User talk:RMCD bot/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4

Long multimoves

The new bot doesn't seem to post information notices for multimoves involving more than 9 source/destination pairs. See Talk:List of Dallas (1978 TV series) episodes (season 1) and seasons 10+ listed. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 05:58, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

 Done Bot was pattern-matching just single digits. I fixed it to match one or more digits. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:49, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Current title of page 2

Has been created and deleted ten times by this bot and its "relatives". Now salted, but thought you should know anyway.Beeblebrox (talk) 00:23, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I see from the deletion and move log that the issue predates me. I'll work on it. Wbm1058 (talk) 01:13, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
RM - diff Wbm1058 (talk) 02:52, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
 Fixed The RM templates were modified to trap this kind of user error, some time ago. Wbm1058 (talk) 16:09, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Bug

This ought to have come up a number of times. There seems to be a bug whereby newlines in the rationale are just stripped out, causing sentences to be run together. This affected my recent nomination of Susanne Courtney. If it's going to run it into one paragraph, it should at least put a space where the newline was. — Smjg (talk) 21:51, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

What's more, I corrected the error, only to find it changed back 14 minutes later. — Smjg (talk) 23:12, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
As the page edit notice says, Your edits will be overwritten.—the bot runs every 15 minutes. Looks like you found a work-around by appending spaces to the end of the first paragraph. I believe that it's a design feature that Wikipedia:Requested moves/Current discussions consolidates the "reason why" text into a single paragraph, reserving the use of white space for separating requests. But you're right that there should still be a space after the period. Now I have two items on my bot-fix to-do list. Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 10:58, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 Done Two spaces now replace each newline character in reason messages, effective with this bot edit. Once I got to looking for this in the bot's program, it wasn't that hard to find and fix. So, sorry for the long delay in getting to this. About time I worked off the back end of the to-do list Wbm1058 (talk) 16:19, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Bot blanks its pages

Hm, it seems the bot deleted the entire contents of the Wikipedia:Requested moves/Current discussions page, which is odd. -- [[ axg ◉ talk ]] 22:29, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, odd indeed. Something hiccuped, it seems. The alt version was wiped too, but then restored with the next update. First time I've seen this happen. Wbm1058 (talk) 01:03, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
It's happened before. See User talk:HardBoiledEggs/Archive 1#Bad bot. Another minor fix for my to do list. – Wbm1058 (talk) 20:52, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 Fixed I installed a new version that loops up to 5 times until transclusions successfully retrieved. Normally they're retrieved first time, every time. But if there's a temporary problem (e.g., the function to retrieve transclusions times out?) then RMCD bot will abandon the update, wait 15 minutes, and then try again. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:29, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Problem handling ampersands in titles

Problem processing talk:AT&T

See Ampersands under Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions#Bot considerations for workaround—Wbm1058 (talk) 19:24, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

This issue was misdiagnosed, sorry. Per template:Move-multi/doc, there was a problem with user attempts to specify the now-deprecated parameter current1, because of a MediaWiki bug, in the above reported multi-move request involving AT&T. Someone decided that ampersands needed to be escaped as & – perhaps that escape syntax is something the bot can't handle, but there is no problem processing straight-up "&" characters that I see, per my tests: this test request produced this bot-page line-item. Looks OK to me. – Wbm1058 (talk) 22:14, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Bot issue?

Hi, Not sure if this is a bot issue or If I'm simply missing something here -
On both the B & M and A & M talkpages the bot's saying "There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:C&A which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you" but A. There is no discussion on any of the 3 tps, and B. All 3 pages aren't related to each other?
Thanks. Regards, –Davey2010 • (talk) 23:02, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Oops, I was just testing something. I'll revert those edits; I should have realized I'd need to do that. Thanks. Wbm1058 (talk) 23:32, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
Ah okay, Thanks and Happy Editing :), –Davey2010 • (talk) 23:35, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Media Sports Investment

Seems there is a problem on Media Sports Investment (Media Sports Investments). Matthew_hk tc 14:50, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I tagged it for wp:cut and paste repair (history merging). Although I'm a bot operator, I'm not an administrator. Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 17:11, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
O, I forgot to write the major problem. I don't know why the page did not appear in the WP:requested moves page, or it was there but removed unsolved after 7 days? How to relist it if it is operated by a bot? Matthew_hk tc 19:15, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
{{subst:Requested move}}, but do not subst: {{Requested move/dated}} – Wbm1058 (talk) 20:41, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
 Fixed I added a check for user error on 18 February 2013. – Wbm1058 (talk) 03:16, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Talk That Talk

* ''([[Talk:Talk That Talk#Requested move |Discuss]])'' – '''[[: That]] → {{no redirect|Talk That Talk (Rihanna album)}}''' – Yes, I know this is more popular than the jazz album, but that album was released first. [[User:Billboard Man|Billboard Man]] ([[User talk:Billboard Man|talk]]) 22:49, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

That's screwed up, it seems to be stripping "Talk" for some reason. -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 05:46, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Yikes, it looks like any title that begins with "Talk" may have this problem. The code is pattern-matching "talk" as in "Talk:" namespace and is neglecting the possibility that a title could begin with that string, is my initial diagnosis. Another item for my growing to-do bug-fix list, thanks. Wbm1058 (talk) 13:27, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
 Fixed with this update (diff). Nice to get an easy one knocked off my to-do list. Wbm1058 (talk) 02:13, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Problems signing unsigned requests

Seems that, per User talk:HardBoiledEggs#Unsigned movereqs, there were issues with unsigned requests before I arrived on the scene. Seems to me these issues could be avoided simply by making {{subst:requested move}} an auto-signed template, as {{subst:move-multi}} already is. – Wbm1058 (talk) 15:54, 26 September 2012 (UTC)  Done: {{subst:requested move}} is now an auto-signed template. Implementation went smoothly, for the most part. A few double-signed edits have needed corrected, as I anticipated here. – Wbm1058 (talk) 15:02, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Time not ascertained

I can't figure out why the bot isn't recognising the timestamps on these. Any ideas? DrKiernan (talk) 15:49, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Be careful about where you cut & paste the timestamps from. There can be hidden characters lurking in them – Wbm1058 (talk) 23:29, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
This is normally easily fixed by adding a missing character.[1] but right now the BOT appears to have stopped - and has made no edits since 00:00, 20 November 2012. Apteva (talk) 23:02, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Bug report (round bracket trouble)

  • At Talk:R. G. Ritson#Move? is a move request "{{Requested move/dated|Ralph Gerald Ritson}} [[R. G. Ritson]] → {{no redirect|Ralph Gerald Ritson}} – per bulk of references [[User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- )]] 19:22, 19 November 2012‎ (UTC)" which duly ends in a signature ending in a time and date duly ending in '(UTC)'. But RMCD bot keeps putting it in 'Time could not be ascertained' :: has RMCD bot been confused by the round-bracketed substring inside the user's name? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:11, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
    It looks like the problem was similar to above (hidden chars) – Wbm1058 (talk) 21:10, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Bot grabbing wrong timestamp

In this diff, you can see the bot assigning times to two previously untimestamped posts. However, the bot also posted the first vote for each move proposal, and used that timestamp instead. Is this something the bot will resolve itself, or require manual intervention (by someone familiar with the bot)? Dralwik|Have a Chat 02:52, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

 Fixed – The problem started with these controversial requests being submitted as technical requests. This way they bypass {{subst:Move}} which ensures the proper formatting for the bot. Because the signatures were manually cut-pasted from diffs, they include 3 invisible characters in the dates. The fix is easy if you know what to do... just retype the dates and Show changes should confirm the fix if you see the change there – it just won't look like anything changed. Some day maybe we will have a better way to convert technical requests. Wbm1058 (talk) 05:27, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
Some day is now, see here. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:09, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
  • At this point, I'm going to archive these, as I believe the issues causing the problem reports have been mostly addressed. Start a new report if there are still issues in this area. Wbm1058 (talk) 19:15, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

RMCD bot alert

Hey Wbm1058. First let me just tell you, belatedly, thanks for taking over the bot! Doing what it does by hand was a real pain in the ass. Anyway, this is a minor error, maybe nothing needs to be done—especially if a fix would require a lot of coding—but I thought I'd just alert you to a bot issue so you'd know about it.

I closed the move discussion at Talk:Zanzibar House of Representatives. I'm not quite sure why but the bot listed the page both under September 11, and under "time could not be ascertained" (seeing this, I had supposed there must have been first a malformed request and then a change to it, so it listed and then listed again, but I couldn't find any such malformed initial request in the page history). In any event somewhere along the line, the bot listed it twice and didn't remove the first listing when it listed it again. Furthermore, after I closed the discussion, the bot removed the listing at WP:RM from September 11, but left it listed under "time could not be ascertained". I manually removed it. I tracked down the first listing to this diff but I'm not sure when it listed it the second time. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:00, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Fuhghettaboutit. This is a glitch I'm aware of, but have put a low priority on fixing, because it's a transitory problem that fixes itself. The bot's update (22:31) was coincidentally processing at the same time as you closed the RM (22:30). As I mentioned in Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions#Bot considerations, A request will be listed in a special section titled "Time could not be ascertained" on Wikipedia:Requested moves if the listing bot cannot ascertain the date on which the request was made. This may be because:
  • The move request was closed while a bot update was in progress. This should resolve itself with the next bot update.
The bot runs on the quarter-hour, so if you had closed the RM a minute or two later the bug would have been avoided. Maybe I should put a higher priority on fixing that. I'll get to it eventually. Wbm1058 (talk) 03:35, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
If it would have been taken care of by the bot if I had just waited then it's rather innocuous, so, yeah, put it at the low end of the triage pile:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:01, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

bot didn't remove entry from Wikipedia:Requested moves/Current discussions correctly

I just moved American Teacher (film) to American Teacher and closed the discussion. However, the bot only updated the original title instead of removing the entry. Did I do something wrong that triggered this behavior? --Ixfd64 (talk) 19:23, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

No, I don't see anything you did wrong. You just happened to move the article and close the RM while a bot update was in progress. Actually it appears the sequence was:
  1. Bot update started
  2. You moved the article
  3. Bot update completed (the bad bot edit)
  4. You closed the RM on the talk page (steps 1–4 completed within 2 or 3 minutes)
  5. The next bot edit fixed it (15 minutes later)
Unfortunately the bot doesn't handle this situation as gracefully as it could. The problem corrected itself 15 mins. later, with the next bot update. I'm not sure on the timing as my computer's clock may vary from Wikipedia's by a minute or so sometimes. Sometime I'll look closer at this and see if I can't make it work more robustly. Thanks for the report. Wbm1058 (talk) 20:32, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
I see. Thanks for looking into this. --Ixfd64 (talk) 20:41, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

 Fixed in bot version 4.15 – Wbm1058 (talk) 14:57, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

RMCD bot deleting discussions

I'm not sure whether you noticed, but this happened once yesterday, too. I figured the problem was not on the bot's side, but thought the extra example might help now in case you are working on something. Dekimasuよ! 18:21, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, indeed I am working on improving the bot's robustness. I have identified a place where error checking wasn't being done, and am in the process of making it report malformed requests. Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn't noticed that glitch. That's another issue where I have an idea of what the problem is and how to address it, so I'll make a code enhancement there too. Wbm1058 (talk) 18:39, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
For the malformed requests language, "Did you submit your request by using subst:requested move?" can be read to imply either that the request is malformed because the request has not been submitted using subst:requested move, or that the error was caused by using subst:requested move. Can we try a different wording, e.g. "Did you remember to submit your request by..." or something like that? Dekimasuよ! 21:13, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
Sure, I already changed it to use "Did you remember to", based on your last edit summary ;) Wbm1058 (talk) 21:18, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

 Fixed in bot version 4.15 – Wbm1058 (talk) 14:57, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

A proposed move that uses ref tags is confusing the RMCD bot

See this issue about red error messages at the bottom of WP:RM. When I view WP:Requested moves/Current discussions and click the the 'Discuss' link for this move (search for 'Anna Pou' to find the move entry) it gives a link to the talk page but no section. Normally there is a section link. This leads me to think that the refs are confusing the RMCD bot. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 20:02, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Two issues here. The logic for linking to sections is not as robust as it could be, and my limited experience with regular expressions (regex) has kept that a longer-term issue. One of these days I hope to find a solution. The other issue regarding the missing reflist I think I can solve. This is the first time that I've seen Template:Reflist-talk, that's nice to have an alternative for talk pages. I'll see what I can do. Wbm1058 (talk) 20:09, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
One of the proposals in the Help desk discussion was to change WP:RM to bracket the transclusion of Current discussions like so: <noinclude> {{/Current discussions}} </noinclude> . See a comment by User:Fuhghettaboutit. When I tried this in the edit buffer, it did get rid of the red error messages in the full RM listing. I didn't save my change since I don't want to break the world. What do you think? EdJohnston (talk) 03:28, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
I think Fuhghettaboutit did get a workable solution implemented, where the noinclude tags sandwiched the references only, on the talk page for the specific Katrina/hospital deaths incident. My head can sometimes get spinning with all the transclusions, but I think if you put noincludes on the RM page itself you would effectively block transclusion of the whole subpage – Wbm1058 (talk) 04:07, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

 Fixed

  1. Bot version 4.08 (9 May 2014) added a references section
  2. This version of Talk:Memorial Medical Center and Hurricane Katrina (the 'Anna Pou' entry) had an extra line with a space in it between the section header and the {{Requested move/dated}} template, which prevented the bot's pattern-matching (regex) from finding the section header. Bot version 4.15 (13 December 2014) now reports entries as "malformed requests" when it cannot locate the section header. No text can be entered between the section header and the {{Requested move/dated}} template. Now, perhaps more sophisticated pattern-matching could allow that, but I need to become more proficient with regular expressions to implement that. So, for now, reporting the issue for correction will have to suffice.

Unicode, diacritics problems

Unicode problem

WHoever's running/watchlisting this the bot can't handle that unicode character.—Ryulong (琉竜) 19:17, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I see a temporary workaround has been found. A better fix is on my to do list. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:33, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Diacritics masked?

Hello.

For some reason, the RMCD bot seems to mask diacritics from the RM target in the list of disussions. Check the RM at Talk:Marek Zidlicky, and then check what's listed on Wikipedia:Requested moves/Current discussions.

Thanks

HandsomeFella (talk) 07:05, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Sorry about that. A quick look at my console output shows that the regex matching isn't working, I see It's NULL!! in the output. You can see where the code echos that here. If any regex experts can help me with a suggested fix, that would be appreciated. Otherwise, I'll try to look at this more closely and figure it out, hopefully before this RM closes. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:04, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
I suspect that this is related to the #Unicode problem, although the symptoms express themselves a bit differently. – Wbm1058 (talk) 14:25, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

no No action What I see at Talk:Marek Židlický is an earlier move transcluding {{movereq old|Marek Zidlicky}} which is what I suspect caused the diacritics "mask" problem. There are several issues with transcluding that template, and I believe that substituting it will resolve this. Likewise, at Talk:Callosa d'en Sarrià I see an earlier requested move which is muddying the diagnosis. I ran a test here to see if there were any issues with processing the character à, and the bot handled it fine. So I'm going to assume that there are no problems specifically related to handling certain Unicode or diacritics, but rather these are symptoms of multiple RMs on a single page. Wbm1058 (talk) 05:53, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Unnecessary message at Talk:Plymouth

Hi. Despite being removed twice, the bot keeps adding an unnecessary and potentially confusing message to Talk:Plymouth: [2] [3] [4]. I've moved the latest copy out of the way above the current discussion for now, but this sounds like a bug that needs fixing. Shouldn't the message have been posted to Talk:Plymouth (disambiguation)? - another user has copied it there now: [5].  —SMALLJIM  17:32, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Well duh. Look closely at the request that was made:

{{requested move/dated|multiple=yes |current1=Plymouth|new1=Plymouth, Devon|current2=Plymouth|new2=Plymouth (disambiguation)|}}

  • [[:Plymouth]] → {{no redirect|Plymouth, Devon}}
  • [[:Plymouth]] → {{no redirect|Plymouth (disambiguation)}}

You can't move a page to two different places. You have to choose either Plymouth, Devon or Plymouth (disambiguation).

So unsurprisingly the bot was confused. Perhaps it could be made intelligent enough to report the editor error. But sorry, I'm putting that toward the back of my priority list.

@Mr. Stradivarius: Perhaps you could edit check for this in the new module:Requested move? Wbm1058 (talk) 18:47, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Hmm. Simple sanity check, I'd have thought: don't put a message on the same page as the one that's listed in the message. Anyway, should it really keep adding it once it's been removed? That's a job for AV patrollers etc.  —SMALLJIM  20:18, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
I've added a check for duplicate currentn parameters to the module. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 22:05, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Problem that the bot/template combination has created

There is a requested move at Talk:Severodonetsk#Requested move 4 February 2015. This was created with the template in the usual way. The problem is that the template assumes that the talk page and the article page have the same name; they do not.

I was able to correct this on the move request on the article talk page, so that it shows the move request to be Sievierodonetsk → Severodonetsk.

However on Wikipedia:Requested moves/Current discussions this shows as Severodonetsk → Severodonetsk, which is unhelpful. I tried correcting Wikipedia:Requested moves/Current discussions, but the bot reverted. Do you have any suggestions?-- Toddy1 (talk) 21:31, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

The talk page should be synchronized with the article, so if they move again, they move together. I filed a technical request to fix that. Wbm1058 (talk) 23:54, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Can you help with bot settings for a multiple page move?

Its at Talk:List of longest bridges above water in India and involves just under 300 pages. Sorry, I thought that this fitted the parameters that were set last time. GregKaye 16:17, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

  • (talk page stalker) If I recall, when this was done previously, the bot's limit was upgraded to 100 requests? Steel1943 (talk) 16:20, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
Oh, I see. You mean Talk:List of tallest bridges in the world... Talk:List of longest bridges above water in India just has nine items. Wbm1058 (talk) 16:29, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
The limit was last raised from 150 to 200. I just bumped it to 300, for the update which will run in a couple of minutes... Wbm1058 (talk) 16:42, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

What's going on?

The RM page hasn't been updated for over a day. Any idea what's going on? Thanks. Dohn joe (talk) 16:00, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Yikes, thanks for the heads-up! I see some serious errors in the console output, and am investigating now. Wbm1058 (talk) 16:50, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
Good luck! Dohn joe (talk) 19:52, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
Hmm. This bot's last successful update was at 06:18, 12 June 2015. Per Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 137 § Forced HTTPS, "At some point between 07:38 and 10:00, 12 June 2015 (UTC), the user preference "Always use a secure connection when logged in" lost its effect, and regardless of its setting, Wikipedia became HTTPS only." The bot was still able to login under http, but couldn't do anything after that. I changed the http to https, and it doesn't even successfully login. Go figure. Total breakdown of communication. I don't know how to fix this, and am feeling rather angry at the WMF right now. Going to pack it in for the night and watch a movie. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:03, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
Just a note for the record – I got this sorted out per discussion at m:Talk:HTTPS. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:51, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

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Requests for additional automated notices

See also: Wikipedia talk:Requested moves/Archive 29 § Moving dab pages

Moves to overwrite an existing non-redirect page, and automated notices

I've noticed several cases where a move is suggested to overwrite an existing non-redirect page (such as currently found at Talk:Mavia (queen)). Shouldn't the bot inform the talk page of the non-redirect target that is being suggested to be overwritten? (in this case Talk:Mavia) -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 05:43, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Right, the bot could be made more intelligent here. A {{subst:move-multi}} request which included Mavia → Mavia (disambiguation) would get the bot to write its notification message. But I see the proposal maybe implies a request to delete Mavia (disambiguation) in favor of simple hatnotes. Wbm1058 (talk) 03:14, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
Yes, in which case, if someone were watching the disambiguation page, they would never get notified. (as with the case of Talk:Horncastle) -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 04:02, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

This problem is still not solved, since Talk:Pan-African University, Lagos shows a request to replace an existing page, without informing the existing page. -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 05:09, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

The issue with Pan-African University was a result of an editor error, which I corrected. This is one of several issues for which I expect to work on better bot solutions eventually. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:50, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Considering that this keeps on happening, all the time, such as at Talk:Themiscyra (Pontus) and Talk:Alpina Burkard Bovensiepen and Talk:David Harvey (geographer), the bot really should post a notice at the destination's talk page (if the subject page exists and is not a redirect; or if the talk page exists (and is not a redirect if the subject page is a redirect) ). -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 23:16, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Another user has also pointed out this deficiency, at Talk:Drake (entertainer) -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 03:46, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Additional more-recent examples can be found at Talk:Stenbock, Talk:Smite (video game), Talk:Binomial (polynomial), Talk:Jimmy Morales, Talk:Kim Davis (county clerk), Talk:Maxim's, Talk:Une vie (disambiguation), Talk:Blood Wedding, Talk:Segal (musician), Talk:Bubblin' (Blue song), Talk:Max George (footballer), Talk:Ben Foster, Talk:Stephen K. Benjamin, Talk:The Year of Living Dangerously (film), Talk:Wonderland Amusement Park (Beijing), Talk:You Make Me, and Talk:What I Did for Love (David Guetta song). This continues to happen quite frequently. People often think it's OK to request moving an article to a dab page location without submitting it as a multi-page move – thinking that a move (or deletion) of the destination article name is simply implied. But this results in a lack of notification at the destination that something is happening that could affect that page. In fact, I think it's best to over-notify when in doubt. For example, even if the destination is a redirect – even if it's a redirect that points to the article that is suggested to be moved there – this might be because someone recently changed it to produce that situation. To me it seems that unnecessary notification is a much smaller problem than insufficient notification. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:25, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

 Done by bot version 5.20 — re: destinations that are redirects... see the next section. I'll look into it. wbm1058 (talk) 12:49, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Moves to overwrite a redirect that points elsewhere, and automated notices

Per the recent Talk:Gabz (singer) filing, can the bot post a notice to a redirect's target's talk page? (in this case, Gabz, the target of the move request, redirects to Gaborone, so the bot could post a notice to talk:Gaborone, indicating that a redirect to the article is under discussion) -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 23:13, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Not sure on this one. Will need to follow each redirect and somehow analyze the content at the destination of the redirect. Needs more study. In the meantime, a note like the one you placed at Talk:Gaborone § "Gabz" should cover it. – wbm1058 (talk) 11:02, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
 Done by bot version 5.21 — not that difficult after all. wbm1058 (talk) 13:25, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Automated notices for destinations?

Several requests now have had destinations intended to be overwritten by the subject of the move. I think their talk pages should be informed they are about to be deleted. Talk:MDNA and Talk:Decoupling should have gotten notices about the moves from talk:MDNA (album) and Talk:Decoupling (disambiguation) ; etc. -- 70.24.244.161 (talk) 07:19, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

 Done by bot version 5.20

Request for an idea to improve this bot's functionality

@Wbm1058: While seeing an issue that resulted in me moving a discussion from WP:RFD to WP:RM (the discussion was to retarget the ambiguous term to the disambiguation page), I thought of something that honestly may have been considered before, but would probably be rather helpful; is it possible for RMCD bot to put the automated message that is usually place on pages' talk pages that are part of a multimove request ... onto the requested move targets as well? I'm wondering if this is possible since in my example (moving a discussion from Turner to Turner (disambiguation)), it would be helpful for those who are watching Turner to know about the move discussion on Talk:Turner (disambiguation), especially since the state of Turner will change if the move occurs. Steel1943 (talk) 21:28, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

 Done by bot version 5.20

JarrahTree's issue with RM bot

This person prefers a signature after original signature, not before. It confuses him. I bet the RFC thing doesn't bode well with him either. --George Ho (talk) 00:42, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

I see, you're referring to Talk:Eastern Railway (Western Australia). If he's confused by that, he will really be confused by the regular expression needed to figure out which signature and time stamp to use for the date of the listing. When I first took over the bot in August 2012, I made this change to address an issue. Looks like the bot was just always picking up the first date it found in the rationale. That would explain the convention of putting the most recent relist date first. I patched it so that when there was no relisting it used the last date in the rationale. The code would actually be simpler if we just always used the timestamp at the end of the string – and put relists there. I suppose we just need to give a heads-up to the editors who relist, so they switch to the new convention. Wbm1058 (talk) 03:10, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
Attitude check needed
To find and insert an editors signature inside the signature of blocked sock is outright stupidity.

Also you need to re-read where you have an editor says another editor is a blocked sock, and you actually ping that blocked sock. JarrahTree 13:30, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

See this edit where I needed to insert a linefeed before a </small> tag so that the bot would pick up the signature at end of the line. I should fix it to work with this tag, as relists are often put in small text. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:22, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Another user's—Primefac's—issues with the bot

Just for the heads up. The person tried to move my "relisted" comment to somewhere else. George Ho (talk) 14:30, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

An easy mistake to make when one hasn't seen a relisting of a requested page move before... Primefac (talk) 14:35, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
OK, guys. I'll get to work on fixing the bot to support relists done in the more intuitive manner. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:39, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
@George Ho, JarrahTree, and Primefac: I gave an update on the status of this at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves/Archive 28 § Changing relisting conventions to be easier and more intuitive. – Wbm1058 (talk) 20:34, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
Awesome, glad to hear it. Primefac (talk) 20:40, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
Indeed JarrahTree 23:34, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Relisting instructions

Per WP:RM: "To relist a move request discussion, simply type <small>'''Relisted'''. ~~~~</small> before the initial requester's first timestamp (see this diff for an example). This can also be done by using {{subst:Relisting}}, which signs the relisting automatically. The RMCD bot uses the new timestamp to relist the entry on this page." (italics added for emphasis). Your recent changes on a few Talk pages are contrary to this advice. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:19, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I found some Talk page discussion about that from your edit history. I see that the convention is under discussion, and won't revert those changes. But eventually we need to make sure the instructions are aligned with the way the bot operates (and with what we're doing in practice). —BarrelProof (talk) 17:27, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
I did add a {{notice}} to the instructions, and now I've updated them. See also § JarrahTree's issue with RM bot. Wbm1058 (talk) 18:37, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Right-arrow character (→) between links in the reason for moving the page

More for my to-do list

Here is the diff showing the issue. Hmm, most links do work, but maybe the problem is with handling piped links like [[WP:PRIMARYTOPIC|primary]]. – Wbm1058 (talk) 18:08, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

No, that's not it. Maybe it's those <ol> and <li> tags? I don't see those used very often. What are those for, "ordered list" and "list", rather than just using wikitext pound signs (#)? – Wbm1058 (talk) 18:46, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
OK, I've got the bot screening for and removing the html tags for <p> (paragraph), <ol> (ordered list), <ul> (unordered list) and <li> (list). In the spirit of keeping the reason summaries on the bot's page down to single paragraphs (i.e., reasonably short) I don't think we should let editors bypass that spirit by using html paragraph and list tags. Unless a consensus forms that says otherwise.
But it turns out that still wasn't the issue that caused me to put this on my list. I finally identified the problem: use of the "arrow character", i.e., San Francisco, California → San Francisco. That arrow is a special character the bot's pattern-matching looks for. A work-around is to change it to the old-fashioned ASCII keyboard way of doing arrows: San Francisco, California -> San Francisco. I'm tempted to tag this as a {{Won't fix}} since it's a self-reported problem, but ignoring the issue doesn't feel right; it's not the professional thing to do. – Wbm1058 (talk) 00:37, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Words missing from description in current discussions

From [6], " – The term "Microsoft hoax" needs to point to an ongoing as the most common meaning of the term. K7L (talk) 17:18, 15 June 2014 (UTC)" should be "needs to point to an ongoing technical support scam...as the most common meaning..."[from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Microsoft_hoax&oldid=613035283]. Not sure why the wikilink to technical support scam is being removed when other wikilinks in the description are intact? K7L (talk) 19:41, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in responding. The issue is your use of the arrow character (→) in the reason for move, i.e., ..."redirect Microsoft hoax → technical support scam"... that confuses the bot's patttern matching. See also #More for my to-do list.. hey, now it's not just a "self-reported problem", I updated the instructions at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions #Bot considerations – added a new section there on arrows. Thanks for the report. Wbm1058 (talk) 13:19, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
 Fixed – An easy fix once you know what you're doing. I was trying to find a regex solution, when adding a fourth argument to preg_replace was the simple way to limit to just replacing the first match. wbm1058 (talk) 23:18, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requested moves/Current discussions

@Wbm1058: Looks like I may have found another bug with RMCD bot. The bug appears on Wikipedia:Requested moves/Current discussions in this diff. In that diff, if you look at "line 9" and the corresponding revision, it looks like RMCD bot started the automatic paragraph formatting after the first endash that appears in the second nomination's move location. It appears that the formatting didn't start after the first nomination since I'm assuming that RMCD bot ignores any endashes in the first nomination if it's part of the value in parameters "current1" or "new1" in the {{Requested move/dated}} template. In Talk:Chester to Manchester Line#Requested move 2 November 2016, an endash appears in the proposed move location in the second nomination, which seems to have broken RMCD bot's functionality on Wikipedia:Requested moves/Current discussions. Steel1943 (talk) 17:14, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

 Fixed by bot version 6.15. It seems my v. 6.13 fix broke this. Now hopefully both scenarios are happy. wbm1058 (talk) 21:52, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

RMCD bot down?

I might be overreacting, but it hasn't edited in two hours. Do you know what's up with it? Jenks24 (talk) 14:08, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Never mind, working again now. Jenks24 (talk) 16:46, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the notice, Jenks24. There indeed was a problem. The bot re-started its updates with this edit. Total downtime 41⁄2 hours. I was "out of the office" for a while this morning, and still a bit groggy when I fixed it. The problem was caused by this new request. The bot has trouble reading through all that and finding the requestor's signature at the end. There is no en dash before the start of the rationale, so that tells me they used {{requested move/dated}} directly, as {{requested move}} always puts the en dash in the expected place. Unfortunately the bot did not flag that as a malformed request, rather it simply aborted all processing after it hit that. This edit fixed it, and also kept that lengthy rationale from being copied in its entirely to the RM page. I'll copy this section to the bot's talk page to get it on my to-do list for fixing exploits that could stop the bot's updates. Wbm1058 (talk) 23:53, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the detailed response! By the way, I couldn't help but notice someone a few sections above suggesting RfA. I think you'd make a great admin, you'll have a support from me when you run Jenks24 (talk) 05:19, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
 Fixed – it appears that the bot program crash was caused by a bug in PHP. After I upgraded to the latest version of PHP (7.0.12) the program didn't crash in a call to the preg_replace function. Version 6.14 of RMCD bot now reports requests like this as malformed, after the parsed description is found to be blank (the description is what follows the en dash, so if there is no en dash then there is no description of (rationale for) the request. – wbm1058 (talk) 12:46, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Bot down? (11/18/2015)

Wikipedia:Requested moves/Current discussions hasn't been updated in almost six hours. Jenks24 (talk) 09:39, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the report. It's choking on Talk:Maryada Purushottam Siya Ke Ram. I'll take a look to see why, and see if I can fix the code to close that "backdoor means of blocking the bot".
Most curious. Someone entered a request, then blanked the page. And now, 6+ hours later, I need to do a WP:Null edit to really blank the page?? Wbm1058 (talk) 13:41, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
And I marked the page as "patrolled". Wbm1058 (talk) 13:43, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Yep, after a null edit to that page, the bot completed a successful run. Wbm1058 (talk) 13:47, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Note the line in User:RMCD bot/requestedmoves.php: die("Error 2");. That's what I saw on the console: Error 2. That bot starts by getting an array of all the pages that transclude {{Requested move/dated}}. Then it cycles through them and reads the contents of the page. It died on that page because the read-contents attempt failed. Normally I would assume that this was because my Internet connection was down, or something like that. Wouldn't expect a page to still be transcluding a template six hours after it was blanked. This seems like new behavior of the MediaWiki system. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:00, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the fix. And thanks also for maintaining the bot at all times, it's greatly appreciated. Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) 16:51, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Curiosity

@Wbm1058: Any idea why the RM at Talk:On My Way and Shoutin' Again! only seems to have been listed in the last few hours despite being started on Nov. 18? See diff. Jenks24 (talk) 14:24, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Jenks24, it seems that there was some sort of "solar storm" on November 18 that made some new transclusions invisible to "what transcludes this template" requests. See your earlier reported #Bot down? above. Happened on the same day. I would just relist that so it goes back to the top of the list. – Wbm1058 (talk) 14:39, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick response. I've given it a relist with an explanation. Jenks24 (talk) 14:47, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

RME shortcut

The new section Ellapsed listings is great, and the shortcut from WP:RME works well... could we add a {{shortcut|WP:RME}} template after the heading, similar to the one for WP:RMB after the Backlog heading? No great hurry or importance, it's fairly intuitive for old hands, but it just looks like something that should be done (and should be quick and neat and easy to do). Andrewa (talk) 09:11, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Done. wbm1058 (talk) 21:52, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Noinclude and includeonly tags

On Wikipedia:Requested moves/Current discussions and Wikipedia:Requested moves/Current discussions (alt), "#ifeq" is used to determine what gets shown on the page itself and on the main RM page. However, a functionally equivalent way would be to use noinclude and includeonly tags.

RMCD bot should be updated to use noinclude and includeonly tags as shown above rather than the "#ifeq" parser function. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 15:00, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

 Done. Thanks, that's a more elegant way to do it. wbm1058 (talk) 19:41, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject notifications

Announcing requested moves

FYI, the creation of a new template has been proposed at Wikipedia:Requested templates#Requesting Assistance Building a template related to Requested Moves after discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves#Increasing participation in RM discussions. This would allow open move discussions to be noticed on WikiProject talk pages. As a template creator, you might have some ideas on how to do this. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 13:06, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Ed. I think maybe I can enhance RMCD bot to do this. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:37, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Issues with WikiProject notifications

Please stop spamming WT:MILHIST

@Wbm1058: This bot is spamming obscure requested move discussion notifications on the very busy Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history. This isn't an appropriate use of the project's talk page, and please make it stop! Thanks, Nick-D (talk) 08:18, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

It's also spamming Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board. There's no need for these obscure discussions to be advertised like this. Nick-D (talk) 08:49, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I see that this change was discussed by a few editors at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves#Automatic bot notifications without notifying the relevant Wikiprojects. This seems like bad form, and I've blocked the bot to make the posts stop. In the case of the Military History Wikiproject, if there's a desire by project members to have a regularly updated list of moves it would probably belong somewhere like Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Military rather than on the busy project talk page. Ditto WP:AUSTRALIA. The suggestion made by the IP editor to consolidate these messages also seems like a good idea to me. Obviously this is a temporary block to be in place only until the bot returns to its previous settings and/or a broader consensus for this function is obtained (which should involve inviting members of the targeted Wikiprojects to comment, and probably to also opt-in). Nick-D (talk) 10:02, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation did not get spammed because the line {{bots|deny=RMCD bot}} was added at the top of that page; notifications for that WikiProject are consolidated at Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Article alerts. Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Article alerts serves the same function. It now occurs to me that I could check for "/Article alerts" sub-pages, and skip any WikiProject that has that setup. Sorry I didn't do this before going "live". Wbm1058 (talk) 12:38, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Ditto for Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Article alerts. Wbm1058 (talk) 12:49, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Combine Talk notifications?

I broadly think the bots notifying WikiProjects of RM discussions is a good idea, but it can lead to filling Talk pages more than need be.
On WikiProject China the bot added six new sections in a row—often a few minutes apart. Slightly fewer on Hong Kong, while MilHist got twelve.
Could the bot combine multiple notifications, within say a 48/72 hour period, into one section on WikiProj. Talk pages? Each one could be added with a bullet point inside that section. –146.199.151.33 (talk) 09:11, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject China/Article alerts and Wikipedia:WikiProject Hong Kong/Article alerts already perform this function. I suppose this enhancement was designed for the smaller projects which don't use article alerts. Wbm1058 (talk) 12:54, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Biography help

I notice that this bot has also been flooding Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography. However, there currently isn't an active page at Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Article alerts, because it would be far too large. Could you perhaps work with the right folks to set up Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Article alerts/Moves, and direct all this there? 1bandsaw (talk) 17:32, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed that, and was intending to do that. I'll get right on it now. Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 22:14, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
@1bandsaw:  Done – Wbm1058 (talk) 13:35, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Unblocking the bot

Could we do away with the Wikiproject notifications for now so the bot can be unblocked so it can continue to update WP:RMCD and related pages? Calidum T|C 02:01, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

As the bot's coding as returned to its previous version, I've just unblocked it Nick-D (talk) 04:22, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. Calidum T|C 04:36, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

WP:LANG

Hi. A bunch of recent move requests (e.g. at Tagalog language) were never posted by RMCD bot at WP:LANG, and we now have a mess with one that passed without commentary from members of the wikiproject. Just wondering if RMCD bot will be there in the future?

Thanks — kwami (talk) 22:29, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: I had backed off my beta version of the bot which was updating the WikiProject talk pages, pending resolution of the changes discussed in the prior two sections above. I've just reinstalled that beta version, and will shortly declare it to be the official new production version.
Note however that because Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Article alerts exists, RMCD bot did not post a notice to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages. You'll find the RM notices transcluded to WP:LANG § Alerts. But now I see that the open RM at Talk:Tagalog § Requested move 25 July 2015 isn't listed in the article alerts. I'll look at the AA setup to see why it's not there. The reason I don't notify projects using WP:Article alerts is that my bot was blocked for spamming one such project with too many notices. If your project wants to take advantage of both AA and RMCD bot notices, then I suppose an update to the bot to support overrides by transcluding {{bots|allow=all}} is something I could do (provided there was no other bot the project wanted to deny). Wbm1058 (talk) 18:03, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. There have never been enough notices to swamp the project. There would have been a lot recently, but that would have told us something odd was going on. If there are other bots we want to block, could we use {{bots|allow=RMCD}}? (Probably not necessary.)
Anyway, thanks for the good work. — kwami (talk) 18:25, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: Along with me, there are now three "yes" and no objections at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Languages#Do_we_want_automatic_notification_of_all_move_requests_on_this_talk_page? — kwami (talk) 00:09, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Apparently there was an Article Alerts bug keeping Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Article alerts stale; now it seems to be up-to-date, with four open RMs just added. Setting up {{Bots}} to allow redundant notices from RMCD bot when there's already an AA file like this is a bit tricky, but I can do it if you really want it. Wbm1058 (talk) 12:10, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Bot notifying WikiProject on talk page of page move when proposed page for moving is the WikiProject page

Hey Wbm1058: Is there any way that RMCD bot can stop posting notifications such as this one in the future? I recall the consensus to notify WikiProjects that pages tagged with their banner are moved, but is it really necessary to post a redundant notice directly under the discussion when the WikiProject's page that is suggested to be moved is ... the WikiProject's page itself? Steel1943 (talk) 21:01, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

@Steel1943: Right, I already noted that at WT:RM: diff: :Just noticed another minor glitch in my algorithm: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject First aid § Wikipedia:WikiProject First aid listed at Requested moves – the bot redundantly notified a WikiProject of a request to move the WikiProject itself. Wbm1058 (talk) 11:33, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
It's now another item on my to-do list. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:21, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
Steel1943,  Fixed. That was an easy one. Wbm1058 (talk) 22:23, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
Is this maybe the same issue that is causing seemingly random alerts to appear at Talk:Sudsy Malone's Rock 'n Roll Laundry & Bar? Beeblebrox (talk) 21:21, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
No, this is a different issue. The alerts were not actually posted directly to that talk page, but rather to Template:WikiProject Event Venues, which is transcluded on that talk page. I'll look into why it's doing that. Thanks for the notice, this is the first time I've seen this scenario. I'll scan the bot's edit history to look for other cases of posting notices to a template. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:39, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Just three template edits so far. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:49, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 Fixed – Wbm1058 (talk) 10:26, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Bad Notifications

I'm not sure of the reason, but this bot created a couple orphaned talkpages in an attempt to deliver a message. One at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Charts (I moved the notice to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Record Charts) and one at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Global perspective task force (Which I moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Global perspective.) Just an FYI. Avicennasis @ 07:58, 12 Tishrei 5776 / 07:58, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Also one at Wikipedia talk:WPMILHIST VC migration moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history. Avicennasis @ 06:41, 14 Tishrei 5776 / 06:41, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
...And one at Wikipedia talk:WikiProjectBanners. Pinging BotOp @Wbm1058:. Avicennasis @ 06:44, 14 Tishrei 5776 / 06:44, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:WikiProjectBanners and Wikipedia talk:WPMILHIST VC migration recreated. Avicennasis @ 20:47, 14 Tishrei 5776 / 20:47, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

@Avicennasis: Hi, sorry for the delay in responding, I took a long-weekend Wiki-break. I'm aware of this issue, but had put off working on a fix. See the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves/Archive 28 § Automatic bot notifications. I'm copying the applicable note to here:

My revamped WikiProject notification system is running live now, and updated just over 30 pages. I found one glitch: a notice was relatively harmlessly left on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Global perspective task force, where few editors are likely to notice it. Talk:Iraq War has a {{WikiProject Global perspective task force}} on it, but Wikipedia:WikiProject Global perspective task force is a red-link. This is unusual, but it usually means that the template redirects elsewhere, so Template:WikiProject Global perspective task force is checked to see whether it's a redirect (it's not). So, even though Wikipedia:WikiProject Global perspective task force doesn't exist, it checks for Wikipedia:WikiProject Global perspective task force/Article alerts anyway, and when that's not found, it punts and writes to the default location Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Global perspective task force. I suppose I could enhance the bot's increasingly complex algorithm so that, when a redirect is not found in Template:WikiProject Global perspective task force, it looks for a {{WPBannerMeta}} in the template, and, if found, looks for the talk page of the page indicated by the "PROJECT" parameter; that would be Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Global perspective. If you spot any more unconventional setups where the bot is not finding the best page for posting RM notices, please let me know. – Wbm1058 (talk) 19:24, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

This is only "relatively harmless" if nobody else notices it. As admins are taking time to delete these pages, I'll bump this up on my priority list and get to work on it today. Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 11:45, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I haven't gotten to this yet. It's still near the top of my list, though. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:53, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
No rush. But do add Wikipedia talk:WikiProjectBannerShell to the list. Thanks. Avicennasis @ 07:51, 26 Tishrei 5776 / 07:51, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. I didn't realize that these were getting salted, but that actually makes it easier for me to debug. I see that one's still active on my bot's output console, and am working on this now, while the RM at Talk:See, Amid the Winter's Snow is still open, and to avoid the potential embarrassment of getting reported to the bot operator's noticeboard ;) Wbm1058 (talk) 13:33, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
I've deleted (per WP:G6) and salted Wikipedia talk:WikiProjectBannerShell after a request on WP:RFPP. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 13:37, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
I saw that when I got an alert from the notifications system. I see multiple curveballs are getting tossed at the bot here. I'll start with this one, since it's still active, and then work back through the others. The title "Template:WikiProjectBannerShell" isn't a problem in itself since it doesn't violate my assumed naming convention that all templates titled "WikiProject " are for actual WikiProjects, but five redirects to that template do violate that naming convention, including {{WikiProject Banner Shell}}, which is in Talk:See, Amid the Winter's Snow. I suppose that this hasn't been seen before now because relatively few talk pages transclude that redirect, but I see that actually 1100 pages do, so I'm kind of surprised that this one hasn't come up before. I'll update the bot's code to skip this when encountered. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:05, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
The issue causing creation of Wikipedia talk:WikiProjectBannerShell is  Fixed – others now being addressed separately. Wbm1058 (talk) 19:49, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:WikiProjectBanners is the brother of Wikipedia talk:WikiProjectBannerShell. Same problem  Fixed Wbm1058 (talk) 00:54, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WPMILHIST VC migration

Wikipedia talk:WPMILHIST VC migration was caused by a move discussion which is now at Talk:Fred McNess. The triggering template is again a redirect whose title begins "WikiProject ": {{Wikiproject VC migration}}, which has 1341 transclusions. That redirects to {{WPMILHIST VC migration}}, which points to Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Victoria Cross Reference migration, a subpage of Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history. As that page is an archive or inactive, I'll assume that this template doesn't need to generate any notices. In any event, the {{WikiProject Military history}} template preceding it would have already caused Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history to be notified if Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Article alerts didn't exist. And I see here that an editor had already manually posted a notice to the talk page before the bot's failed notice attempts were redundantly copied there twice. So, I will add a custom screen for Template:WPMILHIST VC migration, which skips that just as Template:WikiProjectBannerShell is skipped. Wbm1058 (talk) 22:53, 9 October 2015 (UTC)  Fixed Wbm1058 (talk) 23:45, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of all of these! Avicennasis @ 07:27, 27 Tishrei 5776 / 07:27, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Pages transcluding Template:WPBannerMeta

Remaining are two pages transcluding {{WPBannerMeta}}:

Neither of these are salted, because they weren't deleted until after the discussions had closed. So, not bad, only two of these in four months, AFAIK. Cases where the PROJECT name differs from the template name seem to be minimal.

There are over 1,800 templates transcluding {{WPBannerMeta}}. – Wbm1058 (talk) 16:25, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

So I've been writing & tweaking a script to analyze the problem here and design a robust solution. Found one extreme example showing how convoluted things can become:

  1. I find {{WikiProject Smithsonian Institution}} on a talk page (e.g. Talk:John Flaxman)
  2. First assumption is that its associated WikiProject is Wikipedia:WikiProject Smithsonian Institution
  3. But that's not the name of the WikiProject – it's a redirect to Wikipedia:GLAM/Smithsonian Institution
  4. Which is the non-standard name of the WikiProject (albeit a special kind of WikiProject – one centered around "galleries, libraries, archives, and museums"). I successfully find it by following the redirect.
  5. However, looking at the contents of Template:WikiProject Smithsonian Institution, I see that |PROJECT = Smithsonian Institution-related. Usually, if following the redirect does not take me to the right place, then I can use the PROJECT parameter to get me there. For example, {{WikiProject Global perspective task force}}: Wikipedia:WikiProject Global perspective task force is a red link, but from |PROJECT = Countering systemic bias/Global perspective I get to Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Global perspective. Not the case with Wikipedia:WikiProject Smithsonian Institution-related. That isn't the name of the WikiProject, but rather another redirect to Wikipedia:GLAM/Smithsonian Institution. To find that, I need to look at |PROJECT_LINK = Wikipedia:GLAM/Smithsonian Institution, where **PROJECT_LINK – it is assumed that the project is located at "Wikipedia:WikiProject <PROJECT>". If this is not the case, then define the full link to the project page in this parameter.

Why this was all set up this way, and what's the rationale for it being this complicated? Wbm1058 (talk) 21:52, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

RM discussion not listed at WikiProjects

Wbm1058, any idea why the bot hasn't notified the relevant WikiProjects about Talk:Turks in Bulgaria#Requested move 7 November 2015? I can do it manually of course, but am just keen to understand if I've done something that has prevented this from happening automatically. Cordless Larry (talk) 19:51, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi Cordless Larry, There are three WikiProject templates on that talk page. Notification of each is skipped because the project subscribes to Article Alerts:
The bot checks for those because when I first implemented it, it was temporarily blocked for spamming some WikiProjects with redundant notices.
Feel free to manually add redundant notices if you want; hopefully none of the project members will have a problem with that. – Wbm1058 (talk) 20:14, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for that explanation, Wbm1058. It all makes perfect sense now. Cordless Larry (talk) 20:51, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject banner shell

A note to myself. The bot is posting notices to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject banner shell. Now on my to-do list. wbm1058 (talk) 16:23, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Wow. I didn't realize that this was getting hit so hard. I'll bump up its priority in my to-do list. wbm1058 (talk) 22:00, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
Oh, I see: Template talk:WikiProject banner shell#Name of template:
Not coincidentally,
The problem here is that the bot assumes that any template beginning {{WikiProject is the template of a WikiProject. But of course there is no {{WP:WikiProject banner shell}}, so I need to hard-code a work-around into my PHP program. It would have made things a lot easier from a programming standpoint if the name of this template did not violate the naming convention for WikiProjects. If I had been aware of this conversation, I would have recommended a move to Template:WPBS or Template:Bannershell, or, if that's not a valid compound word, Template:Banner shell. There is no "Banner shell" WikiProject dedicated to maintaining and improving banner shells! – wbm1058 (talk) 15:34, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
Noting Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2016 February 13 § Various redirects of Template:WikiProject banner shell. I suppose I need to work around that. Bot considerations are rarely a factor in such discussions. wbm1058 (talk) 17:04, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
And this would not have been noticed much at first, but as more and more redirects are bypassed, e.g. (diff), replacing templates like {{WikiProjectBanners}}, which did not violate the convention, because it's camel case, with {{WikiProject banner shell}} the number of hits grew over time. wbm1058 (talk) 18:03, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
 Done – I've got a patch that skips any {{WikiProject template that has the string "banner" in its title. Of course this will skip any legitimate WikiProjects that are dedicated to "banners" of some sort, but I'm not aware that any such WikiProjects exist. wbm1058 (talk) 20:57, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

a couple more false WikiProject notifications

@Wbm1058: Looks like the bot got a false hit for Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sports facilities task force and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pritzker-GLAM, if you want to take a look at that. Thanks! Avicennasis @ 11:37, 22 Kislev 5777 / 11:37, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I've protected the latter page, which was being repeatedly recreated. The easy fix to at least stop the most annoying behavior is to have the bot check for deletion log entries and skip the notification if one exists and the edit would be a page creation. ~ Rob13Talk 15:20, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
 Fixed by bot version 6.21 -- BU Rob13, thanks. I realized my previous patches for this type of issue were kludges. Your suggestion led me to finally implement a more robust fix. I just don't post notices to blank or non-existent WikiProject talk pages. Duh. I should have implemented that patch sooner. wbm1058 (talk) 15:40, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
This was an easy fix, after I had already made the same fix for article-space notices in v 6.20. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:26, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Considering adding bot-maintained article-space notices

A discussion was started by GoneIn60 on Jenks24's talk page, which is now archived here. Article-space notices have been rejected before; see the userfied Template:Move header and Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2011 August 9 § Template:Move header. Also, Wikipedia talk:Templates for discussion/Archive 14 § What to use instead of Template:Move header and Wikipedia talk:Requested moves/Archive 25 § Template:Disputed title. Also the more recently created {{Inappropriate title-soft}} and its talk page.

After further consideration of this, I've concluded that any bot-placed article-space notices will need to be monitored and controlled by the bot to ensure that editors don't initiate move discussions by placing such a template on articles without initiating a corresponding formal requested move discussion on the talk page. The bot would automatically place the notice, if it wasn't already there, at the top of articles as part of its normal processing loop, in similar fashion to the way notices are placed on the talk pages of other articles involved in multi-move requests. Then after completing the regular processing loop, a new lookup of all articles transcluding the bot-placed article-space template would be made, followed by looping through all of them to check for the corresponding {{requested move/dated}} template on the talk page. Upon failure to find the corresponding {{requested move/dated}} template, the article-space template would be removed. This would take care of both closed RMs where the closing admin neglected to remove the template as part of their closing procedure, and templates which, as inevitably will happen, were placed out-of-process as part of a malformed request.

Keeping this on my back burner for now, while I try to reduce the number of balls I'm already juggling. – Wbm1058 (talk) 17:35, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Just requested again at WT:RM. Bumping up the priority, I'm working on it. wbm1058 (talk) 15:20, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
 Done – wbm1058 (talk) 00:50, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Bot repeatedly adding empty template

The bot seems to be malfunctioning, it has added User:RMCD bot/subject notice twice to articles now (which, by the way, is blank, so I'm not sure what's the point). nyuszika7h (talk) 09:35, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

@Nyuszika7H: I'm just developing and testing new functionality. See WT:RM#Time to standardize this and create a main-space template for articles listed here. wbm1058 (talk) 15:11, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Article page notification templates and lack of notification on multimove involved pages

Currently the bot tags an article with the move notification template. But in the case of multimove requests, the bot does not seem to notify all the pages involved, only the subjectpage of the talkpage where the discussion is taking place (or I assume, whatever is registered as "current1" if it is some other page)l Shouldn't the bot equally tag all pages involved in a multimove? -- 65.94.171.217 (talk) 05:22, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that is an enhancement I should get to. I don't think it would be controversial. I didn't include it with the initial implementation, just to keep the change simpler. See WT:Requested moves#Time to standardize this and create a main-space template for articles listed here for the related discussion. wbm1058 (talk) 17:10, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
 Done – implemented by bot version 6.11 – wbm1058 (talk) 21:13, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Misbehavior at Template:Latest stable software release/mpv (media player), doesn't use <noinclude/>

See Special:Diff/741975656. 80.221.159.67 (talk) 21:41, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm aware of that issue. I'll get to it soon. wbm1058 (talk) 22:34, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
 Fixed in bot version 6.01 – but I still need to fix it to remove that notice after the discussion is closed! wbm1058 (talk) 21:26, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
 Fixed in bot version 6.02 – it now removes that notice after the template move discussion is closed. wbm1058 (talk) 20:41, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Menisci (liquid)

@Wbm1058: Just curious, why did RMCD bot create Menisci (liquid) in this edit? Just curious since that page was not referenced at all in Talk:Meniscus (liquid)#Requested move 24 October 2016. Steel1943 (talk) 01:28, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

This scenario is due to "edit conflicts" where a bot update runs while a RM is in process of being closed.
Now on my to-do list: check if a page exists before notifying it of a move discussion. Don't create pages in subject-space. – wbm1058 (talk) 03:29, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 Fixed by bot version 6.20 – wbm1058 (talk) 01:09, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Version 6.16

Bot version 6.16 is a patch to ensure that edit histories such as this one that I split to User talk:RMCD bot/KNPG-LD don't happen again. This is the patch I was installing when the clocks in the eastern US turned back an hour. That was just coincidental to the "oops" that was reported here, but the time change made things more interesting. I try to make my code updates fly under the radar, but wasn't quite successful this time. wbm1058 (talk) 15:35, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Alternating edits to template

The bot keeps on making alternating edits to Template:Afd-notice between addition and removal of the subject notice. The bot needs to be updated to prevent this from happening to other pages in the future. GeoffreyT2000 (talk, contribs) 04:07, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

 Fixed in bot version 6.17 – I split the bot's bad edit history to User talk:RMCD bot/Afd-notice. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:03, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Hawaii Five-0 (season 8)

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A tag has been placed on Hawaii Five-0 (season 8), requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G4 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to be a repost of material that was previously deleted following a deletion debate, such as at articles for deletion. Under the specified criteria, where a page has substantially identical content to that of a page deleted after debate, and any changes in the content do not address the reasons for which the material was previously deleted, it may be deleted at any time.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:19, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Sorry for the notification here. The bot recreated a page that had been deleted at AfD a bit earlier because it was involved in a rename discussion. I saw it was bot recreated, but forgot to disable the Twinkle notification when tagging. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:25, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
No problem, and thanks for the note. Still on my to-do list: check if a page exists before notifying it of a move discussion. Don't create pages in subject-space. See #Menisci (liquid) above. – wbm1058 (talk) 23:11, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 Fixed by bot version 6.20 – wbm1058 (talk) 01:09, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Colons in page names mistaken for namespaces

Sticky note for myself: Talk:Hearthstone (video game)#Requested move 1 December 2016 – wbm1058 (talk) 21:17, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Problem happened again with Talk:List of Naruto: Shippuden episodes (season 1). wbm1058 (talk) 21:49, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
 Fixed in version 6.25 – wbm1058 (talk) 23:44, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
The code that needed patched was introduced in v 6.16 (diff 6.16 vs. 6.25) – wbm1058 (talk) 14:40, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Probably another bug

@Wbm1058: Not sure what caused RMCD bot to perform this edit, but as you can see, it added several lines of unintentional bolding and italics to the respective entry at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Current discussions. Steel1943 (talk) 21:52, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@Steel1943: This edit fixed it. I replaced a single-quote with &#39; so the Mediawiki software wouldn't confuse ''' meaning "single quote followed by italics" with "boldface". wbm1058 (talk) 01:39, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Bot shouldn't tag redirects

, but it did so on Template talk:Rfc bottom. Pppery 13:51, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Wbm1058 Why does your bot persist in making edits like this? It should follow the redirect; which should not be posted to because it leads to the very place that the discussion is taking place. Also, having been reverted once, it should not make the same edit again; doing so three times is tantamount to WP:EW. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:01, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
 Fixed in bot version 6.22. The curve thrown at the bot here is that Template:Rfc bottom is not a redirect, but Template talk:Rfc bottom is a redirect. "Shared talk pages" are very rare or non-existent for articles, and even for templates they are not the norm. This is a scenario I hadn't considered in the initial implementation of extended notifications, and hadn't seen in practice until now. There is no code in the bot's framework that I'm aware of that checks page histories for prior reversions, so the way to stop the bot from "edit warring" is to either use {{nobots}} or to admin-protect the page. I've held off on requesting admin privileges for the bot, which leaves the second option open, but that also means the bot cannot post RM notices on fully-protected pages. When I run across such a request, I post the notice manually myself. I recognize that there have been several fixes needed since the initial implementations of extended notices, but hopefully by now most of the unusual and unanticipated scenarios have been accounted for and fixed. Sorry for the inconvenience. wbm1058 (talk) 20:53, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
Thank you There are several template talk pages that redirect even though the template is not a redir - AnomieBOT creates them frequently. It's not just done for subpages like /doc /sandbox and /testcases, but also when two or more main templates for a group. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:28, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
  • All, are we sure this is the best resolution? So, if the talk page redirects to a talk page that is neither the talk page of the redirect or its move destination, that's okay? See this. I'm just wondering since following the talk page redirect could result in unintentional WP:CANVASSING. Steel1943 (talk) 20:08, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
I don't have a problem with that; this additional notification was something that was requested. Since Bieber redirects to Justin, it's appropriate to place a notice on Talk:Justin Bieber, lest we pull Justin off of PT status without giving adequate notice to his fans so that they could participate in the discussion. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:59, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, didn't mean that was an example of the issue, but rather what issue the change may cause in the event of a poorly-redirected talk page... Steel1943 (talk) 22:53, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

The bot's back to tagging redirects again. Pppery 23:35, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

The same thing also happened with Talk:Camille (Prince album). Rather than a transcluded invisible bots template, I have fixed the double redirect at Camille (album) to prevent the bot from posting a notice again. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 00:49, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
@GeoffreyT2000: That's the same example I provided, except that my diff was before you did the history swap. Pppery 00:50, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
The scenario that led to this issue is a bear to track down:
Algorithm for posting this notice:
The code being executed here was added by my most recent enhancement. I neglected to check for redirects in this scenario, but this out-of-process move points to the need to do that. It's on my to-do list. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:54, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
 Fixed in bot version 6.27, I trust (didn't run any tests to confirm). wbm1058 (talk) 01:49, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Please update the source code of RMCD bot

Please update the source code of RMCD bot to add spaces in headers and a whiteline after the header. Like this. Debresser (talk) 17:42, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

The style guide MOS:HEADINGS says: The heading must be on its own line, with one blank line just before it; a blank line just after is optional and ignored (but do not use two blank lines, before or after, because that will add unwanted visible space). Spaces around the Title (e.g. == Title ==) are optional and ignored.
So I don't see the point. What problem would this solve? wbm1058 (talk) 18:19, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
On the one hand, you are right. As far as easily viewing a page, however, that is where these spaces and whitelines come in handy. You may also have noticed that the default of Wikipedia is to have them (just create a talkpage discussion, and see for yourself). In other words, it is indeed not mandatory, but it is good for clear layout. Debresser (talk) 18:45, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
OK, I'll think about it. wbm1058 (talk) 21:13, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
@Debresser:  Done. However I won't be "fixing" all of the previously posted notices, as that would be considered a "cosmetic edit", per the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#WP:COSMETICBOT update. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:28, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
Indeed. Thanks for this! Debresser (talk) 21:44, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

RMCD bot bug?

Hi. I saw your RMCD bot creating spurious notifications on the very talk pages where the RM is advertised: one is at Talk:Timor–Alor–Pantar languages and the other at Talk:Moravian–Silesian Football League. In both cases, the titles contain ndashes – maybe that is the cause? Not a big deal, anyway. No such user (talk) 15:14, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

@No such user:  Fixed in version 6.41 – thanks for reporting this. I'm not sure whether the hyphen/en dash thing has anything to do with this, or that was just a coincidence, but the patch was similar to others I've made elsewhere in code. – wbm1058 (talk) 19:31, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

RMCD Bot bug again

It is again insisting on putting a notice on the very page where the RM request is located. When I removed the spurious notice, it put another one there. Please see Talk:Warner Bros. —BarrelProof (talk) 04:35, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Warner Brothers was redirecting to [[Warner_Bros.]] The bot thought it was putting a notice on [[Talk:Warner_Bros.]], a "different" page. After I made _this_ "cosmetic whitespace change", the bot behaved properly. I still need to patch the code to convert underscores in page titles to spaces. – wbm1058 (talk) 12:23, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. It's a very valuable bot. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:27, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't know where to submit a bug report. So, I'm putting this report here. The problem is at the page Talk:Quasi-category. After I made a move request, the bot keeps putting a notice that there is a move discussion in the same talkpage (which is pointless of course). This is a bug. -- Taku (talk) 23:07, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

This is the best place to submit bug reports. Silly bot. It thought that [[quasi-category]] was a "different" page than [[Quasi-category]]. This edit stopped the notice from being posted. Fixing this to upper-case the first letter before comparing page names is on my to-do list now, along with replacing underscores with spaces. Thanks for reporting this issue. wbm1058 (talk) 03:05, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

It just happened again at Talk:Watt balance, and when I removed the spurious notice, it did it again. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:33, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

After studying what happened for Quasi-category, I think I found the trigger and fixed it for that particular article, either with this edit] (underscore vs. space) or this edit] (uppercase vs. lowercase). —BarrelProof (talk) 00:11, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Lowercase → uppercase  Fixed in version 6.49.
Underscore → space  Fixed in version 6.50. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:19, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Misplaced notice

The notice Talk:Kim Wall (journalist)#Move discussion in progress seems misplaced. --85.194.2.168 (talk) 15:13, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

 Fixed in v 6.47 – the curve-ball here was the #Disappearance section link. Ironically that section doesn't exist anymore, not that it matters. One more "gotcha" gotten, thanks for the report. wbm1058 (talk) 17:57, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

RM bug?

@Wbm1058: Pinging you to bring this edit by RMCD bot to your attention. Long story short, since then it did not insert a line break after the use of the {{Search for}} template, it caused the rest of the nomination statement to display in boxed code (as if the line started with a space. I am aware this is human error since line breaks used in nomination statements prior to the nonimator's signature time stamp have the potential to mess up how RMCD bot displays nominations, but ... this is essentially a "FYI", but if it can be fixed, more power to ya. Steel1943 (talk) 18:02, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

@Steel1943:  Fixed in 6.48. OK, I saw that. I tweaked the code to whitelist {{Search for}} as well as {{reflist-talk}} for newlines before and after transclusion. See the result HERE. – wbm1058 (talk) 19:48, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Another odd one?

  • @Wbm1058: See this diff. The section above this edit on the respective talk page seems to be the move request the bot refers to. My only assumption is that the RMCD bot thought this talk page was a different page due to the use of {{Lowercase title}} on the talk page. I could be way off on that thought, but I am not seeing any pages recently moved which relate to the move request, thus I'm not sure why the bot posted the notification. Steel1943 (talk) 02:53, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
@Steel1943:  Fixed in version 6.49. You weren't way off, just slightly off. The issue was with the redirect Noindexing. The source wikitext is #REDIRECT [[noindex]]. I just tweaked the code to uppercase the first letter of that before comparing names, as technically [[noindex]] and [[Noindex]] are the same page. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:28, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, RMCD bot. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 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 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Bots can't vote {{repeat|p|3}}ery (talk) 21:38, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
@Pppery: The message was sent by a bot, which will not be watching this page. Perhaps you should inform Xaosflux (talk · contribs) directly. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:07, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
... whom you've already pinged. {{repeat|p|3}}ery (talk) 00:09, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
Hi, @Pppery: the election commission was aware that alternate account would be notified this time. — xaosflux Talk 00:19, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
I think the prepared list should've excluded accounts with the bot flag, no? --QEDK (愛 ☃️ 海) 12:07, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
  • LOL. Where are MediaWiki message delivery's requests for approval? But I understand the rationale for bypassing that process as the election would likely be over before the bot was eventually approved. This reminds me of the time my Merge bot was invited to the Teahouse, by a user mistakenly believing that bots were powered by tea, rather than hot gear oil. In any event, a competent bot operator would have to be crazy not to ignore these notices. wbm1058 (talk) 15:29, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

The subject notice template should be placed underneath disambiguation hatnotes

As a maintenance tag, the subject notice template should be placed after disambiguation hatnotes, per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout. The bot should be able to detect the presence of hatnote templates at the top of the page and place its notice accordingly. --Paul_012 (talk) 13:00, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Bump. Not sure anyone saw this the first time. --Paul_012 (talk) 20:11, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
Oh, sorry. I saw it. On my to-do list, but not highest priority. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:00, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Tag below all hatnote templates

All contextual tags should be placed below hatnotes for articles ({{redirect}}, {{for}} and the likes) but the bot currently prepends the page move discussion tag to the article text instead. Please fix, thank you. --QEDK (愛 • 海) 14:36, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Previously reported above: #The subject notice template should be placed underneath disambiguation hatnotes. This has now bubbled up to the top tier of my to-do list. I wish there was a "general fixes" function I could just plug in for this, but lacking that it may be easier for me to just cobble together a limited, application-specific function for this. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:32, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
I'm looking for the source code that handles the MoveMaintenanceTags function, to help me fix my bot to comply with MOS:ORDER. It was requested that I do this on my bot's talk page: User talk:RMCD bot#The subject notice template should be placed underneath disambiguation hatnotes. While my bot is written in PHP, I'd like to match the AWB algorithm for this as best as I can (how to recognize all the various hatnotes and not miss any). So hoping I can translate the needed code to PHP. A lot of files to search through here. Can you point me to the right one? Thanks, wbm1058 (talk) 01:10, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: It is in MetaDataSorter.cs (Dablinks above maintance tags per [[WP:LAYOUT]]). The list of templates is in WikiRegexes.cs (public static readonly Regex Dablinks). Tools.cs has many supporting items. — JJMC89 (T·C) 23:55, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, wow it's more complicated than I expected. NestedTemplateRegex supports nested templates and comments at end of template name. Would be nice if there was a library function I could just pass in the entire page contents and get back the properly sorted page. User:RMCD bot/botclasses.php doesn't have anything that fancy. A complete "general fixes" function even. Then my bot could apply all general fixes at the same time it posted its requested-page-move notice. Including putting the hatnotes above the bot's notice. wbm1058 (talk) 13:57, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
  • @Wbm1058: This is my first thought in the manner, though I am sure you have probably thought of this already: On pages with (a) hatnote(s) in the page's lead section, is it possible to program RMCD bot to place the template under the bottom-most transclusion of templates that invoke Module:Hatnote, provided the final template occurs before any level-2 (or greater) section headers to avoid false positives? (I seriously believe you have already thought of this, but that's my two cents.) Steel1943 (talk) 15:40, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
@Steel1943: No, the bot doesn't look under the hood to see what module is driving the hatnotes; it just parses the source code of each page. See the hats constant near the top of the source code. Every time an editor creates a new disambiguation hatnote or redirect to a disambiguation hatnote, that new page name needs to be added to this list for the bot's hatnote placement to work. By default, anything not on that list will still come after the bot's notice. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:15, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Ahhh, I see. I was pretty sure you'd have it marked up somewhere since it's a small issue afterall. I'm glad you're looking into it. Generally, a regex replace pulls it off but here's complications. --QEDK (愛 • 海) 18:10, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

I've been working on this, and am in process of debugging. The strategy is to place the bot-notice immediately after any disambiguation hatnotes that are already at the top of the page. If a hatnote isn't at the top of the page, I'm not fixing it. Need to avoid false-positive hits on hatnotes placed at the top of sections because of section-link redirects.

I got some help with this at the village pump. – wbm1058 (talk) 11:01, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

@QEDK and Paul 012: OK, this is Mostly  Done now. Let me know if you see any pages where the bot's notice is not properly positioned. There is one loose end that I'm still looking at. I've run across pages where the templates {{italic title}}, {{pp}}, or {{Use mdy dates}}, or variants of those, are placed before the hatnote(s). I've coded workarounds that allow those to be treated as "part of the first hatnote". See the bot's edits to Yellow Dog Updater, Modified (that one just had a blank line above the hatnote), and Otogizōshi (italic title). Prague school had an {{Expand Czech}} template above its {{about}} template, so the bot only properly placed the template after I moved {{Expand Czech}} below {{about}}. Richard B. Spencer has a {{pp-vandalism}} template which the bot left in place "as part of the first hatnote", but maybe per MOS:ORDER the bot should move the pp template below the hatnote. The bot was still able to edit that page because it's just semi-protected; it couldn't edit Baked Alaska (entertainer) because that's fully protected. I sometimes manually post the notices on fully-protected pages. Just an aside, Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list is a special page that the bot can't edit either. I expect I'll make some more tweaks to handle cases like these. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:15, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
{{featured article}} is another template that may appear before hatnotes. – wbm1058 (talk) 04:03, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
It just occurs to me that I could just code this so that, from the bot's perspective, these italic title/use mdy dates/page protection/featured article templates were all just "pseudo-hatnote" templates! wbm1058 (talk) 04:11, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
Seems good! :) Thanks again. --QEDK (愛 • 海) 17:42, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
Just reiterating but as stated, a handy way is to see if the Hatnote module is invoked, then if absent, you can go on to prepending and if present, identify the template call and appending, maybe save some processing time in the process too. (edit: holy shit, that was unintentional) --QEDK (愛 • 海) 17:49, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
 Fixed in v. 6.53 – I've enhanced it to allow placement of the most common aliases of the italic title, page-protection, use dmy/mdy, and featured/good article templates ahead of the navigation hatnotes. – wbm1058 (talk) 01:19, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
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