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Non-tracked long comments

There are some long comments not using {{subst:long comment}} that seem to have been added long ago, such as this edit to Israeli from 2008.

3926 results for insource:/Long comment to avoid being listed on short pages /.

Many are over 256 bytes (even after you remove the long comment; IIRC one I did manually was 1000+ bytes) and not in Category:Monitored short pages/Category:Long monitored short pages.

These should either be removed or replaced with the proper {{subst:long comment}} (though not if the article would be ≥256 bytes). ~ rusty ^meow ~ 19:56, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

Not so soon, please. By the end of the week, it'll be possible to add __EXPECTSHORTPAGE__ instead of these hacks. Wait until it's decided whether the magic word should be added or some template containing the magic word. ~2026-45514-55 (talk) 20:04, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

The comments should be removed from pages that transclude {{dmbox}}, which is all but three of the results returned by the search link above. That template has been modified to include the magic word that keeps these pages off of Special:ShortPages. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:02, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

While doing this task, a bot or editor should also remove Template:short pages monitor. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:06, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: adding the new magic word here was unnecessary and redundant, because __DISAMBIG__ already excluded these from the short pages list, since this January 2016 MediaWiki update. It's doubtful that any of these even include {{short pages monitor}}. – wbm1058 (talk) 01:15, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

Oh I see, the "disambiguation message box" meta-template also handled set indexes, which were not previously excluded from the {{short pages monitor}}. – wbm1058 (talk) 01:22, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you would say that it is doubtful that a page would contain both {{short pages monitor}} and {{dmbox}} and the long comment text. Two of us linked to search results above showing that nearly 4,000 articles do so. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:43, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

Never mind; I misread the reply above. It looks like there are still 4,000 pages that transclude dmbox and also contain the no-longer-necessary long HTML comment. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:27, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

Summary of the above discussion

Summary of the above for those looking for an AWB task but not wanting to embark on something that might be disputed: A new magic word, __EXPECTSHORTPAGE__, has almost entirely replaced the functionality of {{short pages monitor}} and {{long comment}}. {{Short pages monitor}} has been removed from all pages after checking that it is no longer needed on each one.

The magic word is present in {{dmbox}}, so any page that contains the long comment and transcludes dmbox, 3,900 articles, should have the long comment removed. This is a cosmetic task (i.e. it does not change the rendered page), so an editor might need a BRFA to do this work. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:31, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

BRFA filed – wbm1058 (talk) 22:58, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

 Done – wbm1058 (talk) 19:34, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

More insource searches:

• insource:/Long comment /
• insource:/short pages/

I'm still mopping these up. The Search software times out before it finds everything, just remove the unnecessary long comments found, then search again. – wbm1058 (talk) 19:34, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your diligence. Adding something else to the search makes it not time out and finds almost all of the remaining issues. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:53, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

Incorrect abbreviation

Special:Search/insource:"et al" insource:/et\. al/ should use "et al." rather than "et. al." or "et. al". (It seems that this is already a rule at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos, but somehow this has over 1000 results.) 1234qwer1234qwer4 05:27, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

It looks like many of those are in templates, refs, ref names, etc.—does AWB skip those by default? That wouldn't surprise me. LittlePuppers (talk) 00:52, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

Not sure about typo fixing. For regular replacements, I don't think that is the case (it isn't for JWB), though there are some "ignore" options for text inside certain markup. 1234qwer1234qwer4 17:41, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

Per WP:AWB/T, Typo fixing is prevented within: image names, template names and parameters, wikilink targets, text in quotations and italics, section headers, and any text that follows a colon or asterisk.. LittlePuppers (talk) 21:18, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

That would explain why there are still so many of them... most do need to be fixed, though. 1234qwer1234qwer4 23:31, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

AWB will only change text produced by templates if someone runs AWB on the template itself (and it's not protected beyond the AWB user's privileges). That doesn't happen often, because mass updates to templates are rare. Certes (talk) 10:31, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Doing a quick look at some results, it looks like many of the search results are in, say, ref tags and template parameters, let's say:

<ref>{{citation|author=John Smith et. al; would AWB replace these? ~ rusty ^meow ~ 16:19, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Yes. Need to copy the RETF rule into the personal list (Options → Normal settings) and check that both 'Find & Replace' Ignore... boxes are unticked. Would suggest running with few, if any, other rules activated so no, shall we say, anomalous results occur. Neils51 (talk) 05:34, 28 August 2026 (UTC)

 Done Max (talk) 05:10, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Technically some reference titles (e.g. Special:Diff/1371816693) actually used this, but thanks. 1234qwer1234qwer4 18:23, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Yes, before the actual run I checked what would be affected. Since it was just a typo and fixing it didn't really affect the template, and was actually an improvement overall, I decided not to skip those cases. Max (talk) 18:36, 29 August 2026 (UTC)