Article alerts is a subscription-based
automatic article-monitoring system used to give "status reports" to subscribing
WikiProjects. The reports are created and delivered by
AAlertBot, operated by both
Hellknowz (who also is the sole coder of the bot) and
Headbomb.
Article Alerts is an
automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles tagged by their banners or placed in their categories enter various formal workflows (such as
Articles for Deletion,
Requests for Comments,
Peer Review, and many more).
First
AAlertBot browses
all the workflows in its scope, then checks for WikiProject templates/categories on these pages. If a subscribing WikiProject/Taskforce is found, AAlertBot will update a customized report called Article Alerts for that particular WikiProject or Taskforce. (An example of such a report can be found
here.) Reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what is happening, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. So it is a good idea to
request for a bot to place your WikiProject/Taskforce's banner on articles from relevant
categories, so AAlertBot covers more articles. (See also
Tips and Tricks.)
Originally, the Article Alerts relied on
ArticleAlertbot (coded and updated by
B. Wolterding, operated by
Legoktm) from September 2008 to April 2010 (see
bot approval). Following several months of downtime, a new bot
AAlertBot was developed (coded, maintained, and operated by
Hellknowz, and co-operated by
Headbomb) from December 2010 onwards (see
bot approval).
Report issues and problems with the Article Alerts reports on the
bug reports page. Requests for new features should be made at the
feature requests page.
Please report bugs, missed articles, and any other mishaps on the bug report page. Don't think someone else will do it, because that someone else might think you'll do it, and then neither of you will have reported the bug. It is also possible that the error is specific to your project, so you might be the only one to have seen this error.
Having troubles setting up Article alerts? Leave a message on our
talk page, and we'll try to help as best we can.
Think Article Alerts is the greatest thing since sliced bread? Think it sucks because it doesn't actually cover
Featured deletions? Let us know.
Tips and tricks
Remember to
watch your project's Article Alerts pages.
Did you know that you can monitor your project's Article Alerts using
RSS and
Atomfeeds? Go on your project's /Article alertshistory page, and there should be a "RSSAtom" in your toolbox located on the left of the page.
If a related WikiProject is also subscribed to Article Alerts, you can
transclude their report on your Project's homepage, and monitor their articles too.
Request a bot to place your WikiProject's banner on the articles located in categories relevant to your WikiProject. You will probably end up with some unrelated pages, but at least you've extended Article Alerts to cover many articles you might have missed.
InceptionBot (previously
AlexNewArtBot) is a bot which produces a list of recently created articles that could be in your project's scope. Going through the list to do some tagging will ensure that ArticleAlertbot picks up these articles as well.