Wikipedia:Bot requests

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Shortcuts: WP:BOTREQ WP:BOTR

This is a page for requesting work to be done by bots per the bot policy. This is an appropriate place to simply put ideas for bots. If you need a piece of software written for a specific article you may get a faster response time at the computer help desk. You might also check Wikipedia:Bots/Status to see if the bot you are looking for already exists, in which case you can contact the operator directly on their talkpage.

If you have a question about one particular bot, it should be directed to the bot owner's talk page or to the Bot Owners' Noticeboard. If a bot is acting improperly, a note about that should be posted to the owner's talk page, to the Administrators' Noticeboard. A link to such a posting may be posted at the Bot Owners' Noticeboard.

If you are a bot operator and you complete a request, note what you did, and archive it. {{BOTREQ}} can be used to give common responses, and to make it easier to see at-a-glance what the response is.

There are a number of common requests which are regularly denied, either because they are too complicated to program, or do not have consensus from the wikipedia community. Please see Wikipedia:Bots/Frequently denied bots for a list of such requests, and ensure that your idea is not among them.

If you are requesting that a bot be used to add a WikiProject banner to the talkpages of all articles in a particular category or its subcategories, please be very careful to check the category tree for any unwanted subcategories. You might not expect Category:World War II to be a subcategory of Category:Thailand, but it actually is, and a bot will find it! It is usually safer to give a complete list of categories that should be worked through individually, rather than one category to be analysed recursively. Compare a successful request with a similar one that made a mess.

1 (computer game) & (arcade game) => (video game)
2 Flags in football biographies
3 Template documentation talk redirects
4 WP:CHICAGO bot assistance needed
5 Category:Fooian football clubs
6 Bot to mass-revert a specific list of deletions
7 Working version of User:SatyrBot/WikiProject to do lists
8 Afd notification
9 WikiProject-specific orphan tagger
10 List of the most active WikiProjects
11 Two requests: one small and one... medium?
12 {{Infobox rugby league biography}}
- 12.1 Changes
13 Bot needed to clean up 50,000+ disambiguation pages

Please add your bot requests to the bottom of this page.

click here to make a new request

[edit] (computer game) & (arcade game) => (video game)

It'd be real nice if someone were to make a bot to move all the Title (computer game) and (arcade game) to Title (video game) to reflect naming conventions. Ideally it would also handle (computer/arcade game series), (YYYY computer/arcade game) and (computer gaming). If an article or a redirect to another article exists at (video game) it would do nothing; if the target is a redirect to the article in question, it would move over. It should only move articles with ( ), avoiding titles like WWF WrestleMania: The Arcade Game. Also, if it could grab any (videogame) titles, that'd be great too, as that's not a real word. JohnnyMrNinja 12:41, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Possible: - those are some complicated heuristics to analyse to determine whether a page should be moved or not. If someone could assemble a list of pages that needed to be moved, then a bot could do the actual page moves with very minimal difficulty. Happy‑melon 18:51, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I would be willing to both assemble the list of pages and perform the moves when I get back from my trip, as I've been doing similar things recently. It'd also have to wait until after I'm done with my bot's current mass-renaming task though. I would guess I could put up the BRFA and get things rolling in about two weeks, barring anything else cropping up. If anyone wants to do it before I'm available feel free.--Dycedarg ж 19:03, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll have a go at generating the list, when I'm done I'll put it up for scrutiny. RichardΩ612 Ɣ ɸ 19:37, May 27, 2008 (UTC)

Page is here, some of the search terms ['arcade game series' for example] didn't throw up anything. RichardΩ612 Ɣ ɸ 19:57, May 27, 2008 (UTC)

If you need need a bot to run through that list, I can do it. Just let me know. -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 09:00, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Feel free, if you have a bot ready, go for it! Feel free to delete the page when you're done. RichardΩ612 Ɣ ɸ 09:26, May 29, 2008 (UTC)

Would it be possible to generate a list of (YYYY computer/arcade game), like Overlord (1990 computer game)? JohnnyMrNinja 08:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Are "computer game" and "video game" synonymous? What about text-based computer games? Pseudomonas_(talk) 10:27, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

A computer game is a video game, as it has a video display. The type of display doesn't matter. JohnnyMrNinja 08:38, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Flags in football biographies

Could a bot help me finding incorrect use of {{flagicon}} in football biographies. Per consensus at WP:FOOTY the flags should not be included inside the infobox like her. Could a bot help making a list of the articles with this error, or if the operator dare, make a bot that remove the flags? Rettetast (talk) 00:11, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure, I could do both! I'll see what I can do. CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 13:32, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template documentation talk redirects

Per Wikipedia:Template documentation#How to create a documentation subpage, the talk pages of template documentation should be redirected to the talk page of the associated template to keep discussion centralized. Would it be possible to have a bot automatically go through and create these redirects? There are a couple of minor complications that spring to mind - if the doc talk page already exists, the contents need to be moved to the redirect target. Also, if the talk page of the template does not yet exist, I think we have an adminbot out there somewhere that deletes redirects with no target. We would want an exception in this case to keep these redirects from being deleted. Kelly ^hi! 15:34, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Kelly asked me to come here and comment, probably since I have created and documented many templates. Talk page redirects saves a lot of trouble. Centralising the discussions for a template and its /doc page, or even a set of templates saves a lot of time. It is very annoying and a waste of valuable template programmer time to have to answer the same question over and over again at different talk pages.

And I too have been repetedly "harassed" by some admins that first delete the empty talk page of the template (sometimes even if it wasn't technically empty since it had a notice box telling about the other pages redirecting to it), then they delete the redirects from the /doc talk page and from the sister templates' talk pages stating that they are redirects to a "non-existant target". Problem is that moving a discussion to the central talk page after it has been started on the wrong talk page is much more work than pre-emptively creating the redirects.

This has led to that I nowadays spend time filling the main talk page with anything just so that it won't be deleted and the redirects to it won't then be deleted due to having "no target". Having to fake talk page content like that doesn't feel good, but the current practises by some admins means it is the most efficient option available for me. Since faking some content takes much less time than later having to move a discussion from the wrong talk page.

So I very much would like that a bot automatically add redirects from the /doc talk pages to the templates' talk pages. There are several options what the bot could do if the target talk page is empty: The easiest is probably to simply redirect anyway, another option is to put a notice box on the target talk page telling that "The talk page of the /doc page redirects here." thus making it so the target exists and then redirect to it.

If the /doc talk page already has content I usually move its sections to the template's talk page with an added sentence at the top of each moved section: "This sections was moved here from the /doc talk page.". If that is too complicated for the bot then simply leave those pages alone and human editors will probably handle it.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:27, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I assume Kelly brought this up now due to the automated mass deletion of redirected /doc talk pages that was done recently by one admin. See section Bot to mass-revert a specific list of deletions below about that. (Sorry if my comment above was cranky, I was in a bad mood since I had just spent some hours manually restoring some of those deleted talk pages.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:07, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

For your future enjoyment, DG: {{central}}. Happy‑melon 15:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Happy-melon: Oh, that template is lovely. I responded about it on its talk page. --David Göthberg (talk) 16:17, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I strongly oppose an idea like this. It seems to be an unnecessary use of redirects. Why not use a JavaScript solution instead? --MZMcBride (talk) 00:30, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't think your credibility regarding redirects is very good right now. Kelly ^hi! 06:09, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WP:CHICAGO bot assistance needed

A few weeks ago I made the same request below and curiously someone attempted to help using AWB. That is not what I want. I need a bot to run every few days. It seems User:SatyrTN and his bot User:SatyrBot are no longer active. WP:CHICAGO needs articles in WP:CHIBOTCATS tagged with {{WikiProject Chicago}}. It would also be helpful if the bot autostubbed talk pages that have templates from other projects with class=stub. I think his bot also tagged newly found articles with FA, FL, and GA parameters and added them to class when it added the template. Satyr is not responding to either wiki messages or email regarding so we can not start with his old code.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 07:10, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do. As for running it every few days is something that at this time due to school I cannot do. Weekly perhaps? CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 13:26, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Weekly would be fine. It is sure better than not once in the last six weeks.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 05:15, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Fooian football clubs

Is there any chance that someone could create a bot that would move all "Fooian football clubs" categories (which can be found in Category:Football (soccer) clubs) to Category:Football (soccer) clubs by country? I have started the process off by doing all of the As and Bs manually, but to do the rest from C to Z is a bit too much to do manually, so a bot would be perfect. – Pee Jay 10:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

This could be done relatively easily with AWB, but you might want to point to an established consensus first. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 10:13, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I can probably get you one of those. I should also add to the request that each category should be sorted by the name of the country, rather than the demonym used in the category's name. – Pee Jay 10:17, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

That would be a bit more difficult to do with AWB (or at least, with my skills), though it probably could be done with something more complex. If you can point to some agreement amongst Soccer/Football editors that the cats should be the way you're asking for them, it should be a good start. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 10:24, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I've created a discussion at WP:FOOTY requesting consensus on this matter. – Pee Jay 10:25, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

My only worry is that I won't get (m)any replies to the discussion topic, due to the fact that no one at WP:FOOTY seems to care that much about the organisation of their sub-categories. I'm fairly sure I can guarantee there will be no opposition to the move, however. – Pee Jay 12:00, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

IF and when you get the consensus let me know. I could do it with python. CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 13:23, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, after 10 hours, I currently have two users (including myself) in support of the move, and none opposed. – Pee Jay 20:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, it's been over two days now, and I've only had one reply to the suggestion. Could we go ahead with making the bot now? – Pee Jay 11:23, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes.

BRFA filed CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 01:56, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Doing... a trial CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 16:13, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bot to mass-revert a specific list of deletions

We need a bot to mass-revert a few hundred deletions. See this AN/I discussion for details. Before firing off the bot, please post a notice in the ANI thread that you have such a bot, then wait 12-24 hours for objections. I don't anticipate any but given the history of this incident, it's better to go slow than jump the gun. Note - the AN/I thread will probably spill over into archives in the next day or so. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Hey,not saying that I can / will make this but just got a quick question, Is it only those deletions listed on that page you linked to or all of his deletions or more than those 100? If it is all then there are at least 10000 :> ·Add§hore· ^Talk/_Cont 16:27, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

It looks like he did two runs of (orphaned talk page redirect) deletions recently: One on May 31-June 1, another ending on May 10. I haven't checked older ones. The deletions using other edit summaries can stand for now. We only need reversions for the 5/31-6/1 run for now. Hold off on undoing anything older until it's discussed. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 16:35, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

From what I gather from the discussions, only a small portion of the several thousand redirect talk page deletions were contested. It seems like manual restoration of the contested ones would be a far better option than simply restoring all of them via a bot. VegaDark (talk) 00:25, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

It's not practical for us to manually go through them all and make sure there are no errors, especially considering some of the concerned users are not admins and have no access to deleted versions. -- Ned Scott 00:36, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

At the very least we should undelete any talk page redirect with "archive" in the title. A redirect from a moved talk page archive should not be deleted, and a ton of those redirects were. -- Ned Scott 00:47, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

From what I understand, if an admin were to restore this particular type of deletion, it would be well over 100,000 restorations, possibly more than 150,000. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:28, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm. Restoration of the redirects which were clearly improper to delete, even if the redirects are not helpful, seems appropriate, even if it is more than 150,000. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:35, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

User:ST47 has volunteered to run a bot to restore the "6307 deletions" he's identified. I asked him to wait half a day to see if anyone objects. He can also restore the "4859 from May 10, 1812 from Apr 12, and 13943 from Apr 7" similar deletions if the community wants it. I say go for it, but what do you guys say? Let him know over on WP:ANI. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:18, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I would have to find an inordinate amount of self-restraint to stop myself from blocking ST47 if he were to restore over 100,000 pages. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:46, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Ironic, isn't it? -- Ned Scott 06:06, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

This is probably the easiest way to undelete the redirects that shouldn't have been deleted. There doesn't seem to be any great cost incurred if in doing so we undelete the others as well; even if they are not actually helpful, they are completely harmless. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:03, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Seriously? Having a bot restore 100,000 pages would be best? --MZMcBride (talk) 06:14, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Seriously? Having a bot/script delete 100,000 pages in the first place? -- Ned Scott 06:26, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes? It's been done for years. And from what I've been told, it's done on other wikis as well. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:29, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd expect that anything that was deleted more than a year ago either wasn't that useful or has already been restored manually. In any case, it would be nice if everyone kept in mind that these are redirects we're talking about: all but insignificant in both cost and value, particularly given that they're so easily recreated by anyone who stumbles across them. It's not that big a deal either way, even if there are 100,000 of them. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 06:47, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Obviously you are welcome to undelete them by hand if you wish, but if someone else is expected to clean up the mess a bot would seem to be the simplest way to do it. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:36, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes undeletion is needed to make the point that deletion is not, and never should be, the default. My analysis here indicates that the recent run deleted 6306 redirects split up by namespace as follows: Category talk (10), Help talk (21), Image talk (3), Mediawiki talk (5), Portal talk (39), Talk (3939), Template talk (1065), and Wikipedia talk (1224). User:ST47 has done a similar analysis, going into a bit more detail: "The 6307 are from that day only. 3940 are in Talk:, 1225 in Wikipedia talk:. Of the talk: ones, 105 contain archive, 162 have a /, 77 have a colon. In total, 2602 from that day and 8032 in total are outside of talk or contain a /, :, or the word archive." A list is at User:ST47/restores, though it is not completely clean (some article talk pages have colons in them from the article title, and some of those are on this list). I would suggest restoring all talk redirects outside the "Talk" namespace (that is a total of 2367 redirects), and keeping the list visible to prevent MZMcBride's script from redeleting them (they will then have an incoming link). This isn't to make a point, but to avoid the drama that would ensue if MZMcBride ran the script again and ended up redeleting any that were restored. On a more general point, the problem with MZMcBride's criterion of "absolutely zero incoming links", is that the talk page tab (at the top of pages where the talk page has been redirected to centralise discussion) is an incoming link that doesn't show up on "what links here". MZMcBride did make some point at User talk:Kelly about using the "breadcrumb" link instead (but that doesn't always work if the pages are not linked that way), and that some of the redirects are hardly ever used (which doesn't mean they won't be used in future), but, as I've said in parentheses, in my opinion both of those arguments are wrong, and MZMcBride has not rebutted the "people will create talk pages in the wrong place if they see redlinks" argument. He has suggesed a javascript solution, but I'm not certain is that would be universal, or whether there is any real advantage in doing things that way instead. MZMcBride, what do you think? Carcharoth (talk) 08:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Working version of User:SatyrBot/WikiProject to do lists

Would it be possible to get a second bot to do what SatyrBot was doing before the owner left on a wikibreak? It would be a tremendous help for various wikiprojects. I was looking for something similar for a very very long time... Any takers? Renata (talk) 08:54, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I might poke at it a bit. Q ^{T C} 05:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

See also User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:57, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Afd notification

Y Done:§hep • ¡Talk to me! 16:58, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Recently all article in Category:Ohio high school sports conferences have been listed for deletion; but the creators were not notified of the process. Is it allowed for a bot to mass send Afd notices for one category or is that against policy? If it's okay is there a bot that can do this? Thanks! §hep • ¡Talk to me! 23:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

If it was opt in then it would be fine. -- maelgwn - talk 01:52, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Did it by hand, nevermind. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 16:58, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject-specific orphan tagger

Hi, WikiProject Orphanage is wondering if we could get a bot to run through Category:All orphaned articles and put together lists/categories of orphan sorted by WikiProject/Portal. That way we could refer those categories of orphan en masse to the editors with the most experience in that area, and get their aid for the ones that we aren't knowledgeable enough to de-orphan. Thanks! --Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 07:42, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

What about pages that fall under more then one project? Not to mention that templates on talk pages for WikiProjects really have no standardized format so it would be near impossible to figure out what project it belongs to. Q ^{T C} 18:52, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

If there is no standardized format, then I guess the bot would have to be able to recognize each template individually. I don't see that sort of parsing as being a big deal, though. As for being on more than one project, there's no reason why the bot couldn't put the orphan on more than one WikiProject's orphan list. If parsing the talk pages for the project templates does turn out to be too much of a problem, the bot could just go by the categories on the article, printing out lists of orphans in each category, and then WikiProject Orphanage can submit those lists to the various WikiProjects by hand.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 17:58, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Listings of maintenance categories (including orphaned articles) per WikiProject are available here: User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings. Does that solve your problem? --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:54, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

That is perfect. Please let me know when this is actually up and running.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 18:50, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

It is available, right now. You can request listings for your WikiProject at User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings. I'm just not advertising it on a wide basis yet, since the bot is still in its trial phase. --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:06, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks!--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 06:49, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] List of the most active WikiProjects

For a WikiProject cooperation project, I'd like a list of the most active WikiProjects. It's quite hard to measure this, but I'd say the average bytes/month for the past half year on the project talk page would be a good measure. Any other idea would be great, too. I just know that it'll probably require a bot to do some analysis :)

Thanks, User:Krator (t c) 10:56, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I think WP:WPSPAM would probably win hands down. Kelly ^hi! 17:45, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Two requests: one small and one... medium?

Y §hep • ¡Talk to me! 16:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi! One doable, one maybe doable.

There are some in Category:Châteaux in France that need the museums wikiproject banner removed. These were left over from the less than thoroughly refined tagging of Category:Museums. I think this is doable and probably easy.

Done: Removed all instances of {{WikiProject Museums}} in Category:Châteaux in France and subcats. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 00:50, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

In Category:Unassessed-Class Museums articles there are 500+ articles remaining. If possible I'd like those that are either classed as stub/start for another project and/or have some form of {{stub}} tag within the article to be classed as stub/start for the museums project. They already have a museums banner. Is this doable? I'm not sure, especially about the internal stub classing because there are so many different kinds of stub tags.

There's no rush on any of this of course and I appreciate any help. Thanks! _{TravellingCari}^{the Busy Bee} 00:06, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Done: Stub assessment right now. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 00:29, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Would all classes be okay to assess. ie B, GA, ect. If not that's fine but I can do all of the assessments if that helps. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 01:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Doing... Auto-assessment §hep • ¡Talk to me! 02:30, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Done: Finished assessment. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 16:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Wow! Thanks *so* much. I really appreciate it, as do the rest of us in the museums project. _{TravellingCari}^{the Busy Bee} 01:00, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] {{Infobox rugby league biography}}

As per consensus agreed upon by the Rugby league WikiProject, the template {{Infobox rugby league biography}} would be changed to the sandboxed version here. The newer template (sandboxed version) while different, makes it easier for users to change information than the current version. The consensus can be seen on the WikiProject talk page.

However, the format of template is our worry but our problem is that the current version is used on approx 1500 articles and manually changing each article would be tedious and long. This is why we ask for a bot to do this, of all the instructions are explained below.

[edit] Changes

This may be hard for a programmer, but I'm sure it can be done.

For every instance of the syntax of the {{Infobox rugby league biography}} on MainSpace articles, the following should be done:

The parameter years, needs to be seperated at each use of   or   and then seperated by each use of a dash and placed in the coresponding parameters year1 ... so on. For example:

Old parameter years = 1914 1915-1918 1918-1920 1921

Would become: year1 = 1914, year2 = 1915-1918, year3 = 1918-1920, year4 = 1921 (the template allows up to ten years)

THEN

Would become: year1start = 1914, year2start = 1915, year2end = 1918, year3start = 1918, year3end = 1920, year4start = 1921

OK, so from the first line it would get to the third line. It needs to be seperated first at each use of
or
then by each use of a dash (remembering dashes come in many forms)

The parameters transferred are:

years into year(counter)start and year(counter)end

The counter should change every use of
or
into an integer (1, 2, 3 ...)

Then the first year/word would become the start parameter, and the second term the end paramter

So "1914" would have no end parameter

"1914-1915" would have both a start and end parameter

"19??-present" use of strings in both start and end parameter

"1914-1915, 1917-1918" Uses two dashes, which should take the first date (1914) and the last date (1918) as start and finish.

THE SAME EXAMPLES ABOVE NEED TO BE DONE AS WELL FOR THE FOLLOWING PARAMETERS:

repyears into year(counter)start and year(counter)end WHERE the counter is a capital Letter (A, B, C ...) not a number

coachyears into coachyear(counter)start and coachyear(counter)end where the counter is a Number

repcoachyears into coachyear(counter)start and coach(*counter*)end where the counter is a capital Letter (A, B, C ...) not a number

refereeyears into refereeyear(counter)start and refereeyear(counter)end where the counter is a number

The parameter clubs needs to be seperated at each use of   or   and placed in the coresponding parameters club1, club2... so on. For example:

clubs into club(counter) where counter is a number (starts at 1) which is a new one at the seperation of each or

repteam into team(counter) where the counter is a LETTER (starts at A) and seperated at each or

coachclubs into coachteam(counter) where the counter is a number (starts at 1) and seperated at each or

refereecomps into refereecomp(counter) where the counter is a number (starts at 1) and seperated at each or

refereecaps into refereeappearances(counter) where the counter is a number (starts at 1) and seperated at each or

The parameter caps(points) will be more tedious. It needs to be seperated both at each use of   or   AND the brackets. These will be placed in the parameters appearances1 ... so on AND points1 ... so on. For example:

Old parameter caps(points) = 12 (32) 14 (324) 281 (1010)

Would become: appearances1 = 12, points1 = 32, appearances2 = 14, points2 = 324, appearances3 = 281, points3 = 1010 (template allows ten times)

So each would be seperated by either a or
You would then get multiple values in the form of "x (y)" or just "x" or just "(y)"
So x (y) would be seperated into x and y.
The x will go into the parameter appearances(counter) where the counter starts at one and goes up by 1 for each value (seperated by the br)
The y will go into the points(counter) same as above.

This would have to be the same for:

repcaps(points) into appearances(counter) and points(counter) where the counters ARE LETTERS (starting at A) and seperated like above.

The Birth and Death date, may have some information for others but no information or limited information for others:

The old parameter dateofbirth and dateofdeath respectively.

Now, there will be different formats for both of these old parameters. Some will be in {{birth date and age}}, others in other templates. Some will be just written out in date form. Others might just have a year. But they somehow have to be pushed into three seperated parameters each: dayofbirth, monthofbirth, yearofbirth and dayofdeath, monthofdeath, yearofdeath.

Some other small tasks:

The pcupdate and repupdate should get the most recent date (one may be 12 may 08, the other 12 june 08 (in which case it would be 12 June 2008) and then seperate it into a year ("2008" in this instance) to the year parameter and the date "12 June" into the date parameter, BUT NOT LINKED.

The following parameters are no longer used and should be deleted:

| occupation =

| school =

| university =

| spouse =

| children =

| relatives =

| currentclub =

| clubnumber =

| youthyears =

| youthclubs =

| youthrepyears =

| youthrepteam =

| youthrepcaps(points) =

| otheryears =

| otherclubs =

| url =

They may be a minority of articles that don't follow the old MOS for this infobox, the bot should create a list (somewhere) of articles that should be manually changed. I don't know much about bots, but I think this may be better done in sections/speratetly. Note that the template is currently in the old format, and we won't change it until any bot's are used.

I may be unclear in some parts, I'm here to go through with this, so I'll help to gain understanding, and this may not be as hard as it seems (to me any way). The Windler talk 09:29, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bot needed to clean up 50,000+ disambiguation pages

Due to the fact that many disambiguation pages predate Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages), and the fact that many/most editors are not familiar with the manual of style, about 2/3 of our disambiguation pages need some sort of cleanup.

A sizeable amount of this cleanup (though not all) could be done with a bot. Each entry in a disambiguation page is supposed to start with an asterisk, end with no punctuation, contain only one blue linked term, and this blue link should generally not be piped (so clumsy article titles like Mercury (element) should look exactly like that). In addition, DAB pages should contain no external links, no references sections, and (with a few exceptions) be in no categories except Category:Disambiguation.

It would be very helpful to have a bot which could check all 100,000 DAB pages, removing periods from the end of entries, removing categories, converting numbered lists to bulleted lists, commenting out external links and references sections, and in those cases where it would be possible for the bot to do so, removing extra blue links and inappropriate piping of article titles. I estimate that the bot would end up doing cleanup on about 50,000 pages.

This has been discussed on Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation and, while there is agreement that this needs doing, none of us have the technical knowhow to write our own bot. --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 17:40, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

if you can give some diffs of dabs that you have cleaned up Ill take a look at the issue and see what I can do. β^_command 17:42, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[1], [2], [3]. These don't involve all of what needs to be done, but the other stuff (removing categories, commenting out external links, etc.) is pretty straightforward. --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 18:14, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

How would categories on page like Auburn Township, Ohio be handled? §hep • ¡Talk to me! 20:35, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not entirely up to speed on the exact set of categories which are currently considered appropriate, this would have to be figured out before the bot could start removing any categories, with the help of the folks at Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation. The categories that article is in look appropriate to be left in place, though. --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 22:15, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

There are some extra considerations:

Sentences should end with a full stop, and there are disambiguation pages with sentences.(eg)
There are disambiguation pages with two relevant (disambiguating) blue links on the same line (eg). New entries should be made for the second entry.
Pipes are often used to good effect, and are fairly common when the blue link occurs after the red link. Removing the pipe without altering the description may result in loss of information, nonsensical descriptions,(eg) or a redlink.(eg)
Where there are multiple blue links it is not always obvious which one should remain(eg)

It may be better to restrict some of these tasks to leaving a cleanup tag. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 21:21, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

There are definitely extra considerations. In the first example you gave, though, the manual of style says "Even when the entry forms a complete sentence, do not include commas or periods at the end of the line". As to your other concerns, yes, the bot will not be able to clean up every instance of piping or every entry with multiple links, but will instead only be able to do so in situations which appear to be straightforward and which shouldn't cause problems.

Basically, it should revolve around looking at whether linked terms match the title of the disambiguation page. If the page is Voodoo, then entries would only be cleaned of extra links if they have exactly one blue-linked term which contains the article title. If an entry has no blue linked terms which contain "Voodoo", or more than one, then the bot can't know what to do with that and should do nothing.

As for piping, it should only remove piping in straightforward situations. Probably 95% of the inappropriate piping involves either changing something like [[Sequim, Washington]] to [[Sequim, Washington|Sequim]], or [[Tarzan (1999 film)]] to [[Tarzan (1999 film)|Tarzan]], and these should be fairly straightforward to fix (the only complication being the odd ways editors try to add italics around the name of the film, which a bot should also be able to deal with.(Note, for those who might not be familiar with the manual of style - the bot would be removing the piping, not adding it) --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 22:06, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify that first point - the solution is not to remove the full stop from the second sentence, but to convert the two sentences into one and then remove the full stop (that's a job for a human). Perhaps the bot could check for existence of two full stops and not remove the second one, but flag it accordingly. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 22:19, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

There are problems with that Voodoo example. For instance assume the James Kelly disambig page had only two links, it should still link to the article Jim Kelly (martial artist) which means the same thing, but doesn't include the phrase, as well as the article James M. Kelly (politician) which wouldn't be seen as a match following a simple comparison. --T-rex 00:08, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

As I said above, if the entry does not have a blue linked term containing the article title, then the bot shouldn't be doing anything with the links in that entry. So the bot would probably do nothing regarding both of the entries that you mentioned. This is not a problem, as we would rather have a bot which fixes 90% of the problems correctly than have one which fixes 95% of problems, but messes up many of those other 5%. (A further comment, added afterwards - I'm not sure I'm understanding you here, but you may be thinking the bot will be removing entries entirely. It won't. The bot will only be de-linking and de-piping. If one of the entries on the James Kelly page says nothing but "Jammmees Kelly iz a rad dudde!!", the bot will not be removing that) --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 09:53, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, make that three links then, adding one to James Kelly (pirate) as well. Fact is that a bot that creates some problems should never be used no matter how many it may fix. --T-rex 18:11, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

You haven't explained what problems you think the bot would cause. If the bot saw "*[[James Kelly (pirate)]] (died 1701)", it wouldn't change that in any way. If it saw "*[[James Kelly (pirate)|James Kelly]] (died 1701)", it would remove the piping. If it saw "*[[James Kelly (pirate)]] (died 1701), English [[pirate]] active in the [[Indian Ocean]]", it would de-link "pirate" and "Indian Ocean" (Or at least, that's my plan). --Xyzzyplugh (talk) 18:30, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

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