User talk:Xqt

In urgent cases please feel free to contact me on #pywikibot or #wikipedia-de-bots (IRC-Channels)

Your bot request

Hi Xqt I wanted to let you know that Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Xqbot is labeled as needing your comment. Please visit the above link to reply to the requests. Thanks! --BAGBotTalk 02:20, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Dušan Simović

Why was this removed? [1] Also, if you are going to run a bot, you should have a way to communicate and turn it off on each project you run it on. Jokestress (talk) 01:54, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

See User talk:Jokestress #Dušan Simović --Xqt (talk) 07:48, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Please make a clear link on your bot page and bot's talk page indicating that users can leave a message here if there are problems. I do not like to leave messages on other Wikimedia projects, so there should be clear instructions on how to leave them here as well as on the German one. Thanks. Jokestress (talk) 07:55, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I thought it would be enough, to put the bot's template on the page, which also contains the operators contact address. Isn't it? On the discussion page of the bot is a further link to my home wiki. --Xqt (talk) 08:11, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

User:Xqbot and Tard

Hi, this is just informational, because I doubt you could have anticipated it, but [2] shows your bot making a bad change on behalf of a subtle vandal who had redirected the original target (Tard, Hungary). I've requested permanent protection of Tard, but I'd also like you to consider a blacklist of terms that your bot shouldn't edit, to stop things like this. In any case, please try not to these sort of bad edits unintentionally.

I would also join previous posters to this page in asking that you not point your bot's talk page to de.wiki when it should point here instead. I understand that you don't want to miss talk messages, but communications with an en.wiki bot's operator should take place here. Thanks in advance for your consideration of both points. — Gavia immer (talk) 19:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Guten tag. Do you know what might have caused Xqbot to change the en:Tard redirect target from en:Tard, Hungary to en:George W. Bush? Danka, Kralizec! 07:47, 1. Mär. 2009 (CET)
copy from de:User Talk:Xqt #Xqbot on en.wikipedia 2 --Xqt (talk)

I checked the bots edit and I suggest it was not a good idea to change the redirect but teh but isn't be able to detect vandalism. Tard, Hungary was overridden with a redirect yesterday on 2:40 but the RCs patrol doesn't identified it. At 10 o clock the Special:DoubleRedirects was updated an my box begun fixing them four hours later. I am sorry for the mistaken edit but there are no possiblities for the bot which acts in standard manner to detect vandalism or to see whether is link may be right or not. On the other hand it wasn't also detect by human beeings for a long term. You can prevent a page not changed by a bot but I think this wouldn't make sense. My bot fixes double redirections of more than 1000 pages a day on this wikipedia. I think it's not a good idea stopping it because one doesn't detect potential vandalism in lead time. Bot it is normal to correct pages they are changed by vandalism. Btw I agree to communicate here as well as on de-wiki. If I didn't answer, please give me a hint there because it is not possible to have a view on all my SUL talk pages (perhaps I'll write a bot to solve this). Sorry if my English is not so good and thanks for your messages, which gives me a hint improving my bot --Xqt (talk) 15:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Double redirects change

Hi, I notice you run a bot that fixes double redirects. You might be interested in participating in the thread at WP:Village pump (proposals)#Double redirects, which discusses the possibility of having certain double redirects left unfixed. If we adopt that solution, I would be interested to know how such redirects might be marked so that bots know to leave them alone.--Kotniski (talk) 10:10, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

The simpliest way is to mark such articles with a {{nobots}} template. But I don't see any sense because my redirect bot solves only redirects which points to other redirect pages and btw is the result of moving an article. It doesn't change any links on articles which points to a redirect page. --Xqt (talk) 17:01, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

It seems {{nobots}} doesn't work on standard pywikipedia bots. I've changed it on my bot and I'll looking vor other solutions and comment it on the given discussion page. --Xqt (talk) 22:05, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Hello! Your bot mistakenly redirected Semi fiction to Religion#Semi-fiction! Is that its way to express its opinion on religion? ----IsaacAA (talk) 04:40, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

You are right. This was due to a vandalized redirect from Fiction to Religion. -Xqt (talk) 06:30, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

bot improvement

I noticed that this bot removed a language link to a redirect, I corrected that link here. I wonder if you could make a change that improves links rather than removing them. cygnis insignis 14:45, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the iw-link. The target page has been moved and the bot couldn't find it because no site pointed to the new one. But it would be fixed some steps later if a bot checks the iw-links of the sv-wiki. I am working on a feature to run my bot especially for moved pages. This would improve these edits. Regards. --Xqt (talk) 07:19, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Is this bot approved?

I couldn't find any link that proves that this bot is approved? Is it? I noticed for example that it changes Image->File but I think it was a discussion for that and there was no consensus for that action. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:03, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh sorry, I saw this switch for cosmetic_changes was wrong. I just changed it. --Xqt (talk) 08:52, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Bot syntax error

In doing "cosmetic changes", Xqbot created a syntax error in Balochistan by inserting a space between the asterisk and number sign (*#) used to created an ordered (numbered) list within an unordered list. This wiki markup only works if the symbols are adjacent, with no whitespace. Please fix this in your bot.

I suspect the bot's problem is that it incorrectly assumes that it can safely insert a space after an asterisk if it's the first character in a line (i.e., markup), or possibly after the last asterisk in a series (allowing for indented lists). I commend the effort, as we really should have spaces separate markup from text wherever possible because it's easier for newbies to understand what's happening. But you should account for all nest-able markup, which includes asterisks (bullet list), number signs (numbered list), colons (indentation), and semi-colons (definition lists, which are often used for non-TOC headings). I believe a substitution pattern replacing "^([*#:;]+) *(.)" with "$1 $2" should do the trick. Thank you for your attention. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 18:18, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I've switched this feature off for the en-wiki as requested above but you are right. I'll fix it for the others. Thanks! --Xqt (talk) 15:27, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

2090s and tk:2099

Your bot is adding, among other things, tk:2099 to 2090s. This is incorrect, as tk:2090 also maps to 2090s. It's possible the fix needs to be made on tk (and mk:2065), rather than here, but I thought I'd report it to you. Bots are DumZiBoT (talk · contribs), GrouchoBot (talk · contribs), and Xqbot (talk · contribs). — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:30, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll try to fix it with bots support manually. --Xqt (talk) 10:36, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

This should solve the problem --Xqt (talk) 11:17, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Your

bot did this [3]--74.13.99.207 (talk) 22:22, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but I couldn't found any malfunction there. What's going wrong in your opinion? --Xqt (talk) 15:36, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Bot edit

Any reason why it did the date change [4] ? feydey (talk) 07:54, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

The date wasn't changed by bot. There was one previous editor who did the vandalism. [5] --Xqt (talk) 15:32, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Your bot vandalised Husch

Two days ago I created the page Husch. I included a link to [[de:Hüsch]]. Take a look at the English and German pages: they are obviously appropriate for linking.

Yesterday your bot removed [[de:Hüsch]] from the article. It did not even give any justification - the edit summary was just (robot Removing: de:Hüsch). I find this very irritating - it's a time-consuming process to go through looking for links to Wikipedias in other languages, and if I put it back I could quite easily find that your bot removes it again.

I'm sure you constructed and run the bot in good faith, but I wonder how many hours of people's good work your bot is undoing in this manner.

Please explain, and prevent it from happening again. Cheers, Hebrides (talk) 05:39, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

de:Hüsch is a disambiguation page but the {{surname}} is not listed at MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage. This forces iw-bots removing links to different page types. My Bot would not touch this page for a while but you may solve this by adding this template to the MediaWiki-page or to exclude bots from the given page by marking it with the {{nobots}}-template. --Xqt (talk) 17:41, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

This is ridiculous. I cannot edit MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage. I'm happy for well-behaved bots to visit and update the Husch page, so do not want to add a {{nobots}}. Husch and de:Hüsch are very obviously pages that should be linked by iw links. Please please please make your bot behave in a sensible manner. -- Hebrides (talk) 19:25, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I know about this behavior and I made a two feature requests to the pywikipeda framework to solve this. And I've found an additional request there for changing MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage for a similar bot edit of another bot owner. In this case my bot will not return to change this and I'll mark this page on a exception list until this behavior would be changed in a global manner. On the other hand It would be a good idea to use a {{disambig}} instead of {{surname}} because this really seems to be a disambiguation and not an article. btw: please see the version history of the given MediaWiki page. The {{surname}} template has been removed from this page on february and this leads to a new behavior of iw-bots. --Xqt (talk) 08:32, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Please see MOS:DABNAME which clearly states, "Pages only listing persons with a certain given name or surname (unless they are very frequently referred to by that name alone) are not disambiguation pages, and this Manual of Style does not apply to them. In such cases, do not use {{disambig}} or {{hndis}}, but {{given name}} or {{surname}} instead." If I were to take your advice and use {{disambig}} I am sure another editor would correct my mistake.

It seems that German WP regards pages of people with the same surname as disambiguation pages, whereas English WP does not. Your bot wrongly assumes agreement on this – an invalid assumption on which to operate. This logical contradiction needs a radical solution which is beyond the realms of a humble editor like me. Are you able to get something done to correct this? -- Hebrides (talk) 16:04, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

The solution

I've been directed to the solution. Please make your bot compatible with the solution at MediaWiki talk:Disambiguationspage#Re-add_.7B.7Bsurname.7D.7D. Since MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage actually contains the line "((Surname))" you should be able to pick this up and avoid removing valid surname-to-disambig links in future. Hope this helps. -- Hebrides (talk) 07:57, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Please stop!

I just had to revert another ten links vandalised by this bot. Please suspend its action until it respects the protocol described in the paragraph above. I'm getting desperate! I don't want to spend the rest of my life reverting this bot's changes... -- Hebrides (talk) 19:16, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that you are using the -force parameter at the same time as -autonomous which is something you are not supposed to do because it breaks on disambiguation pages as you have seen. It is a common error, as long as you stop using the two paramters together you will stop having this problem. -Djsasso (talk) 03:49, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you are right. I've changed my bots behaviour now and testet it since about two weeks. It would skip pages if it founds a disambig mismatch. Can someone unblock my bot, so he can start working again. That would be very nice. --Xqt (talk) 19:39, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Please clearly explain the purpose of this bot

Hi, I am not sure of the purpose of this bot. Could you please explain it to me? I am considering blocking it. Thanks. Graham. Graham Colm ^Talk 21:21, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi again, given the lack of reply to the concerns expressed above by another user, I have blocked this bot. Graham Colm ^Talk 21:32, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I am wondering. The purpose of the bot is described at User:Xqbots page. It is the normal funktion of a interwiki and redirect bot which comes from the pywikipedia framework. --Xqt (talk) 17:27, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I have blocked this bot again. I would like to see the concerns expressed above fully resolved. Graham Colm ^Talk 20:41, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Your edits on the Afrikaans Wikipedia

Hello, thanks for your contributions to the Afrikaans Wikipedia. It seems your bot is programmed to organize interwiki links alphabetically. While this may be acceptable on the English Wikipedia, this is not the policy of the Afrikaans Wikipedia. Please reprogramme your bot to organize interwiki links according to the alphabetical order of the language name of the Wikipedia, and not according to the link name of the Wikipedia. For reference, see how your bot moves the Finnish language between the F-languages at [6], while the language name is Suomi and belongs between the S-names. Thanks for your co-operation. — Adriaan (T★C) 18:14, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi Adriaan, thanks for this report. I will report it to the framework to fix the sorting of iw-links for the bots too. --Xqt (talk) 16:17, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. The Afrikaans Wikipedia doesn't have a custom policy about this, so if this is the case as you explained it, then it is infact correct. I was mistakened by thinking the default policy would be not to categorize the iw-links alphabetically, but to do it alphabetically in its language name or transliterated version of its language name form. But that is an incorrect assumption. Thanks for the reply and sorry for the trouble. — Adriaan (T★C) 10:45, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome. Xqt (talk) 15:33, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Misspelling redirect

Misspelling redirect. I thought this was a bot edit, but see it's yours. For genera names, or taxon names, two names may be very close in spelling but not be the same. Pelagorhynchus appears to be a dinoflagellate. Pelargorhynchus is an extinct fish. Particularly when dealing with marine single-celled organisms, the genus may be so obscure to appear to be a misspelling. It still could be, but in the absence of a source for it, and a top note for the redirect, I'd rather the redirect simply be deleted. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 09:02, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Well I found a broken link and tried to repair it. But if you prefer to delete the redirect, it is ok to do so. --Xqt (talk) 19:31, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

It's probably a broken link because the dinoflagellate genus was deleted; however, this doesn't mean it's a misspelling to the extinct fish. It's a tricky edit, though, so no fault on your part, just a suggestion that with genera names misspellings may require more looking. --69.226.103.13 (talk)

Princess Royal<-> Princesse Royale

Hello, since the French Princess page links to the English Princess Royal page, I don't see why the English page can't link to the French, but the bot removed my edit. Madridrealy (talk) 03:59, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

fr:Princesse royale was marked as a disambig. But it is not. Your ar right but the bot didn't know about this. I've removed the disambig template on the french site and let the bot correct the rest. --Xqt (talk)05:04, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Emmy Awards

Please learn the difference between Little Dorrit (film) and Little Dorrit (TV serial). Thank you. 209.247.22.164 (talk) 14:41, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok, but I do not understand your message. Could you give me a hint? --Xqt (talk) 04:11, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

GhalyBot

• I have stopped the bot from work for the last few days because of problem with order odf the links , and will change the scripts before making it work, when I restart it I will let you know, please let me know if there is any problems , I am planning to make it work only if all the scripts are updated to latest version. many thanks. Ghaly (talk) 12:47, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

• The Change you mentioned , appears to be due to MenoBot changing the page on wikipedia arabic, and GhalyBot was following that. MenoBot has done the changes to all the years pages on Arabic wikipedia , please let me know what you think. Ghaly (talk) 12:53, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

• I am running a test edit for GhalBot on .af , please let me know what you think. Ghaly (talk) 13:50, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

No, it doesn't work properly. Changing the iw-link from ar-wiki is quite right, but the the interwiki sorting is a misorder; you can see here that mhr: appears on top of the list but it must not. Is your local version the actual one? mhr-wiki has been added to the family few days ago.

Modifying the ar-wiki links was ok an I have wondered that your bot was one of the first who solved this in correct manner. That wiki just created a new extension namespaces for years articles and on de-wiki there was implemented an abuse filter until I supported some bot owners to change the crossing namespace table.

BTW: did you have a pywikipedia-Bot or sth else? --Xqt (talk) 07:19, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

• GhalyBot is a pywikipedia-Bot
• What you mentioned about the sorting of the codes is the reason I stopped GhalyBot from working on 23 July 2009.
• Since then I have updated the pywikipedia file on my computer and ran a test on .af and now the sorting order is correct , so I let ist update more pages.
• I hope this will clarify matters , Many thanks . --Ghaly (talk) 17:37, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

If your bot speaks python, did you changed the crossnamespace-table? This seems good because you recognize the extension namespace of year on ar-wiki. This is quite fine. But on the other hande there was a sorting problem of iw links to mhr-wiki. I looked through the last edits but these pages doesn't contain a mhr-link. You should test your bot on those pages which contain such a link like 1962 or sth else. But I am wondering about this of cause my bot is also python and it could correct the missorting of yours [7]. Good luck --Xqt (talk) 06:09, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

• GhalyBot has been running on an updated version since 26 July , and I think this has sorted the order of links now, many thanks. --Ghaly (talk) 06:13, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

GhalyBot September 2009

I've blocked your Bot because it is still out of date. --Xqt (talk) 07:13, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

• • I have updated the software and GhalyBot has been running on an updated version since 26 July, but now because of what you told me on the arz.wikipedia page , I stopped the bot from working until I further udpate the sofware , I will let you know when I manage to update its software again. so if you dont mind I can run a trial , but I am not going to make it work before the new updates. Thanks. Ghaly (talk) 08:56, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

You have to keep you bot up to date. This means not only monthly because there often comes a new software version, a bugfix, new translation and localisation or new wikipedia families. I strictly recommend to do this. You can get the actual version from the toolserver here. Your bot is blocked on pdc:- and de:-wiki until 17th september; enougth time to actualize it. I just trust you that you will keep your bot okay for the future. Thanks for your kind attention. --Xqt (talk) 12:55, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Your edits on the Yiddish Wikipedia

Your bot has been making wholesale unexplained deletions of interwiki links under the guise of Cosmetic changes. Please revert these deletions. --Redaktor (talk) 22:54, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I think this has been solved [8] --Xqt (talk) 11:30, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Annihilate Redirection

Your bot modified the redirect for Annihilate from pointing to Annihilation to My_Little_Pony. It cited (Robot: Fixing double redirect) but I could find no evidence of this. Extols (talk) 13:29, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Xqbot is edit warring

IIRC, some bots respect reverts: When you revert them, they don't re-revert. Can Xqbot do that too, please? There are legitimate reasons for double redirects, and there seems to have been a majority for allowing longer redirect chains at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_44#Double_redirects, and if your bot doesn't have the human intelligence to recognize them, it should leave the judgment to humans, and not edit war with them, as it did here. — Sebastian 23:24, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Xqbot keeps doing it, and there is no emergency button. I therefore had to block the bot; sorry about that. — Sebastian 00:45, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi Sebastian, I think you are right blocking the bot in this case. This was the second best choice for this problem. A better ability would be to tell the bot, what it should do with this page as you did it for human editors (here:leave it unchanged). I placed a {{nobots}} there to do this. This bot uses a standard script from Python Wikipedia Robot Framework as by others and its behavior is unchanged. But a better solution would be, to mark the middleman of double redirects and to change the bots behavior leaving the middlemans references unchanged. As I am in process becoming a developer of this framework, I could help to solve this problem in another manner. But in conclusion it is necessary to give bots an hint, what to do with such double redirects as you did for the human ones. BTW: There is no script by the PWRF which recognized its own reverts. It is a good suggestion but it would degrade the performance a lot. It is better to improve the bot to prevent malfunctions.

Remark: {{Emergency-bot-shutoff}} is the same as blocking the bot. --Xqt (talk) 10:48, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your friendly reply to my somewhat breathless post! I see your performance argument, but checking the history is something we humans have to do, too, and it hampers our performance as well. Maybe there is a way to make life easier both for humans and bots? (Any solution would probably be well beyond the scope of this bot. (E.g. de:WP:Sichten comes to mind.) But maybe you have a better idea.

Thank you also for placing {{nobots}} on the page in question; I wasn't aware of this. It would be better if the bot told us of this option in the edit summary. However, this is not in general a good solution; imagine what you would say if we had a human user who busily reverts edits of others, and if you want him to respect those edits, you would have to speak in Chinese with him - in each single case! I quickly looked at the last 20 edits the bot did, and found that seven of these are potentially the same situation as described at the village pump. I don't know what the conclusion of that discussion was, but I'm only mentioning this to show that the problem may go far beyond this one single redirect.

A simpler and more effective solution may be more specific to this bot: This is one of a class of bots that never should go back to an article it has edited before, and does not do urgent edits. I don't know how the bot proceeds from article to article, but off hand I could imagine two solutions: If it is possible to go by creation date of the redirect, then the bot can start with the oldest, and it would be guaranteed that it would never revisit a page. If that isn't possible, then maybe it could work off a list that is created once every week or so, which would be created by taking into account a "master list" of articles already visited. To better compare the two lists, they could be sorted alphabetically, which would also have the added benefit that we humans get a feel for what the bot is up to. — Sebastian 15:50, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

That same page now got changed again by another bot. So, obviously, {{nobots}} doesn't even work as its name promises. That makes that even less of a solution than I said above. Please, therefore, take my concerns and proposals above seriously. — Sebastian 14:32, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi Sebastian, this is a good example why your proposal won't work. I've discussed it with other bot owners and developers. In general there are several bots who does the jobs, but there is no way to disable an edit except looking for {{nobots}} (and the bot has to be exclusion compliant and on actual state) or giving the bots an other syntax to handle that stuff. I've changed my bot to respect {{nobots}} on 10th March to prevent the given problem and the bugfix of the PWRF came on 15th march with release 6508. It is strongly recommended to keep the bot actualy. The exclusion compilant is described at WP:Bots as well. In this special case, there is no difference between a redirect which links to a target who contains an article and on the other hand a redirect which belongs to an other lemma, which could be a redirect itself or an artice, but this link should be fixed. There is a meta-tag __STATICREDIRECT__, but this is never supported by any bot. A possible solution for the last one would be to mark these redirects with a template like {{softredirect}}. This would work of cause normal redirect bots wouldn't see these pages as redirects and won't try to fix that. This softredirect could link to a redirect as well which derives to the article. This not differs significantly from a double redirekt of cause mediawiki solves only one hop. --Xqt (talk) 14:03, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Can some of the bot's work be undone without going through each one?

This problem started when an editor moved Social Security (United States) to Social Security in the United States with no prior discussion on the talk page. There are reasons not to make this move, and I've reverted it.

The editor who made the move didn't trouble fix any of the redirects, though. Accordingly, they all became double redirects. The bot jumped in and "fixed" them. As a result, they now reach a dead end. For example, reader who enters Social Security Act of 1935 used to get to the relevant section of Social Security (United States), but now reaches a redirect page.

I don't want to have to go through and fix all of these by hand. Is there a way to automate it?

Thanks for your help. JamesMLane t c 03:58, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

This has been done by DarknessBot who also fixes double redirects. Isn't it or does I guess wrong? --Xqt (talk) 06:02, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if the bot prefers working on articles who have been most recently changed, which would also explain the revert war I mentioned above. — Sebastian 06:06, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Struck out above; that was an edit conflict. Xqt, if you're there, could you please reply to what wrote above? Thank you! — Sebastian 06:12, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

The other bot handled some of the problems, but quite a few were left. On closer examination, though, I realized that this was because the editor who moved the article also edited the "ssusa" template to direct to the new title, so it showed up as being linked in all the articles that used the template. I edited the template and that seems to have solved the problems that the bot didn't fix. Thanks for your help! JamesMLane t c 03:05, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

HI

Henmor (talk) 11:52, 25 August 2009 (UTC) i see you was looking at my article Arthur Sarkissian (artist) there are two request's. and i change and add what ask's there.... please if it's ok delete that request if no't please tell me what to do..... Henmor (talk) 11:52, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Only my bot acted there. I am fine with your edits. --Xqt (talk) 14:17, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Never Shout Never

For some reason, your bot keeps changing the correct spelling of Never Shout Never to NeverShoutNever! for the languages other than English. --Russ is the sex (talk) 04:30, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry but the bot corrected the interwiki links to the given articles as writen in the foreign languages. For the spelling you have written there exists no articles on other wikis. I've reverted your edit thus iw links works again. --Xqt (talk) 06:23, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I see what happened now. Sorry about that. Technically speaking, the bot is correct. However, the correct spelling of Never Shout Never is not NeverShoutNever! and it is incorrect on those select pages in other languages. Could you correct it on the Español, Norsk (bokmål)‬, and Português pages? Thanks! --Russ is the sex (talk) 13:46, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I think it's up to the local community to change the title. For es-wiki IMHO it's ok to move the page but my normal local user account is not autoconfirmed and I couldn't do this. Try to explain your request on these local talk pages to get the title changed. Regards --Xqt (talk) 06:24, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Error

Hi, your bot just added ru:Alex Van Halen to Eddie Van Halen. I've fixed it. Rodhullandemu 15:03, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I found the iw links at ru site are still wrong. But I've fixed it manually yet. --Xqt (talk) 12:43, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Caspian Sea

Hi, I really don't understand what's going on over at this article illustrated by this edit. It appears to be a bot war. Thanks Nelson50^T 14:16, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

It is not a bot war [9]. My bot just removed a non-existent link but SieBot found the right link to that wiki first. Maybe elsewhere the right link has been changed manually. --Xqt (talk) 23:08, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Merde

A vandal redirected hip hop to shit, and Xqbot dutifully fixed many of the double-redirects, even though the redirect was only in place for 42 minutes. Although I may agree with the sentiment, it was difficult for me to find all the redirects. Any suggestions? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:28, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Increasing the time offset would not solve this problem. I found this behaviour two times in one year and it was never reported to the robot framework. This miss-edit is annoying but it might be not a big problem. I will change the bot scripts on occasion to detect some cases of vandalizm. Thanks for your request --Xqt (talk) 17:21, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

May I suggest that the edit summary might be a good way to reduce this? "Fixing double redirect hip hop to shit" would be easy enough to search for. Rich Farmbrough, 19:00, 15 October 2009 (UTC).

Sounds good. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:52, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Good idea. Will be implemented asap. Xqt (talk) 07:00, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Done in r7499 --Xqt (talk) 08:41, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Double redirects to categories (XqtBot)

Can you check that any ":" is preserved? Other wise Category:X becomes a category of the redirect page, rather than merely the target. Rich Farmbrough, 18:57, 15 October 2009 (UTC).

Do you have an example for me? --Xqt (talk) 06:59, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I think Rich is referring to this. 66.57.4.150 (talk) 21:08, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I see. Thanks. In my opinion this is a mediawiki-Bug. Anyway it should be solved. --Xqt (talk) 10:35, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Kuvempu University

Don't remove the robot add from Kuvempu University (Kn:)--122.173.185.1 (talk) 08:50, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry but the interwiki target for kn-wiki does not exist Xqt (talk) 12:14, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Double redirect change

Hi, your bot just 'fixed' a double redirect - effectively reverting my edit from Heme C to Heme c. However, the former name (my change) is actually correct, given the context of the target article. I've undone its change. Is there any reason why this change took place please? Brammers (talk) 15:02, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Addendum: please could you clarify if your bot is approved? I've only been able to find its "Request expired" page. Looking at your talk page, it seems to be misbehaving quite a bit. Brammers (talk) 15:06, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry I don't understand your opinion. If Heme C is the right one, you should move the article to that place. This bot only solves double redirection like some others too because mediawiki doesn't solves it yet. These pages are listet at Special:DoubleRedirects. Btw my bot has a global bot flag. --Xqt (talk) 05:44, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Please accept my apologies for being a little terse; my understanding of the double-redirect was mistaken. All sorted now. Best wishes, Brammers (talk) 14:53, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

November 2009

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did to Swahili Wikipedia. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. Amsaim (talk) 13:06, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

This behavior is the result of namespace mismatch. I wouldn't free all of these crossnamespaces. So I blocked the page instead for bots --Xqt (talk) 13:49, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

December 2009

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did to Norwegian Wikipedia. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. Amsaim (talk) 20:28, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Please try to understand that the different language wikipedias have their own individual different ways of organizing their articles. German Wikipedia does not organize german articles on different language wikipedias in the article namespace. German Wikipedia has a special namespace for this here. Thus You cannot remove such valid language links from english wikipedia articles. If, for instance, you create a german article on the Norwegian Wikipedia, and place that article in the german article name space, what will happen is that a german admin will come along and take that article out of the article namespace, and place it into the appropriate name space in German Wikipedia. So the language links are correct. This is not a typical "namespace mismatch". Please adjust your bot accordingly and refrain from removing valid language links from english wikipedia articles. Thank you. Amsaim (talk) 20:48, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Your are rigth. I just blocked the page for now. Fix for crossnamespace coming soon --Xqt (talk) 06:02, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I've fixed the crossnamespace on my local copy now. After testing the behavior I will upload the new revision to svn repository for the other bots too. I hope I get my bot unblocked for doing this stuff --Xqt (talk) 17:31, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Rosie Malek-Yonan's name in Farsi needs no hyphen

Recently a hyphen was added in Rosie Malek-Yonan's last name when spelled in Farsi. Though her last name does have a hyphen in English, when translated into Farsi, there should be no hyphen. I've removed it a few times but it appears again. Can you please help remove it. Thanks! Zayya 17:51, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Since this part is a link to a given farsi article, you cannot change its spelling here. The only way is to move the Farsi article to its redirect --Xqt (talk) 18:03, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Xqbot

I've blocked Xqbot from editing, it has not went through a request for approval and is editing outside the scope allowed for global bots. Per WP:GLOBALBOTS, The English Wikipedia allows the use of Global bots to update interwiki links . . . Use of global bots for any other purpose is not currently permitted. Q ^{T C} 11:06, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I do not agree. You cannot change the rules and hang the delinquent. Since I've startet fixing double redirects in january 2009 this was allowed for global bots long time ago [10]. This was never recalled by global bot policy. I found no restriction to that policy by local policy [11] at the time I startet this task. On the other hand I informed the comunity about my bots tasks on its user page as well as on Wikipedia:Registered bots #Other registered bots. So far I can not understand why my bot was blocked after this long time and its maintainance was well known. Anyway I have switched off fixing double redirections at en-wiki and it would very helpfull unblocking it now to enable fixing interwiki links again. Thanks a lot --Xqt (talk) 17:25, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

English Wikpiedia opted-in to global bots, not the global bot policy. Global bot policy does not overrule local policy. As agreed, ENWP bot policy would only allow global bots to do interwiki work. When the global policy expanded to include double redirects, that did not give the authority to do so on English Wikipedia, as ENWP does not agree to the global policy, but allows global bots under local restrictions. While this might have been ambiguous for a period of time since adoption, the Global rights page was updated to explicitly state that it is against policy to perform tasks outside of the original consensus of interwiki-only. Despite the fact that it was running, did not constitute approval that it was running within policy. It only came to my attention after it 'fixed' some malicious redirects. You're more then welcome to do double redirect fixing, but only after gaining approval for this task. I've gone ahead and unblocked the account so it can continue to do interwiki work only; as mentioned, any other tasks will require approval. Q ^{T C} 01:26, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I respect this policy without any doubt. But as I came here I had also no doubt that fixing redirects is allowed here. I felt it as a overreaction blocking the bot instead of informing me about this misunderstanding. I check all talk pages every day and I am reachable at #pywikipediabot. Anyway it's quite ok for me. Thanks for unblocking and best regards --Xqt (talk) 07:30, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Bot makes mistakes when fixing double redirection

See the history of this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epitaph_of_Twilight&action=history There was redirection to .hack#Setting, which was changed to URL redirection (the article) to fix the non-existant double redirection.

There was another article like this for which I undid the edit also, but I can't recall what it was (it also redirected to .hack#Setting). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.110.201.130 (talk) 19:02, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

This was caused by vandalism here --Xqt (talk) 07:44, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I see. I'm sorry, then. A suggestion: perhaps the bot should check if any part of the page name (a "part" being a word separated by a space from the rest of the name) exists in the second redirected page. This should be true 100% of the time (real double redirects will always be fixe), although it would not always prevent vandalism like this. Perhaps you have another idea which might make it prevent more vandalism. The problem with this kind of vandalism, combined with bots, is that when it gets "fixed", it seems to be a mistake rather than vandalism.

P.S. This is my WM account - I'm the previous IP poster. Thanks, Comanoodle (talk) 16:24, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion. Maybe it works. I am just in experimenting for one of a further release to detect whether a broken redirect or redirect loop may be fixed or should speedy deleted. This might be a bit similar to get potential vandalized pages and write this to a service page for checking. By the way, my bot has a delay time for giving the rc patrol a change to detect such vandalism. But also as described at #Merde above, I changed the bot behaviour in Release 7499 writing the redirect target into the comment line. This helps to revert such derived links to its origin. --Xqt (talk) 18:03, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

ANI notice

Hello, Xqt. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is User:Xqbot. Thank you..— Dædαlus ^Contribs 09:38, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

iw problem

Hi, your bot made this edit, which doesn't seem very plausible to me. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:09, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

The whole thing is not plausible. There are iw links from a portal namespace to tempates and normal articles. This doesn't make any sense at all. The bot just tried to unlink crossed namespaces --Xqt (talk) 12:40, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Please correct your bot

Your bot has been repeatedly and mistakenly adding the french link fr:Barbarian II: The Dungeon of Drax to Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior.[12][13] The sequel has its own page Barbarian II: The Dungeon of Drax. Please make your corrections to this bot. Jappalang (talk) 00:04, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

It's not a bot's malfunction. It is a normal way interwikilinks works. I've changes the source pages at fr-wiki thus it would lead the new links to the correspondig targets. --Xqt (talk) 11:08, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Your bot made a personal attack.  :)

How did this redirect happen? Woogee (talk) 01:08, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

First I guessed this was a kind of artifical intelligence. But sorry the reason was this edit. --Xqt (talk) 10:16, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

I figured it was some sort of vandalism. NOT on your part. Woogee (talk) 23:01, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Unnecessary redirect change

Xqt made this edit because it was "fixing double redirect", but it was not a double redirect. Adabow (talk) 04:21, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

It was at the time it changes the link, but the redirect was reverted here --Xqt (talk) 05:16, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

reply

Hi Xqt, I've left a reply to your message on my talk page. --Marmzok (talk) 20:23, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi Xqt, I've left a reply to your message on my talk page.--Marmzok (talk) 15:00, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

good news?!!! --Marmzok (talk) 20:06, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi Xqt, I've left a reply to your message on my talk page.--Marmzok (talk) 10:55, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

German coats of arms category

sv:Kategori:Delstatsvapen i Tyskland should not be interwiki linked to Category:German coats of arms etc. The Swedish category is just for German Länderwappen, not for German arms in general. E.G. (talk) 21:00, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I've removed all sv-links of all referenced sites --Xqt (talk) 07:34, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

January 2010

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to List of Wikipedias, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Amsaim (talk) 10:05, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Did not help

This edit by the bot didn't help. The previous edit was pretty obviously some click vandalism and should just have been removed (since done). Can the bot be improved to detect this and do the best thing? --J Clear (talk) 03:22, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

done in revision 7875. Greetings --Xqt (talk) 09:41, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Outstanding. Cheers. --J Clear (talk) 02:33, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Interwiki changes

This does not seem very likely. I've seen an iw bot do this before, so if you can figure out what combination of factors is causing this, please leave a note. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:15, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Bot Propagated Redirect vandalism.

Just a heads up, your bot propagated some vandalism. (Or maybe just a new user's test edit?)

When this edit was made, your bot not only obscured it by making another redirect, but it propagated the change.

Propagated vandalism is here : [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]

There may be others. As long as I've got these open I'm going to revert them, but I thought you'd like to know.

APL (talk) 16:49, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh. I see now, from reading more of your talk page that you've already discussed and implemented changes that should prevent this from occurring in the future. APL (talk) 16:53, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

... Do you have a mechanism for quickly fixing this sort of error in the future? If a vandal were to temporarily redirect a page that was the target of many redirects, your bot might go on a spree. That would be tedious to fix manually. APL (talk) 17:06, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

It's the same as desccribed at #Did not help and I've changed the behaviour of that botscript in release 7875. This should help. --Xqt (talk) 15:14, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Xqbot is Vandalising, deleting vital links

Xqbot just deleted a vital link on Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries to the Chinese Wiki [20] ... which, although it is in Chinese, is the more authoritative reference. What on earth is Xqbot doing breaking inter-wiki links. It seems to not be programed with the prime directive "thous shalt not destroy." Please can you keep away from this page in future. Enquire (talk) 06:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Give him the right letters from the target page and it would be perfect, so it could also add the backlink. --Xqt (talk) 11:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you

For fixing the double redirects I left behind. Bots like you, along with their operators, are a big help to the project! WFCforLife (talk) 08:52, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Another thank you

...for fixing my silly error just 4 hours after I created the new page![21] --Cyfal (talk) 16:42, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I am honored. Oh btw. I am not a bot but human :D I sent greetings to my bot and he respondet 1111010001010010. Greeting you both --Xqt (talk) 20:56, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Skyscraperman

Please explain your recent edit. Thank you.--Mimiken (talk) 22:15, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

A page SKYSCRAPERMAN does not exist at fr-wiki. --Xqt (talk) 05:47, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you

Thanks for doing the "User talk:Sir Floyd/Blue Cave (Bisevo)‎; 10:31 . . (+2) . . Xqbot (talk | contribs) (Robot: Fixing double redirect to Talk:Blue Grotto (Biševo))" Sir Floyd (talk) 10:41, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Steffen Mueller

A tag has been placed on Steffen Mueller, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done for the following reason:

not noteable

You may wish to consider using a Wizard to help you create articles. See the Article Wizard.

Thank you.

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not meet basic Wikipedia criteria may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as an appropriate article, and if you can indicate why the subject of this article is appropriate, you may contest the tagging. To do this, add {{hangon}} on the top of the page and leave a note on the article's talk page explaining your position. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would confirm its subject's notability under the guidelines.

For guidelines on specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for bands, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Mod mmg (talk) 05:34, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Xqbot removing interwiki link to renamed page without adding replacement

I noticed here that Xqbot removed an interwiki link to an en.wikipedia that had been renamed and deleted, but did not replace/update the link. It was easy enough to add the links manually, but I thought perhaps you might be able to use the information. Cheers, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 22:54, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

As categories could not be moved, I have to find out any regularity for such cases to implement any new behavior. But this is a first hint. Thank you therefore. Last week I implemented in r7936 a new function that enables bots to follow {{category redirect}}s as well as redirects. And I am improving a new module which could detect backlinks to a given page. This will help to fix the new link as fast as possible. Xqt (talk) 08:09, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad if I've been any help. One more thought I had is that the deletion summary could possibly be useful, as the new category name is often linked in the summary; I don't know, however, whether there is sufficient regularity in this practice for a bot to be able to make use of it. Thank you for your response and all your work, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 08:39, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

RE: Deletion warning

your name was on the edit history.Mod mmg (talk) 07:58, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Really? I found User:Xqbot on the vh. But this is a bot. Xqt (talk) 08:09, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

So how is this 'bot' talking to me?Mod mmg (talk) 21:48, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I guess the bots talk page redirection leads you to me. Xqt (talk) 07:11, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

So how did I put stuff on the bot's page if it redirects here?

Mod MMG (User Page) Reply on my talkpage. Do NOT click this link 07:31, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

You haven't [22] Xqt (talk) 17:34, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

"Cool White"

Hi. Long story about a redirect.

Someone once confused two separate blackface minstrels who were both living and working in 19th c. America. One man was called Charles White: the other was called John Hodges, but acted under the stagename Cool White. Somehow the two got confused and so a page was created for a non-existent Charles "Cool" White. To try and sort it out I made a page for each man separately, and then made a redirect from the stagename "Cool" White to the real person, John Hodges. But somehow the bot has reinstated the 'Charles "Cool" White' page. RLamb (talk) 23:06, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I believe the reason is this edit Xqt (talk) 13:40, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I made that page before I discovered redirects. How can we stop wikipedia from responding to a search for 'Charles "Cool" White' when there is no such person? Or since it redirects to the right person, does it not matter?RLamb (talk) 13:54, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

bot mindlessly processing double redirects

The situarion regarding "Taqi al-Din" was satisfactory unitl yesterday. Then editor Jagged 85 carried out an ill-judged move of it, to "Taqi al-Din (disambiguation)". I protested, at User talk:Jagged 85#Taqi al-Din, explaining that, amongst other things, it he had left a whole lot of redirects in a wrong state. Now your bot has "fixed" them by making it worse. Wikipedia work is hard enough without well-intentioned messing-up like this. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 22:19, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Removing double redirects is actually harmful to the wikipedia. The policy was originally that they should be removed, the current policy is that it's unnecessary, as it does not improve performance in any significant way. There's actually a policy that you should not do things for efficiency reasons; that's the website's problem. In some common situations removing links actually damages the Wikipedia. I want this ill-conceived bot function shutdown.- Wolfkeeper 15:14, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Double redirects are a problem and do need to be fixed. This bot seems to be a doing a good job with them. If the editors above have suggestions they should be advised that being constructive would be more effective. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:34, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Double redirects are not a problem, merely an irritant. Wrong links are a problem, and there are a lot of them, sometimes caused by vandalism, more often by editor carelessness. When the links are right this bot removes the irritant. When the links are wrong this bot compounds the problem. It should only be used with great care. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 08:59, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

bot removes apparently valid wikilink

Clay animation‎; 02:13:52 . . (-18) . . Xqbot (talk | contribs) (robot Removing: he:Claymation) --Janke | Talk 12:12, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

he:Claymation does not exist, it has been deleted. Xqt (talk) 09:39, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

All transliterations of Choy Li Fut are causing moving/redirect problem.

This is a great page here which gives credit to many of the branches of Choy Li Fut - a style of martial arts.The only reason why anyone would want to change the name of this page is for political reasons. Lets keep politics and passions out of this wiki page and concentrate on the content. I believe that the page should be left as Cai Li Fo. I will add both Mandarin and Cantonese to the top description. Okay, let me explain the linguistic problems. First Chinese as a spoken language is tonal not phonetic like most western languages such as our English. There are basically 4 tones in Mandarin, 7 in Cantonese. The system of writing Chinese words into English is called Pinyin. For example "choy" can be written as "Choi" or "Tsoi", etc. That is because it is difficult to write tones and refined sounds into letters. To try and standardize the English writing of Chinese words and to take into consideration pronunciation, pinyin standards such as Gwoyeu Romatzyh of 1928, Latinxua Sin Wenz of 1931,Wade-Giles (1859; modified 1892), zhuyin, etc.. were created over history to address these problems. Each of them had differing standards. The official 2009 national standarized pinyin of China is called Hanyu Pinyin. There are 107+ known spoken dialects in China. In Cantonese alone, you have dialects such as Toi-san, Sam-yup, Sei-yup, Gok-gong, Hakka, etc.. Each will pronounce "Choy Li Fut" slightly different, thus the transliteration to English, depending on what pinyin you used, and when it was used, will create differences in the English spelling. An example would be the word "Chi". If you use the Chinese Postal Romanization, you can write it as Chi, ch'i, and hsi (pinyin ji, qi, and xi) are represented as either tsi, tsi, and si or ki, ki, and hi depending on historic pronunciation, etc. The official Chinese Hanyu Pinyin of 2009 romanized spelling of Chi is Qi, whether you like it or not, whether you are from the South or North. So arguing whether Choy Li Fut should be written as Choi Lei Fut or Tsoi Lee Fot, is ridiculous and wasting time. If you wish to conform to the most popular Southern Cantonese standard for the name, the "Choy Li Fut" would be the one. Another problem. To make Choy Li Fut a widely known martial arts in China, and to standardize it's name. You have to use Mandarin. To unify the country as a whole and remove the dialect issues. The government of China made Mandarin the official language of China. Since Hong Kong is now part of China again, Mandarin is now the official language in Hong Kong even though people still speak their dialects. Even with written and spoken Mandarin, Taiwan uses the older written language while mainland China uses a simplified version. Most people born and educated before WWII in China and Japan can read the old style of writing as well as the newer simplified form. To deal with this issue, I will mention both names at the top of the article. To deal with transliterations of the romanized spellings, when a wiki user types in any transliteration of Choy li Fut, Cai Li Fo, Choi Lei Fut, whatever, the wiki has been set up to auto-magically send them to this page. The Xqbot is causing problems with all the transliterations of Choy Li Fut. All the various Pinyin spellings should point to Cai Li Fo as the official name and page. Huo Xin (talk) 20:43, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't see the point. As Cai li fo has been moved, xqbot solved double redirections to the new target after a delay. The delay is to prevent fixing double redirects during move wars. You moved that page back to its origin. This is no problem for the bot. It would fix it again after a given delay. But in this case you were faster doing this by hand. -Xqt (talk) 06:11, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Help

Can you help me edit this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_theatrical_film_production_companies to follow the same format as the distributors page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Theatrical_Film_Companies? It is a lot of work and I would appreciate your help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Misterix (talk • contribs) 08:30, 2 May 2010

Both are deleted. -Xqt (talk) 16:19, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Removal of valid language links

Please refrain from removing valid language links from this article. The links you removed are valid, and they lead to the corresponding language entry on "List of Wikipedias" in other language Wikipedias. Check the discussion at the articles talk page. Thank you. Amsaim (talk) 22:28, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

It looks like a number of the links that were added were erroneous, as well, pointing to other languages' articles on the Laotian Wikipedia, rather than to their list of Wikipedias; e.g., fr:Wikipédia_en_lao. But yes, as Amsaim says, List of Wikipedias is tricky as far as interwikis are concerned, because different encyclopedias might have a list article, a list in project space, or both, and consensus on enwiki is to link all of them. This shouldn't be changed by a bot. — Gavia immer (talk) 00:43, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

This comes from an faulty namespace at hy-wiki because the namespace delimiter is not a ":" but a unicode letter. This leads to this malfunction. Normaly it avoids the project namespace. I try to fix it manually -Xqt (talk) 07:51, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I found this faulty page was corrected: [23] -Xqt (talk) 08:04, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid this has happened again [24]. Can you please make certain this problem doesn't get repeated? — Gavia immer (talk) 04:45, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Redirect vandalism

Hey, just letting you know about a new sort of vandalism that was facilitated by your bot. Someone vandalized Economy of the United States, redirecting it to an image of a trashcan, and then half an hour later, your bot fixed all the double redirects, pointing them all to that image. It affected United States/Economy, U.S. economy, United States of America/Economy, US Economy, Economy of United States, Economy of the United States of America, Economy of United States of America, Economy of usa, Economy of US, Economy of the united states, United States economy, Economy of the USA, GDP of the United States, U.S. Economy, Usa economy, US GDP, United States GDP, GDP in USA, and they weren't fixed until I caught it today, two days later. I'm not certain there's a good solution to prevent this from happening in the future (my only thought would be to have the bot wait for a certain period of time before fixing double redirects, but in this case it took 4 hours to fix the initial vandalism, so that wouldn't have helped much); I just wanted to notify you of this new possible vandalism threat. --Rory096 18:53, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

I implemented some checking procedures for other vandalism types in past and analyzing this new type I am sure to find a solution for that. Give me a bit time to implement it. -Xqt (talk) 04:47, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

over-enthusiastic bot

This is not the first time I have wished this bot did not exist (see above). It is really disconcerting when doing slightly complicated reorganisations of articles, as I have been doing, when this bot crashes in and fixes double redirects which I was about to deal with anyway, but only after case-by-case examination of links which used the redirection. Could I suggest that at least you equip the bot with a time-limit, so that it doesn't act on a double redirect until the situation is, for example, three days old, rather than doing it less than 30 minutes later, as happened to me just now. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 21:59, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Bot Issue Involving Xqbot & A New Proposed Bot Configuration Tip

Please see User talk:Tim1357/Archive 5#DASHBot 2 and Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Proposed configuration tip. There was a case of vandalism that Xqbot propagated via a double redirect fix and then was cascaded into templates by DASHbot. It's resulted in a proposed change to the bot policy so you may want to weigh as it could impact your bot's operation. -- JLaTondre (talk) 02:48, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Bot interwiki removal

Please explain This edit. ml:മലയാളം appears to be a complete appropriate interwiki link for George Orwell. Please respond on my talk. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:51, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Some pages and categories of ml-wiki where not reachable for some hours for humans and bots as well but mw replied with "page not found". This causes the bot removing the link. -Xqt (talk) 17:05, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Huh Well, it seems to me like the wiser decision might be to skip ml.wp or have your bot operate from ml.wp, removing only articles that are deleted on that wiki. If I hadn't checked, how long do you think it would have been before a different bot re-added ml.wp? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:47, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I wise decision if you could know it. The lost pages might be have something to do with the mw version upgrade from 1.16alpha-wmf to 1.16wmf4 and maybe some changes of namespace aliases. Anyway I've started my bot to fix iw links for that site (and other bots did that too) and all links should be restored now. -Xqt (talk) 16:22, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

A link from Solar flare to the sr-wikipedia was deleted today. I restored it, but I thought you could use the information. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 12:49, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. This is a well-known bug of the interwiki bot and nobody has an idea to fix it. This is due to the needed transformation from latin to kyrillic letters. I've fixed the iw link now.

It removed interwiki links in this DIFF for the second time. ----moreno oso (talk) 20:22, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Which is quite right. The pages on these given sites does not exists. -Xqt (talk) 13:25, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

schon wieder

Yet again this bot has caused me annoyance, where this attampt to "fix" a double redirect was simultaneous with my actual fixing of it, so timed as to cause an edit conflict.

The reason I've been having problems with this bot is the type of work I've been doing recently, namely sorting out disambiguations of Arabic names. There is often a fairly common name (for example Abdur Rashid, as in this case) which occurs in several variant spellings (for example Abdul Rashid). Often some form of the name has arbitrarily been used in unqualified form as the name of the article about one of its bearers. So I've been moving such articles to better qualified names (for example Abdul Rashid (Chief Justice) in this case), updating all the correct inward links (while leaving alone the incorrect ones of which there are often many), then turning one of the pages with the plain name into a disambiguation page, and redirecting the other forms of the name to it. Between my doing the move and creating the dab page there is a short time lag where there may be a double redirect situation. It is not at all helpful if this bot "fixes" this situation at this time, since what it does is wrong, and it serves only to confuse and irritate.

I will repeat my suggestion given above, that this bot should be modified so that it doesn't touch double redirects until the situation is, say, at least three days old. That would give me (and others) enough time to sort out any necessary restructuring. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 09:31, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I am not the bot runner, but I disagree. It should not be taking a human editor anywhere near three days to do a move; typing a redirect takes less than a minute, and even with some other intervening cleanup edits, manual moves-and-cleanup should not take more than ten minutes, and usually less than five. If anything, I often wish this bot acted faster, so that we wouldn't have so many double redirects all over the place. —Lowellian (reply) 23:15, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

With respect, you obviously have never attempted anything on the scale of the restructurings I've been doing. I've been doing moves involving fifty to a hundred "intervening cleanup edits", each of which I have checked for appropriateness. That takes rather more than ten minutes, and is tedious enough that one needs to take breaks. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 17:09, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

That assumption about me is not correct. I have made tens of thousands of edits in my years on Wikipedia, including some large and complex move jobs with intervening cleanup edits on that scale in the past, and I have never had any problems with this bot acting too quickly. Those intervening cleanup edits might take more than ten minutes, but this bot works on a far slower scale than that; it can often take hours to fix redirects. —Lowellian (reply) 08:57, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Bot mangled redirect

Could I please get you to take a peak at this edit, where the bot mangled the redirect, specifically the part after the #. - TexasAndroid (talk) 13:12, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Looks like a well known bug of the pwb. I increase the priority. -Xqt (talk) 17:51, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Wrapping up Xqbot 5

Hey Xqt, Im trying to wrap up Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Xqbot_3 and there is one comment by Betacommand that you need to respond to. After that Ill be glad to give you {{BotApproved}}. Thanks. Tim1357 ^talk 00:47, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Done. Xqt (talk) 18:01, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Redirect confusion of Henry Nicholas for Henry Nicholis

I notice that several pages that were meant to redirect to Henry Nicholis were incorrectly "corrected" by the bot in order to clean up a double redirect. (See Heinrich Nicklaes, Heinrich Niclaes and Hendrik Niclaes.) I've tried to undo all those false redirects, but I'm not sure how to locate where the double redirect came from, and I can't tell from the revision history of the "Nicholis" page if it was simply a problem of an incorrect rename of the article. Can you help me figure out if the problem is fixed? Or is there another article awaiting a chance to trick the bot? Thanks, Aristophanes68 (talk) 21:23, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

The reason was this vandalism. You can find it on bots contrib searching for the redirect target. I'll have a look to this stuff this evening and correct the rest if needed. Xqt (talk) 06:09, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

You've fixed them all. There is nothing left to do. Xqt (talk) 06:55, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Aristophanes68 (talk) 22:35, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

So-called "Cosmetic changes"

Bonjour,

I don't like your "cosmetic changes" : [25], [26], [27] ; see here how a good bot works.

Budelberger (   ) 16:18, 15 August 2010 (UTC).

Where is the problem? Please make a bug request to the framework if there are any wrong actions done by m:cosmetic_changes.py on other sites s.v.p. -Xqt (talk) 07:52, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Actually its not our responsibility, its that of the bot runner to make sure there are no bugs. Your cosmetic changes have been making errors on simple.wikipedia. This is one. It moves the default sort and the stub out of the correct positions and places them up with the external links. Please stop using cosmetic changes on simple.wikipedia until this is fixed or your bot may be blocked. -DJSasso (talk) 10:35, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

This not only depends on cosmetic changes but also to all bots dealing with categories because of a non-standard placement of that {{stub}}id template (see textlib.py for further informations). I do not think that this is a reason for blocking a bot. Anyway I've deactivated my cc on simple-wiki. I guess we have other problems to fix first, isn't it? ;) Greetings Xqt (talk) 07:48, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Feature request added  @xqt 16:13, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

 Done in gerrit:437175  @xqt 12:23, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Please stop your bot from doing the following

Please stop your bot from adding pl:Chłopiec z malajskiej wioski to The Kampung Boy. The Polish article talks about the animation (at Kampung Boy (television series)), not the book. Jappalang (talk) 21:21, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for this hint. Missleading links are introduced by an user, not a bot. I fixed the remaining pages on the other sites. Xqt (talk) 18:47, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Yet again

Once more this stupid bot is interfering with my work. I moved Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri less than an hour ago and was in the middle of sorting out the redirects, and this stupid bot cuts across what I'm doing and makes a whole lot of wrong edits. When will this nonsense stop? SamuelTheGhost (talk) 21:27, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Where is the sence to change the source redirect with a delay of 14 hours after moving the target? Xqt (talk) 11:12, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. Let me explain. I moved

• 20:32, 2 September 2010 (diff | hist) N Abd al-Qadir ‎ (moved Abd al-Qadir to Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri: let bare name be disambiguated)

This automatically created a redirect from Abd al-Qadir to Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri. Then I made eight straightforward corrections of double redirects, of which the following is typical:

• 20:37, 2 September 2010 (diff | hist) Emir Abdel-Kader Al-Jazairi ‎ (←Redirected page to Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri) (top)

There remained a dozen or so double redirects of other spellings of Abd al-Qadir, which had in total around 100 uses of them in articles. These were uses of variant spellings of Abd al-Qadir, currently referring to Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri. I wished to point these variant spelling to the disambiguation page, so I went through the 100 or so articles which used them, changing their links to go direct to Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri. I checked each carefully as I went since in a few cases the link was wrong. Less than an hour into this process your bot "fixed" the couble redirects. I left the redirection of Abd al-Qadir itself until after I had finished, as this made it easier for me to see what I was doing, and so that anyone accessing the articles in the interim would in fact find the links to be as correct as possible, even if double. I'm sure you understand that carefully checking over 100 links and changing them took 14 hours (spread over two days). SamuelTheGhost (talk) 12:11, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I just moved Abd el-Krim as part of a re-structuring exercise, and two and a half hours later you crash in with your stupid fucking bot. You don't have the grace to discuss this with me properly, nor the sense to support my work. I see you as about as much help as a vandal. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 18:37, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Samuel, after moving a page you may replace the remaining redirect with an article or disambig page. This would prevent fixing redirects to the new target. If you would keep that redirect without fixing its redirects just write _STATICREDIRECT_ to its content. I've changed the behavior of redirect bots especially for this request to keep redirects pointing to a static redirect unchanged. This gives you enough time to check every link. If you are ready you should remove this magic word. I guess this is in your sense and the best solution for your work. Regards Xqt (talk) 20:04, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll try that next time the occasion arises. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 09:28, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I am sorry. This magic word is __STATICREDIRECT__ (two underlines on both sides) -Xqt (talk) 10:51, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Warren Woods High School

Hi,

You redirected Warren Woods High School (my new article) to Warren Woods Tower High School, a pre-existing article. The 2 schools are NOT the same. The former (WWHS) predated WWTower HS (see WWHS text). I have undone your redirect in that it is not accurate.

Thanks.

JMP62 —Preceding unsigned comment added by JMP62 (talk • contribs) 19:03, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Really? I neither edited Warren Woods High School nor Warren Woods Tower High School and my bot keeps them untouched too. Xqt (talk) 14:59, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Navbox move

Hi, when I move a navbox Template, the sourcecode "Name" does not change. So the v-d-e box {{{navbox}}) still links to the old name. Is that easy to detect, to notify, and maybe even to change by bot? -DePiep (talk) 22:24, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I`ve got my wires crossed somewhere, could you explain. {{navbox}} isn't moved. Did you changed the assignment to "Name" and it didn't changed on the pages? Then wait for some hours. This changes will be recorded on a queue and changes step by step. Ok there is a possibility to speed-up this stuff. If it's urgent, please call me again (via irc if you like) Xqt (talk) 14:51, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

You described the problem correctly (it's about the Name parameter), and for me it doesn't need a speedup. Just didn't know it was automated already. -DePiep (talk) 11:17, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Not your fault, but...

After someone vandalized the feminism page by redirecting it to misandry, your Xqbot dutifully did its job and changed every redirect to feminism to misandry instead. Took me some time to clean up the extensive mess. Again, not your fault at all, but thought you should know. Maybe there's a way to throttle the bot so it waits some number of hours or days before fixing double redirects, to avoid turning a minor vandalism into a major headache. --Jayron32 06:42, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure whether this was vandalism. I guess he meant this seriously. Anyway I am working on a solution for these cases. Xqt (talk) 13:42, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Li Zehou

The bot appears to have removed the link to the Chinese WP for this article. Is there a reason this was done? im relatively new to linking to for lang WP's, and i know there are some issues with firewalls and censorship in China. please enlighten me if there is a legit reason for this edit.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 19:42, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

You can see the reason here and I've fixed it. Unforunately interwiki bots aren't be able o transliterate different forms of chinese letters as MediaWiki does. The right thing is copy the page name from zh-wiki and it should work. Xqt (talk) 23:43, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Malfunction

The bot is creating malformed redirects by omitting the final square brackets from the link, e.g. [28], [29], [30], [31], [32]. Regards, Jon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.44.188.123 (talk) 19:50, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes I know about this bug. I've fixed it 7 hours ago in pyrev:8656. Thanks for your notice Xqt (talk) 20:43, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks: specific interwiki links bots documentation

Thanks for your prompt reply.

I would like to find doc about the specific bots dealing with interwiki links, helping in the translation efforts. The link you provided is about writing bot in python: I cannot find specific do con interwiki bots (instances of the general concept) dealing with link checking and completeness, useful during translation works. --Pastore Italy (talk) 12:45, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

The botscript ist here but I guess you need something like Help:Interwiki linking or it:Aiuto:Interwiki. A general information about "How interwiki bots are working" is availlable on de-wiki: de:Wikipedia:Wie funktioniert ein Interwiki-Link-Bot? Xqt (talk) 14:37, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Spray (sailing vessel)

Hi, the bot added here, but the sv:-article is not about the ship. I have reverted, but maybe other places the same mistake? Interestingly, User talk:RedBot did the same today. -DePiep (talk) 19:39, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Sure there is this wrong iw-link on another site too. This should prevent it's return for now. I'll investigate for this wrong link later. Xqt (talk) 05:59, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

List of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes

Please weigh in on Talk:List of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes#Inclusion of episode segment links, so we can generate a consensus. Thanks, Fixblor (talk) 09:23, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Double redirects to "Redirects with possibilities"

Per WP:NOTBROKEN, I think the bot should not be "fixing" redirects such as this one. Savidan 03:53, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Only double redirects has been fixed (which occures normally after moving a page), not the redirect itself or inside an article. Xqt (talk) 17:46, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

@Xqt: The bot changed some double redirects and defeated the "with possibilities" feature. Here is an example https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jentadueto&diff=948782204&oldid=948461765

Jentadueto redirected to Linagliptin/metformin. Linagliptin/metformin has "with possibilities". If Linagliptin/metformin is changed to be a standalone page Jentadueto should still redirect to it. The bot changed Jentadueto to redirect to the page that Linagliptin/metformin redirects to even though it has "with possibilities".

Here are more examples

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jentadueto_XR&diff=948782226&oldid=948449653

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kazano&diff=948782244&oldid=948459480

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kombiglyze&diff=948782268&oldid=948462138

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kombiglyze_XR&diff=948782290&oldid=948462095

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Metformin/alogliptin&diff=948782329&oldid=948457645

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Metformin/ertugliflozin&diff=948782347&oldid=948460137

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Metformin/glipizide&diff=948782369&oldid=948458261

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Metformin/linagliptin&diff=948782385&oldid=948450573

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Metformin/rosiglitazone&diff=948782411&oldid=948460528

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Metformin/saxagliptin&diff=948782428&oldid=948461948

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Saxagliptin/dapagliflozin&diff=948782559&oldid=948462416

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Segluromet&diff=948782588&oldid=948459882

Whywhenwhohow (talk) 02:27, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Move Archdeacons of St Albans

Before I got change to move List of Archdeacons of St Albans to Archdeacon of St Albans you redirected the latter one. I wasn't sure what was the best article title name and moved it back and forth before wanted to move it to Archdeacon of St Albans. I intend to expand the page from a basic list to an article about the post, its history, etc. If possible could you move the page to the Archdeacon of St Albans. - Scrivener-uki (talk) 23:12, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I can't since sysop rights are required to to that. The right place to request this is Wikipedia:Requested moves. Greetings Xqt (talk) 07:59, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Sample page

I, in my userspace, have made a sample double redirect. It goes from Page B to Page C to Page D. Xqbot has been "fixing" it. I revert it. Us441(talk)(contribs) 21:54, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Ok I've blocked that page. Sorry for that. Xqt (talk) 07:52, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much. Us441(talk)(contribs) 13:14, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

User space edits

The bot has done something it shouldn't have done: [33] - "fixed" redirect from username to another username. East of Borschov 01:28, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

This came from that wrong redirect which was reverted lateron. Xqt (talk) 12:58, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

On Khuzestan

I noticed that you had changed "Khuzestan" into "Arabistan" in referring to an article on the Arabic Wikipedia. The illegal action (we are not at liberty to change internationally-recognized names as we please) on the Arabic Wikipedia conforms with what some Arabs seem to be doing all the time, naming the entire world Arabistan, a manifestation of an acute form of inferiority complex from which this lot is clearly suffering. For historical details and the relevant historical maps (even Arabic maps) concerning Khuzestan, please consult this note. We do not need to follow uncritically some Arab chauvinists/illiterates here on the English Wikipedia. --BF 00:07, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Dear Xqt, thank you for so promptly correcting the falsification on the Arabic Wikipedia! With kind regards, --BF 02:40, 6 December 2010 (UTC).

Double redirects and vandalism

Recently, an anonymous vandal redirected a page with a degrading name (Whore of Babylon) to a different page (Lady Gaga). This redirect lasted for 2 hours and 19 minutes; during this time, your bot (Xqbot) "fixed" redirects to it. To prevent such vandalism, I think your bot should only assume a redirect to be valid (and therefore fix redirects to it) if either the redirecting was done by a registered user, or it had lasted 24 hours. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:28, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Helike

Hello, I would like to ask for your help. I saw the comment of Parrot of Doom (delete a load of nonsense, and possibly a copyvio) and I would appreciate if someone could explain to me why it is nonsense to show to everyone the 20 persons who studied, researched and wrote, about the lost city of Helike, in the past. These informations were published in several greek magazines and one of the most reliable magazine for archaelogists (Archaeology magazine issue No 9 November 1983 wrote: In the Corinthian Gulf and in the area of Aegeion the Greek diver-explorer Alexis Papadopoulos has discovered a sunken town. It lies at a depth of 25m-45m with exhibits walls, fallen roofs, discarded roof tiles, streets, etc. Whether or not this town can be identified with Eliki is a question to be answered by extensive underwater research. In any case, the discovery of this town can be regarded as an extremely interesting find). Please advise to whom I can send the permission of the owner for using material from his site. Please find the link for the underwater documentary film in greek and english version http://oudeterapleustotita.blogspot.com/2009/11/blog-post.html Thank you for your time. Happy New Year. Alchemistria (talk) 17:15, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

I guess these permissions are handled by the WP:OTRS-team. Regards and happy new year too Xqt (talk) 05:14, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Wang Rong

Xqbot has been repeatedly, and I can't tell why, removing the Chinese Interwiki link for Wang Rong. Can you look into this? Thanks. --Nlu (talk) 23:47, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I guess this was it. Greetings Xqt (talk) 06:15, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Trop fort, Xqt. --Budelberger (   ) 09:16, 14 January 2011 (UTC).

Thanks for your fix, Budelberger, tres bien ;) Xqt (talk) 05:57, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The changes made to Pskott m/68 by the bot

The Pkkott m/68 is not a rocket. It is similar in operation to the larger recoilless rifles (see text on that page). Also, please not that the AT-4 which replaced the Pskott m/68 and is wide spread use around the world (including the US) is also not a rocket, even though for what ever reason many official documents in the US military state it is. JackJackehammond (talk) 14:44, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your reporting. It's not up to the bot to discover the sense of the target page. It only solves double redirects. Ask user:The Bushranger about these movings which gave that wrong rocket hint. Xqt (talk) 16:49, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Warning

Dear Xqt,

Please be advised that your bot is adding {{stub}} template to articles in Persian Wikipedia. This is not advised because stub articles should be marked with subject-specific stub templates. It would be a good idea to stop this behavior of your bot at the earliest convenience.

Regards,

huji—TALK 04:09, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Huji, could you please give me diff link? I do not remember that a bot places stub templates without manual operating. And I don't. Thanks. Xqt (talk) 09:35, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, my bad. It appears the abuse filter is triggered even when the stub template already exists in the article. Your bot is fine. huji—TALK 02:49, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Xqbot misbehave on en.wikipedia's article Belarus

Hello, your bot Xqbot continues to remove valid inter-wiki for hak:Pha̍k-ngò-lò-sṳ̂, stating in summary that it is removing invalid inter-wiki to hak:Phâ̍k-ngò-lò-sṳ (difference is in circumflex accent position). Other bots keep adding valid inter-wiki for hak, so bots are in active edit war. Please resolve this issue.--Gowr (talk) 01:08, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. This is a known Python bug. I've made a work-arround in pyrev:9018. Xqt (talk) 06:48, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks for cleaning up after me... I always forget the reference close tag. --Ed558 (talk) 11:31, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Redirect templates

I noticed that when you fixed the double redirect of City of thieves on 1/21/2011, you left in place the "R from other capitalisation" template, which no longer applied to the updated redirect. I'm not sure what the solution to this problem is in the general case, but I think a reasonable thing to do would be when fixing a double redirect, remove the redirect template if present. AlphaPyro (AlphaPyro) 15:43, 12 April 2011‎ (UTC)

Redirection problem

Hi.

This bot changed all the redirects to the page National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, in redirects to the Pensioner page.

That is obviously not the same thing! You should fix that. Maximini1010 (talk) 23:36, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

This was one year ago caused by this vandalism. I fixed the bot months ago to detect this sort of vandalism. Xqt (talk) 07:35, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I've done a rollback for the remaining wring redirection links now. Xqt (talk) 07:41, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Bot edits pages even when they are marked as "In Use"

In this edit, your bot edited a page which was marked by the "in use" template. This caused a duplication of the "References" section which had to be fixed manually. Perhaps your bot should respect the "in use" template, which says "please do not edit this page while this message is displayed." —Bill Price (nyb) 16:41, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

See here for a solution on how to make your bot respect the template. —Bill Price (nyb) 16:42, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I've implemented this behavior for interwiki bots in pyrev:7759 several months ago but it would be a good idea to do the same for other bot scripts too. Give me some time to implement this. Xqt (talk) 10:26, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

incorrect ordering of Interlanguage links

In this edit, while editing the nl: link, your bot also moved the ro: link to be before the nl: link. I have correct it. —Coroboy (talk) 03:54, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

fixed in pyrev:9275 Xqt (talk) 09:06, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Xqbot double redirect false positive

Hi there, and thanks for your great work with Xqbot. This is just to let you know that in this edit, xqbot tried to fix a link that was already correct. I'm not sure exactly what the problem is, but I would appreciate it if you could take a look at it. Thanks! — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 11:53, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

The reason was this redirection of the target page which results in a double redirect of the source. I've no idea to prevent this except keeping a delay time which was more than 1 hour. Sorry for this. Xqt (talk) 12:04, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Possible bot edit warring

Hi, I'd like to bring to your attention the history of this article. Three bots seem to be warring here. Could you try and explain what exactly is happening there? Thanks. Lynch7 12:28, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

This is a known bug 3081100 not from the bot framework but from the underlying python interpreter. We are not able to fix it but to deny some bots from editing some affected language codes. Xqt (talk) 16:59, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification :) Lynch7 17:18, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I also needed another clarification. For instance, if I add a sa interwiki to a page in English Wikipedia, will all the interwikis be automatically added to the article in sa? Lynch7 08:58, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, under the conditions the target page exists it it is not empty or under construction and there is no interwiki conflict (which means more than one article points to the same language site). Xqt (talk) 11:21, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Now should be fixed with new python release 2.7.2. Xqt (talk) 13:29, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! Lynch7 13:34, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Akhiezer-Krein-Favard theorem

Dear Xqbot,

I have created an article Akhiezer-Krein-Favard theorem which redirects to Jackson's inequality, and a few spelling variations which redirect to Akhiezer-Krein-Favard theorem. The idea is that, hopefully, Akhiezer-Krein-Favard theorem will be a true article one day, and then the redirects will point to it without the need to fix them manually. That is why I undid two of your edits.

Yours, Sasha (talk) 08:37, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

I am answering in order of my bot ;) Akhiezer–Krein–Favard theorem was a redirect loop and I fixed it to Akhiezer–Krein–Favard theorem. I marked the last one as _STATICREDIRECT_ which means double redirects woun't be fixed. I guess this is what you ment. Greetings Xqt (talk) 15:22, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

thanks!! this is exactly what I wanted.Sasha (talk) 16:59, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

pywikipedia bot problem

from ru:Обсуждение_участника:Volkov#Interwiki_bot_-_request_for_log:

For this edit (I know that problem is caused by interwiki mess, not by bot) Bulwersator 18:45, 16 августа 2011 (UTC)

NOTE: Ignoring link from non-disambiguation page [[pl:Makary]] to disambiguation [[en:Makarios]]

NOTE: ignoring [[en:Makarios]] and its interwiki links

======Post-processing [[pl:Makary]]======

WARNING: [[ca:Macari]] is either deleted or has a mismatching disambiguation state.

WARNING: [[sh:Makarije]] is either deleted or has a mismatching disambiguation state.

WARNING: [[ca:Macari]] is either deleted or has a mismatching disambiguation state.

WARNING: [[sh:Makarije]] is either deleted or has a mismatching disambiguation state.

Updating links on page [[pl:Makary]].

Changes to be made: robot Adding: [[de:Kari]] Modifying: [[en:Kari (name)]]

- [[en:Makarios]]

+ [[de:Kari]]

+ [[en:Kari (name)]]

--Volkov ^(?!) 19:51, 16 августа 2011 (UTC)

• So what in en:Makarios is recognised as disambig? Template:Given name? Bulwersator 06:41, 17 августа 2011 (UTC)
• And why en was ignored (non-disambiguation page [[pl:Makary]] to disambiguation [[en:Makarios]]) but it, ro, sh, co disambigs weren't? Bulwersator 06:46, 17 августа 2011 (UTC)

The way disambigs are treated by pywikibot is a bit tricky. You'd better ask for more technical details one of script developers - en:User:Xqt --Volkov ^(?!) 09:32, 17 августа 2011 (UTC)

So what happened here? Bulwersator (talk) 23:21, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Disambig templates are normally recognized via MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage. {{Given name}} is not a disambig but pwb handles it as a disambig per bug request years ago. The bot only follows interwiki links of disambig pages even if the target page is a disambig page too. And guess what it does for non-disambig pages ;) Most of the bots are running in autonomous mode which means the operator does not verify all bot edits before updating. But the rule described above could be wrong. Maybe it could be right pointing from a disambig page to a non-disambig page e.g. a page marked with "Given name" template to a name article on an other site. We had a lot of wrong bot edits in past with a -force option which enables to remove wrong crosswiki disambig links and bot owner are recommended not to use that option in autonous mode. In result given links will not be deleted but only new links are added existing links could be changed. In pyrev:8536 I introduced a -cleanup option which enabled removing non-existend links. In the given sample existing links wheren't removed but it changed a link from a disambig to a non-disambig page. Xqt (talk) 21:19, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Xqbot and double redirects resulting from vandal edits

Hi. just to let you know, this vandal edit resulted in this erroneous edit by Xqbot. Not sure if such things are avoidable or not. --Paul_012 (talk) 14:06, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I am collecting some ideas avoiding some of these vandal edits before changing the framework. I guess I need a bit time for implementation. Xqt (talk) 15:54, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Redirect edit issue for Eight Circuits of Consciousness

Xqbot made this problematic edit, however I was unable to find what triggered it to occur. --Bxj (talk) 17:23, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Found it. I guess the problems are over-agressive DR fixes, and DR fixes that don't get reverted when there are new cues to suggest it was invalid. Arguably, it's just a bigger problem with MediaWiki itself and how redirects are handled, but that's another can of worms. --Bxj (talk) 17:28, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

missing template-generated refs

Xqt seems to have missed Caolan language, where the ref is generated by the infobox. (It's since been done manually.) Is there a way to include this? I'd like to try to get Wikiproject languages to review our language articles, and if the population figure checks out with the latest edition of Ethnologue, to set ref=e16 to generate the reference. There are thousands of such articles, and it would be nice if people could just work on getting through them without worrying about formatting the references. — kwami (talk) 07:35, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

The bot didn't see the reference during screen scrapping since the reference gots an additional <span> tag. I fixed the bot now and it should work with the new mw screen. Thanks for reporting this bug.  @xqt 10:58, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Great! Usur:WikHead has expressed reservations on my talk page; if you think his worries are justified, maybe the bot could just fix cases of the ref parameter being set to e16? Though that parameter is used for manual refs as well. — kwami (talk) 23:35, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

incorrect iw

keeps adding pms:Lenga zhuang setentrional to zhuang languages, when these are not the same topic. I've deleted the iw links in the piedmontese article, but they get restored from the two dozen wp's it iw's to. — kwami (talk) 02:19, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Alprazolam

Please see, that you xqbot does not add "Ksalol" as serbian translation. The international drug name is Alprazolam and it's translations. "Ksalol" is a brand name of a sr company. This seems to be in error in sr:wiki. They should use the drug name, not a brand name. 70.137.152.25 (talk) 07:47, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Lescinel Jean-Francois

Please stop changing his name to the incorrect version of Jean-Francois Lescinel - Lescinel is his first name as published by his current club, used on the back of his shirt and confirmed by the player in interviews where he says he is fed up of people assuming differently. 09:41, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Did you ever read the version history?  @xqt 15:09, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Croatian interwiki links

Your bot has been removing links to the Croatian Wikipedia, either adding them back later or letting another bot re-add them. Do you know why? Jared Preston (talk) 05:29, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

could you explain please? Which article is affected?  @xqt 06:56, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

There's probably a simple explanation for it, but I can't/couldn't work it out. I reverted here, here, here, here and here. I'm sorry if I should have left them. But what caught my eye was Miroslav Klose on my watchlist, see history here, your bot added a correct link, but also removed the Croatian link in the same edit. But there is nothing in the Croatian public log to show why the link would or should have automatically been removed. Your bot corrected itself here and here, but another bot corrected yours here, which is why I am a little bit confused. Jared Preston (talk) 07:17, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Seems to be a API problem. I'll check the log soon and investigate into this matter.  @xqt 08:25, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

delete R tags when redirect gets new target

When a redirect is edited by your bot to a new destination, such as when an article has been renamed and an already-existing redirect thereby becomes part of a double redirect, R templates in the redirect apparently are not edited by the bot and may no longer be correct. I observed this in the last week or so. I recommend that when destinations are changed the bot delete all R templates, thus making a redirect like those that were never assigned R templates in the first place. If Wikipedia already has a system for accessing redirects lacking R templates, then deleting R templates will put the newly-edited redirects together with the redirects that always lacked them, which might inspire someone to assign R templates. That's likelier than if they're left erroneous and it saves the work of reading and judging all the R tags when editing a destination.

I don't know if yours is the only bot doing this function. Should I post elsewhere?

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:43, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

As I am member of the developer team, this place is ok for me. Could you give me a hint for your request please (e.g. diff links).  @xqt 18:06, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Here's a diff: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Child_sales&diff=481708050&oldid=480220577

Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:15, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Dispute resolution survey

Dispute Resolution – Survey Invite Hello Xqt. I am currently conducting a study on the dispute resolution processes on the English Wikipedia, in the hope that the results will help improve these processes in the future. Whether you have used dispute resolution a little or a lot, now we need to know about your experience. The survey takes around five minutes, and the information you provide will not be shared with third parties other than to assist in analyzing the results of the survey. No personally identifiable information will be released. Please click HERE to participate. Many thanks in advance for your comments and thoughts. You are receiving this invitation because you have had some activity in dispute resolution over the past year. For more information, please see the associated research page. Steven Zhang DR goes to Wikimania! 01:09, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Odd change (which was old)

Just wanted to point out http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Supreme_Court_of_the_Confederate_States&diff=prev&oldid=404780242. I think I see this mentioned above and has probably either been fixed or is unfixable. But did want to point it out, just in case. (New redirect works, BTW). Student7 (talk)

One of these three edits caused it.  @xqt 05:00, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Same with Southern Confederacy. Based on [34] there are about 5-10 redirects that need to be fixed. Fornadan (t) 07:45, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

 Done Thanks.  @xqt 11:31, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Featured.py to mine Featured pictures on many wikis

Hi, I am developing working on Commons:Template:Assessments which reports "featured" status files on commons. For instance if a file is a Featured Picture on English Wikipedia, Assessments template would have the parameter |enwiki=1 and optionally |enwiki-nom= to link to the nomination page. If a file is a formerly featured picture the parameter would be |enwiki=2. If the file is a featured sound the parameter would be |enwiki=3 and if the file is a formerly featured sound the parameter would be |enwiki=4. Updating the commons page is sufficient to update all wikis since the starts are visible on all wikis. Though it is also possible to run the code in an interwiki.py-like manner as featured pictures are typically not interwiki linked. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 09:25, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

French for Knowlesville, New Brunswick?

If fr:Noonan is correct French for Noonan, New Brunswick, would fr:Knowlesville be correct French for Knowlesville, New Brunswick? The 'bot removed fr:knowesville, but that was a typographic error. I do not know French, so I need help. Perhaps the fr:Noonan is incorrect, too. --DThomsen8 (talk) 20:53, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

fr:Knowlesville does not exist ans therefore the bot removed it. Interwiki Links aren't Translation. They must Link to existent corresponding pages on other sites.  @xqt 05:35, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Garbo edit

Hello there, you just edited something on the Garbo page which I don't understand. Can you explain what you did? Many people make these adjustments which I don't understand so, out of curiosity, I want to learn this stuff! You can just answer, if you wish, on my talk p. thanks,--Classicfilmbuff (talk) 00:50, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Unexplained removal by bot

I don't know if the bot's supposed to explain but ....

It removed a component I don't fully understand myself yet but which I had looked at with some care and decided was a reasonable addition, namely the "zh" with the article (ICE, spelled out) name in (in this case) Chinese (to start, I had to look up "zh"), here. The component was put in here. To check the addition myself, I had translated via Google the Chinese phrase and it was correct to the article title. (GoogleTransl. did seem a little confused between Japanese and Chinese but the Chinese seemed firmly the preference so I didn't probe further; from my bit of knowledge about the two languages (Japanese "kanji" (sp?) being Chinese characters "reused", about my limit), it wasn't a bothersome confusion and was one that could happen easily.)

Short question: Why remove it?

Curiously, not you (or anyone) have (yet) removed the same IP editor's "zh" addition here from 20 Dec. (well before the ICE case above which was early 24 Dec. addition, later 24 Dec. removal)) but another bot (User:MastiBot) has removed the "zh" addition here (12 Dec. edit; 15 Dec. removal), also without explanation or communication with the IP'er here at the IP Talk page. From this quick look, it feels like you both, via bot, are (sometimes?) treating this component like vandalism but aren't labeling it or combating it as such. It may not be your "job" to do so; I'm just trying to understand. I would and will post to the IP's Talk if you have a good explanation. I don't like to see apparently good faith work "cleaned [out]" without explanation.

For the record, ICE is a global enterprise as, partic., is NYSE which it is acquiring, so a Chinese link for the article made and makes good sense to me.

Looking forward to your response. Thanks. Swliv (talk) 18:25, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I guess the reason is a kind of miss-spelling. Mediawiki can solve different zh spelling but pywikibot unfortunately can't. I'll have a look to this problem tomorrow to solve it if necessary.  @xqt 21:10, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

You lost me with "Mediawiki" but I appreciate your looking into it. I've done another bit of research or three. First, I've learned now that these "language:translation" bits don't show up on the page as presented, for instance here Neo-Scholasticism. I'm assuming the article has some "l:t" bits because I see them here on a "differences" page that's addressing a change in them. However, you'll note (or know) that they (still) don't appear in the body of the text below the "differences" section. This particular differences page is of interest, further, because there's no "zh:_" on it; yet one was added here. The problem of these not appearing on the page anywhere is that it becomes cumbersome to track who has removed one like the "zh:_" one here, gone between the two pages I've linked to. In this case I got one cleverer (and lucky) and looked at the one edit with substantial negative (red) bytes on the Rev. hist. and found this one, a wholesale "language:translation" bits remover (on Neo-Schol. page at least).

How did I find User:Isnow who added the zh to Neo-Schol. back in July 2010? Because he or she just (since your bot removal) added it (back) to our ICE. And he or she is mostly a zh adder. So I went back aways in his or her contributions history and picked Neo-Schol. randomly.

As is I expect clear, I'm poking my way through this subject without necessarily a lot of intrinsic interest even in it; but I'm curious about a zone of Wiki I have found I don't know anything about but which, in seeming to have some problems, interests me. And the China interaction piques my interest as well. Maybe it's good to have zh adders, maybe not, don't know yet. OK? I am going to link in User:Hydro who did that wholesale removal and User:Isnow to see if there is anything to be learned from them, too. I hope you can continue to try to meet me halfway and are OK with me starting a (little) larger forum here at your user talk page. I'll find another locale if you'd rather. Cheers and thanks. Swliv (talk) 20:11, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Hello, I am a human editor. The interwiki links were added between zh and en based on my knowledge. The "zh:_" links were usually the same page title as in zh.wikipedia, which may be Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese. I am also interested in how the bots decided to remove the links. --Isnow (talk) 21:46, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

As I told above as shown here. You inserted the right link, xqbot remove a kind of "miss-spelled" link. Mediawiki software can solve that in some circumstances. The Pywikipediabot framework cannot. The best way is to copy the target title of zh-wiki and paste the link here.  @xqt 13:12, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

In addition to my comment above here are some explanations about the deleted links:

• IntercontinentalExchange: kind of miss-spelling, fixed here
• Methaqualone: this link was quite right
• Ferrari FF: target page does not exist
• Neo-Scholasticism: interwiki links where fixed here due to its meaning in other languages and sites

Best.  @xqt 13:44, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, as I predicted, my interest in this has ebbed. But I'm glad Isnow came in as someone directly affected. And I appreciate xqt's earnest attention to the detail.

• I did know, and said above, that Methaqualone was fine.
• The Ferrari adds a new element to my sense of what I'm dealing with here (and noone's explained where these components even live on a page much less what they do; I know, I could look it up): Do these link to articles in other-language Wikipedia editions? Wow! if so. Neat. And are we then saying that MastiBot was correct in removing the link (if it's a link; the "component" was my vaguer, working term) (because there was no Ferrari FF article in the zh Wiki)? That would be a nice resolution of that. (This isn't yours, Isnow, but you could look into that if you wanted. I did not even reach out to that IPer, in this go-round.)
• As to Neo-Schol.: I gave you the "fixed" page you've given back to me (mine at the end of my first 20:11 paragraph). I don't understand the "other languages" explanation you give. All I saw at the (User:Hydro) edit was the "wholesale", as I called it, removal of lots including the zh one. I guess I'll leave this to Isnow to explore further if wanted but I'll sure try to understand an explanation if one's given.
• ICE. I'll take your word it's fixed. I'll also leave it to Isnow to figure out the "miss-spelling" if that's the explanation for the (mistaken) removal. I guess I do, now that I'm back where I started – with ICE – wonder if this is a systemic problem with the bot removing components that it shouldn't be removing. I guess your answer, xqt, is "Yes, sometimes, come to me and I'll fix it, case by case". That's of course not a systemic fix. But maybe it's the best way to proceed. I've seen your defense above (1000 edits a day or an hour or whatever) and can certainly appreciate (from a place of extreme basic ignorance) the work you're doing for the encyclopedia.

I'll leave it (almost) at that for now. (And I mustered some focus and interest ... for another round, eh?) Final point: I've just been picking randomly a tiny number of examples, following my nose on this. Is there really a sense, xqt, that this is not a systemic problem? Thanks for your attention. Cheers.

ps Reviewing before posting I've just picked up with more focus on "interwiki" in your Neo-Schol. explanation. That ... has led me to Wikipedia:Interwiki. I think, if any other generalist wanders into this thicket hereafter, that would be where one would start to look up what's going on here, what we're talking about here. Am I right, xqt and Isnow? should you care to answer such a basic question. Feels like I'm right. So much to learn .... (And Isnow, I think we're all human in this discussion, right? xqt operates a bot (prob. designed it too). But I was charmed by your opening; and both of your's willingness to engage in this. :-)) All best. Swliv (talk) 02:10, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

WHS

Your bot made the exact same edit as Dinamik-bot (click). I'm reverting it, but it seems to be a widespread issue with interwiki bots that should be attended to. _EricLeb⁰¹ (Page | Talk) 20:46, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Could you give me a hint which edit is wrong please.  @xqt 21:05, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I gave you a link to another talk page discussion with a diff exactly like your bot's. Anyway, here's the specific one. You'll notice that each of the IWs linked to deal with German World Heritage Sites – not all of Western Europe like the English article. _EricLeb⁰¹ (Page | Talk) 03:46, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I guess the inital edit was this one. I'll try to fix it with __STATICREDIRECT__s.  @xqt 13:00, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! That should take care of the global issue. _EricLeb⁰¹ (Page | Talk) 02:10, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

History of the oil shale industry

Hi Xqt. Xqbot added to the History of the oil shale industry article iw link ru:Сланцевая революция. However, that link is not about the oil shale and has nothing do to with this article. Thank you. Beagel (talk) 05:50, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

fixed  @xqt 07:41, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Help with your bot

This interwiki fr:Junior (musique) in Junior (athletics) i wrong. I remve it, but ypur but re-put it. --Kasper2006 (talk) 13:21, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I am very sorry but I cannot fix it at the moment at the other sites. I would do it any time later. For now I blocked interwiki bots at that page.  @xqt 19:42, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Bot gone mad!

WP:SB and similar Wikilinks traditionally redirect to the Wikipedia:Sandbox. Your bot has edited a bunch of these so they redirect to Super Bowl XLVII! Please rectify this problem. Thanks. Dolphin (t) 11:11, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Done  @xqt 11:46, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata is here; please disable any interwiki bots on the English Wikipedia

Hi!

Wikidata has been deployed to the English Wikipedia. Going forward, Wikidata will manage interwiki links. Further information: m:Wikidata/Deployment Questions and <https://blog.wikimedia.de/?p=13892>.

Important note: Bots that continue to add, remove, or update interwiki links on the English Wikipedia may be blocked from editing after Saturday, February 16, 2013.

If you are running pywikipedia's interwiki.py, please update to pyrev:11073 which will automatically prevent your bot from updating links on this wiki.

If you have any questions, please ask at the bot owners' noticeboard. Thank you for your past work maintaining interwiki links. It has been very appreciated and we're looking forward to an even brighter future with Wikidata. Legoktm (talk) 10:30, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! I've updated the rewrite branch and pyrev:11074 is recommended for wikidata. Now my bot is in release pyrev:11076.  @xqt 14:51, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Just curious but where is your approval for Xqbot being an interwikibot? I don't seem to be able to find it anywhere.. ·Add§hore· ^{Talk To Me!} 15:31, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

It has a global not flag for interwiki maintenance.  @xqt 17:55, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I should really have looked there! Cheers! ·Add§hore· ^{Talk To Me!} 19:33, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Please note [35] is an incorrect removal as there is no wikidata entry. ·Add§hore· ^{Talk To Me!} 20:35, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, see below.  @xqt 11:55, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Your Bot is making strange edits

Such as [36] which removed good interwiki links --Racklever (talk) 20:29, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with interwiki link removal on mainspace pages as links are now on Wikidata ·Add§hore· ^{Talk To Me!} 20:34, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Blocked - [37] links should not have been removed here. (No Wikidata item). --Rschen7754 20:36, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

(BK) unfortunately not all these pages are at wikidata. I've blocked my bot now. Could anybody unblock me (and of cause my bot to since I've stopped it due to a malfunction with nonregistered pages on wikidata. Please.  @xqt 20:37, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, meant to block the bot, not you... I'll unblock your bot. --Rschen7754 20:39, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I check the last few edits.  @xqt 20:40, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Unblocked. That will teach me to block when I'm still waking up... --Rschen7754 20:41, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Have a nice day. I have to be awake til I am ready with reviewing the bot...  @xqt 20:45, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

recent/early deletions of IW links too opaque?

I've seen some recent edits by User:Xqbot that initially looked suspicious and/or wrong. A little investigation revealed they are related this Wikidata project/initiative. This is probably a good thing, but seems a bit opaque right now in the early stages.

While there is the "edit links" thing over in the languages frame, these otherwise unexplained edits might catch editors unawares. Providing very explicit edit summaries along with a link to the associated wikidata page may be helpful during this transition. --Dfred (talk) 04:30, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

A good suggestion!  @xqt 08:07, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Merge discussion for List of books about philosophy

An article that you have been involved in editing, List of books about philosophy , has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Anthrophilos (talk) 18:06, 18 February 2013 (UTC) Anthrophilos (talk) 18:06, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Pywikibot rewrite vs trunk

Hi Xqt. You fixed the missing wikis in the pywikibot rewrite branch (in r11100 and r11101), but not yet in the trunk. I couldn't find much information about the branch. Should new bots use the rewrite branch, or is it not ready yet? —Pathoschild 00:47, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi Pathoschild. Sorry I forgot to update the trunk release from rewrite. You may use the rewrite branch as you like. I don't know where we are going in future, perhaps the amsterdam hackathon gives more clarity. I use both branches for developing. Rewrite has a lot of good ideas but I feel trunk is more stable and does not need a lot of api calls for getting site information of all sites of a project. I prefer to merge them because it is hard to work to keep both versions up to date. Best  @xqt 11:52, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll stay with the trunk for now, and see if anything comes out of the hackathon. —Pathoschild 16:58, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Redirect.py in case of multiple redirects

Hello Xqt, you have here handled and closed my error message "2 redirects on a page: all replaced, instead the first only - ID: 3605596". (It was my first such message and I misinterpreted the "Private". And, maybe, it's not the right place here for the discussion?) Am I right, you didn't change the source code? I think, that wouldn't be the best solution.

I had written on the problem first here to Avocato, giving more information. Clearly, a second redirect is useless. But in reality, users make errors and use such redirects to put information on the pages. You have seen such a case in ANSCA. And redirect.py now destroys this information. I have changed already nearly half of the pages with more than one redirect (and will handle the others too), but we cannot hope, that users will not make this error in the future.

The alphabetically first remaining examples of the error: Kafala, Karnatak, Kevin kudulis, Kyoto protocol, Laboratory Tests, LCA Tejas, Lerika, LSEA, Maggie T, Malaviya, Marto, MECW.

Could you think again about modifying redirect.py? Best regards, --Griot-de (talk) 14:11, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Hm I guess we should have a maintenance page either on the redirects talk page or any page on bots namespace or somewhere else to be fixed. Or the bot could transform the redirect to disambig page. Otherwise this problem may be kept for while until it will be detected by accident. Any further suggestions?  @xqt 16:59, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, a maintenance page could help, to correct known cases of multiple redirects on a page more quickly. A bot could find the cases, but it could not correct them: A good correction is dependent of the context, a disambig page isn't appropriate in every case. Often a note "This article is about .... For ..., see ..." on one of the target pages (and deletion of the other redirects) is better. So it should be handled manually. But a first step could be, to avoid destroying of (mostly) valuable information... --Griot-de (talk) 00:27, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

cosmetic_changes.py

Some time ago the message <!--interwiki (no, sv, da first; then other languages alphabetically by name)--> was added to cosmetic_changes.py for nn.wiki. Now that interwiki is no longer to be stored locally, the message should be removed/deactivated. Thanks. --Njardarlogar (talk) 09:51, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

 Done in pyrev:11284  @xqt 16:27, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

CHECKWIKI #3 and Xqbot

Hi. Since Xqbot does a wonderful job in adding references tags to page lacking them, I took the liberty and add it in Wikipedia:WikiProject_Check_Wikipedia#Bots. Happy editing -- Magioladitis (talk) 06:13, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Ok, thanks.  @xqt 15:23, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Invitation to a Wicnic in Gainesville on Saturday, June 22nd

Greetings!

Seeing that you've edited the article on Gainesville on Wikipedia, I'm inviting to the North Central Florida 2013 Great American Wiknic that will be on Saturday June 22, 2013, commencing at 1:00 pm, ten blocks north of UF campus in Gainesville,.

If you're able and inclined to come, please RSVP at at this URL.

Type to you later, Vincent J. Lipsio (talk) 20:21, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I guess it was my bot. Are it invited too? ;)  @xqt 12:36, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Please adjust your BOT to exclude such

There was, iirc, discussion back in 2006 or '07 about making it a policy to have BOTs exclude certain types of pages, and in my case, one like this clearly tagged as underconstruction. I can really do without BOT edit conflicts, you know? Preferentially, you should be skipping any article less than 48 hrs old as a matter of commonsense, Letting the brainless BOTs loose whilst the human intelligence is still working out the tough stuff, is counterproductive. // FrankB 02:08, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Georgia Brown (Brazilian singer)

Hello Xqt,

This is just a courtesy visit to apprise you that I took the liberty to slightly expand your above article by adding a section and relevant references. Hopefully, you'd like my little effort. Best regards,

(MrNiceGuy1113 (talk) 08:59, 24 September 2013 (UTC))

Hello Xqt,

I was disappointed when I got the notification that you've reversed the edit work I did for your Georgia Brown. The information I put in about the person in question, albeit brief, the extra references and wikilinks, I believe, did not harm the article, on the other hand, supported it. Anyways, I'm not airing a grievance, but, just to be more sure about my work in the future, I'd truly appreciate knowing what was lacking. Best regards, (MrNiceGuy1113 (talk) 09:26, 24 September 2013 (UTC))

Hi,

Back again. This time to apologize to you. The article George Brown (as I learned later) was not reverted by you but a diffrent gentleman(Seokhun). Sorry again for taking your time. Regards, (MrNiceGuy1113 (talk) 09:47, 24 September 2013 (UTC))

Bot edit (ref tag)

Any reason why this edit added the missing header after the categories and stub tag? Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 07:20, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Hm, seems there went something wrong with detecting headers. I'm going to fix it. Thanks for reporting.  @xqt 14:27, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Should be fixed in gerrit:88121 and gerrit:88122 waiting for code review now.  @xqt 16:09, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Similar here. — JJJ ^{(say hello)} 17:51, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this was before the fix above. There where some changes in mediaWiki software results in the previous weeks which also caused other bugs too.  @xqt 10:36, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Preferred ref tag

Hi,

I see you consistently add <references /> to the ref section. I always add {{Reflist}}. Is one preferable to the other? (They used to do different things, but no longer.) Pls ping me if this matters. If {{Reflist}} is dispreferred, it would be a good idea to remove it from the edit-window options. — kwami (talk) 05:26, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

I am not sure which of both is the preferred one, imho there is no preferences for one of them. The template does the same as the mediawiki magic word except the template is able to show the reference list in columns (see also bugzilla:51260)  @xqt 06:25, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Bot shouldn't add "References" section to disambiguation pages

Hi, On occasion an editor will add a reference to a disambiguation page. This is an error, so xqbot should not add a corresponding "References" section to such pages (as happened in this edit, for example).

In fact, what would be really useful is if the bot could instead flag the page for someone in WikiProject Disambiguation to check up on, perhaps by adding it to a new subcategory of Category:Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup. Regards, --NapoliRoma (talk) 03:29, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

You are right. I filed the bug at bugzilla:57164 and solve it soon  @xqt 05:34, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Bug 59008

Hi. Can you resolve bug 59008, please? It is just adding two lines of code. Unfortunately, my current computer doesn't have Git installed on it or else I would have submitted the patch to Gerrit myself. --Meno25 (talk) 20:06, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

 Done in gerrit:104494 and gerrit:104493. You may contribute your code without git installed using our Gerrit Patch Uploader. Have fun!  @xqt 15:25, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you and happy new year! --Meno25 (talk) 06:11, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Add {{reflist}}

See [38]

Please add

== References ==
{{reflist}}

instead of

== References ==
<references/>

Thanks --Frze ^{> talk} 03:15, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for fixing up the reference for Zoology mnemonic. I was not able to fix up the problem myself because my computer is currently only showing extremely tiny unreadable text - both the article page and the editing page. All the best. Figaro (talk) 02:57, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

blacklist hits

Xqt, I noticed your bot sometimes hits the blacklist by adding {{reflist}} to articles where there are 'blacklisted references'. Two recent/current examples are:

• 16:55, 25 April 2014 Xqbot (talk | contribs | block) caused a spam blacklist hit on Truly Scrumptious (song) by attempting to add youtu.be.
• 16:52, 25 April 2014 Xqbot (talk | contribs | block) caused a spam blacklist hit on Faubourg St. John by attempting to add www.google.com/url?.

I have now solved the problems (both are redirect link, I have expanded to the proper link which is not blacklisted), but maybe you can make your bot alert you of these cases so they can be repaired. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:28, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Redirects to anchors

Your bot's not handling them properly: [39] --NE2 22:44, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting it. I guess it is the same issue like in de:Benutzer_Diskussion:Xqt#Aufl.C3.B6sen_doppelter_Weiterleitungen, unfortunately it sometimes works as expected like [40]. I'll investigating into this matter.  @xqt 07:57, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

bugzilla:66403  @xqt 06:40, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Losing information in double redirects

When fixing this double redirect, the bot has dropped the hash part of the original redirect that links to a section in the target article. This edit is wrong, as it changes the intended target of the first redirect and therefore the fix loses information. I've found another example of the same error here, which should have been fixed like this.

This is a severe bug; sure, it's not earth-shattering, as the redirect still leads to the same page, but the meaning of the redirect and the section that the editor intended as the meaning of the link are lost, forcing the reader to infer why the link was created. Please disable the double-redirect function until this bug is fixed, as the bot shouldn't be making wrong edits unsupervised, and it's very hard to detect. You may also want to check all the edits where the second redirect is a redirect-to-section, as it's likely that this has been going on for a long time. Diego (talk) 06:27, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

same as above. I'll investigate in this matter soon.  @xqt 18:56, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

sigh --NE2 18:45, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Should be fixed now. Thanks all for reporting. gerrit upload for operator may follow soon  @xqt 19:20, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Nope, still not fixed. --NE2 01:55, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

fixed in gerrit:138794  @xqt 11:56, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

And fixed. Cheers. --NE2 23:30, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Your bot…

…is creating redirects to nonexistent pages. � (talk) 17:49, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting this bug. I blocked bots for that page now. Fix is coming soon.  @xqt 20:08, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Bot is "fixing double redirects" that aren't

Hi: The bot seems to be "fixing" redirects as being double that aren't. The only thing being "fixed" in this and this is that there's no space between the #REDIRECT and the brackets - which is, incidentally, how the redirect button on the editing menu formats it. Space or no space makes no functional difference to the redirect, so the bot's edits aren't necessary at all. BMK (talk) 02:56, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Actually the bot is replacing a normal hyphen with a fancy dash. Note how when you click on Morris-Jumel Mansion it says you were redirected. --NE2 04:43, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes that's it.  @xqt 12:50, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Why are we using "fancy dashes" in article titles, when they cannot be easily typed from a normal keyboard? BMK (talk) 08:19, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Because style is more important than substance. --NE2 08:41, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Yet another double redirect bug

Apologies if this has already been fixed - the instance I've just discovered was 4 years ago but I didn't find any mention of it in the earlier discussions.

This edit left {{R from other capitalisation}} there, although it is inappropriate to the new title to which the redirect was changed. I suppose fixing this would be a matter of programming it to recognise certain redirect templates and remove them if they are no longer appropriate.

It might be that in some cases, the best that can be done is to log it for human checking.... — Smjg (talk) 01:53, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the template is wrong, since it is a redirect from another capitalization to the same target as the correct capitalization ("it leads to a title that is associated in some way with the conventional capitalisation of this redirect title"). For a simpler example, Oakleaf Plantation, FL -> OakLeaf Plantation, Florida could logically have both {{R from other capitalisation}} and {{R from postal abbreviation}}. --NE2 08:44, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Just read the text of that template again, and you're right. Though I'm made to wonder whether the template is defined that way purely for the benefit of bots fixing double redirects. Though maybe there are other templates that need to be thought about - I'll let you know if I find one. — Smjg (talk) 22:34, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Bot messed up HTML comments while fixing double redirect

Hi, I would like to report a bug in your bot where it did not only fix a double redirect, but also messed up the text in HTML comments: [41], [42], [43], [44]. These comments exist for documentation purposes and as a suggestion for other editors for possible alternative link targets depending on the future development of the articles. In either case, comments should never be touched by a bot. Please fix your bot to ignore them. Thanks. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 09:50, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Fixed in gerrit:148377. Thanks for reporting.  @xqt 14:09, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Thank you as well. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 10:01, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Matthiaspaul, a list of redirects in HTML comments is not documentation for other editors. It is confusing. I have replaced them with prose. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 21:37, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Incorrect edits for Freedom

It seems that Freedom was moved to Freedom (disambiguation), and then Freedom was changed to redirect to Liberty. Unfortunately, the editor who did the moving didn't take into account all the pages that were linking to Freedom, such as Freedom (song). Your bot "fixed" the double redirect by changing Freedom (song) from linking to Freedom#Songs to Liberty#Songs, which doesn't exist. Instead, it should have changed it to Freedom (disambiguation)#Songs. This is one of 14 bad edits that the bot made, which I am now fixing. Is it possible for you to change the bot so it doesn't make similar mistakes in the future? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 12:37, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

bugzilla:70515  @xqt 10:39, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks

In amongst all the bug reports and moans, this is just to say thanks for the bot. When I moved the page, I got the page (reasonably) asking me to deal with the double-redirects, but I didn't know how to do that, and the bot has done it for me. Thanks. DrArsenal (talk) 20:33, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Jackie Joyner Kersee award‎

On Jackie Joyner Kersee award‎ I have included a note about the intentional double redirect on this article. Your bot can't read. This is a simple lower-case disambiguation of the original version. The original name currently redirects to the Jesse Owens Award because that is what the award was known as until a 2013 decision to convert it to the Jackie Joyner Kersee Award‎, so the last two versions have followed that name. As this new name gets established there will certainly will be a new article--probably by me. When that is done, I don't want the disambiguation to directing to the wrong article. I need to figure out a way to do so without losing the 20 year history of the award with the original name. The Board of USATF who awards this is in disarray right now. Who knows what decision they will make for the legacy of their most important award once some sane individuals are appointed to the board. Trackinfo (talk) 09:31, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi Trackinfo. There is a way to prohibit the bot solving the double redirect. Just add __STATICREDIRECT__ to your redirect page; it wouldn't be fixed anymore.  @xqt 10:54, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

It didn't work. Give me the exact syntax you want. Trackinfo (talk) 06:29, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Sorry I had to explain that behavior. You edited the wrong redirect. The middle man must be the static redirect which I've done now here. This drawing shows how static redirects work with the bot(s). Please excuse that trouble I've done.  @xqt 09:04, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

A cookie for you!

Thanks so much for ‎Xqbot and all of the double redirect corrections that it makes. It is much appreciated! Michael Barera (talk) 21:07, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks a lot.  @xqt 12:45, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Bot changed Virginia Kelley redirect Virginia Clinton Kelley

Virginia Kelley was set up in 2007 as a redirect to Virginia Clinton Kelley, who is Bill Clinton's mother and was known as Virginia Kelley. On April 17, 2015 Xqbot with this edit incorrectly changed the redirect to point to Bill Clinton. I'm changing it back to what it originally was. — Maile (talk) 20:58, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

That was the reason for bot's action. The initial edit was reverted few days later.  @xqt 06:32, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
	Thanks for the help Uaearthub (talk) 14:32, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, I am pleased.  @xqt 16:17, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

phab:T109225

Hi. Could you, please, have a look at phab:T109225? As I can see here, you have a disagreement in opinion with John Vandenberg, so, could you, please, commit the one line change that I requested in the task and postpone other changes until you settle your disagreement with John? Thank you, sir. --Meno25 (talk) 14:05, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Please give your vote (or comment) at gerrit:231894, that would be great.  @xqt 08:47, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

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SIG MKMO submachine-gun

Thanks, -- hmaag (talk) 16:51, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Kindly undo wrong redirect

Hi, Some one either you or sd:User:Ahpalh has wrongly, misunderstandingly redirected a Category towards a Template, Kindly undo redirect of sd:زمرو:سانچو documentation to sd:سانچو:دستاويز, because زمرو:سانچو documentation is the alternative to Category:Template documentation pages en:Category:Template documentation pages on Sindhi Wikipedia whereas, سانچو:دستاويز is the alternative to Template:documentation, hope you understand and kindly revoke, undo this blunder redirect. Thanks اسد علي جوڳي...........--Jogi 007 (talk) 05:37, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

I am sorry but I am not familiar with sd language. Anyway sd:User:Ahpalh redirected sd:زمرو:سانچو documentation to sd:سانچو:دستاویز which is a redirect to sd:سانچو:دستاویز. The bot only fixed the double redirect. Please feel free to fix the redirects if it's wrong and clean-up double redirects when needed. Sorry for that trouble and thanks in advance.  @xqt 09:55, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I understand sd language but I am unfamiliar with such words. Undo this Redirect please. SahabAliwadia 11:38, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

This thread is two years old. Feel free to fix it if still required.  @xqt 12:57, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

T110529

Hi. Regarding T110529, when using the core version of template.py it fails and gives me the following error:

python pwb.py template Persondata -remove -page:"آدام هامل" -lang:ar -family:wikipedia
WARNING: Bot.site was not set before being retrieved.
WARNING: Using the default site: wikipedia:ar
Retrieving 1 pages from wikipedia:ar.
You can't edit page [[آدام هامل]]

Although the page ar:آدام هامل is not protected and the bot account is not blocked. This is the first time I try the core script. Is this a bug in the script or am I doing something wrong? --Meno25 (talk) 17:10, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

you may ignore the warnings seems the script uses an older bot class which set the default site when it is not set in constructor. But the blocking of the page looks ugly. I'll investigate into this matter soon.  @xqt 18:22, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Seems there is a {{nobots}} inside the page. Could you check?  @xqt 18:46, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

No, there isn't. (The arwiki nobots template is ar:Template:بوتات) I tried the script also on another article ar:أجاثا كريستي and in my userspace ar:User:Meno25/test core and it fails in both cases with the same error. Any help from you would be appreciated. --Meno25 (talk) 19:47, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Could you temporary set ignore_bot_templates=True in your user-config.py and try again?  @xqt 22:31, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Edit succedded but it turns out that the same bug descriped in T110529 exists also in core (see edit) as can be shown in the following output:

python pwb.py template "Persondata" -remove -page:"User:Meno25/test core" -lang:ar -family:wikipedia
WARNING: Bot.site was not set before being retrieved.
WARNING: Using the default site: wikipedia:ar
Retrieving 1 pages from wikipedia:ar.
WARNING: Bot.site was not set before being retrieved.
WARNING: Using the default site: wikipedia:ar


>>> مستخدم:Meno25/test core <<<
@@ -14,5 +14 @@
+
- {{Persondata
- |NAME=آدام هامل
- |ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
- |SHORT DESCRIPTION=لاعب كرة قدم إنجليزي
- |DATE OF BIRTH={{تاريخ الميلاد|1988|1|25|df=y}}

Do you want to accept these changes? ([y]es, [N]o, [e]dit, open in [b]rowser, [a]ll, [q]uit): y
Waiting for 1 pages to be put. Estimated time remaining: 0:00:10
Password for user MenoBot on wikipedia:ar (no characters will be shown):
Logging in to wikipedia:ar as MenoBot
WARNING: API warning (login): Fetching a token via action=login is deprecated. Use action=query&meta=tokens&type=login instead.
Page [[مستخدم:Meno25/test core]] saved

--Meno25 (talk) 06:38, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

The problem seems the nested template. I reopened T110529. I guess we should copy the related parts there.  @xqt 06:47, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

The other issue: I tried to run the bot on your test page as follows (without ignore_bot_templates=True):

>>> import pwb, pywikibot as py
>>> s = py.Site('ar')
>>> p = py.Page(s, 'user:Meno25/test core')
>>> p.botMayEdit()
True
>>> 

I tried the other page you mentioned:

>>> p = py.Page(s, 'user:xqt/Test')
>>> dest = list(p.linkedPages())[0]
>>> dest
Page(\u0622\u062f\u0627\u0645 \u0647\u0627\u0645\u0644)
>>> dest.botMayEdit()
True
>>> 

It also works. Finally I tried an edit on that page:

C:\pwb\GIT\core>pwb.py template Persondata -remove -page:"%D8%A2%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%
85_%D9%87%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%84" -lang:ar
WARNING: Bot.site was not set before being retrieved.
WARNING: Using the default site: wikipedia:ar
Retrieving 1 pages from wikipedia:ar.
WARNING: Bot.site was not set before being retrieved.
WARNING: Using the default site: wikipedia:ar


>>> آدام هامل <<<
@@ -17,5 +17 @@
+
- {{Persondata
- |NAME=آدام هامل
- |ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
- |SHORT DESCRIPTION=لاعب كرة قدم إنجليزي
- |DATE OF BIRTH={{تاريخ الميلاد|1988|1|25|df=y}}

Do you want to accept these changes? ([y]es, [N]o, [e]dit, open in [b]rowser, [a
]ll, [q]uit): y
Sleeping for 4.9 seconds, 2016-04-08 09:26:40

It also worked for me. Anyway the edit was wrong and couriously there where no output about saved page.  @xqt 07:31, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Xqbot: Adding the wrong tag

Hello, Please see this edit by Xqbot: [45]. In short, the preceding edit added a <ref group=n>...</ref> tag to the page, and the bot then added the <references /> tag to the article, which doesn't actually fix the citation error. What Xqbot should have added to the page was {{Reflist|group=n}} ([46]).

Thanks, — TheJJJunk ^{(say hello)} 18:29, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

A heads-up

I think this was a bad redirect. I reverted it. Geo Swan (talk) 22:48, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

You did right. The reason was this unintelligible edit. Thanks.  @xqt 05:53, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

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Double direct fix University of Ballarat / Ballarat University

What a nice surprise! I was going to go fix the redirects and found that you had done it after the pages were moved/merged. Thanks so much!--CaroleHenson (talk) 00:20, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

PLOS Article -- bots reverting each other

I wanted to mention that this PLOS article was published last week, and it mentions Xqbot as one bot that has a history of reverting other bots. There have been quite a few news articles about it too.

An excerpt from the journal:

Delving deeper into the data, we found that most of the disagreement occurs between bots that specialize in creating and modifying links between different language editions of the encyclopedia. The lack of coordination may be due to different language editions having slightly different naming rules and conventions.

In support of this argument, we also found that the same bots are responsible for the majority of reverts in all the language editions we study. For example, some of the bots that revert the most other bots include Xqbot, EmausBot, SieBot, and VolkovBot, all bots specializing in fixing inter-wiki links. Further, while there are few articles with many bot-bot reverts (S7 Fig), these articles tend to be the same across languages. For example, some of the articles most contested by bots are about Pervez Musharraf (former president of Pakistan), Uzbekistan, Estonia, Belarus, Arabic language, Niels Bohr, Arnold Schwarzenegger. This would suggest that a significant portion of bot-bot fighting occurs across languages rather than within.

Here's one example, though it's a fairly old example.

I don't care either way, I'm just curious -- has this interwiki-bot-reverting issue been fixed in Xqbot? --Hirsutism (talk) 19:11, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

The origin study is published here which is less spectacular. Anyway most of these bots based on the same framework i.e. have the same script. There where three main reasons that bots where reverting each other:

• an unicode bug found on the underlying development system, see phab:T102461 and [47]
• cross-namespace interlanguage links might be misleading when the framework was not updated in short term
• the main reason was caused by human editors and spread by bots.

Now all these bot edits are replaced by wikidata.  @xqt 21:24, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, April 2017

Bots Newsletter, April 2017

Greetings! The BAG Newsletter is now the Bots Newsletter, per discussion. As such, we've subscribed all bot operators to the newsletter. You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list. Highlights for this newsletter include: Arbcom Magioladitis ARBCOM case has closed. The remedies of the case include: Community encouraged to review common fixes Community encouraged to review policy on cosmetic edits Developers encouraged to improve AWB interface Bot approvals group encouraged to carefully review BRFA scope Reminders/Restrictions specific to Magioladitis BRFAs We currently have 27 open bot requests at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, and could use your help processing! Discussions There are multiple ongoing discussions surrounding bot-related matters. In particular: RFC on COSMETICBOT Efforts at WP:CHECKWIKI to identify cosmetic fixes Requested move for the Bot Owners' Noticeboard A phabricator ticket T162685 has been made to have a "bots" tag, so issues related to bot frameworks can be tracked New things Several new things are around: A BAG Guide has been created (WP:BAGG, discussion). Users now have the option to hide AWB from their watchlists via a script (WP:HIDEAWB, discussion) The guidance on how to deal with bot issues has been overhauled (WP:BOTISSUE, discussion) The bot policy has been updated to clarify that bot operators are required to register accounts. (WP:BOTACCOUNT, discussion) Wikimania Wikimania 2017 is happening in Montreal, during 9–13 August. If you plan to attend, or give a talk, let us know! Thank you! edited by:Headbomb 11:35, 12 April 2017 (UTC) (You can unsubscribe from future newsletters by removing your name from this list.)

Cross-namespace double redirects

Would it be possible for the bot to log all the cross-namespace and U2 redirects it creates when bypassing redirects (and possibly not create them)? Especially when article-space is involved, they are often R2-able, and they make cleaning up from confused users a lot harder. For example, see User:Marina51/sandbox -> User:Amedeo Schiattarella -> Amedeo Schiattarella -> Help:Marina51/sandbox that I just encountered. I was able to bring the page back to article-space, but if it were something completely unfit for mainspace and had to be brought back all the way back to the sandbox, I'd need admin help. – Train2104 (t • c) 18:34, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, July 2017

Bots Newsletter, July 2017

Greetings! Here is the 4th issue of the Bots Newsletter (formerly the BAG Newletter). You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list. Highlights for this newsletter include: BAG BU Rob13 and Cyberpower678 are now members of the BAG (see RfBAG/BU Rob13 and RfBAG/Cyberpower678 3). BU Rob13 and Cyberpower678 are both administrators; the former operates BU RoBOT which does a plethora of tasks, while the latter operates Cyberbot I (which replaces old bots), Cyberbot II (which does many different things), and InternetArchiveBot which combats link rot. Welcome to the BAG! BRFAs We currently have 12 open bot requests at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, and could use your help processing! Discussions Efforts at WP:CHECKWIKI to identify cosmetic fixes are still ongoing. The RFC on COSMETICBOT has concluded with "a clear consensus exists to adopt the proposed language". The new wording is now live. The venue for bot appeals and reexaminations has been changed from WP:BRFA to WP:BOTN (see discussion) The Wikipedia:Bot owner's noticeboard is now the Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard (see discussion). New things A historical correction was made to WP:BOTPOL (see discussion). WP:HIDEBOTS now mentions how to hide all bots from your watchlist, not only specific bots. The phabricator ticket T162685 is now closed, and we now have "#Bots-Framework" tag, so issues related to bot frameworks can be tracked. Wikibits.js has been removed (see discussion). 21 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion). WP:BOTISSUE has been updated to mention that BAG members can act as neutral mediators in bot-related disputes. WP:INTERWIKIBOT has been updated to reflect the post-February 2013 practice of putting interwiki links on Wikidata, rather than on Wikipedia (see discussion). Upcoming HTML Tidy will be phased out in June 2018, or possibly earlier. This may affect some bots (see FAQ). Wikimania Wikimania 2017 is happening in Montreal, during 9–13 August. If you plan to attend, or give a talk, let us know! Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 17:12, 19 July 2017 (UTC) (You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Discussion related to double redirect-fixing bots

As the operator of a bot that fixes double redirects, your input into the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Double redirects#The bots should operate with a delay is invited. Note that the section contains multiple ideas (not just the one in the section title), but not yet any firm proposals. Thryduulf (talk) 16:42, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Draft:Type 3 innate lymphoid cells (ILC3)

Hi Xqt, I see your bot has created/fixd this redirect Draft:Type 3 innate lymphoid cells (ILC3). I din't think this is needed as the Type 3 has barely any link at all at the moment, and non point via that redirect. Thanks. scope_creep (talk) 20:32, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

The bot fixed the double redirect only. If this redirect isn't needed at all please feel free to make a deletion request at the dedicated page. Greetings.  @xqt 11:58, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Xqtbot

Your bot is correcting double redirects from student users moving their pages around multiple times. This makes it much more difficult to fix the errors they are causing from the moves. Can you put a delay on your bot so that users have a chance to fix these pages before your bot fixes the double redirects? Thanks. Nihlus 01:25, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

There is a delay of few minutes already. Could you show me a sample please.  @xqt 08:49, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the ones I was working with are deleted since they had to make way for a move. However, a few minutes isn't enough. I'm looking at something around a 60 minute delay as a bare minimum where a page move is involved. Nihlus 08:54, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

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Bots Newsletter, March 2018

Bots Newsletter, March 2018

Greetings!

Here is the 5th issue of the Bots Newsletter (formerly the BAG Newletter). You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM

• Magioladitis 2 happened, leading to further restrictions on Magioladitis (decision, summary).
• Betacommand 3 was proposed to be amended to lift the indefinite ban on Δ, but was unsuccessful (decision).
• A motion concerning Crosswiki issues (mostly concerning Wikidata) was passed (see discussion).

BAG

• Hersfold was removed from the BAG due to long term inactivity.

BRFAs

We currently have 6 open bot requests at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, and could use your help processing!

Discussions

While there were no large-scale bot-related discussion in the past few months, you can check WP:BOTN and WT:BOTPOL (and their corresponding archives) for smaller issues that came up.

New things

• WP:BOTDICT, a dictionary of common bot-related terms (see discussion).
• 6 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion).
• The 2017 Community Wishlist Survey happened. Two bot-related proposal passed, #6 deploy Article Alerts to other languages and #10 Commons deletion notification bot, although other entries may affect bots as well.
• Category:Wikipedia bots and its subcategories has had some cleanup. Bot-related pages that were historically important but are no longer of interests can be found in Category:Wikipedia bots (historical)
• The edit summary limit has been increased to 1000 characters (see T6715). If a bot you operate relied on the old truncation limit (255 characters), please review/update your code, as overly long summaries can be disruptive/annoying. If you want to use extra characters to have more information in your edit summary, please do so intelligently.
• You will soon be able to ping users from the edit summary (see T188469). If you wish to use this feature in your bot, please do so intelligently.

Upcoming

• HTML Tidy will be phased out in June 2018, or possibly earlier. This may affect some bots (see FAQ).

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 03:12, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

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Mathhew Shepprd act listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Mathhew Shepprd act. Since you had some involvement with the Mathhew Shepprd act redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Goveganplease (talk) 17:59, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, August 2018

Bots Newsletter, August 2018

Greetings!

Here is the 6th issue of the Bots Newsletter. You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM

• Nothing particular important happened. Those who care already know, those who don't know wouldn't care. The curious can dig ARBCOM archives themselves.

BAG

• There were no changes in BAG membership since the last Bots Newsletter. Headbomb went from semi-active to active.
• In the last 3 months, only 3 BAG members have closed requests - help is needed with the backlog.

BOTREQs and BRFAs

As of writing, we have...

• 24 active BOTREQs, please help if you can!
• 5 open BRFAs and 3 BRFAs in need of BAG attention (see live status).
• 54 approved bot tasks since the start of 2018. Of note, Community Tech bot 5 (the #10 Wish on the 2017 Community Survey) was approved to notify users concerning problematic images and files from Wikimedia Commons.

Also

• If you're a bot operator that can help with Tidy/Linter error cleanup (see discussion, discussion), please file a BRFA!
• 8 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion, discussion, discussion).

Discussions

These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active.

• Use of tags by bots – Exploring the use of a new 'bot' tag.
• Mass page moves – Bot policy question/clarification about mass moves.
• Creation of redirects – Bot policy question/clarification about the creation of redirects.
• Guidance on disruptive use of semi–automated tools? – Related to meatbots (see also MOS discussion, which resulted in small addition to MOS:VAR).
• Discussion concerning WP:BOTFLAG/WP:RC – A reminder that bots should use the bot flag when it makes sense to use it (see also VPT discussion and CREATEBOT update).
• Out of curiosity... (to all bot operators) – BotPasswords vs OAuth usage amongst bot operators.
• Introducing Toolhub – Toolhub is looking for feedback.

New things

• {{Automated tools}}, a new template linking to user-activated tools and scripts has been created. It can be used in articles previews, and can be placed on any non-mainspace page/template (e.g. {{Draft article}}) to provide convenient links to editors.
• AWB 5.10.0.0 is out, after nearly 20 months without updates. If you run an old version, you will be prompted to install the new version automatically. See the changelog for what's new. Note that the next version will require .NET Framework 4.5. Many thanks to Reedy and the AWB team.
• BotWatch, "a listing of editors that have made >2 edits per minute [without] a bot flag", is being developed by SQL (see discussion).
• Massive updates and improvements have been made to Citation bot in the past few months (see discussions, discussions, discussions). You can activate the bot here, amongst other methods.
• HTML Tidy has been phased out (see Tech News #28).
• {{Newbot}} has been reorganized a bit (diff). In particular, it links to previously approved BRFAs (see discussion).
• Wikipedia:Bots#See also has been reorganized a bit (diff).
• The bot dictionary has two new entries, context bot and context-sensitive edit.
• The bot request header has been updated to include better guidance (see discussion).
• The subcategories of Category:Wikipedia bot requests for approval have been sorted in a consistent manner to make past BRFAs easier to find.

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 15:04, 18 August 2018 (UTC)

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Hello, Xqt. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Requesting mass redirect fix

I requested a mass redirect retarget at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Redirects to Star Sports, but so far, I've got no meaningful response from other user. JSH-alive/^{talk/cont/mail} 11:32, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand what bots has to do here. Maybe other bot owner cannot follow your task too. Could you explain in simple steps what you expect doing by bots.

By the way if you change Star Sports into a redirect leading to Fox Sports (Southeast Asian TV network), all redirects linked to Star Sports will be fixed and get Fox Sports (Southeast Asian TV network) as its target. This is the normal behavior of redirect fixing bots. If you want to keep a redirect target leading to Star Sports then put a __STATICREDIRECT__ into the this redirect; the redirect bot will not fix them. If you want to have a different target you have to do it manually. Best  @xqt 11:44, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Guess I'll have to retarget them manually. But since I'm going to redirect Star Sports to Fox Sports (Southeast Asian TV network), if you are going to do what I requested, I think you will only have to retarget the following to Star Sports (Indian TV network).

• STAR Cricket
• Star Cricket
• Star cricket
• STAR Cricket HD
• Star Cricket HD
• Star cricket live
• STAR Sports 1
• Star Sports 1
• STAR Sports 2
• Star Sports 2
• STAR Sports 3
• STAR sports 3
• Star Sports 3
• STAR Sports 4
• STAR sports 4
• Star Sports 4
• Star Sports 4K
• STAR Sports HD1
• Star Sports HD1
• Star sports HD1
• STAR Sports HD2
• Star Sports HD2
• STAR Sports HD3
• Star Sports HD3
• STAR Sports HD4
• Star Sports HD4
• STAR Sports Select HD1

After that, I can just redirect Star Sports to Fox Sports (Southeast Asian TV network) as you insist. JSH-alive/^{talk/cont/mail} 13:26, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Ok, I'll change the redirect targets for them listed above.  @xqt 13:30, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for accepting. JSH-alive/^{talk/cont/mail} 13:40, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Y Done  @xqt 13:49, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Confusion over DuckTales redirect

It looks like the bot moved the Ducktales redirect from DuckTales to List of DuckTales merchandise. Any idea why that's happening? Most people would want to just be redirected to DuckTales. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SupermanReturns (talk • contribs) 00:38, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

@SupermanReturns: Amcaja, a currently retired admin, redirected (Weirdly there was no edit history before this edit) "List of DuckTales merchandise" to "DuckTales" in 2003. I think that is the reason why the bot refirected "Ducktales" to "List of DuckTales merchandise". —Wei4Green | 唯绿远大 (talk) 11:09, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

I guess it was this moving of the source page. Anyway thanks for fixing.  @xqt 15:57, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Bot request

Hey, Xqt,

When your helpful bot fixes double redirects, could it also correct redirects on the associated talk page? That would be very useful and save editor time. Thanks! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:31, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

I am wondering that this hasn't been done. Do you have an example for me to be compared with my log files?  @xqt 14:56, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Greetings!

Here is the 7th issue of the Bots Newsletter, a lot happened since last year's newsletter! You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM

• Nothing of note happened. Just like we like it.

BAG

• Several (1 + 12 = 13) users have been retired/resigned from the BAG due to inactivity, per our new activity requirements (discussion).

BAG members are expected to be active on Wikipedia to have their finger on the pulse of the community. After two years without any bot-related activity (such as posting on bot-related pages, posting on a bot's talk page, or operating a bot), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice. Retired members can re-apply for BAG membership as normal if they wish to rejoin the BAG.

• Two BAG members retired
  • Madman (talk · contribs) retired.
  • BU Rob13 (talk · contribs) vanished and retired.
• Three new BAG members have been voted in, welcome to the BAG!
  • Primefac (talk · contribs) joined on 2018-12-12 (RfBAG). Primefac operates PrimeBOT (talk · contribs) which does a plethora of tasks.
  • TheSandDoctor (talk · contribs) joined on 2019-01-21 (RfBAG). TheSandDoctor operates several bots including DeprecatedFixerBot (talk · contribs).
  • Enterprisey (talk · contribs) joined on 2019-08-07 (RfBAG). Enterprisey operates EnterpriseyBot (talk · contribs), which does a plethora of tasks, RemindMeBot (talk · contribs) which posts reminders, and codes several scripts.

We thank former members for their service and wish Madman a happy retirement. We note that Madman and BU Rob13 were not inactive and could resume their BAG positions if they so wished, should their retirements happens to be temporary.

BOTDICT

Two new entries feature in the bots dictionary

• Editor-hostile wikitext – describes wikitext structuring that is editor hostile, even if it renders correctly
• Spectrum of usefulness – describes how tasks are deemed useful or not

BOTPOL

• Activity requirements: BAG members now have an activity requirement. The requirements are very light, one only needs to be involved in a bot-related area at some point within the last two years. For purpose of meeting these requirements, discussing a bot-related matter anywhere on Wikipedia counts, as does operating a bot (RFC).
• Copyvio flag: Bot accounts may be additionally marked by a bureaucrat upon BAG request as being in the "copyviobot" user group on Wikipedia. This flag allows using the API to add metadata to edits for use in the New pages feed (discussion). There is currently 1 bot using this functionality.
• Mass creation: The restriction on mass-creation (semi-automated or automated) was extended from articles, to all content-pages. There are subtleties, but content here broadly means whatever a reader could land on when browsing the mainspace in normal circumstances (e.g. Mainspace, Books, most Categories, Portals, ...). There is also a warning that WP:MEATBOT still applies in other areas (e.g. Redirects, Wikipedia namespace, Help, maintenance categories, ...) not explicitely covered by WP:MASSCREATION.

BOTREQs and BRFAs

As of writing, we have...

• 20 active BOTREQs, please help if you can!
• 14 open BRFAs and 1 BRFA in need of BAG attention (see live status).
• In 2018, 96 bot task were approved. An AWB search shows approximately 29 were withdrawn/expired, and 6 were denied.
• Since the start of 2019, 97 bot task were approved. Logs show 15 were withdrawn/expired, and 15 were denied.
• 10 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion). 5 other bots have been deflagged per operator requests or similar (see discussion).

New things

• All bot-related discussion pages now have a centralized and searchable archive box (see discussion). Discussions are searchable per noticeboard, or globally.
• {{Bot}} now supports |status=expired (see discussion). This led to the deletion of Category:Indefinitely blocked Wikipedia bots as useless (see discussion).
• WP:BOTREQ now mentions WP:SCRIPTREQ and WP:AWBTASKS as alternatives to bot requests.
• The bot creation guide now mentions bot flags, and two new languages Awk and MATLAB. Other minor tweaks have been made.
• AAlertBot has received major code updates. In particular, WP:AALERTS will now report splits, mergers, and AFC submissions.
• Citation bot has received several updates (User talk:Citation bot/Archive 10/11/12/13/14/15/16/17). In particular, the bot stopped the automated removal of |publisher= from {{cite journal}}, and stopped the automated addition of CiteSeerX links, and now uses OAuth to authenticate those who make requests of the bot.

Other discussions

These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active.

• Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 12#Adminbots requests page
• Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 12#Double-redirect tagging (2019)
• Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 12#Long and Winding Road to Parsoid
• Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 13#Bot-like user scripts
• Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 13#WP:URLREQ
• Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 13#Wikipedia:Bots/Status
• Wikipedia talk:Bot Approvals Group#Minimum edits
• Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Minor update to WP:BOTISSUE
• Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Semi-automated Portal creation
• Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Clarification on "Bots operated by multiple users"
• Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Bots triggered by multiple users
• Wikipedia talk:Bots#How to use Special:ApiFeatureUsage

See also the latest discussions at the bot noticeboard.

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 17:24, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

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Redirect of PANDAS and Giant panda

It looks like the bot moves redirect to PANDAS to Giant_panda. Not sure how this happens, but the page Pandas is redirected Giant_panda while there is another page with title PANDAS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jieralv (talk • contribs) 22:16, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Can you show me the corresponding bot edit please.  @xqt 07:03, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 election voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:11, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Bot mistakes

Hello, Xqt,

I don't know how to resolve this but I am frequently reverting your bot. What happens is that an editor moves a pages (or sometimes many pages) to the wrong page and then the bot moves every single redirect to a wrong location. I end up following up behind the bot, reverting many of its edits. Perhaps it could delay responding to page moves for 48 or 92 hours which would allow bad moves to be undone before the bot gets to work and makes many changes that other editors then need to clean up.

The reason why this is a concern is that when the pages DO get moved back, the original redirects appear to be broken and then there is a different bot that comes along and deletes them when they are valid redirects, they just direct to the wrong page because of your bot's edits. Any ideas how this could be avoided? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:58, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Can you give me an example to investigate please.  @xqt 01:50, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi, Xqt,

Sorry, I have been absent from Wikipedia and didn't notice your response.

Here is a recent example: DolbyPedia, a sockpuppet, moved Tajik alphabet to Persian (Iran) alphabet (see this edit), and within 5 minutes all of the redirects (like this one) were redirected to the incorrect page by the bot. When an editor moved the page back, the bot didn't change the redirects back to the correct location. This might be because the editor or admin who corrected the wrong move frequently doesn't leave a redirect from the wrong page to the right one.

I should say that yours is not the only bot I've come across which does this (changes the redirect pages following a bad move and doesn't change them back when the page gets moved back). See this edit that was a part of a series of incorrect double redirects by EmausBot. And I'm not sure if these redirect corrections can occur if the editor or admin who reverts the move doesn't leave a redirect. I've only noticed them because they often show up at the broken redirect page and I'm concerned that User:AnomieBOT III will just delete the redirect if an editor doesn't revert the bot moves. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:32, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Once again, I'm reverting about a hundred edits of your bot which changed dozens and dozens of redirects after a few bad page moves. The pages were moved back almost immediately and the redirects then pointed to empty pages. If only the bot would change the redirects back to where they were in the first place so I didn't have to revert each one individually myself. Sorry, I'm a bit frustrated with the bot and the new editor who thought it would be smart to move highly visible articles to talk pages. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 05:05, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

There may be several bot using the redirect.py script from mw:Manual:Pywikibot framework. I guess user:EmausBot and user:Xqbot are working on this site. The source is public. I tried to implement some kind of vandalism detection and can conclude that page moves by unconfirmed users are always ignored. In addition there is a delay time after moving a page befor the bot starts working. Anyway what can someone do if the page must be moved back and the redirects should be fixed in that way? Just wait until the bots have fixed the double redirect again and delete the wrong redirect afterwards. What to do if the redirect is deleted after moving back or the page was moved without leaving a redirect? Just wait again until bots have fixed the broken redirects; they are able to restore the broken links. Or make a mass revert for the bots edits. Or make a bot task request. Or ask a bot owner who uses that redirect script. Or ask me or other guys at #pywikibot channel. Probably you have a better idea to verify whether a page move is usefull or not. There are several tasks at Phabricator related to this script. Any hints and proposals are welcome.  @xqt 16:13, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for Xqbot

		The Bot Creator Barnstar
		I hope you keep maintaining and running such a great bot. —⁠andrybak (talk) 12:57, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Bot garbled an edit

See DIFF. Hint: I think that came after an admin moved a redirect upon request at WP:RM/TR, where after the request to move the page was made there, another editor moved it to a different title before the admin honored the request, and the admin failed to notice that they were actually moving a redirect, not an article. Sigh, sometimes managing Wikipedia editors feels like trying to herd cats. Best, wbm1058 (talk) 19:04, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Another munged edit. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:53, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Very strange. This is related to other bots too. I created phab:T254839 for it.  @xqt 05:11, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Deprecate "source" tags

Where is the approval for that bot task? I currently have a BRFA open for it, but your bot doesn't seem to have been approved for it --DannyS712 (talk) 19:21, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Ignore double redirects to nonexistent targets

Special:Diff/970100519 resulted in Special:Diff/970482185, Special:Diff/970484782, Special:Diff/970484829, Special:Diff/970484860, Special:Diff/970485337, and Special:Diff/970485525, which all had to be fixed by hand. Can you update Xqbot to ignore double redirects when the final page in the chain doesn't exist? Jackmcbarn (talk) 06:21, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Bot reverted my correction

Hi Xqt, your bot is apparently interfering with my correction of the article Unité mixte de recherche. This article was redirecting to Public Scientific and Technical Research Establishment, which is not the same thing (UMR and EPST are different types of institutions). So I corrected it and removed the redirection, but the bot Xqbot restored the redirect (this is related to an old double redirect problem apparently, I did not dig deeper). Can you please remove the page Unité mixte de recherche from the bot's task list? Arnaud Chéritat (talk) 14:59, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

ZFS

This was an error. Oracle_ZFS does not contain the section that was linked to, ZFS does. Silver hr (talk) 02:56, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

hahbazyan]] ??

See DIFF – wbm1058 (talk) 14:53, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Probably related to #Bot garbled an edit, I guess. Has nobody taken ownership of that yet? wbm1058 (talk) 14:56, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

"Blox" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Blox. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 October 12#Blox until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Seventyfiveyears (talk) 13:45, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message

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Bot bug?

Special:Diff/1017183113. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 18:58, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Looks like an undetected edit conflict on API side, see phab:T93364.  @xqt 08:27, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Please grant an exemption

I reverted the redirect of the Baron Macbre (Marvel comics character) page because the data on him had gotten lost due to repeated redirects, merges, page splits, re-merges, etc. Please grant an exemption to this page from your bot until such a time as the merge is successful. Thank you. Blackfyr (talk) 19:06, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Which are the related pages?  @xqt 07:15, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Unconstructive behavior

Changed redirect of Flat-Earth theory to People that have an IQ of 1, which is not a real article. Suspicious. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Quantupediholic (talk • contribs) 17:44, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

see move log.  @xqt 19:35, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

April 2021

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to introduce jokes into articles, as you did at Flat-Earth theory, you may be blocked from editing. Wikipedia is a serious encyclopedia, and contributions of this type are considered vandalism. Changed redirect to a non-existent page. Quantupediholic (talk) 17:47, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Are you joking? [48]  @xqt 19:05, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Xqbot and {{avoided double redirect}}

Is there any way that Xqbot could, when making edits like this, remove {{avoided double redirect}} if that template's target matches the new target? Otherwise they just fall into Category:Avoided double redirects to be updated and create a backlog.

P.S. The source code link on the bot's userpage doesn't work anymore. -- Tamzin (she/they, no pref.) | o toki tawa mi. 20:41, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

"Gibberish language" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Gibberish language. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 June 9#Gibberish language until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Seventyfiveyears (talk) 00:51, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

WP:NOTBROKEN

Your bot is ignoring WP:NOTBROKEN. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 00:38, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Request writing about Isabelle de Charrière (Q123386)

Hello Xqt, Would you like to write about Isabelle de Charrière (Q123386) for the ZH Wikipedia? Or find someoneelse to do it. That would be appreciated. Boss-well63 (talk) 11:10, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Double redirects

Hello! It seems that none of the double-redirect fixing bots has been running for the past several days. Thought you might want to check on this. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:21, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Technical Barnstar
	For running Xqbot. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 13:40, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, December 2021

Bots Newsletter, December 2021

BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the eighth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Maintainers disappeared to parts unknown... bots awakening from the slumber of æons... hundreds of thousands of short descriptions... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

Our last issue was in August 2019, so there's quite a bit of catching up to do. Due to the vast quantity of things that have happened, the next few issues will only cover a few months at a time. This month, we'll go from September 2019 through the end of the year. I won't bore you with further introductions — instead, I'll bore you with a newsletter about bots.

Overall

• Between September and December 2019, there were 33 BRFAs. Of these, Y 25 were approved, and 8 were unsuccessful (N2 3 denied, ? 3 withdrawn, and 2 expired).

September 2019

Look! It's moving. It's alive. It's alive... It's alive, it's moving, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, IT'S ALIVE!

• Y Monkbot 16, DannyS712 bot 60, Ahechtbot 6, PearBOT 3, Qbugbot 3 · N2 DannyS712 bot 5, PkbwcgsBot 24 · ? DannyS712 bot 61, TheSandBot 4
• TParis goes away, UTRSBot goes kaput: Beeblebrox noted that the bot for maintaining on-wiki records of UTRS appeals stopped working a while ago. TParis, the semi-retired user who had previously run it, said they were "unlikely to return to actively editing Wikipedia", and the bot had been vanquished by trolls submitting bogus UTRS requests on behalf of real blocked users. While OAuth was a potential fix, neither maintainer had time to implement it. TParis offered to access to the UTRS WMFLabs account to any admin identified with the WMF: "I miss you guys a whole lot [...] but I've also moved on with my life. Good luck, let me know how I can help". Ultimately, SQL ended up in charge. Some progress was made, and the bot continued to work another couple months — but as of press time, UTRSBot has not edited since November 2019.
• Article-measuring contest resumed: The list of Wikipedians by article count, which had lain dead for several years, was triumphantly resurrected by GreenC following a bot request.

October 2019

• Y OAbot 3, DannyS712 bot 47, Pathbot 2, PearBOT 2, DannyS712 bot 59, DannyS712 bot 62, HasteurBot 14, PearBOT 4, WOSlinkerBot 4, MilHistBot 5
• Curb Safe Charmer adopts reFill: TAnthony pointed out that reFill 2's bug reports were going unanswered; creator Zhaofeng Li had retired from Wikipedia, and a maintainer was needed. As of June 2021, Curb Safe Charmer had taken up the mantle, saying: "Not that I have all the skills needed but better me than nobody! 'Maintainer' might be too strong a term though. Volunteers welcome!"
  

November 2019

Now you're thinking with portals.

• Y BHGbot 4, YiFeiBot 2, DannyS712 bot III 64 · ? PearBOT
• Old bots do new tricks: DannyS712 bot III 64 prowled redirects, YiFeiBot 2 archived GoCE requests, and BHGbot 4 removed links to portals deleted at MfD (until its authorization was revoked in January at operator BrownHairedGirl's request).

December 2019

• Y DemonDays64 Bot, DannyS712 bot III 66, Bot1058 6, Monkbot 15, MilHistBot 6, PearBOT 5, DannyS712 bot IV 65 · N2 SportsStatsBot · Xinbenlv bot, SteveBot 8
• Redirects to be autopatrolled: A RfC took place at WP:NPP, closing with unanimous consensus that new redirects should be automatically marked as patrolled by bot. DannyS712 wasted no time, and submitted DannyS712 bot III 66 the next day; it passed two days after that.
• 200,000 bios get short descs: Along a similar vein, Bot1058 6 was approved to remove disambiguation pages from Category:Monitored short pages and a new bot (DemonDays64 Bot) changed lots of http links to https using JavaScript Wiki Browser. One particularly neat task, PearBOT 5, automatically generated short descriptions for more than 200,000 biographies.

In the next issue of Bots Newsletter:
What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?

• What happens when two bots want to clerk the same page?
• What happens when an adminbot goes hog wild?
• Will reFill ever get fixed?
• What's up with ListeriaBot, anyway?
• Python 3.4 deprecation? In my PyWikiBot? (It's more likely than you think!)

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the January 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 04:29, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

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Xqbot jumbling wikitext

Not sure if anyone's monitoring the bot anymore, but something strange happened with this edit. Stranger still, it didn't happen with the corresponding edit to the mainspace redirect. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 08:10, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

could you please explain a bit more what happened and what is going wrong  @xqt 11:42, 1 January 2022 (UTC)  @

Oh, gosh, I linked the wrong diff, sorry. This one is the problematic one. The substring ti station]] was repeated at the end of the redirect link. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 12:09, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

2 Millionth edit by Xqtbot

Hi Xqt, if you don't know then Marathi Wikipedia has completed 2 million edits and the 2 millionth edit has been made by a bot run by you, i.e. Xqbot. You may see a notice of completetion of 2 million edits on all pages of marathi wikipedia. Also the 2 millionth edit made by bot is this- [[49]]. Also a marathi wikipedia administrator has wished the bot for the same on Xqbot's marathi talk page. Congratulations for running a bot who is part of a Wikipedia milestone. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 12:40, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, January 2022

Bots Newsletter, January 2022

BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the ninth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Vicious bot-on-bot edit warring... superseded tasks... policy proposals... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

After a long hiatus between August 2019 and December 2021, there's quite a bit of ground to cover. Due to the vastness, I decided in December to split the coverage up into a few installments that covered six months each. Some people thought this was a good idea, since covering an entire year in a single issue would make it unmanageably large. Others thought this was stupid, since they were getting talk page messages about crap from almost three years ago. Ultimately, the question of whether each issue covers six months or a year is only relevant for a couple more of them, and then the problem will be behind us forever.

Of course, you can also look on the bright side – we are making progress, and this issue will only be about crap from almost two years ago. Today we will pick up where we left off in December, and go through the first half of 2020.

Overall
In the first half of 2020, there were 71 BRFAs. Of these, Y 59 were approved, and 12 were unsuccessful (with N2 8 denied, ? 2 withdrawn, and 2 expired).

January 2020

Yeah, you're not gonna be able to get away with this anymore.

• Y ST47Bot, Seppi333Bot, Qbugbot 4 · N2 PkbwcgsBot 25, PkbwcgsBot 26
• A new Pywikibot release dropped support for Python 3.4, and it was expected that support for Python 2.7 would be removed in coming updates. Toolforge itself planned to drop Python 2 support in 2022.
• Two new bots dropped in January 2020: ST47Bot, the successor to STBot, and Seppi333Bot, whose task was to perform a weekly update of four "massive" wikitables for WikiProject Molecular Biology.
• Cydebot, an adminbot operated by Cyde since 2006, was blocked after going berserk on categories that hadn't yet been CfD'd.

February 2020

Speaking of WikiProject Molecular Biology, Listeria went wild in February

• Y AnomieBOT 78, Cewbot 2, DannyS712 bot 67, DannyS712 bot III 63, PearBOT 6, DemonDays64 Bot 2 · N2 PearBOT
• On February 1, some concerns were raised about ListeriaBot performing "nonsense" edits. Semi-active operator Magnus Manske (who originally coded the Phase II software|precursor of MediaWiki) was pinged. Meanwhile, the bot was temporarily blocked for several hours until the issue was diagnosed and resolved.
• On February 18, ST47Bot got into a tussle with Amalthea (bot), and had to be partially-blocked from Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Cases/Overview.

March 2020

• Y MajavahBot, SDZeroBot, TheSandBot 6, TheSandBot 7, Bitbotje, FACBot 6, TheSandBot 8, Qbugbot 5, Cewbot 3, SDZeroBot 2, PrimeBOT 31, WikiCleanerBot 12 · AntiCompositeBot
• In March, a long discussion was started at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy by Skdb about the troubling trend of bots "expiring" without explanation after their owners became inactive. This can happen for a variety of reasons -- API changes break code, hosting providers' software updates break code, hosting accounts lapse, software changes make bots' edits unnecessary, and policy changes make bots' edits unwanted. The most promising solution seemed to be Toolforge hosting (although it has some problems of its own, like the occasional necessity of refactoring code).
• Some of the twelve bot tasks approved this month were TheSandBot 6 (removing blocked users from Category:Wikipedia usernames with possible policy issues), and TheSandBot 7 (removing unblocked users from Category:Wikipedians who are indefinitely blocked for promotional user names). SDZeroBot 2 was approved to refine geographic stub tags. New bots approved this month were MajavahBot (to patrol WP:EFFPR), SDZeroBot (to merge stub tags), and Bitbotje (fixing DISPLAYTITLE modifications, DEFAULTSORT errors and broken behavior switches in draftspace).

April 2020

Listeria being examined

• Y TheSandBot 9, BHGbot 5, DannyS712 bot 69, SDZeroBot 3, ST47ProxyBot, WugBot 4, SDZeroBot 4, DatBot 10, WikiCleanerBot 11, WikiCleanerBot 13, WikiCleanerBot 14, AntiCompositeBot 2, Cewbot 4 · N2 DaedanBot 1 · Creffbot
• A discussion on the bot noticeboard, "Re-examination of ListeriaBot", was started by Barkeep49, who pointed out repeated operation outside the scope of its BRFA (i.e. editing pages in mainspace, and adding non-free images to others). Some said it was doing good work, and others said it was operating beyond its remit. It was blocked on April 10; the next day it was unblocked, reblocked from article space, reblocked "for specified non-editing actions", unblocked, and indeffed. The next week, several safeguards were implemented in its code by Magnus; the bot was allowed to roam free once more on April 18.
• ST47ProxyBot joined the stable in April, after a BRFA started in December was finally completed. As an adminbot, it was authorized to block IP addresses belonging to open proxies, public VPN services, and web hosts. New tasks approved for existing bots included BHGbot 5 (diffusing categories), TheSandBot 9 (taking over some tasks from the inactive RonBot), and WugBot 4 (updating data at {{Interactive COVID-19 maps}}). Also, DatBot 10 was approved to scale down non-free SVGs — I didn't even know that was a thing.
• A discussion at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy was started by Thryduulf about whether WP:BOTCOMM should explicitly specify that bot operators must be responsive to concerns raised on English Wikipedia specifically (as opposed to Phabricator, SourceForge, Toolforge, et cetera). Eventually, the policy was amended to its current form:

Issues and enquiries are typically expected to be handled on the English Wikipedia. Pages reachable via unified login, like a talk page at Commons or at Italian Wikipedia could also be acceptable [...] External sites like Phabricator or GitHub (which require separate registration or do not allow for IP comments) and email (which can compromise anonymity) can supplement on-wiki communication, but do not replace it.

May 2020

We heard you like bots, so we made a bot that reports the status of your bots, so now you can use bots while you use bots

• Y MajavahBot 3, DannyS712 bot 70, CitationCleanerBot 5, Dreamy Jazz Bot 4, QEDKbot, William Avery Bot 2, DannyS712 bot 68, PrimeBOT 32, TheSandBot 10, Bot1058 7, BHGbot 6, EaglesBot 2, Cewbot 5, WikiCleanerBot 17 · N2 MDanielsBot, PhuzBot 3, Gedimon · ? PearBOT 7
• MajavahBot 3, an impressively meta bot task, was approved this month for maintaining a list of bots running on the English Wikipedia. The page, located at User:MajavahBot/Bot status report, is updated every 24 hours; it contains a list of all accounts with the bot flag, as well as their operator, edit count, last activity date, last edit date, last logged action date, user groups and block status.
• Other approvals for this month were William Avery Bot 2 (processing redirects in {{R from scientific name}}), DannyS712 bot 68 (allowing users to schedule bot reminders for themselves), TheSandBot 10 (removing blocked/locked users from Category:User talk pages with conflict of interest notices), Bot1058 7 (updating Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests/Permalink), Dreamy Jazz Bot 4 (adding {{WikiProject Biography|living=no}} to talk pages where their associated article is in a year of death category), and QEDKbot (deleting and nominating empty categories).
• General syntax fixing tasks were approved for DannyS712 bot 70, CitationCleanerBot 5, PrimeBOT 32, BHGbot 6, Cewbot 5, and EaglesBot 2, as well as WikiCleanerBot 15, 16, and 17.
• Seven bots who fell below activity requirements (with neither the bots nor their operators having any edits or logged actions in two years) had their bot flags removed. They were NekoBot, Robert SkyBot, DASHBotAV, VoxelBot, JackieBot, ReferenceBot, and CensusBot.
• On May 12, EmausBot was blocked.

June 2020

A partial block averted at the eleventh hour for the robot that makes Legos

• Y QEDKbot 2, AnomieBOT 79, WOSlinkerBot 6, Yapperbot 2, Yapperbot, AnomieBOT 80, Dreamy Jazz Bot 5, WikiCleanerBot 18, HasteurBot 15, MusikBot II 4, NoSandboxesHere · N2 RedWarn · ? Seppi333Bot 2
• In July 2017, Headbomb made a proposal that a section of the Wikipedia:Dashboard be devoted to bots and technical issues. In November 2019, Lua code was written superseding Legobot's tasks on that page, and operator Legoktm was asked to stop them so that the new code could be deployed. After no response to pings, a partial-block of Legobot for the dashboard was proposed. Some months later, on June 16, Headbomb said: "A full block serves nothing. A partial block solves all current issues [...] Just fucking do it. It's been 3 years now." The next day, however, Legoktm disabled the task, and the dashboard was successfully refactored.
• On June 7, RexxS blocked Citation bot for disruptive editing, saying it was "still removing links after request to stop". A couple weeks later, a discussion on the bots noticeboard was opened, saying "it is a widely-used and useful bot, but it has one of the longest block logs for any recently-operating bot on Wikipedia". While its last BRFA approval was in 2011, its code and functionality had changed dramatically since then, and AntiCompositeNumber requested that BAG require a new BRFA. Maintainer AManWithNoPlan responded that most blocks were from years ago (when it lacked a proper test suite), and problems since then had mostly been one-off errors (like a June 2019 incident in which a LTA had "weaponized" the bot to harass editors).
• David Tornheim opened a discussion about whether bots based on closed-source code should be permitted, and proposed that they not. He cited a recent case in which a maintainer had said "I can only suppose that the code that is available on GitHub is not the actual code that was running on [the bot]". Some disagreed: Naypta said that "I like free software as much as the next person, and I strongly believe that bot operators should make their bot code public, but I don't think it should be that they must do so".
• Two new bots had their first BRFAs approved: Yapperbot, to replace Legobot for handling the Feedback Request Service, and NoSandboxesHere, to remove {{user sandbox}} from articles in draftspace using Category:Non-userspace pages using User sandbox.

Conclusion

• What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?

• Will Citation bot ever be set free to roam the project?
• What's the deal with all those book links that InternetArchiveBot is adding to articles?
• Should we keep using Gerrit for MediaWiki?
• What if we had a day for bots to make cosmetic edits?

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the February 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 23:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

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Why?

Hi! Yesterday you reverted "Restored revision 399635460 by Xqbot" on the page Drug laws saying: "unnecessary diversion". I do not understand and I do not see it very legitimate, provided that I had redirected to "Drug law (disambiguation)" which includes a redirection to "prohibition of drugs" anyways. It seems more logical that "Drug law" should point at "Drug law (disambiguation)" instead as to any other page, anyways. I would be happy to understand why not. Thank you! Teluobir (talk) 00:34, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

It wasn’t me: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Drug_law&type=revision&diff=1074589126&oldid=1074565113  @xqt 06:41, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Odd redirect at Vice President Mondale

Not sure how, but in January the bot redirected this page: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vice_President_Mondale&type=revision&diff=1066478799&oldid=777412999>. Another bot also kept the same redirect. I've put it back to redirecting to Walter Mondale. Geoff | ^{Who, me?} 19:34, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

"Furious Love" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Furious Love and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 April 1#Furious Love until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The Ghost of Art Toys Past (talk) 14:01, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Outdated SVN link at User:Xqbot

Infobox at the page User:Xqbot links to svn.wikimedia.org which redirects to phabricator.wikimedia.org. Could you please update the URL in the infobox? —⁠andrybak (talk) 14:51, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Double-closing-bracket bug

• Special:Diff/1084421327

Any idea what happened? -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 02:13, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Xqbot and fixing double redirects

I'm curious as to one aspect of the bot fixing double redirects. Article "A" is moved to "B" and then is moved to "C", but with the redirect suppressed so that "A" is now a redirect to a red link that was "B". Will the bot be able to fix that and redirect "A" to "C"? Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 08:05, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Pywikibot scripts/interwiki.py

There's an extra character on line 1191. self.originP to self.origin. Prod (Talk) 21:09, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Good catch, thank you. Solved with gerrit:816139  @xqt 12:09, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

I got an error running archivebot.py as well. If it's trying to create a new archive page, it was throwing a NoPageError in load_page. I was able to bypass the error and continue execution by putting a try except on the text = self.get() for NoPageError. However, it failed to add the header properly. My repository was a week old, so I'm not sure if it's still a problem in the latest version. -- Prod (Talk) 23:40, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

This is already solved with gerrit:818121.  @xqt 07:37, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Line 1331 in interwiki.py:

-                    self.problem('Found link to ' + page)
+                    self.problem('Found link to ' + page.title())

-- Prod (Talk) 04:15, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Xqbot

Hello, Xqt,

It looks like you are not on Wikipedia much lately but I thought I'd drop you a note about your bot. Xqbot correctly changed a redirect on Draft:Skeleton Crew (TV series) when the target page was moved but didn't change the redirect on the talk page. Is there any way you can ensure that the bot corrects both talk pages and article/draft pages when a move happens? Thanks for your contributions and the work of your bot! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:14, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2022 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:44, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Double redirect whitelist

Would it be possible for you to implement a whitelist system to Xqbot? When WP:Sandbox was modified to a redirect, it caused a bunch of disruptive changes such as this one. A system preventing such changes to certain test pages would be helpful! Thanks ~ Eejit43 (talk) 05:00, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Breaking rcats

Hello,

I've noticed this happening a fair amount, for example Special:Diff/1138396128. It seems to somehow remove the start of {{Redirect category shell}}.

@Xqt directly pinging you to ensure you see this, its a relatively disruptive bug when it happens. ~ Eejit43 (talk) 14:20, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Another somewhat similar issue: Special:Diff/1141717189, improperly fixing redirect ~ Eejit43 (talk) 17:45, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Bot unblocked

Your bot has been blocked on hrwiki for many, many years. I've now unblocked it, feel free to visit any time! Ponor (talk) 17:13, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

"Ship Island, Newfoundland and Labrador" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Ship Island, Newfoundland and Labrador has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 April 9 § Ship Island, Newfoundland and Labrador until a consensus is reached. PatGallacher (talk) 01:01, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

The bot seems to have stopped

Hi Xqt. I’m just leaving you a message as Xqbot seems to have stopped fixing double redirects for the last few days. Best, A smart kitten (talk) 15:14, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Broke template on redirect

Please take a look at [50]. - Christian75 (talk) 06:46, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Broken link at User:Xqbot

Thank you for running and maintaining Xqbot.

The userpage of the bot contains a dead link to the source code in the infobox: https://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/pywikipedia/trunk/pywikipedia/interwiki.py?view=log redirects to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/?view=log, which seems to be the landing page of Diffusion (I'm not sure, haven't used it a lot). —⁠andrybak (talk) 23:33, 29 August 2024 (UTC)