Wikipedia:Bot requests

This is a page for requesting work to be done by a bot. This is an appropriate place to simply put ideas for bots. If you need a piece of software written for a specific article you may get a faster response time at the computer help desk. You might also check Bots to see if the bot you are looking for already exists. There are also quite a few "frequently denied requests", for various reasons, such as a welcoming bot, as it would de-humanize the process, and an anti-vandalism bot, as several already exist. If you want to request a bot to populate a category for a wikiproject, please create a subpage with a full list of categories to be used, as most bot operators who can complete this task will not go into all subcategories, as some members may be irrelevant to your project. Also note that if you are requesting that an operator change or add a function to an existing bot, you should ask on his talkpage, if you have questions about certain bots, they should be directed to the bot owner's talk page to the Bot Owners' Noticeboard, and that if a bot is acting improperly, it should be posted to the owner's talk page, the Administrators' Noticeboard, or AIV, listed in increasing levels of severity, and a link to the discussion may be posted at the Bot Owners' Noticeboard if appropriate. __NEWSECTIONLINK__ de:Wikipedia:Bots/Anfragen es:Wikipedia:Bot/Solicitudes eo:Vikipedio:Laboro por robotoj eu:Wikipedia:Bot-ak/Eskaerak fr:Wikipédia:Bot/Requêtes it:Wikipedia:Bot/Richieste nl:Wikipedia:Verzoekpagina voor bots nds:Wikipedia:Andrääg op Bot-Status pl:Wikipedia:Zadania dla botów ru:Википедия:Проект:Работа для бота sk:Wikipédia:Úlohy pre botov sv:Wikipedia:Robothjälp uk:Вікіпедія:Завдання для роботів vec:Wikipedia:Bot/Richieste

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

If you are a bot operator and you complete a request, note what you did, and archive it. Requests that are no longer relevant should also be archived in a timely fashion.


 * ''See also: Current policy on bots and Bots/Frequently denied bots, to make sure your idea is not listed.

Template:Unreferenced bot request
Hello,

We need someone to write and maintain a bot that will police the use of the controversial Template:Unreferenced.

This template, currently on over 10,000 articles (Maybe it's 100,000; I don't know; I clicked "next 500" until I tired of it), says, "This article does not cite any references or sources." The problem is that this is almost always untrue, and the tag has therefore lost credibility. There is steadfast opposition to changing this statement to say "sufficient" instead of "any"; some other editors enjoy pointing out that there are other template tags such as Template:Refimprove that complain about references without complaining that the article has no references, as "Unreferenced" does; and that the "Unreferenced" tag is needed, despite the widespread inaccuracy of its use (past and ongoing).

It occurred to me that a bot could be written that would fix this problem. It would run through each article that is tagged with Template:Unreferenced, and if there are any single-bracket links in the article at all, the bot would assume it's a reference, and change the template to Template:Refimprove. The run would occur every few days, ideally, and subsequent runs after the first one would involve far fewer tags, since I expect 80% of the thousands of Unreference tags to be converted in that first pass.

This would strengthen the integrity of Template:Unreferenced. Any volunteers?

Thanks - Tempshill 23:40, 4 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Might bring this up on the 'Pump to get a consensus that this is something that's needed. Q  T C 02:40, 5 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Le Pump sent me here. I think the need is self-evident since there seem to be several editors who are steadfast in insisting that the wording stay as-is, and it's on, you know, 10,000 articles.  Tempshill 04:08, 5 September 2007 (UTC)


 * It's on 79,228 articles, i.e. mainspace pages. I agree with OverlordQ, please get consensus that it's needed. --Erwin85 10:58, 5 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The project Unreferenced articles exists in part to manually remove unref and replace it with refimprove as described by tempshill. Consensus for the project was formed at Template_talk:Unreferenced in general and at details worked out at Template_talk:Unreferenced/Archive_2.  A look at the progress on Unreferenced_articles will indicate the need and the project should indicate consensus.  For this proposed bot an article with an external link or a would qualify  to change to refimprove.  The bot could also check for and add the reference section as discussed in   Jeepday (talk) 12:52, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
 * We can't trust the inclusion of a &lt;ref> tag - those are used for footnotes in general, not just references. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 13:31, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

For clarification, this was sent from WP:VP/T to WP:BOTREQ, however if discussion needs to occur for this proposal, the proper "Pump" is WP:VPR. Oh, acronyms.... Cheers. --MZMcBride 19:50, 5 September 2007 (UTC) I can get my bot to do it, but I'd need consensus first. And perhaps 2 external links instead of one.  ^ demon [omg plz]  17:07, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Please describe what would constitute consensus for you. Per Template:Unreferenced Unreferenced should be used only on articles that have no sources. The Refimprove template is appropriate for articles with some sources but not enough.  There is a whole list of conversations here that talk about "any" vs "Adequately" the end result is, if there is even a single reference, use Refimprove if there are no references at all use Unreferenced. Jeepday (talk) 04:06, 8 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me. I don't have my bot on this particular PC, but I'll run it the next time I'm at work (Wednesday).  ^ demon [omg plz]  05:04, 11 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Great :) Jeepday (talk) 02:06, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Which Wednesday? Jeepday (talk) 02:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Today actually. I got sidetracked and forgot. I'm actually about to run the bot right now. First run will change for anything containing at least one  ^ demon [omg plz]  17:49, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I just did a random check of some of User:^demonBot2's most recent changes looks great :) Can you set it up to run periodically (maybe weekly)? Jeepday (talk) 22:55, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I hit a minor snag in doing it, so I'll be fixing it soon hopefully and then it'll be back to work.  ^ demon [omg plz]  23:05, 19 September 2007 (UTC)


 * User:^demonBot2 did more today then I could do in month. But there are still many more to do by hand so back to work I go. Thanks :) Jeepday (talk) 23:25, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

It's a great idea and I fully support it. Go demonBot2! SilkTork  *SilkyTalk 23:46, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Teething problems: The bot is not differentiating between a tag placed in an article, and a tag placed in a section, as here: Kidbrooke. The section has no references at all, but the tag reads that it needs "additional". SilkTork  *SilkyTalk 23:51, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Will this be started up again? The original suggestion here was unsure of the size of the category, for everyone's information it is listed at 83,256 at WP:WATCH. I don't know how this bot works but if it could go through and  first, that would be most helpful. --Birgitte SB  22:43, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Infobox and comparison-table aggregator
This is a request for a tool to automatically create a database and table-almanac using data from infoboxes and comparison tables on Wikipedia articles. It would probably have three components:


 * A tool to gather all instances of an infobox and output a database table of them, where each instance becomes a row and each row of the infobox becomes a column. Wiki markup should be converted to HTML or whatever the database format calls for; links and footnotes should be preserved; and images should be replaced with links. A column called Article should also be added, whose value is the URL each box is found on.


 * A tool to do the same for tables on such articles as Comparison of text editors. Where there were two or more tables with similar values in the first column, they would be natural-full-outer-joined.


 * A bot to call these two tools nightly or weekly on all infoboxes that have, say, 20 or more instances on the article namespace; aggregate the output into one file; natural-full-outer-join infobox tables to comparison articles where appropriate; and where a link from an infobox to another indexed-infobox-holding article is found (the Article column can be used to detect this), convert it to a link to the other infobox's database record. The combined and linked database would then be made available for download; it could also be given a query interface (both guided and query-language) on the Wikimedia Toolserver, and/or uploaded to Google Base or a similar site.

This database would make it quick and easy (at least for someone who knows the query language) to answer such queries as "What alternative metal bands, active in or after 2002, are based in Ontario?" and "What open-source text editors run on the Mac and support UTF-8?" It would be the start of a print reference book, a great aid to library reference desks, and a way to search for just about anything. (Note that it may require type polymorphism and may-or-may-not-be-foreign-keys, so SQL may not work for it.) Neon  Merlin  20:35, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

LegendBot request
Hello, I can't program a Wikipedia bot, but I want a very good bot that's occasionally updated to prevent bugs and do more stuff to help Wikipedia. I want a bot called LegendBot. Thank you,--The source of the cosmos... 21:44, 24 September 2007 (UTC) HELLO?!?--The source of the cosmos... 00:52, 26 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Um . . what is this bot supposed to do. Q  T C 05:02, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Anything to help Wikipedia! Oh, and make sure to identify the version of the bot. Okay?--The source of the cosmos... 22:18, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
 * You're going to have to be more specific than that. There's lots of bot tasks available: those listed on WP:BOT, anti-vandalism bots, anti-spam bots, archiving bots...
 * Think of something you've wished would be automated before. Shadow1  (talk) 22:23, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

But, the bot does everything to help Wikipedia, no exceptions.--The source of the cosmos... 01:17, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't know what "everything to help Wikipedia" is, so you'll have to tell me.  ^ demon [omg plz]  01:27, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Stopping vandals, Fixing articles, that sort of thing, but like a city, it must be built from one subject to another.--The source of the cosmos... 02:04, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you might be interested in AutoWikiBrowser? Its a program for Windows that allows you to make small changes in a very efficient way (though its not really for vandal fighting, but there are other programs for that). If you come up with a task that needs to be done that could be automated with AWB (no need for human judgement) and isn't already being done, it can also be used for a bot after approval. <font face="Broadway"><font color="#056366">Mr. <font color="#056625">Z- <font color="#054F66">man  17:31, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

List of Kodokan Judo techniques
All articles on this page need to be moved to the correct capitalisation (eg O Goshi to O goshi, and internal links fixing to match. A bot to take care of this would be awesome. Neil   ム  10:15, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Special:Unusedimages
A bot should be created to sift through Special:Unusedimages. There are many images there, some likely without copyright information, some orphaned copyright, many copyleft. I'd imagine this could be sifted in three waves, finding and tagging images without copyright information, then when those are deleted or attributed, finding and tagging those tagged as copyrighted as orfud, and finding and tagging images with an appropriate copyleft tag to be transwikied to commons. Then, it would be a simple matter to have a bot move the copyleft images over. Doing this will make local management of images easier, as the remaining backlog at Special:Unusedimages will be manageable by a single admin on any given day, making finding prohibited, forgotten, or cv images a lot easier, and as it is, commons is the repository of potentially unused copyleft media, not us. Thoughts? --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - &lt;*&gt; 10:55, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
 * If I remember correctly, scraping unused images for candidates for the various image speedy deletion criteria was done by BetacommandBot.  ^ demon <sup style="color:#c22">[omg plz]  <em style="font-size:10px;">01:23, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah BCBot does ORFU tagging. βcommand 01:25, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm talking about tagging the unused copyleft images for migration as well. Also, maybe a bot to find images that have no copyright tag at all, because recently I came across an image being used ina n article that was untagged for more than a year and a half. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - &lt;*&gt; 12:08, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Aircraft categories
For a couple weeks, this set of aircraft categories has been requested to change. The change is clearly approvable, but it's complicated to implement. It involves searching templates like Template:civil aircraft by nationality and switching U.S. for United States, or PRC for People's Republic of China. And all of the subcategories of those categories, of course. Can anyone's bot do that?--Mike Selinker 15:59, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Category:U.S. civil aircraft to Category:United States civil aircraft
 * Category:PRC fighter aircraft 2000-2009 to Category:People's Republic of China fighter aircraft 2000-2009
 * Category:PRC airliners 1990-1999 to Category:People's Republic of China airliners 1990-1999
 * Category:PRC airliners 1980-1989 to Category:People's Republic of China airliners 1980-1989
 * Category:PRC airliners 2000-2009 to Category:People's Republic of China airliners 2000-2009
 * Category:U.S. airliners to Category:United States airliners
 * User:Cydebot could probably do this. You might want to leave a message on User talk:Cyde. <font face="Broadway"><font color="#056366">Mr. <font color="#056625">Z- <font color="#054F66">man  17:36, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Have an admin add them to WP:CFD/W and cydebot will rename them (or someother bot) βcommand 01:32, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Redirect and template bot
I would like there to be a redirect and template bot. I would like it to be called MacBot. --MacMad (talk · contribs)  16:39, 28 September 2007 (UTC)


 * What would it do? :) SQL(Query Me!) 17:20, 28 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, it would make loads of redirects to other pages and create and manage lots of templates. --MacMad (talk · contribs)  05:41, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Why is "loads of redirects" desirable? Is it especially hard to find pages on Wikipedia? And how does one "manage" a template? <font face="Broadway"><font color="#056366">Mr. <font color="#056625">Z- <font color="#054F66">man  05:54, 29 September 2007 (UTC)