn't be as effective as it being built into the typo matrix. –xenotalk13:17, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Rather than terminate the operation, AWB should just wait for, say, half an hour, when maxlag is exceeded 10 times in a row and give it another shot. –xenotalk21:32, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if you guys killed the maxlag features with fire or whatever, but I rather liked being able to "let my bot loose" as it were and let maxlag act as a leash. So maybe having maxlag as an option to enable would be cool. –xenotalk15:00, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Check boxen to allow running GF before AND after custom fixes
Check boxen to allow running GF before AND after custom fixes
Added in revision
Doing some work where GF makes malformed items recognisable to my regexs, so I want it first, but they can also create self-piped targets. I know I can fix these by adding a regex to do what GF is doing, or running twice, but would be nice to only have to tick a box. RichFarmbrough, 20:36, 31 August 2009 (UTC).[reply]
Possibility made lists with parameters which may by used in substitutions on replacement operations.
That possibility must be have:
window with possibility add new parameters or change it name and order, to the list and input it values to each list members;dupe similar requests above
possibility of importing lists from wiki tables (when is made import from file, or from wiki page with table (columns order -> parameters order);
possibilities of making list from the more then one category can include parameter with value in where is this page was found;
possibility of use that parameters in substitutions, by using exp. %%p1%%, where p1 is parameter name,
Add an option to sort a list while disregarding the namespace, so that a mainspace article would appear immediately before the same title in other namespaces. For example, instead of sorting as Article1, Article2, Talk:Article1, Talk:Article2, it would be Article1, Talk:Article1, Article2, Talk:Article2. This could be in the right click menu and/or the list filter. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM00:18, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Another possibility would be to have an "Add talk page" option to take a list of articles and add the corresponding talk page right after each article. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM20:22, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
I'm working on sets of pages where I fix/add DEFAULTSORT and also work on the corresponding talk page, adding WPBiography if missing and fixing/adding the listas and living parameters. It would be very convenient to have the pages sorted together so I can manually apply any nonstandard DEFAULTSORT which I find in the article to the listas, and also determine the living status from the article to fill in for WPBiography. Or, if I find that the article's not a bio, I can immediately skip the talk page. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM00:18, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This is such a useful feature for me that I wrote a simple external program to do it and I paste the list into AWB. But it would still be very convenient for AWB to do this. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM20:22, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
AWB seems to support the automatic addition of conversion templates for temperatures. This is often misused by users unaware about the difference between an absolute temperature and a temperature difference. Temperature differences cannot properly be converted with Template:convert, and come out completely wrong. Prompting the user and asking for explicit confirmation might improve the situation. It might even be possible to build som AI into the tool and check for "difference" in the surrounding text to give a stronger message to the user. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:28, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
AWB doesn't ever automatically insert {{convert}}. Users must have their own find & replace rules to do this. I suggest you contact the editors concerned directly. Thanks Rjwilmsi10:09, 24 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Understood. But this happens with several users. Maybe AWB could offer a smarter convert so that fewer users write their own naive macros? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:32, 29 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Don't remove trailing parentherical elements of DEFAULTSORT, indeed do add them
When creating DEAULTSORT AWB does not include any trailing expressions in parenthesis. This is usually harmless but is occasionally wrong. Leaving them is always right, and at worst harmelss. RichFarmbrough, 09:01, 5 September 2009 (UTC). 09:01, 5 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Parenthetical terms are only removed where AWB considers the article to be about a person. This was inline with WP:COP until you changed the wording in July. Where was the discussion about your change? Rjwilmsi09:33, 5 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Until now the common practice was to remove disambiguators. AFAI, if the listas entry is the same the sorting will be done by the pagename, so no randomness occurs-- Magioladitis (talk) 10:28, 5 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately that is not so. The list above is not made up. I believe that the entries retain their sort order as if they had no key, which I believe is the order they were added to the category. RichFarmbrough, 13:41, 6 September 2009 (UTC).[reply]
Modify ListComparer so that can give only the list with the common articles in the middle. This will allow editors who care only for the list in the middle (lb3) to save some time. This is not difficult. We just have to figure out where to add this option. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:45, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I originally made this suggestion at WP:BOTREQ, but it didn't get a lot of support. So, I'm suggesting it here so it can be included in the cleanup function of the app.
There are many templates that have content that should use en dashes instead of hyphens as per WP:DASH. Unfortunately, many editors are not aware of this and use hyphens. Obviously, going through and replacing all instances of hyphens with en dashes is not practical as the bot would have to understand the context. However, for some of these templates, I believe that if we can specify which parameters should always have en dashes, then a bot/AWB can be programmed to ensure en dashes are always used. I have gone through many templates and documented parameters that, I believe, should always have en dashes. A lot of these parameters, also contain text but I could not identify a situation where a hyphen would be used. Most of these are parameters that have scores, win-loss records or date/year ranges. I originally proposed this for sports templates only, but have expanded the scope to all applicable templates.—NMajdan•talk13:47, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Templates and their corresponding parameters that should always have en dashes instead of hyphens
There will be too many false positives to drop this into AWB general fixes but I can provide a simple custom module to use with AWB to do it semi-automatically. Rjwilmsi21:14, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think that will work. But, if I may ask, can you expand on the false positive reasoning? As I said in my description, those parameters in those templates should only have en dashes, none should contain hyphens.—NMajdan•talk13:29, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, so we will start with a custom module for you to run. If it goes well we can add it to AWB a bit later. That way what does into AWB will have been well tested. Rjwilmsi13:56, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Found an issue. On the A.W. Shepard article, the CoachYears parameter has the value [[1892]]-[[1893]]. The module tried to replace it with [[1892]][[1892]]–[[1893]][[1893]]. Granted, having the years wikilinked is against MoS guidelines.—NMajdan•talk16:28, 13 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ha. It doesn't like HTML comments (<!-- -->). These can be skipped when manually ran, but for a bot, can it be told to look for this syntax and exclude it? I'll keep reporting bugs as I run into them. I've modified over 30 articles and have ran the module against close to 100 articles in the category Category:College football head coaches.—NMajdan•talk17:01, 13 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Still having both issues. But it looks like I need to wait for a new AWB snapshot, so I'll wait until one is released and will retest both issues and let you know here. Thanks again for the assistance.—NMajdan•talk01:05, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Downloaded snapshot 6465. It appears to be handling HTML comment code a bit better, but still messes up. Its replacing with <!–– ––>. I can fix these with a manuel edit, but would it be possible to modify the script to look for nearby exclamation marks and greater/less than signs? The issue with the wikilinks appears to be resolved. Thanks!—NMajdan•talk16:38, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Most of this has been overcome by events with either the Infobox cleanup project Magio was working on or the Template redirect page or other additions. I recommend it be archived. --Kumioko (talk) 01:51, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean? In the case given, sometimes people link a word so that the definition can be understood, i.e. that an embossed surface is a raised surface, not necessarily embossing of a certain type (like the articles on the disambig page). Wizard191 (talk) 01:15, 22 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I grabs it, but adds "Wiktionary" to the variants, instead of wikt:word. If this feature is considered, I suggest that it be done smartly: if {{wiktionary}} was used, wikt:word is added to the variants instead of "Wiktionary". --Muhandes (talk) 08:58, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I know that a lot of logic has been added to AWB in recent months to clean up the order of things that appear in articles to make article structure more consistent and to follow the MOS. I would like to suggest some additional logic to make sure that the start box/end box template groups appear in the correct location. I have seen frequent articles were this appears below categories, before references, in see also sections, etc. An example can be seen in Joseph R. West. In this article it appears as sandwich meat in between the References and External links sections.--Kumioko (talk) 20:56, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I imagine there is a better way but I am not as good at regex as you all are but this seems to work good as long as the article doesnt have a multisection reference. In which case you have to tell it to ignore sections with more than 2 ==. I hope this helps. --Kumioko (talk) 11:27, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Allow advanced find and replace entries to be marked minor
Allow advanced find and replace entries to be major or minor to work with the new option to "skip if only minor replacement made". –xenotalk22:24, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It is quite laborious copying the regex to the active screen from the test regex page. I would like a button on the testing page that will put the regex into the active find and replace page on the next available row, and automatically open the active active find and replace page ready for approval by clicking "done". Snowman (talk) 21:15, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
You can do that in reverse. If you go via the FaR, and right click and move to regex tester (not sure on the specifics), you can move it to the tester, edit it, and move it back... —Reedy21:18, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I will look for that - I have not been looking at what was available in the right click menu. When I have needed to test a complicated regex I have started writing it on the tester, and there is no indication of how to transfer it easily to find and replace. Snowman (talk) 21:35, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In the diff area, break up the display of long uninterrupted strings of characters such as URLs. These long strings annoyingly stretch everything out, requiring horizontal scrolling, and making it much more inconvenient and difficult to compare the versions. The diff area should always be evenly split right down the middle with no horizontal scrolling required. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM23:43, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
Yes, please! That is easily the most annoying problem with AWB. Seems like it could just be set to insert soft line-breaks after forward slashes.—Chowbok☠20:32, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
When you double-click on a paragraph to undo a change in the diff window, the window goes back to the top after undoing. This can be quite inconvenient when undoing multiple paragraphs towards the bottom of a long page. Would it be possible to add an option to return to the old line in the diff window (or as close as possible) after you do a double-click undo? Hope this makes sense.—Chowbok☠16:28, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
I have also noticed that in addition to this if I make a change in addition to those being suggested by AWB, double clicking will eliminate any manual edits I have made. --Kumioko (talk) 16:32, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm... I checked-out & compiled revision 5036 and I'm still seeing this behavior. Is there something I need to set?—Chowbok☠21:07, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The fix which was implemented deals with the focus in the edit box rather than the requested diff window. I agree that the original request would be very useful, but I also realize that it's much more complicated since the double clicked paragraph probably won't be displayed, so it would have to find the closest paragraph which would be displayed. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM20:56, 13 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I made a duplicate request below. The clicked paragraph may or may not be displayed, depending on how many automated changes there are; but if not, focusing on the next (rather than previous) paragraph that is displayed would be a nice feature. That way one could go through the diffs one by one from top to bottom, eliminating those which aren't desired.
Note that if you click the 'diff' button to fix any manual changes (resolved request above), that also takes you back to the top of the diff page. It would be nice if both actions (dbl click on paragraph and manual edit plus 'diff' button) would keep you where you are on the page so you can continue editing uninterrupted. — kwami (talk) 22:04, 21 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Display category information in the "Page statistics" box when a Category: page is displayed; by "category information" I just mean the statistics returned by api.php?action=query&prop=categoryinfo&titles=Category:Foo
Added in revision
Ability to resize either list window for at Make List or in List comparer, or a scrollable window
When working on wikisource pages, especially in the Page: namespace, the page names are very long, and only vary in the last few characters (looooong filename.djvu/\d{1,3}). Ability to be able to expand the size of one of the list screens to see the whole pagename, or even to be able to have a scroll bar. This is necessary as pages don't sort well due to /1, /10, /100, /101 ... /199, /2, /20, /200, /201 ... and can be a selection of pages upon which to be worked. billinghurstsDrewth14:32, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
After manual edits, automatic summary information from RegexTypoFix, Find and replace, user modules, etc. is wiped out. However, the original, full edit summary is still available in the Edit Summary tab. If users were able to edit this summary, they could annotate their manual changes, remove portions pertaining to undone changes, or use it as is.
(I have on occasion copied the summary from the tab to the Summary field and edited it there, but that's inconvenient, causes problems if I forget to switch my summary back to my default, and clogs up my list of summaries, as it gets added to the list automatically.)
Unless I have missed something, when saving the settings there is no notification of the name of the file being saved when a settings file is being overwritten. Perhaps the box that appears could include the name of the settings file about to be saved. Snowman (talk) 21:56, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
After using several settings in one session it is useful to have a memo of which settings are currently in use at the time the settings are saved. The default file is the one in current use, so this can change. After using several settings there is currently no memo of the file name when it is saved. I think it should always be clear what file is being overwritten. Snowman (talk) 22:48, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Save as will show you in the window. Save will save the currently loaded file (displayed in the program header). Default, well, saves to the default file.. —Reedy22:51, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
File menu then "Save settings as" just says "Replace existing file?" in a pop-up box. A memo would also be useful when using more than one version of AWB at the same time, or when saving some regexes at different stages of writing them. Snowman (talk) 22:55, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The file name appears at the top of the edit box only after the file is saved, and then it disappears on starting using AWB abain. Surly it would be more user friendly if the file name appeared in the pop-up box. Snowman (talk) 11:10, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you have a deep directory structure you do not actually see the file name, but you see part of the path to the file (and perhaps only part of the file name). You might only see part of "C:\Users\long name here for the name of a directory\Documents\settings file.xml." I also had quite a descriptive long file name of the settings file. I launched AWB set-up files from the directory to which it was downloaded and this is the default file arrangement on my system. Snowman (talk) 12:26, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Rather than submit several individual changes I am going to submit them at once.
I suggest adding a check box under find and replace that will allow a change to be applied to talk pages only. Currently users have to either save it as a separate file or check and uncheck items as wanted.
Can functionality be added to AWB to convert links with ship names like USS Ship name (DD-123) to the ship template?
Do you work with lists that contain both articles and talk pages? Why not separate them?
It seems a plugin is needed for that.
This would be usefull but the functionality of {{Portalbox}} is a bit weird at the moment. I would expect something like the WikiProject Banner Shell instead of having to add the name of the image used and the portal's name manually.
I think the subject is too narrow. How many articles transclude the ship template and need maintance? (It's a real question. If you have an estimate please write it). -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:22, 2 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure to be honest but it exceeds the 25000 limit of AWB. Not only do ships have it, people have it, battles have it, cities where the ships are based out of, the companies that make the ships have it, there all over the place. Here is a link to the template. There are basically 6 scenarios to link for this template Template:USS. I am not necessarily trying to capture every single possibility but I think that we can make a big improvement. --Kumioko (talk) 14:00, 2 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The functionality mentioned here for combining portals has been done and the portal logic has been completely rewritten but the rest have not yet been done. If they cannot be done I recommend archiving this one but I left it and Ill let you decide to keep it or not. --Kumioko (talk) 01:51, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Allow more granular control of Preference "Enable logging"
Current status Editor launches AWB and get informed that there is that their version is disabled and has to download new version. They are asked to press Yes to update, No to do it manually or Cancel. Pressing yes results AWBUpdater to launch. AWPUpdater asks (again) if editor wants to update with a Yes/No.
Suggestion First box changes to Automatic/Manually/Cancel. If "Automatic" AWBUpdater is called with a parameter and no new window pops-up. Update starts. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:41, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've been working on some articles about some towns and villages in Switzerland. I've got a template that I want to use in the infobox and in the article. However, the template requires a number that is unique to each town/village. This number (called a SFOS number in the infobox) is at another place in the infobox. Is there a way that when I run AWB I can; 1) load this number into AWB 2)find and replace a line of text with the template format including this number from 1? I'm not very comfortable with programming or regular expressions, so any clear, basic help would be appreciated. Tobyc75 (talk) 16:16, 14 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
LOL, I was just about to file a similar feature request. Right now I am accomplishing this with a regex that matches the whole page (or as much of the page as necessary to find the values I need). Tobyc75 - give me an example edit and I can hack together something similar for you.
@Rjwilmsi - is there any kind of guidance anywhere on how to create a custom module for relative n00bs like myself and Tobyc75? –xenotalk15:03, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The first part of this suggestion is that I would like to suggest that a new tab be added to AWB between Edit box and History to view the Talk page of the article. The second part of this request is to allow both to be edited within the same instance of the edit. For example if AWB finds fixes on the article, the editor can then view the talk page, if necessary make changes and then when save is pressed it processes the article page first and then the talk page. This could also allow future logic to be added to AWB to do some comparison between the two if the editor decides they want to go down that road. For example, if the article page had a category for Living people and the talk page was missing the BLP tag (or potentially the WP Biography template) then AWB would add it. I realize that this change would not be a simple thing and would likely cause AWB to move slower so the user should have the option of doing this or not. Initially I think just adding the tab would be a good start. --Kumioko (talk) 19:13, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
This is another one I'd been rolling around in my head. The logic should be usable in the "if contains" and "if not contains" advanced find and replace regex. I.e.
if (article page contains) -stub}} then replace class= with class=stub
Certainly possible to add a preview of the talk page as a separate tab (though not sure I could do it myself). Rjwilmsi 14:10, 30 March 2010 (UTC):::Certainly possible to add a preview of the talk page as a separate tab (though not sure I could do it myself). Rjwilmsi14:10, 30 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Currently the edit box defaults to the top of the article even if the change AWB is recommending is at the bottom. I recommend changing AWB to default the edit box location to the line where the 1st recommended change occurs.
Currently information cannot be copied and posted from the AWB show change area. I believe it would be beneficial to allow copy paste from this especially when trying to document a possible error.
Allow users (or AWB) to specify a color to differentiate between manual user edit recommendations based on the find and replace function, changes made as part of a module or the general edits that AWB generates (maybe green, pink and orange). Currently AWB looks at a change as a change with no differentiation and frequently its difficult to determine where the change is coming from. I am going to throw myself under the bus as an example here. I have about 400 manual find and replace edits, I frequently use modules and sometimes have problems. In the cases where these problems occur its difficult sometimes to determine if its something I did or AWB. --Kumioko (talk) 18:38, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the quick response and sorry I guess using the end was a bad example. I frequently get edits that are at various points in the article and have to click on the edit box or scroll down to get to it. It would be much easier from an editors point of viwe anyway of AWB did that automatically. --Kumioko (talk) 19:26, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
For 2 you can already copy from the diff area by selecting text, right clicking and using the copy option, so that feature exists. For 1 I'm not clear what you mean by a "recommended" change, though yes, we could provide an option to focus the edit box on the line with the first non-whitespace change (ignoring the source of the change). For 3 it's theoretically possible but I think it would be hard to do – I would be disinclined to spend my time on it, as I think other features would be more beneficial to Wikipedia. Rjwilmsi14:09, 30 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks again, For 2, I tried to copy it and it didn't work. It might just because I am still using IE. For 3 I understand and for 1 thats exactly it. --Kumioko (talk) 14:43, 30 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note that trying to copy with Ctrl-c doesn't work, but right click/Copy does.
However, if pasting into the edit box, the pasted text displays in a different font (which I reported right after the change to the rich text box) and, more importantly, a new line is always inserted after the pasted text. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM22:09, 30 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The idea would be that if it contain a template (or any specific phrase) like {{Main word|Liking}}, where I have specified it is {{Main word|X}} it looks for, where X can be any set of string, it could open up the page of "Liking" and then add whatever I wish it to add to that page, typicly a link in a specific manner that I have already pretold it
I looked at some of this list and it appears that a number of them are User pages, tests, sandboxes and the like. Im not sure exactly what the purpose of this change is so I didn't want to remove them but I am skeptical about wether making changes to these would be wise. --Kumioko (talk) 17:05, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The AWB already apply subst in some templates, like this, in the "General Fix". But it dont work with some templates, like {{Aviso}}. I think this only works in some templates, or in templates that exists in the en.wiki. I would like to make it possible to customize this in each project. Currently we are making an script just for subst in templates, but by using a page in the project to list all the templates for the AWB it will be easier and will be used by everyone and in every edit.
In the diff window, we can copy text by selecting it and right-click->copy. The standard key Ctrl-C doesn't work, but should. AxelBoldt (talk) 19:32, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The ability to save and load AWB settings to/from a wiki file page would be helpful for publishing source code and collaborative development. –xenotalk04:11, 5 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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Do you mean a physical [[File:]] - Of course, using the relative file location will let you do it, with MaxSems warning... —Reedy14:47, 7 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the real reason is so that I don't have to email myself settings file back and forth between locations when I'm in the middle of a task. –xenotalk13:10, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Looking to know whether there was an efficiency to be able to filter (pre-parse) pages on their last edited date, eg. pre-parse can skip files edited before DATE-A
Background: On a project at enWS we are looking to update the style used on transcriptions, and after we have updated pages, we would only want to run the search on pages edited after the last cleanup. It is a link style cleanup so there is no ready other means to filter. billinghurstsDrewth14:57, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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Trivial, yup. PageInfo gives us the last edited timestamp. If someone can suggest a good place to add this, and what to do about date formats etc, I'll get this added. —Reedy06:31, 24 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In the 'Filter' there is a tick box option called 'Sort alphabetically'. I suggest that we turn that into three option buttons labelled: 'Do not sort', 'Sort alphabetically', and 'Sort by date of last edit'.
It would also be useful to have date fields labelled 'Remove articles with last edit after' and 'Remove articles with last edit before'
At the same time, I'd review the 'Keep alphabetized' option in the 'List menu'. I'm not sure what it does and perhaps it could be removed or have another option relating to the new chronological sort.
Could AWB remove the "dateformat=" parm from uses of template:cite web? It already recognizes it as invalid, and it removes "language = English" when it sees it (at least in the English wikipedia). I've seen "dateformat=mdy", and I think I've seen "dateformat=dmy" (with different numbers of spaces around the equal sign, and before and after the whole parm). There may be other templates where it could also be removed, but this is the one I saw today. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:12, 15 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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Yes it can, but first please point me to a discussion where this has been agreed as wanted. Otherwise somebody else will complain later. Rjwilmsi21:40, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's not enough that "dateformat" isn't a parm for that template? There hasn't been such a discussion that I know of. Do you happen to know where the discussion(s) is/are for other parameters that currently get removed (so I can look at them for examples)? Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:53, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In the "Alerts" area, could the "delink selection" be made available when there aren't any multiple wiki-links? I use the "Find" feature with regexes to find things that I'd like to unlink, and being able to use the delink button would be very helpful. --Auntof6 (talk) 01:18, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice if we had an option to move an associated talk page as we do when we move manually. I'm leaving a bunch of talk pages at redirects because they're too time consuming to go back and do manually. — kwami (talk) 23:53, 5 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
AWB should support using more than one typo list on third-party wikis. Being able to specify from within AWB which lists are used (e.g. separate checkboxes for individual lists, and one "all lists" checkbox) may also be useful, but isn't central to this request. 「ダイノガイ 千?!」? · Talk⇒Dinoguy100021:02, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think this was rejected in the past. Bots finding deleted files used to comment them out. The reason is/was that this gives the chance for a recently deleted file to be reuploaded in a new version. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:17, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see the point in leaving articles messed up. I'm currently working on a 13k list of deleted/non-existent file links. Leaving an article with red links does not encourage what your trying to do. βcommand22:50, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think these have to be done manually (not automatically). Redlinks are the main way of diagnosing erroneous deletions (like when commons deletes a file that needs to be uploaded locally). — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:05, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I tend to agree with CBM. We already have the ability to remove or comment out a given file name, which means the AWB user has determined that the file has become a redlink for good reason. Doing this in bulk may not helpful. Rjwilmsi12:17, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There are currently a number of articles that have multiple individual Common Category links on the same article. For example Body painting has two; One for bodypainting and one for face painting. I would like to recommend adding logic to AWB to combine these into the Common cat multi template rather than have two individual ones. --Kumioko (talk) 17:12, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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An example of how is done?
No problem thanks for the quick reply. Using the article I mention above; Here is what the article looks like with multiple cats [11] and here is what it looks like with the multiple common categories combined into a single commons cat multi template. [12]--Kumioko (talk) 17:30, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I can do that, but why would this be a bot request over just an AWB logic edit? I ask this question mostly for my own knowledge so in the future I can distinguish the difference between edits that are more appropriately done as a bot request and an AWB logic change. --Kumioko (talk) 17:30, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Usually if we have an amount of a lot of articles have a problem: We reduce it by using a bot and we use AWB to keep it low. The best is a combination of bot and AWB. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:44, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ok makes sense thanks, question, is there a way to find out how many articles has more than one? I have found and fixed about 20 or 30 in the last month as I made other edits but I have no idea how many there are out there. It may be a fairly small problem already. --Kumioko (talk) 19:39, 11 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I appreciate you taking a look at that for me. One of these days ill have to get someone to show me how to do that myself. After doing some research into the various different templates for Commons, linking to other wikis such as wictionary and Sister projects there seems to be quite a confusing and redundant network of templates. If you take a look at Magioladitis's talk page you'll get an idea of what we have been talking about. That sounds like a fairly small number at least. --Kumioko (talk) 16:07, 13 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
When I make my list using the source "What links here" and add What links to a particular disambiguation page, it includes pages that contain {{dn|wikilink}}. However, those pages are skipped by AWB. For example, you can try this by trying to disambiguate APC - notice that it will include Adenocarcinoma in your list because the article contains {{dn|DCC}}, but AWB won't prompt you to disambiguate it. (If you have enabled RegexTypoFix, it will prompt you to change "etc" to "etc.") Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:44, 13 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to suggest a couple of further improvements if possible.
Also, would it be possible to include logic similar to that used by wikilinks to take you to the that line if clicked. Currently it lists the alerts but its sometimes difficult to locate the problem the user is alerted too.
It would be nice if AWB could be set somehow to search for specific ones, for example if I wanted to search for Dead links I could select that alert, perhaps under options somwhere and AWB would let me know when it finds one.
The next is kind of a high hope but I think it would be useful if there was a way we could add our own Alerts in much the same way as the find and replace but rather than find it and replace it, it will just let us know if there is one. The idea I had was to add the ability under the find and replace Normal Settings option and maybe the advanced option to Alert Only as maybe a checkbox. Sorta like how we identify it as a minor edit. Then when AWB finds it it shows it as an Alert rather than process it as a change.
When working with talk pages could an alert be added to notify the user if the talk page is empty or if there are no wikiproject banners present. Currently if AWB is being used to scan talk pages for problems and articles talk page is empty or contains no banners it simply moves on. --Kumioko (talk) 15:09, 24 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In Esperanto, there are two templates which editors feel should not be separated from the categories by a blank line, because they tie in closely with the categories, and have nothing directly to do with the article. These are 'vivtempo' & 'havenda artikolo'. Can these be added in as exceptions? See comment on my talk page here. — kwami (talk) 23:58, 23 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest adding an option to the options menu item to enable/disable talk page fixes. This could be similar to the option for "Do not apply WP:MOS fixes. I can foresee that there may be occassions when it may be undesirable to process these while performing other edits. --Kumioko (talk) 15:23, 24 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Good to know, I didn't realize the talk page fixes were lumped into genfixes. I had thought it might be useful but now that I know that I can understand it wouldn't be as easy to do. --Kumioko (talk) 15:33, 24 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Feature doesn't quite exist, there might be a situation where a worklist would contain both mainspace and talk pages, where one or the other type of general fix was desirable but not both. –xenotalk12:57, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
When making a list, it would be neat if by adding a code, like "&from=fe", AWB would start the list from the letters "fe". Fore example "Category:Living people&from=fe" starts the list from "fe" then "fc" etc. This can help in very large lists. Sole Soul (talk) 13:25, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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Prevent the article from being saved if a condition exists
An option that would prevent an article from being saved if a rule is violated. So if the Save button is pressed and a condition exists that violates a predefined rule then the article is not saved and an error dialog is displayed (or the article is skipped and the occurrence is logged).
Added in revision
This could be a plug-in I guess. It would create a additional rules dialog analogous to advanced settings. The dialog would allow the user to enter some number of rules (regular expressions) paired with an error messages. The text would be evaluated when the Save button is pressed. If a condition exists in the text which violates one of the rules then:
The save is aborted.
The first instance of violating text is highlighted as with the highlight errors option in the Options Menu.
An error dialog is displayed containing the paired error message.
If in bot mode, or at the users discretion, the page is skipped and the error message entered in the skipped log.
This process is repeated until the text does not violate any of the rules.
Perhaps a check box could be added to the rules dialog that would prevent saving when an error exists of the type highlighted by the existing highlight errors option. This might also include the option of skipping and logging the error type.
The highlight color should probably be different than the red used by the highlight errors option. Some striking color that could not be confused with red but does not obscure the text.
The motivation is that it is possible to detect situations that are ambiguous and need human attention. In the past I've created rules that inserted brackets that created an open bracket error. On re-parsing the bracket errors where highlighted and allowed me to handle the case manually. It's a laborious process that is prone to failure.
The interface might not have to change much. Maybe add a rule type to advanced settings that implements the functionality. –droll[chat]03:29, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Typos tab of edit box: include the typo rule name as first column, alongside existing find & replace columns
Although I personnally like the idea of moving this template to the top of the article directly below talk as well, Wikipedia:Talk page layout reflects placement of it as below the Talk header. This is just an info paper and not a "policy" but I wanted to mention it so if we do add logic for this we should also update this documentation. As a side note, this template could also be merged into Talk header as a parameter thereby eliminating another limited use template. Per Jarrys template use counter] there are only 2177 transclutions of {{notaforum}} of which at least 520 (AWB will only allow me to pull in the first 25000 talk header articles so its likely higher) already have both the talk header and the Notaforum templates. --Kumioko (talk) 14:30, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It would be useful to have a language setting for AWB so you could tell it whether the page is written in British English, American English etc so it could fix, for example, "color" in an article about England as "color" is not a word in British English. This way it could standardise the spelling of an article without having to manually (and tediously) search through the hyperthetical article about England that an American user has edited to find all of his spelling mistakes. McLerristarr (Mclay1) (talk) 03:36, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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Add a vertical scroll bar to Normal settings find and replace window + 2 more
Can a vertical scroll bar be added to the Normal find and replace window. Some of my find and replaces are fairly long and I find it somewhat time consumning to constantly resize it to see the whole find and replace filter. --Kumioko (talk) 15:20, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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Auto focus Normal settings find and replace columns
I would also like to suggest some logic to auto focus the width of the find and replace columns to the widest non empty text. --Kumioko (talk) 15:20, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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Allow multiple Contains/Not contains elements to be defined for Advanced find and replace
Currently under the advanced setting find and replace window only one Contains or Not contains can be specified for a find and replace edit. I would like to suggest that multiple Contains or Not contains entries be allowed. For example I can currently create a find and replace with a contains of Category:Confederate Army general but I cannot (at least anyway I know of) create one with a contains of [Category:Marine Corps Medal of Honor recipients and [Category:American military personnel of World War I. --Kumioko (talk) 15:20, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible to improve the "wiki text search" facility by adding an option to search by namespace? When searching for phrases such as "July 3", at least 10% of the 1000 pages selected tend to be non-mainspace, for example. BencherliteTalk08:37, 28 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
At the moment, the auto-skip options allow you to skip if no fixes need to made, then all the other skip options are listed as sub-options for that option. But the other options do not require "skip if no fixes" to be ticked, so they are in no way sub-options. Also, the default setting is for "skip if only general fixes" to be ticked but not "skip if no fixes". "skip if not fixes" should be on by default when AWB opens. McLerristarr (Mclay1) (talk) 01:55, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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Some people want to make manual changes to pages and use AWB because it enables them to open lists of pages faster than a normal browser. I already disagreed with making "skip if only general fixes" as default. I expect the people who install the program to know what it is about. Anyway, since what is default makes no difference I am good either way. I expect that editors save their own preferences as default. -- Magioladitis (talk) 06:39, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Handle the initial directory for "Open settings" and "Save settings as". Either allow users to specify a default directory, or start in AWB's directory. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM21:41, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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I use many different settings files, so this would be very useful to save a little directory navigation. (It would be especially helpful when running more than one instance of AWB simultaneously, as "Recent settings" only works initially for the first. This specific issue may only be relevant with snapshots which are debug builds; I'm currently using SVN 6872.) MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM21:41, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
When AWB adds a banner, such as {{Orphan}}, to the top of an article it automatically puts a blank line between the new banner and the next line, even if the next line is another banner, such as {{Unreferenced}}. Article banners do not need spaces between them. McLerristarr (Mclay1) (talk) 10:07, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Multiple hyphens should be removed, especially "--", which is used a lot. In "text--text" it should be replaced with an em dash and in "text -- text" it should be replaced with an en dash. But it should work for more than two hyphens as well. McLerristarr (Mclay1) (talk) 10:19, 2 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"text -- text" is often used when the intent is to add an em dash, not an en dash (i.e., the intent is to have an em dash with spaces around it). In such cases it should of course convert to an em dash with the spaces removed. I do not see how a program could tell which correction to make. DGG ( talk ) 17:36, 15 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. I feel that the intent of "text -- text" is to have some kind of dash longer than a hyphen which is set off by the spaces. This is a stylistic choice, and in my AWB settings, I attempt to respect the original writer's intentions by replacing unspaced instances with em dashes and spaced ones with en dashes. See WP:EMDASH. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM18:35, 15 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
They put data in order to add extra information before the parentheses that contains the local name closes. I am not sure how we do it in other cases. Do we have two pairs of parentheses one next to the other. Btw, "usually" in this case is equal to "always with probability 1" i.e. in all the cases I observed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:01, 2 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
More than four full stops (e.g. Hello.....) should be deleted and reduced to just three or four. I cannot think of an example in which it would be OK to have more than four full stops. McLerristarr (Mclay1) (talk) 01:41, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why is the "Fix excess whitespace" feature not done automatically by AWB as it does everything else? If the feature can be altered so that it does not remove the second space above a stub template, then it could be included with the rest of the AWB changes. McLerristarr (Mclay1) (talk) 01:29, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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It would also require other tweaks as well. It could be separated into automatic changes that fix mistakes and far too much whitespace (it could be ticked as an option like Regex) and manual changes that don't really improve the article just remove spaces (like before bullets). McLerristarr / Mclay111:24, 27 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The automatic title bolding, that bolds the title of the article at the start of the article, needs to work for titles that are italicised, resulting in 5 apostrophes around the title. McLerristarr (Mclay1) (talk) 05:17, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I only mean for titles that are already italicised before AWB works on the article. It would be impossible to program it to know which articles needed italicised titles. McLerristarr (Mclay1) (talk) 03:24, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why does AWB do this? I can think of reasons why you may want to sort the article by only the first word. Can somebody please remove this seemingly pointless and possibly disruptive feature? McLerristarr (Mclay1) (talk) 10:00, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but not exactly the same. What I question is if it's almost the same, why did someone programme AWB to change it in the first place? There could be a situation where you would want an article only sorted by part of the full title because of the sorting of another article. I think it's just a pointless feature and should be removed. McLerristarr|Mclay113:00, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why want to do partial sorting? This feauture was added because some editors couldn't bother to add a page's full name and/or a DEFAULTSORT. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:01, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There could be a case where, for example, you had "Books on The Beatles" sorted in "Category:The Beatles" as just "Books" so that "Books on John Lennon" sorted after it rather than before it. That's not a real example but there could be something similar. If a user thinks that that's the best way of sorting it, I see no reason to change it; not like this anyway. McLerristarr|Mclay103:52, 21 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
But my point is that it isn't always making stuff better. For example, my above example. Sometimes you may want to do that. I don't see why you'd really hate that and want to delete it. McLerristarr / Mclay105:02, 28 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I am workign with DEFAULTSORT for a long time. I could write down tenths of cases where this feature worked perfect, I have no examples where it didn't. --Magioladitis (talk) 18:12, 29 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, there are many things that AWB could do that would be useful a lot of the time but not useful some of the time. This is one of them. Could this feature perhaps be a separate option that could be turned off? McLerristarr / Mclay103:19, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Allow previewing of image files instead of just a preview of the image description page. Image file preview may also include information about the file itself, e.g. file type & size, resolution, file duplicates, etc. Spebi (talk) 07:08, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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Is this something that AWB is capable of? Would it be better suited as a plugin or other? It's a feature that could really come in handy on my wiki. Could someone give me an indication as to whether or not it is possible? Spebi (talk) 09:50, 29 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In the Find & Replace screen, Find column, there is a box that when touched sorts the list of finds. In many cases, the usefulness of the list is destroyed if it is sorted; entries must all be re-keyed. It would be very helpful to have an option the AWB user could set so that the sort box would not be presented for a particular list Hmains (talk) 19:09, 28 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
On the find & replace panel, you can mark a row and use the right mouse button to bring up an options panel. On this panel, you can insert a new row. It would be helpful to have a field here to key a 'number' which would insert the indicated number of rows, not just one row. At the same location, it would be helpful to have a 'copy' function, not just an insert function, again with a 'number' so you can copy the marked row the number of times. This would help reduce the amount of repetitive keying now necessary when slight variations in a row entry are needed to handle all the desired changes. Hmains (talk) 19:20, 28 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In the Find & Replace panel, I make some changes and then realize I don't want those changes. So I go to the 'x' at the top right corner of the Find & Replace box. I am surprised to find that my changes get saved even though I never pushed the 'Done' button. There should be a way to cancel out my just-made changes, and I don't want to delete my entire list! Hmains (talk) 19:28, 28 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to second this request. More than once, I have tried to change the first F&R rule and accidentally clicked on a heading cell just above it, thus unintentionally sorting the rules into an unusable order. I then had two unpleasant choices: save the trashed list of rules after trying to restore order, or not save the settings file, scrapping all incremental rule changes that I have made and tested since I last saved the settings. I suggest dropping the "Done" button and adding "Apply" and "Cancel" buttons. This could also help to resolve another feature request, "On exit, check for changes to settings and query whether user wants to save the changes" (q.v.). Christhe spelleryack15:12, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In 'Find & Replace', provide that changes will not be made inside of quotation marks, "xxxxx". Find & Replace does not make changes inside quote templates, but often (not always) makes changes inside quotation mark pairs. Of course, quotations should not be changed in any way by AWB or anything else. This could be made part of the 'ignore templates, refs, links, etc' option or added as an additional (not replacement) option Hmains (talk) 19:41, 28 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That does not occur for me. If you'd like me to investigate please post your AWB settings file to a sandbox, and suggest a mainspace page where quoted material is incorrectly affected. Thanks Rjwilmsi07:50, 29 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I am sorry I have no idea how to post a settings file to a sandbox. The test article is Kikuchi clan. The only setting I have is to change from 'twelfth century' to '12th century', with no quotes, with the ignore templates option on and with no other special settings--mostly just the defaults provided by AWB. Hmains (talk) 17:16, 29 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, a long quote. I had set a limit of 500 characters for text within quotation marks, so rev 7041 increase that limit to 2000. You should find any quote less than 500 characters is already covered. Rjwilmsi20:43, 29 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What do you think about text in italics text. Generally, these are the names of objects such as books and should not be changed by AWB either. See Chersonesos Taurica, first item in section "References and further reading" for example. Hmains (talk) 21:26, 29 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have some related questions:
1. Does this option apply if the code is in a module rather than in Find&Replace?
2. Could there be an option for avoiding text within single quotes?
3. Could there be an option for avoiding text that is indented e.g. by a colon?
Regards Lightmouse (talk) 21:15, 29 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
1, Yes, whenever HideMore is called. 2, single curly quotes are already matched, if we match on a single straight quote we'll match on apostrophes. 3, already done in HideMore. Rjwilmsi07:58, 30 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. That's very good to hear. I've used HideMore in the past and plan on using it again. I couldn't find a complete list of what it does.
Is the HideMore source code and/or documentation available to view?
Would it be possible to have Hidemore as a checkbox option for module users?
I didn't know the single quote character problem related to apostrophes. That's interesting. Most (if not all) quotes have a non-word character on one side of the single quote. Most (there are exceptions) apostrophes have a word character on both sides. I'd rather have an occasional miss than a false positive. Could we use that distinction for super-cautious editing? Lightmouse (talk) 10:35, 30 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Source code is linked from Awb main page. HideMore can be called in a custom module. I'll check how well it's documented. Rjwilmsi08:09, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It wouldn't be super-cautious it would be wrong, for example
The president said 'Moses' bullrushes would be preserved in a museum.' he later added 'Next to Jesus' un-seamed garment, in the Presidents' library.' He was speaking in the 'Adan Governorate, where Moses' bullrushes' remains had been found.
Here various levels of nativity would have various levels of fail - i.e. quoted bits seem unquoted and vice versa. This case can be solved correctly however by the following rules:
.' is a closing quote
\w' is never an opening quote
All closing quotes have a corresponding opening quote.
All quotes are either terminated in .' or preceded or followed with a saying verb (asked, added, commented, said etc.)
However it rapidly becomes more difficult after that, some cases will be truly ambiguous.
Good points. Based on those, and thinking out loud:
A quote can only be closed if it is open.
Treat \W'\w as an open quote. We contrast a non-word char on the left with a word char on the right. For example, He said: 'blah blah blah ... False positives may occur due to apostrophes, as suggested above.
Treat \w'\W as a close quote. We contrast a word char on the left with a non-word char on the right. It is not an open quote. For example, ... blah blah blah'[1] to the press. False positives may occur due to apostrophes, as suggested above.
Treat \W'\W as a close quote. We see non-word chars on both sides. It is not an open quote. For example, ... blah blah blah?' to each candidate.
Treat \w'\w as neither an open quote nor a close quote. Treat it as an apostrophe.
Treat a new paragraph, or a paragraph end, visible to the reader as a close quote. A foreseeable issue is that multiparagraph quotes (e.g. a quote character at the beginning of paragraph no1 and at the end of paragraph no3) will be closed too soon. But that is better than the current situation where the quote isn't detected. The quote character at the end of paragraph no3 will have no effect.
Do not change text that is in italics (surrounded by a pair of single quotation marks). Generally, this includes the names of objects such as books and should not be changed by AWB. See Chersonesos Taurica, first item in section "References and further reading" for example. Hmains (talk) 02:33, 30 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It would be great if there was a way to not ignore comments if they are explicitly match by a regex. Meaning that if you include <!-- and/or --> in your search pattern, it's assumed you do want to edit any comments that matches (unless they themselves are in a comment). All other non-comment matching patterns would ignore the content of comments as usual (unless they were ran after a regex that uncommented a comment). As an example of it's potential usefulness, I have a couple regexes to remove some junk code from pages but since they are comments I can't run it automatically as my other regexes would edit the stuff inside comments I don't want it too. Rocket000 (talk) 00:48, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Not really. Even if they were split that wouldn't accomplish want I'm talking about. I want the "Ignore comments" ON, but be able to edit them if a pattern matches the comment itself (by including <!-- and/or -->; which is safe to do since there's no other reason you would search for that syntax if you didn't want to match). I don't see how separating the options would help (although I would like that feature too). Or did you mean that that those four generic options could be applied individually to each search pattern, like multiline, singleline, case-sensitive, etc. can be? That would work although, but kinda be option overload and I prefer it figuring it out itself. Rocket000 (talk) 13:49, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No changes inside single straight quotes. This request arises from discussion at the previous feature request: "no_changes_inside_quotation_marks". Most (if not all) quotes have a non-word character on one side of the single straight quote. Most (there are exceptions) apostrophes have a word character on both sides. I'd rather have an occasional miss than be beaten up for a false positive. Could we use a non-word character outside the single straight quote marks as a distinction for super-cautious editing? Lightmouse (talk)
I thought a general fix was an edit. This is not an edit, it's almost the opposite of an edit. I suspect it would need to be an option. Not everybody would need or want to use it. Lightmouse (talk) 13:56, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You may be referring to single curly quotes. I should have made clear that I'm talking about single straight quotes. Thanks. I've amended the text above. Lightmouse (talk) 14:06, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I note that HideMore is, by definition, an option for cautious editing. Perhaps the misses are rare enough that it could be added to HideMore for all users until we can selectively choose options. Lightmouse (talk) 14:08, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Provide checkbox options for module users e.g. use HideMore. There are lots of good options in Find & Replace that are useful for modules. It would be handy to use checkboxes rather than rediscover the code method each time and/or edit the module. Lightmouse (talk) 14:00, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It wasn't that the example wasn't clear. It was just an extra convenience, particularly when some runs are needed with it on and others with it off. As you say, doing it manually isn't hard. Thanks for considering it anyway. Feel free to archive this request. Lightmouse (talk) 15:28, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It would be helpful if coding (such as Javascript, C#, VB or C++) could be used under the advanced find and replace option of AWB perhaps with a check box like we do for regex. There are a lot of things you can do using code that cannot be done easily in awb without programming the module. Currently the only way to make edits using code is through a module but using the module you either end up with multiple items stacked together or you have to run them individually, manually commenting out the ones you dont want to use. If users could add them in the advanced find and replace it would be easier to comment them out, manage the code and separate edits into appropriate groups. --Kumioko (talk) 14:43, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
On the start pulldown, at the bottom right, there is a place where you can do a string find against material in the edit box. When the find is made, the top line of the edit box shows the line on which the string was found--the 'find line'. As often as not, I have to scroll up one line to get the context of the 'find line' It would be helpful if the find command itself would always point to the line above the 'find line' for context. This is pretty standard on other 'finds' that I have seen. Hmains (talk) 02:37, 2 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Alphabetical sort can be done by choice in more than one place. However, in the list comparer, alphabetical sort is not a choice, it is compulsory. Please can it be made into an option? Lightmouse (talk) 22:12, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I've met perl lovers before, there seems to be a lot of them. I could be one of them if I knew how to get started. Where would I put that script to run it? Lightmouse (talk) 22:03, 6 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's inconsistent. Lists are unsorted by default with a simple checkbox option to sort. I like the way you've done that but can't put a strong case for it. The feature either adds value and should exist throughout, or has no value and should be removed throughout. If it's difficult to implement consistently, then it's a judgement call for you guys. Not a big deal, feel free to decline. Lightmouse (talk) 10:15, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've been thinking of that today. If we implement the non-alphabetised version it would mean that we would have to check every element of the one list with every element the other and that's slooooooow. I guess if someone really needs this can do it alone by saving both lists and using external sort programs. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:29, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You can copy and sort the lists, do the comparison, then link the result back to the original lists. Algorithmically, that's easy (and for each list). I don't know exactly what the result of the comparison should be, though (a list of elements in list a, but not list b, and vice versa?). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:45, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Intersection and symmetric difference found in Filters should give unosorted lists but are buggy. My idea is the following at the moment:
Compare lists: Gives A-B, B-A and (intersection) all alphabetised. Method works with duplicates.
We can get (symmetric difference) with the same method.
Allow null edits for a "What links here" list. I've reviewed the archives, and seen the arguments against, but I want this for a different reason. When a user turns a page into a disambig, and lots of articles link to that new disambig, I leave them a note reminding them of WP:FIXDABLINKS if they didn't clean up. The problem is, if those links are coming through a template, someone may have already fixed the template, but the disambig's "What links here" doesn't reflect it yet. There's no easy way to determine how many links to a new disambig are via a template and how many are actual article links that need fixing. If I could do null edits for the "What links here" for those few disambigs, I would know what really needs cleanup. You can see what I'm talking about at the daily disambig report; for today's report (Sep 10), Sherman Creek is a perfect example. Are all 167 links through templates, or are there 40 or 50 links that actually need fixing? Impossible to tell. --JaGatalk14:05, 10 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
What I do when is just hold down the enter key since it allows you to save "no changes" as along as it's not automatic. It's actually a bit faster than bot mode (35 edits/min. vs. 29 edits/min.) If you have a lot to do, you can probably use a program to automatically press enter continuously or put a weight on the key to hold it down while you're away from the keyboard. Rocket000 (talk) 18:03, 10 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, that worked. Takes a bit of time (I was only getting about half the performance you were citing), but it gets the job done. Of course, if someone wanted to make it a little more automated, I wouldn't object. But this does the trick. Thanks! --JaGatalk19:48, 10 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Do "What links here" in AWB, filter to templates (we are talking navboxen?), select all and rt click, add -> blue links. Open list comparer, using current list, make the second list from "what links here" and do a compare. RichFarmbrough, 22:36, 30 September 2010 (UTC).[reply]
When changing "b." to "born", add Category:xxxx births
The problem that in the specific article there is nothing to 100% determine that this is an article about a person in order to add Human Categories. There isn't any person infobox or other human category. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:07, 11 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You're right - there's no infobox or other human category to make it 100% clear that this article is about a person. But if AWB is confident enough to change "b." to "born", isn't that enough? Or is "born" also used for non-persons, like animals? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 23:28, 11 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In order to standardise redirects, AWB should do things like this. Capitalise 'REDIRECT', have a space before the target and another space before a redirect template. Redirect templates on other lines should be moved up to the first line with spaces in between them. Anything other than the REDIRECT tag, the target, templates, a DEFAULTSORT, categories and interwiki links should be deleted. McLerristarr / Mclay110:52, 11 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Not all changes are visible, such as avoiding redirects to {{Citation needed}}. There are many edits that AWB does that qualify for rule 4 if only done by themselves. However, if all these changes were made to a redirect page, as well as edits to categorisation, interwiki links and other existing changes, it could be beneficial. Removing pointless extra text in a redirect page is useful, as it is completely unnecessary and could possibly be vandalism. McLerristarr / Mclay115:53, 11 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It would be very helpful to be able to select and undo any given change as shown in the diff window; this would be a big time saver over manually undoing a change, and would be less prone to manual error. (Thanks for great work!) David Hollman (Talk) 07:35, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
...and as long as you realize that double-clicking on any change in the diff window (or making any change in the edit box) wipes out all the automated messages that get added to the edit summary (e.g. typo fixes, replacements, addition/removal of templates), which is a bummer. GoingBatty (talk) 01:22, 16 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't just show the paragraph containing the diff. It also puts paragraphs either side that have no diff. These provide some context but use up a lot of space. Can these non-diff paragraphs be reduced in size?
It might also be helpful to have an "undo like" capability that would allow the user to deselect all changes like on an article..(for example if AWB suggested a bunch of typo changes the user could select the undo like option to uncheck all the top changes). --Kumioko (talk) 17:25, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Since AWB won't apply typo fixes to stuff in the "sic" template anyway, is it really necessary for that warning popup to come up when there's a sic in the page? I've had that come up for me hundreds of times, and not once has there been a false positive with a sicced word being corrected. I think it'd be safe to get rid of it, or at least put in an option to suppress it.—Chowbok☠13:50, 16 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If there's a {{sic}} template then no warning is needed. But if the article has a literal "[sic]" then, by experiment, I find that no typo fixing occurs at all. This needs a warning, because to get the article spell-checked you have to find the "[sic]", replace it with the template, save, and then ask AWB to re-process it. Dull! -- John of Reading (talk) 09:13, 11 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If that's the case, then the fix should be to do typo correction everywhere except around the "sic", not to have a popup warning.—Chowbok☠12:25, 11 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the times I've seen {{sic}} used, it hasn't been used around text e.g. in Alford plea and Blade Runner. AWB will not skip the incorrect text if it is not inside the sic template. That's probably why the warning message was there in the first place. McLerristarr / Mclay111:58, 11 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The text in Alford plea or Blade Runner would not be fixed by AWB even if the {{sic}} template wasn't there, since the text in question are quotes. Therefore, there's no need for AWB to give a warning when {{sic}} is inside quotes. Also, AWB doesn't try to fix typos like "{{sic|institue}}" or "institue {{sic}}", so there's no need for a warning then either. Could someone please show an example of when this warning is needed, or remove it from AWB? GoingBatty (talk) 21:29, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Some templates within WP employ a name field that allows the input of the name of an individual if it differs from the page. The Find a Grave template and Hall of Valor templates are two examples. Some articles currently use this parameter unecessarily and some do not use it when they should. There are a number of templates where this logic should be applied but initially my recommendations are as follows:
If the name parameter is equal to the Article name for the Find a Grave and Hall of Valor templates, then remove the name parameter.
If the article name contains a disambiguation in parenthesis (for example (Medal of Honor), (soldier), (Footballer), etc) for the Find a Grave and Hall of Valor templates then add the article name minus the Parenthesis if the name paramter is not already used. For example if the article name is John Smith (Medal of Honor) then the name parameter should be John Smith.
Thanks, I thought about that and even went to the effort of establishing a Kumbot account but most of the tasks that I would likely perform can be done with other existing bots. Not sure there is much benefit gained by creating another sole purpose bot. --Kumioko (talk) 01:50, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Combinate?
Can you combinatie the pages which linked to File:Flag of the Netherlands.svg and pages in the category Association football clubs. I hope so that everyone can input this to me!
77.168.97.100 (talk) 20:17, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
AWB knows that newspaper= is not an appropriate parameter of {{cite web}}. Instead of just showing an alert, could it change the template to {{cite news}}? (AWB seems to do something similar already to change the template to {{cite book}}.) Here's an example of an edit where I did it manually. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:33, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
In my opinion its possible to capture some of the but the problem is going to build logic to catch them all. For example here is some regex to convert from Cite web to Cite news if it contains www.news in the url:
Of course you could also look for publisher=News ltd but the problem is that both of these are based on the assumption that all articles that have publisher=News ltd or www.news something are always going to refer to a news article. And we would need to do some testing to make sure that all the parameters in cite web would apply to cite news. --Kumioko (talk) 01:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My assumption was that it wouldn't matter what the URL or publisher was - just change the word "web" to "news". However, you have a valid point about the parameters: coauthors, month, postscript, separator, work, and year are all parameters of Cite web but not Cite news. It would probably be too complicated to try to map those values into the Cite news parameters.
My next thought was to keep the template as Cite web but change the parameter from newspaper to work or publisher, but what if those parameters already exist with different values? Sigh.... GoingBatty (talk) 01:35, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I dont actually know what the code looks like but I would do it by looking for the ISBN in cite web to change it to cite book or look for things like google books to change it from web to book. Of course its still not 100% but I think in these cases it would be much easier to derive. --Kumioko (talk) 01:54, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
BTW I dont think its a lost cause I just dont think it would be 100%. I also wouldnt worry about the parameters too much. coauthors, separator and postscript arent used all that much so the instances of those should be low. Work, year and month are common though. --Kumioko (talk) 01:58, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Cite web's month and year could be mapped to Cite web's date, but I don't have a good plan for the rest. Is it possible to see which articles have a Cite web template with a newspaper parameter? If there are only a few, I could just fix them manually. If there are a lot, fixing a few might bring some insights. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:03, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I did a quick check against a small group of 25000 and I found several within the first 100 articles in Cite web that probably should be in Cite news. One more problem that I found was there appears to be some redundancy between cite news and cite journal. There were quite a few in Cite Journal that could fall into the realm of news. Im not sure what the differentiation is between cite news and cite journal. --Kumioko (talk) 02:28, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like {{Cite news}} is for newspapers and other news sources, whereas {{Cite journal}} is for journals and magazines. {{Cite web}} is for web sites, but I can see this getting murky when the newspaper/magazine publishes their printed content (or non-printed content) on their web site. GoingBatty (talk) 03:13, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The overuse of {{cite web}} is a problem, but not so much of one for news sources, since {{cite news}} is pretty similar to {{cite web}}. It's more of a problem for books, where {{cite book}} has the useful ISBN, edition, chapter fields, and academic journals where the {{cite journal}} DOI, PMID, PMC, volume, issue fields are very useful. AWB already converts {{cite web}} to {{cite book}} for Google books URLs. I have RjwilmsiBot converting to AW{{cite news}} for the strict list of news sites it supports. I'm not sure a wider conversion would be easy to do as part of AWB genfixes – where we need to be really accurate. There are some reasonable suggestions for some specific cleanup here that I'll have a look at. Rjwilmsi10:40, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Better handling of deadurl= parameter in {{cite web}}
AWB knows that deadurl= is not an appropriate parameter of {{cite web}}. Instead of just showing an alert, could it remove the parameter and add {{Dead link|date={{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}}} instead? For example, The Dark Knight (film) is an article where this would be appropriate. Since this would make the dead link visible on the article page, this would hopefully encourage users to fix the link. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:25, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Whats the SVN? The last SVN release was 7159. If you download that one AWB will move Deadurl out and place it after the reference. --Kumioko (talk) 02:02, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the info. I'm on SVN 6660 - was awaiting the official release before downloading the new version. I checked Archive 7 before posting this request, and didn't see this change there.
However, I'm looking at HMS Royal Oak (08) (specifially reference #29 "Erwin Schulhoff") and rethinking this request. Since the archiveurl parameter provides a good link on the article page, I'm inclined to say that AWB should just remove the deadurl parameter. However, if the archiveurl parameter is blank or missing, only then AWB should add the {{Dead link}} template to encourage users to find a different source or a proper archive URL. Thoughts? GoingBatty (talk) 04:02, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Fix redirects with incorrect syntax (CHECKWIKI error 36)
Regex tester is a very useful tool, but it is inconvenient that one should type all expressions again and again every time one opens the tester window during thorough debugging of a complex regexp. It would be great if the last content of the window was restored when it is open. --Vladimir Ivanov (talk) 12:18, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
Request of CheckPage feature to make it more easily maintainable (generall access option)
AWB has WP:AWB/CP page for access control. I think this is good feature. But this page needs few bureaucratic works for maintainance (user needs to write request, admin must check applicant's contributions and judge it. And after it, adding name to the page, or decline request.) Although maintainance needs few works, "no-CheckPage" could cause troubles. So if CheckPage supports general option, like Wikipedia:Huggle/Config#Access_control or WP:Twinkle(User:AzaToth/morebits.js), it would be very helpful for many wikis. Especially wikis in which admins are not so many. For example, JAWP where I'm from has only about 60 admins[15]. Active admins are more fewer than it. Active admin who can use AWB is almost nearly zero. If some general options (e.g. "number of edit", "account-age", "all bots are yes") are available, I think it is very helpful. Thank you. --Was a bee (talk) 06:38, 10 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My goal isn't to change the existing rules, but to have the edit summary that is automatically generated better reflect the changes that are made. Took a quick look at Custom Modules, but didn't see an example of one that with logic such as: if (something) is added, then include (some text) in the edit summary. GoingBatty (talk) 17:54, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Use something like this to begin:
Summary = "StartSummary"
and call a function inside an if..then statement adding:
Summary += MoreSummary + @", ";
I guess Rjw can give you more specific instructions.
The first one is good because adding persondata is an improvement and not a fix. The others go a bit off our philosophy, because generating lentghy edit summaries can be time consuming and endless. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:11, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please move the ignore options that are in the find and replace options (templates, wikilinks, external links, HTML comments, files, excreta) so that these rules can be applied on a per item basis, often I have find/replace that I want to do on external links, while others that I don't want on external or internal link. Having the ability to set these on a per item basis would make it easier. ΔT The only constant13:44, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Is that really a good idea? The presumption is that multiple reflists is an error, but I can think of uses for that. Perhaps it would be better to simply raise a flag alerting the article's editors in case it is inadvertence, but not to presume to "fix" what might not be broken? - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:08, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The only way you can have muliple "reflists" with different purposes is if you specify different |group=s (for example group=N). Other than that the reflist will just duplicate the references. A good example of this is on the Smedley Butler article. One reflist has group=n for notes and the other is just a reflist (although it does break the section into columns). --Kumioko (talk) 22:04, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, you're right, multiple uses gets duplication. (I was doing something slightly different.) As to potential uses, I can think of one, but doubt if it should be encouraged. I am still leery of automatic "fixes" (e.g., how is it determined which instance should be deleted?), and generally prefer admonition than execution. But I defer to you all's capable judgement. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:37, 31 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
When AWB fixes typos, instead of adding "typos fixed" to the edit summary, add [[WP:AWB/T|typos fixed]]. This could eliminate the need to encourage people to do this manually in the Attention box that pops up when you start AWB, and reduce the length of each edit summary. GoingBatty (talk) 17:02, 16 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
SVN7290: In the database scanner, there is an 'About' button there which probably should be removed to declutter it - all the 'About' info is (or should be) accessible from the Help menu. Also, there are three links 'WMF dumps', 'Wikia dumps', and 'Generating Database dumps'. These should be removed to declutter the dialog. The links should be moved to the help file if needed. The title of the database scanner dialog is 'Wiki Database Scanner'. I think the word 'Wiki' could be removed (so it matches the menu item) and the words revised to sentence case i.e. simply 'Database scanner'. Lightmouse (talk) 17:26, 17 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
AWB seems to automatically determine the processing order for Find and replace. This currently makes it difficult to process certain changes without either manually hitting reparse or making several passes. This request would add the ability to manually set the processing order of the Find and Replace settings. I thought maybe a 4 digit number (automatically populated at first) that could be manually reset by the user to allow the find and replace settings to process in the desired sequence. --Kumioko (talk) 00:51, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
I presumed that the processing order was top to bottom, which a user could change by moving rows up and down. If that's not true, what is the processing order? If that is true, when would top to bottom not meet your requirements? GoingBatty (talk) 01:10, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Im not completely sure but I think it does Normal settings first, then Advnaced settings and I believe it goes from top to bottom. The problem is if you sort the list (and mine is several hundred edits long) it can take a long time to put them back in a certain order. The only way I know of to make sure they process in a certain order is to build a custom module. Which is difficult. --Kumioko (talk) 01:21, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I just tried putting a two digit number in the Comments column, sorting on Find (which messed up my order), and then sorting on Comments (which restored my order). Would this work for you?
It could I guess, but I also use the comments to determine the type of edit (ie grammer, punctuation, typos) and some other things like if its an edit with a date I need to change. I could put the number in the beginning I suppose. Thanks for the suggestion thats a good Idea ill have to try. -Kumioko (talk) 02:32, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I ran across a page that had id={{issn|0000-1111}} in a cite journal template. According to the template instructions, this is deprecated; people should be using issn=0000-1111 instead. Seems like it wouldn't be too difficult for AWB to fix this (as well as DOI, PMID, Bibcode, etc., and also ISBN in cite book). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chowbok (talk • contribs)
AWB already does this. Can you give an example where its not occurring? Also what version are you using> It could be the version you have. --Kumioko (talk) 17:42, 21 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Admins already have the option to bypass all redirects on a page. This request is to do it automatically in certain circumstances. However, I'm unconvinced about the feasibility of this request since it would require an API call for each wikilink ending in s, which would not be performant for a general fix. Rjwilmsi08:09, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
AWB should allow sending a list to Special:Export, and automatically loading the resultant xml file in the database scanner. –xenotalk03:20, 24 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Two concerns here: 1) how does a computer know when a template is a navbox (they don't all start of end with navbox), and 2) is this documented as an agreed standard (WP:LAYOUT or similar?). Rjwilmsi08:24, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Add {{Empty section}} when the bottom section only contains Navboxes, {{DEFAULTSORT}}, categories, stub templates and/or interwiki links. Also, Fix all excess whitespace should not remove the space under the section heading before these things. McLerristarr | Mclay116:43, 24 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, some people like to have a separate heading just for navboxes so perhaps the navbox suggestion should be scrapped. The other four things are fine though. McLerristarr | Mclay117:10, 24 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
AWB currently removes the comma from international date formats (e.g. "30 October, 2010"). Per WP:DATESNO, could AWB be expanded to remove the comma between month and year of dates when the day is not specified (e.g. "October, 2010")? GoingBatty (talk) 05:30, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of people do not bother putting commas after things like that though. Also, that would mean the dates would never be fixed when the date was in the middle of text. If that was to happen however, a date at the end of a sentence would be safe to correct. McLerristarr | Mclay122:02, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
AWB corrects date formats such as "21st of January" to "21 January". Please update it so that it will also change "the 21st of January" to "21 January". See this edit for an example of what AWB currently does (and doesn't do). Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:32, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've already suggested this, amongst other date corrects, however I think some of my suggestions possibly shouldn't happen. If this correction is added the 'the' should not be removed as "the 11th of September terrorist attacks" should correct to "the 11 September terrorist attacks". McLerristarr / Mclay113:18, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Good point - I agree. I'm trying to think if there's additional logic we could come up with, such as "on the 11th of September" → "on 11 September", but that doesn't seem to be foolproof either. GoingBatty (talk) 16:37, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A recent change was made to AWB to replace {{Unreferenced}} with {{Refimprove}} but in this edit I noticed that AWB didn't update the date. I would like to request that if AWB changes the template it also changes the date to the current month and year. --Kumioko (talk) 02:51, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ok I understand, nevermind then. I dont really have the time or patience at this point to spend the next 2 months arguing with people about it only to have the concensus be to leave it status quo (sorry was that too pessimistic). --Kumioko (talk) 18:19, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Allow users to modify the source location of the Find and Replace code
I currently use different PC's to edit in WP and in order to keep the Find and Replace XML up to date between them I have to email it to myself or temporarily copy the code to a userspace sandbox and then paste it into the new location. I would like to suggest a function that allows users to opt for using a userspace subpage rather than an offline XML file. This would have several benefits including:
Allow users to spend less time moving files around and more time editing
Reduce the offline footprint of AWB (not that its all that big)
This would also allow better visibility of what edits people are making
Would allow us to assist one another if we see a problem in another users code.
Could be used by multiple editors doing the same type of edits. This is especially true of more complex code
In fairness a couple potential problems I see with this:
The source code page could be vandalized causing problems (which could be fixed with a message stating that the page has been edited by someone else like we do when someone edits the talk page)
I would like to suggest adding the ability of allowing users to designate an exception list. For example when doing certain edits I have a notepad document of about 100 pages that I have to manually purge for a variety of reasons (such as complicated or special article structure, special circumstances outside the norm, contentious articles were any edit tends to provoke an edit war, etc). It would make it very useful if I could just setup the exception list one so that AWB just skips it automatically.--Kumioko (talk) 13:57, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have tried to do this without success and it might be possible for someone with better programming ability but even then it could be quite difficult. Essentially you have to put some thing like [(article1|article2|etc)] with the articles that you want to exclude. For me thats about 100 at present and it grows by a few a week. --Kumioko (talk) 16:40, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Reduce length of Alerts text to prevent horizontal scrolling
When editing a "long stub" using AWB, it tries to remove the stub tags. While re-adding them isn't too difficult, it's extra manual work, and when I'm stub sorting using AWB, it makes my task more difficult. I would like an option for "non-removal of stub tags", which shouldn't interfere with any other general fix AWB may propose (including moving the location of the stub tags). עוד מישהוOd Mishehu10:39, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
For some reason AWB does not correct dates when following "the". e.g. "the 1st of January" will not correct to "the 1 January". "The" cannot be removed due to phrases like "the 1 January 2000 elections" but I see no reason why the date should not be corrected. "The" could be removed if the date is followed by a punctuation mark. McLerristarr | Mclay122:06, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Currently, -- corrects to an emdash. Could it instead be corrected to an endash if it is surrounded by spaces? e.g. "text--text" will correct to "text—text" but "text -- text" will correct to "text – text". McLerristarr | Mclay122:19, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If an article being edited by AWB has a direct use of a stub category (such as here; a stub category is any category ending with the word "stubs"), then the category should be replaced with a stub tag; finding the appropriate stub tag is relatively easy - in the category, there is a {{Stub Category}} template or a {{Stub category}} template, where the stub category is givenas the parameter called "newstub". עוד מישהוOd Mishehu
I have never seen the code for AWB, but given that AWB has the functionality for parsing page code, and for looking for specific parameters, I would imagine that it's not too hard. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu12:17, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If the lead of an article about a person contains "(born November 10, 1980 in [[Los Angeles, California]])", AWB will add "November 10, 1980" to the {{Persondata}}DATE OF BIRTH= parameter. Could it also populate the PLACE OF BIRTH= parameter with [[Los Angeles, California]]? GoingBatty (talk) 02:16, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The text generated by the editing buttons ''Insert non-formatted text here'' for example, can often be inserted in a page by mistake or vandals. With some caveats it is safe to remove, recursively. This will often fix other breakages. RichFarmbrough, 10:27, 12 November 2010 (UTC).[reply]
I don't think AWB should do this. Automatically removing the text will improve the article, yes, but it will not welcome the new user or warn the vandal. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:32, 24 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In the same way that AWB capitalises category and file namespaces (e.g. [[category:Spam]] → [[Category:Spam]]), AWB should capitalise other namespaces, such as image, and also capitalise categories, files and images when they are linked (e.g. [[:category:Spam]] → [[:Category:Spam]]). McLerristarr | Mclay101:03, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I found out that here at Wikipedia the Special:WantedPages has been disabled (I don't know why), but on other wikis such as the RuneScape Wiki, have wanted pages and is not disabled. When I tried to make a list in Special Pages, there was no such option, nor was there for Special:WantedFiles. This would be helpful for those non-wikipedia wikis. Evil1888 00:11, 18 November 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.236.58.30 (talk)
*12-hour clock times end with dotted or undotted lower-case a.m. or p.m., or am or pm, preceded by a space (e.g. 2:30 p.m. or 2:30 pm, not 2:30p.m. or 2:30pm). Hours denoted by a single digit should not have a leading zero (e.g. 2:30 p.m., not 02:30 p.m.).
A hard space (see above) is advisable (2:30 pm or {{nowrap|2:30 p.m.}}).
i.e.:
Change 2:30p.m. to 2:30 p.m. (non-breaking space after number)
Change 02:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. (remove 0 and add nbsp)
I only see "In some categories, sort keys are used to exclude prefixes that are common to all or many of the entries, or are considered unimportant (such as "List of" or "The")." It doesn't say in all. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:24, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Adding "The" at the end is unlikely to ever make a difference, but AWB already excludes "The" from DEFAULTSORT tagging. If you look at the edit you linked, AWB did not include "The". McLerristarr | Mclay106:21, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Can we have a checkox or an option of some kind that could be set by the user to allow AWB to reparse (potentially multiple times) if checked. I have close to 2000 changes in one of my settings files and I find myself having to manually reparse quite often and this would save me a lot of time even if it meant I had to wait a little longer fro AWB to process the change. A good example of this is the logic in AWB to add multiple portals to portal box. If you add a portal using a custom find and replace you then have to manually reparse to put it into the portal box template. --Kumioko (talk) 17:51, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
We could use some logic that looks for duplicate templates. I am finding quite a few with more than one of a WikiProjectTemplate (often due to the use of different redirects of the same template), talk header, etc. --Kumioko (talk) 17:50, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
Just for clarification of the above I have no preference as to where above and below as applicable but they should not be embedded in the wikibannershell or sandwiched between wikiproject banner templates. --Kumioko (talk) 17:53, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, They might be bugs then rather than feature requests. I have SVN 7424 and I have seen several cases today where these did not work. The next time I get one I will post a link to the article. --Kumioko (talk) 19:54, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ok thanks, by their descriptions it made more sense to put them below. You can remove those 2 if I get them again I will resubmit them as bugs with a proper diff. Cant seem to find another one at the moment. --Kumioko (talk) 20:27, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Within an infobox, to remove a comma when followed by <br> (and its other versions) so that a "," does not appear at the end of each item in an infobox list. See the examples below for examples of what this should do. Skier Dude (talk05:38, 5 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
For example: a list like
|starring = [[Tom Sizemore]],<br />[[Richard Jenkins]],<br />[[Ving Rhames]],<br />[[Colm Feore]]
At El Culpable Soy Yo the general fixer wants to remove the blank lines from within the {{tracklist}} template, but in this case the author(s) have carefully grouped the lines to make them easier to understand. Is it worth coding an exception to the usual rule? "If the line after the blank sets a template parameter ending in a number, and the line before the blank sets a template parameter that ends in a number one less than this, then allow the blank line to remain" -- John of Reading (talk) 16:05, 23 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Done. I guess we could add it as a general fix but some coordinates were coming from infoboxes which were transcluding coord. Does it worth to add it? -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:57, 29 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Currently very few if any alerts will trigger in talk pages but I have noticed on a few things that might make a good alert (or if you can think of logic to fix it that's ok too).
If |class= = if the class is equal to something other than stub, start, C, B, GA, A, FA, FL, List, File, Redirect, Category, Disambig, Template, DAB, Disambiguation or Disambig.
If importance/priority does not equal Top, High, Mid or low
Is there any possibility that AWB can recognize if dmy (or any ofther time format) is used only and add the template automaticly? This would prevent some unneeded extra edits by users/bots, if this is the only timeformat in the article. mabdul08:34, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
The fact that only one date format is used in the article doesn't always mean it's the correct one. I've seen plenty of bio articles about English/British/European individuals with no links to America/Canada where only the American date format is used, whereas per WP:ENGVAR the correct format would be International. Yes, this is possible, no I don't think it should be done. Rjwilmsi10:11, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And what to check the date formats with categories/wikiprojects? (And what to check this and correct the date formats?) mabdul12:57, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If IsArticleAboutAPerson = true and the article does not have an infobox, add the {{Infobox person}} blank template with basic parameters, and populate |birth_date=, |birth_place=, |death_date=, |death_place= using the same logic as used for adding {{Persondata}}. GoingBatty (talk) 01:01, 14 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
NoLimits Plugin is essential for doing maintenance work on Commons where many categories are in 100s of thousands. Unfortunately "Category Recursive" is not very useful since single miscategorization can cause adding orders of magnitude more files than you were looking for. Ability to control depth of recursive scanning is quite needed. For example I would like to capture most files in subcategories of Commons:Category:Creator template home categories. Recursive scan does not work (never returns anything) and regular "Category" returns only other categories. I could really use "Category Recursive" to the 1st or 2nd level. --Jarekt (talk) 03:48, 16 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It is not required that a ref have a cite template, & quite a number of refs do not, from both new and experienced users. . I , for example, never use it unless there are already refs in the article formatted with it. DGG ( talk ) 16:23, 15 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Find redlink files within an article/page and remove them, or at least comment them out. As of last Database report, there are over 16 thousand pages like this. Avicennasis @ 03:13, 17 Shevat 5771 / 22 January 2011 (UTC)
I would like to suggest adding an option that, when selected, would reset the counters in the footer of the AWB application for Edits, Skipped and New back to zero. I frequently leave my AWB application up and it would be helpful to me if I didn't have to close and reopen the application to reset these numbers. --Kumioko (talk) 18:06, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice to standardize the order two main talk page templates are listed, {{talk header}} and {{ArticleHistory}}. Article history is arguably more important than wikiprojects or other notices. so i'd like AWB to autosort these templates (if they exist) as part of the gen fixes in order to have some consistency. there is random placement on talk pages where i've even seen these templates sandwiched between two different project banners. --ΖαππερΝαππερBabelAlexandria16:09, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Be aware that this was changed referencing an old discussion, which, in my opinion, does not support the change. Per that discussion I have changed the guidance back to two blank lines. It is notable, however, that the non-displaying DEFAULTSORT on its own (with no explicit categories), while not counting as a blank line itself, allows the preceding and subsequent blank lines to count as successive. The same may also be true of the various non-displaying templates. RichFarmbrough, 03:35, 7 February 2011 (UTC).[reply]
Replace normal spaces with non-breaking spaces before forward slashes (/) to avoid awkward text wrapping before the slash. Do not add spaces before a slash if no space already exists. McLerristarr | Mclay109:53, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I see these grammatical errors frequently and wondered if they can be included in the genfix set.
there's no space between a currency sign and the number following. eg. "$25" not "$ 25" (refer)
big number words like thousand, million, billion, trillion after a currency-number pair are uncapitalised and ideally have a   between. eg. "$25 billion" not "$25Billion". (refer)
AUD$ means literally "Australian dollar-dollar" and makes no sense. Change any instances of AUD$ to AUD, USD$ to USD, CAD$ to CAD (ISO codes)
It would be great if the units in point number two could be added to FixNonBreakingSpaces, regardless of whether or not there is a currency symbol in front of the number. GoingBatty (talk) 05:10, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
When you click "save", the edit box becomes grayed out. If you get a timeout error (or whatever causes AWB to restart), AWB just re-processes the article from scratch automatically, and you lose all your manual changes. It would be IMMENSELY useful if, when you click "stop" to interrupt the re-processing, that the edit-window would become editable again so you could keep your changes (via crtl+c), or that AWB would prompt you before reprocessing the page, giving you the option of keeping your changes rather than start from scratch.
This happens to me too and I find it very discouraging. I spend considerable time on an article only to have the changes disappear. It is not always related a long period of inactivity on my part. Is the edit box content saved anywhere on my computer where it can be retrieved after restart? –droll[chat]06:24, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Some people apparently write __ToC__ instead of __TOC__. For some reason, this doesn't cause a problem on Wikipedia itself, however, this is extremely poor practice, and will cause issues on mirrors and any project which re-uses Wikipedia content, as well as the downloadable PDFs, as it is expected that MediaWiki standards for magicwords are followed.
AWB should fix all magic words to their correct uppercase version of __FOOBAR__. If someone could do a database scan and fix them all, it would also be extremely appreciated. (I did those for the __TOC__ variants, but not for the other magic words). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books}14:39, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Can you please first update its manual to show when and how "Orphaned essay" should be used? I guess we added in addition to "essay"? -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:02, 9 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Enhance the logic of duplicated category removal duplication logic to remove duplicated categories with different sort-keys when the one key is substring of other. i.e.: [[Category:CatName|Foo]] [[Category:CatName|Foo bar]] → [[Category:CatName|Foo bar]].
Please add an option to the "make list" field to add 100 random pages instead of just 10.
Added in revision
I'd like to bring up this request again. I think it's no big deal to implement this feature. And it would really help people who occasionally like to run "Typo fixing" over 5,000 random pages (like I do). --bender235 (talk) 23:03, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Cannot currently be done: the MediaWiki API has a limit of 10 pages for users, 20 for bots (see API documentation). You would have to arrange an API change to get 100 random pages in one go. Rjwilmsi10:23, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A workaround I use is to pick a Category (recursive) to make my list, and run in preparse mode to skip if no typos found. Each time you find a typo, do a Wiki and/or Google search to find all the articles with the same typo. That should keep you going for quite a while. Happy typo fixing! GoingBatty (talk) 14:38, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please remove the Expand tag as there is no tag with this name and it's removed plus add feature to add Unreferenced tag manually and "Automatically" and UnreferencedBLP. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nima1024 (talk • contribs)
Have the "Filter" window remember from one time to the next if it should be set to "Symetric difference" or to "Intersection" - usually when I've used "Intersection", and go to there again in the same session, I want to use "Intersection" again, and I imagine that so would most other AWB users. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu
Added in revision
Allow AWB to render/preview a change without saving it
Currently in order for AWB to render any logic or to use pre parse mode to see what articles are affected by a particular problem (like to filter out redirects) the user must have access to login to AWB. I am recommending that users without access to save changes still be allowed to view the effects of a change or to use the preparse mode as a means of determining articles affected by a particular problem or change. Some AWB featured such as the list comparer work without being logged in so the precedent is already there for some functionality to work without being logged in. To clarify, I am not asking that AWB allow the change to be saved, just to see what the change would do especially the ability to use the preparse function to scan a group of articles for a particular problem. --Kumioko (talk) 18:16, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
Open page in browser should instead open content page
Currently if editing talk pages, "Open page in browser" and "Open talk page in browser" do the same thing. Ideally I should be able to open the content version of a talk page instead. --ΖαππερΝαππερBabelAlexandria22:52, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
FixCitationTemplates "removes |language= when it is English per citation templates manuals." However, it does not remove |lang=en from {{cite web}} and {{cite news}} (as I did manually in this edit). My first preference is to remove the parameter entirely. My second preference would be to have an "Invalid citation parameter found" alert. GoingBatty (talk) 23:05, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Along the lines of the template redirects and the dated templates features, a feature to remove deprecated parameters from a given template, and a second feature to rename parameters that have been renamed (but still work with the old name as well). Like template redirects and date templates, the list of parameters to update would be taken from a subpage here and done as part of general fixes for when someone is doing something that actually changes the article! SeveroTC19:23, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but we could do that with template redirects as well... renamed template parameters fall into the same category as template redirects because they are both non-essential general fixes (or am I missing something?). So, it could be helpful to add renamed/deleted template parameters on the same basis as template redirects. SeveroTC16:04, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It would be very helpful if AWB had an option or alert that would inform us in some way of the status of the associated page. For example if I was looking at an article but the talk page to that article is missing or is a redirect, then AWB would either highlight that article (say in red for missing or yellow for a redirect) or showed an alert. Not only do I frequently find articles with no talk page but I also find a lot of articles were the talk page has been redirected or talk pages were the article has been redirected and the talk page was left. --Kumioko (talk) 19:07, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please add option 'Open diff in browser' for log. The options 'Open page in browser' and 'Open history in browser' are very useful. I'd like to be able to see one or more items in the log and select 'Open diff in browser'. The use case is: check multiple edits. Thanks. Lightmouse (talk) 13:27, 14 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please add option to increase visible size of log. The log only shows 6 lines at once, sometimes I'd like to be able to see many more lines. I know that I can save the log and review it that way, but Would it be possible to have an option that enlarges the log? It currently shows 'Successfully saved' and 'Skipped' by default. Perhaps you might be able to allow the user to choose which one to show and that would allow more vertical space for possibly 30 lines. Lightmouse (talk) 13:37, 14 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
Extend scope of 'Add replacements to edit summary' to custom modules
Extend scope of 'Add replacements to edit summary'. In 'Find and replace', there's a 'Normal settings' button which leads to a 'Find and replace' dialog. The dialog has a check box called 'Add replacements to edit summary'. This is very useful. I have a custom find&replace module that is hundreds of lines long but the auto edit summary doesn't work for custom modules. Question1 Can it be made to work for find&replace in custom modules? Question2 Is there a way to transfer hundreds of lines from a custom module into the find&replace dialog? Lightmouse (talk) 11:53, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That would certainly need to have an explicit consensus before mass-converting them, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (footnotes) does not favor one over the other. It's also more complex than described above: The <references /> tag may be enclosed in {{refbegin}}/{{refend}}, a list of non-inline references might be listed there as well. Amalthea11:16, 4 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Newsletter delivery with AWB often leaves messages for indef blocked users, which are then usually reverted. A skip option "Page of indef blocked user" would allow the operator to avoid such edits in the first place. Useful in particular for implicit lists of users where it's not a matter of removing a category or a name from a list. Amalthea10:05, 4 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
AWB removes underscores from wikilinks, except wikilinks with sections (e.g. [[This_is_a_link#To_somewhere|Link]]). I don't know if this is a bug or a deliberate feature but I can't see any reason for it. McLerristarr | Mclay104:05, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
For some reason, the Fix all excess whitespace feature adds whitespace rather than removing it. It adds a space after a bullet or list number. There is no consensus that there should be a space there but even so, it definitely should not be added by a tool that is meant to reduce whitespace. McLerristarr | Mclay104:08, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Move "External links" sections below "Further reading" sections, per WP:LAYOUT. When I ran AWB on this version of Bighorn National Forest, it changed the order from "External links, References, Further reading" to "References, External links, Further reading". The correct order is: "References, Further reading, External links". -- Black Falcon(talk)17:24, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
can a feature be added to AWB that will allow users to reset the counters (Edits, Skipped, New). I usually leave my AWB up and I hate having to close it and restart it just to change the counters. --Kumioko (talk) 02:17, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
When using certain functions such as the Append/Prepend text function it is possible to add things that AWB would normally reorder such as adding WikiProject banners above talk header or to trigger another edit or rule. Can a checkbox be added that will allow users to tell AWB to run the settings/custom modules again when save is pressed (essentially run them again). Of course there would be a significant performance hit so this should be an option that the user can uncheck if they don't need it. I believe this would also reduce some of the edits )bot or otherwise) where users do multiple edits on the same article successively. --Kumioko (talk) 02:17, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Although I do not actively do vandalism I have been catching a lot of vandalism on articles lately. I know this is a little out of AWB's scope but can a checkpage or alert be added if certain potential vandalism is found on the page? I was thinking of an alert that looks at a page like the Template redirect page and if it sees something that meets the criteria an alert or message box would generate saying something like "Potential vandalism". --Kumioko (talk) 02:17, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Between two section headings (if the section is empty), AWB should not remove a blank line between the headings, unless the first section heading is of a higher level (i.e. has less equals signs) than the second. Conversely, AWB should probably add a blank if there isn't one. McLerristarr | Mclay111:20, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is what AWB should not do. A guideline says somewhere that section headings should be preceded by a space for readability in the edit window. I requested that as a feature a while ago and it was added but I was told that AWB would not add a space after an empty section because of pre-existing logic. There should be no space after an empty section if the empty section is of a higher level than the next section but if it's the same level or a lower level, then the section is empty because no one's filled it in yet or the text has been deleted. In those instances, AWB could add {{Empty section}}. McLerristarr | Mclay107:07, 3 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Would like the 25000 page limit to be removed from Image file links. Currently investigating cleaning up use of File:Replace this image male.svg. Initially required to identify page that use this file but do not have a request for photo on the talk page. Also in discussion is to remove this image from all pages where it is used. --Traveler100 (talk) 10:57, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Request a feature that will search the refs and then merge refs that are duplicates of each other. It could use the "Title" field or author fields to generate a refname.
I think it could be useful for refs that dont. A ref name can be generated using the title of the ref, then the author if no title, and finally just cut the first 15 characters off the ref string if nothing else is available. Then merge it's duplicates. Just an idea and I think a useful one. I am editing an article right now, Edmund Ser, where the author used 65 refs and most of the are duplicates. It's going to take me awhile to merge them and copyedit.--v/r - TP18:12, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It is enough to give just one of the references a name. Once an article contains a named reference, then the current AWB/bots will merge all the duplicates, adding additional names as required. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:37, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There is a discussion on the Village pump about adding a gadget that would line out a username if that username is blocked. As someone who occassionally uses AWB to add comments to talk pages I had been preprocessing the pages to filter them out. If some logic could be added to AWB that would line out or otherwise mark a user page as being a blocked user it would save me a great deal of time (and I believe others as well). --Kumioko (talk) 20:34, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The 'List filter' dialog has an option for 'Remove titles containing' with a checkbox for 'Regular expressions'. Can you add an option for 'Case sensitive'? That would make it match similar functionality in the 'Skip' tab in the text search of the 'Database scanner'. Thanks. Lightmouse (talk) 08:26, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The term for regex is inconsistent (in the Skip tab, Database scanner, and List filter): 'Regular expressions', 'Regexes', and 'Regex'. I suggest 'Regex' in all three cases.
The terms for testing a match is inconsistent. In the List filter it says 'Matches', 'Keep titles containing' and 'Remove titles containing' (with the equivalent of 'Contains' second). In the Database scanner it says 'Title contains' and 'Not contains'. For text searching, the Skip tab says 'Match', 'Doesn't contain' whereas the Database scanner says 'Text', 'Text Searching', 'Not contains' (with 'Contains' first). I suggest 'Contains' and 'Not contains' for all (with 'Contains' first).
The group label in the Skip tab is 'Match' but I suggest 'Text'. The Text tab has a group label 'Text Searching' but I suggest 'Text'. The text tab has a label 'Page Text Properties' but I suggest 'Page properties'.
The 'More...' tab has a group label 'Append/Prepend text' but I suggest 'Append/prepend text' i.e. sentence case. If you're able to search the whole interface and apply sentence case to group labels, that would be good.
We can save space by replacing group boxes with a separator (see Microsoft guidelines) in the following tabs 'Options', 'More...', 'Disambig', 'Skip', and 'Bots'. In the case of 'Disambig', I suggest the groups shouldn't exist at all, the labels should go directly on the widget.
The 'File' menu item 'Log In/Profiles...' should be sentence case i.e. 'Log in/profiles...'. This would make it match the menu item 'Log out'.
I would like to request some logic be added for some tasks related to talk pages.
If the talk page is a redirect and is shown as #redirect can we make it change to capitals #REDIRECT.
If AWB senses a talk page redirect that looks like #REDIRECT on categories can we change that to Template:Category redirect
If the talk page has the WikiProjectBannerShell and the parameters BLP, BLPO or activepol at the end of the template group, move these to theh top of the group directly after the text for WikiProjectBannerShell.
If the WikiProject Biography Banner contains activepol=yes and the WikiProjectBannerShell does not contain it then add it to the WikiProjectBannerShell.
If the talk page banners are lined up like this {{WikiProject X}}{{WikiProject Y}} on the same line then separate them to seperate lines
If the talk page contains the improper formatting of |blp=yes1= then replace it with |blp=yes|1=
If the talk page contains a duplicate banner (for example WikiProject United States is listed twice then delete one.
Thanks for the quick response. I have seen cases were 4 and 8 aren't done but the next time I see one I will let you know. I admit I did do a couple of those but I thought I fixed all the ones I did. I will fix those you identified. --Kumioko (talk) 17:04, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
1. There are probably thousands of redirects with "redirect" in lower-case. I would like AWB to correct instances of this in every namespace.
5. Minor edits are still useful if done with more important edits.
Just a note on #3, I realize that KingbotK did this but I didn't like it then either. What I have seen happening is that some people add it again at the top and the article ends up with 2 of them. On the question about #2. Categories should not have the #REDIRECT. It should use the template. I can't remember where this is documented but I will try and locate it. --Kumioko (talk) 14:09, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I admit I don't know exactly how many there are but I recently changed several relating to WikiProject United States. Plus I admit that few users edit categories. I can just use the regex I have and do it that way as I run across them. --Kumioko (talk) 14:32, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Stop using non-breaking spaces between figures and unabbreviated units of measurement
WP:MOSNUM calls for non-breaking spaces "in expressions in which figures and abbreviations (or symbols) are separated by a space", but that does not mean they should be used with unabbreviated units of measurement, as it did to "Melton stands 5 foot and 3 inches", where it inserted a non-breaking space after the "3". Doing so makes the article less readable to editors, and slows down an AWB user who stops to wonder what's going on. Christhe spelleryack18:31, 26 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it looks odd to me, too, but using a non-breaking space won't fix it, and it might be harder for an editor to notice it with a non-breaking space in it. If there were a consensus to always use a non-breaking space between figures and spelled-out units, I think WP:MOSNUM would say so. Avoiding breaks "in other places ... disruptive to the reader" seems to be giving freedom to editors to exercise good judgment, but I don't think AWB is to the point where we can say it has good judgment. Christhe spelleryack14:03, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
When I said it looks odd, I meant the strange wording, with mixed plural and singular units of measurements, and with the word "and", instead of "Melton stands 5 feet, 3 inches". It wasn't clear to me (and still isn't) what looks odd to you, since the sentence (in the article on Nikki Taylor Melton) has no line break in it anyway, so a non-breaking space or lack of same is not detectable by the reader. Adding a non-breaking space will not help the issue with the strange wording, and AWB did not try to add a non-breaking space after the "5". What AWB does and doesn't do with non-breaking spaces, and why, is somewhat of a mystery to me. Christhe spelleryack20:17, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed with Mclay1's initial comment - our goal should be to make the article text more readable to the general public, even if that makes the code a little less readable to editors. GoingBatty (talk) 17:38, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
While I agree that
At the market, Jimmy bought 27 sheep, 254 birds, 5 heads of cattle and a ladder that is 20 meter long
isn't desirable, AFAIK the MOS never got consensus on systematically using non-breaking spaces in the generic "number + noun" situation (which is basically why it's telling people "if things look bad, consider using an nbsp" rather than "this could look bad, so always use an nbsp to make sure" in those situations). Maybe that changed, but it should go through MOS first. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books}18:00, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As can be seen in this edit (if you look at the whole page before the edit), AWB does not shorten duplicate <ref name="X"> tags. If multiple ref name tags of the same name are present with the same content, all the ones after the first should be shortened, like in this edit. If multiple ref name tags of the same name are present with different content, a warning should be displayed to alert the editor to the mistake.
Also, the empty duplicate ref name tags that AWB does correct, are given an unnecessary space (see the first diff). This space does not need to be added and it would save space if such spaces were removed (see the 2nd diff).
When updating AWB to merge these templates into Multiple issues, could you please also ensure that they do not give "Unknown parameters in Multiple issues" alerts? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:57, 25 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Changes to the software mean that capitals and lower-case letters are sorted equally in categories. Could we remove the feature for adding a DEFAULTSORT to a page if only casing is affected? While we're at it, it would be useful to add more logic so that the DEFAULTSORT puts definite and indefinite articles (a, an, the and others in other languages) at the end (e.g. Beatles, The). McLerristarr | Mclay106:04, 1 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There should be same facility of ignoring abuse-filter as for spam filter exists.if we run a operation on any list then in case any of its article is blocked by abuse-filer then it should be automatically skipped.But in current case AWB stop working when any article in the list is blocked by abusefilter.--Mayur (talk) 17:39, 25 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
Support BASIC HTTP AUTH authorization for private custom wikis. If access is denied give user possibility to input user/pass. Patch included!
It would be useful if the filter could be applied while making a list. For example, if I check articles that transclude the 'no refs' template, I only get back a few months before hitting the 25k-article limit of AWB, which means that I never see most of the articles. I hit the limit even if I restrict myself to Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2009. Since I'm not going to bother with refs for subjects I don't know anything about, I'm just going to filter the results for articles which have 'language', 'dialect', 'grammar', etc. in their titles anyway. If the filter could optionally be applied first, so that I got a list of 25k filtered articles, I'd have access to everything – there can't possibly be that many unsourced language articles, and even if there were, I could just run the list several times with more restrictive filters.
Occasionally, I create a list which I want to save on Wikipedia, such as a list of categories I want to nominate in a single CFD disucssion. It would be nice if AWB would allow me to save this directly on Wikipedia (maybe limited to the account's userspace - I always save it to the userspace, anyway), in stead of having to save on a local disk, and then open in a text editor and copy to Wikipedia. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu11:18, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
Support to fix "Category:Articles using Infobox musical artist with deprecated parameters"
Replace |Born= with |birth_date= and |birth_place=
Replace |Died= - with |death_date= and |death_place=
Intelligently split date and birthplace and move to correct field (Example: |Born= January 1, 1960 in Minneapolis, Minnesota with |birth_date=January 1, 1960 and |birth_place=[[Minneapolis]], [[Minnesota]]
Added in revision
The first three would be easy. The 4th one would be harder because there are a lot of different variations of how that information is displayed in the inforbox. I have seen that data a dozen or more different ways. --Kumioko (talk) 19:46, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Currently, AWB removes any spaces after a disambiguation message box, such as {{Disambiguation}}; however, I can't find any guidelines recommending this and it seems odd. It would be more consistent with everything else if there were a space between the template and any categories or interwiki links. McLerristarr | Mclay106:52, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
Expand the logic for adding untitled to untitled talk page sections
Currently the logic in AWB that adds Untitled to sections without a title on the talk page does not seem to work in all namespaces. I would like to see if the logic can be expanded to include all Namespaces. --Kumioko (talk) 19:53, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Now, the last step of Updating is “Cleaning after Update”. But we do not see when it is completed. Suggestion: Add a new last step of AWB-Updater: “Cleaning after Updating ist completed. You may close this window (AWB-Updater) now.”
Added in revision
Passed away
It would be really great if AWB included a phrase converting all instances of sadly / tragically passed away / died to "died". So unencyclopedic. There seems to be a school of thought that believes sadly or tragically goes with such words in order to make "good writing". I have tried but failed. Kittybrewster ☎11:11, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And of course the 2000+ instances of "untimely death" should be changed to simply "death" as well (apart from those cases where it is in a quote). Of course, in a sentence like "His untimely death is an irreparable loss to the nation and the mathematical community in Pakistan." (here), removing one word isn't sufficient to make things WP:NPOV. Fram (talk) 13:18, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Things like that are difficult to remove, even though we must do so, because it's probably perfectly true and probably written by someone close to him who feels a great loss. I recommend that as people do remove such things, the most respectful possible language and explanations are given, both in the edit summary and on the talk page. It's not good if such things are removed with "revert promotional fluff" or whatever people might be tempted to say.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:03, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't been able to use AWB since a couple of years ago because my main platform has drastically changed. I used to use a Windows machine, but now my main platform is Mac. I would like to use it again, and I would like to petition for support of the Mono framework. This was last brought up in October 2010, and since then, referenced by [16], "Currently, Mono supports just about everything available in .Net 2.0. There are a few notable exceptions, like Windows.Forms' DataGridView and ASP.Net's WebParts". I'm not sure what parts of .Net AWB uses, as I am not a programmer, but since the framework (mono I mean) has evolved since then, I would hope a port to the platforms that Mono supports would be slick and easy. Thanks for considering this, Haseo9999 (talk) 00:28, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
When I was going through some categories I noticed that AWB doesn't appear to recognize Template:Category redirect . as a redirect. Could the logic be modified to include this? --Kumioko (talk) 01:45, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry I did't clarify that. Yes, I think it should be treated as a redirect if the appropriate check box is checked in AWB so if I check "Page is redirect" under the "Skip" tab it should include category redirects. --Kumioko (talk) 13:16, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Spooky, I've just listed a bug for Failure to skip redirects. I don't know the difference between hard and soft redirects but that bug and this feature request could be the same. It certainly made me wonder why I ended up at pages that I'd already excluded from the list. What's the difference between hard and soft redirects? Lightmouse (talk) 10:03, 25 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Rjwilmsi pointed it out to me at Failure to skip redirects. The confusion was because we have three options in three different places:
'Bypass all redirects' in the right-mouse menu
'Follow redirects' in the options menu
Skip 'Page is a redirect' in the skip tab
I had chosen the option in the skip tab and was convinced I'd made the correct setting. It never occured to me that I had to look for more redirect settings elsewhere. Can we make it so it's possible to make all redirect settings without having to look in more than one place? Lightmouse (talk) 18:53, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Stop adding blank line before section headings in some cases
Sometimes there is a template call just before a heading that relates specifically to the new section. See here for two examples. In these cases it would be better not to add a blank line before the heading. —Coroboy (talk) 10:58, 24 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
{{Anchor}} is supposed to be place in the section title; however, placing it the line above the section title could work better because it avoids the problem of the template becoming part of the section name. In those cases, AWB should add a blank line above {{Anchor}}. McLerristarr | Mclay106:46, 25 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The various rocks in space such as (79990) 1999 FP1 were created with a template, and then another edit would be made to add the DISPLAYTITLE. The creation of those articles was almost automated. It would be simpler if AWB could create articles. Could it ever be done? --Σtalkcontribs01:59, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice to have an option for AWB to automatically close the program when a task/list is completed in bot mode. Some users run multiple instances for different tasks/wikis, and it would be nice to not have to check which ones are complete so you can close the program.Avicennasis @ 20:40, 1 Elul 5771 / 20:40, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Pretty much what the header says: convert template list entries to /doc subpages, similar to how AWB can convert from articles to talkpages. Just have it take any template:foo entry in the list and replace it with template:foo/doc. This would be handy for changing documentation across a given template category (or even be used to change the category, since it's often set with <includeonly> on the doc subpage.) Avicennasis @ 06:16, 6 Elul 5771 / 06:16, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not infrequently, I use a toolserver tool to create a list of all pages where certain edits would probably be needed using AWB (category names by patern using this tool, category scans using this tool), where creating the list inside AWB is either impossible (such as my first example) or difficult (the second example - I still would need to filter out all non-mainspace, for example, but that would be simple AWB filtering). I think that we should be able to make a list from all incoming links from an external web page, given by URL. That would make these tasks much easier. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu10:38, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If [[Category:Disambiguation pages]] is found on an article, it should be removed and {{disambiguation}} should be added. (If the template and the category are found, then just the category should be removed.) Category:Disambiguation pages states the category should never be used directly. Avicennasis @ 15:26, 12 Elul 5771 / 15:26, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Requesting amendment so no login is required with pre-parse mode set on. I am presently doing an interwiki task that involves just looking at other language wiki's to see which articles exists/are missing. When login is required would have to request bot access to many languages and explain that the bot would actually be doing no editing(!) - this I'm thinking is going to be confusing to explain in alternative languages.
Requesting amendment so superscripted ordinals are removal (as per WP:MOSNUM#Typography) as part of general fixes by inserting the following regex:(\d)<(?:small|sup)>(?:<(?:small|sup)>|)(th|st|nd|rd)<\/(?:small|sup)>(?:<\/(?:small|sup)>|). For more information, please see this request --Ohconfucius¡digame!10:10, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Added in revision
Increase maximum delay for timer, prevent invalid settings, or warn user
The delay timer has a field that allows values in excess of three years. However, any value larger than 119 seconds is no longer treated as a delay, it simply stops AWB from working. I understand that this is a problem with the API but I'm sure we can improve the interface. My preferred solutions would be:
Increase the value beyond two minutes.
Change the interface so invalid values cannot be set by the user.
Change the interface so it warns the user if the value is invalid.
Currently there is very little if any functionality in AWB that affects the File namespace and I would like to suggest this be changed. After doing a recent task I noticed a number of things that would be well suited IMO to be edits in AWB.
Fix the incorrect URL's (like HTTP//, HTTP:/WWW, HTTP://Website.come with no WWW, etc) This logic is already in place on the main namespace
Enable typos checking
Remove the duplicate section titles.
Allow general fixes to be done
Add a function that would allow the user to turn on or off General fixes for different namespaces. For example, most editors using AWB only make edits to mainspace so there is no reason to have edits enabled for all namespaces. --Kumioko (talk) 17:37, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]