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

Possible change to Hazard-bot

I want to request a slight change to the text Hazard-Bot makes when creating a specific daily category, but considering its operator, Hazard-SJ, hasn't made an edit in over two years, I'm not sure going to his talk page to request such would be worth it. What do I do in this situation? JHD0919 (talk) 11:26, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Hello, how can I help? Hazard-SJ (talk) 13:59, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

See your talk page. JHD0919 (talk) 16:06, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

As evidenced by the above, first point of contact is always the bot op. Most people, even if they don't make edits, will watch their talk page, have email notices enabled or similar. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:06, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

User:Mathbot needs a new owner

Crossposting at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#User:Mathbot needs a new owner for best coverage. User:Oleg Alexandrov has asked in a recent discussion:

Are there any poeple willing to maintain this bot? Last time I worked with Dreamrimmer who is listed as co-owner at https://toolsadmin.wikimedia.org/tools/id/mathbot. If he is around, or somebody else is willing to help adopt the bot, that would be great. It has been too long and I don't visit much or remember how things work anymore.

Note that Mathbot is a fairly important bot, as it cues up the new pages for AfD and maintains other aspects of AfD. BD2412 T 15:09, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

DreamRimmer is still active, pinging them. Tenshi! (Talk page) 15:24, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm still around and check the bot's activity every few days, so don't worry. – DreamRimmer ■ 15:30, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

The bot has a very similar scope to the XFD-related tasks that Anomie's AnomieBOT runs. Izno (talk) 15:45, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/FlammableBot 2

Is this not just a cosmetic edit? Whilst having the links comply with MOS:POSLINK is best practice the guideline only says should, not must. The edits themselves do nothing to alter the rendering of the page and provide 0 benefit to readers, only a minor benefit to editors. Traumnovelle (talk) 01:28, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

Note: Pausing the bot run for the moment (just happened to come across this topic in my watchlist).

I believe that the discussion Wikipedia:Bot requests#Request for bot to perform automated task related to MOS:POSLINK addresses quite a bit of this, and showed overall consensus for the task. The edits do change the rendering of the page, see George Washington's vs George Washington's. This makes editing slightly easier and makes the appearance of most links consistent with the style guide (instead of having some of both kinds of links everywhere). FlammablePizza (talk) 02:30, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

The change is visible to readers, so it doesn't fall under cosmetic changes. @FlammablePizza, I forgot to mention this when closing the BRFA, but this isn't urgent or something that needs to be done quickly. Just take it easy, a couple thousand a day at a slow speed is fine, so it won't clutter people's watchlists. – DreamRimmer ■ 04:12, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

Facepalm I was under the impression that the bot flag hid the edits from both Recent Changes AND Watchlists by default… I’ll be sure to set it to a higher edit throttle before any more edits. FlammablePizza (talk) 04:24, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

FlammablePizza, it does. — Qwerfjkltalk 17:00, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

Okay, I set it set to a 40s edit throttle (about 1.5 edits a minute). May lower it to 30s (2 edits a minute) if I continue running it in these roughly 12-16 hour batches. FlammablePizza (talk) 13:06, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

Courtesy diffs: . –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:38, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

EmausBot leaving incorrect redirect tag

I just spent considerable time tracking down an incorrect redirect tag (which may mean that I am a retired IT engineer and I can still track the behavior of software). There is a redirect from Alper Yilmaz to Anadolu Efes S.K. that says it is from a page name without diacritics to a page name with diacritics. No. Those are two different names. It turns out that this is the result of User:EmausBot fixing a double redirect by merging the redirects at . One of the redirects that was merged had been from Alper Yilmaz to Alper Yılmaz. My questions are:

• Who is maintaining EmausBot? User:Emaus seldom edits. Do they maintain the bot?
• How should a merged redirect be tagged when it is no longer between two pages with almost the same name?

Robert McClenon (talk) 16:49, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

For the benefit of non-admins, the history of Alper Yilmaz before it was G6ed had a creation by User:Eubot on 2008-03-25, comment "Redirected page to Alper Yılmaz.", with content

#REDIRECT [[Alper Yılmaz]] {{R from title without diacritics}}

, followed by an edit by EmausBot on 2013-03-13, comment "Bot: Fixing double redirect to Anadolu Efes S.K.", with content

#REDIRECT [[Anadolu Efes S.K.]] {{R from title without diacritics}}

IMO, in this case a proper action could have been for the bot to add {{R avoided double redirect}} and/or to set |of= on {{R from title without diacritics}} to indicate the appropriate title. Anomie⚔ 20:54, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

I see that User:Emaus edits on other Wikipedias, and have tried to notify them on the Russian Wikipedia. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:04, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

Spam block list override

Special:ListGroupRights#bot includes: "Bypass the spam block list (sboverride)". This was added after phab:T313107: "Grant bots the sboverride userright". The archiving bots Lowercase sigmabot III and ClueBot III stopped triggering the spam block list after this when the archived text happened to have a blacklisted link. That's good. ListeriaBot (bot since 2015) and SchlurcherBot (bot since 2025) still trigger the spam block list often. They aren't used for archiving and I don't know whether blocking their edits is a problem but I wonder whether there is a deliberate difference caused by something (e.g. a setting somewhere or the blacklisted link already being on the parent page), or it's a bug. I don't have a bot or plan to make it. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:07, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

My first uneducated guess was that it was a difference related to Archives but this edit says otherwise. Interested to hear the answer https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&logid=183850995 Dw31415 (talk) 01:30, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

It may be that ListeriaBot and SchlurcherBot are using OAuth or BotPasswords without including a grant that applies the sboverride right, while the others either don't use those or include an appropriate grant. I'd think that, if blocking the edits were actually a problem, the bot operators would have looked into it. Personally, I'd rather that AnomieBOT's OrphanReferenceFixer task would have edits blocked, but it does need the relevant grant for other reasons so 🤷. Anomie⚔ 12:29, 13 August 2026 (UTC)