Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/General fixes/Archive 1

Archive 1

Moves Stubs before Categories

Why does AWB move the Stub (Egin) from the correct position (last) to BEFORE the Cats? BOT-Twm Crys (talk) 09:25, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

In which page exactly? -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:27, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

If you refer to svwiki, we fixed the bug. -- Magioladitis (talk) 01:54, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Bold in headers that start with a number

Bold in section titles may not be visible within the article, but it is visible in the TOC, making it more readable in case of p.ex. a list that has headers that start with a number. There may be other situations, so I'd be more careful. Finding one title that starts with a boldened number may be a skip-article criterion; finding partly-boldened titles may be another.

Also, I can't find anything about bold section titles in WP:HEAD --Mkratz (talk) 11:54, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

You are right, there are a few good use cases for partly (not fully) boldened headlines. But in most cases it should be avoided and in other cases you should use italics instead of bold. Could you please post permanent links to a few examples? --TMg 10:25, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Well OK, I've been giving the List of vacuum tubes a bit of a much-needed spit shine, and I've just restored the bolds to the now-current version. The problems started with section 9 "List of other number tubes" whose subsections are called single figures which are the first digit of the hereunder listed tube's ref numbers. I think TOC entries like "9.1 1" are less user-friendly than "9.1 1". Once I started it with the numbers, I had to apply it to the letters too, for consistency. --Mkratz (talk) 22:40, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

"1" is an ugly heading anyway, no matter if it's bold or not. You could use "1xxx" or "Tubes starting with 1", for example. --TMg 21:56, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Should abbreviation matter? Other way around?

'inches (but not "in")' seems to conflict with next line 'Non-breaking spaces are added only before abbreviated units.' I've been adding nbsp manually. Thought it didn't matter if not abbreviated. Might be wrong. Does this only apply to a bot? And while I'm at it, I delete spaces before refs and fix dates (format). Seems a bot should/could do that? comp.arch (talk) 16:43, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

@Comp.arch: There are probably too many false positives where "in" is not an abbreviation for inches (e.g. "Route 2 in Michigan"). Having a bot task where the primary purpose was to delete spaces before refs would probably be considered to be a WP:COSMETICBOT. User:BattyBot and User:MonkBot are two bots that fix date formats, although the former is on hold pending some RfCs. GoingBatty (talk) 23:27, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. According to example in WP:UNIT unabbreviated byte is preceded by a nbsp and others use a convert template (I think those produce nbsp, not sure). I know as a rule units should be abbreviated but if not they should also be preceded by a space and a guess a nbsp? Am I misunderstanding or does the 'Non-breaking spaces are added only before abbreviated units.' rule only apply to the bot? comp.arch (talk) 10:03, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

@Comp.arch: I don't see where in WP:UNIT it states that unabbreviated byte should be preceded by a nbsp. Could you please point out what I'm missing? The Fix non-breaking spaces functionality rule applies to any human or bot running AWB with the option to apply general fixes turned on. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:43, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion. I just looked at the "code" for the page and saw that "64 MB (67,108,864 byte) video card" uses nbsp for byte (and MB, only that ("B") is the unit?). I couldn't find any explicit rule except for units. Doesn't mean using nbsp is allowed otherwise? Didn't mean to confuse you, not saying there is anything wrong with the bot. comp.arch (talk) 08:50, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Well-formed whitespace in XML start tags

<ref > (changed to <ref> by BG19bot) is not an error and should not be changed. Whitespace is permissible here and even has advantages, as giving word wrap a safe place to break lines without introducing either syntactic or legibility confusion.

(See also Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Check_Wikipedia#Error_.2361_false_positive) Andy Dingley (talk) 22:34, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

White space added at top of article

See here (immediately following line 1) and here (immediately following line 1).

It looks like when a template at the top of an article is ammended (by AWB general fix), an extra whitespace is added between the template and proceeding text. This bug was initially reported by User:Airplaneman on my talk page.-- GreenC 16:34, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Template redirects are not minor?

Template redirects don't change anything for the reader as far as I know, so why aren't these treated as "minor genfixes"? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 14:12, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Question about Empty section tagging

Could someone please help me understand why Tagger only "Tags empty level-2 sections with {{Empty section}}" and not deeper level sections? (e.g. Fransmart) Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:18, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

GoingBatty there were complains. Some people were creating skeletons of pages with many sub-headers and the result was that the tagger was adding multiple empty tags all over the place. My main concern is why we do not have enough editors to fix backlogs like the empty sections which is a content problem. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:57, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Persondata

Resolved

I have recently discussed with an editor who actively deletes most persondata templates from the article he works on. Since persondata has already been deprecated and is replaced by Wikidata, I see no reason why AWB should not stop adding persondata templates automatically, and perhaps, after some time, be able to automatically delete persondata templates. The Average Wikipedian (talk) 14:42, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

@The Average Wikipedian: Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/History shows that the developers "Removed Persondata addition from en.wp general fixes" last month. There's still some controversy over how to remove the existing templates. I've only been removing them if all the information is somewhere else in the article (e.g. infobox, categories, lead). GoingBatty (talk) 22:10, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

No active AWB versions add Persondata anymore. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:59, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Underlinked -- 6 words without a link is silly

Resolved

I saw a bot do this and its page links here. If an article has nine words of text outside of the title, and three are already linked, why would you put a tag bigger than the article to say that those remaining six words are underlinked? The script should not add "underlinked" to a one sentence stub that already has a link. I read Wikipedia on a desktop browser on a cell phone, and I hate it when the entire article is unreadable because the tags are longer than the content. It is also not a good article when every word except for "is" is linked. MicroPaLeo (talk) 17:16, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

@MicroPaLeo: Could you please let us know which article this was, so we can compare it to the AWB tagger rules for adding {{underlinked}}? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:20, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

After going through MicroPaLeo's contributions, I believe the concern is with this edit to Chaudhry Abdus Salam. The stub has only one wikilink, which falls into the rules for AWB tagging. GoingBatty (talk) 21:58, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

I checked today and underlinked is not added in that page anymore. (AWB 5.8.0.1 rev 11749) -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:03, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Link GA and Link FA templates that refer to current Wikipedia

Resolved

...could be automatically removed by AWB. See bot's edit and my correction. --Gikü (talk) 00:17, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Why remove them? -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:52, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I find that an obvious error. --01:42, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Ah now I see. It's like interwiki to the project itself. By the way requests can be submitted at WP:AWB/GF and not here. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:11, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I thought that was sort of a description page, not a request page. --Gikü (talk) 15:01, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Oooops Sorry! I meant WP:AWB/FR. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:27, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

All templates were deleted from Wikipedia. all badges are handled via Wikidata. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:04, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Issues with Link FA and Link GA on rowiki

Resolved

Hi. I am applying the general fixes features on the Romanian version of Wikipedia. Link FA is named ro:Format:Legătură AC and Link GA is named ro:Format:Legătură AB. By applying general fixes, AWB places all the Template:Link FA, ro:Format:Legătură AC and Template:Link GA templates just before the interwiki links, but the ro:Format:Legătură AB template seems to be seen as an usual template and is placed before the categories. The cause is that ro:Format:Legătură AB template is relatively new on Wikipedia. What should I edit or where should I do an edit request so the template gets properly interpreted? --Gikü (talk) 13:50, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Here is an example: http://ro.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=J._K._Rowling&diff=7179754&oldid=7166436 --Gikü (talk) 13:55, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Fixed in the following release. I added ro:Format:Legătură AB template. rev 8789. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:58, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Wow, didn't expect such a fast feedback. Thanks a lot.

Btw, is Link GA added as well? I didn't see it in the sources.

Best regards! --Gikü (talk) 14:23, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

The supported templates are "link FA", "link AF", "legătură AC", "legătură AF", "legătură AB". -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:39, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Fixed in the following release. I added ro:Format:Link GA template. rev 8790. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:42, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

All templates were deleted from Wikipedia. all badges are handled via Wikidata. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:05, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Which section does removing an excess pipe from "[[File:" fall under?

I had an AWB edit that only removed an excess pipe from a [[File: construct even though I was skipping minor genfixes. So, I was wondering if it's actually a minor genfix or not, but I can't find this on the page. Does this fall under something else already on the page? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 20:38, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Stevietheman please provide us a diff. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:46, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Here's the diff. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 20:58, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Discussed in phabricator and resolved there. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:58, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

The phabricator issue was about excess pipes in a cite, not a file construct. Where is this covered on the page? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 15:07, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

My mistake then. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:08, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

White space at end of paragraph?

Hi there,

I am using AWB in the German Wikipedia, unfortunately my global account does not work in en:wp.

AWB automatically removes whitespace at the end of a paragraph. This is in general OK, but I could not find this feature in the manual yet (especially not here under "general fixes"). Does it belong to the "general fixes"? --84.147.181.130 (talk) 11:13, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

We remove whitespace in multiple places in the code. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:09, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

CN fix

AWB tries to replace

<ref>{{Citation needed|date=May 2010}}</ref> with

<ref name="Citation needed|date=May 2010">{{Citation needed|date=May 2010}}</ref> and

<ref name="Citation needed|date=May 2010"/>

but it should rather just remove the <ref>...</ref> tags. Could somebody please fix this? --bender235 (talk) 22:53, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

In which page did that happen? -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:52, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Confirmed (AWB rev11749) but Citation needed should not be in ref tags. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:07, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

@Rjwilmsi: do you think it's worth replacing

<ref>{{Citation needed|date=May 2010}}</ref> with

with

{{Citation needed|date=May 2010}}?

-- Magioladitis (talk) 08:08, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

@Magioladitis: I suggest you run a database scan and see how common the issue is. We can add to AWB if a common issue. Rjwilmsi 12:58, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

@Rjwilmsi: I search the July database (20150702-pages-articles) for

<ref>{{Citation n

I got 60 matches. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:13, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

@Rjwilmsi: ther are also cases of

<ref>{{Cn

etc. Bgwhite searching the latest database found 75 cases of

<ref>{{Citation needed

-- Magioladitis (talk) 06:26, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

It does not remove underscores in file links

General fixes is supposed to remove underscores in file links, and it worked for me before, but, for some reason, it no longer does. I have disabled all other features but to no avail.

It removes underscores in links but not file links.

Can anyone please help? Thank you.
―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 02:24, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

References after punctuation for otherwiki

How can i use RefsAfterPunctuation for fa.wikipedia? I used this module but it doesn't edit cases on here Yamaha5 (talk) 23:49, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Authority control template

I have just made a bot request at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Authority control template, for {{Authority control}} to be added to biographical articles. As I explain there, this might be something that could be done as part of GFs. What do you think? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:21, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Mdashes

One of the AWB General fixes seems to be changing a hyphen in the page range of a citation template (e.g. this edit). On my talk page, Dave Rave indicated that this is not necessary because the template automatically converts it:

• {{Cite book| title=Original using - |pages=20-22}}: Original using -. pp. 20–22.
• {{Cite book| title=After using – |pages=20–22}}: After using –. pp. 20–22.

Two questions:

1. If this is not already mentioned on the WP:AWB/GF page, could you please add it? (e.g. Is this is part of Mdashes?)
2. Since the template automatically converts it, could AWB be changed to not do the conversion?

Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 19:08, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

ReorderReferences

Where is the consensus basis for ReorderReferences? czar ♔ 22:53, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Please {{ping}} me if this gets a response. I'm unfollowing the page after nearly a year with no reply.  czar ⨹ 18:01, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

I am also curious about this as it is unhelpful. This looks like order for order's sake, and forgets that cites are sometimes placed in the same sequence as the information they support in the sentence. Re-sequencing them can make tracking down the appropriate source for the information more difficult than it need be. Ping User:czar as requested. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 07:14, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I have the same concern. I order my refs based on the relevance of the source and there's no consensus that refs need to be reordered numerically. I'd like to see this removed from genfixes. czar 07:27, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Copied over from Magioladitus' talkpage:

Hi. In your edit on The Kinks article you changed the order of some of the inline cites. It's not an issue, I'm just curious as to the thinking behind the rearrangement because normally cites are arranged in the order of the statements they cover in the sentence as this makes it easy for checking, but your edit changed the logical order to something apparently more random. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 06:18, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

SilkTork I changed them in a way that references are given in increasing order i.e. [1][3][2] changes to [1][2][3]. -- Magioladitis (talk) 06:20, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

OK. But I think what I'm curious about is why? SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 06:27, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

There is another user who has queried the sorting Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/General_fixes#ReorderReferences. I expect that fix has been there a long time, so the rationale may be hard to track down. It may be worth having a discussion about it to see what the consensus is. I suppose one argument in favour of it would be that if people are going to check all the cites at the end of the sentence, and the cites are numerically close together (12, 14, 17, for example), they might find it easier to memorise the number sequence and then check them off one by one rather than going back to the text to find the next cite. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 08:00, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

SilkTork thanks for taking some time to check it. I am not references expert. The main argument was/is that since an article is edited by multiple people there is no way to set a "sort by importance/relevance" criterion when adding references because anyone may go and add a reference after or before the existing references. Still, you can seperate the references by adding a comment between them and then AWB won't change the reference order. I hope I was helpful. Thanks again. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:09, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

What I am still not clear on, is why an editor would want to change the order of the cites to being numerical. The assumption appears to be that numerical should be the default, but it's not clear why that should be. I don't think this is a big issue, and if there is a rationale explanation I'll be content, but until then it just seems a little odd. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 13:13, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I would ask: What's the rationale for footnote numbers being out of order? It's a presentation thing overall, not only listing them in the order started on the page, but showing them as a sequence. If they're not in sequence, that looks odd to me. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 14:00, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

We're talking about inline sequencing, not the grouping at the bottom of the page. AWB is set up to change the logical order of cites at the end of a sentence to a numerical one. In the example given of The Kink's edit (in this case, it's trivial, and the order doesn't really matter, but it caught my attention because it seemed so pointless), the sentence is "The group's fourth single, "All Day and All of the Night", another Ray Davies hard rock tune, was released three weeks later, reaching number two in the United Kingdom, and number seven in the United States." The original order of the cites was 36, 4, 33 - 36 citing 4th single, 4 citing No 2 in the UK, and 33 citing 7 in USA, in the same order as those statements are given in the sentence. The order was changed to 4, 33, 36, so it becomes purely a number sequence unrelated to the information contained in the sentence. The way to prevent this is to move each cite so it's next to the information, rather than grouped at the end, and for quotes, or particularly contentious statements we would closely cite that way, but for general information it's common to cite at the end of the sentence in logical order: WP:CITEFOOT - "The citation should be added close to the material it supports, offering text–source integrity. If a word or phrase is particularly contentious, an inline citation may be added next to that word or phrase within the sentence, but it is usually sufficient to add the citation to the end of the clause, sentence, or paragraph, so long as it's clear which source supports which part of the text." We need to either change our guidance, or change AWB. We can't advise editors to "add the citation to the end of the clause, sentence, or paragraph, so long as it's clear which source supports which part of the text", if someone else comes along, and, without reading the text or the sources, uses an automated device to change the order so it is no longer "clear which source supports which part of the text". SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 04:52, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

• Related RFC: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#RfC:_AWB_bot_ref_reordering @SilkTork czar 05:45, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
• Updated link: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 136#RfC: AWB bot ref reordering with

  Consensus to halt AWB ref reordering

  czar 00:38, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Though/although

'Though' and 'although' are fully interchangeable as conjunctions. It is good have both in use, in order to give some stylistic variation. Whoever added an automatic change function changing initial words in sentences from 'though' to 'although' to this 'tool' is incorrect. The construction "Though ....." is used very many times in the King James Bible and generally elsewhere in English literature. I suspect that an over-proscriptive American style-guide has been mistaken for a real grammatical rule. Urselius (talk) 06:38, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Battle of Waterloo (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

@Urselius: That change to the wording was not made by these built-in "General fixes" nor by the spelling rules at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos. You should discuss the grammar point with Smasongarrison (talk · contribs). -- John of Reading (talk) 07:20, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

@Urselius:Thanks for bringing that distinction between style and grammar to my attention for (al)though. I've disabled that rule. Smasongarrison (talk) 09:02, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Circular redirects

Institute of Physics#Awards has a zillion circular redirects (links that redirect to the originating article). I hoped that AWB would fix this with its general fixes, but it doesn't. Could this be added? Sandstein 07:11, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Also requested at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T243117. Sandstein 07:14, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

There's one type that shouldn't be bypassed though, and those would be self redirects that are section redirects. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:44, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Can I add a summary for each General Fix?

I want to add a summary for each General Fix. For example, if 'FixNonBreakingSpaces' and 'FixDates' Module enabled on editing, add a summary like "Bot: Fixed non-breaking spaces, Fixed dates". How can I do that? I tried to edit modules in 'WikiFunctions.dll', but I don't know about C# well. Thank you so much. KindUser (talk) 08:17, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Overuse of wikilinks tag

I am trying to reduce the number of articles that have underlinked tags by adding more appropriate links. However, I see many articles that do not need more wikilinks, but the bots are tagging them anyway. Many of them are two-line stubs. Others contain small amount of text accompanied by tables (sports results, election results, etc) If you open "Category:All articles with too few wikilinks" on the first page, many of these articles are in the 0-9 section. Examples include 1935–36 Scottish Football League and 1898–99 Michigan State Spartans men's basketball team, Mashinostroiteley and Malakichthys elegans.

Quoting from Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking "An article is said to be underlinked if words are not linked and are needed to aid understanding of the article". How does a bot determine if wikilinks are needed to aid understanding? Thank you. Rogermx (talk) 17:30, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Please do not insert   in source

Would you please consider removing from AWB's actions the "fix" of inserting " " between numbers and units of measurement? Please consider that:

1. "To look nice" is not one of Wikipedia's priorities. Paper encyclopedias must look nice for marketing reasons that do not apply to us. In Wikipedia, looks are much less important than information — and making it easier for people to contribute information. The wikisource syntax was intentionally kept very simple, with no tools to control layout (line breaks, line spacing, text font/size/colors, etc.) in order to make editing as easy as possible and to discourage editors from wasting their time on fidgeting with the layout. Those non-breaking spaces are pure "looks", with zero information contents.
2. Every time an article receives one of those "fixes", dozens of editors will see it flagged on their watchlist, and will have to spend several minutes inspecting the changes.
3. Those " "s make the source much harder to read, especially the measurements -- which are the most critical to get right, and the easiest to mis-type.
4. If a typical line has about 100 characters, less than 2% of those " " will actually have any effect in preventing a "bad" line break. And some of those may then cause a bad line break somewhere else. But every one of them will make the source less readable...
5. Those " "s have very little value for the readers, if at all. A line break in those contexts would have very little impact on the article's readability or appearance. Every article has many flaws that are much worse in both aspects, like single spaces after sentence periods, the ragged right margin, single-word lines, bad interactions between images, TOCs and section headers, — and, of course, terrible writing and jumbled ordering of the information.
6. Good line breaking should not be a concern of editors. It should be implemented by the Wikipedia server, when it generates the HTML of the article; and/or by the browser, when it fits the text to the reader's window width. Either software should be programmed to avoid (or, rather, de-prioritize) a line break in a blank space that immediately follows a digit. If your robot script can find the places where an " " should be inserted, why cant't the WP server do it instead?
7. Last but not least, those " "s add to the the complexity and inscrutability of the wikisource syntax and semantics. Very few people know what " " means. Surveys by the Foundation have shown that many new would-be editors get scared away by of what they get when they click "Edit". Those non-breaking spaces add to that. How many newbies intended to add a measurement to an article, but gave up because they did not know what " " meant, and how/when to use it?

So, please reconsider. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 20:30, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

I second this, especially the last five points. Ionmars10 (talk) 01:25, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

accessdate -> access-date?

Today my AutoWikiBrowser has suddenly started to replace the accessdate parameter in citation templates with access-date. I haven't updated AWB at all and I don't see anything in the GF documentation that mentions changing parameter names like this. Anyone else experiencing this? Ionmars10 (talk) 11:45, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

It's from this rule change here, so maybe take it up on the citation template talk pages if you think it's incorrect/inappropriate. Rjwilmsi 13:59, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Ah, didn't know that page existed, thanks. My only issue with it is that it's such a common change (seems like about every other page I edit has like 10 of these to be changed) that it might cause annoyance to other AWB users who happen to have genfixes enabled. Personally I'm fine with it, although it might slow things down a little. Ionmars10 (talk) 14:36, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

I regret that I've had to turn off genfixes. AWB now proposes about ten access-date changes for every intentional fix, so checking changes with genfixes on now takes ten times longer than I had hoped to spend. I understand the good intentions, but I think this change would be better made by a bot. Certes (talk) 01:03, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Certes, agreed. If it can be reliably automated by genfixes, it can be reliably (and more efficiently) automated by a bot. Ionmars10 (talk) 04:01, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Bug: Inserting extra line break

When {{#section-h:Foo|Bar}} is used, it's necessary to have only a single line break afterwards, or else an extra space is created. When using AWB recently, I noticed it add an erroneous extra line here. Could this issue be fixed? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:31, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Oh, and I just realized it inserted another erroneous line break, here (between the history and campus sections) due to a hidden comment. This really needs fixing—GENFIXes are applied so widely that they should not be introducing bugs. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:05, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

I tried creating a phab task at T267086, since the main AWB talk page says that's where it's maintained nowadays. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:12, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

See WP:TRANSCLUDE and {{trim}}. The cause of this is that if a section ends with a line break, then that line-break is transcluded (since it is part of that section). The fix is likely for AWB to put section transcludes in trim templates. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:02, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Genfix option being ignored?

In this edit, AWB changed the position of {{Redirect}}, even though I had the "apply general fixes" option unchecked. Is that supposed to happen? (It moved it above the short description, which I'm pretty sure goes against MOS:LAYOUT, and is likely part of the outstanding issue with that that I'm rather shocked still isn't resolved.) {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:16, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: I edited the article with Genfixes enabled, and it changed the position back to where it's supposed to be. I'm using version 6.1.0.2 SVN 12432, which was posted in December 2020 and is available here. The last official release was 6.1.0.1 SVN 12350 in September 2019, and I wish official releases were posted more frequently. Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 03:24, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Italicization in references

I made a reference to a tweet from a newspaper: {{cite tweet |author=''The Student Life'' |author-link= |user=TSLnews |number=1062588964802940928 |date=26 August 2020 |title=@billkeller2014 visited TSL’s office today and spoke with staff members about his career |link= |access-date=26 August 2020 |archive-url= |archive-date= |url-status=}}, which displays as . The italicization within the author parameter isn't ideal, but it's necessary, since the author was an institutional account of a newspaper, and we italicize newspaper names. When a GENFIX recently came through, however, it removed the italicization, introducing an undesirable output. Is there a different way I should have done the reference, or is this bad behavior from GENFIXes that should be stopped? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:14, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

References

@Sdkb: I just ran The Student Life through AWB 6.1.0.2 SVN 12432 and genfixes did not try to change this reference. GoingBatty (talk) 03:29, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Ability to have a local form of general fixes, rather than Wikipedias

Anyone know if it is possible to have a local wiki specific set of general fixes rather than global. The Wikisources are reproducing works which do not comply with the WPs styles, so the general can be problematic, though some elements within it are quite useful. So having a local variant would be a winner. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:43, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: You could try disabling the general fixes and instead using a custom module with just the general fixes you want. GoingBatty (talk) 04:52, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I was thinking something at a community level rather than a personal level, though at least I can give some pointers. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:19, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Error: Moving a commented out category out of a comment

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T298747

Ahecht has noticed an error with GENFIXes at Special:Diff/1063444797, where a commented out category is moved outside of the comment. Could someone identify which task is causing this and code a solution? Thanks, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:52, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

@Ahecht and Sdkb: Hi there! I suggest one of you report the issue on Phabricator per Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Before you post. Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 03:18, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Done; see phab:T298747. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 01:36, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Hatnote order

Is this edit correct? WP:HNP and MOS:ORDER say hatnotes go above protection tags. That seems logical, as we group the "is this the article you wanted?" stuff above details of the article itself. Sdkb tells me the edit came from the Genfix set. Certes (talk) 17:55, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:DUPCITE" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Wikipedia:DUPCITE has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 November 26 § Wikipedia:DUPCITE until a consensus is reached. Queen of Hearts ❤️ (no relation) 00:43, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Awkward choice of new ref name when {{! present in title parameter

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T354131

Diff created <ref name="Hoary Alyssum {{!">, where <ref name="Hoary Alyssum"> would have been better, so as not to create a set of unbalanced open curly brackets.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:03, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: In the same reference, I changed |title=Hoary Alyssum {{!}} to |title=Hoary Alyssum. GoingBatty (talk) 17:37, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Square bracket mismatch

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T354120

It looks like <nowiki>[</nowiki> isn't being correctly treated as an opening square bracket, for the purpose of finding mismatched opening/closing brackets. For example, see this AWB edit, which changed

• <nowiki>[</nowiki>[[sub-creation]]]
  • which renders as: [sub-creation]; to:
• <nowiki>[</nowiki>[[sub-creation]]
  • which renders as: [sub-creation

Could be worth running a replacement on <nowiki>[</nowiki> to use {{!(}}, {{Square bracket open}}, or better yet {{Bracket}}, for clarity, instead? --Yodin^T 16:14, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

As long as a matching nowiki-closing-bracket exists, GenFixes doesn't remove the 3rd closing bracket, e.g.

<nowiki>[</nowiki>[[Gustav Stresemann|Gustav]]<nowiki>]</nowiki>

on World War I.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:45, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Interesting, I wonder if this is because it considers neither of them as brackets? Whatever the reason, as there are 2,839 articles with <nowiki>[</nowiki>, and 4,149 articles with <nowiki>]</nowiki>, there are over a thousand articles which don't have matching nowiki closed brackets; having logic to detect these would prevent GenFixes breaking these in future. I'd also still recommend replacing them all with {{Bracket}}, as it improves code clarity. --Yodin^T 16:57, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I think the problem arises when the left bracket is enclosed in nowiki but the right bracket isn't, because a right bracket at that position usually has no wikitext-syntax significance and appears harmlessly as ]. Perhaps AWB needs to be conservative and treat a bracket in nowiki as optionally matching a bare bracket, so the current nesting level is a range (2–3 here) rather than a single number (2 because the bracket in nowiki wasn't counted). That may be easier said than done. Certes (talk) 17:29, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Thinking about it a bit more, what would be the potential problem with treating nowiki brackets as identical to ordinary brackets? I can't think of any cases where it would cause problems. --Yodin^T 21:42, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure the order that GenFixes are applied in, but would it also be possible to just match any <nowiki>[</nowiki> with the first unopened ] (or <nowiki>]</nowiki>), and change it to {{Bracket}}, before running the unmatched bracket check? Surely this would also solve it without resorting to very complex nesting levels, etc. ? --Yodin^T 21:49, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@Yodin: could you report this issue at Phabricator per Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Before you post, and use {{Tracked}} here as needed? Reminder for me to do that with the post below...   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:11, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

 Done @Tom.Reding: 👍 --Yodin^T 19:22, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

I took this search of ~2835 pages (at the time; permalink to initial results) containing <nowiki>[</nowiki>, and found ~400 pages which did not have a closing <nowiki>]</nowiki>. I tested WP:GenFixes on those ~400, and ~60 would have had a trailing ] erroneously removed, so I balanced those 60 to prevent any mistakes in the near future (until more instances inevitably crop up). The remaining ~340, which GenFixes did not alter in a way relevant to this discussion, was due to the presence of a template between the normal, double, closing ]] and the last ], like on Old testament:

through <nowiki>[</nowiki>[[Jericho]] ({{Circa|1400 BC}})],

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T354150

Then, I took this search of 4146 pages (at the time; permalink to initial results) containing <nowiki>]</nowiki>, and found ~1700 new pages. Of those, only ~3 needed balancing to avoid GenFix errors, and 2 oddballs I couldn't figure out, Nolamba dynasty, Pickering Airport Lands. There was 1 page, however, John Simon, 1st Viscount Simon, where GenFixes breaks the currently functioning succession box by removing a balanced bracket (diff), which happens on both v6.2.1.0 & v6.2.1.1.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  22:49, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this! --Yodin^T 01:39, 8 January 2024 (UTC)