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Please use this page to request new features in AWB.

Any discussion can follow as normal. Please place new feature request at the bottom of this page. This format allows the developers to keep track of feature requests. Once the feature requests have been added, after a short period, they will be moved to the /Archive.

[edit] General Fixes

[edit] Remove repeated wiki-links except for first in each section of article

Well, if we started removing all multiple wiki links, we'd get into trouble. However, i think we could be ok to do something like that, it would just be a case of getting the regex's right. As although if its a long article, multiple links scattered about would be good, if its a short one, it doesnt need it 5 times in one paragraph. See what anyone elses input is. Reedy Boy 11:04, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, yeah, but if it only removed duplicate wiki-links in each paragraph it shouldn't be that much of a problem. You have some valid points, though. --RazorICE 08:10, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

i'm slightly concerned about wikilnks that are identified as duplicates but actually link to different sections in the same large article. as it stands, the software tends to treat links to different sections as duplicates, doesn't it? -ΖαππερΝαππερ ^Babel_Alexandria 19:31, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

This proposal has been shot down at WP:BOTS many times. I still think it's possible, though, just not easy. For example, don't delink dates which are supporting formatting. I currently use this javascript to delink some repeated links, I often have to put back a few year links.

function replink(){
  var txt = document.editform.wpTextbox1;
  txt.value = txt.value.replace(/\[\[([^\]\|]+)\|([^\]]*)\]\](.*[.\n]*)\[\[\1\|\2\]\]/gm, "[[$1|$2]]$3$2");
  txt.value = txt.value.replace(/\[\[([^\]]+)\]\](.*[.\n]*)\[\[\1\]\]/gm, "[[$1]]$2$1");
  document.forms.editform.wpSummary.value=document.forms.editform.wpSummary.value + "Remove duplicate wikilink. ";
  document.editform.wpDiff.click();
}

These regexes can be used in a "normal" AWB find/replace

Rich Farmbrough, 07:51 6 April 2007 (GMT).

Got bored, so attempted to add it a bit. rev 1334 - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAutoWikiBrowser%2FSandbox&diff=137115677&oldid=137115241

Its done some!Reedy Boy 21:17, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I dislike this idea. Overlinking is a problem, but removing it probably requires more judgement than a regex can provide. As Reedy Boy suggested, repeated links can be useful in a long article, and in general I always assume that links in succession boxes or infoboxes should not be excluded from any assessment of duplication, and the same can apply to lists. I suppose that a sophisticated script could avoid this sort of problem, but I'd prefer to have this sort task done without close human supervision, and AWB doesn't always display the context of the changes sufficiently to ensure that this sort of tool would be used with due caution. Better than to have a little overlinking than to find widespread removal of links which do assist the reader. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:10, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Converting labelled foreign language text to equivalent template

Status	New
Description	For example, replacing ([[Russian language|Russian]]: Фёдор I Иваннович) by ({{lang-ru|Фёдор I Иваннович}}). This would have to be restricted to cases (as here) where the whole phrase is enclosed in parens, as the closing paren provides the indicator of the end of the foreign language text, which otherwise can't easily be determined automatically. Colonies Chris 12:16, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure you can just set up a RegEx for that (too lazy to show one). ~EdBoy^[c] 19:11, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• Probably it would be possible, but I think it should be part of 'General Fixes', not left to each user to devise. Colonies Chris 13:23, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Regexes can be set up for the entire language-specific wiki. You only need one person to figure it out, put it on the right page, and everyone shares it. --Brianmc 21:07, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External to Interwiki

Status	New
Description	I think AWB should have a feature that changes external links to sister projects into interwiki links, like changing Main Page to Main Page. --Wikihermit (Talk • HermesBot) 00:45, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

By MaxSem from Wikihermits talk page:

1. find \[http://en\.wikibooks\.org/wiki/(\S*) (.*)\], replace with [[b:$1|$2]]
2. find \[http://en\.wikibooks\.org/wiki/(\S*)], replace with [[b:$1]].

Reedy Boy 11:10, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

More:

1. find \[http://en\.wikisource\.org/wiki/(\S*) (.*)\], replace with [[s:$1|$2]]
2. find \[http://en\.wikisource\.org/wiki/(\S*)], replace with [[s:$1]].
3. find \[http://en\.wikiquote\.org/wiki/(\S*) (.*)\], replace with [[q:$1|$2]]
4. find \[http://en\.wikiquote\.org/wiki/(\S*)], replace with [[q:$1]].
5. find \[http://en\.wiktionary\.org/wiki/(\S*) (.*)\], replace with [[wiktionary:$1|$2]]
6. find \[http://en\.wiktionary\.org/wiki/(\S*)], replace with [[wiktionary:$1]].
7. find \[http://commons\.wikimedia\.org/wiki/(\S*) (.*)\], replace with [[commons:$1|$2]]
8. find \[http://commons\.wikimedia\.org/wiki/(\S*)], replace with [[commons:$1]].
9. find \[http://en\.wikinews\.org/wiki/(\S*) (.*)\], replace with [[n:$1|$2]]
10. find \[http://en\.wikinews\.org/wiki/(\S*)], replace with [[n:$1]].
11. find \[http://en\.wikispecies\.org/wiki/(\S*) (.*)\], replace with [[s:$1|$2]]
12. find \[http://en\.wikispecies\.org/wiki/(\S*)], replace with [[s:$1]].

Implementation...?

Reedy Boy 16:57, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

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.

-- JLaTondre 00:44, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

This code is for en.wiki only! We use AWB in other wiki!--OsamaK 15:28, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

We know. It hasnt been implemented as of yet (it may not ever be), so it doesnt really matter atm. Reedy Boy 19:32, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

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.

function fixTitle(e) {
    // Convert from the escaped UTF-8 byte code into Unicode
    s = 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 format
    s = s.replace(/http:\/\/(\w+)\.(\w+)\.org\/wiki\/([^#{|}\[\]]*).*/i, '$2:$1:$3')
    // Scripts paths (/w/index.php?...) into interwiki format
    s = s.replace(/http:\/\/(\w+)\.(\w+)\.org\/.*?title=([^#&{|}\[\]]*).*/i, '$2:$1:$3')
    // Remove [[brackets]] from link
    s = s.replace(/[^\n]*?\[\[([^[\]{|}]+)[^\n]*/g, '$1')
    // '_' -> ' ' and hard coded home wiki
    s = 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 in
    e.value = s
}

A general implementation (suitable for general fixes) for foundation links from the code above:

1. Find \[http://(\w+)\.(\w+)\.org/wiki/([^{|}\[\]<>"\n]+) +([^]]+)\] replace with [[$2:$1:$3|$4]]
2. 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]]

It avoid the flaws from above and works across all languages. — Dispenser 04:13, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! —Reedy 12:57, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Broken hyperlinks

Status

New

Description

While working on my external links script I came across some broken link which were only caused by syntax. the format of the links are [http://...index.html''title text''].[2] The reason why they show up correctly is because the mediaWiki parser changes ''text'' to <i>text</i> and the link does not included <> eg *[http:// www.stickycarpet.com/dam/dam194X.htm Complete 194X series] . Please a general rule that'll fix this. —Dispenser 22:25, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

If anyone wants a regex its \[\w://[^][<>"\s]*?''[^][]*\] —Dispenser 18:44, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

The stickycarpet.com domain has been nominated for blacklisting due to spam problems so I have disabled the link above to www.stickycarpet.com/dam/dam194X.htm so as not to trigger the Mediawiki spam filter. Reference: meta:Talk:Spam blacklist#stickycarpet.com (permanent link). --A. B. ^(talk) 01:38, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Reedy, if you want a failsafe version it would be (\[\w://[^][<>"\s']*?)(''[^][]*\]) to be replaced with $1 $2 —Dispenser 22:15, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. MaxSem is fiddling with general fixes atm. I'll point him here and ask him to add it :) Reedy Boy 22:20, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Rule:    Add space to external links separated by a HTML entity and double-quote
Replace: \[(\w://[^][<>" ]*)([<>"][^][]*)\]
With:    [$1 $2]

Rule:    Add space to external links separated by wikimarkup converted into HTML entities
Replace: \[(\w://[^][<>" ]*?)(''[^][]*)\]
With:    [$1 $2]

Tests:

1. span tag
2. > sign
3. < sign
4. "Quotemark
5. Wiki italics
6. Wiki bold
7. Wiki bold & italics
8. [3]

As you can see not at full proof as I'd like, however, I'd say that the " and double don't have flaws. —Dispenser (talk) 07:15, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

# Commons fixes for URLs
text = re.sub(r'(http:?/+)+', 'http://', text)                      # Silently correct http://http:// mistakes
text = re.sub(r"(\[\w+://[^][<>\"\s]*?)''", r"\1 ''", text)         # Italics and bold misforgivings in the php render

Some code from my tools. — Dispenser 04:43, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I've used the (http:?/+)+ fix in AWB: based on the March database dump there were 976 articles matching the pattern (http:?/+)\1 (replacing with http://). Of these, about still 454 contained errors yesterday, which I've now fixed. I think this can be included as a new general fix. I'll have a look at the second one this evening. Rjwilmsi 07:03, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Status	New
Description	It it possible to insert wikilinks into the middle of external link. This can cause issues for people who work links in AWB and other programs. Could AWB turn these into more conventional links? Source: [4] —Dispenser (talk) 07:15, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Placement of ^[1] within punctuation

We already have some stuff for this in the general fixes, but more couldn't hurt. —METS501 (talk) 16:52, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Would you clarify that? Snowman 18:26, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, we don't. MaxSem disabled them in rev 994. Jogers (talk) 15:38, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

It would be great if someone who uses regular expressions to fix placement of <ref> tags shared their experience. Jogers (talk) 17:36, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I have not worked on it, but is sounds easy I have been told by a programmer - try using the octal forms of brackets and backslashes in the reg ex. Probably need to first recognise if the format is correct or not, and then only put the wrong ones through a subroutine to save doing too many loops. Snowman 13:32, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

It should be fairly easy (just needs someone with the time to sit down and play with it) - Set of regex's to match the bad ones, then something to find the nearest/next full stop, and then just move the reference to there.. Reedy Boy 17:37, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

As I have suggested the refs in the middle of text and not adjacent to punctuation would be difficult to reposition because the punctuation might need sorting out, and it might not be satisfactory to move them to the next punctuation, where the refs might look like they are referring to the wrong facts. At the present time I was thinking that these would be left where they were in the middle of the sentence. It is where the spacing is wrong adjacent to punctuation that could be quite easily fixed with reg ex. Spaces could be swapped out/in and/or punctuation moved. The case of more than one ref at a punctuation also needs to be considered. It can be tested in the above block of text although all variations are not included. Snowman 18:15, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

True - I suppose some fixes would be better than none - Like moving ones before full stops to after them. Reedy Boy 18:20, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that would be helpful; but not just for full stops but for all punctuation, brackets, and quotation possibilities as well, and refs where the punctuation is included before the end of italics and bold text. Perhaps, start with punctuation marks and obvious ref positions points to get it launched with a success. I think that the diff screen needs to show changes in blank spaces more clearly to show what has been done - that is another suggestion. Have you seen the diff display in Winmerge software, also on sourceforge? Snowman 18:45, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I have a set of regular expressions that do this job. I am happy to share my work with anybody who is interested. Gaius Cornelius 17:39, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

That would save us having to come up with ourselves for the AWB project. And would mean they could be added fairly easily to AWB for the next release. If you wouldnt mind, we'll certainly use them. And give you credit in the code ;) —Reedy Boy 20:27, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Here are my rules, they must be applied in the order given:

Rule:    Move reference to after punctuation (1)
Replace: (<ref>|<ref )([^<]*)(</ref>|/>)([\.,;:"])
With:    $4$1$2$3

Rule:    Delete white-space before reference (1)
Replace: \s(<ref>|<ref )([^<]*)(</ref>|/>)
With:    $1$2$3
Apply:   Twice

Rule:    Delete white-space between references (1)
Replace: (<ref>|<ref )([^<]*)(</ref>|/>)\s(<ref>|</ref )([^<]*)(</ref>|/>)
With:    $1$2$3$4$5$6

Rule:    Delete white-space before punctuation followed by reference (1)
Replace: \s([\.,;:"])(<ref>|<ref )([^<]*)(</ref>|/>)
With:    $1$2$3$4

Rule:    Delete white-space before punctuation followed by reference (1)
Replace: \s([\.,;:"])(<ref>|<ref )([^<]*)(</ref>|/>)
With:    $1$2$3$4

Rule:    Move reference to after punctuation (1)
Replace: (<ref>|<ref )([^<]*)(</ref>|/>)([\.,;:"])
With:    $4<!--delspacex-->$1$2$3

Rule:    Delete white-space before reference (1)
Replace: \s(<ref>|<ref )([^<]*)(</ref>|/>)
With:    $1$2$3
Apply:   Twice

Rule:    Delete white-space between references (1)
Replace: (<ref>|<ref )([^<]*)(</ref>|/>)\s(<ref>|</ref )([^<]*)(</ref>|/>)
With:    $1$2$3$4$5$6

Rule:    Delete white-space before punctuation followed by reference (1)
Replace: \s([\.,;:"])(<ref>|<ref )([^<]*)(</ref>|/>)
With:    $1$2$3$4

Rule:    Add space after reference followed by text.
Replace: (</ref>|[^b][^r]\s/>)([A-Za-z0-9])
With:    $1<!--insspace1--> $2

I find this set to be reasonably reliable and effective, would like to hear how others get on.

Gaius Cornelius 21:07, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

The white space diff is reported to be ready in the next version, which will help to show what the above (or similar) has done in the AWB diff sceen. Snowman (talk) 00:46, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Only the first rule seems to work for me. Also, it seems when only using the first rule, it would be useful to let it work repeatedly (when more references are present to move the punctuation just in front of the very first one in the whole row) - however when I set to repeat it, it did not seem to take effect. I also do not understand why you duplicate some rules and why you say "apply twice" on some - isnt it the same?--Kozuch (talk) 20:39, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Non breaking spaces

Status

New

Description

Could (as part of the "apply general fixes" feature) AWB add non breaking spaces? Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Non-breaking spaces there should be a   between a measurement and a unit so that it doesn't wrap onto the next line leaving 4 on one line and kg on the next. User:AndyZ/peerreviewer picks up on this so perhaps there would be a hint in the code there? Thanks, James086Talk | Email 12:41, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

If we ask nicely, i suppose, we can probably use the regex's/whatever and add via a similar method... Reedy Boy 22:00, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes please! Would that mean something like the "Find and replace" feature? James086^{Talk | Email} 00:14, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes and no. You could probably do it manually via that method, but to include it automatically in the general fixes, i presume, it would be a set of regular expressions looking for certain matches, and then replacing the space in it with a non-break space Reedy Boy 09:38, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DEFAULTSORT

Status	New
Description	When a DEFAULTSORT already exists, and categories use it explicitly, remove the explicit usage. Rich Farmbrough, 15:17 11 October 2007 (GMT).

Status

New

Description

Related to the above request: It seems a DEFAULTSORT is added only when all the Categories use the same listing. Sometimes, however, one Category's listing is merely misspelled or omitted, or a special sorting method is used for one or more categories (e.g., "Nelson Rockefeller" might get ""Category:Rockefeller family|Nelson", whereas other categories will get ""Rockefeller, Nelson"). New request: When a majority of Categories use the same listing, add the DEFAULTSORT anyway (it's only a default!), and delete the listing from (only) the appropriate Categories.--BillFlis (talk) 14:25, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Please don't implement this; the defaultsort value should be a sensible default, not the majority usage. Hesperian 04:05, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Pipes and categories

This should be simple enought to add. Regex to match category piped, get bit after |, if == page name. Remove it and pipe... Reedy Boy 13:42, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

It should only do this if there is no DEFAULTSORT on the page. In addition, in all namespaces but the mainspace, it should only accept {{FULLPAGENAME}} and {{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}. Od Mishehu 08:09, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Addition: If DEFAULTSORT exists remove the name after the pipe symbol if == DEFAULTSORT. -- 22:53, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Added in rev 2326, but only mainspace is currently supported. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 14:44, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Placement of portal template

Status

New

Description

Forwarding on a request... that the {{XX Portal}} template be moved under "See also" within an article when found elsewhere (namely at the top). I'm guessing that if the "see also" doesn't exist, that the section be created with the template underneath. I wasn't aware that it was supposed to be placed there, as I've generally seen it at the top of pages, however, Template:Portal does have the mention of the correct placement. SkierRMH 15:33, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] {{commons|Category:XXX}} > {{commonscat|XXX}}

Status	New
Description	In general fixes, I hope add replace {{commons|Category:XXX}} > {{commonscat|XXX}}.--OsamaK 18:28, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I think that could work. {{commonscat}} will work if the commons cat is the same as the name as the wiki page. Snowman (talk) 00:50, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Move orphan tags on the top

Status	New
Description	Detect orphan tags and move them on the top of the article. -- Magioladitis 01:17, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

It doesnt move cleanup tags to the top.. But i suppose, that can be used for sections.. Are there any other tags that really should be moved to the top..? ie {{uncategorized}}. Seems like this will have to be a new "general fix". Does AWB move any tags to the top atm... I cant seem to think/find any. Just puts them at the top when it adds them... —Reedy Boy 23:28, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I am using {{Articleissues}} to navigate through the different tags.

• {{uncategorized}} should be at the bottom.
• {{orphan}}, {{deadend}}, {{cleanup}}, {{notability}}, {{{refimprove}} should be in the beginning.
• {{Wikify}} and all the others can be used for sections as well. So: no move.

I don't know if this complicates things but all these tags should go under prod, prod2, Afw, Rfd warnings. I don't know if this necessary.

Atm I don't think that AWB does it. I may have seen "uncategorized" moving to the correct position but maybe this was because interwiki and stub tags moved to the correct position. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:55, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Move text under categories above external links

Status	New
Description	Sometimes people add text at the bottom of the article UNDER categories. AWB places text about it, but it would be better IF external links section exists to put it above it. See here and here. Magioladitis 22:31, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Date links that break autoformatting

Status	New
Description	Fix errors that break autoformatting.

Please can AWB fix pieces of text that break autoformatting? For example:

• [[5 November|November 5]]
• [[5th November]]
• [[5 November]][[1980 in music|1980]]
• [[1 November|1]]-[[5 November]] date ranges should not be linked because they end up looking like '1-November 5'.
• many more

I cannot see any circumstance when these are valid. They are hard for the human eye to detect but easy for a machine. Several people, including me, have script to address these (e.g. see my monobook script) but editors create these errors faster than we can fix them. Feel free to adapt the existing script code for AWB general fixes. Lightmouse (talk) 11:38, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Some more code that needs review for false positives and efficiency:

//remove piped years from full dates (day, month, year)
ArticleText = Regex.Replace(ArticleText, @"(?i)(\[\[\d\d? (?:January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December|Jan|Feb|Mar|Apr|May|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sep|Oct|Nov|Dec)\]\],? ? ?)\[\[.{1,30}\|(\d{1,4})\]\]", "$1$2");
//remove piped years from full dates (month, day, year)
ArticleText = Regex.Replace(ArticleText, @"(?i)(\[\[(?:January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December|Jan|Feb|Mar|Apr|May|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sep|Oct|Nov|Dec) \d\d?\]\],? ? ?)\[\[.{1,30}\|(\d{1,4})\]\]", "$1$2");
//remove piped years from full dates (year, month, day)
ArticleText = Regex.Replace(ArticleText, @"(?i)\[\[.{1,30}\|(\d{1,4})\]\](,? ?\-? ?\[\[(?:January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December|Jan|Feb|Mar|Apr|May|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sep|Oct|Nov|Dec) \d\d?\]\])",  "$1$2");
//remove piped years from full dates (year, day, month)
ArticleText = Regex.Replace(ArticleText, @"(?i)\[\[.{1,30}\|(\d{1,4})\]\](,? ?\-? ?\[\[ \d\d? (?:January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December|Jan|Feb|Mar|Apr|May|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sep|Oct|Nov|Dec)\]\])",  "$1$2");

//remove piping from day/month to day/month
ArticleText = Regex.Replace(ArticleText, @"(?i)\[\[\d{1,2}(?:January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December)\|(\d{1,2} (?:January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December))\]\]", "$1");
//remove piping from day/month to month/day
ArticleText = Regex.Replace(ArticleText, @"(?i)\[\[\d{1,2} (?:January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December)\|((?:January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December) \d{1,2})\]\]", "$1");
//remove piping from month/day to month/day
ArticleText = Regex.Replace(ArticleText, @"(?i)\[\[(?:January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December) \d{1,2}\|((?:January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December) \d{1,2}\]\]", "$1");
//remove piping from month/day to day/month
ArticleText = Regex.Replace(ArticleText, @"(?i)\[\[(?:January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December) \d{1,2}\|(\d{1,2} (?:January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December)\]\]", "$1");

Regards Lightmouse (talk) 09:57, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

(?:January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December|Jan|Feb|Mar|Apr|May|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sep|Oct|Nov|Dec)

I would probably replace it with

(?:Jan(uary)?|Feb(ruary)?|Mar(ch)?|Apr(il)?|May|Jun(e)?|Jul(y)?|Aug(ust)?|Sep(tember)?|Oct(ober)?|Nov(ember)?|Dec(ember)?)

Bit shorter... Hmm —Reedy Boy 18:26, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

That is fine by me. I will leave the decision up to you. Lightmouse (talk) 18:36, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Any news on this feature? Lightmouse (talk) 09:32, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Any news on this feature? Lightmouse (talk) 08:19, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Would more regex examples help move this feature forward? Lightmouse (talk) 12:05, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

This one has been static for a while. Is there a particular problem with it? Lightmouse (talk) 21:47, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Handling <li> and <ul> html tags

Status	New
Description	Replace <li> with *. Delete <ul>, </ul>, </li>. Example -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:47, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

<li>(.*?)(</li>)? --> * $1

Then just remove all other </li>, <ul>, </ul>..

</?(li|ul)> --> ""

—Reedy Boy 13:34, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

So that should be easy. Can you implement it? -- Magioladitis (talk) 02:08, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Expand out contractions

It would be possible to achieve via WP:RETF, when we patch it not to touch quotes. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 20:48, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Merge multiple tags into one {{articleissues}} tag

Status	New
Description	If an article has 3 or more tags, then make it easy to merge them all into a single {{articleissues}} tag. --Gary King (talk) 20:42, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Formatting of parenthetical birth and death information

Status

New

Description

A feature, probably as part of the "Apply general fixes" function, that would change instances of b. and d. into born and died, respectively, in the parenthetical portion of text that follows the name of a person (see WP:MOSDATE#Dates of birth and death). For instance, '''John Doe''' (b. [[21 February]] [[2008]]) would be replaced with '''John Doe''' (born [[21 February]] [[2008]]) The simplest way I can think of to minimise the potential for error is to make the replacement contigent on the presence of the following code (of course, human judgment will still be required): ''' (b. Thanks, Black Falcon (Talk) 06:43, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I'll have a go at this one early next week by searching the March database dump I have then running a find & replace against the results. Hopefully I will be able to report back a >99% reliable regular expression that can be added to the AWB general fixes. Thanks Rjwilmsi (talk) 15:29, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Add/remove [[

Status

New

Description

"Apply general fixes" should also contain a fix or notice when an earlier user has forgotten the left ([[) or right (]]) pair of an link. (General fixes does fix one of the [ missing, or removes/adds when internal/external link is mixed up.) It also happens that someone adds the [[ and ]] inside the link, like [[Movie from Japan ([[2007]])|Japanese movie]]. NL-Romaine (talk) 19:37, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

How do you propose to fix it? MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 19:55, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

That is a difficulty I had forseen, that is why I mentioned to give a notice of it in some way or mark it somehow on the screen that it is not "strange". NL-Romaine (talk) 01:31, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Appending reference section

Status	New
Description	Add the <references/> with section header to articles which use Extension:Cite, but lack said tag. An implementation currently exists in DumZiBot. For more background see User talk:NicDumZ#Question. — Dispenser 13:00, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Format Infobox

Status	New
Description	Format Infobox and Taxobox as indicated below.

A very high proportion of articles begin with either an Infobox or a Taxobox template. Some are tidy and easy to read, but many are a ragged mess. I have thought about how it might be possible to tidy-up these templates using regex expressions, but for various reasons this turns out to be very difficult. However, an algorithm for tidying these template should be pretty straightforward and might be built into AWB.

I would move to suggest that the best arrangment for such templates is to have each parameter on a new line immediatley preceeded by a space, the pipe (vertical bar) character and a single space. The parameter name should then apprear, followed by a variable number of spaces, an equals sign, a single space and then the parameter value. The parameter value may itself contain a template, in which case it should be reproduced exactly as it was left by the previous editor, but if it contains new line with a pipe as the first non-whitespace character, the line should be padded with preceeding spaces to align the pipe with the opening curly brackets of the template.

For example:

{{Infobox_nrhp 
 | name           = Burns Cottage
 | nrhp_type      =
 | image          =
 | caption        =
 | location       = [[Atlanta, GA]]
 | lat_degrees    = 33 
 | lat_minutes    = 43 
 | lat_seconds    = 36.9 
 | lat_direction  = N
 | long_degrees   = 84 
 | long_minutes   = 21 
 | long_seconds   = 19.86 
 | long_direction = W
 | area           =
 | built          = 1911
 | architect      = Morgan, Thomas H.; McWhirter, Robert M.
 | added          = [[December 1]], [[1983]]
 | governing_body = Private
 | refnum         = 83003572<ref name="nris">{{cite web
                                              | url       = http://www.nr.nps.gov/
                                              | title     = National Register Information System
                                              | date      = 2007-01-23
                                              | work      = National Register of Historic Places
                                              | publisher = National Park Service
                                             }}</ref>
}}

Just as a comment, this would need to be opt-outable. I agree it would be nice to auto-tidy some infoboxes, but non-tidy infoboxes also have their uses in helping you to identify "old" ones that need their content updating. FlagSteward (talk) 11:45, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Very true. I wonder, would it be possible to have a completely general "format template" button that formats the template on which the cursor is currently resting? Gaius Cornelius (talk) 16:55, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Skipping

[edit] Batch Filter by "Skipability"

Status

New

Description

It would be great to pre-filter lists by "skipability". Suppose I have a long list of articles and I only want to make changes to pages containing the word "foo". I'd configure AWB to Skip if doesn't contain: foo. I would then command AWB to check all of the pages in the list and remove non-matching pages from the list *without* making any changes to the matching ones. It would run, and I could come back to a prepped list that only contains articles I'm interested in. — jmorgan (talk) 05:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC) When using AWB, it generally takes about 5 seconds for a page to load and be processed (due to the delay in accessing it from the internet) before I can look at the diff to decide whether to save it or not, and another 5 seconds to save it. When editing hundreds of articles in a row, these few seconds really add up. A nice feature would be to preload a list of articles and process them all ahead of time. Then I could come back, look at the diffs quickly and decide which to save and which to ignore. AWB would then start uploading the results, but log an error and skip the article if a change had been made by another user in the mean time. Thanks, --CapitalR 17:25, 4 May 2007 (UTC) When creating a long list of articles with AWB and setting some ignore conditions ("General article skip options"), I'd like a "Prune list" button that would prune out the articles that would get ignored. Currently you basically have to stare at the program all the time even if four out of five articles need no action from you, because the process gets stopped the second the program encounters an article that does need editing. If you could first prune the list, then you knew you could do something else when the program prunes and then focus on the actual editing afterwards. This could actually be implemented under the Filter dialog. --ZeroOne (talk / @) 19:09, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I think this comes back to the extra server load from loading pages twice. I dont think its something that can really be added... Its been requested for typo's and such before Reedy Boy 16:08, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

YOu can do this. Set up Skip if contains and null changes. You will then get the ones you want in the skipped list, and no changes acutally made. Rich Farmbrough, 13:25 20 April 2007 (GMT).

My plugin now has this feature (but don't tell anyone!) although, of course, it's for talk page templating only. --kingboyk 13:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

This would be a bit of a server hog - ie dual processing, it has been dismissed before. AWB has a lot of automatic skip options, and the V4 release willl include a new diff engine, that reduces the load on the wikimedia servers, and will do the diffs quicker. Reedy Boy 14:48, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for letting me know. And thanks for all the other good features and fixes, the program is a big help. --CapitalR 18:12, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

That said, pywikipedia loads 50 pages at a time, then edits each one, applying the throttle between them. Could we not possibly go this way for some bot operations (rather than loading hundreds of extra KB of html?). Martinp23 14:27, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

AWB could really use speeding up for bot ops, I agree. With our recent changes, and the plugin, it's starting to look like a serious bot app now, but it could do with being faster. Supporting the maxlag param would be cool too (and afaik pywiki doesn't support it yet, we could be first ;)) --kingboyk 12:54, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

<- I support adding this change. In the grand scheme of things, I can't imagine the extra server load of say 50-100 people loading 50-100 pages each a day twice would cripple the servers. Mbisanz 21:54, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I suppose, and isnt there a rule regarding that we shouldnt have to worry about these sorts of things, thats up to the dev's/admins, as long as we know its not going to completely "rape" the servers? —Reedy 13:00, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I already effectively do this as I modify the order of skipping in AWB, and nobody has complained yet (and they complain about other things quite keenly ;) ). I suggest we go for it. Thanks Rjwilmsi (talk) 15:32, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Find and replace improvements

[edit] Apply the four generic settings individually

Status	New
Description	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. mattbr 17:15, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

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)

Sounds very useful to me. Gaius Cornelius (talk) 12:32, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Individual edit summary

Status	New
Description	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. mattbr 17:15, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

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)

[edit] HTML substitution

Status	New
Description	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. —Dispenser 03:44, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Addition for "Replace Special"

Status	New
Description	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. – 84.179.33.65 23:21, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Subset regex

Status	New
Description	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 —Dispenser 02:26, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I can example it better with an example:

I'll use HTML

<html>
<title>String1</title>
<head>
</head>
 
<body>
String1
</body>
</html>

We want to change String1 to RE1

What I'd like to be able to

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)

[edit] Counting Regextypo fixes

Status

New

Description

It would be great for AWB to keep track of which and how many RegexTypoFixes have been done. The user would then have the option to (at any convenient time, say once a month), send this to the server. The server would then store this information. The idea is twofold. Firstly, say after a year, we could remove the Regex fixes with very low count, hence making AWB faster (and preventing the list from become too large). Secondly, it would yield fantastic statistics on which typos are most common in English language. Voorlandt 19:34, 16 August 2007 (UTC) And third it would be a good testimonial to AWB and the "bot army". Rich Farmbrough, 09:26 1 September 2007 (GMT).

I'd proposed to Sam that I/we add some simple stats gathering to AWB; I'd particularly like to find out how widespread usage is outside this wiki. Then I saw this (old) request. If I do the stats stuff then we can think about collecting this info too. --kingboyk (talk) 18:58, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Support for typo-fixing like projects

Status	New
Description	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)

As a though, a plugin interface could be done for this... Or just using IAWBPlugin.. —Reedy 15:33, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] some development to ignore images

Status	New
Description	I think that option should ignore all these configurations: Grafika:.*?\.... (sample regex maybe there are better, that's example for .pl) because images are included in tables and galleries as well (maybe this regex won't match for galleries but sth should be applied for them anyway) --84.234.42.68 15:33, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Renaming of the new keywords

Status

New

Description

Before the keywords that I've proposed are implemented in "stone", I would like to change them. I've realized that it would reduce the learning curve if they were the same as wikipedia's magic words. Some maybe useful to convert hard-coded strings to variables, while others maybe used to work around bugs. I list bellow what I believe are the most useful keywords to implement Page names It's probably a good idea to include the "E" version as well.  %%PAGENAME%%  %%BASEPAGENAME%%  %%NAMESPACE%%  %%SUBPAGENAME%%  %%FULLPAGENAME%% Time Apparently there been bug in with subst: in the ref tags, they maynot be all that useful since they rely on the user correctly keeping time.  %%CURRENTDAY%%  %%CURRENTMONTHNAME%%  %%CURRENTYEAR%% Other Useful to convert hard-coded edit links.  %%SERVER%%  %%SCRIPTPATH%%  %%SERVERNAME%% —Dispenser 02:00, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, if they were the same as the wikipedia ones, there would be nothing to do in AWB, as wikipedia would process it - Ie there would be no point doing it in AWB aswell. Reedy Boy 10:16, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Unless you want to want to change to a variable. Like changing http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Feature_requests&action=edit to {{fullurl:{{PAGENAMEE}}|action=edit}}

Note that SmackBot has several hundred regex rules which put subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME etc in pages: becasue of the above mentioned bug in Wikimedia I then need to use a regex to replace this a month literal - which I inevitably forget to update fully. So having an AWB variable for currentmonth/year would fix one of the known problems for me, not as well as if the mediawiki bug were fixed though.

Note 2. The above proposal is to use the same naming convention - the mediawiki magic words need "__" or "{" around them, not "%%".

Rich Farmbrough, 10:34 15 October 2007 (GMT).

It will be helpful to add magic words to AWB, for example, some time I want to include page's name in the summery. If you apply this, I'll can write summery as "Editing %%PAGENAME%%"..--OsamaK (talk) 04:52, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] First letter of category & section name

Status	New
Description	[[Kategoria:browary w Polsce|Bartek]] -> [[Kategoria:Browary w Polsce|Bartek]] [[Kategoria:gmina Gołuchów]] -> [[Kategoria:Gmina Gołuchów]] etc. --84.234.42.68 15:01, 6 July 2007 (UTC) and == film == -> == Film == --84.234.42.68 (talk) 14:05, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

So capitalisation of the first letter in a category? I think this is there for en.wiki (im sure i added it...) but it may not be for other wiki's... Reedy Boy 18:22, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

on .pl that isn't present, I didn't want to do a screenshot, just copied the diffs (from manually capitalizing kategoria->Kategoria [I now uncheck that regex as it's implemented), and there were no other changes) ;) --84.234.42.68 10:51, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

here's a screenshot to be sure [5], also the first letter of the name of image is not being changed to big on .pl--84.234.42.68 11:02, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

still doesn't work on .pl [6], in 4.3.0.0 not present on .pl --84.234.42.68 15:10, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Must "RegexTypoFix" be enabled in order for this to work on en.wiki? I encountered this situation here and manually changed "transport" to "Transport" -- AWB did not prompt the change. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:52, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Automatic uppercasing for section names will not be implemented, as there are lots of cases when it should remain as it is - for example, dotTrace, uTorrent and so on. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 16:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I did not find any category name that starts with a lowercase ([7] still does't work - from plwiki with the lattest AWB release) --84.234.42.68 (talk) 20:55, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Variables generated from article name

Status

New

Description

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)

[edit] Threading, Background and Automation

[edit] Threading

Status

New

Description

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. --kingboyk 15:40, 9 April 2007 (UTC) 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. —Dispenser 18:55, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Load pages in background

Status

New

Description

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

Migrate to API? will allow us to complete this much more easily (as below). This is very much a duplicate request.. Cant find the others, but it has been requested before. Very similar to/a simpler version of: #Background_scan_to_prune_unchanged_articles_ahead_of_time The only problem we get is if pages are updated between pre-load and save... Which, could be, of course, checked for... —Reedy Boy 20:53, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Save pages in background

Status	New
Description	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

Migrate to API? will allow us to complete this much more easily. With the current way, we'd have to be faffing about with multiple browsers (which we already do do...) —Reedy Boy 20:51, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

What shall we do if the save is aborted for some reason and user input is needed? All UI will already be diplaying the next page... MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 20:57, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Background scan to prune unchanged articles ahead of time

Status

New

Description

Sorry if the subject's a bit awkward; I'm not exactly sure how to put this into words. The idea would be for AWB to constantly go through the list of articles it has been given, and removing articles that it doesn't detect any automatic fixes for, thereby skipping the waiting time between articles as AWB loads each one to see whether it needs an automatic change. In other words, say you have 5 articles -- for example: Apple, Bear, Clown, Deer, Elephant -- and say AWB doesn't think Apple needs an automatic change, then it would remove it from the list and move on to Bear. Now say Bear needs a change, AWB would bring up the usual editing interface, but at the same time, in the background, would keep going through the list to see if the other articles need a change. If Clown and Deer don't need a change but Elephant does, AWB would remove Clown and Deer from the list so that when the user is done editing Bear, Elephant would be loaded right away. I realize the example is convoluted, but I really believe that in this way, users will spend less time waiting for AWB to find an article that needs an edit, and more time actually editing. Personally, once in a while I go through my watchlist and spend more time waiting for AWB to find a page that needs attention than actually editing. I hope this makes sense, and thank you in advance for considering it. --85.5.94.202 (talk) 10:36, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

An interesting idea, and I agree this would be a useful feature. Rjwilmsi (talk) 18:10, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Nearly the same as the pre-processing requests above. We cant be using cached versions, as we may be taking/saving older versions... Even really in the short period.. Even more so if the list is long and takes while to be worked through —Reedy Boy 20:53, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

This isn't pre-processing, we don't need to worry about edit conflicts if we use results of ProcessPage only to tell if the page should be skipped. However, implementing this could be pretty difficult. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 21:56, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Waiting for the pages to be ignored is really a teddious task.--Kozuch (talk) 21:23, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Automatic List Making?

Status	New
Description	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. ~ Wikihermit 01:19, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

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. --OsamaKBOT 16:35, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

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"

[edit] Automatically have AWB do multiple things for bots

Status

New

Description

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) R ParlateContribs@(Let's Go Yankees!) 02:04, 15 June 2007 (UTC) 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 | talk 18:47, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

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 Boy 08:54, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

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. --Brianmc 12:12, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

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. Mashiah 23:29, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

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)

[edit] Support new Mediawiki maxlag parameter

Status	New
Description	See Wikipedia:Bot_owners'_noticeboard#Maxlag_parameter and mw:Maxlag_parameter. --kingboyk 14:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I suppose that it could be accomplished using the nudge timer? Does it work ok currently? MaxSem 18:26, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I think it's probably a bit broken in terms of implementation. The basic idea certainly works, as it one's of several features which ran in my plugin without incident for some time, and which got moved over to AWB. The nudge timer would probably have to be modified somewhat anyway, so that it knows it's waiting on a maxlag retry (good) rather than possible network/server problems (bad). We also presumably have the page save timer for auto-save, that would be able to be removed. --kingboyk 16:30, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Automatic creating of an replace list based on Special:Log/move

Status	New
Description	I'd like to have function which create an "find and replace" list for updating links. I know that stuff like "link upadte" is very unusual in Wikipedia. But in projects like Wikibooks it's a nice to have because we some time have to update a lot of link and pages. Example: Remane book or an issue with the namening convention. -- MichaelFrey 16:32, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possible plugins

[edit] Allow easy way to add missing parameters to a template, and also a way to reorder parameters

Status

New

Description

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, --CapitalR 12:07, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Display more info for images and coordinating image tags added to menu

Status

New

Description

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) -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 05:36, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

bumping so someone might at least respond to this.... -ΖαππερΝαππερ ^Babel_Alexandria 18:40, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

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 Boy 20:22, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

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. -ΖαππερΝαππερ ^Babel_Alexandria 00:07, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

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 Boy 09:32, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article creation using CSV files as datasource

Hi, im sure this can be done, just needs some time to work on it. Can you post us somewhere a CSV with some test entries so we have something to work it?

It sounds like your basically after something that will load each one individually, parse it through the required regext, and spit out the article text? Or is it substing a template onto it - ie

 {{subst:IndiaTown|Machilipatnam|town|Andhra Pradesh}} 

Reedy Boy 07:53, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

This would be a very useful in creating new articles and adding info to already existing articles. It would help in removing a major limiatation in my bot.--(Sumanth|Talk) 08:01, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Are you wanting to do it the substing template way? It would make sense i think to me... Well, depending on how it was coded/done AWB side Reedy Boy 08:15, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Reply to you first question- It would be "something that will load each one individually, parse it through the required regext, and spit out the article text". The regex text can be entered either in "append/prepend" field or "replace" field. For example, see the User:Sumibot/AWB_settings. In the text added in "prepend" field we can include some variables which would be read from CSV file. I didn't quite understand what you meant by "substing template" (your 2nd question). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sumanthk (talk • contribs)

I was just thinking of other ways to do it. If AWB will already do it, im thinking too far outside the box - You just need to be able to load the CSV's, and then run through them - Right? Reedy Boy 08:34, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Yup. Just load list based on the first variable in each line and be able to use the other variables in "prepend" (for creation) and/or replace (for adding info to existing articles) fiels.--(Sumanth|Talk) 08:44, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

ReedyBoy, Thanks for your interest in this request. Even subst'ing templates will require the variables to be used to be passed as parameters to the template.

{{subst:IndiaTown|{{{1}}}|{{{2}}}|{{{3}}}}}

These will get parsed into actual values for each row. I have uploaded some CSV data at User:Ganeshbot/Census2001. Please let me know if you need more information. Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 22:20, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Per a new request below, I learnt about %%title%% keyword feature that already exists in AWB. It evaluates to FULLPAGENAME at runtime. This change is similar, need keywords for each column in the CSV file. For example the following text,

%%col1%% is a %%col2%% in the Indian state of %%col3%%.

can be used in the Append/Prepend text box. Col# naming was just a suggestion. I am open to new ways of implementing the same. Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 20:03, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Just chipping in my 2 cents worth... But as your CSV is just a format usually used to load spreadsheets and the like, why not make the first row of the CSV your variable names? That way you don't need to muck about with defining search/replace strings - you'd just do

{{subst:IndiaTown|{{{Place name}}}|{{{Place category}}}|{{{State}}}}}

The first line of the CSV would then be:

 Place name,Place category,State

Oh, and I can see uses for this too, for example updating all our country portals on Wikinews. --Brianmc 21:04, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. If theres more people wanting it, its definately something worth playing with to implement! Reedy Boy 21:06, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

This is something I have been wanting for use on the Māori Wikipedia - it would be a great feature for the creation of say, geography pages as Ganeshk says, or botanical/zoological articles, or election articles. or if you wanted to create articles where 'X is a Y in the Z, notable for its Q and P or whatever.... there are so many databases available online that contain information in CSV form or in some form that is easily transferable to CSV, that could be used to create or expand articles in a satisfying way, if this feature was available Kahuroa 19:19, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2008

This feature will be of great help for many. This will elimate the need for writing individual programs to create new articles. Can this feature be worked on please? Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 18:12, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I have written this plug-in in VB.NET. If anyone would like to beta-test it (has some CSV data to upload), see User:Ganeshbot/CSVLoader. Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 18:21, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks rather good. When i've got some time, i'll help test it out and help improve the code if i can see any improvements. —Reedy 19:30, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bypass redirects

Status	New
Description	It is somewhat important for navboxes (template space) as self-link are bold but only to a page with that exact title (no redirects), see User:Dschwen/HighlightRedirects for an example of some code which utilized the api.php. — Dispenser 03:33, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't utilise the bot API, it simply changes page CSS on request to make links to redirects visible, which is not helpful for us. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 10:33, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I was using api.php before the feature was integrated into the software, older version uses ajax to get the redirects. — Dispenser 05:55, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Added Infobox and person data support

Status

New

Description

I think it would be great to program in some additional support for adding infoboxes and person data templates. Currently all the data must be manually input when the infobox or person data template is added by some of the info (like the name, or info from categories) could be programmed in allowing the infobox and person data templates to be added faster and more accurately.--Kumioko (talk) 13:07, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Any comment on whether this might happen or not?--Kumioko (talk) 20:00, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

AWB isn't likely to implement this as its to specific for the general sotware to have. So I've filed this under the plugin section. If you'd like to implement this, there plenty of tools you can use and you aren't restricted to C# or VB.NET if you use the external processing function. Also, next time when you fill out a feature request be a bit more specific on what you want. — Dispenser 02:07, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation all links

Status

New

Description

Following WP:US/R#highlight links to disambiguation ("dab") page User:Splarka produced a script that call the bot api to get the transcluded template from pages and see they one of the ones listed at MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage † I independently came up with a script which uses a category method and doesn't work as well since it attempts to send pages in batch. And it doesn't actually compare the categories with those in Category:disambiguation just looks for ambigu. It should be possible for an AWB plugin to do one of the above and cache the pages to reduce the number of call to the server. while integrating it into the existing disambiguation selector. — Dispenser 00:38, 12 May 2008 (UTC) † A more efficient call to only lists the templates. Also, each of these is one or two simple query to the database so it is very fast.

[edit] Interface

[edit] Ability to protect articles/review history for Wikinews archiving procedure

Status

New

Description

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. --Brianmc 11:49, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

The history is implemented in the next version. —METS501 (talk) 20:09, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

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)

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? --kingboyk 16:08, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

From just fiddling now, it only loads the history if the history tab is activated. Which is fine. Reedy Boy 13:55, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

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. --Brianmc 12:15, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

AWB has a history tab and protection button, so is this feature request completed? —Dispenser (talk) 04:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

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! —Reedy Boy 11:59, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

No, doesnt actually do the protect! —Reedy Boy 16:21, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

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 —Reedy Boy 19:31, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

What about adding the cascade option, that is not present in the latest version. --Charitwo ^talk 19:44, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

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! —Reedy 21:10, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Not enabled here, but on other projects it works. --Charitwo ^talk 12:00, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Was meaning the AWB protection feature. —Reedy 12:17, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

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. --Charitwo ^talk 18:51, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

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 —Reedy 21:47, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Customizable keyboard shortcuts

Status	New
Description	I often use keyboard shortcuts and I'd love to have a shortcut for 'Open page in browser'. Plus I just like to look out for my DVORAK homies out there. ;) Did I just say that out loud? --Seed 2.0 11:21, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Improve handling of pages protected to prevent creation

Status	New
Description	Currently AWB just displays a standard error dialogue when trying to edit a page that's been protected to prevent creation. Conversely, when trying to edit an existing page that is protected, AWB skips the article with the reason 'Page is Protected'. I would like the handling of the former situation to be the same as the latter. Thanks -- Rjwilmsi (talk) 19:12, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

You wouldnt happen to have an example of a protected against creation page would you? —Reedy Boy 00:25, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Brian peppers. Arthena^(talk) 00:00, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Also: I Wish I Was An Astronaut (band) Thanks Rjwilmsi (talk) 20:58, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

AWB gets a nasty error when trying to load a page that has been salted. Try loading User:MelonBot/Sandbox3 to see what I mean. Happy‑melon 21:12, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I get no error.. It will say its "saved", but wont actually create it.. Then it seems to be using the wait/busy cursor on the web control.. —Reedy Boy 16:59, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Note, admins dont get this error. As per:

Hi there. I noticed you unprotected and recreated User:MelonBot/Sandbox3, which had previously been salted. As you can see, this page was actually deleted and salted at my own request, to function as a test page to ensure that MelonBot does not produce unexpected behavior when it encounters salted pages. Could you restore the page to its salted state please? Happy‑melon 19:10, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I didnt actually unprotect it. I did recreate it, in an effort to try and duplicate your bug. If you look in the log, i have done no age actions to it. I am a admin/sysop, so would be allowed to create the page for that reason, and hence not experience the bug. Deleted again for you. —Reedy Boy 20:05, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

—Reedy Boy 17:01, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

If I replace MessageBox.Show("There was a problem loading the page. Re-start the process", "Problem", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error); with SkipPage("There was a problem loading the page"); then AWB skips the article and continues working. This seems like a sensible option to me and is better than the current message box, as the user will have to skip the page anyway. Thanks Rjwilmsi (talk) 17:11, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Sounds at least, like a better idea until its handled properly... —Reedy 17:50, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sub-paragraph undo

Status

New

Description

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 dputig07 00:54, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

It would be helpful to those reviewing page edits if this fix could be implemented. Thanks Rjwilmsi 15:15, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unicode font support

Status	New
Description	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)

What characters arent working? As i can get it to display all the arabic and such characters i have tried... —Reedy Boy 17:21, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Message left on local page! —Reedy Boy 17:25, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

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)

I believe AnjaliOldLipi is the most popular font in Malayalam. Here is the AWB screenshot from a win2k system. In XP, it works fine. If there is an option for adjusting font size will be appreciated. Some characters are difficult to read. --Sadik-khalid (talk) 09:19, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

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 Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 13:42, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Prod/AfD buttons

Status	New
Description	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. MBisanz talk 17:13, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

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)

[edit] Disable the "add to watchlist" preference as an option

Status	New
Description	Disable the "add to watchlist" preference as an option

Basically the reverse of the "add all to watchlist" tick from the "general" menu: remove the "add to m watchlist" if I have the option to add it automatically. Otherwise, you have to disable it in the preferences prior to starting AWB. (of course if needs be, it can be readed for a page with the proposed tickbox above). Circeus (talk) 21:32, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation repair using numpad

Status	New
Description	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

Im not sure how you'd actually want the keys mapping... —Reedy Boy 20:53, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Autosave

Status	New
Description	Configuration Autosave: Save the configuration every ten minutes and right before you exit. When you start up AWB it resume with the configuration that it has before you closed/crashed it. It save the configuration to a separate file. —Dispenser 18:42, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

The autosaving in this can be done easily. I presume just to 1 file would be ok? ie autosave.xml...? As for loading that when you reload it... That would require saving to a different file, or easier, save the other one to default.xml? Reedy Boy 20:28, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Any autosaving would be good. As for the reloading I was thinking along of how some programs keep state so it when launched it is exactly where you left off. —Dispenser 02:18, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Button or tickbox to toggle "watch this page"

Are you aware that there is an option to add all edited pages to the watchlist? Jogers (talk) 15:48, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Or use the MediaWiki Settings. Reedy Boy 17:50, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Should the button be more obvious? What if only a few of the edited pages need to be watched? Snowman 18:24, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, it should be easy to implement so if would be convenient for you I'll add it. Jogers (talk) 18:32, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

The only problem is that the user interface is already quite dense. My idea is to rearrange buttons as follows:

 -------------------
| Start the process |
 -------------------
| Stop everything   |
 -------------------
| Preview | Diff    |
 --------- ---------
| Watch   | Move    |
 --------- ---------
| Protect | Delete  |
 --------- ---------

The "Show changes" label is changed to "Diff" because it won't fit otherwise. What do other developers think? Jogers (talk) 08:41, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

To save room could the top two buttons be changed to "stop" and "start"? There is no need to display both if the button would change to "stop" when it is going and "start" when it it stopped. The button could also change colour to make it visually clearer. Similarly "watch" could change to "unwatch" like it does in the usual wiki control panel. Snowman 17:20, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I was thinking to make the "watch" button change to "unwatch" if the page is already in the watchlist. I'm not sure about combining "start" and "stop" buttons though. Jogers (talk) 17:33, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Im not sure why it was changed from start/stop in the first place. Feel free to change it over :) Reedy Boy 12:46, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

GUI needs tidying up. But this is now done - rev 1782 Reedy Boy 20:45, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I prefer the scheme I suggested above because the "start" and "stop" buttons are most often used and it's reasonable to make them bigger. Jogers (talk) 09:07, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I do agree, they look funny being small... Reedy Boy 12:09, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Slightly larger buttons on the bottom 3 on the right. Looks fine to me now. rev 1784 Reedy Boy 12:13, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Much better now but the watch/unwatch button doesn't work as I would expect it to. Jogers (talk) 12:25, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

How so...? Care to elaborate a bit more? Reedy Boy 12:28, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it doesn't seem to work at all. I would expect it to show the Ajax-style message saying that page has been added/removed from the watchlist. Jogers (talk) 13:04, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

It would only work to watch/unwatch it when save was pressed... Does it want to be on demand adding to watchlist or something? Reedy Boy 13:33, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

This is just how I would expect it to behave. I wonder about Snowman's opinion. Jogers (talk) 13:42, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. Wouldnt be difficult to do - Just need to make it invoke the member that handles that, and wait for the web control to update, and then update the button... Just need consensus on which way it should be done Reedy Boy 13:55, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

On a wiki page the radio button at the bottom of the page only works with a save, but the tab at the top of the page works anytime. Can AWB simulate the tab rather than the radio button? Snowman 14:05, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, if thats what you want! You requested it ;). Not overly difficult to change over.. Just need to find the element to "click"... Reedy Boy 14:10, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

rev 1790 would do it if the edit box page, for example, wasnt using the Simple skin... Saying that, on the preview page.. It doesnt like it either, cant find the element... Hmmm Reedy Boy 14:29, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps, you can ask someone about wikimedia elements and come back to it later? Snowman 15:52, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I did ask in #mediawiki, and someone suggested a firefox add-on to find out these things. They looked aswell, and came to the same conclusion of what it was... Reedy Boy 17:52, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Just why can't we use action=watch and action=unwatch url example. The state where the page is watched can be gotten from the "Watch this page" checkbox. — Dispenser 04:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The idea was to use the AJAXy method to save it having to reload the whole page. —Reedy Boy 11:09, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

As mentioned above, Wiki pages use the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=**************&action=unwatch
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=**************&action=watch

page name = **************

It is very quick; does it save the whole page? Snowman (talk) 14:52, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but it loads a new page... —Reedy Boy 14:57, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Page list improvements

Status

New

Description

AWB ineffectively use the screen space in the Make list panel. The Remove selected, Remove duplicates, and clear, could be merged in to a button "Remove" with a drop down for Removing duplicates and Removing all with possibly a Remove others (inverse remove). A similar button, Filter could Could be implemented Removing non-mainspace and Remove Talk added from the filter menu. The Save button would fit neatly and somewhat logically next to the make button. (This FR is a repost from the discussion page) — Dispenser 04:43, 26 February 2008 (UTC) .-------- Make list --------. | Make from |_Category___v| | | Category |_____________| | | ========= <Make> <Save> | | .-----------------------. | | | Wikipedia:AWB/sandbox | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | '-----------------------' | | |________________| <Add> | | <Remove | v> <Filter | v> | '---------------------------'

[edit] Options list

Status	New
Description	This is one the more ambitious ideas and is a repost from the discussion page. It effectively present the user with a modular view of AWB with its options presented in a matrix. — Dispenser 04:43, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

AWB's Find and Replace goes up here

---

Pre-programmed options

	General fixes
	Automatic Tagging
	Unicodify
	RegexTypoFix
	External processing
	PyWikipedia script
	Custom wiki-loaded regex fixes
	Add

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)

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. — Dispenser 22:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

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)

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 —Reedy Boy 19:33, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

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) —Reedy Boy 20:56, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Edit summary when I use find and replace on ar.wiki

Status	New
Description	In ar.wiki we prefer Arabic edit summary. Can you edit "edit summary" when I use find and replace on ar.wiki? English : Replaced: 1$ > 2$. In Arabic: استبدال : 1$ > 2$ --OsamaK 08:34, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

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 Boy 08:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Not exactly. Replacing right arrow with left one can give you weird results if you've replaced one non-RTL word with another[8]. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 20:04, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fixing ambiguous typos

Status

New

Description

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 <AmbigTypo find="\b([Dd])istict\b" replaceOptions="$1istrict,$1istinct"> 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 Chris 08:22, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like an interesting idea. Jogers (talk) 09:10, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

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)

[edit] Option to not load image pages

Status	New
Description	This should maybe be default behaviour, but certainly an option. Loading image pages sometimes occurs for reasons unknown, which shouldn't happen. Normally the edit form is loaded straight away, but sometimes the image description page begins to load beforehand. This is undesirable behaviour because it slows down the client.  —Mike.lifeguard|@en.wb 14:31, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hide "Bots" tab

Status	New
Description	The new release (AWB4300) has an additional tab ("Skip" options), which means that one of the tabs is always off-screen. Is it possible to hide the "Bots" tab for users who do not have a bot. Whenever I log in, there's a note at the bottom stating "Bot = False, Admin = True", so perhaps it could be a function of that. Thanks, Black Falcon (Talk) 20:42, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

MaxSem has already fixed the designer for the next release, so they are not scrolling - ie they are all shown at the same time. —Reedy Boy 21:22, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

That said, I see no reason why the bot tab should be visible if all the features on it are disabled... we shall think about it, thanks for the request. --kingboyk (talk) 21:41, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, thank you both.Black Falcon ^(Talk) 21:48, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bot Halt, or like feature

Status	New
Description	I'd like a feature while running a bot for it to halt on certain conditions to allow me to exam the page more closely. I would like an option to test a regex on the page after processing has completed. This could conceivably be worked in as a skip option, where I could re-run the page after the initial pass. — Dispenser 05:27, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

What my plugin does is open bad pages in the browser; they can be fed back into AWB later if need be*. That way the bot doesn't stop processing, a feature which would annoy more people than it would help I suspect. Would that be a better option? Either way we could certainly consider a "halt or open in browser on hitting regex x" feature I guess. --kingboyk (talk) 09:35, 5 March 2008 (UTC) *I use the skip log for feeding pages back in. --kingboyk (talk) 09:36, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm thinking how that a halt feature might introduce more complexities and clutter than its worth. The ideas of skipping when the output matches a regex is more flexible. — Dispenser 22:34, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

AWB already has the "skip if contains", and you can make them regex... —Reedy Boy 22:42, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

But those are processed before my regexes are applied. I'd like something where I can check to make sure the output is correct. — Dispenser 05:24, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Hmm.. I suppose, it wouldnt be difficult to have a "early and/or late" check, like there is with the normal FaR - ie they can be applied before or after the general fixes...? —Reedy Boy 08:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

What I am really asking for is a if is a set of Skip if contains and Skip if doesn't contains that are evaluated after the regexes have finished parsing. There's been a similar request here before to have this too. It's a good idea since bot ops can ensure the saved page is correct. — Dispenser 00:47, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Import/Export Advanced rules

Status	New
Description	The ability to Import/Export Advanced rules From/To separate files. So as top be able to have a standard set of rules that can be imported either in whole or in part from a users choice file. 13:03, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Save full log

Status	New
Description	A french developer developed an internal plugin that can generate a a like auto-completed as you can see on fr:Utilisateur:Chicobot/Log/2007/04/20. It is translated in english but we are waiting for a more stable version to provide a english compiled version for testing purpose Chico75 09:22, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. This is similar to the tagging bot logs by Kingboyk - Log List, A Log, which has been present a while - very good for tagging WikiProjects. Is this using the new logging method in AWB? As it did change at the 3.9.0.0 release, and some minor changes have happened again to it.

V4 of AWB is not far off, implementing a different diff. engine to reduce some of the load on the servers. It should also include a 'profile' element. Cheers, Reedy Boy 09:31, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I think we'd like to see the code for that please. It looks nice. As Sam says, my plugin already writes logs. AWB now has a log listener/tracing interface, which is written to by AWB and plugins for display on the logging tab; the same interface (but with different underlying objects) is written to by the logging feature in my plugin. It would then be quite easy to drop an extra logging feature into AWB, either using my code or yours or a bit of both; the basic concept is that the log objects implement the interface and we're ready to rock and roll. --kingboyk 11:23, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Its listed as 3.9.0.0 - So i reckon its probably using our logging control... Reedy Boy 11:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I didn't know it was possible to get a diff after AWB has saved. That's certainly something I'd like to add, and I like the layout of that log page too. --kingboyk 11:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I think its something that Query.php or API.php can get... I think... Reedy Boy 11:56, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I wrote to the developer guy at the French wiki. Let's hope he speaks English :) I won't bother writing any more now about how the logging currently works or how my plugin does it, as it's all academic if we don't get a reply or an offer of help/code. --kingboyk 13:50, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello Kingboyk,

Sorry, but I speak english with very difficult. I worked during these last two days to make a clean version of my FullLog plugin. I think to publish my work this friday. I must contact before Chico.

Best regards, — TiChou ^talk le 27 avril 2007 à 05:25 (CEST)

And I speak French worse than your English, so you win :) Thank you for the reply, speak to you soon. Merci beaucoup monsiuer. --kingboyk 12:32, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Finally the great work of User:TiChou is available as a plugin in english here (only exe and dll), you can see an exemple of log on this page. The advanced regex logging is not implemented yet due to difficult problems, but everything else should work properly. The patch and sources are beeing uploaded, so you will be able to add it to ne next release. Chico75 20:09, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

The patch

the sources

Chico75 20:13, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Cool - What license is this released under? I presume some form of free license with you putting the sources out.... Reedy Boy 20:46, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Released under GPL licence, like AWB. Chico75 20:55, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Of course. :-) — TiChou ^talk 21:05, 28 April 2007 (UTC) Thank you Chico to be my intermediary and interprets.

=) I suppose you wouldnt mind if we integrated this into AWB then?/Included it with AWB. Of course, credit would be given to yourself for it. Reedy Boy 21:11, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

No problem for him although it would require some clean up before. The integration of advanced regex is in progress. Chico75 22:05, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

You can get the current AWB version using Application.ProductVersion.ToString. IAutoWikiBrowser.Version is redundant because plugins are always running within an instance of AWB. --kingboyk 23:04, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Good ! Thx. :) — TiChou ^talk 23:47, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I applied the interface-changes patch in rev 1117. Although .Version is a bit redundant, it doesn't do any harm, so I retained and modified it. It's now called IAutoWikiBrowser.AWBVersion. I also added an IAutoWikiBrowser.WikiFunctionsVersion. Hope that helps. --kingboyk 14:41, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

One more little tweak. I changed the Version properties to output a Version type; just use .ToString() to get your string :) --kingboyk 12:56, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

The advanced regex logging is now fully functional with a nice-looking display : fr:Utilisateur:ZX81-bot/Journaux/2007043001. Chico75 15:05, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

That looks nice. /me likes. --kingboyk 12:57, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fast previewing

Status	New
Description	Integrate wikEd's Quick Show preview, displays a local preview using InstaView that is replaced by a server preview using Ajax techniques. This is a much faster way doing previews.

A quick look at it, it would either require users who want it, to have it installed in their monobook - Presumably it would give a button? AWB could check for presence of this button and then do the same as for preview... Or maybe, with it being javascript, AWB could use [9] and do it all internally... —Reedy 11:10, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Looking into the code of WikEd it very simple and doesn't use any complicated parser (at least anymore). It does a normal preview but instead of doing a POST /w/index.php?title=PAGENAME&action=submit it does POST /w/index.php?title=PAGENAME&action=submit&live while return a XML-like page which has only the preview field. All that needs to be done to it is to insert it into the page. A preview page could be constructed which only has the <div id="content"> as to save space. And it saves server resources to boot. — Dispenser 23:56, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Auto cut-to-clipboard mode

Status

New

Description

Checkbox-type mode. When an article is loaded, the contents of the editor textarea are cut and sent to the system clipboard. To streamline the following use case: editor opens page in AWB editor mouses into edit window editor clicks select all editor clicks cut editor pastes into another app for editing (...) editor pastes new content into awb and clicks "Show changes" Cheers, HausTalk 16:49, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

FYI, while I'm convinced there are still people who could benefit from this, I hacked together a better solution for my immediate needs via jedit. Cheers. Haus^Talk 20:43, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Clipboard.SetDataObject(txtEdit.Text, true); is all that AWB needs, putting in the right place, and having an option to do so... Cant see a reason not to add it (its very simple), but i cant see there would be many people to use it..? —Reedy Boy 21:56, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Block and Protection Log Access

Status

New

Description

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)

[edit] Make the Find and replace dialog not modal

Status

New

Description

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)

It isn't modal, see Feature Request Modeless Dialog "Text regex" (Couldn't spell). But I have the main window on my first screen and AFAR on the second. Perhaps, you want an always on top feature or a taskbar button? — Dispenser 03:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Show rather than show dialog? IIRC? —Reedy 14:52, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I changed it to modal some time ago because when it was non-modal, closing it sometimes resulted in the main being hidden. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 15:16, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Allow split-screen mode to see preview and diff at the same time

Status

New

Description

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)

[edit] Copy/Paste or drag and drop rules

Status	New
Description	Allow copy and paste of an "entire rule" or drag and drop of "entire rule" between two open "Replace special" windows (two open AWB sessions at the same time). Right now I can copy and paste one line at a time which is to damn tedious. --pete 21:45, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Support non-standard Windows font PPI

Sel-explanatory

MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 19:33, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Built in AWB functions

[edit] Typo fix should look in image descriptions

Status

New

Description

For the find/replace and the RETF feature, AWB should also look inside image tags for everything past the URL (i.e. the image description) ... if possible. There are often typos in this description that are not found by AWB. --Thiseye 02:29, 1 March 2007 (UTC) Thought I'd requested this one already (for search and replace). Would save me a lot of work. Rich Farmbrough, 21:55 4 April 2007 (GMT). Oh yes it;s the next one... Silly me. Rich Farmbrough, 21:56 4 April 2007 (GMT).

[edit] Search and replace in image captions

Status

New

Description

Descriptions Captions of images should be changed , and things immediately after a </ref> tag. Rich Farmbrough, 15:40 3 March 2007 (GMT). Note this is partly overlapping with the previous feature request. Rich Farmbrough, 21:57 4 April 2007 (GMT). I am making the latter part a bug. Rich Farmbrough, 16:17 16 September 2007 (GMT). The bug part is fixed. Rich Farmbrough, 14:32 5 October 2007 (GMT). This would really help me. Image captions are the only part of the text SmackBot can't reach, leading to manual edits. Rich Farmbrough, 14:31 5 October 2007 (GMT).

I'm confused: it seems to work[10]. Or I didn't understood it? MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 13:16, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I have "ignore images ...." set. Because I don't want to tamper with the names of files, let alone urls, etc.. Sorry should have made this clearer. Rich Farmbrough, 21:30 17 November 2007 (GMT).

[edit] Ignore duplicate wikilinks in infoboxes, etc.

Status	New
Description	AWB should probably ignore wikilinks in infoboxes and other templates and not consider them as duplicate. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 22:17, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Remove some WP-specific things, at least for other wikis

Status	New
Description	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.wb 14:35, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Add Person data template to AWB

Status

New

Description

Can a new option be added to AWB to allow users to insert the Person data. As I see it this could be done automatically where there is sufficient data in the infobox or as an insert tag option similar to the DEFAULTSORT tag. I know that we can add the meta-data template but it seems like we can make that more automated. There is already a java script that does some on the Person data page.--Kumioko (talk) 20:46, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ignoring spelling errors within quotation marks?

Status

New

Description

I do a lot of spelling correction using AWB, and often get false positives stemming from quotes. Example: in the article on Berghain, the word "heydays" is used within a quote - even though the correct spelling would be "heyday" (according to RegExTypoFix anyways). As Philip Sherburne probably said "heydays" and not "heyday", this should not be corrected. That got me thinking, should quotes ever be corrected? Perhaps AWB/RegExTypoFix could ignore spelling errors within quotation marks? Jobjörn (talk) 14:25, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Ugh, this could be useful. Any comments from others? MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 14:02, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I agreed, i suspect, in the majority of cases, spelling mistakes WONT want to be fixed in quotes... —Reedy Boy 15:59, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

If we're gonna do that we might want to ignore anything followed immediately by "(sic)" too... --kingboyk (talk) 16:01, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps even implement the usage of a commented out "sic" () that would cause AWB to ignore spellchecking the preceding word? Jobjörn (talk) 21:04, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

There is a {{sic}} template that could be wrapped around such mistakes to identify them to spellcheckers as well as visually. (It appends [sic] after its contents.) Colonies Chris (talk) 12:21, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, the {{sic}} template should be used where the quote deliberately includes a typo to quote exactly, and this is currently ignored by the RegexTypoFix so AWB users can/should publicise and encourage its use. So far so good. However, for some cases (maybe old-fashioned use) a {{sic}} tag won't be appropriate, so we could do with another solution. To ignore the word before a commented out sic is one option, but it's not a core Wikimedia one. Further ideas? Rjwilmsi (talk) 21:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Listbuilder: links on pages excluding red links

Status

New

Description

In the list comparer, "make from", it would be nice to have, next to the "links on page" also an option "blue links on page". As an application example, all the blue links in the article List of chess grandmasters should coincide with the articles in the category Category:Chess grandmasters. Obviously the listcomparer is ideal for checking this. Currently, it only works to check whether all articles from Category:Chess grandmasters are in the List of chess grandmasters, but not the other way around.Voorlandt (talk) 13:51, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Unsorted

[edit] Show what links here for images

Status

New

Description

An idea that I think would be really cool is a tab that shows what links to an article currently being edited, what transcludes the current page, and/or (what I really want) what articles include the current image. The idea just hit me that I could use AWB to help with the image backlogs at CAT:CSD, Especially with the Category:Orphaned fairuse images, because you can see at a glance whether an image is orphaned or not. Harryboyles 11:09, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

yeah, i asked for something like this a while ago... don't know what happened to it... -ΖαππερΝαππερ ^Babel_Alexandria 20:39, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] custom namespaces

Status

New

Description

Much like the prior request, many wikis not on WM projects have non-WP namespaces (Wikia has "Forum:", for example.). As it is, AWB only browses in those namespaces which WP employs. Would it be possible to implement an allowance for custom namespaces? Whether by (automatically) looking for the added namespace ids, or with some other form. In fact, it should already probably be using the namespace ids, rather than the names, if possible. See the mediawiki link for how custom namespaces are created. --Izno 01:44, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Automatically loading the namespaces would make more sense - Saves WikiFunctions having long lists... Reedy Boy 18:59, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I thought about it a bit; mw:Manual:Namespace might also aid in this --Izno 06:20, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Or this: meta:Help:Namespace. --Izno 06:31, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

FYI, even WMF wikis have namespaces that aren't used on WP. Wikibooks has Subject: Wikijunior: and Cookbook: namespaces. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 16:01, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Database scanner filtering XML dump file

I agree that it would be very useful. Jogers (talk) 17:35, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Special:Export ? —Reedy Boy 15:20, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

That will do it for me. Thanks! Jogers (talk) 15:46, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Neither did i... Or at least, i didnt remember it. Someone posted it on the DB Dump page, so i thought it may be worth a link here! —Reedy Boy 16:17, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Marking as exists as can be done via MW —Reedy 15:36, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Interwiki the AWB link in edit summary

Status	New
Description	As well, a minor request. When AWB appears in the edit summary, could it be an interwiki link so there aren't massive numbers of redlinks when AWB is used on other projects. Either that, or have it not linked unless its on WP.

– Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 02:40, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. theres 2 things to take care of, the project differences, and the language differences. I think having it linked wherever, would be the best... Just what if there is the local page... Hmm Reedy Boy 16:02, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Juts create a local page. It can soft redirect to WP:en. Rich Farmbrough, 15:22 11 October 2007 (GMT).

Thats probably a better idea. Thanks Rich! Reedy Boy 15:50, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I did notice that we can in the variables set a link to the AWB page... But that is by language.. Reedy Boy 13:29, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] IronPython

You mean on custom modules? Im right in thinking that IronPython is the python that runs on the .NET Framework isnt it? —Reedy Boy 11:53, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Two problems: [1] So far, there is no evidence that IronPython's license is GPL-compatible; [2] I don't want to rely on non-standard assmblies that we don't ship with AWB. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 21:40, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Marking as "no" —Reedy Boy 00:26, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

IronPython's written in C# and it would be cool if we could barrow some of the cooler things from pywikipedia and make them into modules for AWB. —Dispenser (talk) 08:32, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Maybe so.. But as MaxSem said, theres the licensing problem, so we couldnt ship it with AWB. If we did there would be extra files to move, that most users wont use... —Reedy Boy 13:03, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

If it compiles to .NET IL then just write a plugin - then we (AWB devs) don't need to know anything about it. Plugins can be written in any .NET language. I don't imagine we'll be adding module support for anything other than the bog standard MS languages: licensing issues aside, it's not worth the time as C# and VB are more than adequate. Plugins are more powerful anyway. --kingboyk (talk) 23:30, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

For the archive, the C Python license is GPL compatible. Python documentation: Appendix C: History and License — Dispenser 02:02, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

IronPython License - MS-PL —Reedy

Hmm. Wonder if theres a way to have this as an addon, ie we wont ship a DLL for it, but if its there, AWB will letya use it.. —Reedy 15:38, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I've downloaded the libraries and tried to look for a critical component we need to easily implement this. We currently use "Microsoft.CSharp.CSharpCodeProvider" and "Microsoft.VisualBasic.VBCodeProvider" to compile the module code to C#/VB. The IronPython library doesnt seem to have one, unfortunately, so there is now way for me to even work around loading the module on the fly if its there and working with it... Feel free to re-open this if they add one, as it will be easy enough to implement then. —Reedy 21:51, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New keyword for last name

Status	New
Description	I would like to request a new keyword for last name only, perhaps %%lastname%%. Currently there are keywords %%key%% and %%title%% but I have frequently found that when cleaning up categories that only the last name is used and I have to manually delete it.--Kumioko (talk) 15:20, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Category and stub handling enhancements

Status

New

Description

The existing category and stub features (Guess birth/death dates and Ctrl-T) are great but some enhancements would help even more. When searching for the birth and death dates, ignore any dated cleanup/wikify etc templates at the top of the article If there's a DEFAULTSORT, don't append the name key to the generated xxxx births and xxxx deaths categories Provide a selection list of commonly used categories, such as Living people, Date of birth missing, Year of birth missing, Date of birth missing (living people), Year of death missing On Ctrl-T, allow selection from a list of recently used categories Allow selection from a list of recently used stub templates too How about a 'categorise human' button that would add a human name DEFAULTSORT, guess birth and death dates, add 'Living people' category, if appropriate, or one or more of the 'date missing' categories mentioned above, and convert a {{stub}} template, if present, to a {{bio-stub}}. Colonies Chris (talk) 12:48, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] More funcionality for the append/prepend text box under the more tab

Status	New
Description	I think it would be good to add the ability to use keywords like %%title%% in the append/prepend text box under the more tab. Currently in order to prepend text (like infoboxes to an article keywords don't work and you have to manually type all the info.--Kumioko (talk) 13:07, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Any comment on whether this might happen or not?--Kumioko (talk) 19:59, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Use the work around. In replace special you can prepend or append text using the regex ^ and $, respectively, in single line mode. — Dispenser 00:26, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

True, but in order to prepend infoboxes I have to add the names and info manually. I cannot even use the %%title%% or %%key%%funtions.--Kumioko (talk) 13:47, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

As I said it should work in Advanced Find and Replace. Another method would be to use {{subst:PAGENAME}}. As I think more about it, this is in the wrong section, it should be in the bugs section as what your describing is expected behavior. — Dispenser 01:49, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] wikify dates

Status

New

Description

As a general fix, implement date linking using regex something like this: <Find>([1-3]?[0-9])(?:th|rd|st|nd)? (January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December),? ([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])</Find> <Replace>[[$1 $2]] [[$3]]</Replace> <Find>(January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December) ([1-3]?[0-9])(?:th|rd|st|nd)?,? ([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])</Find> <Replace>[[$1 $2]] [[$3]]</Replace> Thanks Rjwilmsi (talk) 17:53, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Is there strong consensus that all such occurences should be wikified on sight? Linkie? MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 10:11, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, not using commas and ordinal suffixes is in the MOS as per Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Dates, so should be a general fix (along with Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Feature_requests#Date_links_that_break_autoformatting). As for linking, the MOS at MOS:UNLINKYEARS says this can be done, but it doesn't identify whether it should be done. I think it should as nobody loses anything by them being linked, and many users with a date preference will gain. Also, comparing/reading dates is easier if they're in the same format for everybody. Perhaps we can have the fixing, and take a vote on the linking on the MOS talk page? Thanks Rjwilmsi (talk) 10:45, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I've found some relevant discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Archive D2 – it would seem that linking dates like I suggested above is approved of, provided that specific piped dates like [[2003 in film|2003]] are not changed. I'm not suggesting we change those links, only bare dates. Rjwilmsi (talk) 10:56, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I am requesting that succession boxes should be exempted from such a substitution. WikiProject Succession Box Standardization guidelines discourage the usage of links in succession boxes, because they unnecessarily clutter the boxes and detract, in the boxes' limited space, from the links which really matter. Until a way is found to prevent date autoformatting from creating visible links in the boxes, we do not wish the dates to be linked. Waltham, The Duke of 01:29, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Section edit summaries

Status	New
Description	When AWB makes changes which only affect a single section, it should use the /* */ syntax in the edit summary to indicate this.

Hopefully not too complicated to implement, and I think it would be very helpful for people tracking certain parts of an article being able to disregard certain edits by AWB. BigBlueFish (talk) 10:55, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Good idea. I second this one. Rjwilmsi (talk) 12:42, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fix accessdate tags

Status	New
Description	As a general fix include a fix to correct misspellings of accessdate as accesdate or acessdate, and fix dates formatted as YYYY/MM/DD or YYYY_MM_DD. Suggested regex: find: "acc?ess?date( )?=( )?(200[0-9])[/_]([-0-9][0-9])[/_]([0-9][0-9])" replace: "accessdate$1=$2$3-$4-$5" Also, replace acessyear and accesyear with accessyear. Thanks Rjwilmsi (talk) 21:18, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I've got quite keen on this one - User:Rjwilmsi/accessdate. There's an issue with the citation template which I think would need to be resolved before this could be an AWB general fix. Rjwilmsi (talk) 22:17, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removing spaces before ref tags

Status

New

Description

Footnote links should generally appear immediately after a punctuation mark or word (depending on editors' preferred style), and there should be no space(s) before a <ref> tag. This would also automatically fix the existence of spaces between <ref> tags. So, Sentence. <ref>Citation</ref> changed to Sentence.<ref>Citation</ref> and Sentence.<ref>Citation1</ref> <ref>Citation2</ref> changed to Sentence.<ref>Citation1</ref><ref>Citation2</ref> Black Falcon (Talk) 18:21, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

This is far too controversial. MOS doesn't explicitly state lots of minor formatting things. We had such fixes in AWB recently, and there were multiple problems with them causing numerous reports. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 18:45, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I had thought that the controversy extended only to the issue of whether the tags should be placed before or after punctuation marks... Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:48, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removing ordinal indicators from dates

Status

New

Description

Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Dates: "Wikipedia does not use ordinal suffixes or articles". Could removal of ordinal indicators be automated? As far as I can determine, the only instance where straightforward removal of an ordinal suffix would result in an error is for dates in "the Xth of May" format (e.g. "the 14th of February"). Perhaps AWB could check for the presence of an "of" after the ordinal suffix and skip these cases... Black Falcon (Talk) 19:00, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hyphen to en dash replacement

Status

New

Description

Per WP:DASH, can we add the following replacements? I'm adding these from my prefs file; I've tested them extensively and they have minimal (if any) false positives. <Replacements> <Replacement> <Find>(pages\ ?=\ ?|pp\.?\ )([0-9]+)-([0-9]+)</Find> <Replace>$1$2&amp;ndash;$3</Replace> <IsRegex>true</IsRegex> <Enabled>true</Enabled> <RegularExpressionOptions>IgnoreCase</RegularExpressionOptions> </Replacement> <Replacement> <Find>([1-9]?[0-9])\ ?-\ ?([1-9]?[0-9])(\ |\&amp;nbsp;)(years|months|weeks|days|hours|minutes|seconds|kg|mg|kb|km|GHz|Hz|kHz|miles|mi\.|%)\b</Find> <Replace>$1&amp;ndash;$2$3$4</Replace> <IsRegex>true</IsRegex> <Enabled>true</Enabled> <RegularExpressionOptions>IgnoreCase</RegularExpressionOptions> </Replacement> <Replacement> <Find>(\[?\[?(January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December)\ [1-3]?[0-9]\]?\]?,\ \[?\[?[1-2][0-9][0-9][0-9]\]?\]?)\ ?-\ ?(\[?\[?(January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December)\ [1-3]?[0-9]\]?\]?,\ \[?\[?[1-2][0-9][0-9][0-9]\]?\]?)</Find> <Replace>$1&amp;ndash;$3</Replace> <IsRegex>true</IsRegex> <Enabled>true</Enabled> <RegularExpressionOptions>IgnoreCase</RegularExpressionOptions> </Replacement> <Replacement> <Find>(\$[1-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9])\ ?-\ ?(\$?[1-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9])</Find> <Replace>$1&amp;ndash;$2</Replace> <IsRegex>true</IsRegex> <Enabled>true</Enabled> <RegularExpressionOptions>IgnoreCase</RegularExpressionOptions> </Replacement> <Replacement> <Find>([0-1]?[0-9]:[0-5][0-9]\ ?([AaPp][Mm])?)\ ?-\ ?([0-1]?[0-9]:[0-5][0-9]\ ?([AaPp][Mm])?)</Find> <Replace>$1&amp;ndash;$3</Replace> <IsRegex>true</IsRegex> <Enabled>true</Enabled> <RegularExpressionOptions>IgnoreCase</RegularExpressionOptions> </Replacement> <Replacement> <Find>([Aa]ge[sd])\ ([1-9]?[0-9])\ ?-\ ?([1-9]?[0-9])</Find> <Replace>$1 $2&amp;ndash;$3</Replace> <IsRegex>true</IsRegex> <Enabled>true</Enabled> <RegularExpressionOptions>IgnoreCase</RegularExpressionOptions> </Replacement> </Replacements>

I often find em-dashes used erroneously in these situations. Why not generalize the above to find and correct them (to en-dashes) too?--BillFlis (talk) 13:23, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

That's a good idea. The hyphen above could be replaced with (-|—|&mdash;|&#8212;).—Chowbok ☠ 14:14, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Of course you mean (?:-|—|&mdash;|&#8212;) so you don't have to change $3 to $4 everywhere, etc.--BillFlis (talk) 14:41, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks fine to me (and we know you know what you're doing regex wise ;))... MaxSem, you ok with it too? —Reedy 18:22, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's better. Thanks!—Chowbok ☠ 18:38, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

So far I don't see a definite consensus at WT:AWB/T#Entries to move hyphens to en dashes. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 18:28, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Nobody's objected to the idea of doing the substitution; the only disagreement is whether we should use "–" or "&ndash;" for en dashes. I would argue that since en and em dashes are already excepted from the UTF-8 substitution routines, we should by the same logic use "&ndash;"... but I'll leave this up to the discretion of the AWB developers.—Chowbok ☠ 18:38, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I've changed my mind. Let's go ahead and put this in with the 8-bit en dashes instead of the entities.—Chowbok ☠ 15:46, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Feedback that module modification has been compiled.

rev 2422 - Will display a timestamp of when the module was built. —Reedy 20:17, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Marked as partially implemented, as there may be nicer ways to indicate that. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 20:23, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

True, there probably is (at least, it covers the bases for the moment). I've made some other minor tweaks (dont really affect this) in rev 2423 —Reedy 20:30, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. If feedback is available soon that would be nice. If the feedback method changes later that is fine by me. Lightmouse (talk) 21:46, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

(It is added now, Max just is suggesting there might be a better way) —Reedy 15:44, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Remove text that says Double-click on a line to undo all changes on that line, or single click to focus the edit box to that line.

Status

New

Description

Remove text that says Double-click on a line to undo all changes on that line, or single click to focus the edit box to that line.. This text uses up valuable space (about 10% of the 'Show changes' section). It adds no value for experienced users. It may provide a benefit to some beginners (not all - it did not help me, I found out another way) but a significant reduction in screen space for all users is a high price to pay. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lightmouse (talk • contribs)

We must develop a mechanism that will display this message several times at first, and then will not do it. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 05:18, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Saving in a settings xml wouldnt be appropriate. However, saving in the "Properties.Settings.Default" which we use for window size, state, etc etc, may make sense? —Reedy 08:05, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Further thoughts:

• There are other elements that consume space that do not add value for the experienced user.
  • Column titles 'Current revision' and 'Your text'
  • The black box border around the column titles.
  • The black box border around the whole of the 'Show changes' text. This looks like it uses up space on all four sides of the frame.

• Some applications have a 'Tips' dialog appear each time the application starts. They often have a check box for 'Show tips'. Such a dialog may be a suitable place for the message telling a new user what to do. Just a thought. Lightmouse (talk) 18:18, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Here's a good idea: we could insert an anchor halfway one the line with "Current revision/Your text" such the text is cut off halfway. This arrangement hints to new users to scroll up to see the cutoff text any everything before it, while allowing people like Lightmouse who don't know about the custom CSS option to have more text when loading. — Dispenser 23:43, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Seems a better idea to me. Then its there if anyone needs/wants it, but if its focused on that by default... —Reedy 16:12, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Someone fancy telling me what to do put the anchor in, etc... ;) (obv its <a>...) —Reedy 10:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] On exit, check for changes to settings and query whether user wants to save the changes

Status

New

Description

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)

[edit] Convert hatnotes to templates

Status

New

Description

Convert hatnotes which are not templated to use a template, eg ':''For something else, see [[this article]].' to '{{for|something else|this article}}'. The templates wrap the hatnote in a div class which doesn't show when printed, and also means that they retain a consistent format (currently indented and italics). It would be good if the hatnotes could be converted to use one of the specific templates to preserve formatting (standard wording and grammar etc), otherwise a wrap in {{dablink}} would be good. There is a full list of templates at Template:Otheruses templates. I would also like them moved to the top of the article, per Wikipedia:Accessibility, but I think it might cause false positives if they are placed within the article text. Is this something that could be worked out? Thanks, mattbr 11:39, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Option to save log with edit summary of skipped articles

Status

New

Description

I would find it very helpful to be able to save the log of skipped articles with the edit summary of that article (had the article been edited). Currently the save log feature for skipped article saves the article name only. However, if I could save the name and edit summary, I would be able to see what changes (find & replace, typo fixes) occurred on skipped articles. Thanks Rjwilmsi (talk) 19:43, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Sounds fairly reasonable (certainly feasible), just need to keep track of the edit summary too (which wouldnt be a bad thing to list in the saved log box TBH) —Reedy 22:28, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

We already write the edit summary to the WikiFunctions.Article.EditSummary property, Sam, and store it in a private field, so that bit should be trivial. It looks like WikiFunctions.Logging.AWBLogListener has an AWB-facing interface in addition to implementing IAWBTraceListener (I ought to know as I designed most of it but you know what my memory is like!), in which case that bit would be trivial too. Perhaps AWBSkipped() could be modified? --kingboyk (talk) 00:09, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

PS The reason why the log is savable, and savable only as a list of articles, is so that it can be fed back into the listmaker. --kingboyk (talk) 00:12, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Re: PS comment: yes I know that, so I would like this log with edit summary to be in addition to the current log. If the new log had a format like the user contributions page, it would be trivial to convert this back into a list to feed the listmaker after the user had removed articles as needed. Thanks Rjwilmsi (talk) 07:40, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Or we can make have it so it can/will save into multiple formats... One just a list of articles, one with edit summary.. —Reedy 22:36, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I do not know if this deserves its own feature request but it is a related point: I would like to be able to avoid parsing articles twice. I usually make a list of candidate articles, then use list comparer to removed my contributions from the candidate list. This method takes no account of skipped articles, so I have to skip the same articles on multiple occasions. I know that I can save a list of skipped articles but it is a manual process that I just fail to do. The above feature request might be implemented as a file containing all contributions and what happened. This file could be updated automatically when AWB is closed. The file could be filtered in various ways to get all articles touched or skipped for various reasons. Then Rjwilmsi could have what he/she wants and I could have what I want. It would have the additional advantage that it would be quicker than a search for 'My contributions' because the file would be on my machine. Lightmouse (talk) 11:23, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lists of categories from text files

Can be done easily yourself now. Load in the text file into AWB. Select all the articles (right click, select all), then right click again, then "Add selected to list..." --> "From Category" Would then do that.... Not sure if theres much point simplifying it further, but could be. Just stating the method incase you didnt know of this. —Reedy 22:21, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

No I didn't. :-)) So that's good. But I'd suggest it's a failure of user interface design in so many ways that yes, it would be worth adding "list of cats" to the main drop down, it's very unintuitive at the moment. FlagSteward (talk) 11:42, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. I would never have known it is there. Please can it also be available in another way? Thanks. This issue crops up from time to time in guidelines:

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb226836(VS.85).aspx Do not make commands available only through shortcut menus. Like shortcut keys, shortcut menus are alternative means of selecting commands . User:Lightmouse
  • The only problem is, we're low on space on the listmaker to do this... Hence the use of the Context menu to do it... However, as of rev 2905, i've added 2 new list maker options. 1 to only recurse 1 level deep, and a 2nd to recurse to a level that the user defines... Which would solve this problem for you in a different way... —Reedy 12:10, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Filters before running the list maker

Status

New

Description

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)

Hmm. Something like List --> Filter out non mainspace and Filter duplicates (they run when new stuff has been added).. —Reedy 22:35, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

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)

Yeah, what im meaning, is something "like" that needs adding. —Reedy 23:08, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

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)

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? —Reedy 22:57, 1 June 2008 (UTC)