Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard

Bots noticeboard

Here we coordinate and discuss Wikipedia issues related to bots and other programs interacting with the MediaWiki software. Bot operators are the main users of this noticeboard, but even if you are not one, your comments will be welcome. Just make sure you are aware about our bot policy and know where to post your issue.

Do not post here if you came to

• discuss non-urgent bot issues, bugs and suggestions for improvement. Do that at the bot operator's talk page
• discuss urgent/major bot issues. Do that according to instructions at WP:BOTISSUE
• discuss general questions about the MediaWiki software and syntax. We have the village pump's technical section for that
• request approval for your new bot. Here is where you should do it
• request new functionality for bots. Share your ideas at the dedicated page

Bundle tasks or do them one by one?

Not sure this is the right place to ask - at the moment, I'm considering several different tasks for tagging redirects with rcats. Some of these may overlap (e.g., I might tag a redirect with both R with wikidata item and R to anchor). Would it be generally best practice to have these be separate runs and separate edits, or one run/bot task (to reduce the number of edits, server load, etc). My incilnation would be for the second option but I can see the argument that the first would allow it to be more easily monitored. If the second option, should I submit one BRFA or several different ones, since these are still conceptually different tasks which might be approved/rejected separately, just running together for convenience?

Some further context at Wikipedia_talk:Categorizing_redirects#Any_other_rcats_we_can_do_by_bot?. Rusalkii (talk) 04:15, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

Can't think of a better place to ask... </humor>

So, first things first, the best idea is to have a bot edit any given page as few times as possible in succession. In other words, if a page needs Thing A, Thing B, and Thing C all done to it, the best outcome is to have a bot edit the page once. This is not always feasible, but it's our baseline (this was the main issue with some of the linter bots, as it would edit the same page over and over and over to fix "the same issue").

Second, grouping tasks into a BRFA mainly makes sense when those tasks fall under the same and/or a reasonable umbrella; in your case, "adding rcats to redirects" would be that umbrella (and a reasonable one at that), meaning if you wanted to add a wikidata rcat and an anchor rcat it would only need one BRFA, one approval, and one edit to the page.

As a sidebar to this point (and to assuage one of your concerns), this is why good edit summaries are important - it might not matter which rcats are being added but the reader should still know that's what's happening

Specific concerns can always be asked about here, I'm mostly trying to answer your question in the general sense.

I would also note that BRFAs can be amended (see e.g. this discussion about amending vs new BRFAs) so if for some reason your rcat task needs to add (or remove) additional rcats, that might not strictly need a new BRFA (and in the case of removal, doesn't mean the whole task is invalid).

In summary, a well-worded proposal with consensus to add multiple different types of rcats only needs to be a single BRFA, which allows for editing any given page the fewest number of times. Primefac (talk) 11:26, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

Got it, thanks! Rusalkii (talk) 18:38, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

Commons needs help from a bot programmer

Hi all. Commons:Categories for discussion used to be archived by SteinsplitterBot, but it last ran that task in June and Steinsplitter hasn't responded to a request to fix it.

Commons doesn't have a huge number of bot devs, so I'm now posting here seeking help.

Please ping me if you have any questions. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 02:19, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Update: I placed an identical call for help in Discord and User:MSK responded there! The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 02:56, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Issues with overwriting fair use images.

For example, this one, where the bot simply ignored the last version and botched the resizing. There are some issues like this that need to be resolved. Candidyeoman55 (talk) 00:32, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Also with this. Find a way. Candidyeoman55 (talk) 01:00, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Did you try posting at User talk:DatBot? Anomie⚔ 01:00, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

The issue is the bots using a previous version for the resizing. Candidyeoman55 (talk) 01:02, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Not what I asked. See the header of this page, where it says Do not post here if you came to discuss non-urgent bot issues, bugs and suggestions for improvement. Do that at the bot operator's talk page. Anomie⚔ 01:35, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

I'see if it works... Candidyeoman55 (talk) 02:02, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Retargeting after Moving

Hi there! This is basically me testing the waters to figure out how to move forward as I'm not too familiar with the precedent on this. I (more or less frequently) close RMs, which occasionally necessitates the retargeting of a lot of wikilinks on other pages, for example if a page is demoted from primary topic and its current name becomes a DAB page. (see Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions § Cleaning up after a change in topic structure) As sometimes the link counts for such pages can go into the thousands I think this could fit squarely into WP:MEATBOT. As I've usually avoided closing moves requiring this, I haven't figured out everything yet but there are some scripts that could fulfill this purpose or possibly better AWB/JWB.

As I didn't want to go to the trouble of creating a bot account and everything to file a BRFA to just find out I had it the wrong way around and waste everyone's time, I've come here first. How should I go forward, is this just a thing tolerated anyways, should I figure out a specific concept and file a BRFA or put the idea out of my mind completely?

Kind Regards, squawk7700 (talk) 17:59, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Oh and sorry if this isn't the right place to ask, just tell me and I'll move it ~ squawk7700 (talk) 18:10, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Such a bot would have to be manually directed, else I believe it would run into WP:CONTEXTBOT issues. As for filing a BRFA, any BRFA should be run by a bot per WP:BOTACC. I think it could be reasonable as a general task, but I would advise you to think about how often these moves occur, and how many links they usually have, and with that in mind, whether it would be worth it overall as opposed to someone running AWB/JWB. Tenshi! (Talk page) 18:25, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for your fast reply, and for the Insight. I think my original post was written a bit confusing, I always intended to do this with AWB/JWB, I think I should have better phrased this as do I need to run a BRFA for this (similar to the the "enabledbots" on the CheckPageJSON). But with your and Anomie's comment combined I can answer that as well, this will probably just boil down to me manually using AWB on a second account reviewing the context for each change. Thanks again! squawk7700 (talk) 19:55, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The important part of WP:MEATBOT is "pay attention to what you're doing, don't just blindly click 'ok'". In the context of updating incoming links prior to changing the target of a page, that may include verifying that the existing link is actually correct and not a case where someone linked the wrong target (e.g. Apple when they meant Apple). If the community really does want bot-like retargeting without that sort of checking, then they can express consensus for an actual bot to do it. Anomie⚔ 18:28, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Move+ has had functionality to do this for years. It largely gets around the context problems by operating under the principle that it doesn't make things worse; if a link previously pointed at Apple, then if Apple is moved to Apple (fruit), it's reasonable to assume that the link should now point at Apple (fruit); it may mean that existing issues are preserved, but it doesn't introduce new ones.

Personally, I believe that post-RM cleanup is the wrong time to try to fix links pointing at the wrong target for reasons unrelated to the RM; I was previously working on tools like Platybot for part of this; I'll look at digging it up again now I'm back, although I'm currently working on a bot to fix old links that I want to deploy first. BilledMammal (talk) 02:38, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

In a way it does make things worse, though: it converts a link that very plausibly does need review into one that appears to have had its target chosen specifically. It's similar to the practice of explicitly linking a "(disambiguation)" redirect when the intent really is to link the dab page. Anomie⚔ 11:45, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

Double redirects

What active bots do we have that fix double redirects? I just came across a template, Template:Huế, that had been moved twice in the last 24 hours; I decided to manually fix the resulting double redirect, but while checking I found that there were two double redirs, and no less than three triple redirects. All are now fixed with these edits. But surely a bot should have passed by at some point and fixed them automatically? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:54, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

EmausBot, Xqbot, probably more that I'm missing. Tenshi! (Talk page) 10:59, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Apologies for forgetting to update the vte links... Looks like from this discussion that Template redirects should get handled immediately by Emausbot, but if not they'll be covered when the Special page gets updated. Xqbot also goes off the omve log. Primefac (talk) 11:52, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Project statistics table not getting updated

There is a project statistics table here: Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/CE_articles_by_quality_statistics that is showing data about a year old. How can I get it updated? Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask, but I suppose there is a bot that is supposed to be updating it, correct? The table is used by the WP Civil Engineering Project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Civil engineering. I would ask there, but that project is a bit dormant, and I doubt anyone would know how to update the table. Noleander (talk) 22:58, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Did you try asking at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index?

It looks like it stopped when Category:CE articles by quality was renamed to Category:Civil engineering articles by quality, causing the bot to put the statistics at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Civil engineering articles by quality statistics instead. Anomie⚔ 23:39, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for that info. I suppose I'll update the CE project to use the new table. You're a Wizard, Anomie! Noleander (talk) 23:52, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bot requests not archiving

Is something broken on Wikipedia:Bot requests? Multiple very old threads as well as those with {{Done}} on them are not archiving. I even tried adding User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow with no success... Anyone know whats going on? Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 05:18, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

Since ClueBot III has been archiving other pages, it's a problem specific to that page. There are several possibilities:

• unclosed markup, or markup that is opened in one section isn't closed until a later section
• presence of a blacklisted URL
• changes to the parameters of {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis}} - not the case here
• changes to the header section - not the case here

The problem need not be in a section that is eligible for archiving; it could be anywhere.

Adding {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}} won't help, because ClueBot III will only archive a section if it is happy with the whole page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:36, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

Codex found a few issues with backticks, I think the most likely being:

• “Alternatives to bot requests”: eg. ```|url-status=usurped`` has mismatched backticks.

Dw31415 (talk) 11:43, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

If that’s a real issue but doesn’t fix the archiving, let me know here and I’ll run mwparserfromhell on the page. Dw31415 (talk) 11:55, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

That text is in Wikipedia:Bot requests/Header, which has this:

'''Alternatives to bot requests:'''
* [[Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks]], for simple tasks that involve a handful of articles and/or only needs to be done once (e.g. adding a category to a few articles).
* [[Wikipedia:Link rot/URL change requests]], for tasks involving changing or updating URLs to prevent [[link rot]] (specialized bots deal with this).
* [[Wikipedia:Link rot/Usurpations]], for reporting a domain be usurped eg. {{para|url-status|usurped}}

No backticks involved. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:16, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

Stupid bot. (It was guessing from the rendered page). As penance for the slop comment, I ran mwparserfromhell. It found all 25 sections so that a clue that it's not an open format tag. Dw31415 (talk) 12:39, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

Digging in a bit after checking out ClueBot III's code, I don't see any problems with the parsing of the page itself. I do note, though, that Special:Diff/1367872579 reset the timer for several old sections by changing whitespace in them (ClueBot III looks for "section is unchanged since X time ago" rather than looking at signature timestamps). Anomie⚔ 12:29, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

Also, I note that the "archivenow" configuration is case-sensitive, so it won't recognize {{Done}} (only {{done}}). OTOH, it should recognize the {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveNow}} just added, and the {{BOTREQ|done}}. Anomie⚔ 12:35, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

I see 5 topics archived 20 minutes ago. Did you add ArchiveNow? I don’t see that in the page history. Dw31415 (talk) 19:45, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

@Dw31415: They were added by Zackmann08 (talk · contribs) in these four edits. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:41, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn’t go back far enough. Dw31415 (talk) 22:06, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks all! Sorry been offline all day... Looks like it is working again. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 23:04, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

I suspect it was working before, but nothing was ready to archive due to edits like Special:Diff/1367069933 and Special:Diff/1367872579 "resetting the timer" by editing old sections. Anomie⚔ 00:37, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Weirdness. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 00:58, 30 September 2026 (UTC)