This is an archive of past discussions with User:FACBot. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Hi Hawkeye7, I'm posting this here to avoid the clutter at WT:FAC. Firstly, thanks again for getting this bot working on FA-related pages - it is much appreciated. The extension to WP:FANMP is particularly useful. However, there is a bug, perhaps two... The following articles have not appeared on the main page but the bot has excluded them from WP:FANMP (because they are the first article in a section or subsection?)
1940 Brocklesby mid-air collision - first article listed under "Warfare" (although this is scheduled to appear on the main page, it has not appeared yet and so should still be on WP:FANMP until it does appear)
Finally, how often is the bot going to update FANMP and does it have a scheduled time? Is it going to add {{FA/BeenOnMainPage| }} around the relevant article each day at WP:FA too? What the last bot did was to add the "BeenOnMainPage" code to the TFA at just after midnight UTC, then regenerate WP:FANMP to remove the new TFA (and also to add any articles promoted that day to FANMP).
Yes, that is the plan. I have to go through the Bot approval process. Like FAC, this can take a while these days, as there are so few active editors. In the meantime, I will run it by hand. Hawkeye7 (talk) 13:07, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for this fix, but now there is another problem... (sorry!) The following articles are missing from FANMP, but they were there before the bot's latest run - perhaps it doesn't like colons?
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Hello there, Hawkeye. I noticed that FACBot recently archived Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Amphetamine/archive4 and made the corresponding closure on the article's talk page. However, instead of putting the link to the failed nomination under the "Article milestones" template, it put it at the very top of the talk page. Is there any way to get it to put the result under "Article milestones", or does that have to be done manually? AmericanLemming (talk) 14:42, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
I've never seen the article history put on a talk subpage before, as had been done, so no wonder the bot's done that. I've merged back the article history onto the main talk page and added the latest action as no.6. BencherliteTalk15:00, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
"uncuccessful" (a v minor point, I know!) Is the bot going to be updating WP:FA to mark new TFAs and then updating WP:FANMP, or is your plan to leave that for another botreq once this one is approved? BencherliteTalk20:21, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for making the change to accommodate incorporating prior GAs into articlehistory. I know articlehistory is the bugbear of this code, so I'm sorry to ask, but can you incorporate handling standalone PR and FAC templates too? I think those are the only other standalone templates that would significantly affect articlehistory order.
The only other issue I've noticed is kludgy oldids. It appears that the bot is using the oldid of the most recent edit at the time it updates articlehistory. This is close enough if the bot runs every day, but we know they sometimes just...don't. I'd like to see more robust handling; given that we know the timestamp of the actual promotion, it should be fairly simple to acquire the corresponding oldid.
Ah, I see. Once in a while we get a good-faith nomination of an article that turns out to be very much not FAC-ready. If the FAC is closed quickly without substantive comments other than 'not ready', the FAC delegates (or occasionally me or another FAC regular) sometimes make a judgment call to close it without including it in the archive log. This used to happen quite often, and it seemed best not to clutter up the archive logs with tons of wholly aborted FACs. In these cases, we typically did not bother even adding an articlehistory since there was implicitly no commentary; we would just add archive tags to the FAC page and remove the FAC template from the article's talk page. This is likely to continue happening occasionally, so you might want to add some handling for it eventually.
I looked through yesterday's edits and everything is going great! I was happy to see that you've incorporated catching prior GANs/PRs as well as better oldid handling. I found only one glitchy thing and it was a real fluke: in this edit, I think the bot got confused by the end braces of a convert template inside dykentry text, mistaking them for the end braces of articlehistory itself. Seems unlikely to recur very often, so I'm not worried about it. Thank you very much for continuing to improve the bot! Maralia (talk) 03:52, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
The code to add |currentstatus=FA was already there, but there was another of those case sensitivity errors, which I have now corrected. Have implemented a parser for the GA and PR templates, and added DYK as well. I'll be keeping a close eye on the Bot, but please report any error you spot, however minor. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:40, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
For all reviews: add {{FARClosed}} at the bottom with the appropriate result; move the transcluded review from WP:FAR to the correct section at Wikipedia:Featured article review/archive; add {{FAR top}} and {{Fa bottom}} (substed and with correct result) to the review page; update the ArticleHistory.
For delisted reviews only: remove the star from the article; remove the article from WP:FA and add to corresponding section in WP:FFA (updating total counts); blank all WikiProject assessments.
The steps Gimmebot used to follow are outlined at User:Maralia/FA bot#FAR closing. The only significant differences from FAC processing are that FAR doesn't keep separate archive logs for kept vs removed FARs (they are all logged to Wikipedia:Featured article review/archive, in Kept or Removed subsections), and that FA quality assessments are to be removed if the article loses FA. Otherwise, the steps are identical: add archive tags to the FAR page, remove the article star if appropriate, remove the FAR template, and update articlehistory.
My $0.02: I think the FAR delegates need to continue both adding the FARClosed tag and moving the FAR from WP:FAR to the log. The FARClosed tag is meant to be a status notification for the nominator and reviewers; it's not an ideal signifier for the bot to take action because FARClosed remains on many closed FARs, too, so the move to the log is probably (as with at FAC) the best thing for the bot to key off. Adding removed articles at WP:FFA should probably remain a human task, too, since 'adding to the corresponding section' involves a judgment call on the topic (if memory serves, Gimmebot did not do this either, although it did update links to renamed pages there). Maralia (talk) 04:12, 12 November 2014 (UTC)== Article milestones ==
A bug was found where MilHist articles with A-Class=pass were being changed to A-class=FA. This has been corrected. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:35, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
Buggy edit
@Hawkeye7: The bot went a little wacky in this edit. This article is a former FFA, current GA, that just had a failed FAC nom. Two issues:
The bot seems to have simply search/replaced "FFA" with "GA" which resulted in an invalid current status of "GA/GA"
The proper currentstatus in this situation should not have been "GA" but rather "FFA/GA".
The bot seems to be updating WP:FANMP just before midnight UTC (23.48). Can you do the following?
Shift it back by 13 minutes to 00:01 UTC,
Start at WP:FA
add {{FA/BeenOnMainPage| }} around the new day's TFA - if it helps, you can use {{TFA title}} and its daily bot-created subpages at {{TFA title/December 17, 2014}} etc to find the title of the TFA.
Only then update FANMP?
At present, the /BeenOnMainPage part is being done by a human, but it used to be done by a bot (and it makes sense for it to be your bot doing it as part of keeping FANMP up to date. Thanks, BencherliteTalk20:53, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
Bump. Any chance you could add 2 and 3 to the bot's "to do" list? No-one had updated WP:FA with {{FA/BeenOnMainPage| }} around TFAs for a month, so WP:FANMP was very out of date. Please? BencherliteTalk00:22, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
Duplicate maindate
See this edit which added |maindate=13 March 2015 to the article history when there was already a correct |maindate parameter, added some weeks ago in a previous edit to the talk page by a human. It's done the same thing for other days too. Is the bot doing this instead of adding {{FA/BeenOnMainPage| }} around WP:FA entries, something I've bumped in a thread a couple above this one? BencherliteTalk00:27, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
The Bot can't read, so it looks for the FARClosed template. If it isn't there, the Bot will not know that the review has been closed. I have added it, and the Bot will close the review tomorrow. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:30, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
We can do that. No use pinging me. You need to come up with a consensus as to how these things are handled. All I can say is that the Bot cannot read, and cannot work out what you mean. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:26, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
That was an out-of-process FAR that doesn't belong in articlehistory and wasn't added to FAR archives, so doesn't require any bot processing ... no ??? In the "olden days" it would have been housekeeping deleted (which it still could be). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:52, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
Apparent bug
FACBot seems to have made a buggy closing in this close (fixed here). I assume the {{shy}} template within the DYK entry is what confused it. Assuming the template is the issue, I would think having it strip out or subst templates from DYKs in the history altogether would be the way to go. Soft hyphens have value when trying to squeeze text into a small box on the main page, but since the articlehistory box is both full-page-width and collapsed, saving space isn't an issue. The only other templates I can imagine ever being used within DYK text are {{nbsp}} and {{nowrap}}, both of which could safely be subst-ed. – iridescent10:12, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
Yes, that is the problem, and it is difficult to deal with because handling requires a more elaborate parse of the article history. None of these templates seem to be necessary, so it would be easier to remove them. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:53, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
Hello @Hawkeye7:, could you have a look at the bot's handling of TFA-articles please (both in WP:FA and WP:FANMP)? It looks like the bot stopped those TFA-related functions (mark as "been on Main Page" and remove them from the "hasn't been TFA" list) since 30/31 May, and is only doing the FAC-archiving and -promotion functions. I and RekishiEJ have updated a few entries manually since then. GermanJoe (talk) 09:26, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Fixed The Bot expected to find the date with a zero in the month, so it wasn't working on 1 thru 9 of the month. This has been corrected. It seems to have affected us in February, March and April too, but was not reported. I checked them, and they were updated manually. My apologies. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:58, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Looks like the bot cleaned up the old cases in WP:FANMP, so they should be OK now :). Thank you for the quick fix. AnomieBot II had 2 minor problems in May with TFAs too, where the TFA title was confusingly bolded: see User_talk:AnomieBOT#AnomieBOT_II_-_missing_TFA_templates. But both cases have been added manually to WP:FA and have been correctly removed from WP:FANMP later (no action needed, just mentioning them fyi). GermanJoe (talk) 14:43, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
Removal of GA topic parameter
I recently noticed this edit to Talk:Addition by FACBot updated the article history by adding the FAC result, but when it merged {{GA}} into {{ArticleHistory}} it removed the topic parameter of the GA (in this case, "Mathematics and mathematicians"). It should have copied the topic over to the ArticleHistory template; the parameter has the same name there. — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e)00:07, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
Anomaly
@Hawkeye7: Once in a while I get a glitch where the bot doesn't pick up a promotion. Here I promoted 4 articles. The bot picked up three, but not Bodley. Usually removing and re-adding it to the promotion log solves the problem, but do you have any idea what might be causing it? --Laser brain(talk)17:33, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure. This is very odd. Unfortunately, I cannot do anything about it now, but I will investigate the problem when I get back from China in two weeks time. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:43, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
FACBot has made two similar errors in the past two days: [5][6]. In both cases it added a "maindate=" parameter when the parameter was already there; in the second case it actually added the parameter to a {{sclass}} template. —Granger (talk·contribs) 01:26, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
This FLC isn't closing properly. I forgot to sign when I originally added the FLCClosed template; is that what's causing the problem? If so, should I revert myself and re-add the template? Giants2008 (Talk) 15:12, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
No. When you don't sign, the Bot simply uses the article history to extract the date and time of closure instead. I am not sure what the problem is. I am investigating. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:04, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
FLC bugs
Two bugs to report for the FACBot's FLC work; 1 major, 1 minor:
The Bot had instructions not to do the FLRCs automatically, because I wanted to check that it it handled them correctly. I will get it to process them. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:57, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
Done It is processing them now. There was a minor problem related to the status of a FFL, which is now corrected. (The Bot sets their class back to "List" for all projects.) Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:20, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
No, I missed it. The problem was that the Bot finds featured list removal candidates by looking in Category:Wikipedia featured list removal candidates, but it wasn't there. I think it may have had something to do with the page being renamed. I added it back to the category, fiddled with some redirects, and ordered the Bot to try again. Everything looks good now. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:48, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
FACBot converted a GA nominee template
Although it shouldn't touch a GA nominee template, which indicates an GA nomination, in this edit, while processing a newly closed and unsuccessful FAC, the bot also processed a GA nominee template on the talk page as if it were a regular GA template and the article had been listed, adding both by creating an Article history template. (It had not been listed as a GA.) I've fixed the Talk:Gail Halvorsen page, removing the GAN from Article history and restoring the GA nominee template.
Of course, it isn't supposed to be possible that an FAC and a GAN be open at the same time—if nothing else, one or the other is supposed to be closed when the other is opened—but it happens occasionally, and sometimes the decision is to close the FAC and others to close the GAN. (The FAC reviewers noticed that there were both an FAC and a Peer Review ongoing and the latter was closed, but not that there was also a GAN.) I suspect the bot needs to not only check for "GA" immediately inside the template, but also that it is not immediately followed by "nominee". BlueMoonset (talk) 15:02, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
Hawkeye7, it just happened again at Talk:Fountain pen. I've fixed the Article history accordingly, which had previously been created and was only being added to here. This time, the same person started a GAN and then an FAC; the FAC was closed (article not ready), but the bot also closed up the active GAN, which is under review at the present time. BlueMoonset (talk) 02:40, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
It seems to be a timing problem. The FACBot normally runs shortly after midnight Zulu each day, and sweeps up the FACs promoted the previous day. So it can sometimes have one for the previous period. I will change it to check the date on the goings-on page, and add to the previous one if necessary. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:07, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
Okay, that is done. If the article does not pertain to the correct week, then it will not update the goings on. Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:39, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
Bad edit
With this edit, the bot (1) changed another editors comments and (2) introduced a duplicate parameter error by adding a second action2, rather than using action3. After I fixed the second error, it was subsequently reintroduced by SchroCat. Thanks! Plastikspork―Œ(talk)00:47, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
Hi -- just doing some stats analysis on April FACs, and I found this, which doesn't seem to have been processed. Looks like the FAC is not linked on the article talk page -- is that why? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:13, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
I will investigate. I can't tell what is going on without checking the logs, and I can't do that until I return home. (I may get the Bot to put them in the drop box in future so I can read them remotely.) The Bot sends me error reports with logs when it has a problem, but it has not detected one. I will have to get back to you in a few days. Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:50, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Resolved
Now that I can see the log, the Bot says: "WARNING: FAC closed but Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Philippine Competition Commission/archive1 has NOT been moved to the archive page". This is true; I have made this change, and it was processed. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:38, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
Bot error
The bot on this edit removed three entries that had the word Naruto in it from a FA promotion. Is there a way that the bot can only remove the proper link and not all links containing the same word? -- 198923:38, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
I thought it would be okay too. But I'm kind of lazy, which is why I use Bots. Your proposed fix should be okay. The Bot looks for the "Articles (15, most recent first)" line. It obtains the number to keep from that line. It adds the new entry, and then counts the lines from there. So ones beyond 15 are omitted. (This allows you to change the number of entries.) It assumes it has reached the end of the section when it reaches a blank line or the "Topics (15, most recent first)" line. I have just now told it to respond to your </div> card as well. So you shouldn't need the blank lines. Hawkeye7(talk)05:25, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
Hi, it appears that the FACbot is not running on WP:FLC for the last few days- its last edit tot he page was on December 7, and there have been several promotions since that haven't been touched, as well as nominations crossing the "old nominations" line not getting moved. --PresN12:47, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
There was an outage on 8 December, and there has been some problems since then. I have run it from the remote backup. I will try to have it run each day. Hawkeye7(discuss)23:16, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
Thank you! No worries, mainly just wanted to make sure you were aware, since it seemed the bot was still running on other pages. --PresN02:25, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
The problem is Warning: Template include size is too large. Some templates will not be included. You can see the effect down the bottom; the References and external links sections are not processed properly. I corrected the FL star by moving the template to the top. I will raise a request and see if anything can be done. Hawkeye7(discuss)20:45, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
Hmm, Hawkeye7, looks like the archived page has been truncated at the point someone put {{Non-free with NC}} in there -- I take it the bot dislikes this...? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 04:03, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
The problem was this:
Ah yes. In that case you'll need to add something like <noinclude>{{Non-free with NC}}</noinclude> on its own. [[User:Jo-Jo Eumerus|Jo-Jo Eumerus]] ([[User talk:Jo-Jo Eumerus|talk]], [[Special:CentralAuth/Jo-Jo Eumerus|contributions]]) 19:18, 11 April 2018 (UTC)}}
The Bot normally strips out the text between <noinclude>...</noinclude> tags, this being the FA toolkit at the top of each nomination. I have instructed it to only remove the first one. This should resolve the problem. Hawkeye7(discuss)04:58, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
Invalid date error
Hi team, while updating this FLC, the bot updated the date in the form of DD MM YYYY instead of the DMY format, which caused an invalid date format error to be thrown. —IB[ Poke ]04:08, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
– I didn't move all the fixes that had been racked up into production, and there was a dependency. Copied the new template handling modules across. Hawkeye7(discuss)23:22, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
FAC archive handling
The FACBot added this notice to the article TP after I withdrew the nom. Can't we simply state the nominator "withdrew it as a candidate"? The template also states that Morgan le Fay is a former featured article, but I can't find when or why. Thanks in advance....Atsme📞📧00:22, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
Hi Atsme, the closing note on the article's FAC nomination page states that "this candidate has been withdrawn", after that the FAC bot treats it the same as other archived noms. As to the "former featured article" bit and the half-completed new FAC nomination, those seem to have been introduced by the closing bot -- Hawkeye7, would you mind taking a look when you get a chance? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:22, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
Resolved
– In the latest version, although it looks like the Bot performs only a few simple operations, to do them, it actually breaks down the entire page and rebuilds it completely. This resolves problems we have had with template handling, particularly where templates contain templates (contain templates...) (1) The FFA was an error on my part. (2) Failure to remove the nomination template was caused by an error in the recursive template search method, which has been corrected. (3) Corrected a problem with display of default template parameters. Your forbearance is greatly appreciated. In answer to Atsme, "withdrawn" is not a valid parameter to {{Article history}}. Hawkeye7(discuss)05:30, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
Change?
I was going through articles, and it seems that the bot, when updating {{ArticleHistory}} for a FAC passing, currentstatus= is untouched, leaving it as the previous class. See here. Is it possible to change that? Eddie891TalkWork 19:24, 19 August 2018(UTC)
Given that this section is receiving some commentary at the moment, I just wanted to check: what is the cut off point for the bot to move an article into "older nominations"? Something doesn't look quite right to me on the current list. But it may just be me. Sarastro (talk) 22:54, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
Dear Hawkeye,
I wonder if you could have a look at the workings of the FAC bot in relation to Sandringham House. It was promoted on 20 September by Ian but the bot appears not to have worked its usual magic and the little star has yet to appear. Thanks and regards. KJP1 (talk) 06:25, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
– Problem with incorrectly calling the new parser modules. Corrected. Note that articles promoted on Saturdays do not normally make the Goings On page, as the Bot will not run until Sunday, and a new week will already have started. Hawkeye7(discuss)00:57, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
A long-standing problem has been cases where the templates on the talk pages contained other templates (which sometimes contained other templates, and so on, ad infinitum). The simple pattern matching rules that the Bot used to make sense of it all worked most of the time, but not all of the time. So when I had the time, I wrote a new library that completely parses the page. This was implemented after I got back from Germany. Some bugs have since been found, which are related to how the Bot interacts with the new library. There was an error in the routine that handled merging the GA template into the Article History, which has been corrected. Hawkeye7(discuss)05:55, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
U-1 class submarine not added by FACBot for some reason
Resolved
– @Kges1901: The Bot was only adding articles that had passed A-class review to the MilHist FA showcase. The article in question had passed an ACR, but back in 2009, and had not been added to the showcase (or maybe it didn't exist back then). I have instructed the FACBot to add all MilHist articles to the FA showcase, whether or not they were A-class. Hawkeye7(discuss)00:06, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
– Two problems actually; one about parameter names containing an ampersand, and the other regarding the confusion of a reference tag with a parameter name. Both related to the token processes in Parser.pm. Changed one line to handle these situations. Hawkeye7(discuss)23:59, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
FAC closures
@Hawkeye7: For some reason the bot hasn't run for a few days, although there are some FACs that have been closed. Is it something we've done wrong? Sarastro (talk) 11:51, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
Yep, I had a look at Endless Night and couldn't spot anything obvious like the article name having changed halfway through the nom or something... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:33, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
Resolved
– A syntax error on my part. The FACBot has run and processed all the outstanding requests. But Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Endless Night (song)/archive2 has a different problem. The Bot complained that Ian had not signed the {{FACClosed}}. I added his signature and the FACBot proceeded the review. I'm not sure why I did it this way but I could have the FACBot invoke whodunnit, a routine that figures out who made a change by searching the change history. Hawkeye7(discuss)23:08, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
Tks Hawkeye! Yes, I generally preview my closes to make sure I've got the syntax right and noticed I'd accidentally used a square instead of curly bracket around FACClosed, and in correcting that managed to clobber my signature (and of course not preview it)... ;-P Cheers, Ian Rose (talk)
On checking, I found that the Bot already invokes whodunnit to find details of the closure, and that the date on your signature line is used for display only. Therefore, I have rewritten the code to use the timestamp returned from whodunnit instead, reformatting it in the display form when required. The problem should not then recur, even if you forget to sign. Hawkeye7(discuss)23:23, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
@Hawkeye7: Sorry, another one! I've just noticed that on its most recent runs, the bot has left the GA icon when it added the FA icon. Not a bit deal, obviously, but just letting you know as it didn't do that before. Sarastro (talk) 01:40, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
Resolved
– Two problems here: (1) Non-matching of Good Article template, (2) Non-removal of Article from Good Articles list. First was a typo, the second was a logic error in the new code to handle renaming of GA admin pages. Corrected, and ran a script to fix the articles in error. Hawkeye7(discuss)04:20, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
– My apologies. Changes to the Bot runs were mandated by a recent move to a new server. I made a typo (a small 'f' instead of a capital) which confused the Bot. The error occurred during a manual test run. The problem has been corrected, and the invalid changes have all been reverted. Hawkeye7(discuss)04:53, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
– My apologies. Changes to the Bot runs were mandated by a recent move to a new server. The upgraded version of Perl flooded me with messages about unescaped literal "{" characters in regular expression patterns no longer being permissible. [11] In escaping all the instances, I accidentally changed one too many. A fix has been applied. Hawkeye7(discuss)05:03, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
I'm not seeing changes to any of the perl files on the bot's user page. Is there a place I can check your changes? Isa (talk) 00:01, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Well, I still can't see the changes you did because you didn't import your commits ;) But thank you for taking the time to do this, I appreciate it. Cheers. Isa (talk) 19:26, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
Bug: Articles that fail a FLC retain the GA status
But on second thought, there should probably be a custom FFLC/GA status for failed featured list candidates that are good articles. I'll probably go make an edit request to add that as a status at article history later. Retro (talk | contribs) 18:22, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
Hi! I use the FAC page closure result string to parse FAC result for WP:Article Alerts, which used to be "promoted" and such. Could you tell me what the bot means by "archived", such as [15]. Is this synonymous with "not promoted"? — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK09:09, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
@Ian Rose: I'm sure this has been asked (and answered!) many times, but why does it only run twice a day? What's the difference with the GA bots, which seem to rum every hour (or somesuch). Cheers, ——SerialNumber5412909:50, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
The FAC job doesn't run twice a day, it only runs once a day. The difference between the task of the GA Bots and the FACBot is that a GA can be closed by any user, and there are a potentially large number of GAs at any given time. Whereas FACs are only closed by a small number of coordinators, and on average there is less than one FAC per day. So it didn't seem worthwhile to run more often. If Ian wanted it run more often I could adjust the crontab. Hawkeye7(discuss)12:09, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
Funny, I always thought it was only once a day but assumed SN knew more than I... ;-) I kind of like it infrequent as it means there's usually time to clean up the mess if I make a mistake promoting or archiving something... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:15, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
Hi Hawkeye, The FACBot is playing up a little at the moment, adding an extra ==Nominations== just above the Older nominations header, such as here. It looks like it's been doing it for four days. I can't see what is wrong with the nominations page, so I guess it may be the bot. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 15:26, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
Hi Hawkeye, I have found another error with the FLC nomination pages dating back to March 2019. It seems that since 21 March 2019 the archive header and footers have not been added to a FLC nomination page once either promoted, not promoted, kept or delisted. Refer to Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Featured log/March 2019.
Hi Hawkeye, I seemed to have discovered an issue with the FACBot in relation to the Featured list removal candidates log. Dating back to April 2019, the problem seems to be that the bot is not adding the Featured list removal candidate nomination page to the monthly log page IF there is a nomination page already there with the opposite result.
I didn't think bots interacted with the GA listing pages, but I noticed yours just now.
I've simplified the GA listing format (see this edit-window link for an example). I hope it's not much trouble to slightly modify the bot, regarding diffs like this, to not look for a number/count to change, any more. The other changes are probably transparent to the current programming. (Unless it looks for "nbsp;–" after link.) Thanks, Outriggr (talk) 07:57, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Resolved
– A long overdue improvement. As it happened, the Bot would have handled this correctly, but kudos for having me check. Updated the FAC job, removed the code that updated the totals. Hawkeye7(discuss)23:02, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. I hoped the bot might successfully make "half" the edit with no problems, but tracking that myself before I contacted you would be a little tedious and indirect (looking for the "improper absence" of the edit, once some former-GA new FAC has passed!), so I thought I'd just let you know. Outriggr (talk) 07:36, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Bot keeps re-adding to article milestones
At Talk:Island of stability (also tomorrow's TFA, not sure if that's relevant), the bot has added the same old peer review template to article milestones (with the same diff) no less than seven times over the last two days. I don't believe it's supposed to act like this, and it's adding quite a lot of clutter in there. What exactly is happening, and how can this repetition be stopped? ComplexRational (talk) 10:37, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
Both the humans and the bots would prefer to have the {{featured article}} template up the top instead of down the bottom, but MOS:LAYOUT says otherwise. So the Bot has to find {{DEFAULTSORT}} or the Categories or, failing that, the end of the article. And it did. A {{nowrap}} template was not closed, so it extended to the end of the article. The Bot tried to do the right thing; it closed the {{nowrap}} template and placed the {{featured article}} template before it. I don't know why the humans ignored the warnings messages from the editor. I could add more smarts to the bot to correct these sorts of errors better. The big problem is for the Bot to figure out what to do once it determines that a template is broken. Hawkeye7(discuss)20:00, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
Here the bot failed to recognize the article name. I remember Dank telling me this was a known bug. Last time I tested if the bug still existed, it appeared resolved. Since then we have started using a new template {{Main page image/TFA}}. Could this possibly have affected FACBot? Or was the issue never resolved and I just got lucky the last time I intentionally tried to recreate the bug? --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 06:03, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
Honestly don't know what went wrong here. I ran the bot on it again and it output:
The new template isn't a problem. I also investigated Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 11, 2020. This one went wrong because the Bot could not find the article of the day. It was expecting it to be surrounded in bold quotes and it isn't. Wehwalt corrected the TFA entries but not the blurb (and did not report the error). The Bot expected that you would always write it like this: '''[[HMS Temeraire (1798)|HMS ''Temeraire'']]'''. Now to get around that, I instructed the Bot to take the first link immediately after the {{Main page image/TFA}} template if there is one. Hawkeye7(discuss)07:46, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
I wasn't sure if it was my error and did not see the uncorrected issue. Now I know and will double-check next time I schedule.--Wehwalt (talk) 11:10, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
I think the Taylor Swift error occurred because this is how it appeared when the Bot saw it. Your new instruction to the bot have also taken care of this. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 16:34, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
That was in 2018. There was a problem with the different forms of the peer review template, but this has since been corrected. I re-tested with that article, and it was fine. Hawkeye7(discuss)23:41, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, Hawkeye7; I am pinging in Tom (LT) here, as I am unsure if this question is for you or him. When closing a peer review, one gets an ID parameter (sample here) from the subst. Every other process uses the paramater "oldid" as in the Template:Article history. I imagine you programmed FACbot to handle the ID parameter, but in the interest of getting every one back on the same page so that regular editors will know how to solve issues in the article milestones, would it not be better if the PR closing thingie used the standard terminology "oldid"? Also noting that the "reviewed name" is most appreciated, as this one changed the name right after the FAC closed. I am working towards trying to get everyone back on the same page, as we once had a standard way of building article milestones, but I fear regular editors no longer understand how the template works, so no longer understand how to fix errors when they occur. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:05, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping, that's a great goal. Thanks for the positive note. I implemented |reviewedname= a few months ago because we were getting so many broken links (we currently have around 750 and are awaiting bot approval to fix up these links).--Tom (LT) (talk) 23:43, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
If the template contains an ID, then the Bot uses it; otherwise, it finds that date of the last entry in the history of the peer review page, and calculates the oldid from that. Hawkeye7(discuss)19:50, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
That is leading to errors. I have encountered three times this week where FACbot got the wrong date on a peer review because someone altered the PR page long after its close. It would be optimal if the PR closing script always gave you and oldid and a reviewed name. I am going through fixing them as I find them ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:33, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
The closure script currently does include those two parameters, but I only implemented it two months or so ago. That leaves around 19,940 reviews without those parameters recorded. It would be easy to get a bot to do this (and is on my to-do list to request) but first I am waiting for the 750 or so reviews which have broken links to be fixed. It's a gradual work in progress :) --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:05, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
Re: |ID= I have a couple of things I'm juggling project wise at the moment, but you raise a good point and it's important to standardise, so I'll aim to rename it in the next few weeks. --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:43, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
I know it would be a big endeavor, but my honest opinion is that it would be much easier if there was a single way this were to be dealt with, and in my opinion that would be to use an article subpage, like Mullum Malarum/FAC4 or Aaron Tveit/PR1 and so on. Apart from being standardised, this would also help fix the frustrating issue of broken links, because all these will travel with an article as it's moved. Additionally a standard approach will (I expect) help unify technical things at the back end. I have considered trying to build consensus for this at peer review, but because of the overall Wikipedia situation and the large variation between processes, I've held back from doing this for the moment. --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:43, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
That is a lofty goal that I fear we will never attain ... for example, who on earth can figure out why DYK uses template space, or how to get them to change that. Small steps first ... I am surprised that we have lost so much ground since 2008 when article milestones were implemented on editors not even caring about talk page clutter. I am finding FA after FA where the main editors who went through all these processes do not know how to clean up a talk page or care if the page is cluttered with templates ... so cannot imagine how we would begin to get entire processes to care about changing towards a standard. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:33, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
On this entry, the correct name of the DYKnom was there but changed. Lewis and Clark expedition dollar --> Lewis and Clark expedition gold dollar. When the name has changed, the DYK template is still at the old name, which is usually given in the DYK entry. I found this one as I was processing through December TFAs, fixed.SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:54, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
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