Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive 30

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How to change location for RegEx list?

Hi. I am using AWB on a private wiki and it's working perfect. But now I want to create a RegEx list for typos, but I would prefer a specific page (other than WikiName:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos). Is it possible to use a different page for that list? --89.245.215.249 (talk) 21:29, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

I now created a RegEx-Typo list in User space. But how do I tell AWB to use this one, and not the standard list? --Asomy (talk) 11:05, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

No chance?--Asomy (talk) 18:42, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

You can specify an override URL for the typos page within the settings specified on the checkpage. Rjwilmsi 19:18, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately this page is in the wiki namespace, too. I hoped there is a way to do this changes in a user file, like xml or something. Thanks anyway. --Asomy (talk) 15:51, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Replace template usage and add new parameter line

Hello. As an example, is this type of template parameter replacement possible in AWB? xxxx is variable text.

Find:
| location = xxxx

Replace with::
| subdivision_type2 = Location
| subdivision_name2 = xxxx

As you can see. The change is from a one liner, to a two liner, with one of the lines consisting of variable text. Thank you, Rehman 13:15, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

You might start with this:

find:

\|\s*location\s*=\s*(xxxx)(\s*)

replace:

| subdivision_type2 = Location$2| subdivision_name2 = $1

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:43, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Trappist the monk. If I don't know the value for xxxx, is there a workaround for this? Rehman 13:53, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

find:

\|\s*location\s*=\s*([\w\s]*)(\s+)

replace:

| subdivision_type2 = Location$2| subdivision_name2 = $1$2

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:08, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Am I doing it right? Rehman 14:20, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Ignore the above, got it to work... Can we add a line break after the first replacement? (I.e. Both parameters to be on separate lines)? Rehman 14:24, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

That is the purpose of the second capture; whatever the 'termination' of the original line, a space, a newline, or nothing, the regex replacement keeps the format that the template had before the replacement. If the regex is not doing that, provide an example page where the regex doesn't work so I have a better understanding of what it is that isn't working.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:57, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Is there a way to make the output in two lines instead of one? Rehman 12:55, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Did you not read my last post? The purpose of the (\s+) capture is to get whatever character follows the 'xxxx' (whatever that is). The replacement then uses the value obtained from the (\s+) capture to end both lines. If:

| location = xxxx

ends with a newline character, the regex should be adding the newline character to the ends of both lines in the replacement.

Did you not see that I asked for an example where the regex is not working? Show me an article or a sandbox page where this regex is not working.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:21, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Sorry if I misunderstood your post. I did not use AWB before. I'm trying to get the two red cages on two separate lines. Is this possible? Rehman 14:24, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Adding a ping after the fact has no effect. For ping to work requires a new signature.

\|\s*location\s*=\s*([\[\]\|\p{L}\p{P} ]*)(\s+)

The above regex allows matching of wikilinks, unicode letters, punctuation, and the space character. The previous regex matched only Latin letters, digits, and the underscore character.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:50, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Rehman 23:31, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

CSVLoader.dll not in plugin folder

Plugin Folder

You can see my folder not have CSV. I don't know how. But older version of AWB had this in my folder. But now this is a big problem for me. Please tell me what should I do? And please add CSV in AWB exe ( sourceforge.net/projects/autowikibrowser/) NehalDaveND (talk) 10:22, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Just discovered how to dramatically improve the Preview screen

I just tried setting AWB to emulate IE11 instead of the default IE7 rendering mode. The result gives an amazing improvement to the Preview screen. I did it simply with a registry entry in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION but I think the exact details may vary depending on your computer configuration; there are plenty of websites out there that give all the details. The improvement was so remarkable I just had to share it! — Hebrides (talk) 10:30, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Would this be possible through Wine, or are Mac and Linux users stuck with a completely broken preview screen that doesn't clear itself for some reason and has everything in Times New Roman? Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 11:53, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Preview has been affected for all users recently due to a mediawiki API issue (phab:T144301), caused all previews to lack rich formatting, which is now fixed, though I'm unclear if it has been rolled out to all wikis yet. No change to AWB config should be needed. Wine users as ever need to make sure the right winetricks are installed, as per notes on AWB & wine page, otherwise the diff or preview window doesn't clear. Rjwilmsi 19:17, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

“What links here” for files

How do I get AutoWikiBrowser to get every page that uses a specific image? I’ve checked pretty much every single option there is to check.

“What links here” and “What transcludes here” do not work.
―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 23:58, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

@PapiDimmi: Choose Image file links from "Source" under the "Make list" box in bottom left corner. EvergreenFir (talk) 00:05, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Ah! I looked everywhere, yet I didn’t see “Image file links.” My mind was playing tricks on me. Thank you!
―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 00:07, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Stable Release section of infobox

Resolved

I'm seeing Wiki markup instead of text on the project page. Something need fixing? Andrew³²⁷ 11:57, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Andrewman327  Done -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:15, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Update to the live CS1 module weekend of 30–31 July 2016

See Update to the live CS1 module weekend of 30–31 July 2016 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trappist the monk (talk • contribs) 10:38, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

I think I found a bug

When selecting the “Special page” source and then “User contribs,” it’ll show the same pages several times. I assume that this is because the user edited the same page several times in a row, but this is completely pointless in AWB, and AWB should remove duplicate pages when selecting “User contribs.”

Screenshot.

―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 00:30, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

 Comment: @PapiDimmi: I came to this page Report this error then I found that you have already did it!Regards --ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 13:40, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

@PapiDimmi and ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2: Have you ticked "List > Remove duplicates" in the top menu bar? -- John of Reading (talk) 14:13, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading:This duplicate must never appear.Thank you --ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 14:18, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

It's working as designed. If you don't want to see duplicates, then follow John of Reading's instruction. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 14:21, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

@Stevietheman:Is this duplicate has a benefit?Is it possible to be canceled? --ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 17:57, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

As you've already been told, if you don't want to do this select "remove duplicates". AWB is designed for a range of purposes, not for your personal convenience, and those purposes include such tasks as compiling an editor's contribution history for which the ability to see duplicate entries is essential. ‑ Iridescent 18:01, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I don’t know why this isn’t the default behaviour, though.
―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 20:00, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Because it's presenting the facts -- that sometimes an article is edited multiple times by a user. But if you don't want the duplicates, AWB provides an easy way to remove them. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 13:29, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, but shouldn’t duplicates be removed as a default? Why would you need to scan the same article several times in a row?
―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 14:25, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

If you have "Remove duplicates" set, you won't see them in the first place. So what's the real issue? Another AWB user might want to build a list with the duplicates. Note that AWB is used for more than just editing -- it's also used for smartly building lists of articles. And a user might want to run counts on how many times another user has edited an article. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 14:32, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Okay. You have proved me wrong.
―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 18:24, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Localisation

@Magioladitis: and other developers, Please look at this request. These strings have not been localised yet, Thanks. Muhammad Shuaib (talk) 19:57, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

@Magioladitis: (re-ping, it only gets set off on a new comment.Naraht (talk) 20:06, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Unreferenced stub template

AWB edits my bot made moved the {{Unreferenced stub}} template from the top of the article to the bottom.[1] This was with "Append text" and "Sort metadata after" options, so maybe AWB is mistaking {{Unreferenced stub}} for a stub template? - Evad37 [talk] 02:03, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

The meta data sort function has a maintenance templates rule that includes {{Unreferenced}} but not {{Unreferenced stub}}. There is a Template redirects rule for {{Unreferenced stub}} to {{Unreferenced}}, so in this instance you would need to also run genfixes if you want the behaviour of sort meta data to retain {{Unreferenced stub}} in zeroth section. Rjwilmsi 13:58, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Hewiki localisation

Hello, Magioladitis. Could you explain me, please, how can I configurate the AWB so it will move some templates to a place between categories and interwiki, such as local versions of nobots or coordinates, during metadata sort? Thank you. IKhitron (talk) 17:31, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

New template error reports and AWB

Reports produced by the new tool, like this one for {{Infobox person}} show common errors which AWB might fix as part of its routing tasks. In this case, for instance, mis-captialising parameter names (|Awards= instead of |awards=) or misspelling them (|alma matter=, and other variants, instead of |alma_mater=).

Perhaps someone would like to start analysing the reports and adding fixes for the most common errors to AWB? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:54, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Template:Underlinked

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T112382

I think it might be a good idea to add guidance on this template regarding stubs, similar to that included in Template:Refimprove. I was surprised it wasn't already there.

The template was recently added to M-2 visa, which I created yesterday, but it's use in this manner just doesn't seem at all helpful. The problem with the stub is not that it has too few WLs; the problem is that it is a stub, and there's only so much wikilinking that can be done in two sentences. TimothyJosephWood 12:14, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

The code that determines that it should be added should be reviewed for improvements. This matter has been brought up before. I have Find/Replace entries to prevent it being added at all because of this issue. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 17:03, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

File size problem

The XML file with all the search and replace rules I use with AWB has ballooned to over 60 mB and continues to grow. I occasionally get the error "Exception of type 'System.OutOfMemoryException' was thrown." and sometimes can't open AWB. Looking at the text of the XML file with a text editor, there's a long long list which appears to some articles I've edited, repeated hundreds of times. The list is under <Special> <remove>.

If I delete all those lines, the file goes down to just over 1.5 mB, and works fine, but the next time I save it, the file jumps up over 60 mB again and all those article names are back. If I save the file in its small state, close AWB and restart the computer, then open the file and re-save it, it goes back up to over 60 mB again. I've tried "Reset to original default settings" and without adding any rules, next time I save, the XML file is up to 59 mB and the long list is there again.

I'm working in English Wikipedia with Windows 10 Home, Version 1607 and looking for suggestions. Thanks,  SchreiberBike | ⌨  02:12, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T147772

I've reproduced this and logged it as a bug. You should be able to see these strings in AWB by opening the "List > Filter" dialog, where they will be displayed in the box at the right. The "Clear" button below this box will get rid of them. I think you'll have to clean up your default settings first, as my guess is that this list isn't being cleared when you switch from one settings file to the next. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:35, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

That seems to have fixed it. Thanks a million!  SchreiberBike | ⌨  15:27, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

I corrected the question above to refer to mB instead of kB for future reference. Dumb mistake fixed.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  19:46, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

bot flag problem in AWB

Namaste! I am an admin at sa.wikipedia and I have AWB rights in hi.wikipedia. In sa.wiki I had gave AWB rights to a user (who not an admin) and without any bot flag he can use bot option in sa.wiki. But because my account has not bot flag, in hi.wiki I can't see bot option. So I want to know, what the matter is. NehalDaveND (talk) 07:51, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

How can i get All pages of ta. wikipedia by Make list facililty?

I am one of the sysop in ta.wikipedia. I am in the need to know all the name of existing articles.I tried by Makelistoption by selecting All pages. of AWB. But i got 25,000 articles only. How can i get the remaining articles name?--Info-farmer (talk) 11:35, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

But why AWB? Use dumpwiki. IKhitron (talk) 11:42, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

How? guidelines, pls--Info-farmer (talk) 04:01, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

@Info-farmer: From the Wikimedia Downloads page I can see that the latest "tawiki" dump is here, and from there you can download the "List of page titles in main namespace". -- John of Reading (talk) 06:16, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks indeed--Info-farmer (talk) 11:16, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

@Info-farmer: If don't want to download the dump, you can run (online) a query on Quarry to get list of articles. Such a query will do the job:

USE tawiki_p;
SELECT page_title
FROM page
WHERE page_namespace = 0 AND page_is_redirect = 0
ORDER BY page_title

--XXN, 18:32, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

@XXN: pls explain in details. How can i use your infos? --Info-farmer (talk) 02:10, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

@XXN:Is this correct ?. How can i get redirect pages without any link? A example page--Info-farmer (talk) 02:50, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

@Info-farmer: In your query you've changed page_namespace to 1, so those are (article-)Talk pages; main namespace is 0 (zero). Query for the second question:

SELECT page_title
FROM page
LEFT JOIN pagelinks
ON pl_title = page_title
AND pl_namespace = page_namespace
WHERE page_is_redirect = 1 AND pl_namespace IS NULL
ORDER BY page_title;

This is a bit of off topic here. More help with queries you can ask on mw:Talk:Quarry, and a list with various example queries ready to run you can see here. -XXN, 09:33, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Oh! great. Thank you very much.--Info-farmer (talk) 10:40, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Windows 10, 5.8.7.0 Login aborted

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T148342

It's been a few months since I used AWB, I think April 2016. Opened it and tried to login, and it said "Login aborted". Multiple times. So, I closed AWB and used the AWB updater. Opened it and tried again. Same thing. Since then, I've gone from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10, and I think Microsoft just installed the Windows 10 anniversary build on my computer. What can I do to log in? Cannot update to any other version of AWB — Maile (talk) 18:01, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Moving categories at the end of the pages

Hello,

Currently, categories are moved automatically to the end of the pages when editing with AWB. Is there a way to avoid that? (For example, in some Wiktionaries, it's prefered to put the categories at the end of each language section -and there can be several language sections per page-.) Automatik (talk) 23:19, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Random pages

Can someone give a precise description of the sense in which the "Random Pages" are random? What is the space from which these pages are drawn, and how are they selected? Thanks. ----

EEng they are selected from the mainspace and it's in fact multiple calls of the Special:Random. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:33, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Any idea where I can find out exactly how Special:Random works? EEng 14:05, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

EEng Check mw:Help:Random_page. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:20, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

update to the live cS1|2 module weekend of 29–30 October 2016

Discussion is here.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:13, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Windows 10 and Avast don't like 5.8.8.0

I had problems with running the new version this morning. On Windows 10, I had to tell it to run the app anyway. Avast totally choked on it and wouldn't let me run it. I had to add my app directory to its Exclusions list before it would run as normal. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 11:03, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Stevietheman nothing really changed since the last version. @Reedy: to check it. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:15, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Unable to update on Windows 10

Resolved

AWB stopped working tonight, saying I need to install the latest version. It then tried to do it automatically, but failed with the error message:

Access denied for copying files. Files and such are not the best place to run AWB from.  Please run the updater with Administrator rights.

So I logged on to an administrator account and tried the AWB Updater, but it failed again with the same error message. How can I get AWB working again?--Gronk Oz (talk) 14:01, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Gronk Oz do what the message says: "Please run the updater with Administrator rights". -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:53, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

To do that, find the file AWBUpdater.exe on your computer, right click on it, and then choose 'run as administrator'. Schwede66 17:38, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Ah, that worked - thanks for the reply, Schwede66. If I might make a suggestion, that error message could be clearer. To me, it seems to be telling me not to run in from the file list ("not the best place to run AWB from"). I interpreted it that I need to log out of Windows and sign on with the Admin account, then run AWBUpdater. But no; that did not work and apparently what you suggested is different somehow, and those of us who are not Windows experts might need a bit more specific instructions. Anyway, thanks for the help.--Gronk Oz (talk) 21:30, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Automatic revocation of AWB access

See here for a proposal on automatically revoking AWB access for indefinitely blocked users, inactive bots, etc. This is purely for in the interest of maintaining the ever-growing CheckPage. Your input is welcomed. Best — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:31, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Feedback on whether addition of machine readable data is non-cosmetic

Please see this PERM request for Pariah24. Would the addition of a template which contains machine-readable metadata (with no actual visual change on the page) constitute a non-cosmetic edit? I thought this was straight-forward at first, but given the efforts at Wikidata and recent tech shifts, maybe this is more borderline than I thought. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 00:14, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

That PERM request smell of what could have a scope of thousands and thousands of pages - if there is community support should probably be run under a bot account. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:54, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

New adminbot request - AWB access management

There is a new adminbot request open at WP:BRFA. Please see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MusikBot II for details. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:19, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Layout

This edit made with AWB changed layout, and removes spaces after bulleted lists etc. If this is not a user-specific feature but a feature of AWB, please take care to turn it off. AWB should not change layout automatically, and certainly not in the direction of less clear layout. Debresser (talk) 13:51, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Some AWB users add their own cleanups (via Find & Replace) and therefore some of the changes you see may not be "built in" to AWB. I'm not sure exactly what the problem is, though -- removing unnecessary spacing seems like useful tidying that can go along with other substantive changes. What am I missing? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 18:44, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Spaces after bullets are considered by many, and me included, to be helpful, as they guarantee a more easily to overview layout. Debresser (talk) 16:07, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

I've not seen the built-in general fixes make this kind of change. Could Marek69 confirm which part of his AWB setup is adjusting the spaces after bullets? -- John of Reading (talk) 16:16, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

If you mean spaces after the asterisks used to bullet, I would concur. But AWB doesn't remove those spaces by default. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 16:20, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

This is not a general fix. I add spaces after bullets exactly as it's done by other cleanup tool like AutoEd. Debresser please contact Marek to ask them not to do this kind of changes. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:21, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

I've looked at this edit several times now, but I'm still not sure I understand what you're refering to. I can't see where spaces have been removed after bullets. I'm sorry. -- Marek.69 ^talk 16:54, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I didn't look closely enough. I was referring to the removal of spaces after pipe characters - I don't think the built-in general fixes does that. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:13, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks John, I see now. I have several scripts running with AWB. I will look into it and see which one is doing this.

Best regards -- Marek.69 ^talk 00:57, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

WP:2FA and AWB

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T150566

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T150582

Please note, AWB does not currently support the new two-factor authentication system. However, you can create a BotPassword for AWB purposes and still log on via the API. If creating a BotPassword for yourself, you can remove the security sensitive access you may have that you don't have a need for when using AWB. This will prevent a hack of your BotPassword to gain full access. See also meta:Help:Two-factor authentication. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:46, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

phab:T150566 suggests that AWB does not support BotPasswords. — JJMC89 (T·C) 05:34, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

It certainly does, I use one personally - maybe there is a bug of some kind? I asked over at that phab ticket. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:08, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Adjust highlight color

I'm often working with single-character changes, and the default shade of blue for the + side of the diff viewer is difficult for me to spot easily. I've been looking for the option to customize the highlight color to something less subtle, but I'm striking out and not finding anything in the documentation. Could someone point me to the right place? Appreciatively —jameslucas (" " / +) 21:29, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

@JamesLucas: You can change the CSS applied creating or modifying style.css file in AWB directory. The line you need to modify are :

td.diff-addedline .diffchange {
	background: #a3d3ff;
}
 
td.diff-deletedline .diffchange {
	background: #ffe49c;
}

You can change the colors to something more visible, like #ff0000 (red) and #00ff00 (lime) if you want it to be really flashy. --Zebulon84 (talk) 03:33, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks,@Zebulon84:. I created style.css and populated it with the first half of your code. It successfully brightened the highlighting as intended, but unfortunately it also overrode all the style settings—blanking them and leaving my review box looking like a nearly unformatted 1995 webpage. Is there a way to access the default CSS so I can tinker with that? Or else insure that the creation of style.css doesn't modify anything except for what it explicitly includes? Cheers! —jameslucas (" " / +) 11:51, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

@JamesLucas: the original css is in Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/style.css --Zebulon84 (talk) 11:56, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks again,@Zebulon84: My eyes passed right over that box of links at the top of the Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Technical. Much appreciated. —jameslucas (" " / +) 13:25, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

On a related note, I'm trying to make a "night-mode" style.css, but unable to alter the diff window in 2 areas: 1) the whitespace below and arround the changes (i.e. when you only change 1 line, there's a lot of whitespace below), and 2) the line "Double click on a line to undo all changes on that line, or single click to focus the edit box to that line" is still black text with white background. Here's a screenshot of what I have now, and what I'd like to do. Does anyone know how to change that?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:19, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: add

body {
	color: white;
	background: pink;
}

You may change "pink" to another color

Once you're satisfied, I would be happy to have a copy of your night settings. --Zebulon84 (talk) 19:20, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Zebulon84, thanks! I added color: white; to your code so that the "Double click on ..." text shows up at the top of the diff window. I uploaded my style.css to User:Tom.Reding/Night-mode style.css, and you can see the changes from AWB's style.css in this diff. It would be nice to have a non-kludgy night mode style; until then, let me know if you come up with any improvements.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  22:12, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Replacing a template with content

How can I replace an entire template with content in it with another template, like in this case?Ionutzmovie (talk) 06:44, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

@Ionutzmovie: In some cases, using regular expressions may help, but the problem with infobox templates is that they oftentimes have templates inside of them, thus making regex parsing trickier. If you don't know regular expressions, it may be best to find someone who can assist with a specific replacement task you have in mind. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 16:23, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

@Ionutzmovie: You can use a custom module.

private static readonly List<string> templateList = new List<string>(){
    "Orașul polonez",
    "Redirect"
};

private static readonly Regex regexTargetTemplate = Tools.NestedTemplateRegex(templateList);

private static readonly string replacement = "{{Infocaseta Așezare}}";

public string ProcessArticle(string ArticleText, string ArticleTitle, int wikiNamespace, out string Summary, out bool Skip)
{
    Skip = false;
    Summary = "trecut la Infocaseta Așezare";
    
    string newArticleText = ArticleText;
    
    foreach(Match m in regexTargetTemplate.Matches(ArticleText)) {
        newArticleText = newArticleText.Replace(m.Value, replacement);
    }
    
    if (!newArticleText.Equals(ArticleText)) {
        ArticleText = newArticleText;
    }
    else {
        Skip = true;
    }
    
    return ArticleText;

}

Replace Redirect with the name of a redirect to ro:Template:Orașul polonez (without the namespace). You need to list all of the redirects to ro:Template:Orașul polonez. Example edit. — JJMC89 (T·C) 03:27, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you!Ionutzmovie (talk) 07:27, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Search all pages for a specific query?

Is there a way to search all pages for a query? I want to look for all pages including "Cultural references" and use the find and replace tool to quickly go through those. --Jennica✿^{Ping Me!} 12:23, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

@Jennica: Do you mean all articles with a "Cultural references" section? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 15:24, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: yes. I want to be able to see all articles that have that. --Jennica✿^{Ping Me!} 01:32, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

@Jennica: I'd like to know if there's an easier way to import insource:/.../ searches into AWB too, especially with a larger # of results. What I normally do (and what you can do in the meantime) is take this search for insource:/= *Cultural [Rr]eferences *=/, which found 2,309 pages (in groups of 500, so 5 times), and paste them into 1 Excel column. Then, in a 2nd column, filter out every 3rd line from the 1st column, leaving only the page names in the 2nd column, and paste that into AWB.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  01:54, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Tom.Reding (talk · contribs) - thanks.. do you know how to delete every third row in google sheets? i don't have excel and trying to figure it out is giving me a migraine --Jennica✿^{Ping Me!} 02:40, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, the fastest way to do effectively the same thing is by making B1 reference A1 and leave B2 & B3 blank, then copy B1-3 to cells B4-6, then repeat until you get to the end (3 -> 6 -> 12 -> 24, etc., so you only need to do it 10x). I have a special spreadsheet I saved with 10,000 or so rows of this for exactly this reason.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  02:55, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

I use a Python script then C&P. Mr Stephen (talk) 19:13, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

RfC notice: AWB bot ref reordering

There is a related active RfC at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#RfC: AWB bot ref reordering. Thank you. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:44, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Useless if you can't log in

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T148342

Please see this post. Yes, there actually has been a ticket on this since October. And, no, nothing has been done to resolve it. Looks to me like one of those things that will never have an answer, or fix. So, as far as I am concerned, for all my purposes, AWB is useless, dead as the proverbial door nail. Surely, I cannot be the only one this ever happened to. Useless. Useless. Useless. Useless. — Maile (talk) 20:32, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

AWB continues to be very useful for me and others, but I'm sorry you're having a problem logging in. Have you manually downloaded and installed version 5.8.8.0? And if so, can you say what wiki you are using AWB for? Per the Phabricator issue, this may be key. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 04:04, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

I just now manually downloaded and installed 5.8.8.0. Same results, won't let me login. Yes, I saw that message about version 1.26.2, but I have no idea what that means. How do I know? I click on the AWB icon on my computer, and it opens up version 5.8.8.0. And then it doesn't let me log in. That's all I know. — Maile (talk) 14:21, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

If you go to the About page of the wiki in question, it may show the version of MediaWiki in use somewhere on it. That's at least how it's done on the English Wikipedia. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 22:13, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

I think Special:Version should work on any MediaWiki installation. -- John of Reading (talk) 22:33, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

I am normally on is English Wikipedia version, which should be the same for everybody. — Maile (talk) 22:42, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

• I have uninstalled this and won't be trying it again. Bah humbug. Not worth my time. — Maile (talk) 18:15, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

General fixes and ref name="ABC" group="DEF"

AWB's 'general fixes' seems to be changing e.g. <ref name="reception" group="note"> to <ref name="reception group=note">, see for example Syntactic Structures. Is this gen fix or me, and if the former is it expected and correct? (Help:Footnotes is ambiguous.) Mr Stephen (talk) 21:29, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Mr Stephen it's a bug that has already been fixed for the next release. I can make a release soon. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:34, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

OK, thanks for fixing it. Mr Stephen (talk) 22:04, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

More than 25k pages in a category?

Is there a way to grab more than 25,000 pages in a single category via "Make list"? I'm trying to run a bot task on Category:Stub message templates, but it's too large to give me the entire cat. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 20:07, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

BU Rob13 use no limits plugin. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:19, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Using AWB for targeted user messaging

Are there any guidelines or rules of thumb (beyond WP:CANVASS) I should consider before using AWB for targeted user messaging? Or is it considered a bad use of the tool? This is not something I would feel the need to do often, but it has dawned on me that it would be useful for sending a message to WikiProject members or users potentially interested in particular proposals. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 19:41, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

For any sizable target list, Mass-messaging is almost always a better option. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:13, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Xaosflux. There's over 2,200 to send to, so yes, mass-messaging is best in this case. I just submitted my mass mailing to send out. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 19:53, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Dash to hyphen?

I'm used to AWB changing the occasional hyphen-minus to an en dash when appropriate, so when I was making this diff I didn't immediately register anything odd, but after I hit 'save' something felt off to me, and I went back to investigate. Sure enough, AWB did the reverse operation for no reason I can determine. Any thoughts here? Thanks —jameslucas (" " / +) 02:15, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

It's for WP:SORTKEY point 4, that punctuation such as en-dashes in sortkeys shouldn't be used. Rjwilmsi 07:38, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! I'd actually interpret the current wording of point 4 as a requirement to remove the dash, but if there's a consensus to replace it with a hyphen-minus, I'm on board! —jameslucas (" " / +) 13:21, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

AutoWikiBrowser stops after loading first page

What can I do when after loading the first article of the list, AWB shows a dialog stating an error has occurred and it will close, "a message will be shown if a solution is available". Unfortunately, I do not get a message and I honestly don't have a clue what the problem might be. I am using AWB on Dutch Wiktionary. The same procedure worked fine a few weeks ago. Any suggestions? --MarcoSwart (talk) 19:53, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Special pages

I'm pretty sure AWB used to pop up a dialog to fill in parameters for a Special page, but now I select Special page and nothing happens. I need to use Linksearch and a mask as the list source. Guy (Help!) 14:16, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

@JzG: This still works for me (AWB 5.8.8.0, Windows 10). I selected "Special page", clicked "Make list", got the second dialog, selected "Link search", a domain name, and a namespace, and then "OK" built me a list. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:39, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, that's what I just did. It says 74,998 pages, and the list starts with the !!! and obscenities, so something's not right. Guy (Help!) 21:33, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Ignore me. I think I worked it out. It had logged me out. Guy (Help!) 21:35, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Skipping pages marked for deletion

I can't find any Skip options which prevents AWB showing alerts for pages marked with any sort of deletion template. I'm a new user, so I'm sure I've missed something obvious, despite a careful look around. Any tips? (And, while I'm here, why can I only get an audible sound to an alert when I have the Preferences dialog box open? I then have to close it before being able to save a recommended edit - that seems really weird) Parkywiki (talk) 01:29, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Agree - I would love the option to skip pages that are marked for deletion. --Gronk Oz (talk) 13:59, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Skip tab: Text: Contains: {{Article for deletion

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:13, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Trappist the monk - will that catch the CSD nominations? --Gronk Oz (talk) 01:44, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Because that field can use regex, you can customize it as you like. For example, this skips everything currently in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion (make sure that the Regex box is checked and the Case sensitive box is not checked):

\{\{(?:db|speedy|afd|article for deletion)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:04, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Brilliant - thank you, Trappist the monk! I really have to invest the time to learn more about regex and how to use it ... this just might be the inspiration I need. --Gronk Oz (talk) 06:27, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

AutoWikiBrowser has stopped working

I get the message AutoWikiBrowser has stopped working when I try to run it, Release 5880. --Dthomsen8 (talk) 00:36, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

template flags "not a spelling error"

• Sorry, I know there's a template that makes AWB not to "correct" an odd spelling (in this case, outcastes for outcasts), but I can't remember what it is. Any sort of "sic" template would not be sending the right message to manual editors. I need a template that means, "this may look like a spelling error, but it isn't". TKS  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:43, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

@Lingzhi: Try {{Not a typo}} or one of its synonyms. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:52, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

{{duh}}. Tks!  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:55, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Consensus to halt AWB ref reordering

I have closed the RFC regarding AWB reordering refs.[2] There was roughly two to one opposition to these edits, with the additional factor that automated (or semi-automated) edits are expected to be either uncontroversial or supported by consensus. I believe this constitutes a clear consensus to halt these AWB edits.

Pinging Rjwilmsi, per comment I will ensure AWB is updated if required to support the consensus reached.[3] However any available AWB maintainer should of course make the update at as convenient. Thanx. Alsee (talk) 18:40, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

I realize there's nothing that can be done to stop this, but I do want to record my objection for posterity on the basis that this form of edit served to make the Wikipedia appear more professional to the reader, and removing this form of edit from AWB's repertoire is therefore a step backward for this publication. Further, those very few who objected to any particular change in this form had a slap-easy method for avoiding it. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 18:59, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Rjwilmsi asked that a phabricator ticket be opened once the RfC had closed. I have no idea why it had to be done that way, but I've opened one anyway: T154089. Don't know whether I did it correctly. For the future we need to sort out this issue of features being added to AWB without consensus, but very clear consensus and phabricator tickets being needed to remove them. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:05, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Forgot to ping Reedy. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:07, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

This is a software change request, and since this application is on Phabricator, opening a ticket only stands to reason. If you (or even "the community") want software changed, it has to go through the software development change process. As for adding forms of edits to the app without a consensus or guideline behind it, there is obvious merit to that concern in general. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 19:11, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree it's a step backwards, but consensus is against it by default. The feature shouldn't be removed, but be made optional. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:12, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Hmmm, that's an interesting idea, as other wikipedias and wiki projects might not have a problem with this. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 19:14, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

There's no consensus to make it optional. Anything optional on AWB tends to be the default in my experience. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:16, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

There's every consensus to make anything you can do manually optional. I can reorder refs manually if I want, there's no rhyme or reason to make me jump through hoops to do this. Bots shouldn't do this, fine, but you have zero consensus to remove my ability to make editorial decisions.Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:23, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Optional is good. Mr Stephen (talk) 20:05, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Optional is good. --Gronk Oz (talk) 21:06, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Consensus

I would like to ask if there is a central place where the community discussions leading to additions to genfixes is logged. If not, do the AWB developers think that there should be? What about template redirects? I understand that there is some overlap in developer effort with CHECKWIKI. Would it be possible to answer the same question for CHECKWIKI here? SpinningSpark 12:16, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

@Spinningspark: There's no centralized consensus-building process for AWB genfixes. As with any automated tools, the development is largely up to the developers, but all edits made with AWB are the responsibility of the editor who makes them. My understanding is that a large percentage of changes to genfixes are initiated by community members on-wiki as suggested fixes or off-wiki on Phabricator. Since AWB is semi-automated outside of the few bots that run it, the presence/absence of something in genfixes is not an excuse to edit against consensus. I run a prolific AWB bot, so if you have any questions about best practices, I might be helpful as a resource. My watchlist is cluttered and I check this page infrequently, so please ping me if you respond or have additional questions. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:51, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Requests for changes to AWB are done through Phabricator tickets. That's centralized discussion but technical rather than general community. There are the various talk/wikiproject/MOS/template pages etc. and that's where I think community discussions should remain.

If I look at a ticket requesting a new genfix or a significant change to genfixes, I hope that the ticket includes a link to relevant discussion, policy/MOS pages and/or template documentation etc. If not I'll ask for it, so I aim for tickets that get worked on to reflect consensus and a well thought-through request.

There isn't a formalized process for this, and I'm not sure there should be. My IT day job involves formalized processes, bureaucracy, sign off etc. and I don't want volunteering at Wikipedia to become too much like that for me or others.

That said, most tickets are for minor changes or exceptions to existing logic, or don't relate to changes AWB makes to source text, so editor consensus isn't a consideration for those.

Template redirects: are community maintained at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Template redirects. I think with the recent discussions around template redirects and bots the issue has not really been template redirects, it as been an issue that some bots don't have sufficient checks to ensure they have found and fixed the actual error intended, so may edit a page only doing something minor, of which template redirecting is one of various examples. So in the bots issue I would be focusing on the need for bot owners to improve their bot's checks.

CHECKWIKI: I'm not directly involved. Rjwilmsi 11:33, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

I was not trying to suggest here that there should always be a community discussion before implementing a task, or that it should take place centrally. I get the point about bureacracy, I really do, I've had to deal with that over software changes in my career too and don't really want to impose that here. What I was looking for was how to trace back from a task I see being done by AWB in my watchlist to where it was decided to put that task in—an audit trail back to the original decision. Now that decision might have been a community discussion, or it might have been a request by one user or a small group, or it might have just been "assumed uncontroversial". All of those can be acceptable reasons to proceed. The problem here is if something turns out to be actually controversial, it makes a difference to how easy it should be to take the task out again. A case in point is the order of ref tags, that seemed uncontroversial but turned out not to be.

There may well be a phabricator ticket, but without an index being kept as tasks are added that can be really problematic to find. It relies on coming up with the right search term. Failure to find it does not guarantee that it does not exist.

I know editors are responsible for their edits made with AWB, but there is a general assumption that anything in genfixes has official approval. I've heard editors say as much on many occasions. It's hard to blame editors for making those edits. Yes, template redirects are under community control, but they are not (necessarily) community approved, and there has been some recent disruption over it. An audit trail back to how and why these decisions were made would have helped here too. I have some other comments about template redirects, but I don't want to sidetrack this thread into that issue. SpinningSpark 13:07, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

OK, I see, so more of a question of why AWB genfixes have some existing logic than a question as to the process for any future changes. We have Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/General fixes which documents the genfixes in quite a lot of detail including links to MOS pages etc., but not many links to the original ticket, or AWB feature request discussion page for the pre-Phabricator days. So I suppose what you'd like to see is that page with links to all the tickets? Doable, but a time-consuming and perhaps tedious task I would think to back-populate. Rjwilmsi 13:49, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Maybe just do this for individual genfixes when questions/concerns arise? That way, it won't have to take so much time. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 13:54, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

The policy has always been that genfixes are OK when applied manually in limited numbers (e.g. to replace manual editing). But they generally are not acceptable when done on their own, or when done at high speed for their own sake. This is the point of Rule 1 and Rule 4. So, if one editor wants to use AWB to replace template redirects on a handful of articles that editor frequently edits, I doubt anyone would complain. The issue lately has been with a few operators who misuse AWB, and take the mere existence of general fixes as a reason to apply them to all articles. At the same time, some operators have failed to properly code their bots, so that the bots did not correctly skip pages where no significant edit was applied. I view both of these as issues with the operator, rather than the tool. As they say, only a bad craftsman blames the tool when the work turns out bad. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:03, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Stevietheman, I agree, I am not especially seeking to "backdate" indexing. What concerns me most is what happens when a task is challenged. I have in mind to propose something written into policy on this, but I wanted to get the views of tool operators first to establish what they think the process is. The case of the ref ordering above especially concerns me. The original discussion is apparently here in 2009 which cannot by any stretch be considered a community discussion. Even during that very limited initial discussion there was a voice of opposition and it remained controversial for years. Yet it had to go to an RFC in 2016 before it was killed. That has been far too difficult and convoluted for an item that could not be demonstrated to have consensus. I would like to see the onus to prove consensus put more on those wanting to keep a feature than those wanting to remove it when a challenge occurs. Maintaining an index might be a help here, but it is not central to the problem I am perceiving. SpinningSpark 14:19, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Part of the issue is a tension between AWB as a manual tool for editing a small number of articles - which would not need a wiki-wide consensus - versus AWB as a tool for making the same change in large numbers of articles- which would require much stronger consensus. The original viewpoint on AWB was the previous on: a manual tool for editors to use for small one-off tasks, or to use on pages they already edit. When AWB is used as a bot platform instead of a manual editing tool, stricter limitations have to apply, but these were typically taken to be the responsibility of the person using AWB. One option - although I haven't thought about it much yet - might be for AWB to disable general fixes whenever it is run in bot mode, so that bot operators have to directly specify the changes that they want to see made. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:31, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Spinningspark, it's not clear that it has been killed even now. The RfC concluded: "Automated or semi-automated edits ... need to be either uncontroversial or have consensus. There is roughly a two-to-one opposition to AWB ref reordering." But the RfC has been interpreted as applying only to genfixes, not to semi-automated editing in general. See here: "With the new AWB release users who want to make use of the ReorderReferences functionality on en-wp can still do so, using a custom module." This speaks to the issue Carl mentioned above, namely the tension between AWB as a manual tool and one that can be used to change lots of articles at high speed. SarahSV ^(talk) 17:35, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

It has been effectively killed. All users (given they have upgraded) won't be making these changes under standard usage of the tool any longer. Only those very few who jump through technical hoops that are not straightforward to most will be able to continue to use it. If a user is taking such steps to use the functionality, it is entirely their responsibility as if they are making manual edits, and hopefully, they would be especially sensitive to consensus in particular subject areas or individual articles. The RfC has been satisfied within reason. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 11:00, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

It's also worth remembering that the MOS is not a policy. In fact, there are ongoing discussions on the MOS talk page about the question whether the MOS alone is enough reason to change the style of a page that uses some other style. Many editors feel the MOS is only general guidance, not a rule controlling of all articles. So the mere existence of language in the MOS is not sufficient to warrant applying a style change indiscriminately to many articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:05, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Guidelines are not sacrosanct (as it's conceivable to carve out reasonable exceptions), but at the same time, these are consensus-created design decisions that do indeed apply everywhere (and one can make the usual arguments for uniformity of appearance across the work). How the exceptions are managed with bots and semiautomated tools in use does seem like a bit of a conundrum. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 14:49, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

The idea that the MOS is the controlling rule everywhere is not a universally held position, though. See the MOS talk page for a long thread. I'd recommend posting there to let others give an opinion about it - but I am certain there is at least some opposition to the idea that recommendations in the MOS take preference over the local style in each article. See this closed thread for a recent example: [4]. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:56, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't have the time anytime soon to wade into that discussion, but as you state, that the MOS as a generally controlling rule is agreed upon by many but not all. I am part of those who believe it does apply everywhere with spare, thoughtful exceptions. Also, the idea of a "local style" can be taken in ways that are not necessarily positive for the work as a whole. It generally depends on what aspect of style one is talking about. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 15:04, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

AutoHotkey for Windows

AWB operators who use Windows may also be interested in AutoHotkey (AHK), a free, open utility for Windows, that automates actions such as typing a particular string; or opening a programme or website. We've started to compile some example scripts for using it with Wikipedia and sister projects, at Wikipedia:AutoHotkey. If you have any AHK scripts that are useful when working on Wikimedia projects, please share them there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:47, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Halfway vs half way

Moved to Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos § Halfway vs half way

 – Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 19:16, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Creating redirects

Hello, I'm new to using AWB – fantastic tool by the way. I have a bot account on Wikia and I'm trying to figure how to create new pages that redirect to existing pages. The problem I'm trying to solve relates to article names with apostrophes in them, I want to create redirects for pagenames with "fake apostrophes" \u2018 and \u2019 to the standard apostrophe \u0027 pages that already exist. Can this be done with AWB, if so, how? --Korakys (talk) 04:34, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

AWB dosn't save textfiles

I have tried already many days to make AWB open new articles in fiwiki ja upload there text from txt-files. I have used instructions I have read on the page Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Create new pages, but as result AWB cant load the text from my file to the AWB-editor. When it saves the "content", wiki-filter ignore it, because there are no text to save. I will use CSVLoader insead, but I have a lot of file I want to save in fiwiki first. Have anybody some clue, what went wrong? --J Hokkanen (talk) 09:12, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Ab-Using AWB to insert advertising links into Wikipedia articles

Obviously some folks use AWB to insert advertising links into Wikipedia articles, ie. https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Walnut_Green_School contained a link for www.rukket.com which I just removed. Details: Revision as of 20:53, 28 February 2016, Hmains, (copyedit,refine category structure, general fixes using AWB using AWB)

Can this any Wiki admin please check? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.135.209.64 (talk) 22:02, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Not an admin, but did check. That was added by an IP in this edit in March 2014. The AWB edit of February 2016 merely moved the text from below the categories to above the categories. You were right to remove it, but mistaken to think AWB was used to add it. Thanks,  SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:58, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Proposal in the Magiodilitis arbcom case

I've made a proposal on the ARBCOM workshop page concerning how to deal with the Magiodilitis situation. Input by WP:BAG, bot owners, and the community at large is welcomed. Even if the proposal doesn't pass, some other ideas can be of interest, especially to WP:AWB/WP:CHECKWIKI people. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:22, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Quote chars in image filenames

This is broken. AWB needs to lay off filenames (and embedded quote chars) in image links. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:52, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Human error will always exist within Wikipedia, but I have wondered why AWB doesn't ignore file names by default. I know I mangled a couple file names when I was getting my legs and hadn't found the ignore checkbox yet. Could we make file-name editing an opt-in rather than an opt-out feature? —jameslucas (" " / +) 02:43, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

@Andy Dingley: That change is not from AWB's default settings, AWB genfixes are well aware that file names can't be changed, the change is from user-configured find&replace. Please raise specifically with the edtior who made the incorrect change. Rjwilmsi 12:17, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

The problem is that Bgwhite loads the functions via Custom module to create skip conditions and then he runs the functions in unhidden text. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:49, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't know about the module, so my comments may not be directly relevant to the error(s) cited by Andy, but I do know that if you create a Find & Replace function using the "Normal settings" dialogue box, the "Ignore links, images, etc." box is unchecked by default. I'd say that this should be reversed. —jameslucas (" " / +) 05:19, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Deleting pages

How can I delete a list of pages with AWB and how can I make a list with pages created and edited by only one user?Ionutzmovie (talk) 12:35, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

@Ionutzmovie: I don't believe either are possible using AWB. The second is probably doable with a wiki database query tool. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 11:21, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

WWII convoys

Some convoys in WWII ended in the letters KM. AWB is deciding that this is a measurement and converting "KM" to "km", even when I post a hidden notice specifically stating that it is NOT a measurement. This is now getting tedious having to revert such edits. Can something be done about it please? Mjroots (talk) 14:00, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

@Mjroots: This is a concern for WP:AWB/T, but if there are just a few of these, or only appearing in one or two articles, surrounding these text snippets (like OS46KM) with {{Not a typo}} will avoid automated/semiautomated fixes. If it's more than a few, perhaps some review of code to prevent these false positives will be in order. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 16:08, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Adding wikilinks

Hello, I'm trying to cut down the backlog of dead-end pages. I've gone through them using the category with AWB and removed erroneously tagged ones. However, is there a way I could use AWB to add wikilinks to an article in order to un-dead-end it? Thank you! DrStrauss talk 11:56, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

@DrStrauss: if you want to link specific articles, you can do a Find/Replace, placing double square brackets around those article names, although be careful about overlinking or linking ordinary terms. As for a general all-around fix for this, I don't think AWB can cover this. Linking is generally considered a manual task, due to aspects like context, reader value, specificity (redirects/section links), ambiguity, etc. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 17:06, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Make list of articles containing an internal link

Hello. I'd like to list all articles containing exactly [[Aquitaine]]. I tried "Links on pages (only bluelinks)" and "Wiki search (text)", none of them give the correct list (too large). What should I use ? Jack ma (talk) 08:15, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

If you want all articles linking to Aquitaine no matter how it's done, use "What links here" with Aquitaine set for "What links to:". if you want all articles that link to Aquitaine exactly as [[Aquitaine]], use "Wiki search (text)" with "insource:/\[\[Aquitaine\]\]/" (without quotes) set for "Wiki search:". Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 11:11, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

@Jack ma: Sorry I forgot to ping you when I answered. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 16:53, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Stevie, Jack ma (talk) 05:57, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

List of Subpage and Removal of All category at once

Hello, In Sanskrit Wikipedia so many students created sub pages (sandbox also) I want to make a list of it. But I don't know. Please help me for this Or please make list via bot or something. other thing is I want to remove all the categories in those pages. In AWB a can only one but I want to remove those at once. So please help me for that too. Thank you. (ping me when answering) NehalDaveND (talk) 13:24, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

@NehalDaveND: here's my suggestions:

1. You can make a list of an individual user's subpages by setting the Source to "Special page", click "Make list", select for Source "All pages with prefix", select for Pages the user's name, and select for Namespace "User:". If you want the subpages for multiple users; create a piped name list (e.g., User1|User2|User3) and copy/paste that into Pages.
2. Removing all categories isn't the only answer as you can also disable their appearance on category pages. You can do a Find/Replace, looking for "[[Category:" and replacing it with "[[:Category:". If you want to remove them entirely, you can use a regular expression in Find&Replace (more complicated if the first suggestion isn't good enough for your needs).

Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 16:39, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: Thank you. I tried tries but "Pages" I cant understand this option. So I couldn't make list. Please make list for me, I can allow AWB rights in sa.wikipeida. Other thing I will do. Please help. NehalDaveND (talk) 08:14, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

@NehalDaveND: I will teach you how to fish, but you'll have to do the fishing. As I said, you enter the usernames in Pages, like User1|User2|User3 -- what is not understandable here? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 20:28, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

WP:HIDEAWB

I put a new section on how to hide AWB at WP:BOTS (and mention it in the WP:AWB#See also), since this is often a WP:MEATBOT related issue. However, we could move it to a section of WP:AWB (and mention it in the WP:BOTS#See also) if you feel it's out of place there/would make more sense here. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:38, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

regex alteration of matches

I'm working on a large set of pages that have an infobox with bad values (Category:Pages using infobox university with unknown parameters), one of the more significant ways in which the pages are wrong is that an infobox will have something like |Principal=John Smith rather than |principal=John Smith. I'd like to find a way to change all of these in a single replace or replace special. I'd be just fine with anything that does a find on ( *\| *)([A-Z]) and replace with $1\L$2 or something... Any ideas? Naraht (talk) 20:03, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

@Naraht: simply changing the case on "Principal=" to "principal=" appears to be a cosmetic change, unless I'm missing something. Unless there's a visual change involved for the reader, I wouldn't advise using AWB for this purpose. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 20:22, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: This isn't a cosmetic change, this is inside an infobox. If the capitalization on a parameter is incorrect, it won't be correctly interpretted. So with lowercase, it will create a line like "School Principal John Smith" inside the infobox, with uppercase p, it will completely ignore it.Naraht (talk) 20:47, 23 February 2017 (UTC) Naraht (talk) 20:47, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

@Naraht: "Principal=" appears to be displayed for readers but is deprecated with an editor warning, but I'm looking at {{Infobox school}} (I'm not sure what universities have to do with this). The regex is pretty simple. For find, seek "\|(\s*)Principal(\s*)=" and replace with "|$1principal$2=" -- I captured spaces so they can be output as before, in case some editors want to maintain spacing. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 21:48, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: There are other situations where they don't display and I'd like to fix all of them with AWB fixing other issues with the infobox at same time. I know that I can replace Principal with principal, I'm looking for something to do all of these (changing |A to |a, changing |B to |b, etc.), not just Principal with *one* regex replace. In other words, I'd like one that will *both* turn |Address=AAA into |address=AAA *and* |Principal=BBB into |principal=BBB Naraht (talk) 21:59, 23 February 2017 (UTC) Naraht (talk) 22:04, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: As an example of where this is needed: Krishna Institute of Engineering and Technology with Director and Chairman in uppercase they are ignored (other than causing a complaint on preview and being placed into Category:Pages using infobox university with unknown parameters) when put into lower case, they show up in the infobox.Naraht (talk) 22:09, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

@Naraht: As far as I know, that can't be done with regex options, but {{subst:lc:$1}} ought to transform $1 (say) to lowercase when the edit is saved. -- John of Reading (talk) 22:14, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading: Please help with telling me how to do this, is this a Substitute Template?Naraht (talk) 22:16, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading:,@Stevietheman: OK, I think I see what I want to do. I can do this with the following, a replace special rule that has the find as ^( *\| *)([A-Z]) and a replace with as $1{{subst:lc:$2}}. That appears to work though it does look *wierd* in AWB.Naraht (talk) 22:27, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Something like that. It's getting too late, UK time, for me to try this out. -- John of Reading (talk) 22:46, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Cool.Naraht (talk) 22:48, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

@Naraht: I think it would be safer to do this on specific cases where you know there is a problem with them being upper-cased, rather than changing all upper-cased parameters. You can have multiple F&R's, one like I showed for 'Principal' and so on. Also, I wouldn't check for regular spaces, but for any spaces (\s) in case the bar (|) isn't on the same line. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 14:39, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: So \s will pick up carriage returns as well?Naraht (talk) 15:55, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, although I think the multiline setting will prevent that from working, so avoid checking that. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 16:12, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: Cool. I'll experiment in the test area.

It reads like you're try it do them as one regex call, just split them and create separate rules in Advanced find and Replace like Stevietheman said - X201 (talk) 15:21, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@X201: Agreed, probably safer. This is only going to fix a slice of the issues in the category, of course.Naraht (talk) 15:58, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm doing the same thing as you (different infobox) I've got 60 different rules to clean up just one infobox - X201 (talk) 16:10, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

I think a module is the way to go if you have that many parameters. Mr Stephen (talk) 16:42, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

I did think about it, but the main problem is the vast number of human errors that there are to clear up. The template I'm working on has just 25 fields, but by spelling mistake and free will users have managed to invent a grand total of 420 new field names. Its quicker just to add a new Find and Replace rule when I find another weird interaction with a redirect of a template that shouldn't be embedded in the infobox in the first place. the other reason is my C ain't that hot. - X201 (talk) 16:50, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@X201:Not sure how you do modules, but C/UNIX was for a while was what paid my bills.Naraht (talk) 17:12, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@Naraht: Not sure if you know that this(Infobox university monthly error report) exists. I've found it useful for the Infobox that I'm working on - X201 (talk) 16:54, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@X201: *BLESS YOU*, that tells me what to expect across the 4000 entries in the category. Which infobox are you working on?Naraht (talk) 17:12, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@Naraht:Infobox single - X201 (talk) 13:39, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

@X201:That one looks like fun (for some sad definition of fun :) ).Naraht (talk) 14:35, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

AWB Newbie

I'm new to talk:AutoWikiBrowser (AWB), I'm attempting to do a simple change from 'Wakefield Trinty Wildcats|Wakefield Trinity' to 'Wakefield Trinity' for articles in the Category:Wakefield Trinity Wildcats players. Within AWB I've entered the category, and pressed 'Make List', I've checked the 'Find and replace' box, and then entered the text in the 'Find' and 'Replace within either and/or both 'Normal settings, and the 'Advanced Settings', and then pressed 'Start', AWB then brings up the article, but it doesn't appear to 'automatically make any changes and then go to the diff(erence)'. However, I can manually make changes in the 'Edit box' and save the changes. How I get AWB to make the changes automatically? Best regards DynamoDegsy (talk) 19:07, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

You have a typo in your search. Regards,Mr Stephen (talk) 20:03, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your prompt response. It was a typo… Trinity not Trinty… how embarrassing. Best regards DynamoDegsy (talk) 10:20, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

@DynamoDegsy: It seems to me you only need either Normal or Advanced settings to do this single task, not both of them. Can you show us what exactly you have set in your Find&Replace? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 20:29, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your prompt response. Best regards DynamoDegsy (talk) 10:20, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Bengali Edit summary

Hi, is any AWB developer here who can look into this? i asked there two months ago but still no response. thanks in advance --Aftabuzzaman (talk) 22:26, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

new version not working in Indic Language

Hello! New version of AWB can't find Indic words. Before not like this. Please make changes for this. NehalDaveND (talk) 05:23, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

NehalDaveND In which Wikipedia again? in.wikipedia? -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:22, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

all Indian Language not showing and in Sanskrit Wikipedia I firstly seen this problem. NehalDaveND (talk) 10:50, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi NehalDaveND, I'm from Bengali Wiki. I have no problem there. --Aftabuzzaman (talk) 22:29, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

skip contains

Hello! I want to check in a page two things. 1. .png and 2. .jpg. But in skip contains option I can't see both of them. Please tell me how can I check both at a time. .jpg|.png|.svg this not working I don't know why. In manual shows this option only. Please ping while answer. Thank you. NehalDaveND (talk) 08:47, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

@NehalDaveND: I've got to ask the obvious... Did you click the Regex option to enable Regex in the Skip Contains? - X201 (talk) 09:31, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

@X201: Yes I did. NehalDaveND (talk) 09:43, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

@NehalDaveND: Haven't had chance to check this, but try making the dot literal e.g (\.jpg|\.png|\.svg) - X201 (talk) 09:53, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

@X201: Thank you very much. It works. NehalDaveND (talk) 10:05, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Checkwiki Task 16 for AWB

Hello all, would somebody mind telling me how the heck Task 16 works on AWB? (I know this should be referred to CHECKWIKI, but I thought I should bring it up here.) I've looking at a couple of edits in which Magioladitis fixes them, and it looks like the whitespace gets replaces by another whitespace. Anyways, I've looked at where the unicode characters are, and AWB does not seem to pick it up where it should be. Could somebody mind explaining CHECKWIKI Task 16 to me? Thanks! Yoshi24517^Chat _Online 05:03, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Yoshi24517 not the correct place to ask this. AWB is software. You may want to check WP:CHECKWIKI. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:26, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

@Magioladitis: Sorry, I should have made my question clearer. My question is, how does AWB make edits concerning those in Task 16? Sorry, should have made my question clearer. Yoshi24517^Chat _Online 04:25, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Yoshi24517 I use Find and Replace with regexes to catch invisible characters and replace them. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:39, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

How many edits i can do for a minute in semi automatic mode?

i want to use AWB in a semiautomatic way to correct the grammatical errors of ta.wiki pages after a week prior notice in the ta.wiki Village pump. how many edits i can do in a minute? May i do 2 to 3 edits in a minute?I want to know that What is your edit limits that you are following here?--Info-farmer (talk) 06:24, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

@Info-farmer: See WP:MEATBOT. I don't know if ta wiki has similar policy. The rule of thumb on en wiki is that you can go as fast as you humanly can, as long as you verify all the changes with your eyeballs (and skipping or revising any incorrect changes) before saving. Of course, I have no idea how editors on ta wiki will look at this. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 14:13, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Checkwiki Error

I am new to using AWB, and I am not sure what the appropriate input is for the "Checkwiki error" source URL. Can someone give me an example of what you would put in that field? Thanks, Gluons12 ^☢|☕ 00:07, 6 March 2017 (UTC).

All Pages List

Hello! I am trying to make a list of hi.wiki's all pages. But Whenever I am doing this, I can get only 25000 articles. Moreover, again and again I get same list only. I want 1 lack article's list of hi.wikipedia. How can I get it? NehalDaveND (talk) 11:33, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

@NehalDaveND: I don't know how to avoid the 25000 article limit. If you don't get any other good replies here, the Wikimedia Dumps site might help you. The latest hiwiki dump includes "hiwiki-20170301-all-titles-in-ns0.gz", a compressed text file listing all the article names, one per line. Once uncompressed I think you can load that into the AWB list window. Or there's "hiwiki-20170301-pages-articles.xml.bz2" which you can search using the AWB database scanner. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:40, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

@NehalDaveND: To exceed the 25,000 limit you would need the AutoWikiBrowser/NoLimits plugin, the use of which requires you to have the apihighlimits userright, which is (on enwiki) only usually granted to administrators and bots (and researchers). If you can't get that userright, you will need to use a database dump or similar. —  crh ₂₃  (Talk) 12:07, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Infoboxes pipe differentiation

Does anyone have any ideas on the best way to use regex to differentiate between

• abc=def|ghi=jkl
• abc=[[def|ghi]]|jkl=mno

What I'm trying to do is to delete both the unused parameter abc and its value, so I'd like the regex to delete abc=def| in the first one and abc=[[def|ghi]]| in the second one.Naraht (talk) 16:25, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

As a first step, scan through the text and replace all titled wikilinks with something else; something unique that is unlikely to be found in normal text. For example, I've used this with some success:

search: \[\[([^\|\]]+)\|([^\]]+)\]\]

replace: __WL1NK_O__$1__P1P3__$2__WL1NK_C__

then search for and remove:

abc=__WL1NK_O__def__P1P3__ghi__WL1NK_C__

at the end, search and replace:

__WL1NK_O__ with [[

__P1P3__ with |

__WL1NK_C__ with ]]

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:15, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Unlikely to occur except, of course, on this very page. Why not do it in one step? EEng 12:26, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

What is unlikely to occur?

I find that multiple steps, for me, are simple, easy to understand (especially when coming back to them after time away), and really cost nothing in the way of performance.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:43, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

You said ething else; something unique that is unlikely to be found in normal text. I'm just pointing out that, should your technique be applied to this very page, your instructions will be eviscerated. EEng 12:54, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

True it would be eviscerated, but why run AWB on this page. :) Naraht (talk) 15:33, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

@Naraht: You should be able to cover that scenario in a single regex, if you have a regex that says "look for abc= then text excluding brackets up to next pipe OR a wikilink with a pipe then next pipe" so as a starter "abc=([^\[\]\|]+|\[\[[^\[\]\|]+\|[^\[\]\|]+\]\])\|". However, to cover all scenarios in a single regex becomes pretty difficult, imagine if parameter contains a template and that template contains parameters with links, so it tends to be easier to write a bit of code, there are helper functions within WikiFunctions such as Tools.RemoveTemplateParameterValue for use within a custom module. Rjwilmsi 15:13, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

@Rjwilmsi:I'm starting to think building custom modules here *might* be easier. But that function is to remove the value, not the entire entry, right. I'll take a look when my list gets down under 2,000, if I can do that with less obnoxious coding.Naraht (talk) 15:33, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

OK, then Tools.RemoveTemplateParameter could be what you want. Rjwilmsi 16:07, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

@Naraht: Have you got a real live example of an article with this problem please? I've got an idea and I find it easier to work on the actual problem rather than a recreated example. - X201 (talk) 08:50, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

@X201: Not at this point, but I'm sure that I'll find one as I go along. The removals that I've been doing have all assumed the field is the only one on the line, so I can simply grab everything between the starting pipe and the carriage return, but as I start finding the "leftovers" where they have jammed the entire infobox on one line, I'll let you know.Naraht (talk) 14:58, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

I cant use AWB

Resolved

Hello, when I open AWB, I have some errors. Here a screenshot of the first error. After the logiciel open with difficulities. When I try to go to "parameters", I have this second error. Because of that, I can't select fr-wp. I already delete and redownload the latest version but it still doesn't work.

Because of the name of error, I think it come from WikiFunctions.dll.

I have Windows 10 pc. Please notify me because I contribute on french wikipedia. My pc is 64bits but the software run in 32bits.

Thanks. --Gratus (talk) 15:33, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

I find the solution. It was proxy's problems under IE.--Gratus (talk) 08:36, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

How to remove a specific range of Template syntax from wikia articles?

Resolved

Heya, I'm looking for a way to remove templates from wikia articles. Is there a way to do something like "Remove {{Template:*}}", so that everything between "{{Template:" and the next "}}" is included in this order? Or is there a general way to remove templates no matter what was entered in the article? For an example please click here, where I want to remove the TransTitle- and the SInfo-templates, but the information entered obviously changes from article to article.
Also, is there a way to remove the information from the template SongFooter (at the bottom of the linked article), so that only the template itself remains? Again, the information that was previously added there changes from article to article. Maybe something like "|fLetter = *"? Seelentau (talk) 13:17, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Go in "Advanced settings", then select New > In template call. Add the template you want to remove. Find \|(.*)=([^(\||\}\}|\n)]*), replace with |$1= (enable regex). It'll run into issues if you have templates inside that template, but other than that it should be fine. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:04, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Ok so that removes the content from each article's template, afterwards I just have to do the normal find & replace to remove the templates themselves, right? Seelentau (talk) 18:01, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Well it works, but I'm left with the templates in the articles, they're just empty now. If I use \|(.*)=([^(\||\}\}|\n)]*), it only removes the stuff beween {{Template: and the next }}, not the template itself. How can I do that? I know I can f&r the {{Template part, but if I do the same with }}, it removes it everywhere and I don't want that, of course. Seelentau (talk) 18:20, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

If you want the entire template gone, do the same as above, but find .*, replace with nothing. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:47, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Works like a charm, thank you! :) Seelentau (talk) 22:02, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

CHECKWIKI Error

Resolved

This was archived last time, so I am reposting again: I am new to using AWB, and I am not sure what the appropriate input is for the "Checkwiki error" source URL. Can someone give me an example of what you would put in that field? Thanks, Gluons12 ^☢|☕ 18:13, 19 March 2017 (UTC).

I don't know the answer (sorry), but the AWB user manual could well be beefed up a bit with regard to this. Magioladitis might you be able to help here? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 18:36, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Search for "List for bots" here (you'll get this link). And it's the answer. Although I don't see the difference between "Checkwiki error" and "Checkwiki error (number)", but ok, that's a secondary issue. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 14:08, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Gluons12 ^☢|☕ 17:17, 23 March 2017 (UTC).

Error on using AWB

Resolved

Hello,

I am currently using AWB for my bot account on idwiki. It was no error occurred since then until I got a pop-up message saying "API reports this user is blocked from editing". I was wondering if my bot was blocked from editing, but CentralAuth says no. I am not using much API for edits, and set 13 seconds to delay between edits. Does it become the problem? Thank you for your time reading this query. ··· 🌸 Rachmat04 · ☕ 13:15, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Hello, the problem has been resolved. I am able to use AWB again today. ··· 🌸 Rachmat04 · ☕ 07:00, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

WP:COSMETICBOT update RFC under way

See Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#WP:COSMETICBOT update. This will be relevant to many people here.

After (and if) this is passed, I would suggest that the AWB team review their genfixes for compliance with the update guidance. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 11:57, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Identifying cosmetic fixes at Checkwiki

There is currently an effort to identify which WP:CWERRORS should be considered cosmetic/which aren't. Help and feedback would be appreciated. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:01, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Adding Categories to Pages

Hi! I run a wiki over on wikia, and I'm looking to use this to assign categories quickly and efficiently. I read the manual, but it seems to be tad confusing, I corrected typos and did find and replace to get the hang of it, but this is still tripping me up. Can anybody help me?? --FiveCraft (talk) 19:24, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

@FiveCraft: see Categories under Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/User manual#More.... It is as simple as selecting "Add category:" and entering the category name. If that still isn't clear, feel free to follow up. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 20:50, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: Okay, so I kindof got it, but I really feel like the instructions on the page are kinda vague. Is there a way to make a list of pages without Categories, and then apply Categories to them. And also, (Hopefully this isn't asking much, if it is, don't bother answering this second part), I need the instructions on adding Pages with AWB simplified, there's just so much there when I looked at it, and it is sortof overwhelming.FiveCraft (talk) 22:46, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

@FiveCraft: as far as I know, AWB doesn't generate new pages. It is an editor of already existing ones. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 22:53, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: is there Bot software that can generate new pages, and how do you generate a list of pages without categories in AWB?FiveCraft (talk) 23:00, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

@FiveCraft: I don't have an answer for the first question (sorry). For the second one, if you were talking about Wikipedia, we have a category Category:All uncategorized pages, and this can be used to make a list. I don't know if there is an equivalent on Wikia. I have no experience with that site. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 13:51, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@FiveCraft: AWB can create pages, though I've never tried it. You need to get the page names into the list box somehow, and then at the bottom of the "Skip" tab you need to select something other than the default "Skip if page doesn't exist" option. For the other question, you could see if your version of the wiki software has Special:UncategorizedPages. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:08, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Where is my mind... yes, you can create pages with AWB, by having a list of intended page names, and putting anything on it, by using "Append/Prepend text". I've been doing that for adding wikiprojects to nonexistent talk pages for years, and that totes slipped my mind. Geesh! Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 14:15, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: It's okay, LOL! Thanks for your help! Last question, how do I create a list of intended pages?FiveCraft (talk) 17:56, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@FiveCraft:, open up a text editor, and put a page name on each line, making sure namespaces are added as necessary (e.g., Template:Stuff). Then copy all and paste into the "Make list" list. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 18:27, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: Hopefully last question, is there a way for AWB to continually check for Typos on all the Pages like, for example, every 30 minutes? Or is there some other software that I could use to do this?FiveCraft (talk) 19:02, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Not that I know of, on both counts. I'm referring to how AWB works for general users. Perhaps if one is using AWB as a bot and writes/runs a module, this could be done, but I'm not sure. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 19:18, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: I've noticed that AWB won't correct typos in tables like these, is there a way to have it do so? Thanks again for all your helP!FiveCraft (talk) 23:09, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't think so. However, typo rules can be copied (although not all at once) into Find&Replace and run from there. The typo rules are basically just regex find/replace's. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 00:18, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Find all links to a certain site

I am the currently-active bureaucrat on the Beatles Wiki, and am doing a major clean-up of the dead wood on that wiki (resolving redirects and disambiguations, deleting unused redirects (which for some reason AWB calls "broken" redirects) (finished that one), and so on). AWB is useful for many of these tasks (such as resolving disambiguations), but I'm wondering how (if?) AWB can find all pages which link to a certain site, for instance those which contain en.wiki.x.io. (There are a lot of pages on Wikia which link to [http(s)://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/ instead of the preferred syntax, [[wikipedia:; does AWB automatically correct these if they find them?) — 2A02:C7D:462:1500:7D2A:32C8:C9E5:8F79 (talk) 08:00, 13 April 2017 (UTC) (RobertATfm over there, though seeking to change it to evilquoll.)

I do something like this to find en.wiki.x.io links to hunt for WP:CIRCULAR cites using Find/Replace, although I don't make a list of pages with such links to begin with. I suppose you could, though, using source "Wiki search (text)" and "insource:/en.wiki.x.io/". My find/replace is somewhat primitive, seeking "(<ref.*?>\s*|url\s*=\s*|\[)https?://en\.wikipedia\.org" and replacing it with "CLEANUP" so I can decide when it's caught what surgery is appropriate. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 11:12, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

update to the live cs1|2 module weekend of 29–30 April 2017

I expect to update the live cs1|2 modules on the weekend of 29–30 April. Changes since the last update are:

to Module:Citation/CS1:

1. override mw:Extension:CLDR language definition for code bn; (discussion)
2. remove support for special {{cite interview}} parameters; (discussion)
3. fix spacing oddity in maint cat messaging; (discussion)
4. fix multi-byte character |vauthors= bug; (discussion)
5. detect and alert on wayback machine deprecated liveweb host name; (discussion)
6. move transtitle out of external link; (discussion)
7. access signal lock images per RFC; (discussion)
8. remove duplicate lock image code; (discussion)
9. replace cite arxiv unsupported parameter test with list of supported in whitelist; (discussion)
10. support for cite biorxiv and cite citeseerx; (discussion)
11. remove support for coauthor and coauthors; (discussion)
12. extra punctuation bug fix; (discussion)

to Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration:

1. remove cite interview special parameters;
2. add Burmese language script-title code;
3. access signal lock images per RFC;
4. remove duplicate lock image code;
5. remove support for coauthor and coauthors;
6. add ssrn validation; (discussion)

to Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist

1. removed cite interview special parameters;
2. 2017-03-26: support for cite biorxiv and cite citeseerx;
3. remove support for coauthor and coauthors;

to Module:Citation/CS1/Identifiers

1. remove duplicate lock image code;
2. add ssrn validation;

to Module:Citation/CS1/COinS

1. support for cite biorxiv and cite citeseerx;

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:11, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

How to add new parameters to templates in articles?

Hi guys, I want to use the AWB to add two more parameters to my infobox in the articles of my wikia-wiki. This is a current article and this is an article I manually added the parameters ("previous" and "next", that is). Is it possible to make the AWB add these? I would try to replace "{{SongHeader" with "{{SongHeader |previous= |next= ", but I don't know how to add line breaks. Is there any other way (or a way to include line breaks in F&R)? Seelentau (talk) 04:28, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

@Seelentau: you can find a parameter after which you will insert the new ones using regular expressions. Let's say you want to add previous and next after the birth_place parameter. So you would find "^(\s*\|\s*birth_place\s*=.*)$" and replace with "$1\n| previous =\n| next =" -- where \n is a new line character. In addition to this being a regular expression, this would need to be set up as "multiline" and assumes the parameter you're inserting after is all on one line. It also assumes that the template has the pipe character (|) at/near the beginning of each line. I hope this helps. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 10:41, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

@Stevietheman: thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. I want the new parameters to be at the top of the template, but if I switch out the "birth_place" in your example with "{{TemplateName", it doesn't find anything. Is there maybe a way to put the new parameters before/above the "birth_place", instead of after/below? Seelentau (talk) 11:29, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Sure, just use "| previous =\n| next =\n$1" as the replace instead. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 11:37, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I see, so that's what the $1 does. But the workaround I found is to just replace "{{SongHeader" with "{{SongHeader \n|previous=\n|next=", then it works as well. Thanks again! :) Seelentau (talk) 11:41, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

novice regex question

I've read through many of the regex questions in the archives, and they been useful, many confirming that what I figured out was reasonable, but now I'm trying something a little more advanced. I want to find one string and replace with another, but I want to limit the find search to within a specific template (in this case Infobox). (I know there will be templates within templates issues, but I'm trying to understand one issue at a time)

I've done a "(\{\{Infobox)" to anchor the beginning of the find, but can't figure out the proper syntax to anchor the ending }} I've tried RTFM, but can't find an example that is similar, and I've tried various combinations with both MultiLine and SingleLine. Any suggestions on where to find an example? Thanks. (BTW Thanks for the AWB Regex Tester Tool. It's invaluable) Ahwiv (talk) 12:42, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Permission in Spanish wiki?

I'd like to have permission in the eswiki-AWB (Spanish), es:AWB. However, all relevant pages are red and even blocked. Anyone has a clue on how to proceed? -DePiep (talk) 21:02, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

@DePiep: I had to do some file replacements at eswiki a few days ago, and saw that too. Turns out if you just log in to eswiki with AWB it works. Note that you will be rate-limited until your account is autoconfirmed, which on eswiki takes 50 edits/4 days. – Train2104 (t • c) 17:11, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanx, Train2104. Will try. -DePiep (talk) 23:40, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

References

How to disable the scheduling of references, for example, if a 4 to 3 he put 3 4? Please reply me on my user page on Serbian Wikipedia. Zoranzoki21 (talk) 18:58, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Watch out for a new general fixes bug

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T166293

Anyone running AWB with general fixes turned on should take note of phab:T166293 - the new syntax <references responsive/> is valid, but AWB doesn't recognise it and will damage the article. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:16, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

The list of wikis where this matters are at phab:T159895. --Izno (talk) 11:57, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Ignoring certain edit suggestions

Hi there, I am just wondering, how do I stop AWB from suggesting certain edits? Is it possible? Thanks for your time! --TheSandDoctor (talk) 05:16, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

It really depends on what you're referring to. If you're talking about your most recent AWB edits, then deselecting "Auto tag", "Apply general fixes", and "unicodify whole page" or enable "Skip if only genfixes". However, looking at your most recent edits, that would skip every edit you've made. What are your search terms for these AWB runs? Remember that largely cosmetic editing using AWB is strongly discouraged. Primefac (talk) 12:05, 1 June 2017 (UTC) ping. Primefac (talk) 12:06, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for answering. So my edits made with AWB are considered largely cosmetic? @Primefac: --TheSandDoctor (talk) 16:13, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

From the edits I looked at, TheSandDoctor, yes. Things like this edit, other than adding {{uncategorized}}, do nothing to affect the visual output of the page.

This is why I was asking what your parameters for loading pages in AWB, because edits like the one above should only happen if you're actually fixing something. Primefac (talk) 18:40, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Primefac My AWB settings are just default as far as I know, other than just turning on the Regex typo fixing. --TheSandDoctor (talk) 20:40, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

TheSandDoctor, apologies for a poorly worded question. I should have asked "how are you finding pages to edit using AWB?" Primefac (talk) 20:53, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

EDIT: If you're finding new pages to patrol (per this thread) then I would stick with Tony's advice and edit on-wiki instead of AWB. AWB is really best for if you're doing one thing over and over (for example, replacing a template, updating a URL, adding categories to a bunch of related pages, etc). Primefac (talk) 20:57, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Noted. I was looking at Category:United States articles with invalid parameters just now for looking into using AWB to assist with it, but it lists talk pages, which isnt the most useful for AWB. Is there a way to add the articles which the talk pages are associated with into AWB, rather than just the talk pages? @Primefac: --TheSandDoctor (talk) 21:25, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

The pages in that category are the pages with the invalid parameters. If you edit and "preview" the page, you'll see errors along the lines of Warning: Page using Template:WikiProject United States with unknown parameter "film" (this message is shown only in preview). So going through that category looking for articles with params probably isn't the best idea.

However, in the interest of expanding knowledge: in order to switch from article to talk (or vice versa) use the List menu (or right-click) and select "convert to talk pages" or "convert from talk pages" depending on which is appropriate. Primefac (talk) 21:33, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. Is there a way to have AWB look for invalid parameters or is it the sort of thing that just has to be done by hand? @Primefac: --TheSandDoctor (talk) 00:23, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Sure, just about every major template has a category for if invalid parameters are used. However, as with reviewing new pages, AWB really isn't good for that sort of thing. 75% of the time a page ends up in an invalid param category because someone's trying to use a parameter that isn't a real param, and maybe 25% of the time it's a misspelling of a valid param. However, said misspellings are rarely consistent (I recently cleaned up a fair number myself), so AWB's automation won't really be helpful there either. Primefac (talk) 00:32, 2 June 2017 (UTC) P.S. I'm watching this page so you don't have to ping me every time.

removal of bot option in sa.wikipedia

Hello there! I want to disable bot option, which available in AWB. I have AWB right in Sanskrit and Hindi Wikipedia. In Hindi Wikipedia, I can't see Bot option in AWB, because I don't have bot flag on my account. Besides that in Sanskrit Wikipedia, not only I, but all users can see & use bot option without bot flag. Please tell me how can I remove that potion from Sanskrit Wikipedia AWB? Thank you. Pink me when reply. NehalDaveND (talk) 02:27, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

 Doing... — xaosflux ^Talk 03:24, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

 Done @NehalDaveND: I have repaired the configuration page at w:sa:विकिपीडिया:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage, now only users listed in the "bots" section will have the bots tab enabled. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:28, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you very much. NehalDaveND (talk) 03:31, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

AWB and exif

Is there a way to read exif data with AWB? --Hedwig in Washington ^(TALK) 07:56, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Enquiry concerning specific use case on Wikisource

I am an editor on Wikisource of a volume of the US Statutes at Large which contains endless repetitions of a specific block of boilerplate text: "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that the Secretary of the Interior be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to place on the pension roll, subject to the provisions and limitations of the pension laws, the name of ". For those not aware of Wikisource, it is fundamentally concerned with OCR correction of out of copyright texts to provide a free, electronic library. The target text which ultimately needs to be corrected to the above, is, therefore, whatever Tesseract (the WS OCR software) has delivered - i.e. including a potentially massively variable number of errors. Is this a use case which experienced users would regard as appropriate for AWB? Thanks CharlesSpencer (talk) 05:49, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

@CharlesSpencer: not an usual case but I think AWB could be useful in this case (usually such OCR can be corrected because it depend on the context but here the sentences is long enough). The only question is to find the regular expression that should be replace by the correction (or in other words what is the range of the OCR error?). Cdlt, VIGNERON * ^discut. 14:33, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Old/multingual wikisource

How to use AWB on http://wikisource.org , the old/multilingual/incubator wikisource? There is no language prefix and apparently it's not possible not to select a language nor to use the custom mode (error 403). If there is no solution, here is an idea : use mul as language prefix (which is done in some other cases.

Cdlt, VIGNERON * ^discut. 14:33, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Regex bug, or am I doing something wrong with the negative lookahead?

Resolved

I was standardizing the format of newspaper names when I ran into this issue: I made a find & replace rule to clean up piped links, changing "the New York Times" to "The New York Times" ('The' is part of its name).

(?:'')?(?:[Tt]he\s+)?(?:'')?\[\[(?:[Tt]he\s+)?.ew\s.ork\s.imes\|(?:'')?(?:[Tt]he\s+)?.ew\s+.ork\s+(?:'')?.imes(?:'')?\]\](?:'')?

It is intended to handle various situations where the piped link may or may not be preceded by "the", where italics may or may not surround the link or be contained in the right part of the link. The replacement is a simple link inside italics, whether italics were found or not: ''[[The New York Times]]''

So far, so good. Here are four lines for testing:

wrote to a ''[[The New York Times|New York times]]'' reporter that they 1

letter to the ''[[The New York Times|New York times]]'' that they 2

wrote to a [[The New York Times|New York times]] reporter that they 3

letter to the [[The New York Times|New York times]] that they 4

Go ahead, plug these into the Regex tester and have some fun. It works great. The second line is changed to

letter to ''[[The New York Times]]'' that they 2

Perfect. But in lines 1 and 3 the newspaper name modifies "reporter", so it is better to skip it than to produce the awkward

wrote to a ''[[The New York Times]]'' reporter

which has both an indefinite article and a definite article ("a The"). Just add a negative lookahead (?!\s+reporterx) at the end of the find rule. Same results, as you would expect, since the 'x' in 'reporterx' prevents it from matching anything. It only demonstrates that the syntax is OK. Now remove the 'x' from 'reporterx' and WOW. Line 3 is now not changed by the rule; this is what we wanted. Line 1 should also be ignored, but it gets changed and also gets two extra apostrophes.

wrote to a ''[[The New York Times]]'''' reporter that they

The lookahead should not affect the engine's current position in the string, but it appears to back the position up in front of the two apostrophes that follow the closing brackets of the link, and so the two apostrophes are now not part of the found string. I have no further insight into this. Maybe I can split this into two rules, one for cases with surrounding italics and one for cases with no italics, but I have a lot of these rules, and would much rather do it with a single rule. I would be grateful if someone could show what I have done wrong or could provide some workaround. Chris the speller ^yack 05:38, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

@Chris the speller: Picture the regex engine working on example one when it has matched all the way to the closing square brackets. "Now I have the option of matching two apostrophes. Let's try it that way first - yes, found them - but now I'm stuck because the word "reporter" has turned up. So let's try it the other way and not match those apostrophes. Now, does "reporter" come next? No, two apostrophes come next, so I've succeeded"

Try this instead:

(?:'')?(?:[Tt]he\s+)?(?:'')?\[\[(?:[Tt]he\s+)?.ew\s.ork\s.imes\|(?:'')?(?:[Tt]he\s+)?.ew\s+.ork\s+(?:'')?.imes(?:'')?\]\](?!(?:'')?\s+reporter)(?:'')?

-- John of Reading (talk) 06:24, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Oh, you're good. That's a neat twist, and it works beautifully. Thanks! Chris the speller ^yack 14:02, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Regex causing timeouts

I am trying to use the regex below in AWB (Regexper flowchart).

\n(\s*\|?\s*(Last (single|album)|last_(single|album))\s*=\s*)"?(''|'''|''''')?"? *(\d?\d?\d?[^"/\d'\{\} \t]([^"/\d'\{\}]|[^"/\d'\{\}]'?\d?\d?[^"/\d'\{\}])+[^"/\d'\{\} \t]\d?\d?\d?|[^"/'\{\} \t][^"/'\{\} \t]?) *"?(''|'''|''''')?"?\s*\|?\s*\n.*[Tt]his[ _].*=.*\n(\s*\|?\s*(Next (single|album)|next_(single|album))\s*=\s*)"?(''|'''|''''')?"? *(\d?\d?\d?[^"/\d'\{\} \t]([^"/\d'\{\}]|[^"/\d'\{\}]'?\d?\d?[^"/\d'\{\}])+[^"/\d'\{\} \t]\d?\d?\d?|[^"/'\{\} \t][^"/'\{\} \t]?) *"?(''|'''|''''')?"?\s*(\||\}\})?\s*\n

Unfortunately, on some pages (including some as short as this one), AWB refuses to do anything.

Is this too complex for AWB to handle, or is my regex written badly? Should I use pywikibot instead? Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 11:33, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

I have no idea what it is that that regex is supposed to do. I'm not sure I want to, it makes my head hurt to just look at it. Can't you break it up into a series of smaller, more understandable steps that would accomplish the same thing?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:49, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: I am looking for transclusions of {{Infobox song}} and {{Infobox album}} where there are no dates in the chronology parameters, and the titles for last/next song/album are in quotes, italicized, emboldened, or any combination; or unformatted and not containing slashes, curly brackets, quotation marks, and substrings of four consecutive digits.

I suppose at this point it would be easier to write more Lua and stick it in the template instead. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 12:02, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

@Jc86035: This is called regex backtracking. It is not an AWB issue, it is a fundamental limit to the way regular expressions work and how regular expression engines process expressions. If doing this in AWB, without resorting to writing code, what I would look at doing is using the Advanced find and replace to find the template, then use subrules to find/exclude on your further conditions. You might need a number of rules to achieve what you want, but it should be doable. I would fully expect that the same regular expression would have the same performance issue in any other tool, unless the tool applies 'search timeout and error' instead. Rjwilmsi 12:15, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

@Rjwilmsi: So, for example, I should split it into one search for each parameter instead of searching all three parameters in the same search? Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 12:19, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

You can, though you may not need to. The performance issue is likely due to the [^...] exclusion ranges rather than the number of parameters checked, so what I suggest you do is use the rules and subrules to split out the contains and not contains criteria. Rjwilmsi 15:58, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

As a general comment, your regex is rather inefficient in many places, if you have something like (''|'''|''''')?, you'd really be better off doing something like '* or (''+)? (yes it'd match other cases, but when are you going to run into those? Likewise for \d?\d?\d?, which could very likely be replaced with \d* or \d{0,3}. AWB can also ignore casing, so things like [Tt]his could likely be replaced with this, or (Next (single|album)|next_(single|album)) replaced with (next( |_)(single|album)).Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:13, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

New version soon out

Finally, I have some spare time. I'll start preparing the new vrsion during the next week. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:34, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Great to hear and thank you! Would you consider improving workability on Linux? Thanks!--Jetam2 (talk) 16:33, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Subrules

I am having trouble figuring out how the advanced find/replace rules work. I have nested some regex rules (if rule 1 then (if rule 2 then (rules 3–5))), but the subrules are run regardless of whether or not their parent rules are actioned upon. Is this a bug, or am I doing this wrong? Are the rules for the entire tree ignored if there is a match in the "Not contains" panel, or does it do something else? Jc86035 (talk) 16:52, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Disabling duplicate wikilink check

I got a recent message on my Talk page telling me I should disable wikilink checking because of a disagreement with several other editors, but I don't know how to disable it. Since the warnings, I've only been ignoring the feature and only skipping articles on an alternating basis: when no changes are made OR when there's no alerts. jd22292 (Jalen D. Folf) (talk) 20:00, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Request and bug

Hi,

I'm not Phab-ing this because it's a hybrid request.

The bug I've detected is that as long as the talk page for my AutoWikiBrowser alt account exists, I get the "you have new messages" pop-up constantly, rendering usage impossible. Anarchyte has SALT-ed this for me.

The request I'd like to make is for the "move" function to be unlocked for page movers as well as administrators for community sanctioned mass-moves like the one currently being discussed at WP:AN.

Thanks,

DrStrauss talk 12:14, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

The new messages dialog is likely WAI. You must visit the user talk page of your alternate account while logged in as your alt to clear the message. — JJMC89 (T·C) 18:58, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

I think JJMC89 is right about the message - you have to visit the page whilst logged in to the alt account to clear the message. Primefac (talk) 20:57, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Maxlag on AWB

Good day, on it.wiki we were discussing about acceptable edit/min rates according to maxlag. So the question is: is it possible to set a maxlag parameter on AWB as it is e.g. on Pywikipedia? Thanks, --Daimona Eaytoy (talk) 10:03, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Currently AWB supports the maxlag API functionality but the functionality is disabled. We could readily change AWB have wiki-specific value of maxlag if required, that would need a code change to AWB and a new release though. (I don't know how easy/how often there is lag to actually test the behaviour though). Rjwilmsi 14:43, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

I think it might be a great idea to make the change, in order to avoid any potential trouble. While running my bot I've been warned several times that "the slave database failed to catch up ...", so (if this is what you meant) I suppose that troubles with maxlag aren't that uncommon.--Daimona Eaytoy (talk) 18:27, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

General fixes talk page

This page has 856 watchers; Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/General fixes has just 33. In the short term may I direct folk's attention there, and in the longer term perhaps it should be redirected here? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:12, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Extract from Dump

I'm using one of the custom modules to read a field from a template and export its value to a text file. On a template that has 24000+ uses, is there any way I can get the AWB+custom module to extract from a database dump instead? and avoid having to get the data in batches from live WP requests. - X201 (talk) 11:24, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Read the manual ...

Read the manual. Is there a better "how to" or tutorial? Cinderella157 (talk) 10:46, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Not that I've ever found. What kind of edits do you want to do? - X201 (talk) 11:26, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

@X201, I am not wanting to do edits (in the first instance) but to do searches and filtering across a broad range but with a modest degree of specificity that cannot be achieved by the search bar or advanced search. It is for curation of a project. I could write a logical statement for what I want but not for the "syntax". It would certainly not fit into the 300 character limit of the normal search bar, even if it could identify some of the terms I want to compare. AWB appears to has the search capability but not the output capability. What I do want, is a list of links that satisfy the conditions such that I can manually review the contents and then add tags to their talk page. The search/filter statement could be fairly complicated in detail but simple in concept. In reality though, I am probably looking at about three separate searches. Happy to give more detail but this is a start. Thankyou. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 12:17, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Cinderella157, if you're just looking to create a list of pages, you can still use AWB - you're only required to log in if you're actually editing the pages. You can create the lists and then copy them over to Wikipedia if needed. Primefac (talk) 12:45, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

@Primefac, how do I copy a list to Wikipedia so that the links work? I have looked and looked but I can't find any guides on how to use AWB, let alone things like this. The manual on Wikipedia gives very little on how to do things - just a very general description of the various menu "tabs". Any help/links would be appreciated. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:55, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

@Cinderella157: Right-click in the list and choose "Save list", select "Text file with wiki markup" as the file type, and save the list to a local file. Then open the file with Notepad or similar, and copy and paste the list into a Wiki page. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:02, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Template:Orphan

Please note that there is a discussion related to {{Orphan}} at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Orphans, relating to possibly disacontinuing its use. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:04, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

General fixes talk page

This page has 856 watchers; Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/General fixes has just 33. In the short term may I direct folk's attention there, and in the longer term perhaps it should be redirected here? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:12, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Bump. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:48, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

I'd say per SILENCE you'd be justified in this change. Primefac (talk) 13:11, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Can AWB be used to edit WikiData?

I want to update/check/add IDs in/to {{Taxonbar}}, which draws from WikiData, for all/most of its transclusions. How could I do this semi/automatically?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:44, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

AWB cannot edit Wikidata. — JJMC89 (T·C) 18:11, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Update to the live cs1|2 modules weekend of 4–5 November 2017

See this post. —Trappist the monk (talk) 12:22, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

AWB on FreeBSD

How to use AWB on FreeBSD? I once ran it through wine, but did nothing except building a list. (Make list menu was very odd.) A similar discussion regarding huggle can be found at WP:Huggle/Feedback#Huggle 3x on FreeBSD. Thanks. —usernamekiran(talk) 10:48, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

We have information on use of AWB under Wine on Linux at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Mono_and_Wine. I've not heard whether anybody has been able to achieve the same with FreeBSD or similar. Rjwilmsi 23:00, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

@Rjwilmsi: Yup. I already tried that a few days ago. The category list in "make list" was the only problem I could see in my dummy run (I didnt do any edits). I thought maybe there was some other way around than mono/wine. I will do a full run again in 2-3 days. —usernamekiran(talk) 23:13, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Any workaround for AWB on Windows XP / 2003 Server?

This recent patch (intentional denial of access to WMF wikis for HTTPS clients with legacy cipher support) has effectively rendered AWB useless on Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server platforms, as there seems to be no way to update MS SSL/TLS client libraries to support newer ciphers and/or to update MSHTML to above IE8.

Is there any known workaround to continue using AWB on these platforms?

If it's not, than mentions of Windows XP should be removed from requirements ("AutoWikiBrowser requires Windows XP or newer. It also requires Version 3.5 or later of the .NET Framework. It still runs under 2000/XP even though they are not supported anymore by Microsoft, but users of Windows 2000 and Windows XP must download and install .NET Framework 3.5 (it is included in Windows Vista)." [5]) --Teslaton (talk) 18:35, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

I was wondering about that... figures they finally pulled the plug on XP/AWB. Primefac (talk) 18:39, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Well, this is WMF enforcing stronger security requirements, not a change to/by AWB. I am not clear on what are the latest versions of the .NET framework and IE for XP - is IE 9 or higher available for XP? Only other suggestion I can think of, if the version support depends on MSHTML, is to find and download a newer version of the Microsoft.mshtml.dll file and put it in same folder as AutoWikiBrowser.exe and restart AWB - AWB should then use that in preference, which might help (I'm not going to try to link to a DLL file as I am not clear on the licence rules for Microsoft's DLLs). However, I think overall continuing to use XP, while it's each individual's choice, and may be needed for support of other specific hardware or software, is not an option for use of current websites that has much of a future. If you want AWB access you don't need to buy a newer version of Windows, can use it with all free (beer) software under Linux.

The AWB OS support can be updated, though bear in mind on other wikis XP may still be working. Rjwilmsi 23:11, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

The scenario, I was using happily for years to perform AWB edits on skwiki, was actually a Win2k3 Server guest (which I still need for some legacy sw., so I can't just replace it with Win7+ guest) on housed headless Debian server. For many reasons I really don't want to install those tons of dependencies, required to run GUI sw. (and particularly native Windows sw. using Wine) directly on that Debian host. So the only way for me seems to be an additional Win7 guest, just to be able to do AWB edits, which is quite annoying...

Regarding that separate MSHTML library – I'll try that, but I'm afraid, that the fundamental problem would be a system SSL/TLS library, bundled with XP/2k3. Even with newer MSHTML, all HTTPS requests would still be made via that system library. The only agent I know, which uses custom SSL/TLS library on XP/2k3 is Firefox. Which, sadly, is not supported by AWB (not to mention any HTTPS requests, made by AWB directly using .NET library calls, not using that embedded browser component – those will be handled by that system SSL layer too, I guess).

And as for IE version under XP/2k3 – the last supported was IE8. IE9 requires Vista SP2 or newer, IE10/11 Win7+ and Edge Win10. --Teslaton (talk) 00:43, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

JS Wiki Browser

Next to this WP:AWB (an exe file), there exists "JS Wiki Browser" that is run by script. It is maintained by Joeytje50 (talk · contribs).

Ever since the script version was launched, it created confusion between the two programs (or whatever I should call them). Since the "AWB" is well-established, I think the JS-version should make changes & clarifications to make clear that it is a different program.

BTW, it shares the Project:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage rights settings.

• In the interest of AWB and/or script users (like me), and to keep consistently distance between the two, I ask WP:AWB (the project people) to push the script away from AWB.

1. First, there should be a single, nonconfusing ID. Today I see:

• "JS Wiki Browser" (in the tools menu)
• JWB (with talk:JWB a redlink)
• WP:JWB (link in the editsummary)
• URL "Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Script" (title when running)

2. Once a single id has been established, add a subpage to this WikiProject, say Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/JWB. This page should guide users to the true pages for documentation, maintenance, bugs, contacting, etc.

3. This subpagepage name be added to the navigation Template:AWB, added to the "Changelog" link list.

-DePiep (talk) 11:53, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Complex find and replace

Hello fellow AWB users. I have been using AWB to fix MOS:ACCESS#Text violations where the text is inappropriately made small. This has been done by putting in two find and replaces for <small> and </small> where the replacement is blank. However {{small|*}} is also used to make text small where is * is the said text. Is it currently possible to change {{small|*}} to * with AWB, keeping in mind that is removing the template but keeping the data inside the template? Please ping when you reply. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:45, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

You need to learn basic regular expressions for that. --Izno (talk) 21:00, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

@Izno: Thanks for highlighting that to me. Am I correct in thinking that \{\{\s*?[Ss]mall\s*?\|.*?\}\} would be used to find it? What would I use to replace it with $2 ? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:19, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Emir of Wikipedia, use case insensitive \{\{\s*(?:HW\-small|small)\s*\|([^\{\}]+)\}\}, and replace with $1.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:22, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: Thank you very much Tom. I will do some reading into Regex and hopefully will be able to do it on my own the next time. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:25, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: There is a lot more junk in that regex than I would have used. :D What is going on there? --Izno (talk) 21:27, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

"A junk in time, saves nine", trust me. The only major difference in my regex is the inclusion of all aliases to {{small}} (just {{HW-small}}) in a non-captured group via (?:), and restricting the captured group to exclude curly braces so as to avoid any {{small}}s with multiple nested templates. Single-nested templates might turn out ok, but better to small-batch those at the end, one-by-one, after having gone through the bulk of easy ones first.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:44, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I see that now. --Izno (talk) 21:55, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I would have done something like that. To explicitly fix it, you need to look at regex groups, which allow you to add certain specific subelements of the string into the replacement. --Izno (talk) 21:27, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

They are voting on the future of AWB

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2017_Community_Wishlist_Survey/Bots_and_gadgets/Convert_AWB_into_a_special_page#Voting

The Transhumanist 23:30, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

That proposal looks like a big mess. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:45, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

using awb to null edit

Is there any way to use my bot account to null edit a list of pages?

Why would I want to do that? Because sometimes I make mistakes that can be remedied by a template fix followed by null edits to the effected pages. Today I edited {{lang-fi}} and left out a $2 in the replace value in my awb script. That $2 was supposed to insert a capture of the </includeonly>. The result? More than a thousand pages transcluded the template's documentation. I also regularly want to do this when I update the Module:Citation/CS1 suite (seven modules) that will cause Lua script errors because I can't instantly update them simultaneously.

I can use awb to null edit a list of pages manually (on the options tab, uncheck everything; on the skip tab, uncheck everything) then start and click save for every 'no changes'. Works like a charm. But, a thousand pages is a lot of clicking. Is there a way to use my bot account to accomplish the same thing?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:17, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

That would undoubtedly need a WP:BRFA, and there's no guarantee it would be accepted—even doing it by machine-gunning the "click" button is doubtful, since you'd need to demonstrate that every instance had a noticeable effect on the rendered page. Basically, any edit you make using AWB—whether manually or by bot—that has no noticeable effect on the rendered page will get the AWB permission stripped, and any edit you make using a bot that has no noticeable effect on the rendered page will get you blocked; since it's only been a couple of months since this principle was reconfirmed by Arbcom, the pitchfork-wielders are unlikely to be in a very lenient mood. ‑ Iridescent 17:25, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Wait! What? I must not have explained myself clearly. When I update the Module:Citation/CS1 suite, I must do it one module at a time. Because new versions of the modules may not be (probably aren't) compatible with the older, but still currently live, modules that haven't yet been updated, and because I can't halt the MediaWiki job queue processing while I do the updates, the job queue will blithely render pages using a mix of the old and new. When it does, those newly rendered pages may contain script error messages that look something like this:

Lua error in <module name goes here> at line nnn: <message text goes here>.

Pages with this kind of error are categorized in Category:Pages with script errors.

The other error I described can currently be seen at Talk:National_liberalism#Intro/definition where (at the time of this writing) you can see the transcluded {{lang-fi}} documentation including a script error.

You seem to be suggesting that using AWB to null edit pages that have these errors and that are clearly broken, is somehow an offence. I disagree. Pages with these error messages / improper transclusions are broken, the null edit produces a noticeable effect on the rendered page: the error message / improperly transcluded text is removed. There are those who whine and complain about cosmetic edits cluttering up lists. AWB null edits don't seem to cause that. None of the 1000+ pages that I null edited today are, for example, listed in Special:Contributions/Trappist_the_monk nor are those edits reflected in article histories; see 1952 Summer Olympics (history).

Am I not making any sense?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:18, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Maybe phab:T135964 is a better idea than to use a manual bot run. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:29, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

If I understand that phab ticket, and I admit that I may not, then I think it is an unsatisfactory solution because for pages listed in Category:Pages with script errors, fixes are needed 'now', not some number of days since the last touch.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:18, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Also - See User:Joe's Null Bot - X201 (talk) 17:58, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Again, this seems an unsatisfactory solution because of the time element. When these kinds of errors occur, and are left to linger, editors become angry. I choose to not have angry editors berating me; I'd much rather get on with fixing the problem so that in most cases they never know that the error existed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:18, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

I think that Iridescent is concerned that AWB would perform actual edits (General Fixes and the like) when running. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:07, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

I did say: on the options tab, uncheck everything; on the skip tab, uncheck everything (emphasis added) that 'uncheck everything' includes all of the automatic changes including general fixes. I never run awb with those on anyway because I don't want to be responsible for fixes that I don't intend. I'd be quite happy if on the bot tab there were a 'null edit' checkbox that would automatically disable everything in all tabs and just ran through the list doing null edits.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:18, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

From a technical point of view, you should be able to do a run to pre-pend {{subst:null}}. Test it first on a single page, turn off all other options. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:15, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't know what you are talking about. Explain?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:18, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

under the "more" tab there is a "append/prepend text" that you can use to append or prepend text to the targets. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:22, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Got it. I think that works. I tried it on my sandbox both manually and with my bot account. AWB went through what looked like its normal 'save' process and logged both edits. Worth a try next time I need something like this. Thanks.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:49, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

This can be done manually. How big a run of pages are you talking about? bd2412 T 19:23, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I know it can be done manually, I just did a 1000+ manually. I'd rather not do that if I can make awb do it for me.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:49, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Setup using text search?

Is it possible to generate list of all pages containing specific text? Coderzombie (talk) 16:00, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes --Racklever (talk) 16:03, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

And a way to do it is by setting the Make list Source: to Wiki search (text), then putting the string you want a list of in quotes like "list of all pages" and clicking Make list. Another way with some more power is to use the List comparer under the Tools drop down list. That works similarly. Hope that helps.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:26, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

slow

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T182322

Is it just me, or is AWB slow to load and save for others?

A simple script to replace unwanted italic wiki markup. The first couple of load/save cycles are as fast as I have come to know from past experience. Then, it's like a switch gets thrown and it takes 5–7 seconds to load a page, practically no time for AWB to get to the Ready-to-save state, and then another 5–7 seconds to save after I click the Save button – every time; this is very consistent. Yesterday was Thursday so is it possible that MediaWiki is now throttling AWB edits somehow?

I have tried logging out, restarting, etc. Always the first couple of edits are normally quick and every edit after that consistently slow as I have described. En.wiki page loads and saves that I've done this morning outside of AWB are nominally the same as they were yesterday.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:49, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Same for me and other users. See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Slowness_with_Twinkle_scripts --Racklever (talk) 14:09, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I've found some simple WP functions to be slow, like thanking people, taking a slightly longer time than normal.

Indeed, according to performance.wikimedia.org, save times (at the bottom) are on the rise lately...   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:12, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I'd be very happy with sub one-second load and save times. That's what I'm getting directly from Wikipedia to/from my browser; it is not what I'm getting with AWB except for the first two or so load/save cycles after an idle period.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:46, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm getting the same thing. In the past when things slow down a restart fixes it, but over the last couple days, it behaves as described above.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:20, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Well, I just ran something like 400 edits using AWB with almost no issue. The huge pages took longer to parse, obviously, but otherwise I didn't notice a slowdown. Maybe it's related to a specific server or group of servers? I vaguely recall hearing something about the Eastern Seaboard servers getting kicked about recently. Primefac (talk) 23:56, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Apparently fixed several hours ago.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:05, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Line Breaks

Hey guys,

I was wondering if anyone knew how to handle removing line breaks for infoboxes? For example,

{{Infobox
|random     = John Cena
|stupid     = Cat flying to Haiti.png
|variables  = 3
|removethis = variable
|example    = Yes
|overkill   = Definitely
}}

How would I go about removing the "removethis" variable along with the line that it's on, with the data that's in it's infobox, including if different pages had different data? Thanks for any help guys. 2001:5B0:2968:9128:FD35:C390:7505:C7F4 (talk) 03:07, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

\|\s*removethis\s*=\s*variable\s* for specific text (the \s group contains all whitespace characters, including the CRLF characters \r\n), or \|\s*removethis\s*=[^\|\}\r\n]*[\r\n]+ for any parameter value on the same line (change [\r\n]+ to [\r\n]* if you expect to find infoboxes with parameters not separated by a new line).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  03:23, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Works perfectly. That is absolutely amazing. Thank you! 2001:5B0:2968:9128:2C57:1121:946C:EAA2 (talk) 03:38, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Regex for this?

Hi guy I was wondering if anyone could help with how to get regex for this:

{{ImageImprove|Image needs to be set at a 3:5 ratio.|Category}}

The enter below it also needs to get removed. Any ideas? The first variable covers any random message and the second one overs various categories. Thanks in advance 2001:5B0:2969:4108:551E:C08F:9EF9:39AF (talk) 23:54, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

\{\{\s*ImageImprove\s*\|([^\|\}]*)\|([^\}]*)\}\} *[\r\n]. Message is in $1 and category is in $2.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  00:01, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

The underlying connection was closed; An unexpected error occurred on a send

Until several weeks ago, I could run AWB 5.9.0.0 on my system without problems. I did not change my system, but when I open AWB now, during the opening process I receive the message "The underlying connection was closed; An unexpected error occurred on a send." and I can no longer login or open a preferences file. While trying to open previously stored preferences, I receive the error message "Received an unexpected EOF or 0 bytes from the transport stream." As I did not alter my system, I suspect something changed on the server side. I'm still using Windows XP, but according to the project page, that operating system should be supported. Is this a known problem and, more important, is there a work around? Wikiklaas  13:26, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Given the timeframe, it's probably because of phab:T147199. I would guess there is no workaround. @Reedy and BBlack (WMF): take a look? --Izno (talk) 13:33, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

I've stripped out the mention of XP in the guide, so that should mitigate some of these queries. Primefac (talk) 18:08, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

OK, but let's be clear. AWB still runs on XP, but the MediaWiki wikis are rolling out stricter security requirements, which Microsoft have not provided support for in XP, so we – those maintaining AWB – can't do anything about. However, if you use AWB on another wiki without the stricter security requirements, AWB would still be working fine. So I'll put in the documentation that XP is working where it meets the wiki's security level requirements. Rjwilmsi 08:58, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

I think you meant to say "may still work on non-Wikimedia" wikis. --Izno (talk) 13:14, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Large category request

Is this the (/is there a) right venue to request all contents of a large category (~44k total, and I can retrieve the top 25k)? All of the admins I know that use AWB are either busy or have an away/on-holiday tag on their talks.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:45, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

 Doing... — xaosflux ^Talk 16:51, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

 Done @Tom.Reding: send me an email Special:Email/Xaosflux and I'll send it to you. It's too big to dump to a wikipage. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:55, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Very nice! Thank you :)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:04, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Template:Refimprove moved

{{Refimprove}} has been moved to {{More citations needed}} - what's the best way to get the AWB general fixes updated for this? Timrollpickering 21:38, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Timrollpickering WP:AWB/TR. Update it and then it will start bypassing the redirect using AWB. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:57, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Trivial template parameter change

{{Convert}} (talk) has two parameter values that are deprecated, and to be replaced with new value. They have many usages:

disp=flip → order=flip 13917 pages in mainspace

sing=x → adj=x 9224 pages

Talk is here. Could be seen as trivial edit. Where can we ask for inclusion in the "trivial typo" edits (that is, only edit when non-trivial edits are made)? @Johnuniq and Quondum: -DePiep (talk) 11:52, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Rename template parameters should do the trick, right?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:29, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Is what I was looking for (missing in doc?). -DePiep (talk) 19:10, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

WW2 Convoy designators

Pleased be aware that WW2 convoy designators ending in KM (e.g. OS 77KM) are not measurements and should not be altered to indicate that they are, as was recently done to the SS Graigaur article. Mjroots (talk) 11:00, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Mjroots, do they all have the prefix "OS"? If not, do you know what other possible designations there are/they could have? Just so that the regex can be as precise as possiblereasonable so as to not avoid the true positives.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  11:13, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

As far as I know, it's OS 46KM - OS 120KM (inclusive) and OS 131KM. Mjroots (talk) 11:36, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Mjroots,  done.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:50, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

It's apparently still not fixed, as the recent edit by Balon Greyjoy to the SS Empire Peacemaker article using AWB shows. Mjroots (talk) 06:21, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

AWB users will only switch to the new version of the rule when they restart the program or use the File>Refresh option. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:17, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

I have posted at User talk:Balon Greyjoy. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:25, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Ah, I've expanded the exceptions to include the "KMS" prefix, since it was previously only avoiding "OS". Are there any other potential prefixes?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:02, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Editing rate

Do we have a maximum editing rate when using AWB? Illegitimate Barrister (talk · contribs) is editing at the phenomenal average rate of over 20,000 in 24 hours, or one every four seconds - but is peaking at around 40 per minute or one every 1.5 seconds. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:44, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Technically no (other than the inherent software limitations of the servers themselves). Per WP:MEATBOT, merely editing quickly, particularly for a short time, is not by itself disruptive. Granted this sounds like it's not "a short time" but if they're not making any mistakes I don't see a huge issue. Granted, they probably should/could file a bot report for it, but that's their prerogative.

Recently, however, there has been a growing consensus that these types of runs can be considered disruptive from a "watchlist" perspective, but the two cases I can think of also involved a bit of IDHT mixed in as well (so there were other factors at play). Primefac (talk) 12:34, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

I see 3475 AWB edits between 05:14 and 06:37 on 2018-01-18. That is over 40 edits per minute for 83 minutes. I've used AWB but am not familiar with things like this. Would someone like to review whether AWB should be used in this way? This is my third attempt to do a quick calculation...please check! Johnuniq (talk) 07:46, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Whether AWB "should be used in this way" is a question for the community and/or admins, rather than a question about the software itself, so maybe this should be taken to WP:ANI etc.? Rjwilmsi 08:06, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Sure, but what are the norms? Johnuniq (talk) 08:42, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

I think that's an awkward one to quantify. It depends on the AWB edits at the time. e.g. If your edit is a simple one and it appears at the top of the edit window it's perfectly possible to check the edit before saving and keep up a fast edit rate, but, if the edit is more complex and would involve a human editor having to scroll down the edit window and spend more than a second or two to check the edit, that will cause the edit rate to drop. What I'm saying is that there isn't a one size "x number of edits in a minute" guide. If it's more than a simple edit and it's in the middle of the article and it would take the average human more than a second to properly evaluate it, then AWB is being used more like a bot and perhaps that editing session should be treated as something that should have been done by a bot. - X201 (talk) 08:56, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Primefack that the interesting new factor in the discussions is the ""watchlist" perspective". Unfortunatelly, I still see no action in the direction of finding a way to alter this factor in a way that useful edits still an be done. For intance, I hvae proposed a more clever way to watch edits of interest. I partly agree with Rjwilmsi. I think the commuity has to decide but not via ANI. It should be a wider discussion. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:28, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

The watchlist problem is bigger now that we are unable to see more than 1,000 edits back. I think that if AWB is to be used for more than a few hundred similar edits, a WP:BRFA must be filed and approved before action. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:41, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

His edits were also contrary to the AWB rules (contrary to guidelines, controversial, and inconsequential, all per WP:NOTBROKEN). -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:29, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

• In my WP:BAG member opinion: large repetitive runs (e.g. 20000 page runs of the same type of edit) are generally considered disruptive if not bot flagged, as they flood recent changes and watchlists. Running a second account for a program like AWB is easy, as is requesting a bot flag - provided there is a general community consensus that the edits are useful. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:31, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

  I'll join my WP:BAG member opinion on this to Xaosflux. We're dealing with a non-approved WP:COSMETICBOT WP:MEATBOT at hand, which violates a slew of WP:AWBRULES as well. At minimum a warning is in order, and if it doesn't stop, or similar behaviour happens again, it's certainly grounds for removal of AWB access / block. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:30, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

• Also (now that I've seen a bit more of the case) quick or minor (or both) edits with AWB is not inherently an issue, but continuing to use AWB after being asked to slow down/stop is an issue (and the reason why IB is currently blocked). In other words, if you see something questionable, ask them about it and see if there's a consensus. If they do not stop, then it's grounds for removal of the perms and/or blocking (depending on how ornery they get). Primefac (talk) 14:33, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Here are Illegitimate Barrister's edit counts for the last two weeks:

Time and date	Edits to date	Increase
04:06, 5 January 2018	137329	113
04:04, 6 January 2018	137618	289
04:02, 7 January 2018	137680	62
04:09, 8 January 2018	137921	241
04:04, 9 January 2018	138054	133
04:05, 10 January 2018	138152	98
04:03, 11 January 2018	138258	106
04:03, 12 January 2018	149321	11063
04:09, 13 January 2018	159948	10627
04:04, 14 January 2018	172089	12141
04:05, 15 January 2018	193583	21494
04:03, 16 January 2018	201738	8155
04:06, 17 January 2018	206146	4408
04:09, 18 January 2018	209842	3696
04:03, 19 January 2018	213673	3831

These are from Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits/1–1000, the link in the first column goes to that specific revision. It shows that the high edit rate began about a week ago, and on the day that I started this thread it peaked at one edit every 4.02 seconds for the 24-hour period. Edits like these, most of which involve the removal of single spaces or newlines with nil effect on the rendered page; or an edit like this, suggest that their motive is to boost their edit count, nothing more. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:17, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

For what it's worth (not to kill the conversation or anything) but IB has been blocked (temporarily) and their AWB access revoked. Primefac (talk) 00:30, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, how is AWB access revoked? And could this process be made more obvious on this page? Beeblebrox (talk) 00:41, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

The username is removed from this list Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage to revoke access. The history edit summaries will log removals. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:22, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Ah. thanks. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:40, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

How to find all red links in a list of pages or a category?

Is there an easy way to do this in AWB (i.e. not brute-force GetHTML'ing each wikilink on each page), or possibly in labs' Quarry tool? I don't know enough SQL yet to do anything meaningful with the latter.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  00:49, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, I don't see how you'd have redlinks in a cat (since by definition cats are populated by bluelinks) but as far as "redlinks on a page" goes, yes, AWB allows you to load up all redlinks on a page. Primefac (talk) 00:54, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Quarry looks like it can easily accept categories as input page-lists, so I meant it in that way.

Yeah, for an individual page (or a small # of pages), AWB is good for finding redlinks. I was hoping someone knew the work-horse of the back-end of that utility that I can then insert into a module and run on hundreds of pages.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:28, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

It took a few tries, but I did it in SQL!^{[test here]} It would still be good to know how (if possible) to do it in AWB, in cases where the articles don't span the same category.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:57, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm sure you can. To be honest, I've never needed to use the advanced dbase search/add options, but the couple times I looked at it there were some impressive options. Primefac (talk) 19:08, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

I didn't even consider checking the db scanner... Just looked through all the tabs though (and particularly the 'Searching' tab) and couldn't find an option for filtering redlinks.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:28, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

There's no such option within the database scanner. The scanner currently assesses each page individually, using the page's raw text and some limited page-level metadata. If you think about it, for each page in the database dump you would have to scan the whole database dump to see if another page links to it. It would be possible (might take a lot/too much memory to hold a list of ~ 4 million links in memory, even just considering mainspace) but we don't currently have any options like that. Rjwilmsi 21:59, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

@Rjwilmsi: I stopped by to see if there was an answer to my question yet and saw this discussion. Someone could create a module that looked at the red links on each page of a list of pages, and then create an exported page list of the red links that appear on those pages? It could be done either as a flat list that could be aggregated later or as an aggregate list with just one line per occurrence and a count of occurrences next to it. We did something like this on our project a while back because the Wanted pages special page was too short with only 1000. You would probably want to limit the size of the list though. FYI, it looks like you already have most of the code needed to do that at [6], all you would need to do is invoke the "Links on page (only red links)" function in AWB.2601:5CC:100:697A:191C:2B5D:C5E8:73B9 (talk) 02:35, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it should be possible to process the database dump to find red links. You would need to process each page in the dump and maintain two lists: page links and existing pages. You would only need a distinct list of each. Red links would then be first list excluding any entries in second list. So yes, someone is free to create that. Rjwilmsi 12:30, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

One way I was doing something similar was to:

1. run a scraping code that might look a bit like this one. That extracts all the blue & red links into an external file one link per line
2. process the file in a spreadsheet to create wikicode with for each article, where X is article name
3. copy the modified list to some sandbox and you should see only a column of red links. See here for similar spreadsheet created wikicode

It is not the best process but it works. --Jarekt (talk) 03:52, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

@Rjwilmsi, Jarekt, and Tom.Reding: Here you go folks, it's fast and it works like a champ. Thanks to @Jarekt: for pointing me in the right direction! I made it so it would include the wikilinks and reformat any categories it pulls in to [[:. of course it would still be better to only pull in redlinks and maybe exclude cats, but it's usable. 2601:5CC:100:697A:F936:60EF:A894:2959 (talk) 00:28, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

//Create a module with the this code. //Use AWB to pull in the list of articles you want to process //The script exports the list of Wikilinks to a .txt file. //From the .txt file it can be copied and saved to /sandbox and then use AWB to pull in the red links

       public string ProcessArticle(string ArticleText, string ArticleTitle, int wikiNamespace, out string Summary, out bool Skip)
       {
           Skip = true;
           Summary = "test";
           String outStr = ArticleTitle;
           bool found = false;

           Match m = Regex.Match(ArticleText, @"\[\[([^\]\|]*)\]\]");
           while (m.Success) {
             outStr = outStr + m.Result("; $1");
             m = m.NextMatch();
             found = true;
           }
           if (found) {
             outStr = outStr.Replace("\r","");
             outStr = outStr.Replace("\n","");
             outStr = outStr.Replace("[[Category:","[[:Category:");

             System.IO.StreamWriter sw = System.IO.File.AppendText("C:/Project/Wikilinks.txt");
             sw.WriteLine(outStr);
             sw.Close();
          }

           return ArticleText;
       }

ListProviders.cs

public class LinksOnPageOnlyRedListProvider seems to contain the back-end for creating the list of redlinks on 1 page, but it's not obvious to me how it does it, nor how to apply it in a custom module (if that's even possible). Does anyone else?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:14, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

It calls the mediawiki API, and the API tells you which links are red links on the page. Rjwilmsi 06:55, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

When will there be a Linux version?

When will there be a Linux version of AWB instead of using the Windows version of it through Wine? LA (T) @ 11:57, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

@Lady Aleena: yours at least work. I use FreeBSD, and AWB crashes whenever I try to save the edit. —usernamekiran(talk) 12:09, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

AWB will start up under Linux using mono. With mono v 4.6.1, AWB seems to start up fine and you can log in and process pages, however, as with the last time I tested it, there is no diff display due to incomplete support in mono for the underlying WinForms Webbrowser features (some other areas of AWB are behaving better than when I last tested). Rjwilmsi 12:26, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

So will there ever be a Linux version that I can install with my package manager? LA (T) @ 13:19, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Unlikely, and certainly not in the near future. --Izno (talk) 13:27, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

@Lady Aleena: there is a similar program that works on Linux... "JavaScript Wiki Browser is a script that allows users to make semi-automated edits more easily. For general use, it works similarly to the downloadable AutoWikiBrowser, but it requires no executable installation, and can run on any (major) operating system. This script heavily borrows from AWB in design and functionality, for example using its Regex Typo Fixing and User Checkpage. To use this script, you need to be listed on the wiki's AutoWikiBrowser CheckPage (Project:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage on your wiki), or have administrator rights on the wiki." It doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but it is more accessible.    The Transhumanist 09:13, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

How to f+r a specific word in a specific template?

Hi all, I have a simple template in a lot of articles:

{{Template|

Japanese

|Romanised

|Translation}}

And I would like to find and replace a specific string of letters ("you") with "yō", but only in the Romanised part of the template, not anywhere else in the template/article. How can I achieve this? Seelentau (talk) 21:59, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Which template are you using? It sounds like it should be a straightforward find/replace of |Romanised=you with |Romanised=yō. I suppose you could add some regex to make it more dynamic; that would turn the "find" into \|\s*Romanised\s*=\s*you Primefac (talk) 12:46, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

\s only finds whitespace. The problem either way is that there are likely to be false positives in the batch since (I would guess this is {{nihongo}} we're talking about) is that there are rarely named parameters (and positional parameters do not take the numbers in general), with "you" being found in the translation parameter (not on the pages where "you" would need to be replaced with "yo"). --Izno (talk) 13:17, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly why I suggested \s*, since it would catch 0+ whitespace characters. If we're indeed talking about {{nihongo}}, then we're always talking about the first parameter, which would mean that a search for \{nihongo\s*\|\s*you and replacing with {nihongo | yō would suffice. However, their example doesn't match the template parameters, which makes me think it's a different template. Primefac (talk) 14:47, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Seelentau, if the template you're interested in is in fact {{nihongo}}, then create a new "advanced" rule. From the "Type" dropdown menu, select "Inside template{{..}}". In the "If" tab, in the "Contains" box, put \{\{\s*(?:[Jj]apanesename|JP|[Jj]p|[Nn]ihongi|[Nn]ihongo4|[Nn]ihongo|[Nn]ihono)\s*\|, and check "Regular expression". This will look for all aliases of {{nihongo}}. In the "Find" tab put (\|\s*[Rr]omanised\s*=\s*)you(\s*[\|\}]), and replace with $1yō$2. Check "Regular expression". This will take care of the named parameter cases.

Now make another advanced rule with a "Find" of (\{\{\s*(?:[Jj]apanesename|JP|[Jj]p|[Nn]ihongi|[Nn]ihongo4|[Nn]ihongo|[Nn]ihono)\s*\|[^\{\}\|]+\|\s*)you(\s*\|) and "Replace with" $1yō$2, checking "Regular expression". This will take care of the unnamed parameter cases.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:15, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi guys, thank you for your replies so far. To answer your questions: No, it's not that template, it's one I've written myself for my own wikia. The syntax is this. What I want to do is to replace any "you" with "yō", but only in that part of the article's text that is put in the "Romanised" part of the template. This is of course because of the English word "you" that is often found in the "Translation" part of the template (and maybe somewhere else in the articles where the template is included). So yes, I would like to avoid false positives. Seelentau (talk) 14:01, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

@Seelentau: I think the Find+Replace "Advanced settings" can do this, though I've only played with it once. Here is a settings file that ran a F+R rule only within a certain parameter of a certain template. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:53, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

uuh, that looks more complicated than I thought^^ isn't there anything that I can put as a new Rule w/ exceptions? :/ Seelentau (talk) 15:37, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Seelentau, yes. It will just be a find/replace, and the following code should work: (\{\{lyrics\s*\|.*?\|[^\|}]*)you → $1yō Primefac (talk) 16:07, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I will try it, thank you! :) But, what part of that code specifies that it should only apply to the "Romaji" part of the template? Seelentau (talk) 18:57, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I'll break down the syntax without all the complicated regex. In the template call, if I type {{lyrics||you}} this will place "you" in the second parameter, which based on the code you've provided is the "Romaji" param. In the code I've provided above, AWB is basically looking for {{lyrics|<anything>|<anything>you and replacing the "you" with "yō" (all of the \s and brackets etc are just to specify wildcards and define the replacement parameters). All of the text before the "you" is stored as the "first match" which is then put in the end text (which is defined in regex by $1). Primefac (talk) 19:05, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Huh, okay, I didn't understand much of it tbh^^' But it doesn't seem to work. :/ I just put it as a new F&R rule, right? No need to check any boxes or anything? Seelentau (talk) 19:07, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

You'll need to check the "regex" but but otherwise it should just be a normal F/R. Primefac (talk) 19:09, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I did, doesn't work... I mean it's "Find & Replace => Acvanced Settings => New Rule => Find (\{\{lyrics\s*\|.*?\|[^\|}]*)you => Replace with $1yō => Regex check, done. Right? Nothing else. Seelentau (talk) 19:24, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

You might need to make sure that "caps sensitive" is disabled. Primefac (talk) 19:27, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I did, still nothing. :/ Does your code also apply to "you" that is at the end of another word, like "ikimasuyou"? Seelentau (talk) 19:32, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

It does, though if you wanted to only match "you" then add a space between the * and ), e.g. ]* )you Primefac (talk) 19:34, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Okay, thought maybe that was the problem. But it still doesn't work: https://i.imgur.com/f2EOMpJ.jpg Seelentau (talk) 19:43, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

That text doesn't appear to be inside of a template call, which is why it's not being picked up as a match. Primefac (talk) 19:50, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

So what do I do? Because for the test, I just copied an article's content... Seelentau (talk) 19:55, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

translate link

1-Hi .there is any module or plug in awb that do translate wikilink(en to pt or fa) 2-can somebody covert this file to dll file for me?https://github.com/leafnode/AWB-Translate-Plugin?files=1 --Monorodo (talk) 20:12, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

List All articles created by a user

I am new to AWB and needed some help in creating a list for all articles created by a single user?? Can someone help?? --Hagennos^Talk 16:30, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

@Hagennos: I've found a way to do this; there may be better ways. Over at your Administrator Noticeboard thread you've posted a link to the Xtools page that lists the articles created by a single user. AWB can be told to extract all the page names from that list. Instructions:

In the "Make list" window at the bottom left, select HTML scraper (advanced regex) as the "Source" and https://xtools.wmflabs.org/pages/en.wiki.x.io/Makhamakhi as the "URL". Click "Make list". In the dialog that pops up, enter (?<=<td class="sort-entry--page-title" data-value=")[^"]+(?=">) as the "Regex". Leave the three checkboxes unticked and the "group" as zero. Click "OK".

I've saved the results in one of my sandboxes, User:John of Reading/X3 (Permalink). -- John of Reading (talk) 08:31, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

@Hagennos: This is built in, make the list by "Special Page" then User Contribs, their name, and the namespace. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:18, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Oops, scratch that, didn't see the "created" part. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:19, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

new device email

Since last few days, few minutes after logging in AWB, I am getting the following email:

Someone (probably you) recently logged in to your account from a new device. If this was you, then you can disregard this message. If it wasn't you, then it's recommended that you change your password, and check your account activity.

I havent used AWB on other computer in ages, however everytime I log in now, I am getting this email. Does anybody know why? Also, anybody else in the boat with me? —usernamekiran(talk) 00:27, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran: no, however I suggest you (1) Change your password ASAP. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:15, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: I changed my password around 6:30pm IST, and then immediately logged in to the AWB, got the same email again. I think the server is identifying my computer as a different one every time. —usernamekiran(talk) 17:39, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Usernamekiran, I haven't changed my login habits but I've also noticed an increase in these messages, each of which I can tie back to a previously-uninteresting login location/attempt.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:12, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

@Tom: But I rarely mistype my password. And haven't used another computer for AWB in ages. But I have two different accounts Usernamekiran, and Usernamekiran (AWB). While I use AWB, I still remain logged in on enwiki through my primary account using firefox. I rarely login on enwiki (using firefox/same browser on same computer). Not sure what's causing this. —usernamekiran(talk) 18:24, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

I could only say that it seems that the reporting threshold has decreased (idk where that discussion is/was), which, given my experiences so far, I don't mind. Perhaps after some amount of successful login attempts, the program will establish a pattern and stop reporting? Would be good to know more. I would like to see a rough geographic location given in the email though.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:36, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

I think your first assumption (successful login attempts) may be accurate; I used to get an email every time I logged in as primeBOT, but the last few times it hasn't sent one. Primefac (talk) 20:39, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

It could be that your IP address changes frequently. If you Google "what is my IP", it will answer and if it is different each time, it could be that Wikipedia is thinking you are working from a different location each time.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  18:32, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, my ISP gives me a dynamic IP. Maybe this is the reason. —usernamekiran(talk) 23:04, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Try this: log out from AWB, open Internet explorer, log in to the same account, ignore the mail if arrived, log out, log in again, log out again, get back to AWB, log in. It can help. IKhitron (talk) 01:06, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Infobox cleanup vs. Rule 4.

Rule 4 says: "Do not make insignificant or inconsequential edits. An edit that has no noticeable effect on the rendered page is generally considered an insignificant edit. If in doubt, or if other editors object to edits on the basis of this rule, seek consensus at an appropriate venue before making further similar edits." On the other hand, I've used AWB to cleanup infoboxes *many* times. For example, if Location=asdf is added into Template:Infobox Fraternity, then the article is placed in Category:Pages using infobox fraternity with unknown parameters. Now that is a hidden category, so a user who doesn't have an account or a logged in account without turning on hidden categories won't see a change to the article. So which of these is the way to go

• I stop using AWB to fix articles in the Category: Pages using infobox XXXX with unknown parameters.
• The statement of Rule 4 should be tweeked.
• This is an IAR situation
• I'm evidently bored because I'm writing this.

Naraht (talk) 22:40, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Personally, I consider parameter cleanup to be valuable edits, not something that is insignificant or inconsequential. So there's nothing to reconcile or tweak AFAIC. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:09, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

I have suggested in the past that this discussion should be sent to the community due to conflicting "personal oponions" that results in willing editors to be part of endless discussions that sometimes discourage them from editing. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:42, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

I would argue that in your hypothetical example changing |Location= to |location= would have a visible effect on the page, because you'd suddenly have the Headquarters line appearing in the IB. Plus, the language isn't a "must" but an "is generally considered", with the additional caveats that consensus should always be sought for potentially controversial uses (or if someone calls you out on it). Primefac (talk) 13:18, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Violation of edit rate by Ser Amantio di Nicolao

Greetings, I just wanted to report that it appears Ser Amantio di Nicolao is again violating AWB's terms of use edit rate rule. He is currently editing at a rate of 25-30 edits a minute without an apparent bot flag. 2601:5CC:100:697A:F55F:44A4:194F:D883 (talk) 14:44, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Being discussed at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Violation of edit rate by Ser Amantio di Nicolao -- John of Reading (talk) 16:29, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Just curious, where is max edit rate shown?Naraht (talk) 22:41, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

The edit throttle was taken out of the formal rules in 2012. This is the discussion that allegedly gave consensus to remove it, although I for one can't see it. As a rough guide, if you're making more than four edits per minute chances are you're going too fast to be manually reviewing each edit you're making prior to saving. ‑ Iridescent 22:54, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Kind of depends on what you're doing. Before my bot got approval to remove deleted templates (usually navboxes) I could very easily manage 10-20 edits per minute, because all I was checking was that the correct line was being removed. But yes, context-dependent changes should probably be in the 4-5/min range. Primefac (talk) 13:15, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Four edits per minutes? I can easily review 20-30 per minute depending on the task. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:20, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Any way to natively resolve page IDs to page names?

I tried, for example, adding Special:Redirect/page/11731559 to my page list, then checking "follow redirects", but I got an auto-skip reason of "page is a special page", with no resolving performed. I also tried adding the special wikilink to my sandbox, then trying to make-list "Links on page", but that returned nothing. I could use the API to do it, but I was hoping to find a native feature first.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  00:21, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

There's currently no feature to do this. The "follow redirects" feature only works for standard redirects. What we're talking about is also resolving Special:Redirect pages as part of that, we would need to use the API, so sounds doable but not currently done. Rjwilmsi 15:13, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. This is probably an edge-case anyway. I ended up doing it via https://en.wiki.x.io/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&rvprop=content&format=json&formatversion=2&pageids=11731559, and scraping for "title", for anyone interested.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:37, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Length of edit summaries

While I am no particular fan of the increased length of edit summaries, they're here (for now). It would probably be beneficial to increase the edit summary length of AWB posts. Primefac (talk) 17:22, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

I voted for the 500 character option (though would have preferred 512...). 1000 is a bit redonkulous.

Perhaps there could be a 1-time-per-AWB-instance popup notification when the edit summary is > 500 (or some other large value)? This would help limit accidentally long summaries.

Either way, it would be good to see a (slightly) larger edit summary text box, where 2 lines of text could be read w/o vscrolling.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:36, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

500 it is [7] --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 17:40, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Will this ever be available for Mac?

Any chance that AutoWikiBrowser will be native for Mac one day? I know that I can run a parallel Windows, but I don't really want to go that route. Leschnei (talk) 17:38, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Realistically it would depend on the Mono project having full support for all of the C# and WinForms libraries so it could run natively under Mono. Currently the Mono support is short in a number of areas so I would not think that's going to happen in the short term. AWB does work well under wine, so that is the current solution to run on Linux or Mac instead of using a Windows virtual machine. Rjwilmsi 15:16, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. Leschnei (talk) 19:24, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Dash lengths

Hi, does AutoWikiBrowser support the feature to fix dash lengths in guidance to WP:MOS? Iggy (Swan) 17:34, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Moved from Special:PermaLink/830574575. Primefac (talk) 17:43, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Check WP:GENFIXES. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:06, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Use on other wikis

On the page, it says to use AWB it first requires registration on Wikipedia. How would you use AWB on another wiki that is not Wikipedia? (Sorry if this is already covered in another page and I'm just being dumb; if this is the case, just let me know)--SkyGazer 512 ^{talk / contributions / subpages} 16:13, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Never mind, I've figured it out.--SkyGazer 512 ^{talk / contributions / subpages} 16:24, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Gives an error when i try to login

Anyone knows why? I'm trying to use it for the ckb project and it returns an error when i try to login.--◂ ‎épine Ⓥ 16:36, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

on ckbwiki? I can log on over there just fine. What error are you getting? Have you ever made a single edit over there? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:43, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: I have 17,543 edits and I'm a SYSOP :P. It gave me a "failed" to login error, but I closed and restarted the program and this time around it worked. I think it has a problem though because there were 30 pages with deletion tags and in the AfD category, I could use AWB to delete some of them but 11 pages never got deleted (it kept escaping them) so I had to delete them manually. Any idea why this might happen?--◂ ‎épine Ⓥ 22:20, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Database scan for AWB specific fixes

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T191210

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T191212

I input my database file, check Namepace > Main/Article, then check all of the boxes under Searching > "AWB specific" options, and get no results after ~an hour. I've tried 2 different dump dates and get the same result. Has this tab been turned off or am I doing something wrong?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:00, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

It works on an AND basis, so if you check all fixes, matches will only be articles that match all of them. So you would need to run a separate scan for each fix you are interested in. Rjwilmsi 15:59, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Rjwilmsi, thanks! Would adding "AND" and "OR" radio buttons be a reasonable request? If so, I'll put in a phab ticket.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:02, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

I don't think it is as simple as that. You likely don't want mainspace OR not redirect OR specific genfix, you want mainspace AND not redirect AND (specific genfix 1 OR specific genfix 2) etc., so almost an AND/OR for each option, which doesn't sound feasible. Rjwilmsi 13:18, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

The AND/OR feature need only apply to the Searching > 'AWB specific' box. I've made 2 separate tickets where I think I've been more clear (hopefully at least 1 of them take). *crosses fingers*   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:30, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

"Bots" tab

Under what circumstances is the Bots tab shown? I am using the 350bot account on Wiktionary and I do not see it. Suzukaze-c (talk) 02:52, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

​It should show up when an account has the "bot" flag, which your bot seems to own. Not sure why it wouldn't be showing up. Primefac (talk) 03:10, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

@Suzukaze-c:enwikt uses a registration page, wikt:en:Wiktionary:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage where bots must be listed (in the bot section). — xaosflux ^Talk 03:52, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense! 350bot got added to "Approved users" instead of "Bots". That must be it. I will ask for it to be fixed. Suzukaze-c (talk) 03:55, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Could Tom.Bot be moved to the bots section of WP:AWB/CP please? /jealous   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:46, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Primefac, could you? (please & thank you)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:55, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

 Done. Primefac (talk) 15:10, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

(It worked :D Suzukaze-c (talk) 04:54, 4 April 2018 (UTC))

Access page without redirecting option

I'm trying to access some redirects on a plaintext list I've made, but AWB seems to be redirecting to the main page, instead of directly accessing the redirect page. I'm sure there's a way to directly access the redirect, but neither Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/User manual#Make list nor Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/User manual#Start says how to do this. E to the Pi times i (talk | contribs) 21:33, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Never mind, I found it: it's (file menu) Options > Follow redirects. E to the Pi times i (talk | contribs) 21:39, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

(Which is the fourth ctrl-f search result on the manual page; :-p) E to the Pi times i (talk | contribs) 21:40, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Moving short description templates to below hatnotes

The short description of a Wikipedia article is intended as an annotation to the title. As such it should display as close to directly after the title as technically practicable (when the gadget is activated or css used) Moving it to below hatnotes breaks this logic. Please check at the Wikipedia:WikiProject Short descriptions for more information and discussion. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:10, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Please get back to us when discussion of placement and an update to MOS:ORDER has been agreed & done. Rjwilmsi 07:12, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

OK, I will look into this and get back. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:29, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Duplicate Unnamed References fix

I've tried running AWB through the Dushdi Mala Medal article in order to merge the duplicate references, but it fails to correct all of them (example). Does anyone know why this is happening? Should it be filed as a bug? --Paul_012 (talk) 02:44, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

What are some examples of duplicates that remain? Rjwilmsi 07:09, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Well, the entire right column in the references section in the above linked version consists of duplicates. For example, <ref>[http://www.ratchakitcha.soc.go.th/DATA/PDF/2560/B/018/3.PDF ''Royal Thai Government Gazette''. '''134''' (18): 3.]</ref>. --Paul_012 (talk) 10:56, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

OK, I see. Reason is that if a name for the reference can't be derived from the contents (mostly looking for the citation to be using a cite template), then generic names ReferenceA, ReferenceB, ReferenceC are used, but if there are more refs than that then we give up. I suppose we could go up to ReferenceZ to cover this scenario. Rjwilmsi 14:11, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

I see. Thanks for the explanation. --Paul_012 (talk) 14:32, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

new section

== AAA ==
== DDD ==

(

Hello . how to add new section BBB between AAA and DDD via csv loader. thanks Monorodo (talk) 22:38, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

autowikibrowser translate plugin

• -Hi .there is any module or plug in awb that do translate wikilink(en to de or fa)

• -can somebody covert this file to dll file for me?https://github.com/leafnode/AWB-Translate-Plugin?files=1
• how to active this js [[8]] in autowikibrowser

Monorodo (talk) 13:41, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

replace by regex in awb

== See also ==
* [[Wallachia]]
== Gallery ==
<gallery>
File:Curtea de Arges.E.jpg|St. Nicholas Princely Church
File:Catedrala Curtea de Arges.jpg|Curtea de Argeș Cathedral in an 1880 engraving
</gallery>

Hello. How to move galley section above see also section by regex. thanks Monorodo (talk) 23:20, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

If it's always in that format, you can go with

(==\s*See also\s*==[\S\s]*?)(==\s*Gallery\s*==[\S\s]*?</gallery>)

and replace with $2$1. Primefac (talk) 15:17, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

@User:Primefac. OK. thanks. its work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Monorodo (talk • contribs) 13:42, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

regex for }} in end of infobox

{{Infobox settlement
|name=Ardeoani
|settlement_type=[[Communes of Romania|Commune]]
|total_type= 
|timezone_DST=[[Eastern European Summer Time|EEST]]|utc_offset_DST=+3
|map_caption=
|subdivision_type=Country
|subdivision_name={{flag|Romania}}
|subdivision_type1=[[Counties of Romania|County]]
|subdivision_name1=[[Bacău County]]
|population_total=2563
|population_as_of=2002

'''Ardeoani''' is a [[Commune in Romania|commune]] in [[Bacău County]], [[Romania]]. It is composed of two villages, Ardeoani and Leontinești.

Hello. I use awb. what is the regex to add }} above '''Ardeoani'''. is way to find what article has this problem (have not }} in end of infobox? thanks

Aymara93 (talk) 22:28, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Aymara93, one solution would be to case-sensitive find ([\r\n] *\|\s*\w[\w_]+\s*=[^\r\n\{\}]*)[\r\n]+('''+\p{Lu}[\w\s]+'''+ is ) and replace with $1\n}}\n\n$2, which will work as long as the last infobox parameter value doesn't contain a {{template}}.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:34, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Violation of edit rate by Ser Amantio di Nicolao

I noticed Ser Amantio di Nicolao violated the AWB rules a couple times just in the last week with his edit rate and volume of edits. I left him a notice on his talk page but he does it multiple times a month, multiple people complain about it and no one does anything. I highly recommend his AWB rights be revoked if he cannot follow the rules. 2601:5CC:101:5DEB:95BA:D5C3:683C:12E (talk) 00:26, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Ser Amantio di Nicolao (courtesy ping) is an admin, which means they are automatically allowed to use AWB (i.e. his access cannot be easily revoked). I believe in such situations the only recourse (assuming that he does not respond at all, or in a way that you do not find satisfactory) would be to start a discussion at WP:ANI about it. Primefac (talk) 00:31, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, a repeated violation of AWB rules is WP:MEATBOT/WP:BOTBLOCK worthy. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:59, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Looking over the editor in question's contribs - I don't see a way a human can edit at 20-50 epm, and pay any sort of attention to the edits made. Had this been a non-admin, the account would likely have been blocked by now. SQL^{Query me!} 01:07, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

I'll be honest, I've had these sorts of concerns with them before (see call and response). Their rationale was reasonable at the time, but they keep getting mentioned here and elsewhere. If I didn't have past history I'd be more inclined to take action on the views expressed above. Though, other than the MEATBOT concerns and the occasional "misfire" as I've shown, what is his track record? Primefac (talk) 01:21, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Apologies. I know I can get carried away sometimes, and I've been trying very hard to watch myself using the counter at the bottom of the screen. Guess I haven't been as careful as I'd hoped. I'll set it aside for now. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 01:23, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Is there any evidence of actual mistakes being made, or edits in violation of any policy unrelated to the edit rate? bd2412 T 01:24, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Can you load a special page with AWB?

For example special:Shortpages. is this possible?--◂ ‎épine Ⓥ 20:45, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

As near as I can't tell you can't load Shortpages specifically, but I've loaded using PrefixIndex before, and there are a dozen other options (dabs, protected pages, recent changes, etc). It's in the "Special page" option on the "Source" dropdown. Primefac (talk) 23:21, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

You are correct. AWB used to be limited on the special pages it could load because not all the special pages were in the API. That was changed last year I believe so now it should be possible to load all or at least most of the special pages including shortpages and the Wanted[pages|categories|templates] pages., there is already a phabricator ticket on this but it was submitted by Kumioko who is now banned. Without someone else who is willing to champion it at this point it probably won't happen. It looks like Reedy might have been looking into it based on the phab ticket but I don't know what the status is. related tickets I can see are: T172697 and T155441 Artickle (talk) 17:02, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Maximum Edit Rate

1. Can someone point me to where it talks about a maximum edit rate, either in AWB or in general
2. In the case of fixing misspellings (For example "John Hopkins University" to "Johns Hopkins University"), why do people believe that an edit rate of 20 epm could not be done properly?

Naraht (talk) 14:06, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

In short, this has been discussed at length in numerous locations, but I've spent the last five minutes looking through the various noticeboards and I can't find any of them. But, from my memory, I will attempt to answeryour questions.

1. There is no official "rule" about the maximum edit rate. WP:MEATBOT says merely editing quickly, particularly for a short time, is not by itself disruptive as well as caveats for not sacrific[ing] quality in the pursuit of speed or quantity. It's been discussed a few times at WP:BOTN in the past, and bots are generally limited to 30epm (but again, no "official" number).
2. See my first quote above - this is not necessarily problematic but if it goes on for a few hours it could muck up watchlists.

Essentially, I think the "fast editing" rules have been cobbled together out of institutional memory and complaints, and there simply isn't a "hard and fast rule". Given how much vitriol has been thrown around in the last few months it might be worth codifying our practices. I vaguely recall a discussion where someone said that bots used to be limited to 20epm simply because AWB and the servers themselves simply didn't allow for the program to run any faster. Primefac (talk) 14:18, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

In principle, every edit using AWB should be manually reviewed. I don't think it is possible to manually review 20 or more edits per minute on an ongoing basis - usually those edit rates are the result of someone just pressing accept without actually reviewing the edits. If the edits are so simple they don't need manual review, a bot request is the way to go. The other reason for the rate limitation is to prevent AWB users from making huge numbers of edits that don't have consensus. Because there is no pre-review (unlike bot jobs), we have to rely on watchlist review, and we don't want editors to make thousands upon thousands of edits so quickly that no meaningful review is possible. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:20, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

The main reason on speed limits are mostly concerned with

• Don't edit so fast you can't review edits
• Don't edit so fast you blow up watchlists all over the place

And one part of

• Don't edit so fast that screwing up creates a massive backlog of errors that need to be undone.

In practice, there is some WP:IAR at play. For instance, you could, for a short time, exceed a 10-20 epm rate, if you say, start fixing something extremely simple, like "John Hopkins University" →"Johns Hopkins University", tag a handful of pages with a Wikiproject Banner, or add a category to a few pages. This assume the edits are correct (see context-sensitive edit), not contentious, and not extremely numerous (roughly <100 pages).

If you're starting make runs of several 100s edits, at this point you're (probably) better off making a WP:BOTREQ, or slowing down. But that would be true regardless of editing rate. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:30, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

I agree that the number of pages overall is important. For 40 pages, nobody cares too much about the edit rate, but for 4,000 or 40,000 they are more likely to care. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:01, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

I think this is best left to case-by-case evaluation, since there are many other factors involved that temper editing rate, like the simplicity/complexity of the edits, size of the edits, the types of pages affected, the topic grouping of the edited pages, the coding/settings proficiency of the user, their ability to search for and fix their own mistakes, the amount of exceptions to rules in the wild, etc. Considering all these factors, I think that as long as each edit is checked, accountability maintained, and there are minimal complaints made about the specific editing run (be it mistakes, watchlist explosion, etc.), I don't see a reason to limit speed nor quantity (since, from my experience null editing here and there, 50-55 ppm seems to be the limit for how fast pages can be loaded, which is at the limit of a human to check the most basic 'prepend-to-page' type edits). If complaints arise, then the user should either stop, slow down, rework their settings/code, and/or submit a botreq, based on the nature of their edits and complaints. A user may of course choose to anticipate this and make a botreq right off the bat.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:41, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

The biggest general issues with high speed editing from an editor point of view are: flooding of watchlists, flooding of recent changes, edits obscuring vadalism, and the flood of edits preventing other editors from checking your edits in a timely manner. The watchlist/recent change floods can be readily managed with a bot flag, when performing a repeated specific type of edit. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:00, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Flooding of recent changes could be handled by other means like better recent changes system. For instance, rcent changes system has been improved the last year to provide many new options. Adding tag to AWB edits could be handle this problem. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:41, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

question

hi in auto wiki browser show new pages in 500 do way to show pages more than 500 example 1000 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amirh123 (talk • contribs) 12:12, 4 May 2018 (UTC)