User talk:MilHistBot

MilHistBot and Devon County War Memorial

I was idly browsing when I noticed that MilHistBot seems to have missed a few steps in closing the ACR for Devon County War Memorial. It made eight edits closing the ACR before, but only six for that one. Courtesy ping for @Hawkeye7: so he can look into the technical stuff. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 09:58, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

The Bot was having troubling figuring out who the nominator was. Normally, the nominator card looks like this:

:<small>''Nominator(s): [[User:Kges1901|Kges1901]] ([[User talk:Kges1901|talk]])''</small>

but this one looked like this:

<small>''Nominator(s):'' [[User:HJ Mitchell|<font color="Teal" face="Tahoma">'''HJ&nbsp;Mitchell'''</font>]] &#124; [[User talk:HJ Mitchell|<font color="Navy" face= "Times New Roman">Penny for your thoughts? </font>]]</small>

The misplaced pair of quotes was all it took for the Bot to throw its hands up in the air. I have enhanced the bot's error reporting, made its parsing of the nominator card more permissive, and run the script to complete closing the nomination. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:42, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

---

@Hawkeye7: There is a similar issue with closing of Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/List of National Defence Academy alumni, it missed of the steps, such as; A-class medal eligibility tracking, article alerts December 2016 etc. Please check for the error. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 10:19, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Same problem, but in this case it read:

<small>''Nominator(s): {{u|Krishna Chaitanya Velaga}}''</small>

Told the Bot to accept this format. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:29, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Military Historian of the Year

		The WikiProject Barnstar
		For "... saving us and our fingers from the agony of a 45-60 minute manual closure of A-Class reviews", I have the honor of presenting you with this WikiProject Barnstar. For the Military history WikiProject, TomStar81 (Talk) 09:33, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7: Rather like Spock, your bot has no pride which can swell for having earned the barnstar, so you'll have to play the role of Captain Kirk and be proud for its achievement :) TomStar81 (Talk) 09:33, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Removal of GANs from Template:WPMILHIST Announcements

G'day Hawkeye7, the bot seems to have removed all the GANs. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:21, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Hmm. There was a problem on 23 March. Kirill Lokshin restored the template, and then the Bot edit was okay on 24 March. I'll keep an eye on it. The Bot actually regenerates the whole list every time, although it looks like it is doing a regular add/remove edit. It may have been one of those transient "database down" errors, and I may have to teach the Bot how to handle them. Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:35, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

The Bot error report said: "Server has reported lag above the configure max_lag value of 5 value after 1 attempt(s). Last reported lag was - Waiting for 10.64.16.76: 30.858206033707 seconds lagged." So the error was a transient one. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:21, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Query

Hi Hawkeye, not sure what is going on with this edit by the bot...? Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:15, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Hawkeye7, this appears to be continuing with another award to Harry which hasn't posted right. See the lack of award post in response to this. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:26, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Still happening. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:39, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Working on it. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:25, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Resolved

 – The wrong call was being made to the new template parser} Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:17, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi Hawkeye7 thanks for getting on to this so quickly. There's the award nom for Harry as well (above). But if we're ok now, I might just do that manually? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 04:21, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

I've added the nomination manually. We may have another bug. The Bot reported it done properly. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:41, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Ordered an impromptu bot run. All looks good. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:59, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

2018 Military Historian of the Year

		2018 Military Historian of the Year
		As voted by your human underlings within the Military history WikiProject, I hereby award you the WikiProject Barnstar for being nominated for the 2018 Military Historian of the Year Award. Congratulations, and thank you for your botting in 2018. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:18, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Extra pipe

Hi Hawkeye. The bot seems to have inserted an extra "|" in {{Wikipedia:Featured article tools}} in this edit, causing a duplicate "1" parm error. Of course, that page is not supposed to be edited, so the error wouldn't be seen, but it shows up in Category:Pages using duplicate arguments in template calls. Davemck (talk) 16:21, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

It was spotted straight away and corrected. I had assumed that it was harmless, but have now corrected the affected pages too. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:30, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Project news medal postings

Hi Hawkeye, just observed something that could do with a tweak. When posting A-Class crosses to the Project news page, could Milhistbot place the ACCs above the Diamonds? Also, if it could use the ACC file rather than the ACM file for the attendant icon? I've fixed next month's ones. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:36, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Okay. I have added the required instructions to the awards run. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:43, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:15, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Minor Milhistbot glitches re Bugle

G'day Hawkeye7, it seems Milhistbot is posting Oak Leaves awards to on Project News of the upcoming issue using the wrong image file name? It should be using File:WPMH ACR (Oakleaves).png. Also it seems to be posting them in a strange order, with oak leaves being posted above medals, but with diamonds at the bottom. I assume Nick and Ian have to make these minor adjustments, and I know there aren't major, but it would probably help them if Milhistbot was tweaked. I assume the order should be medals, oakleaves, swords, diamonds, crosses? In the interests of continuous improvement, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:15, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Resolved

 – Both problems addressed. Hopefully it will be work properly now. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:27, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Missing full stop

G'day Hawkeye, when Milhistbot awards ACMs etc, would you be able to add a full stop after the list of articles and before the signature is inserted? Thanks mate, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:24, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

While you're at it, could you drop the extra blank line above new nominations? Must be doing a pretty good job if this is all I have to quibble about. Thanks again, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:01, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Added the full stop. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:57, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Minor quibble

G'day Hawkeye, I noticed an anomaly in the listing of Sturm's Diamonds on the tally page, it had counted two of the same award (for the same articles) for October 2018, which had Sturm at 15 Diamonds, when he is actually at 14. I've fixed it manually, but just checking that the bot isn't relying on this in any way. I believe Sturm has one more Diamonds before moving to Crosses? Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 10:51, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

it had also listed them out of chronological order for some reason, putting 2016 awards above the 2015 ones. I also fixed that manually. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 10:52, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

The Bot doesn't do the archiving. It is done manually. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 11:05, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Doesn't the bot list approved awards at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Awards/ACM? This is not about archiving, it is about the awards page. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 11:07, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, it updates that. I will investigate what happened in October 2018. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 11:10, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Bots need kittens too!!!

Coolabahapple (talk) 07:03, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Antoine Hamilton and Claud Hamilton

Dear Hawkeye7. I noticed two recent ratings by MilHistBot of articles to which I contributed. The articles are Antoine Hamilton and Claud Hamilton, 4th Earl of Abercorn, 17th-century Irish biographies both. It is great to be rated. Both articles were rated class=C|b1=no|b2=yes|b3=yes|b4=yes|b5=yes. The latter was promoted from Start to C-Class. Wonderful! I think automation is the only answer for the backlog on ratings of pre-A level articles. If I understand it right, you wrote this great tool. Thank you very much! You did Wikipedia a great service. Please allow me a question: why did the articles fail the "b1"-test? If I understand it right, "b1" is referencing (why is it called "b1"?). I think both articles are well referenced. "Antoine" has 84 footnotes and 40 sources. "Claud" has 23 footnotes and 13 sources. The sources are mainly books found in Internet Archive. The citations typically are marked in the text using the "sfn" template and the sources are described using the "citation" template in the list under "Notes and references". The "sfn" typically includes a URL and a quote. The "citation" typically gives a full bibliographic description including page numbers (columns and lines if needed) and URLs. What do I do wrong? What should I do to make these articles pass "b1"? With many thanks Johannes Schade (talk) 11:20, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

The Bot performs what would be my own first pass, which is to check that every paragraph ends with a reference. It found that they do not. For example, three of the last four paragraphs in Antoine Hamilton do not. To pass the b1, references are required for these facts. The C rating says that the article is well referenced, but not fully referenced. Add the additional citations and you can list the articles at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Requests for review by a human. (FWIW, the Bot thinks highly of the article.) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:37, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Dear Hawkeye7. Thank you very much for the quick reply and explanation. I read the A-Class FAQ (WP:MH/A?) and found the requirement for a reference at the end of each paragraph there. This is easy to check but I am not sure that it really makes sense. I got another article Frederick Hamilton (soldier) rated today. MH is such a well organised and active project! I think other projects also should use your bot. Kind regards Johannes Schade (talk) 10:20, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Repeated entry

Parsecboy (39)

A-Class cross for: Liberté-class battleship, Liberté-class battleship, Liberté-class battleship, Liberté-class battleship, and Liberté-class battleship

• Support As nominator Zawed (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 12:21, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. We've got a screw up here as it's counted the same single article five times.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 13:06, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
    • Ah, this glitch is for you, Hawkeye7. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:32, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

      Hmmm... what if we just give him the award anyway? Okay, I'll investigate... Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:15, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

      @Peacemaker67: My apologies. I accidentally deleted a line of instruction (to delete the entry from the nomination page). This has been restored. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:03, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

      No worries. So, Parsecboy should just have one on the ACC tally page? Is that right? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 05:31, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

• • • Yes. I've fixed all the other pages. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 11:16, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Update user page please?

Hi. Could the bot's user page be updated to include info on the recent B-class checklist task? I had to do quite a bit of digging to find the BRFA and discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators. By the way, where should questions and feedback regarding the bot's B-class assessment be directed? --Paul_012 (talk) 07:54, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Pages truncated

There seems to be an error where the bot is truncating talk pages, e.g. Special:Diff/926094324 and Special:Diff/926092712. --Paul_012 (talk) 08:04, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

This is still happening; see Special:Diff/926252508. Hawkeye7, perhaps this should be sorted out before the work continues? --Paul_012 (talk) 21:48, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Already halted. I have a fix prepared that addresses the problem. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:24, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Hintata

Hey Hawkeye7, Was this a good automatic assessment of this bot? What are the criteria of a B-class? Regards -TheseusHeLl (talk) 18:01, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

The five criteria are laid out in the template:

• B1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations.
• B2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies.
• B3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content.
• B4. It is free from major grammatical errors.
• B5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams.

B1 is assessed by the fact that the article is fully referenced. All five appear to be met, so the Bot (and most humans, including myself) would assess the article as B class. Note that the Bot only steps in when the article has not already been assessed. Feel free to override it. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:00, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Auto B-class

Hi, the bot changed start-class rating to B-class here. The article is a stub and it's already generous to consider it a start-class. Renata (talk) 22:40, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

The article cannot be a stub, because it has an infobox, sections and references. That makes it a start at minimum. I have reassessed it as C class, based on its lack of coverage. This sort of thing is hard for the Bot to evaluate. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:43, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Actually, it's pretty easy to evaluate -- readable prose is under 900 bytes. Renata (talk) 13:04, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Collateral damage

A recent edit by this bot of Talk:Mine clearance organization removed most of one of the sections, leaving a partial section heading. See this diff. RockMagnetist(talk) 05:42, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that report. The error was caused by bad markup on the page, and the Bot recieved instructions on dealing with these cases. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:45, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Missed ACR in ACM eligibility tracker

My successful co-nom for Soviet cruiser Kalinin has been missed by Milhistbot on Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Awards/ACM/Eligibility tracking, which shows two ACRs even though I should be entitled to another if Kalinin were counted. Kges1901 (talk) 15:30, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Francisco Bouligny

Hi, I'm just trying to understand MilHistBot's criteria for citations. Francisco Bouligny was rated as C class with only the "referencing and citation" criterion not met for B class. I'm pretty sure every fact/statement in the article is well sourced, using citation tags, to biographies, academic articles, and other reliable sources, so I'm just trying to understand what might be missing. Thanks. Carter (talk) 15:41, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Hi Carter. Looks like you missed one. I have marked it up in the article. Gog the Mild (talk) 14:47, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Gog the Mild; I connected the source for that. Carter (talk) 14:59, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Upgraded to B class. Nice article. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:09, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! Carter (talk) 16:40, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Quarterly reviewing awards

G'day Hawkeye, can you release the quarterly reviewing awards run please? Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 22:57, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Odd inclusion on the MILHIST Announcements template

Hi Hawkeye, Milhistbot keeps adding Argentinosaurus to the MILHIST Announcements template for FACs. I took a look and couldn't see why this is happening. Any ideas? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 22:52, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Hmmm. I see the problem. I will create a fix. (I note in passing that the FACBot has the same problem, and would have added it to the Showcase and the Bugle if it had been promoted.) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:45, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Resolved

 – Fix applied Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:08, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks mate. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:33, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Checking something

G'day Hawkeye, just checking that when Parsecboy gets his next ACC (which will be with Oak Leaves), that Milhistbot knows where to post it on Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Awards/ACC? I've created a subsection there in anticipation. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:26, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Doc Hiram repeated reversion

For the fourth time, I have corrected this bot's assessment of Hiram "Doc" Jones. The bot assesses the page as failing the project's b1 criterion, claiming that the article is not "suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations." — Fourthords | =Λ= | 01:01, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

The Bot had the mission of filling in the checklists. By clearing the checklist, you asked the Bot to re-assess the article. I have filled in the checklist, and the problem will not recur. I will investigate why it believes (incorrectly) that the article is not fully sourced. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:19, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your help! I'm not allowed to rate article's I've written as "b-class", so I couldn't fill out the checklist correctly myself. Whenever I reverted before, I didn't have the time to make this comment here, and I was just hoping that the bot had a trigger of "if undone, do not do again". Thanks again! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 01:52, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Minor tweak needed

Hi Hawkeye, Milhistbot placed Sturm's awarded ACC in the ACC with Oak leaves section per [1]. Might need a little tweak? Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 04:25, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Resolved

 – This took a while to find. It ran all the test cases. The problem only occurred if your name would be the last one on the list.

Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:38, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Hawkeye! Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:00, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Query for Milhistbot

Hi Hawkeye7, I noticed that Milhistbot is listing some GARs twice. Can this be fixed? Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:20, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Resolved

 – It is trying too hard. Have implemented a fix.

Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:37, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Art Tomassetti and Chuck Wilson (pilot)

Hello. I am trying to understand why MilHistBot rated Art Tomassetti and Chuck Wilson (pilot) as C class due to citations. In the past, this occurred when a paragraph ended without a reference but that doesn’t seem to be the case here that I can find. Is there a log file that can be reviewed? I think MilHistBot is a great tool. It might be improved by including reasons for failures. Good work automating a tedious process! Skeet Shooter (talk) 14:33, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

There is a log, but it just contains what articles were checked and what ratings were awarded. To find out why, I have to run with a debug flag on. This revealed that the problem was a section ending with a table. I have adjusted the rules, and Bot now assesses both articles as B class. While the humans check articles better than the Bot, the backlogs had grown too great for the reduced numbers of volunteers. The ones assessed as B class are double-checked though. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:51, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Understood and thank you, Hawkeye7. Skeet Shooter (talk) 01:26, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Overriding manual assessments

Is it possible to prevent this from happening? I don't know if the bot did it because I left one of the criteria empty, but it shouldn't be re-rating articles rated as something other than stub or start-class unless it has very good reasons to do so (and there's only a hundred or so which are not assessed so its not like the backlog is too great at the moment)... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:29, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

The only reason why the backlog is so small is because the Bot has processed several thousand of them. I can adjust it so it does not deal with C class articles. Had you changed the criterion to "no" instead of leaving it blank, the Bot would have left it alone. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:29, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Mis-rating of new articles

The Bot seems to be mis-rating new, stub and start class, articles as C-Class. See Talk:Klewang-class fast attack craft for instance. New article from a relatively new editor, but the article itself is firmly a "Start" at this time:

• HTML document size: 50 kB
• Prose size (including all HTML code): 1663 B
• References (including all HTML code): 10 kB
• Wiki text: 5903 B
• Prose size (text only): 1020 B (164 words) "readable prose size"
• References (text only): 4574 B

I suspect something is off here. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 03:41, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Looks okay to me. I suspect you think that it does not cover the subject in sufficient depth to meet criterion b2 (" reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies"). This is assessed using Ores, which returned a C rating. Do you think I should automatically fail b2 if the readable prose size is less than 1,500 characters (the DYK minimum)? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:14, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)I reckon that is actually a really good rule-of-thumb. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 05:11, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Hi. Yes, I think DYK size ratings are a minimum for a C. And all the DYK criteria for a B. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 05:43, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Okay. I have taught the Bot to count characters as well as words. B2 will be automatically marked as no if there are less than 1,500 characters of prose in the article. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:11, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Hawkeye! Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:07, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you kindly, sir. BTW, thanks for your all work on the pedia, too. Regards, GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 04:32, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Milhistbot tweak?

G'day Hawkeye, could you tweak Milhistbot so that it alphabetises the active member list each month when it runs? Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:17, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

mis labelling with task forces

[2]

Neither russia, nor biography Staszek Lem (talk) 04:29, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Blanking instructs the Bot to assess it again. Looked at it, and does seem to fall under the Russian/CIS task force. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:50, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

HMS TB 23 (1907) and B1

Is the B1 rating on HMS TB 23 (1907) correct - everything seems to be sourced to reliable sources.Nigel Ish (talk) 10:22, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

The Bot has been upgraded recently, and I've run it against the article again. It now gives it a B rating. I suspect the problem was note b. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:00, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Auto task force tagging false positive

For Ministry of Defence headquarters (Thailand) in this edit. Maybe the bot was thrown of by mention of the neoclassical architectural elements? --Paul_012 (talk) 10:36, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

I think you're right. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:54, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Cites ignored by bot

Hello, I have just created a series of lists on the same lines; List of aerial victories of [Ace name]. I will use List of aerial victories of Kurt Wolff as an example. This bot says it lacks cites, even though cites are given at the top as part of the introduction. It also ignores the fact that the list is complete, as is stated in the intro. Please stop using this bot to misevaluate my lists, as I have included all elements of B Class listing except supporting materials.Georgejdorner (talk) 19:54, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi George, the bot is not is not perfect but does a huge amount of work for the project. In any situation where you think the bot assessment is incorrect, please list them at WP:MHAR, and a human will assess them. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 20:23, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Talk:2011 Helmand Province killing

Hi,

User:MilHistBot made an edit to Talk:2011 Helmand Province killing to automatically mark it as C-class. However, the article has passed GAN (as far as I know, the GA status has not been revoked). Is it correct to classify it as C-class in one WikiProject, and GA-class in others? Thanks, It Is Me Here (talk) 16:42, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

This edit inadvertently ordered the MilHistBot to reassess the article. Had there been an {{ArticleHistory}} the MilHistBot would have known that the article was a GA. Without it though the MilHistBot had no way of determining this. The assessment was otherwise correct though; had it not been a Good article, it would have warranted the C-class ranking. I have corrected the rating to GA. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:28, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

False positives

E.g. here and here. The Early Muslim TF does not include modern conflicts. This is even weirder, since the African and Biography TFs have been added as well as the Early Muslim TF, which are all not relevant, but the Balkan TF has not been added. Constantine ✍ 18:04, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback. The first two were caused by the MilHistBot becoming confused about "Islamic Republic" and "Islamic State"; this has been corrected. The third one was trickier, the problem being misclassification of the articles on the Ottoman Empire. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:27, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Question on Assessement against B-class checklist "Coverage and Accuracy"

How does the Bot assess for coverage and accuracy. Both elements can be tricky tasks for an editor let alone a bot? GraemeLeggett (talk) 08:18, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Wrong task force tagging

It seems the bot has a problem with tagging. Currently lots of articles involving Prussia, so belonging to the German task force, are falsely bot-tagged for Russia instead. ...GELongstreet (talk) 23:48, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Have you got an example? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:54, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Just changed a bunch of them, e.g. Siege of Thionville (1870) ...GELongstreet (talk) 01:20, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Resolved

 – Adjusted the matching to accept "Russia" for Russian and "Prussia" for German. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:22, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Étienne Perier (governor)

Back in July, MilHistBot assessed Étienne Perier (governor) with only the B1 criteria missing B class. The revision/rewrite of the article has been completed since then and I believe it should meet full B class criteria (if not higher). Could it be reassessed? Or could you flag where additional referencing is required? Thanks. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 17:04, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Post a request to Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Requests Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:17, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Interesting Assessment

Hey Hawkeye, I hope you've been having a safe and relaxing pandemic. Any idea why the MILHIST Bot decided Flor Crombet was a DAB article and not a start class article? I don't want to just revert it to have the bot come back for seconds. --Molestash (talk) 00:25, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

The reason is that the article is in Category:All articles with links needing disambiguation. The Bot concluded from this that it was a disambiguation page. I can correct this. Thanks for letting me know about it. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 08:58, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Resolved

 – Taught Bot to handle this case Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:10, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Hesse-Hanau Regiment Erbprinz in North America 1776-1783

The dear Bot must have got it wrong, when it says: Referencing and citation: criterion not met. The fact is, that every paragraph has a citation. Maybe a human person can tell my why the criterion is not fullfilled. As of now, I do not know what to improve in order to reach B-level. As it is now, the MilHistBot is discouraging people to write about military history. This is not the first time either. Creuzbourg (talk) 18:05, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

The Bot didn't understand the form used in the Organization section. I have corrected the assessment. Human assessments can be requested at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Requests. Teaching the bot to handle this form is something I will have to consider. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:42, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I will bear in mind the link you provided. Creuzbourg (talk) 11:50, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Assessment criteria

Not sure what this is about, clearly not B-class and the editor who tagged the project already populated the assessment field. I see there are other similar concerns in sections above. The bot is a good idea but i think you should halt it and fix this unless you already have. Zindor (talk) 20:41, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

The other editor had not populated the assessment; without the b-class criteria the assessment is void. The same with the one who cleared the b-class tags; that is the way you prompt the bot to assess. A human editor has since assessed the article as a B. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:54, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

• Same problem on Talk:LAV 6. Schierbecker (talk) 23:42, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

  Since then I have turned the Bot down a notch and the article would now be classed as a C based on criterion B2. What is more interesting is the assessment of B3 as not met. B3 looks okay to me: it has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content, which it does. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:54, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

2022 Baghdad clashes

If this article is Start class according to the other WikiProjects it's part of, there's no way whatsoever it's C-class for the military history WikiProject. But the bot has now twice assessed the article as such for no reason I can glean, and reverted my attempts to bring the rating in line with that given for the rest of the WikiProjects. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 04:30, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

The Bot won't assess an article unless someone tells it to. You do this by adding a MILHIST project template without a B-class checklist or by clearing the checklist. So this edit instructed the bot to assess the article. The Bot will not override a human assessment. However this change won't work. Not because of the bot, but because the template disregards the class card for start, C and B class article and generates it from the checklist. So it would have stayed as a C despite being marked as a start. In this case I agree with the Bot: the article is fully referenced (b1), has a proper structure (b3), is grammatically correct (b4) and has an infobox (b5). The bot assessed that the article was meagre on content so it flunked on coverage (b2). Which gives it a C rating. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:30, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

A problem... maybe.

I was archiving a talk page when I noted this bot had removed a sizable chunk of discussion content, to the tune of -30+kb. A brief spot check yeilded 3 other such incidents: -47kb, -1.5kb & -2.5kb. These particular incidents took place on 13-14 November 2019. I realize (and hope) that this is something you were already aware of, and have fixed. I just wonder how many other pages were affected, and if there was/is an effort being made to restore all this removed content. (pinging Hawkeye7). Cheers - wolf 03:46, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

A fix was implemented. (User talk:MilHistBot#Pages truncated) Looks like some pages were not repaired. I will have a look through the history. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:09, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Visual rating not the same as in code

In this revision, the banner shows the rating being C, despite the code including |class=start. What causes this discrepancy? The article seemed much more a C than a start, so I edited the code to align with that and the visual presentation, so checking to make sure that is correct. Best, CMD (talk) 08:46, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

It's the way our template works. It generates the rating from the B class criteria. Whether the class card says start, C or B, the banner will reflect what the criteria indicate. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:26, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, glad the change is not an issue. CMD (talk) 11:56, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

The change is a good one, because some of the automation expects the class parameter to be correct. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:09, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Petrus Johannes Liebenberg

Dear Bot,

Thanks for your classification of this military biography as Start. However, perhaps Liebenberg by now after an update is worthy of the C status? Thanks, Hansmuller (talk) 12:52, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

The Bot has regraded it as C class. If you add the missing reference to the last paragraph of "Invasion of the Cape Colony" and expand the lead it can be upgraded to B class. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:30, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Shooting from the hip again

I have complained about your MilHisBot (on the talk-page of Dutch States Army) before. I am afraid I now have to protest its assessment of my biographical article Quirijn Maurits Rudolph Ver Huell as "start class" (b1 and b2=no). In the first place I am not ready with the article (with Dutch State Army you waited at least 11 years with assessing it; this time two days!). In the second place: "not enough references?" The bot must be kidding. Take a look yourself. And what about the scope that is lacking? The good man spent most of his career safely away from flying ordnance (except for his bravery in the Battle of Blanc-Nez and Gris-Nez), and I shudder to speculate what he might have done in Ambon to earn his Military Order of William (probably a cancellable offense nowadays). So there is not much heroics to relate. But his main interest is his double career (naval officer and naturalist/illustrator). You won't find that very often. Of course, what I wrote about that came after your bot had already passed with his shot-off-the-hip assessment. Could you please come back after say a month? Out of fairness? Ereunetes (talk) 06:35, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Whenever you think an article could need a human look for a WPMILHIST rating, regardless of it being new or tagged yet (even if it isn't after 11 years), you can request that right over here ...GELongstreet (talk) 10:47, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply and for taking care of my problem. I hope there won't be a next time. Incidentally, as regards QRM Ver Huell (the subject of my article): I am afraid why have a Live One here. Up to his gills in atrocities. And he wrote about them himself. Of course, nothing about this in the official biographies. At the time people didn't see anything untoward. But I'll have to nail him to the cross.Matter of "ethics" :-) Ereunetes (talk) 20:55, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

When an article is tagged as being Military History, but has not yet been assessed, the Bot comes along and assesses it. It runs once a day. In this case, it (correctly) judged that the article needed a couple more references (b1=no) and thought that the one-sentence lead did not do him justice (b2=no). Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:06, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

There'll be a lot more sources when I am finished with him. And I'll try to expand the lede. Ereunetes (talk) 21:41, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

1. I have expanded the lede of Quirijn Maurits Rudolph Ver Huell, but now the MilHisBot apparently is no longer visiting. 2. And the article Carl Heinrich Wilhelm Anthing which I rewrote has now been assessed as "start class" by the bot, whereas the three other raters made it C-Class. Just saying, the bot apparently has it in for me. We can differ about the lede, but in my opinion the references are adequate. Ereunetes (talk) 23:32, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

The Bot wants footnotes for the material in the "Notes" section. Keep up the good work. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:47, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Retaining GA status

Would it be possible to adapt the bot so that if it makes a change following an A-class review, like so, if a Template:GA is present could it write | currentstatus = GA into Template:Article history? Best, CMD (talk) 07:03, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis: This change has been implemented. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:14, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Does this bot sort stub classes?

Yes, it is from this conversation. JASpencer (talk) 16:53, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Conflict between Rater and MilHistBot (B-Class assessment)

I did an incomplete B-class assessment for Royal fifth the other day using the rater tool. Rater automatically added the B-class assessment parameters (B-Class 1, B-Class 2, etc.). When MilHistBot did its auto-assessment earlier today, it used the other B-class parameters (b1, b2, etc.) and did not detect the B-Class assessment parameters I had put in using rater. Would it be possible to modify the bot to recognize incomplete B-Class assessments using the other parameters? ~UN6892 ^t_c 14:07, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

What does the bot use as criteria?

Once again I disagree with the bot about its assessment. This complaint concerns Charles Sevin de Quincy which received a stub-class rating. Yes it is extremely short. But it contains all information contained in a reliable biography, is adequately referenced, is not lacking in the field of grammar and spelling. The scope is indeed minimal, but I am not asking for a B-rating. It turns out there are more articles linking to it, than I expected, and it has the same contents as the French article. So what does one have to do to get a C-rating? Ereunetes (talk) 21:02, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

As part of a project-wide assessment push, the Bot calls ORES [3], a backend AI service that rates articles. If the rating comes back as a stub, then that rating is applied. I am unsure as to what criteria ORES applies, but most projects will not accept articles shorter than 1,500 characters. You can have an article reassessed by posting a request at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Requests. I have reassessed the article manually, but it only got a start rating because it failed b2 (coverage) and b5 (supporting materials). (The Bot uses the ORES rating to assess criterion b2, so it will fail if ORES only gives it a Start or C rating.) Criterion b5 could be addressed by adding an infobox or image, and the rating cdould be upgraded to a C. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:38, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

OK, so I must go hunting for more French biographical material, which the French Wikipedians apparently think superfluous in their article :-) But thanks for upgrading the article a bit. And also for editing it. I was unaware of the"contribution" parameter in the Cite Book template, so I appreciate your improving my source description. I have already used this hint to edit a source description in Oudgastenpartij, and I will henceforth use it in source descriptions of biographical lemmas in my standby online Dutch biographical dictionaries. As long as I am not expected to edit all previous articles in which I used the Cite Web template :-) Anyway, I do appreciate your kind help in this respect. Ereunetes (talk) 20:13, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

True, but Wikiproject Histoire militaire hasn't given it a C rating either. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:16, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree. I was about to ask this after visiting the page Battle of Quiévrain (1792). The bot rated this article a B-class despite the three stub templates at the bottom of the page, two sources, and the length of the article itself. Roasted (talk) 22:51, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Since then, the Bot has been given special instructions regarding articles with less 1,500 characters of readable prose. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:41, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Criteria once again

But this time for my own curiosity. Perhaps you should explain somewhere in layman's terms what technical criteria MILHISTBOT uses to pass or fail the different B-class criteria. Especially since it seems to have changed over time. I.e. I have figured out that it checks for, say, an infobox for one criteria, word and character count for another criteria, and the presence of inline-citations and citation-needed tags for yet another. But nowhere I can find is all this summed up and listed. Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 14:13, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

In case you didn't notice this... @Hawkeye7:. I apologize if I am bothering you. SilverTiger12 (talk) 19:47, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

I noticed. I have added it to my to-do list. It became more complicated over time as additional checks were added. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:14, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. SilverTiger12 (talk) 21:21, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Please add this bot to Category:Autoassessment_bots

This seems to be one of the few bots that set 'class' values based on analysis. Please consider adding Category:Autoassessment_bots Johnjbarton (talk) 15:20, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

 Done Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:46, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Failed criterion b1 at New generation warfare

Hello. In this edit the bot almost passed New generation warfare for B-class, except b1=no (referencing/citation). Where can I find the specific issue(s) involved? There have been additional citation improvements since the assessment edit of 00:48, 7 March 2022. Is there a way I can point the bot at an article, with a |verbose=yes param or something and get it to print out a detailed report? (If not, hint, hint... .) Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 16:31, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I didn't make that feature generally available. Unreferenced parts include the first paragraph of "Background", the last paragraph of "Dissolution of the Soviet Union" and "Putin Era", the last sentence and the one marked "citation required" in "Cold War", the last sentence of "Thaw and end of the Cold War". There's also a "page number required" tag. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:29, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. Mathglot (talk) 05:56, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

MilHistBot assessing redirect articles

I'm wondering if it's strictly necessary for MilHistBot to assess redirect articles with the new banner as it did here. Is this a bug? Schierbecker (talk) 19:36, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

• Disregard. Schierbecker (talk) 19:48, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Caused by the Qwerfjkl bot. Without this they wind up in Category:Unassessed military history articles, one of the maintenance categories that the MilHistBot deals with. This has been changed to leave the MilHist templates alone. Some changes required to Template:WikiProject Military history to get it to inherit from Template:WikiProject banner shell. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:11, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Milhistbot reassesses page when "|A-Class=current'"

Milhistbot reassessed Ironclad as C-class after I started an A-class reassessment of that article. Although I quite agree that Ironclad is about C class, can the bot exclude articles undergoing A-class reviews from its run? Schierbecker (talk) 14:24, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

The problem was that when the status was changed from A-class=pass to A-Class=current, the banner shell was marked incorrectly and inconsistently as C class. This caused some odd effects, one of them being that the banner template marked the article as unassessed, so the Bot re-assessed it. I cannot find the procedure for A Class reassessment, so I will create a new one. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:09, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

I figured as much. Thanks. Schierbecker (talk) 05:25, 30 March 2024 (UTC)