Anomie is still around, mostly to maintain AnomieBOT. But after the WMF proved that office politics are more important to them than seemingly anything else, and otherwise generally seem more concerned with their own image than substance, Anomie is not engaging in technical work on MediaWiki.
Despite
T360488 asking them not to, Toolforge admins have gone ahead and broken AnomieBOT's scripts. Keeping things running properly will likely require manual intervention until they fix that or give me a usable workaround.
Live status for all AnomieBOT tasks is available at Toolforge.
Regarding the OrphanReferenceFixer and TagDater, please note:
AnomieBOT is not an anti-vandal bot, so complaints about AnomieBOT "hiding" or not reverting vandalism are out of place here.
AnomieBOT's current strategy is "wait 10 minutes to an hour or so to let ClueBot, VoABotII, other anti-vandal bots, or RC Patrollers fix the vandalism". I am open to specific suggestions on detecting vandalism, but keep in mind that the false positive rate of any method must be near zero to be useful.
AnomieBOT honors {{
inuse}}; please use it if you have excessive edit conflicts.
If the reference errors or undated tags were caused by vandalism, just revert AnomieBOT's edits along with the vandal's. AnomieBOT will not be offended.
If AnomieBOT made a mistake in correcting a reference error or dating a tag, please correct the error by hand and report the URL of the problem diff below. Don't just revert the bot without fixing the error, or AnomieBOT is likely to "fix" it again in the same broken way before I get a chance to fix the bug.
If you have a problem with
T11790, please take the issue up there. You will be having the problem with more than just AnomieBOT's edits.
Thank you.
Regarding deletions, please note:
If you are here because you think AnomieBOT III deleted an article, please check again. AnomieBOT III deletes redirects when someone else deletes the article the redirect pointed to, and you almost certainly want to talk to that person instead.
If you are here because AnomieBOT added {{old AfD multi}} to an article when the old AfD was about a different person with the same name, just remove it. The bot has no way to tell whether it's the same person or a different one.
Two years ago, after getting tired of edge cases when trying to scrape links out of the wikitext, I switched the bot to looking for {{TFAFULL}} which is a lot easier to parse for. In this case I see the {{TFAFULL}} was present originally but was removed in
Special:Diff/1215188470 by
User:MaranoFan. Looks like I forgot to update the bot's complaint message, and also that I forgot to ever add a check for the day being added to
Template:TFA title/data.json.
Anomie⚔13:10, 11 May 2024 (UTC)reply
Retrieving named refs from other articles
Would it be possible to get some information on exactly how this works? In particular, I'd like to understand why it didn't activate for
this edit. Further details
here.
Sunrise(
talk)01:16, 13 May 2024 (UTC)reply
At the moment the bot only checks pages linked in edit summaries. I turned off the linked-pages check in July 2023 because it seemed too often to cause false positives when people name a ref based on the newspaper or website.
Anomie⚔00:31, 14 May 2024 (UTC)reply
Thanks for the reply, and I'm glad to hear the edit summary check is active. For the edit I'm asking about (which was in 2019), why does it seem that neither the edit summary check nor the linked-pages check worked correctly?
Sunrise(
talk)19:54, 14 May 2024 (UTC)reply
Digging into
old on-wiki logs, I find it says "
Terminology of alternative medicine: Revision
894510465 is transcluding something too b0rken to fix (Ref contains <ref>), skipping". Due to limitations of the expandtemplates API action (e.g.
T235882), the bot can't handle refs inside of refs, for example when {{refn}} is used to contain a <ref>.
In 2021 I added support for some templates, including {{refn}} and {{efn}}, so that's not so much of a problem anymore. The bot still doesn't support other templates like {{r}} or {{sfn}} that do more than just add a single ref though.
Anomie⚔00:30, 15 May 2024 (UTC)reply
You seem confused. You linked to an edit where AnomieBOT added dates to {{citation needed}} tags added by a human editor in a previous edit, which likely means you should talk to that human rather than posting here.
Anomie⚔11:32, 22 May 2024 (UTC)reply
About PeerReviewArchiver
Hey
Anomie! Per a rough consensus at
this discussion, it seems there's some need for additional automated archiving of peer review pages. Since AnomieBOT already performs a very similar task, would you be willing to expand the PeerReviewArchiver function to close reviews that have gone unanswered for over three months? Let me know if you have any questions! —
TechnoSquirrel69 (
sigh)
01:50, 11 June 2024 (UTC)reply
Hi Anomie, I hope you're doing well. I noticed on a Russian village article that AnomieBOT had added a date parameter for the {{Infobox Russian inhabited locality}} infobox back in July 2020, when date parameters are invalid – see
Roza, Chelyabinsk Oblast's history for an example. You might already be aware of this, but I thought I'd let you know to avoid the same issue happening in the future. I've rollbacked the ones that were still rollbackable, I don't know if you want to try and reverse it for the ones remaining that aren't. Thanks! --
Ferien (
talk)
17:49, 12 June 2024 (UTC)reply
Redrose64, indeed, no examples of it happening recently. Was just looking through some random articles and came across it thinking it might need attention. Thanks to everyone for finding the source of the problem so quickly :) --
Ferien (
talk)
21:00, 13 June 2024 (UTC)reply
That's right. Specifically, it was added in
October 2010, and finally removed in
March 2023. Since AnomieBOT was told it was a dated maintenance template, it unsubstified it and it dated instances of it on pages that happened to be in categories indicating that some maintenance template was missing a |date=.
Anomie⚔23:23, 12 June 2024 (UTC)reply
This is the diff labelled: "add & merge list from SmackBot." I referred to this list in my interview with the Signpost. At this point the infobox's code contained: {{fact|date={{{date|}}}}} so it was necessary to date this. You will find my 2009 objection to this practice at
Template_talk:Infobox_Russian_inhabited_locality/Archive_1#Forkit. However the user in question contributed a huge amount to our coverage of Russia, so it was probably a wise decision not press the point overmuch. All the best: RichFarmbrough18:38, 16 June 2024 (UTC).reply
Substitution of templates prior to deletion
(Moved from your talk page since this seems the page for it.)
Can you set the bot to not subst templates in their own namespace. If a template is ever undeleted, the docs, testcases etc will be broken.
This seems like something for people active at TFD to decide. Which does not include me, and at a quick check of your recent contributions does not seem to include you either.
Anomie⚔21:27, 16 June 2024 (UTC)reply
Not really, it's common sense. You are making extra edits to pages that are going to be deleted. The edits are harmful, not helpful. QED. All the best: RichFarmbrough10:45, 17 June 2024 (UTC).reply
In case I wasn't clear, by "in their own namespace" I mean: for Template:Foo pages like Template:Foo/Core, Template:Foo/Documentation, Template:Sandbox, Template:Foo/TemplateData and so forth. All the best: RichFarmbrough10:48, 17 June 2024 (UTC).reply
If you can give more than three examples of a time when a template was nominated for deletion, subst'd as you describe, undeleted, and was "broken" with no one possibly able to fix it (you know, by like... reverting that subst'ing edit?) I will support your position and advocate for it at TFD. On the other hand, this sounds ridiculously convoluted and a non-problem.
Primefac (
talk)
00:56, 26 June 2024 (UTC)reply
Let me rephrase to something I can respond to. "Couldn't people just revert if there is an issue?"
Yes, if someone knows there is an issue, and they happen to know that the template as deleted, and they know a bot is breaking pages before template are deleted, and they can identify the edit, and they are able to revert it, and they are technically competent to do so and they are comfortable doing it.
I was looking at a TfD and was unable to figure out what the template was supposed to do because the bot had broken it, and the docs had stopped working. Certainly I found the error, and being thorough I reverted it and the associated errors.
To us, maybe, this is easy, but it did waste my time. I am not in favour of bots wasting peoples time, and I think it is reasonable to say that not many Wikipedians are happy to dig into template code or futz with template history.
Your explanation above now sounds like your issue was with Template A being subst'd on Template B before A was deleted, which is different from "Template A being substed on its /doc before it was deleted" (which is how I read your original post) and (while still being a problem) is a different issue altogether. I suppose rather than talking in generic examples, could you give the pages where you were finding this issue?
Primefac (
talk)
12:12, 26 June 2024 (UTC)reply
Sub-pages of
Template:DPP if my memory serves. Tricky to check because the pages are deleted, so I can't even check my or the bot's contribs.
Incidentally the fix could be something like the following guard in
TemplateSubster::Base:
# Skip the template itself or any subpages (same for template talk)if($_->{'ns'}==10||$_->{'ns'}==11){# Assuming $title includes the namespace explicitly.if($title=~m/^Template( talk|):$self->{'curtitle'}(\/.*)?$/){$process->{$self->{'curtitle'}}|=0x01;next;}}
It wasn't DPP specifically, but I see what you mean; pretty rare for subtemplates to be left without a main template but clearly it's not impossible. If it's a quick fix and Anomie is amenable then I suppose I'm not strictly opposed, but this seems like a rather unlikely situation if there is going to be any sort of effort required to make the change. Primefac (
talk)
23:19, 26 June 2024 (UTC)reply
In thinking about it more, I've come back around to this probably not being useful - if the template is being deleted, it would make more sense for the transclusion to be subst rather than have someone attempt to figure out what the redlinked transclusion was supposed to do before the template was deleted. If the substitution breaks the page, then that's a problem with the template (i.e. it shouldn't have been subst until it could be done cleanly).
Primefac (
talk)
23:45, 26 June 2024 (UTC)reply
Yes, I get it, and you are correct if the sub-pages are being kept. But for the bulk of deletions all the sub-pages go too, and should be undeleted with the template (also, of course, there is the period before they are deleted, when they are partially broken, in the sense that changes to the template aren't reflected in the sub-pages). I accept that it's an edge case, and I suppose sub-pages being kept is a corner case.
Moreover it looks like AnomieBot hasn't actually substed many templates for TfD, however this could change at any time.
Anyway the request has been seen, and I guess it's up to Anomie.
Just thought I'd drop a note that AnomieBOT III is off its usual 6:02 report issuing schedule which it generally maintains like clockwork. It's a little unpredictable and wacky right now, but there are also problems running queries with Quarry and Community Tech bot has been off=kilter with issuing its
Wikipedia:Database reports/Orphaned talk pages, too so I guess there could be database problems. But I thought I'd let you know. Typically, I use Quarry as a backup for AnomieBOT III to find broken redirect but that's been unavailable for days now. Thanks. LizRead!Talk!22:20, 16 June 2024 (UTC)reply
Seems like things are running now. I did just restart the bot to apply an update to the PeerReviewArchiver task. Given the timing, possibly it was in the middle of the BrokenRedirectDeleter task and had to restart. OTOH, I also see that for the past few days it has been taking longer to process than it had been, mostly without any obvious explanation in the logs. So possibly there's also increased database load making its queries slower.
Anomie⚔23:41, 16 June 2024 (UTC)reply
That might explain its irregularity in its reports along with why other bots are having the same problem. Still no update on Quarry issues though but that's not your concern. LizRead!Talk!05:02, 18 June 2024 (UTC)reply
You seem very confused. AnomieBOT has not edited that article at all. AnomieBOT has been editing the redirect 2006-07 Talk 'N Text Phone Pals (with a hyphen-minus) to have it match 2006–07 Talk 'N Text Phone Pals (with an en-dash); if you fix the latter, then AnomieBOT will have the former match it. I have no clue what you're trying to say with "User:AnomieBOT/Warnings/FPReport", that does not exist nor should it.
Anomie⚔11:21, 28 June 2024 (UTC)reply
I don't know which bot I should be listening to at
Ceviche
So, Cewbot posted
this notice of a broken anchor on the talk page several months ago. I noticed it today and after some fumbling around, I was pretty sure I'd removed what was broken, which was fine because there was another ref for the same sentence. However, AnomieBOT "rescued" it with the next edit
[1]. I'm starting to feel like either I may have completely misunderstood the situaion, or one or the other of the bots has it wrong... Pinging @
Kanashimi: as maintainer of the other bot.
Just Step Sidewaysfrom this world ..... today18:38, 1 July 2024 (UTC)reply
You removed the instance of <ref name="Benson p. 78"> that defined the reference with the bad link, but you left an instance of <ref name="Benson p. 78" /> behind which results in a
big red error in the references section. AnomieBOT fixed that by copying the ref body into the <ref name="Benson p. 78" /> you had left behind. If you remove all the instances of the ref from the article, you should be good.
Anomie⚔20:30, 1 July 2024 (UTC)reply
Hello and good day. The most recent change I made today (was 15 minutes ago) for SFO was reverted back by you, I was able to get it to the present stats page which is up to date yet Reference #1 stated "2016 cited but not invoked" I dont understand why that appeared there when I deleted that info in the edit window concerning the source. What is there now only goes up to December 2022. Maybe you can change it again so it does go to the most recent data (May 2024 I believe). Im sure this can be fixed. Have a good day.
Theairportman33531 (
talk)
15:30, 4 July 2024 (UTC)reply
Without more details, I can only guess at what you're talking about. AnomieBOT creates dated maintenance categories in two cases:
At the end of each month, it creates the categories for the new month. This saves the category temporarily being a redlink when someone adds the first maintenance tag dated with the new month.
If a past dated maintenance category is not empty, AnomieBOT creates it. Sometimes the edit adding a page to the category is reverted, but AnomieBOT can't know that is going to happen.
Hhi Anomie(BOT). I just wanted to say thanks for the great work you do rescuing orphaned refs. It avoids so many broken references. Regards.
DH85868993 (
talk)
06:45, 1 August 2024 (UTC)reply