Wikipedia talk:Article alerts

Can this bot be used on spanish Wikipedia?

I'm still pretty new here so I'm not sure how different Wikipedias operate. Could I use this bot on a Wikiproject on the spanish Wikipedia? If not, can I request as a feature it's implementation on the spanish Wikipedia? Or operation across different-language Wikipedias is not that easy?

Thank you in advance. Irecorsan (talk) 18:10, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Not really, @Hellknowz: can tell you more about the technical reasons, but the main reason is that it very much relies on how the English wikipedia is structured, and you can't easily port that over. The Wikimedia Foundation once accepted to create a bot like this, but they gave up on it because they considered it too complex and not worth spending time on it despite being a highly requested feature by the community. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:14, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, what Headbomb said. It's very English Wikipedia specific. There are probably many similarities with other Wikipedias. But there are probably many more differences. I don't know if it's worth going into technical details, because the list of things that need to be changed is very very long. The bot simply wasn't built with any consideration for multiple Wikipedias. Even some of the English Wikipedia non-standard workflows are a big mess to handle. Personally, there's no way I have the time or resources to do this. In fact, quite the opposite - I was hoping WMF can take over the AA tasks and community contributors can expand from there. So for now it's only English Wikipedia until something major changes or breaks. I can always open-source it, but that would likely mean I will not keep working on it (or be able to offer extensive explanations). —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 20:10, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Understood, thank you both for your replies and the great work! Irecorsan (talk) 21:47, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Film/Article alerts

Hellknowz and Headbomb: I reverted AAlertBot's latest edit of Wikipedia:WikiProject Film/Article alerts. The edit summary explains the issue: Undid revision 1162621881 by AAlertBot (talk) the markup ... see [[Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/{{Infobox film ... cannot possibly be right. Please try again. —Anomalocaris (talk) 18:01, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

It'll overide it again tomorrow. File a bug report and hopefully Hellknowz can get to it shortly. Or maybe there's a problem with the nomination itself. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:12, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

@Anomalocaris: The nomination is definitely broken. It reported it this way because the bot doesn't check or sanitize the template field and the template field included all of the article. I fixed the broken syntax. But I don't see a page where the MfD has actually been created, so it's a redlink. I set the bot to get the page again next run. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 22:17, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

GANs not showing on WikiProject Sweden

I discovered the recently passed GANs for Astrid Lindgren and Basshunter through DYK. It turns out that alerts were properly given at the other wikiprojects listed on their talkpages, but for some reason there was no notice at WikiProject Sweden/Article alerts (archive). Is there a technical issue at play here? Thanks. Draken Bowser (talk) 13:02, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

That's because the project was only subscribed to Deletion sorting and all articles found in Category:WikiProject Sweden articles directly. I've fixed it. The functionality had been broken since 2021. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:35, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

What is the proper way to insert new items to the alerts section?

Hello,

I would like to ask two questions about the alerts section:

1. I understand that there is a bot running and updating the section automatically. Where can I see the criterions that must exist for the bot to insert items to the section? I would also like to ask what are the hours in which the bot runs.
2. Is it possible to insert items manually? if so, is there a specific structure that I must use?

HilbertSpaceExplorer (talk) 08:20, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

@HilbertSpaceExplorer: What is "the alerts section"? You should always state which page you are referring to. As for the second part of question 1, AAlertBot (talk · contribs) runs once a day, at 07:00 (UTC) - you can tell how long it typically runs by the history of User:AAlertBot/Status. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:59, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. I refer to the "alerts" in WikiProject Israel:

Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel/Article alerts

all the questions I asked refer to that page.

HilbertSpaceExplorer (talk) 10:22, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

As you can see in the main list, "WikiProject Israel" is subscribed via talk page banner Template:WikiProject Israel and to listings at delsort page Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Israel. So any page that has the banner or any page manually added to the delsorting would appear in the report. You cannot manually add the pages - generally, you have to tag them as belonging to the project with the banner. (Technically, you can change the report page, but the bot will overwrite and delete the entries anyway.) —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 15:20, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. Will adding the banner also insert the page to the correct place in the alerts section?

Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel/Article alerts

I don't understand for example, how can the bot decide if an article should be placed under "Requests for comments" or under "Requested moves" if the tagging is the same for both cases.

HilbertSpaceExplorer (talk) 17:55, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the page will get inserted to whichever section it belongs to. The banner on the talk page will let the bot know that this page belongs to the project. The actual section or workflow, like "Requests for comments" is decided by the specifics of that Wikipedia process. This gets complicated fast and there are full details at User:AAlertBot/Workflows. The short version is that each workflow has some way to find pages - from category (e.g. Category:Articles for deletion), from template (e.g. Template:Proposed deletion/dated), etc. So, for example, when the bot sees a page that has a Template:WikiProject Israel and Category:Articles for deletion, it knows it's a deletion discussion for the Israel project and will place it in the AfD section of the Israel alerts page. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 19:08, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Understood. I appreciate the detailed answer. Thank you again!

HilbertSpaceExplorer (talk) 22:05, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Pixar work group

It looks like article alerts haven't worked in the Pixar work group since 2011, but I'm not sure how to fix the issue. Anyone know what should be done? ZooBlazer 18:57, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

I re-added the subscription. Looks like it got removed here. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 09:36, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Hmm. The bot didn't deliver anything, and I believe it's because there are no changes since the last time it saw the data. The bot kind of ignores the fact that it hasn't actually written the previous data to the report. I guess one has to wait for anything to change before it writes something. I haven't really implemented any way to check the last delivery date. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 10:01, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Notice of minor change to Module:RfD

I trust that this edit to a template comment is not a breaking change. wbm1058 (talk) 03:25, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Shouldn't do anything. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:48, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: I can go further. Since the first letter of a page name is case-insensitive, not only does the change not break anything, it cannot break anything; and moreover is, other than the purely cosmetic change, completely pointless. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:31, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Redrose64, no, not pointless, or I wouldn't have made the change. The MediaWiki system may be case insensitive regarding the first letter, because it's been coded to be that way. However, the Lua Module:String is not case-insensitive with regards to the first character of the string passed into it. I had to make this edit to get Template:R from move/except to behave the way I wanted it to. – wbm1058 (talk) 00:06, 28 November 2023 (UTC)