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This is the discussion page for the AutoWikiBrowser (AWB) project. It is also the place to discuss using the AWB program (for help, questions, or general inquiries about AWB). Specific guidelines on where to make particular reports or requests are provided in the § Before you post section below. Before asking a question, please refer to the read the § Frequently asked questions below.
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Before you post
[edit]| Do you want to ... | Please use | ||||
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| Report a bug or request a feature in AWB? | Check reported bugs on Phabricator before filing a new bug report. You do not need to create another account there; just log in with your global Wikimedia account. See this MediaWiki wiki page on how to report bugs and request features on Phabricator.
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| Report an incorrectly fixed typo? | Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos | ||||
| Request approval to use AWB? | Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/AutoWikiBrowser | ||||
| Ask a question about AWB or ask for help? | This page |
Frequently asked questions
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Frequently asked questions
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Discussion
[edit]Genfixes removes small tags from citation title
[edit]Nightwalker-87 and I have been discussing my bot's edit to the List of LTE networks in Europe article. While the primary purpose of the edit was to fix |language= parameters, the bot also ran general fixes and removed many <small>...</small> tags under two situations:
- Removes <small> tags inside <small> tags, which is documented as part of FixSyntax
- Removes <small> tags from citation
|title=parameters, which does not seem to be documented at WP:AWB/GF.
I'd like to add case 2 to the general fixes documentation. Would that belong in the FixCitationTemplates section? Does AWB do this because "Wikipedia does not attempt to emulate any stylistic flourishes" in the title per Help:Citation Style 1#Titles and chapters? Or does AWB do this because the tags pollute the COinS metadata? Or is there another reason? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 17:13, 28 February 2025 (UTC)
- At the recommendation of Trappist the monk, I moved
<small>(non-official source)</small>from the|title=parameter to outside the citation template but before the</ref>. However, genfixes still wants to remove the<small>...</small>tags. Could someone please explain this behavior? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 20:13, 28 February 2025 (UTC)- This could be due to MOS:SMALL, an accessibility guideline, which says
In no case should the resulting font size of any text drop below 85% of the page's default font size.
Since text in reflists is already small, using<small>...</small>tags (i.e. reducing the font size to 85% of what it would have been) violates this accessibility guideline. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:39, 2 March 2025 (UTC)- @Jonesey95: Sounds good! I added "Removes
<small>...</small>from citation templates per MOS:SMALL" to the documentation (unless Rjwilmsi or Reedy or someone else thinks differently). Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 23:53, 2 March 2025 (UTC)- The logic we have is that the FixSyntax change for "Removes <small> tags inside <small>, <sup>, <sub> tags" also covers <ref> tags, so I've updated that documentation. There is nothing specifically to remove small tags from within cite templates, your example is small inside ref tags. Rjwilmsi 08:28, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
- Can we extend that logic to infobox template parameter values? Infoboxes are a major source of too-small text. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:01, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
- The logic we have is that the FixSyntax change for "Removes <small> tags inside <small>, <sup>, <sub> tags" also covers <ref> tags, so I've updated that documentation. There is nothing specifically to remove small tags from within cite templates, your example is small inside ref tags. Rjwilmsi 08:28, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
- @Jonesey95: Sounds good! I added "Removes
- This could be due to MOS:SMALL, an accessibility guideline, which says
Adding Engvar tags and WP:MEATBOT
[edit]Last year I started adding {{Use New Zealand English}} tags to New Zealand articles in accordance with MOS:TIES using AWB because I noticed that a lot of NZ articles had American spellings in them and a vandal was changing words to American spellings. Using the hidden categories added by these tags I've completely rid NZ articles of American spellings as far as I can tell. In this discussion I asked how to add the tags to articles and asked if that would count as cosmetic, and GoingBatty nicely helped me and said that it isn't cosmetic because WP:COSMETICBOT says that adding hidden maintenance categories is not cosmetic. Later I found WP:CONTEXTBOT which says that for changes like this that require context, they need human oversight and bots should not do them because they can make errors. When I went ahead and added the tags to thousands of articles I got no opposition (apart from the vandal).
Because I realised that there are probably also vandals changing American spellings to British ones, for the past three months I've been adding {{Use American English}} tags to American articles. I want to use the hidden categories to make SauronBot which will see when people change English variations (accidentally or on purpose) so that editors can be alerted of this and can use their human judgement to fix the edit (if the edit has a problem at all).
The problem is that, unlike when I added the New Zealand English tags, I've had several people complain to me (e.g. here) telling me that I should not be using AWB to add the Use American English tags because it's cosmetic, and I should instead make/use a bot but I disagree with this because of WP:COSMETICBOT and WP:CONTEXTBOT as I've mentioned earlier. Most of these people have backed down but my edits are clearly controversial and I'd like to stop for now and follow rule 3 of WP:AWBRULES to ask the people here: is adding {{Use American English}} tags to articles in accordance with MOS:RETAIN problematic? ―Panamitsu (talk) 07:35, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
- It's definitely not a cosmetic edit, since it adds a category. That changes the appearance of the rendered page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:04, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
- So how would I achieve consensus for rule 3 of WP:AWBRULES? Is this the appropriate venue? ―Panamitsu (talk) 21:58, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
- It is a venue where consensus can be achieved, yes. Primefac (talk) 16:06, 10 March 2025 (UTC)
- How would I know if consensus has been achieved? Has it already been achieved considering that nobody has disagreed with me? If not, how could I get more people to comment on this without canvassing? ―Panamitsu (talk) 21:50, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
- It is a venue where consensus can be achieved, yes. Primefac (talk) 16:06, 10 March 2025 (UTC)
- So how would I achieve consensus for rule 3 of WP:AWBRULES? Is this the appropriate venue? ―Panamitsu (talk) 21:58, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
Unexplained change to a control character
[edit]Run AWB 6.4.0.0 on Armorial of the House of Nassau with everything turned off - no tagging, genfixes, find&replace, anything - and the diff still shows that a black diamond character has been turned into a space. Is this intended? Why is this desirable? A double-click in the diff window fails to undo the change, nor does "Undo all changes" in the edit window. Can someone point me to some documentation or a phabricator task? -- John of Reading (talk) 18:18, 6 March 2025 (UTC)
- The word is probably billette (fr:wikt:billette#Nom commun 2 definition 4) which occurs in several places in that article. I don't have an answer for why AWB replaces the U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER with whitespace. In my experience, that character can be a placeholder for pretty much any other character. Seems to me that AWB would be better off leaving that character alone.
- —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:47, 6 March 2025 (UTC)
- I can't replicate AWB changing that character on the current version of the article text. Rjwilmsi 19:40, 6 March 2025 (UTC)
Lowercase titles on custom wiki
[edit]I have lowercase titles in a namespace on my localhost MediaWiki like how it is done on Wiktionary. Unfortunately, when I try to use AWB on the wiki, it tries to edit "Dictionary:Test", not "Dictionary:test", even if the category source returns properly lowercased pages.
How can I fix this? A diehard editor (talk | edits) 10:00, 9 March 2025 (UTC)
- AWB sets a CapitalizeFirstLetter property which is read from the siteinfo from the mediawiki API. Compare en-wiki and wiktionary, you need to get your localhost version to report "case": "case-sensitive". Rjwilmsi 09:09, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
- Alright, I got it to work by setting $wgCapitalLinks = false; in LocalSettings.php before starting the edits and then commenting it back out afterward. Thank you. A diehard editor (talk | edits) 19:31, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
Named refs genfix issue
[edit]
Moved from User talk:PrimefacSpecial:Diff/1222731766/1280896552 .. it included an entire URL as part of a named ref(!). I assume because it wanted the page number, and the |page= contains a URL. Would it be possible to squelch URLs when creating a named ref? -- GreenC 02:31, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
- That would be a question for WT:AWB, since the change in question was as a result of doing genfixes. Your logic seems sound, though. Primefac (talk) 11:31, 17 March 2025 (UTC) moved from my talk page. Primefac (talk) 11:33, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
- rev 12986 Will fix that in next release of AWB. Rjwilmsi 09:20, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
Still not working
[edit]Ever since August 2024 I have been unable to use AWB. When I try to run it, I get this error message:
**description**:
**workaround**:
--------------------------
<table><tr><th>Exception:</th><td>`UnauthorizedAccessException`</td></tr>
<tr><th>Message:</th><td>`Access to the path 'C:\Program Files (x86)\AutoWikiBrowser\AWBUpdater.exe' is denied.`</td></tr>
<tr><th>Call stack:</th><td><pre> at System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath)
at System.IO.File.InternalCopy(String sourceFileName, String destFileName, Boolean overwrite, Boolean checkHost)
at System.IO.File.Copy(String sourceFileName, String destFileName, Boolean overwrite)
at WikiFunctions.Updater.UpdateUpdaterFile()
at AutoWikiBrowser.MainForm..ctor()
at AutoWikiBrowser.Program.Main(String[] args)</pre></td></tr>
</table>
**OS**: Microsoft Windows NT 6.2.9200.0
**version**: AutoWikiBrowser (6.3.1.0), WikiFunctions (6.3.1.0), revision 12623 (2024-08-08 17:34:31)
**net**: 4.0.30319.42000
**duplicate**:
**site**: https://en.wikipedia.org
As I said last August, the fix suggested then was not usable. By trial and error, I have just found that I can run it if I do so as adminstrator. Please advise. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:18, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
- So if you ran AWB as an administrator once then perhaps Windows requires it thereafter. Perhaps you could try downloading AWB again to a User/Documents folder etc. rather than Program Files? Rjwilmsi 15:49, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
WIR March 2025
[edit]When the Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red newsletter for March 2025 was sent out, it contained a <ref>...</ref> tag but no {{reflist}}/{{reftalk}}, so the ref shows at the bottom of the talk page. Would a change like [1] be something uncontroversial I can do a run on without needing consensus? Thanks. ~ Rusty meow ~ 00:33, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
- Go for it. Primefac (talk) 02:09, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
- How would you even do that with AWB? I'm curious. ―Panamitsu (talk) 03:05, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
- That newsletter was sent to 1580 pages—1550 of which are user talk pages. Are you sure you want to send a new message notification to that many users? People generally dislike new message notifications for cleanup purposes, so I recommend using a bot instead. My bot, DreamRimmer bot III, is approved for this task, and I can help if needed. – DreamRimmer (talk) 05:55, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
- @DreamRimmer: Sure! I didn't know you had a task for that. I just wish to have a {{reftalk}} added to the bottom of the section. ~ Rusty meow ~ 17:27, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
Done – DreamRimmer (talk) 08:12, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
- @DreamRimmer: Sure! I didn't know you had a task for that. I just wish to have a {{reftalk}} added to the bottom of the section. ~ Rusty meow ~ 17:27, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
Infobox display in preview mode
[edit]Some time back, I noticed a change in how articles appear in preview mode. Specifically, the infobox is shown at the top of the screen, and I have to scroll down to see the lead text. Previously, the lead and the infobox were displayed side-by-side, just as they appear in the article. This change happened a long time ago, and I didn't bother to ask about it at the time, but I am wondering if there is a setting that would allow me to preview articles in AWB with the lead text and the infobox displayed beside one another. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 18:43, 21 March 2025 (UTC)