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Agreed bot tasks

Uncontroversial or agreed-upon tasks should be listed here:

Routine bot tasks

  • correcting capitalization of headers, e.g. See Also to See also.
  • add "|{{PAGENAME}}" to category tags, for pages not in the main or category namespaces.
  • fix double-redirects

Suggested bot tasks

  • place these templates on every topic page, if not there already:
  • Look for text strings in articles which are the same as topic and location category names. The first occurrence of this string in each article should generally be wikilinked. (I suggest a policy of using simple links, which will then be redirected, e.g. [[Cambodia]], not [[:Category:Cambodia|Cambodia]]. This makes it less confusing for newbies wanting to learn from the editing. It also makes updating simpler if a category name is ever changed. --Chriswaterguy · talk 19:26, 28 February 2007 (PST))
  • As above, but look for text strings, to help identify pages for categorization. E.g. Look for articles about cohousing, and add [[Category:Cohousing]] (or replace [[Category:Intentional communities]] with [[Category:Cohousing]], as appropriate - this is better but requires more thought & work for each category.)
  • common spelling errors
    • Adapt a bot from Wikipedia?
    • Be sensitive to variations in spelling - some people don't like it if their spellings are "corrected" from American to British forms, or vice-versa.
  • replace [[User:Singkong2005|Singkong2005]] with [[User:Singkong2005|Singkong2005]] ''<small>a.k.a. [[User:Chriswaterguy| Chriswaterguy]]''
  • Tagging pages with apparent non-compliant capitalization
    • Maintain a list (possibly a category) of checked non-compliers.
  • Change header ==Footnotes and references== to ==Notes==. (==References== is a different kind of section - see WP links at the bottom of {{notes}}.)
  • Move the following categories, changing tags in all articles in the category. (Note to bot owner(s): Perhaps it's easier to let the list build up, or else just do it at regular intervals):
  • Fix improperly closed ref tags, which cause the bottom part of pages not to display. Is it possible to detect when a Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag, or by neither?
  • Bots could help with one aspect of our topic/category dilemma:
    • If we go with topic categories, having category redirects will often be essential (due to old links from various places on the internet). However, we don't want people to put anything in these categories. The desired long term solution is that MediaWiki displays these in a way to indicate that they are not appropriate categories (like redlinks) while still allowing the pages to function as redirects.
    • A medium term solution to the redirect issue is that we allow category redirects, using a special template. This would include a regular redirect tag, as well as an explanatory note for those who view it directly. A bot is run as a routine bot task at least once a week on every page displaying this template. It detects whether there are pages in the category, and goes to those pages and fixes the category tag to display the target category. (It will output a log file of changes, so these moves can be checked by a human.) This fixes the single main problem with category redirects.]
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