Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive 1

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Contents 1 AWB text reformatting clutters diffs 2 another thing 3 Open Source 4 Feature requests 5 1.6.2 6 1.6.3 7 Notice 8 Village pump (policy) archive 9 Incorrect edit 10 AutoWikiBrowser on Linux 11 "maybe alphabetize interwiki " clutters diffs (please disable option) 12 Adding datestamps to new versions? 13 Auto AfD? 14 Disambiguation tools 15 interwiki sort 16 AWB editing speed 17 NoAutoBrowser tag? 18 no category bug 19 Multiple regex replaces in the same run? 20 Use with other MediaWikis 21 Date delinking 22 AWB is not recognizing me 23 Problem with redirects 24 Fixed width font for text window? 25 Suggestion regarding images 26 not recognizing me being logged in 27 Bug with anchored links 28 Not allowing me to do any work 29 Multiple wiki-links bug 30 First off, thanks :) 31 Yet another bug 32 Make list problem 33 Noinclude 34 Request 35 Request 2 36 Overzealous sorting of categories 37 Redirect problem 38 download broken 39 Option request 40 Not updating after manual edit 41 Multiple find/replace patterns? 42 Saving and Loading 43 Bug? 44 HTML comments lost when sorting categories 45 Request 46 AWB 1.8.1: inserts * before a URL 47 Bypass redirects and Skip articles 48 URL Unicode fonts 48.1 Font problems on 49 Bug when skipping unaltered articles 50 HTML entities bug 51 Enabling of different versions 52 Adding unnecessary bold tags? 53 Minor edit setting not working? 54 Bad link repair 55 Auto mode 56 Bad link repair

AWB text reformatting clutters diffs

Hi there AWB developers. I've noticed that AWB-assisted edits have a habit of reformatting wikitext in addition to the noted changes in the edit summaries. It would be nice if the reformatting were performed as a separate edit before the intended change (with an edit summary like "reformatting wikitext"). This would lead to much clearer diffs and a better reflection of what was actually done to the article. None of this applies, of course, if this behavior has changed in more recent versions or if what I have seen is a result of the AWB user's actions and not the software itself. Mike Dillon 16:34, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

The edit summary is always "AWB-assisted" followed by a phrase of the user's choice. Therefore, it is the user who wrote the incorrect edit summary, not the AWB itself. — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 22:48, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

How is it "incorrect" if the user doesn't know it's happening or doing it intentionally? I don't have access to AWB since I have no Windows machine to run it, so I don't know if they see a diff before saving or if they have to request it just like on the primary web interface. Does a user really know that AWB realphabetized the categories? Is that an automatic behavior, or did the editor I observed do this intentionally and neglect to note it? Not to sound like I'm on a witch hunt or something, as the diff issue is a pretty minor inconvenience. I would say that AWB should strive toward being neutral on the original wikitext formatting, as far as possible. Reformatting is an excellent functionality to expose to the user by choice, but not if they aren't aware of it. Mike Dillon 03:59, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Diff by default, yes.--SarekOfVulcan 04:10, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

The user is 100% aware of all changes before saving, and can they can introduce any extra changes they want. Martin 09:48, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

It has been tweaked a bit more recently as well, so doesn't make quite as many changes. Martin 23:36, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

How? I know it doesn't fix dates anymore, but what other features have been removed? — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 23:49, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I tweaked it so it didnt need to remove spaces before and after == which it did before to make other fixes easier. Martin 00:11, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Good to hear. Mike Dillon 03:59, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that tweak when I was reviewing the code for the first time, but I didn't know that was new recently. In addition, when I was reviewing the code, you seemed to use * and ? differently than listed at Regex. The article says ? matches 0 or 1 recurrences of the character, and * 0 or more, but somewhere, you used a *?. This leads me to believe that, in C#, * means 1 or more, the equivalent of + in most systems. Is this correct? — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 20:48, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

The *? is a single regex atom. It means 0 or more, but it says to use stingy matching instead of the default greedy matching of *. Unfortunately, the Regex article doesn't address greediness, but basically, a greedy regex will match as match characters as possible until it fails, while a stingy regex will match only until the atom that follows can match. There is a better explanation of greediness in Chapter 4 of the canonical Mastering Regular Expressions (search for "greedy" in the text). Mike Dillon 03:23, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

P.S. Search for "laziness" and "non-greedy" to get the explanation of lazy/stingy regexes, or better yet, read the whole thing ;) Mike Dillon 03:31, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the link Mike! I need to read up on Regexs. Martin 11:49, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

another thing

Another thing that should be added is the ability to change categories with a modifier after them, for example {{Category:Wikipedians in the United States|Jtkiefer}} The way AWB currently handles them if you tried to change them over to say {{Category:Wikipedians}} or {{Category:Wikipedians|Jtkiefer}} I'd end up with something like {{category|Jtkiefer}} which causes problems and which is an unusable category. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 23:41, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I will work on that with Martin. Thanks for notifying me of the problem! — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 23:49, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

It doesnt have any logic to remove keys, but otherwise it handles that fine, see this. thanks Martin 23:52, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the sandbox demonstration, but what's a "key"? — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 00:04, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

The key is the bit after the pipe " | ", if a category has a key it is sorted alphabetically by its key and not by its name. Martin 00:13, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh - I always just referred to that as the modified page name. — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 00:24, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Open Source

Due to the recent success of Firefox, OpenOffice, and other open source programs, I was wondering what the general consensus would be on making the AWB open source. I could release the source code and then make a page, maybe Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Open source, where anyone could request features, and developers could post code. If I implemented such a plan, I would also make available to developers an extensive list of the changes in each version of the AWB. Any ideas? — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 23:49, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

At the moment we make people register to avoid anyone abusing the software, being completely open would make that impossible, any features can be requested here, it would be cool to have more people developing it though. Martin 23:52, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I understand. It would make the code more susceptible to abuse. — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 00:04, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Abuse how? It's software for editing a wiki. Hardly revolutionary. If anyone really wanted to make their own then they could do so. This thing should be open source as should anything to do with the wiki (MediaWiki, etc).

It would make the job of vandals easier (they could lots of damage relatively quickly). BrokenSegue 17:40, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. Just a very rough idea: would it be possible to keep a core part closed and make the rest open source? That core part would be released in binary as we have now and the rest would be open. After all, it's .NET :-) --Adrian Buehlmann 22:29, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Of course it's up to the authors, but my vote is to open up the source.. security through obscurity really isn't that effective, and it's not that hard for someone to write a vandalbot on their own. It is also not that difficult to decompile and modify MSIL code, so someone with some .NET knowledge could bypass the registration check. Great software by the way, I just used it in order to subst a template which has been deleted.. now I just need to re-learn regexes, it's been a while since I've used them. Rhobite 20:14, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

The point is that this software would make high speed vandalism available to all, yes it is obviously possible that someone with a lot of spare time and decent programming skills could make their own vandal bot, but it is unrealistic. Also, consider that 1 person has already been removed form the check page for being reckless with it. Plus I am - prepare to be shocked - not a big fan of open source software in general, and the system that we have at the moment has been very successful in rapidly developing the program. Martin 21:35, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

As I said, it's your call. Thanks for writing it BTW, it seems very helpful. Rhobite 22:16, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Not a fan of open source? The Washington Post had an interesting article today, which basically stated that flaws in open source software are fixed 60% more quickly on average than those in closed source software. (With the AWB, all fixes are quick. The article was about profession software, for example, Firefox, all of Microsoft's programs, etc.) Anyways, if anyone wants the closed source code, all you have to do is ask Martin and he'll happily give it to you. Unless you become some crazed lunatic vandal, of course. The only reason it's not open source is because there are crazed lunatic vandals out there, and keeping the code confined to people whom Martin trusts prevents them from getting their hands on it. E-mail Martin and ask for him to e-mail you the code, and then just e-mail him the code back if you make any changes. It's as simple as that. Martin's always quick to respond to his e-mails (no matter what the time zone discrepancy may be). --M@thwiz2020 22:33, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Feature requests

I have two requests. Every now and then I notice the alert about a long article having stub status. Could there be a button (or something) that would quickly remove all the stub templates. I hate scrolling through the text and finding it.

Secondly, this tool is works wonderfully with fixing typos. I imagine it could do the same for disambiguating pages, but I'm really not sure how it would work. The idea I have is somehow a the program receives the different terms from the user (which he collected from the disambiguation page). After getting the list of pages linking to the DAB page, the user goes through each one. If it's the first term (say, pop music), he clicks on it (or maybe presses a hotkey) and the link changes to that term. Say pop -> pop. Clicking on option two (pop art) results in changing pop -> pop. I hope I've explained myself alright, it's difficult to describe. Let me know if you have questions or any suggestions. Oh, and welcome back! :) Gflores ^Talk 07:48, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Tools for disambiguation is a really good idea, at the moment I am working on scanning the database dump, but this will probably be my next target. (that and introducing an spell checker, but I am waiting on Microsoft for that). Martin 13:17, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I would like to point out this python bot which does something similar to what I described. [1]. I think if AWB can make it a bit more user friendly than using the python bot, that would be fantastic. Gflores ^Talk 05:56, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

A similar process could be used to sort stubs and categories. Just something to keep in mind. :) Gflores ^Talk 17:15, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

If you use navigation popups, you can access a similar feature via the popup. If you hover over a link to a disambig page, the bottom of the popup lists all the links on the page. Clicking on one replaces the link Pop with, e.g., Pop (it adds the correct page while keeping the text seen the same). — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 20:48, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Minor regex request: I'm looking for a regular expression to fix bad links. Essentially, it needs to look for links in this form... [[http://www.abc.com]] and change it to this [http://www.abc.com]. Same with [[http://www.abc.com link]]. Sometimes, linke are like this [[http://www.abc.com|link]]. This needs to be changed accordingly to [http://www.abc.com link]. Any help is appreciated. I read a little about regex and came up have used this in AWB... \[\[([Hh]ttp:[^\]\]]+)]] However, it doesn't change for the later caveat (the '|') and may find false positives. If you have time. Thanks. Gflores ^Talk 18:04, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

That can be completed with some regex. I'll work on the code.  — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 20:48, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I just wanted to say thanks for working on this item specifically. Currently the bad link cleanup process tasks many hours for each dump and this would speed up the task considerably. --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 22:30, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Note to Martin - try:

replace \\[\\[http:\\/\\/(.*)\\]\\] with [http://$1]
replace \\[http:\\/\\/(.*)\\|(.*)\\] with [http://$1 $2]

This removes the double [ from http links, and changes the pipe to a space. It finds all links beginning with http://, which means it will also do this to links to articles such as [[http://]]. In addition, it will not fix links beginning with hTTP - I did this since, if you try [hTTp://www.google.com], Wikipedia does not recognize it as a link. Wikipedia only recognizes external links that begin with an all-lowercase http, but the regex could be easily tweaked to fix any case. — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 17:59, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Martin - I just tried the above regex. I added it between lines 58 and 60 in Parsers.cs, and it works. — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 19:18, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Another note - you have to have the two regex replaces listed in the order above. For example, if you have [[2]] and do regex replace one and then two, you get Google - in the reverse order, you still have [3]. — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 22:57, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bad links also has some bad characters for internal links. I have developed these regexs to fix them:

fixes double space: replace \\[\\[(.*)  (.*)\\]\\] with [[$1 $2]]
fixes space at beginning: replace \\[\\[ (.*)\\]\\] with [[$1]]
fixes space before "#": replace \\[\\[(.*) #(.*)\\]\\] with [[$1#$2]]
fixes double underscore: replace \\[\\[(.*)__(.*)\\]\\] with [[$1_$2]]
fixes underscore at beginning: replace \\[\\[_(.*)\\]\\] with [[$1]]
fixes underscore before "#": replace \\[\\[(.*)_#(.*)\\]\\] with [[$1#$2]]

I just tested them, putting them after the two lines above. The reason why I have separate regexs for spaces and underscores is because I don't want to change a link such as January__1#External_links to January 1#External_links - I want the link to use all spaces or all underscores. — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 23:06, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Another request: according to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), the sections should be in the following order at the end:

• See also
• Notes
• References
• External links

or

• See also
• References
• Notes
• External links

I know the AWB separates the categories, language links, FA templates, and Persondata templates and puts them in the correct order - could you do the same with the above sections, i.e., could you write code to separate them and then put them in the correct order? Thanks. — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 21:09, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

1.6.2

FYI: There is a 1.6.2 listed under the list of changes, but the check page doesn't show this version as enabled. — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS}

17:28, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

In addition, I was looking through the code of 1.6, and, in AboutBox.cs, on line 131, there is a type: guidlines should be guidelines. In AssemblyInfo.cs, the copyright date should be 2006 on line 13. Can I have the source for 1.6.2? — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 19:08, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Sure, I'm busy at the moment, but I'll get all of the above sorted tomorrow evening, thanks for the regexs! Martin 22:21, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I understand - we're all busy at some time or another. Thanks for all your work on the AWB, and especially for returning! — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 22:58, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

1.6.3

Note to all: a new version (1.6.3) is on its way! I have already added the following to it:

• Heading sorter (temporarily removed until better script written)
• Bad link repair (both internal and external)
• Fixed security flaw script to see if user is logged in
• Other minor changes (e.g., updated copyright year, typos)

I e-mailed the source to Martin, who will clean up some of the regexs for various tasks. The new version should be out today or tomorrow. — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 19:34, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Notice

Martin - why'd you remove "When using this software, check every single edit and try to avoid making extremely minor edits such as adding or removing a single space" from the notice? — MATHWIZ2020 ^{TALK | CONTRIBS} 23:05, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Because I put it in the "rules", it is more appropriate there. thanks Martin 23:26, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Village pump (policy) archive

Martin says (above) that AWB "is not broken, it's not even specifically designed for this task as you seem to suggest."

We have no way of knowing the intent of the author that it's specifically designed for any particular task.

Unfortunately, the actual effect of AWB is to mass de-link dates, and to mass de-alphabetize inter-wiki links. For example, see breakage of Wikipedia:Disambiguation and breakage of Israel. That's just two very high profile examples.

Therefore, we should assume that it's misused because of poor quality control by the program author (regardless of intent), and prohibit futher use.

--William Allen Simpson 08:31, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Huh? If you want to know the intent of the person who made those edits, since anyone using the AWB has to approve every edit they make, you could ask him (trust me, Ian is very kind and will respond to any inquries you have), and I don't see how the cited diffs could be interprated as "breaking" those pages.--Sean|Black 08:41, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Sean. William, there is an option in the program that I was asked to implement that removes excess date links (I didnt even make the logic behind it), users have to conciously turn this option on for it to work. Plus every edit has has to be accepted by the user. The software can be used for a range of tasks, it is designed for no individual task in particular. Martin 11:12, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

P.s. I made the software, not Ian!) Martin 11:13, 1 January 2006 (UTC) whoops. Martin 15:28, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Also, if you want to know what intentions were, examples include; Me stub sorting about 50% of "Artist" stubs in just a few hours, Kbdank71 (who pretty much single handidly takes care of WP:CFD) is now able to re-categorise the articles himself and User:Gflores has been correcting typos, many others have been using it as well for a variety of things. Martin 13:18, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

"Mass de-alphabetize inter-wiki links" is NOT an effect of the program. Spanish has the ISO code es. Esperanto has the ISO co eo. I see nothing about the behaviour of the program that indicates that it puts eo after es in a alphabet-based sort. The fact that you don't, or won't, understand how it is sorting things is another matter entirely. David Newton 20:53, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I believe the confusion is that the original poster was referring to "alphabetization" of the resulting list of languages, not the underlying codes. The examples cited (Wikipedia:Disambiguation and Israel) used a sort based on alphabetization of the Latin alphabet transliteration of the local language names, but they were changed by an editor using AWB to be alphabetical based on the ISO-esque Interwiki language code. Since there is no official policy on interwiki link ordering, it is up to the editors of an article to agree on one scheme or another. They are both culturally biased, but the faux alphabetization of local names is not really any more internationally saavy because the sort order is still derived from Western languages. There is no inherent reason that the sound "A" should come before "Z" and that isn't even the case for all the languages that actually have those sounds. Mike Dillon 21:08, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I beg to differ:

1. AWB does not require every edit to be approved by the user. It makes dozens or hundreds of changes with only one approval.
2. For those who have difficulty reading the diffs that I provided, concentrate on a few things:
   • removing (previously correct) date links for 1948 and 1967 (and many others) in Israel.
   • re-sorting (previously correct) interwiki links so that "Esperanto" is alphabetized before "Español" (in both diffs).
3. There are many such bad edits, prompting a firestorm of complaints.
4. If you made the software, you are responsible for its output, not the poor sap that used it assuming that the rules it followed conformed to consensus. There is no disclaimer of warranty in this venue.
5. Finally, the argument concerning intent is pretty standard in the legal domain, and I'm sorry that's too esoteric for many to understand. Here's the short version:
   • The intent doesn't matter, and is not an element to prove.
   • The actual results are enough to indict.

Please cease and desist using AWB until its results are tested and proven to conform to consensus.

--William Allen Simpson 23:47, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

That's simply not true. The AWB does require all edits to be accepted by tose using it- Why would Martin lie about that? A couple of incorrectly alphabetized interwiki links do not "break" pages.--Sean|Black 23:53, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

A couple of dozen bad edits and damaged alphabetization on thousands of pages -- broken by any definition! --William Allen Simpson 11:35, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

(Thanks again Sean) William, you are simply wrong; every edit is checked by the user, if you have a problem with people removing dates then take it up with them, as long as it is a guidline it will be an option in the software. I dont know where you get these ideas from, but I hope you stop these slanderous accusations. Martin 00:00, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Rather, the user is prompted to check every edit. This is a very different thing; you can't enforce an actual check in code. And if someone's making a change every two or three seconds, he's spending much more time waiting for the page to load than looking at what he's actually doing. I recall one article where an AWB-assisted edit changed "May 9th, 1955" into "May 9, 1955" [4], correctly fixing and linking the non-functional date, but incorrectly unlinking the year; it's hard to argue that this edit was sufficiently "checked".

My own bot has a function to convert old cut-and-pasted tables into invocations of Template:Album infobox. Because of all the crazy things folks have done with the formatting between the paste and my conversion, the function can't be 100% accurate, so I check every edit (in raw wikicode) before it's posted. Regardless, I still run it at the normal 30-second throttle, because the bot, not me, is doing most of the work. AWB should enforce a timeout as well. —Cryptic (talk) 03:46, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

True. But if someone is sloppily checking their edits, then it's the fault of the user who's, well, sloppily checking their edits, not the software.--Sean|Black 04:51, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

The edit you describe must have been done manually, it couldnt have suggested doing that. Martin 10:31, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Plus, any user abusing the software should be removed from the list so they can no longer use it. I have also disabled the date removal thing because I am tired of defending what people do with it. Martin 10:42, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for disabling the date removal "thing", please:

1. disable the interwiki sort "thing"; and
2. enforce a prompt for each and every change on a page, not a blanket acceptance of dozens of changes on the same page; and
3. enforce a 30 second PER CHANGE timeout for speed of page edits!

• Sorting interwiki links has been carefully and concientiously done by many international editors, and this one program damaged thousands of such pages, sorting by ISO code instead of alphabetically. That's broken by any definition of the term!

• Moreover, there is no reason for us to have to go to each user of your software to chide them for making the mistakes programmed into the software. Many folks went to your talk page and the AWB talk page and complained, and you did nothing about it while thousands of pages were damaged! Now you (Martin) accuse us of slander?

• It's apparent to those of us who have been both professional programmers and professional editors that your code was insufficiently tested, and did not conform to any standard of Professional Responsibility.

Please cease and desist using AWB until its results are tested and proven to conform to consensus.

--William Allen Simpson 11:35, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

It has been released as a development version. Plus, the only information I could find on inter language order was the Wikipedia:Language order poll, in which the alphabetical listing was the most popular choice, hence that's why it sorts like that. Martin 11:39, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Will you (William) please stop going on about "blanket acceptance of lots of edits". It simply is not true. Every edit has to be accepted individually by the user and it is their fault if the edit is wrong because they didn't check it. Also, I think that sorting interwikis is very worthwhile because it makes it easier to add more in the future. --Celestianpower ^háblame 18:09, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Incorrect edit

Just to let you know, on this page, NTL, it incorrectly moves the line to the bottom (it thinks it's a translation link? It begins with...

ntl:hell following shortly after. Devalued and struggling with debts of around $18bn NTL was forced to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May 2002 in order to organise a refinancing deal. The company did not emerge from protection until January 2003,

I'm using 1.6.5 and doing a typo fix in some other paragraph in the article. Gflores ^Talk 16:32, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok, fixed! (1.66 available now). thanks Martin 17:25, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

AutoWikiBrowser on Linux

The AutoWikiBrowser page does not answer: Are there any plans to port AutoWikiBrowser to compile on Linux? (There's the Mono C# compiler and the MonoDevelop IDE available, though this page is grim about how well WinForms apps work on Linux. It sounds like Mono's WinForms support isn't up to the same quality level as its other toolkits, like Gtk# and Qt#. --Unforgettableid | talk to me 19:44, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I dont know much about mono, but I highly doubt it will be portable as it uses the internet explorer core, if they manage to port that then maybe. Martin 19:48, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Could it be ported to the Gecko engine for rendering pages, instead of the IE one? --Cyclopia 13:35, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I couldnt say if it is actually possible, though it would definately be difficult, particularly as ultimately I am going to use .NET Framework 3.0 technology. Martin 16:42, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Since there is a portable, free (as in beer & freedom) C#/.NET runtime (Mono), and since there are portable and free C#-graphic bindings (Gtk#, Qt#), and since there are portable and free HTML rendering engines (Gecko), shouldn't it be better to focus on them instead of going to use highly platform-restricted technologies? Even if you really only want to stay on Windows, using WinFX will make your application available only on Windows XP and Vista. I can't understand the reasons of this choice. Is there some compelling reason for this? Please note that a Linux or MacOS developer that restricts its applications to its favourite OS in the same way would get the same criticism for me. --Cyclopia 17:26, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Well I am a c# developer who uses VS2005 for a start, plus this highly restricted platform is the one that the vast majority of people use. I have never used mono, and quite frankly while I have more pressing issues don't intend to. As for WinFX, it will allow me to easily implement spell checking, I will provide a non-winFX version as well. Martin 17:35, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok. I find it quite sad, but you're the developer. I'm sorry if I bothered you too much, I just wanted to let you know that there are ways to implement what you want to do without restricting your users to a (non-free) platform (no matter how used it is). For example, GNU Aspell can probably help you on spell checking in a multiplatform, free way. Thank you anyway for the good project -I'm just unhappy of being unable to use it. --Cyclopia 22:26, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

"maybe alphabetize interwiki " clutters diffs (please disable option)

Interwiki bots, when adding new links, routinely sort the interwiki links. Thus, it's probably preferable to disable the option in AWB as it makes diffs more difficult to read. -- User:Docu

I disagree, it's a useful tool and diffs are meant to be informative as to what changes were made, on more complex changes they are almost never "easy" to read Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} _{this user is a candidate for the arbitration committee} ---- 09:18, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

It already has an option to disable interwiki sorting anyway. Martin 09:40, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Adding datestamps to new versions?

Hey there. Just a quick request. Is it possible to add a date to when each new version is/was released? This just makes it easier if one has been away and they wish to see the changes that have taken place since their last version.

For example:

Version	Released	Release notes
1.7.0	January 16, 2006	Allows for openings into other areas of space and time.

Okay. I did just that! (Well, except for the fact that I haven't yet come up with a way for the AWB to engage in hyperdimensional travel, but that's on it's way...) --M@thwiz2020 15:01, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. It will make it easier for people (me) to see what has changed between versions if I've been away.--Dan ^(Talk)|@ 15:46, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Auto AfD?

Would it be possible to make a feature that would help AfD artciles? When I'm going through the articles needing cleanup I find the need to AfD some of them, but I don't want to stop very long or switch browsers to do that. I'd imagine that it would (after pressing a button) subst in the template then take you to the next page where you could write the summary and finaly takes you to the daily page to subst in the deletion page. Broken S 15:12, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I could probably do that. The AWB would open three hidden windows and just add the AFD template. --M@thwiz2020 15:21, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I thought Martin was coding this? Broken S 15:31, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

He is. WP:AWB states, "The author is perfectly willing to share the source code with anyone who wants to help in development." When Martin left Wikipedia on 2 January, I asked him for the source code so I could take over. However, he came back to Wikipedia so now he is doing the majority of the coding. Every once in a while, though, I send him some code that he includes in the AWB. For example, if look at the versions table, I contributed to 1.6.3 and 1.6.5. --M@thwiz2020 15:40, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Alright. I was just wondering. Broken S 15:42, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Interesting idea, not sure how feasable though, in the mean time there is an option on the textbox context menu to open the page in your normal browser. thanks Martin 16:38, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation tools

I just started using AWB today to do some disambiguation link repair. I don't have a lot of suggestions ye but figured I would add them here as I think of them:

• Allowing creation of a custom list of Edit Summary's that can be changed for each page without having to re-click start. I like to include what I actually disambuated in the edit summary so that a) someone who looks at the history does not have to do a diff to see what I did and b) so I can look at the work for a single disambiuation page and get a feel for how many links are going to which articles. I usually do something like disambiguation link repair (You can help!) United Provinces to Dutch Republic but with a diffrent target article depending on what I did. It woudl also be good if you coudl apply the text from the dropdown then edit it for the given instance to add for example two links. In anyevent the edit summary is I think a good first step for doing DAB work with AWB.
• A lot harder to implement would be allowing the find and replace to specify multiple replace with strings which the user woudl be prompted for each instance. Dalf | Talk 04:38, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
• Add a filter to the list like the one that removes links outside of the main namespace to remove or select links via redirects. Dalf | Talk 05:15, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

interwiki sort

Can somebody check: [5]. Does it reveal a bug in interwiki sort? Bobblewik 19:47, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

No, some people like to sort them one way, some another, thats what happens when there is no policy. AWB does it the most popular way, plus it has an option in the menu to disable it. thanks Martin 19:59, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

OK thanks. Bobblewik 20:15, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

AWB editing speed

Martin, one of the rules for the AWB is "Don't edit too fast." What do you consider "too fast"? I noticed that you routinely crank out edits at five or so per minute, yet User:Talrias blocked User:Bobblewik on 29 Dec for editing the same amount, saying it was not possible. Is that speed acceptable? Thanks. --M@thwiz2020 21:42, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I would be interested in the answer to this. User:Talrias blocked me again today <sigh>. So if I go quiet again, either it has happened again or I have given up in disgust again. This problem is inherent in being a janitor.

If people with blocking powers are using speed as justification then artificial speed reduction might be deal with the symptom, if not the disease. I do not know how I would target a particular edit speed. Is it possible to add a speed-brake at an acceptable rate, or a rate that could be modified by negotiation?

Incidentally, I have been accused of being a bot in the past (e.g. on my talk page and elsewhere) because my manual edits are often fast. I think I have got up to 4 edits per minute.

In addition, a suggestion for increasing overall speed while keeping individual speed low might be to share tasks. bobblewik 22:01, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

"Too fast" depends on what you are doing, so some kind of throttle becomes useless, plus people doing disambig'ing etc. frequently edit just as fast. I havent been using my bot account because it is flagged and wont appear in recent changes, I probably should make a seperate bot account though. Bobblewik was blocked because he was making controversial edits frequently, not specifically because they were frequent. Martin 22:16, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

(originally a reply to bobblewik, now down here after EC) In deleting categories that are about to be deleted from articles, it is not uncommon for me to open 10 or 20 tabs so I can go up and down the line with my cuts. While I did a bunch of stuff this morning with little heed to my speed, I am not sure that awb made me any faster than my multitabbed method. It just made me more efficient (well, until I broke someone's complex italicizing on an article or two). In fact I just checked and here is my multitabs where I was doing 6 per minute, which is comparable to my awb speed this morning (on the first page or two of my most recent contributions). --Syrthiss 22:24, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out the italics problem, will be fixed soon. Martin 22:42, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I just looked at bobblewik's contribs, and all his edit summaries say "x percent' -> 'x %' in accordance with Manual of Style" even if they dont change the percentage at all. Is this a bug or something?

PS, Bobblewik, i would check your edits a bit more carefully if i were you, for edits like this. -- jeffthejiff (talk) 23:05, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

This is very annoying, we have a check page so this software is only used resposibly, please check your edits. Martin 23:14, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually I am going to remove your name from the list Bobblewik, you have already received multiple complaints from just a few hours work. sorry Martin 23:17, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Huh? I do not understand. jeffthejiff wanted me to check a particular edit. No matter how carefully I check that edit, I cannot see anything wrong with it. It removed a blank line. How is that controversial? It is bizarre to be criticised for edits that are actually inherent in AWB.

If the problem is that the summary implies my own edits and all that happens is AWB-inherent edits, then that is fine. I can easily incorporate that as a constraint. Alternatively, I can modify the wording to add "possibly". But, until now, I was not aware that it was a problem. I still don't quite see the big deal. What other complaints do you think are valid? Sigh. bobblewik 23:52, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

The problems are; you havent been checking edits properly, your edit summaries are misleading sometimes and you have made very minor edits (which the main page specifically says not to do). If you come across a page where the task your are performing isnt necessary (i.e. you are fixing %s, but the page contains none) and/or the only edit it is making is very minor, then just ignore it. Also, err on the side of caution. May I also recommend that you generate a list of pages that definately need something fixed, such as a common typo (I can do that for you from the data dump if you want), because that way you won't come accross too many pages that should be ignored. If you are happy with all that then I am happy for you to comtinue using the software. I am signing off now so someone else can re-add your name before I come back if they see fit. Martin 00:22, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure the verification is working though since for some odd reason when I forget to log in it still lets me edit using AWB so you'll probably want to recheck and fix if needed the verification code. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 23:57, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Bobblewik, on the main page, under "rules", it says: "Avoid making extremely minor edits such as adding or removing a single space." In the edit described above, that's exactly what you did. Therefore, I am in full agreement with Martin's decision to remove you from the enabled users list.

As for the flaw discovered by Jtkiefer, I'll experiment with that, too. Thanks for bringing it up! --M@thwiz2020 01:50, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I see that. I read it a while back but it clearly did not sink in. That must be because I find it easier to remember things that seem rational and harder to remember things that do not. My simple view of the world has been than a small improvement is better than no improvement. Unless my memory is playing tricks on me, there is encouragement for editors to improve articles in any way they can. I do recall seeing instances whereby my chosen edit did not appear but I chose to go ahead on that basis. I could easily have turned off the 'general fix option'. Believe me, I wish I had. It would even have made my work faster. I still do not understand why small improvements are a bad thing but I won't forget the constraint now.

As far as misleading summaries are concerned, I usually attribute that term to a claim of Doing X and Y when it does A and B, or X and A. In my case, the summary said Doing X. Y. and the complaint was that it merely did X. Actually, it sometimes did X only, sometimes Y only, sometimes X+Y together. So perhaps it should have said Doing X and/or Y. Ironically, the very specific summary was added in response to a request for more detail by Talrias. I do not like being blocked by him so I took his request quite literally and probably gave too much detail.

A while back I was going to ask for an option of ignoring pages if my 'Find' string was unsuccessful but still apply the general fixes if it was successful. That would mean I could be sure all my edits are a targetted 'hit' and may also have the benefit of the general fixes. The current situation means I now have a very strong incentive to turn general fixes off for all edits whereas I have only a very weak incentive, if any, to keep general fixes on.

Now, enough of that negative stuff and onto the positive. My aim was to bring the many instances of 'x percent' and 'x per cent' into line with MoS guidance which says digits should be paired with '%'. I used Google to find them, but if there is a way to probe a database dump, that would be much better. Just to confirm my knowledge of the rules: small edits are bad; summaries should not exceed the actual edits. If I am still persona non-grata, then that would be a shame but there is not much I can do about it. bobblewik 02:45, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Your tone has grown slightly caustic. The point is, all your edits have some cost. Server time, wasted time of people checking RC (shouldn't that edit have been marked 'minor'?), filling up the edit history, etc. Removing that line changed the article in no way. You're supposed to ignore trivial cases because they are trivial (and should be done in conjunction with worthwhile edits, not as their own entities). If you haven't the time to change the edit summary while editing you are going too fast (unregistered bots, even manual ones, are supposed to go slower than one edit every 30 sec) and I doubt you are actualy sufficiently reviewing the edits. I agree, you shouldn't be using the bot for a while. Broken S 04:20, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

It is difficult for anyone to detect tone in text. To the extent that 'tone' is apparent, it frequently looks worse than intended. So do not judge me please. I have no idea about server time or what RC is. All I know about is that articles have a lot of rubbish in them. I was trying to fix percentages in line with MoS guidance. I succeeded in that task and thousands of instances of percent are better for it. That seems to me to be a good thing, not a bad thing.

I was not tackling excess lines but it came up as part of general fixes and it seemed a reasonable suggestion to me. My limited understanding of computers is that extra code on a page is wasteful of something. I have already explained the reason for the same summary but if you missed it, the reason it remained as Doing X. Y. is because it was indeed doing X or doing Y, or both.

If you are determined to believe that I am a bad person, or that I am damaging Wikipedia, then there is not much I can do about your opinion. If you look for defects in people you will find them. If you look for merits in people you will find them. I am not your enemy. bobblewik 05:16, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

We're not being your enemy, just trying to help wikipedia and help you help wikipedia. Extra code on a page is wasteful to some extent, but because each and every edit is saved in the history, it will just use space on Wikipedia's servers anyway. No idea how much they've actually got, but it must be some huge amount. A larger problem is the server time though. By that we mean the time the Wikipedia servers take to make the page up and send it to you - something that is costly in such large quantities (as one of the most popular sites on the internet), and the main reason why Wikipedia asks for donations. And by RC, brokensegue meant Recent Changes, a page which lists all the recent changes made to wikipedia. People check it and might look at the edits only to find that a space has been added in a place that makes no difference to the actual article. Same goes for the Watchlist.

So essentially really minor edits that make no difference to the article should be avoided because they just waste space in history lists - the actual space saved in the code is negligible. Thanks for spending a lot of time improving wikipedia though. -- jeffthejiff (talk) 08:22, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

(indent) The point of the "general fixes" is simply that while you are fixing something such as a common typo, re-categorising or something, that it also makes other minor changes at the same time, as a rule of thumb, if a change doesnt actually affect the look of an article, then don't make it. Also, you will be pleased to hear that the software does have the feature you mention, the "ignore if doesnt contain" is very helpful as it will automatically skip any pages that do not contain what ever the problem is you are fixing. As for your rules; small edits are good, but not if the total edit is insignificant, edits can exceed the edit summary (but not by anything significant), this might sound strange to write, but the vast majority of edits ever made exceeds the summary in some way, just don't let them be misleading, (I think this problem will be solved naturally if you skip pages that dont contain the mistake you are fixing) thanks Martin 10:28, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining it, I understand better now. I am delighted to hear that you have added an 'ignore if doesn't contain' feature. I appreciate the time you take in this. I would be happy to fix more of the same percent problems with a modified edit summary and avoiding insignificant edits. bobblewik 13:04, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Bobblewik, above, you said "I used Google to find them, but if there is a way to probe a database dump, that would be much better." Well, Martin recently developed a database dump search tool. Either you can download and run it or ask Martin to scan the dump for the regex "per ?cent". That way, your fixes would be targeted to articles which (as of the last dump) contained percent or per cent, not all articles returned by a Google search of percent. --M@thwiz2020 21:52, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

NoAutoBrowser tag?

Hi. Is there any way for telling the AWB not to change (by default) a given piece of text? In two different revisions, two editors have removed a lone underscore that was instead necessary [6][7] . Another editor has found the solution of replacing it with the HTML code "&#95", but I am not convinced that the AWB will not delete it again. Having some way for telling the AWB not to change a given piece of text (or, at least, making it alerting the user that that piece of text is not to be changed automatically) would solve the problem. Thanks. - Liberatore(T) 13:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

It does have a way of telling the editor what not to change, as it shows them exactly what it has done before it commits anything, unfortunately, as discussed above, Bobblewik has been less than thorough in checking, and for that reason is not able to use the software at the moment. Martin 13:40, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

For this particular change, AWB should know not to remove underscores from the right-hand side of the pipe. In other words, given [[A_B|C_D]], AWB should transform this to [[A B|C_D]]. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 15:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about this bug - I wrote the code for the bad link fixer. I'll relook at the regexs and then get back to you with an answer and, hopefully, a new regex. Thanks for bringing this to my attention! --M@thwiz2020 20:26, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

While I did write the bad link fixer, Martin added his own underscore fixer as mine had some flaws to it. I went over his code and I think I fixed it - I'm currently testing it out on ASCII. I'll post my results here and, if it works, send the code to Martin. --M@thwiz2020 18:51, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

What the script does is it takes every link and, if it does not contain ":" and it does not begin with "[[_" (my script lacked these components, which is why it wasn't used), then it replaces all "_" with " ". I tried to get it to split the link at "|" but I couldn't get it to work. So, I guess, there is no fix. (It also tries to make [[Bracket|<nowiki>[]]</nowiki> into [[Bracket|<nowiki>[[]]</nowiki>.) Editors will just be forced to double check every edit before saving - then again, since everyone is supposed to be doing that anyways, there is no problem here.

A valid underscore in a link is extremely rare. Martin 21:19, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Just a side question: As Netoholic points out to me on my talk this seems to be a common case to be carefully considered at least in respect to template calls. Is there any consensus how to write template calls? Is it normal that calls to templates are written at random with underscores or spaces? --Adrian Buehlmann 22:06, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Underscores are seen as spaces, so replacing them with spaces makes no difference to how templates etc. are displayed. They are removed simply because they are unnessecary mess. It does say on the project page not to make very minor edits for this reason. thanks Martin 22:17, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok thanks. I had that "unnecessary mess" feeling too and thought that while I'm cycling through the calls of Infobox Film I could clean up that in the same run. I have clarified that on the project page that this also accounts under "extremly minor edit". Thanks. --Adrian Buehlmann 22:39, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Several pages on standards and punctuation syntax infact:[8]. Maybe there should be a rule which searches if a link in the page in question leads to the underscore page. At least the odds of encountering such a problem again would be slashed. Although, any page which relies on underscores (any page which deals with game map topics springs to mind) will be an issue in the future. Being a statistical guy, right now there are 930,000 articles on Wikipedia, and there are probably at least 1000 pages which contain links which rely on underscores. Therefore, in an even edit spread, there's a 1/1000 probability that AWB edits a page incorrectly. Realistic odds are much longer but the 1/1000 is still too high to ignore.--Dan ^(Talk)|@ 21:51, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Virually all those links to underscore do not actually contain an underscore, I'll make it so it ignores links that actually contain the word "underscore" though anyway. Plus no links rely on underscores, as they are seen as whitespace, a few links start with an underscore, but it ignores them already (such as _NSAKEY, but as you can see the underscore isn't actually part of the name for technical reasons). Plus AWB is not automatic, so it shouldnt matter anyway. Martin 22:38, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I had already seen the discussion on the AWB in the village pump, and I agree that the user is responsible for all changes. I suggested that the AWB could alert the user to more careful than usual when changing some pieces of text, but I consider that a suggested improvement for the AWB, rather than a fix. Not having any idea of how long would that take to be implemented, however, I don't know if the effort of realizing this improvement can be worthy. - Liberatore(T) 11:43, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

no category bug

AWB fails to reconize {{1911}} as adding a categoy. I suspect it does not catch them from any template as that woudl be hard to do. Its still probbly notable as articles with only 1911 britinica categorys probly need more. Dalf | Talk 08:25, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

that's correct, it doesnt see the category inside a template, but the 1911 one deoesnt count as a proper category anyway. Martin 09:44, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

True enough. I was wondering though if you coudl add a feature to add a category to articles if they do not already have it. I was using AWB today to add Category:Cities in Romania to all of the cities listed in List of cities in Romania (alphabetical) and there did not seem to be an easy way to do it. Some of them needed other Categories added too so just pasting over and over did not work. FOr that task it looks like we can just at the category to Template:Romanian cities infobox but for the future it might be a worthwhile feature. Dalf | Talk 09:51, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Multiple regex replaces in the same run?

I know I'm evil (and greedy and possibly stupid :-): Could AWB be extended so that mutilple regex replace actions could be entered and executed in the same run (a list of search/replace fields)?

Maybe I'm on a totally wrong track, so I try to explain what I want to do: The underlying problem I'm thinking about to solve is changing calls to templates that need renames in parameters. Specific example job I'm about to do: template:Web reference supports an old variant that used uppercase/lowercase in parameter names. I'm thinking about changing these to the new lowercase only parameters variant.

Reason for this (sorry for my verbosity): Web reference is currently a meta template and I'm trying to convert that to using the new CSS-Trick of Netoholic. I have problems to do that supporting both kinds of parameter sets, so I'm thinking about switching calls to the lowercase only parameters variant.

Sorry for nagging with this whole chain of reasoning and many thanks for any help and ideas in advance. And thanks again to Martin for providing this great tool. (And please don't bother to tell me if I'm asking too much or the wrong thing!). --Adrian Buehlmann 12:41, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

It's a good idea, I'll get around to it one day, part of the problem is simply organising the interface. Martin 21:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Yuha! Great. Thanks a lot. Maybe you could consider a config file with a list of exchange rules for simplicity. A menu point to load the rules (for the more experienced users) or so — Just an idea to make it as easy for you as possible. UI programming can get laborous. --Adrian Buehlmann 21:34, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Use with other MediaWikis

This is a great tool. Is it possible to configure it to work with other wikis, like other languages, or meta.wikimedia.org? Elonka 03:25, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

At the moment I am mainly working on making the code more robust, this will make using it on other sites easier, but then there are probably problems that I havent foreseen. Martin 09:51, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Date delinking

I thought that the date delinking feature was removed. However, Bobblewik seems to be doing a lot of date delinking. For example, see this edit. Has it been removed, or has it been added back? --M@thwiz2020 02:21, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

You can certianly run the regex repalcements manually, without using the delink checkbox. This will be true as long as repalcemetns using regex notation are supported. DES ^(talk) 03:14, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

However it happened, it seems that the changes are still not being reviewed in the latest round of the war on date links. In the Google edit cited above, [[January]] [[18]], [[2006]] got stripped of the brackets, rather than fixing it for the date prefs to work (manually removing the two middle brackets is all that is required). The malformed Dec 22, [[2005]] was handled in the same way. I know that reviewing changes like this is tedious, but my opinion is that quality shouldn't be sacrificed just for speed. Neier 06:05, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree entirely, but Bobblewiki is not using AWB. Martin 09:33, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

He's using a crafty bit of javascript User:Bobblewik/monobook.js/dates.js

AWB is not recognizing me

My name (Eagle 101 is in the list, but AWB tells me that I am not elegible to use it? What am I doing wrong. (yes I am logged in, on windows SP v2, and have broadband internet. What is wrong.

It was working when I was using v1.7.1 but v1.7.2 is giving me the error message. Thanks for any insight.Eagle (talk) (desk) 22:17, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

The user-checking script was changed a bit in 1.7.2. However, as far as I know, it was only changed to make sure the cookie is not empty. --M@thwiz2020 22:42, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

try 1.73, thanks Martin 23:35, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Having just tried 1.73, it's not working for me either. :( --Dan ^(Talk)|@ 00:43, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it should be 1.7.3 instead??? --Dan ^(Talk)|@ 00:47, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I think I have cracked it, try 1.74, problem is that I can't reproduce the problem because it works for me. Martin 01:03, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

That works for me now, thankyou.--Dan ^(Talk)|@ 01:39, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

That works for me also. I think the problem is fixed now. Thanks.Eagle (talk) (desk) 20:00, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Problem with redirects

I used version 1.7.4.0 and had Czestochowa in the list. When "Bypass redirects" is checkmarked (default), AWB loops forever on that redirect ("Browser status is {Loading|Complete}). I had to click the ignore button (BTW a stop button might be a good idea? Don't know). Same happens on Nowy Sacz, Znin, Elblag and others (from what links here of list of Template:Infobox Poland). Low prio problem for me. Just wanted to report it. --Adrian Buehlmann 14:38, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Its the Internet Explorer/unicode problem again, will be fixed in next release, thanks Martin 14:53, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Fixed width font for text window?

This one is for the wish list: it would be nice if the text edit window (lower right window) of AWB could use a fixed width font (like courier or so?). I recently noticed how helpful this edit window really is (I was a bit reluctant to edit there until recently but it works just great). But this is just a "nice to have" one (not that important, no clue how nasty to implement). Thanks! --Adrian Buehlmann 15:42, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Changing the font is very easy, I'll do that in next release, thanks Martin 15:46, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Ahh. The new fixed width font in AWB 1.7.6 is great. Many thanks. --Adrian Buehlmann 00:43, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion regarding images

Is there a way to have an option to turn off the loading of images? Some days, like today, I notice a huge delay after I click save, and it's mainly due to waiting for the images to load in the page. I wind up clicking Start the Process again to skip to the next article. --Kbdank71 20:52, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I just turned off images in IE's preferences, which isn't a problem normally as I use Mozilla for RealBrowsing (tm). Since AWB basically uses IE, that stops the loading of images. --Syrthiss 20:56, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I suppose I should have figured that out on my own. Thanks! --Kbdank71 21:39, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

not recognizing me being logged in

AWB isn't letting me do any work since it keeps saying that I'm not logged in even though I'm logging in and I can even check a special page in the browser (which get pulled dynamically) and get the fact that I'm logged in. I'm using 1.7.4.0 btw. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 22:58, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

With the new version it still isn't working for me, it keeps saying that I'm not logged in. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 23:49, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, do you have internet explorer 6? Martin 23:57, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, how did you change the way that logins are confirmed, I never had this problem before the changes to the way login checking was changed. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 00:02, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Bug with anchored links

The general cleanup function replaces underscores in link anchors with spaces. This is incorrect behavior; the part of the link after the '#' character should not be altered. Kelly Martin (talk) 06:26, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok I'll look into it thanks Martin 09:37, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I cannot see that it is a problem, the extra underscores are just extra clutter surely? As links work exactly the same with or without underscores. e.g. Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Directions_and_regions is exactly the same as Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Directions and regions, apart from the latter has no underscores. I am not unwilling to change the behaviour, I just need to clarify the problem before I fix it. thanks Martin 12:10, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Hm, MediaWiki replaces the spaces after the # as well. So you're right. Nevermind. Kelly Martin (talk) 12:16, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok cool. Martin 12:22, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Rick Block found a possibly valid reason to have an underscore in a link: it behaves like a non-breaking space, but is a bit wider than a normal space (example Leopold_I compared to Leopold I. See also Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#non-breaking space in links and this example. --Adrian Buehlmann 15:20, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Not allowing me to do any work

I just registered and AWB isn't letting me do any work. It keeps telling me to log in, I keep logging in, and it keeps saying I'm not logged in. BTW, I've got version 1.7.5.0. Alr 15:55, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

In the IE window it creates at the top of the page, does it show you logged in up there? I was switching to my bot account earlier and thought all I had to do was open up IE and log in there, but AWB didn't have me showing in the upper panel. Even though it says 'don't click in the top panel', you can click to do stuff like log in and look at your watchlist. --Syrthiss 16:03, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it does show me as being logged in. Alr 16:04, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, then I don't know. Maybe someone else will have a suggestion. --Syrthiss 16:16, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Do you usually browse wikipedia using Microsoft Internet Explorer? As far as I can tell, AWB relies on MSIE being configured correctly. --Netizen 16:36, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I use Firefox and only go with IE when absolutely necessary. I did try logging in with IE and then with AWB in various combinations. Didn't work once. Alr 20:06, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like the problem I'm currently having (see my thread above). Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 20:21, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

The newest version (1.76) may have solved the problem, if not then I can probably fix it another way. Martin 22:00, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Seems to be working OK now. Thanks! Alr 23:20, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, works for me too it seems. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 09:24, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Multiple wiki-links bug

Under "alerts" when it says multiple wiki-links, if you double click a repeated link, in will highlight that link in the text, but will not highlight the last two sqaure brackets: ]]. So for example if you double click on a link saying Spain, it will highlight the [[Spain part in the text box to the right, but not the final brackets. I hope I have made myself clear. Thanks, — FireFox • T • 17:58, 28 January 2006

First off, thanks :)

Making it so I can remove categories is a big help. I was doing it by hand (with awb opening the articles for me).

There appears to be a bug with the category removal though... if the category is listed like [[Category:Child prodigies|*]] (with the asterisk) then it wants to wipe out everything after that as well (other cats, interwiki links). I've just been ignoring those articles where that happens and I'll do them by hand. --Syrthiss 04:07, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, just confirmed that it will do it no matter what the cat construction syntax is in some cases. It just wanted to wipe out all the interwiki links in Jeremy Bentham when I was removing the child prodigy cat. --Syrthiss 04:09, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Fixxed now in 1.77, thanks for finding that. Martin 09:15, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Yet another bug

I'm not good at filing bug reports, so I'll just describe step by step how to reproduce this bug and leave the brilliant prose for featured articles... :-)

1. Opened AWB, started process.
2. While waiting for pages to load, opened MSN messenger, started to chat.
3. At the same moment when page finished loading in AWB, a carriage return ("enter") would be sent to my chat window.
4. Closed MSN, but then went to IRC using XChat. The same "carriage return" event happened, cutting sentences half-way.
5. If pages finished loading in AWB while Firefox was in focus, the last tab I opened with middle click would re-open in a new tab.

The above happened enough times as to lead me to believe it wasn't just something I was doing wrong. It seems that AWB just wouldn't sit quiet in the background. I'm using the latest version of AWB (just downloaded it today) and I have no memory of this error happening before, so it might be interesting to have a look at this. Thanks. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 22:36, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

it has always been like that, I keep meaning to get around to changing it, I'll do it soon. Martin 22:51, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Fixed it now, in verion 1.78. thanks Martin 00:13, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Make list problem

AWB version 1.7.8 loops forever if I try to make list from category:if templates. --Adrian Buehlmann 08:45, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. Think this has nothing to do with AWB. That category is really strange. Seems never ending presenting the same entries over and over again (next is always enabled though there seems no next). --Adrian Buehlmann 09:21, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

This happens if there are more than 200 entries in a category with the same sort key. Known bug in MediaWiki. Kelly Martin (talk) 19:33, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Um. Thanks for the message. Good to know. --Adrian Buehlmann 21:21, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Noinclude

Is it possible, if "Apply general fixes" is checked, to not move categories enclosed within noinclude tags to the end of the article? I've come across a few templates that someone had edited with AWB, and the category was moved outside of the tags, causing a number of articles that had that template to be miscategorized. --Kbdank71 19:01, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Will be fixed next release, thanks. Martin 19:29, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

No, thank you. :) --Kbdank71 20:59, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Request

Can we get an option to populate the article work list from a specified user's contributions? Kelly Martin (talk) 19:35, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Until such a featuee is built in, i think a copy from a contributions page to a text file would do the trick. DES ^(talk) 23:54, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Sure. Martin 00:02, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Request 2

Is it possible to put a timer under the save button? such that the timer would reset everytime the save button is pressed? It would be nice to have, if it does not take that long to program. Thanks!!!!!Eagle (talk) (desk) 22:39, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm just curious, but what would be the function of such a timer? --M@thwiz2020 23:41, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

To avoid editing so rapidly that other users claim that a bot flag is required. I have seen several complaints that any edits made at a rate of more than 2 or 3 per minute by an accoutn without a bot flag using AWB should be consdered bot-edits. I don't agree with thsi position, but avoiding clamor may be worth while to some. DES ^(talk) 23:52, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

You have my intentions exactly, time goes reeeally slow when you are stub sorting, especially by regex. I want to make dead certian that I do not edit faster than 2 or 3 edits a minute. What I am doing is replacing ((stub-here)) with ((another related stub here)), using regex to narrow the field, and then double check that the regex did the right thing. More infomation on what I am doing can be found here Eagle (talk) (desk) 00:09, 1 February 2006 (UTC) (the posted time is out of order due to edit conflict)

It would be easy to add so I guess I may as well. Martin 00:06, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks00:10, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Really? When I use the AWB (which I haven't, unfortunately, been doing as much recently), I edit at about five pages per minute. To me, as long as I check each edit before submitting, I can go this fast. Each page loads in about five to eight seconds, so I can then spend seven to ten seconds scrolling through the changes window. If I see anything suspicious, I'll stop and investigate - otherwise, I'll submit. I see no reason why this technique should be criticized - sure, it's a lot of edits per minute, but they are each checked! --M@thwiz2020 00:12, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure?? I will do what you stated above. Thanks!! Because most of my time now is spent watching the clock on my computer not editing or checking...are you sure that is ok.. according to the rules..., oh just tell me if it is ok!!!Eagle DES ^(talk) 23:18, 1 February 2006 (UTC)(talk) (desk) 00:27, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

As I read the rules, if an edit is manually cheked it is ok no matter how quick, but if someone objects to particular edits, they have been known to denounce them as "bot-edits" if faster than 2-3 per minute. read WP:BOT where things are less clear then they might be.

Is it possible to make this an option and not a mandatory timer (if it goes in at all)? I can edit faster than 2-3 per minute just by using firefox. --Kbdank71 14:16, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Check out 1.79, has all requested features. Timer is option in menu. thanks Martin 14:21, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Overzealous sorting of categories

Some categories are in a particular order. However AWB goes through and sorts them into alphabetical order. The result is I constantly have to partially revert AWB changes made by users. Is there a way around this? Can new rules for category sorting be added? Jdorje 05:50, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Alphabetisation of cats and interwikis can be turned off in the menu. Martin 09:28, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah. Missed that too. How about setting this to "off" by default? --Adrian Buehlmann 09:37, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I could do, but when pywiki bots changes categories they alpha sort them in a totally automatic fashion, so I dont understand how they get away with it but I don't. Martin 09:47, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Could you possibly turn category sorting off by default? It does more harm than good. DR31 _(talk) 14:27, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, but do you not mind that pywikibots do it in large quantities without even human supervision? Martin 14:57, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I guess. But whatever can be done to avoid reverting the work on carefully sorted categories. DR31 _(talk) 15:54, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

If I see a wikibot do automatic sorting, I would complain about that too. But so far I've only noticed human users doing it (though I might have missed it). Jdorje 16:40, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Here's an example: [9]: (AWB assisted living people category -- I guess that's a person using it) and (Robot: Changing category United States soccer players)

This would be pointless, there is no reason why the specific order of the category listings matters since they're still classified the same way no matter what they're order. Bluemoose I suggest you leave this feature the way it currently is since there is no good reason for turning it off even if it is manually enableable. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 19:51, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

It affects the order of categories as listed in the bottom of the article. These are in a specific order. Jdorje 19:56, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

But what I'm saying is that other than the asthetic tastes of a few there's no reason why they need to be done that way and there's no advantage to having them sorted that way, I will continue to use the category sort feature on every edit I make using AWB. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 19:59, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Your argument is circular. If there is no purpose to sorting them any way, why do you want to sort them at all? Obviously there *is* a purpose to sorting. It also helps editors to have a consistent sorting: for instance, tropical cyclones are categorized by basin, season, strength, and location, in that order. Keeping the order consistent lets editors see at a glance that there are the correct number of each category applied (1 basin, 1 season, 1 strength, 0 or more locations). Putting them into alphebetical order provides no additional benefit whatsoever. Jdorje 20:05, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

A consistant sorting would mean sorting every article the same way and since there is no consensus on which way is best alphabetically works as well as any. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 20:16, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

The hurricane articles are sorted consistently. Of the 550+ articles, only a small fraction (those which have been changed by AWB or a bot) do not follow the same sorting rules. You are, of course, free to continue using the AWB sort feature - in most cases it is probably appropriate to do so. I am also free to keep fixing incorrect sortings, and to keep complaining. However I think it is not right for you to go out of your way to "fix" all tropical cyclone category sorting specificially, as you appear to be doing. Jdorje 20:19, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Might I suggest, if this is an important issue, that you try creating a template which adds an article to these multiple categories simultaneously in the correct order: this will also aid in making sure the sort key is consistent. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 10:25, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

On that topic... Martin, your google wikipedia make list option looks amazingly. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 20:24, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Redirect problem

Not sure if I am doing this correctly so I'll just describe what I did.

• I wanted to fix all the double redirects to a page I just moved.
• I generated a list using the what links here feature and told it to replace article name with newname.
• When the program went to edit a redirect it followed the redirects to the page (the on I just moved) and did the search and replace. Oc course there was nothing to replace since the article didn't link to itself.

Is there a way to make it not follow redirects (or do what I'm trying to do)? Oh, by the way could you have it give out a warning if someone type in the category name as "Category:This category" because then it will look for "Category:Category:this category" which is almsot never what is intended. It's not that important though. BrokenSegue 20:50, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Yup, uncheck the "bypass redirects" option in the "general" menu. thanks Martin 20:53, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

wow, alright I'm dumb. Thanks. BrokenSegue 20:57, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

download broken

I have an unenabled version but the download seems to be broken. Dalf | Talk 07:01, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Hm. It works for me. Just downloaded the newest version. --Adrian Buehlmann 12:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

The download link also works for me. --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 13:57, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

It downloads ok but it appears to be corropted "noi files to extract" when I try and extract it (even though it shows the files in the manafest). Dalf | Talk 02:55, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Option request

I wouldn't call this high up on the priority list, but I think it would be nice if there was an option to turn off the "List Complete" and the "No articles in list, you need to use the make list" messages. --Kbdank71 14:09, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Why? Martin 14:18, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

It would be easy to put the messages in the status bar, I'll just do that instead. thanks Martin 14:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

The status bar would be fine, thanks. I was just thinking it would be two less things to click on (I'm extremely lazy). --Kbdank71 14:54, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Not updating after manual edit

Changes I make in the editing pane are not being reflected when I click "Preview" or "Show changes" again, although they are passed through when I click "Save". This makes it all too easy to make mistakes, I fear: could someone fix it fast, please. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 10:26, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I introduced this bug recently by accident, it should have been fixed in 1.8, do you have this version? thanks Martin 16:32, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Multiple find/replace patterns?

Would it be possible to let the user add several find/replace patterns instead of just one? Thanks, AxelBoldt 21:32, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Yup. See Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Multiple regex replaces in the same run? above. Martin has already signaled support for this. --Adrian Buehlmann 21:37, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Excellent. This would also be useful in doing a certain very routine type of stub-sorting task: where a stub category is being split into a number of sub-categories, where each each of those is already tagged by another stub-category (so the object is basically merger of (sets of) two existing patterns, e.g. {{writer-stub}} & {{US-bio-stub}} => {{US-writer-stub}}).

This is already doable in two passes, but that's obviously not ideal (more work, and even if set to auto-run, more server load and more RC spam). Another way would be if add/remove stub template support existed as with category at present (indeed, it's conceptually almost exactly the same thing, just inconveniently different in wiki-syntax).

I should say, suberb job on this tool BM. It's sweeping my watchlist like wildfire, and it's a great hope for many of those mountainous cleanup task backlogs. Alai 04:38, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I have added multiple find and replace now (version 1.81). thanks Martin 01:11, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Saving and Loading

Is there a reason we can't save or load our settings? Secifically our regex and comment field settings? This would be a nice feature. ThanksEagle (talk) (desk) 22:16, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll get around to it one day. Martin 23:56, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Bug?

When I run AWB on Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser, the preview shows that it is trying to empty out the contents of 2 <nowiki> sections (<nowiki>{{wikify}}</nowiki> and <nowiki>{{stub}}</nowiki>). Please point AWB at that page and take a look. --kingboyk 23:34, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

doesnt do that for me, what version are you using? Martin 23:39, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

1.8, freshly downloaded. IE6. At second attempt it didn't do it for me either :~ --kingboyk 00:02, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

It would be great if AWB could recognise a subst'd AFD tag, and not suggest moving the Pages for deletion category to the bottom. That would save some time for me, as a lot of my minor edits are tweaking of deletion-listed pages. Another time saver would be if it didn't suggest changes which are no more than the insertion of removal of line breaks. --kingboyk 00:06, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

The AWB adds and removes empty lines just to "clean up" the page. If the only edits are adding or removing one line, then don't save. --M@thwiz2020 21:00, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, of course :-) But if AWB kept a count of how many changes it has made, and how many were 'trivial', it could skip to the next page if those numbers are low and equal - thereby saving me the time it takes to review. --kingboyk 00:33, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Same with subst'd CFD tags too, if possible. --Kbdank71 21:54, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, fixed this in 1.83. Martin 22:27, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

That was quick! Thanks. --kingboyk 00:36, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

HTML comments lost when sorting categories

It seems to be common usage to annotate an Oscar category with the name of the actor involved, in an HTML comment, and I assume this happens for other categories also. However AWB unhooks these comments and leaves them dangling in mid-air. Could the category-sorting code be fixed so as preserve these comments? HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 10:05, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Request

It's nice to see the implementation of multiple find and replaces. Would it be possible to create multiline find and relplaces too? For example, when you set AWB to find a sub-heading and replace it with nothing, it normally leaves an extra unwanted gap (example). This could probably be fixed with a multiline find and replace, if it is possible to do so. — FireFox • T • 20:57, 6 February 2006

Try this instead: check the regex option and then use \r\n to indicate "new line". --M@thwiz2020 20:59, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

An alternative: Bluemoose, program the AWB to replace multiple blank lines with one and remove blank lines after headings after finding and replacing. --M@thwiz2020 21:01, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah ok. Thanks. — FireFox • T • 21:16, 6 February 2006

AWB 1.8.1: inserts * before a URL

Possible minor bug: AWB 1.8.1 wanted to do this edit to Australian Electoral Commission (Apply general fixes:yes, Auto tag:yes). I believe I did not set such a replace (I was doing things like this). BTW: really great the new multi-regex replace! --Adrian Buehlmann 23:15, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

It's because it bullets external links on a new line after the ==External links== header. This was an unusual situation as the was inside a template and on a new line. Martin 23:34, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

You're right. That's a very arcane case. Seems probably not worth to bother much about. Never mind. --Adrian Buehlmann 23:40, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Bypass redirects and Skip articles

AWB 1.8.1: If I have set "Bypass redirects" AWB does not edit the redirect page, it instead edits the target page of the redirect (superb so far). I have now set in "Skip articles" (on the "Set options tab") a regex expression in "Skip if doesn't contain". It seems to me that the skip expression is applied on the redirect page. I would rather expect that the skip expression is applied on the page that AWB edits, i.e. the target of the redirect if "Bypass redirects" is set. BTW an option that would "click ignore for me" if it is a null edit would be fine ("skip null edits"?). (Sorry for not using the newest version, I have just loaded a bunch of multi-regexes right now into a 1.8.1 instance of AWB and I am too lazy to reenter them into the newest version :-). And sorry for being so greedy on features. AWB is just such an wonderful thing :-) --Adrian Buehlmann 19:59, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

It does check the article it is redirected to to see if it should "ignore if does/doesnt contain", and this seems to be working fine as far as I can tell. I'll add add the skip null edits thing to list of things I will do. thanks Martin 20:28, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

You are right. Sorry for nagging. I'm an idiot. I was distracted by the short blink of the redirect page in the browser window. Thanks for picking up the "skip null edits". BTW do you have an example settings xml file somewhere (or a doc)? The version note for 1.82 says that AWB can load it (not yet save). --Adrian Buehlmann 21:45, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

No problem, I have just uploaded version 1.84, this can save the settings as well. Hopefully you will be able to keep the same settings.xml file for any future versions, meaning you wont need to keep re-entering your settings. thanks Martin 23:40, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Ahhh. 1.84 is amazing. I have edited my regexes into the xml. Thanks! --Adrian Buehlmann 10:52, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

URL Unicode fonts

Um, me again (don't beat me :-). Hypogeum of Hal-Saflieni is a redirect to Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni. I believe my AWB 1.84 loops forever on this. --Adrian Buehlmann 13:28, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

It's that problem IE has with certain unicode fonts in the URL, I am fixing them as I find them, so it is useful to know which ones it has a problem with. I have also added the option to skip pages that it hasn't made an edit on. (version 1.85). thanks Martin 13:47, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh, that's bad. This must be a real pain for developing. I had no clue about that font problem. Would it be helpful to start a list of these problem redirects somewhere? I could then add them there without noising up this page here. Or I could simply email them to you. Or we could just make a special section here. Just some ideas. Re 1.85: Many thanks, I'm hurrying to download... --Adrian Buehlmann 14:20, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh, dear. The new "skip articles with no changes" works like a rocket. Incredible. So far for reducing my wiki editing.... BTW a pause button (or ESC key?) would be something nice to have (very very low prio this). I'm a bit ashamed for constantly asking new stuff and frankly baffled by your responsiveness. Many thanks. I'll try to shut up my chatter a bit now. --Adrian Buehlmann 14:42, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Calm down, our kid! If it's skipping articles, then it isn't making edits. If you're blasting through your list at a rate of knots not changing anything, nothing is lost except your opportunity to make a cup of tea . HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 09:15, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

OH. Just to make this clear: "skip articles with no changes" is an extremely helpful feature to me. It's great to see AWB rush automatically to the stuff I want to change. The idea behind having a stop/pause button is that I do not want to go away from my computer while AWB is running. But sometimes, I do have to do so :-). --Adrian Buehlmann 09:48, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Font problems on

• Poşta Română --Adrian Buehlmann 19:51, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
• Xagħra Stone Circle --Adrian Buehlmann 22:07, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
• Żebbuġ, Malta --Adrian Buehlmann 22:18, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

• thanks Adrian, btw if you want to reproduce the problem for yourself try copying and pasting http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Xagħra_Stone_Circle&action=edit into internet explorer, it doesnt load up properly. If you click the link it works, if you paste it into firefox it works. therefore i am certain it is simply a bug in ie. Martin 22:29, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

• Thanks. Really sad that bug. --Adrian Buehlmann 22:39, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

• Guðbrandur Þorláksson --Adrian Buehlmann 22:39, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Bug when skipping unaltered articles

If you have "Skip articles with no changes" set, then the "Preview" button acts like "Ignore". I can only assume that the dingus which checks for "no changes" is failing to spot any changes because these are not displayed when you do a "Preview". I note that this feature is disabled when you set "Preview instead of diff".

Might I suggest that the "Skip articles with no changes" should only actually perform the skip when you first land on the article and thereafter be disabled until the next article? HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 17:37, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

OK thanks, I knew I would miss something. Martin 19:02, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

It also skips incorrectly if you suffer a failure loading the article up. This is not so helpful when you then have to go back and figure out which article you just skipped so you can try it again. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 09:12, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

HTML entities bug

When making a list, article titles containing HTML entities such as an ampersand (&) appear in the list as the HTML code for them (&). Simple fix I guess... BigBlueFish 10:43, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I never bothered fixing it because it works just the same either way, just looks a bit ugly. Martin 10:48, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Enabling of different versions

Due to only the most recent version of the software being enabled, and being updated every few days, is it possible to enable multiple versions of the software, so that a particular download of the program lasts more than a few days, and then only require an update when a "major" update is made? The constant un-enabling of the different versions makes things quite difficult, as using AWB seems to require a new download practically every single time I use it.

A self-update feature in the program whereby it updates itself to the most recent version might make things less difficult as well.

SchuminWeb (Talk) 03:10, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Not that I would want to speak for Martin, but you might consider that AWB is still a development version and as such we – as early users – help to develop it by using it. As such I think the process that Martin uses (release often, release early) fits quite well. This also includes the early deprecation of older versions (it is good to use and test the new versions as they come out, as this helps improve the software too). This helps to make AWB strong and keep the workload for Martin as low as possible. I understand that this is a bit ugly for the users (me included!), but given the fact that the installation of AWB is trivial (just copy it in a directory) and that the settings can now be saved/loaded, I think we do Martin (and thus ourselves and Wikipedia) a favor if we do take the time to download the newer version before letting it go over articles. A new release each day is not that bad. --Adrian Buehlmann 07:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

That's right, but I accept the original point and will leave older versions enabled for longer. thanks Martin 09:56, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't mind that older versions are disabled, but I would prefer that the check occurred at the "Make list" point and not after the "Start the process" button press. I know I can save the results and reload them, but it would be easier to switch to the new version if I didn't have to repopulate the article list. That's a small annoyance that I can live with though. -- JLaTondre 15:17, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Adding unnecessary bold tags?

See these edits made with the AWB (general fixes and autotag on, nothing else on): [10] [11] [12] [13]. Why did the AWB do this? --M@thwiz2020 19:48, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

It's because it bolds the first occurance of the title if it is near the very beginning of the article, other bold text does not occur at the beginning and the title is not bolded anywhere else in the article. The problems you point out are because I made a silly error in the code, I have uploaded 1.881 now, which fixes this. thanks Martin 19:57, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Minor edit setting not working?

I just starting work on Wikipedia:Bad links with AWB. AWB is such a great tool for this project and saves quite a bit of time. However, for some reason, the setting "mark all edits as minor" isn't working. All my edits are being marked as major edits even though the setting is checked. I've also tried closing AWB and opening it again with no luck. Is this a bug or user error? PS2pcGAMER (talk) 22:34, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind, it is working now. If you want to investigate this further, let me know. Otherwise I will just mark this as a goof by me. --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 22:38, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll tweak it so it sets the checkbox on load as well, at the moment it only sets it on save, but I can't see anything wrong with it. Martin 22:50, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

That's probably why I was confused. Thanks! --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 23:03, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Bad link repair

While going through Wikipedia:Bad links, I've been getting some weird results every 1/20 pages that I (luckily) catch in the "show diff" and fix manually. I'll review the code and let you know if I make any progress as to the cause of this. I can't give you a sample edit, though, since I fix them manually. --M@thwiz2020 00:40, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

See, for example, this edit, which I let go and then later fixed manually. --M@thwiz2020 00:43, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Its because the regexes to fix them were being greedy, I've fixed it now. Martin 00:53, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm going to stop going through the bad links for the night pretty soon, so just upload it whenever you can, and I'll download it tomorrow. I have other work to do now (although whether or not I'll do it now is another question - I'm a bit of a procrastinator.) --M@thwiz2020 00:58, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I've uploaded 1.89 now, with the above fixes and numerous others, including stopping links being clicked in the browser window. I probably did other stuff too, I'm just to tired to remember now. Martin 01:09, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm working on the D's with no problems so far! --M@thwiz2020 23:00, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Auto mode

Does one need to have a bot flag on their account to use "bot mode" - I'm listed in the access as a bot. I have a 8000 entry list to do and I rather automate over clicking 8000 times :) Tawker 12:22, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I couldn't say if you need a bot flag or not, but the auto mode is virtually untested at the moment, once it is reliable then I have no problem with you using it. Martin 12:31, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

From testing, it doesn't work if I have my bot username in the bots field, it still won't give me the field. Not sure if I want to use Auto on adding subst: anyways, I don't know if I'd trust the python bot to do it.) Tawker 23:41, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Adding it to the bots isnt meant to enable the automode, When it is more thoroughly tested I will enable it for some users. Martin 23:48, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Martin, just as you have the "enabledusersbeginshere" tag, you could have a "botslistbeginshere" tag that tells the AWB if a user is a bot. --M@thwiz2020 23:56, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Bad link repair

Martin - can you add a preset edit summary to the drop down box such as: "bad link repair. You can help!"? Thanks. --M@thwiz2020 22:46, 12 February 2006 (UTC)