Live status for all AnomieBOT tasks is available atToolforge.

Regarding the OrphanReferenceFixer and TagDater, please note:

AnomieBOT isnot an anti-vandal bot, so complaints about AnomieBOT "hiding" or not reverting vandalism are out of place here. AnomieBOT's current strategy is "wait 10 minutes to an hour or so to let ClueBot, VoABotII, other anti-vandal bots, or RC Patrollers fix the vandalism". I am open tospecific suggestions on detecting vandalism, but keep in mind that the false positive rate of any method must be near zero to be useful. AnomieBOT honors {{inuse}}; please use it if you have excessive edit conflicts. If the reference errors or undated tags were caused by vandalism, just revert AnomieBOT's edits along with the vandal's. AnomieBOT will not be offended. If AnomieBOT made a mistake in correcting a reference error or dating a tag, please correct the error by hand and report the URL of the problem diff below. Don't just revert the bot without fixing the error, or AnomieBOT is likely to "fix" it again in the same broken way before I get a chance to fix the bug. If you have a problem withT11790, please take the issue up there. You will be having the problem with more than just AnomieBOT's edits. Thank you.

	Regarding deletions, please note:
If you are here because you think AnomieBOT III deleted an article, please check again. AnomieBOT III deletes redirects when someone else deletes the article the redirect pointed to, and you almost certainly want to talk to that person instead.

	Regarding{{old AfD multi}}, please note:
If you are here because AnomieBOT added{{old AfD multi}} to an article when the old AfD was about a different person with the same name, just remove it. The bot has no way to tell whether it's the same person or a different one.

Archives

Index1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 11,12,13,14,15

This page has archives. Sections older than90 days may be auto-archived byClueBot III.

Thisedit correctly replaced{{WikiProject Adelaide}} withAdelaide=yes within{{WikiProject Australia}}, however there already was an existing{{WikiProject Australia}} template. Can the bot check for duplicate WikiProject templates within the banner wrapper and either just skip it or incorporate it within the existing template?The-Pope (talk)13:43, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The TemplateSubster task just substitutes templates that it has been instructed to substitute via{{Subst only|auto=yes}}, it doesn't know anything about the actual content or usage of any of the templates. If you compare the pagebefore andafter, you can see that the visual rendering has not changed.Anomie⚔14:04, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT 86 was approved to allow AnomieBOT to update its EnDashRedirectCreator redirects when they're lacking things like {{User:AnomieBOT/Auto-G8}} or{{R avoided double redirect}} or the targets in those templates are incorrect. So it'll be working through the backlog on that for a bit, in case anyone sees the edits happening and wonders what's up.Anomie⚔22:32, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi@Anomie:, the subject line kinda says it all ... except I've changed the syntax to make it easier to link to the section if need be. I've found over a hundred instances (mostly added with Parsoid over the years) where instead of the wikitext saying "{{vague|date=September 2025}}", it occasionally says "{{vague|date={{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTYEAR}}", as if these magic words weren't substed properly somewhere along the line. See the diffs inthis permalink to my contribs for examples. Could this bot be programmed to catch and fix these as soon as they happen in articles? At the time of writing, I'vefixed them all, but the sooner they're detected, the easier they are to fix, so I was wondering if this bot could help out with this task. Thanks!Graham87 (talk)14:00, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. A search like that is probably the only way to really find these, but it's probably do-able. I'll have a look. OTOH, I note thatat least one person in at least one place seems to want to insist on using it with {{as of}}, so I might exclude that template unless someone else wants to fight that fight instead.Anomie⚔14:19, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Oops, I just meant instances where the wikitext was like {{<pick a maintenance template>|date={{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTYEAR}}}}, so excluding most (all?) "as of" templates you were talking about. I've been tinkering in the "as of CURRENTYEAR" space too andhad my own battles there (WP:CURRENTLY broadly agrees with us). Good to know we've had similar ideas, though I think I would've left that one alone because it does indeed contain some convoluted template weirdness further down in the table (even though it breaks caching and most likely all sorts of other things), but I wouldn't have realised that at first.Graham87 (talk)15:01, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

BRFA filedAnomie⚔15:52, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds great! Thanks very much. I've watchlisted it.Graham87 (talk)16:04, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Anomie. Since you've been more active lately in bot work, wondering if you can modify the BRFA clerking task to also close the BRFA (inserting the headers and footers) once a BAG member marks it as Approved. orSpeedily Approved.? –SD0001 (talk)09:23, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I probably could (although it'd need a BRFA). It's not clear we need it though. In the past 5 years, I see only two BRFAs that this proposal would have closed (Special:Diff/prev/1023220337 andSpecial:Diff/prev/1054503351). If we extend it to denied and expired, that adds two more (Special:Diff/prev/1024073056,Special:Diff/prev/1060563095), and a few where someone made an error or something else confusing was happening (Special:Diff/prev/1037926220 (category lag?),Special:Diff/prev/1094004606 (both "denied" and "expired"),Special:Diff/prev/1267060680 (wrong value passed to{{BT}})). Adding "withdrawn" too (and allowing the botop to have added the tag for this case) would catch a lot more. OTOH, 5–10 years ago there were a lot more that the bot might have handled; I'm not sure how much of that is due to certain BAGgers becoming less active versus them learning better how to close things. Overall, before doing this I'd want some discussion atWT:BAG orWT:BRFAWP:BON to see whether other BAGgers think this would be helpful or not.Anomie⚔16:56, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

AnomieBOT hasn't updatedWikipedia:Categories for discussion/Old unclosed discussions for several hours, even though I've closed lots of discussions since then.* Pppery *_{it has begun...}23:12, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looks likeT404584 again. Restarting the job.Anomie⚔00:00, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've been spending some time onCategory:Pages with incorrect ref formatting recently and have seen the following pattern, well, more than once:

• (In the distant past) An editor adds a reference with the name enclosed in curly quotes in place of straight quotes
• (In the distant past) Visual editor "corrects" this by wrapping the curly quotes in straight quotes
• (Now) AWB running as Monkbot converts the curly quotes to straight quotes (example)
• (Now) AnomieBot removes the contents of the outer pair of quotes (example)

And the last step breaks the reference, which incredibly MediaWiki manages to parse at all the previous steps. I don't know how best to avoid this story ending with a broken reference, but could I suggest that one improvement would be for AnomieBot to convert <ref name=""foo""> into <ref name="foo"> rather than <ref name="">, since that is apparently how MediaWiki parses it? I can also see that it might be good for AWB to remove the curly quotes in this situtation rather than converting them, or for a new bot task to fix all the references with curly quotes, nested or otherwise. Pinging @Trappist the monk for comments since Monkbot is involved as well. Thanks,Wham2001 (talk)15:39, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

PS Since I'm here, perhaps now is a good moment to say thanks for AnomieBot, which amongst its many helpful tasks has saved me countless hours manually filling in the|date= param on maintainance templates, for which I am very, very grateful. Best,Wham2001 (talk)15:41, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, monkbot (not AWB) is likely guilty of creatingname=""summat"" ref names. But not all. If we are to believethis search there are about 460 articles with reference names that beginname="“ orname="”. There were a couple of articles in the categories where task 21 is working that I have fixed.

Similarly,this search indicates that there are some number of ref names that end with“" or”"; the search times out. Constrained to the categories where task 21 is working, the search finds no articles.

Given these search results, I not inclined to tweak task 21's code though I will make a note in the source should I ever decide to reuse it on another task.

—Trappist the monk (talk)16:28, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. 460 is few enough that I'm tempted to go through and fix them all myself. Is this the sort of task that AWB would be useful for? Otherwise I could simply work through all the hits in your search by hand. Best,Wham2001 (talk)19:11, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps. This find regex:

(<ref\s+name\s*=\s*")[“”]([^\>]+)[“”]("\>)

and this replace:

$1$2$3

should be good for a start. The above won't fix stuff like<refname="“”"> or<refname="Historical Log 3C: Mutant-Hunting Exonims Begin “The Decimation”">.

—Trappist the monk (talk)20:01, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note that search-and-replace will probably break articles likeDiictodon in a different way. MediaWiki considers<ref name=“Ray2003”> and<ref name="“Ray2003”"> as being the same. The search-and-replace described here will only change<ref name="“Ray2003”"> to<ref name="Ray2003">, which MediaWiki will not consider the same as<ref name=“Ray2003”>, leaving one of the two orphaned. On the plus side, it looks like AnomieBOT will do the right thing with that to finish the fix.Anomie⚔00:08, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Anomie: Right – if I do this using AWB I would want to check each edit manually before saving it. AIUI it lets you do this.

TTM: Thanks – in that case I will request access at PERM and give it a go. Best,Wham2001 (talk)09:27, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I note the summary is not quite correct, it's broken already after Monkbot's edit. See the error inSpecial:Diff/1314161747#Lifestyle for example.Anomie⚔23:46, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That said, the suggested fix seems reasonable enough since the bot already has a similar fix for<ref name=''foo''>.Anomie⚔23:53, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You're quite right – I didn't check the article state between the two edits carefully enough.Wham2001 (talk)09:25, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @AnomieBOT, I saw you tag the above article with COI, could you explain why do you thing the creator has COI?Uncle Bash007 (talk)21:48, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Look more closely atAnomieBOT's edit, it only added|date=September 2025 to a tag added by another editor inan earlier edit.Anomie⚔23:56, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm curious why AnomieBOT only substituted some of the instances of {{Format ISBN}} and not all of them in this edit:https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Druze&diff=prev&oldid=1313816758 --Lexiconaut (talk)03:13, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some of AnomieBOT's wikitext processing hasn't kept up with certain changes in MediaWiki over the years. In this case, AnomieBOT saw the<!-- near the end of line 505 (not far after the last instance of the template it did subst) as beginning a comment which contains the rest of the article, while MediaWiki's parser at some point changed to ignore a<!-- not matched by a-->. Probably I should look at changing that in AnomieBOT one of these days.Anomie⚔03:23, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Turns out it's a bit more complex than that. MediaWiki actually does still let an unclosed comment run out, the tricky part is that an unclosed comment inside an extension tag like<ref> only runs to the end of the tag, not to the end of the document. For that matter, if you try to do like<ref> ... <nowiki></ref></nowiki>, MediaWiki sees that as an unclosed<nowiki> inside a<ref> rather than an unclosed<ref>, while currently AnomieBOT's "strip_nowikis" function would see it as the opposite. I'll have to adjust AnomieBOT's code that "strips" comments and nowikis to take this into account.Anomie⚔17:22, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much for your reply. I have been seeing more unclosed<!-- inside<ref></ref> recently. I can't figure out why they are suddenly popping up. I've removed the offending<!--. --Lexiconaut (talk)17:52, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think what often happens is that someone does something like{{cite whatever |blah=... |blah3=... <!-- |blah2=... -->}}, and then other bots or scripts try to reorder the parameters or otherwise adjust parameters without properly handling comments (e.g.{{cite whatever |blah=... |blah2=... --> |blah3=... <!--}}). SeeWikipedia talk:ProveIt#Does not properly handle commented-out parameters in cite templates for one example.

In this case withDruze, it looks like Monkbot saw{{cite journal |... |jstor=25802822<!-- |access-date=22 November 2023 -->}} and decided to remove theaccess-date non-parameter inSpecial:Diff/1313811285.@Trappist the monk: for info.Anomie⚔18:38, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nice find! Interestingly, Monkbot only changed one instance of a commented-outaccess-date; there's another instance further up in that diff that the bot didn't change. --Lexiconaut (talk)19:11, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like the other three in the article weren't actually parameters to the template, they were like<ref>{{cite whatever}}<!--|access-date=...--></ref>. Looks like those probably go back toSpecial:Diff/724728852 from 2016.Anomie⚔19:39, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)

Monkbot deletes|access-date= parameters that existin a cs1|2 template when that template does not have|url= (or one of the|chapter-url= aliases). The commented-out|access-date= parameters that were not deleted are outside of cs1|2 templates so were ignored.

I have modified the task to delete the parameter and its assigned value (must be one of the permitted date formats) commented or not. The bot will then delete the<!--...--> markup if empty. Right now this applies only to|access-date=.

—Trappist the monk (talk)19:45, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks@Trappist the monk:. Is there a case to by made to have a bot remove all comments inside all citation templates? --Lexiconaut (talk)02:49, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Doubtful. Some bots use html comments as a way of preventing edits; seeUser:Citation bot § Stopping the bot from editing for example.

—Trappist the monk (talk)12:54, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,Anomie,

I think that AnomieBOT III needs to be restarted. It missed its last reporting cycle reports. Thanks.Liz^Read!Talk!22:42, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like it's running fine? The BrokenRedirectDeleter task made its last update at20:20 UTC, and will be due for the next shortly after 02:20.Anomie⚔00:40, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding[1],X-ray is on a fairly different topic and the content near the ref tag is not similar. Maybe the bot needs a filter for generic ref-names when looking for inter-article correspondence?DMacks (talk)18:03, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It has a filter for the ":0" style VE does, but it's not AI to try to detect every possible generic name someone might try to use.Anomie⚔22:32, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Diff/1318939209 BTW.Anomie⚔22:36, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

User:AnomieBOT/Nobots Hall of Shame, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated fordeletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments atWikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:AnomieBOT/Nobots Hall of Shame and please be sure tosign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content ofUser:AnomieBOT/Nobots Hall of Shame during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you.JFHJr (㊟)05:19, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Vexatious and purposefully inaccurate MFD. 🙄Anomie⚔13:07, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'd like to report a problem with theUser:AnomieBOT/PREQTable template. I noticed that in the table'sassociated category, unprotected requests that are in the article namespace are supposed to be colored in green, while unprotected requests in any other namespace are supposed to be the baseline wiki color (which is usually gray). However, I noticed (with thisrecent revision as an example) that, regardless of which namespace the pages are in, all unprotected pages are always the baseline wiki color; the pages that are supposed to be green in the table aren't colored as such. Do you think you can tend to this issue? —Alex26337 (talk)17:27, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Itwas requested that the PREQ table not highlight any namespace, but apparently no one updatedTemplate:Edit fully-protected/color legend when used onCategory:Wikipedia partial-block edit requests to match. OTOH, if people would rather, I could have the bot start highlighting mainspace. CCPppery.Anomie⚔23:26, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No strong objection to highlighting mainspace - I just didn't see the value in doing so since I didn't think mainspace was special in the context of partial blocks. But if others think it is and the highlighting is useful I say go for it.* Pppery *_{it has begun...}23:32, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

AnomieBot has stopped editing for 4 hours, latest edit 23:25 4 NovemberSpecial:Contributions/AnomieBOT --pro-anti-air ––>(talk)<––03:44, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like Toolforge had database issues.Anomie⚔12:18, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Anomie,

i don't see any recent reports atUser:AnomieBOT III/Broken redirects which is odd because I'm still deleting broken redirects to draft pages. Could you check on this for me? Thank you.Liz^Read!Talk!19:51, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The bot just updated the report page at 22:34 UTC. The userspace report was updated at 22:34, and before that at 16:32 and 10:30.Anomie⚔00:26, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

User:CSD U6 Bot now exists, forWikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/CSD U6 Bot.Anomie⚔23:38, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the notice, I was wondering what would happen with U6s and U7s.Liz^Read!Talk!23:54, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,Anomie,

I'm not sure what happened but AnomieBOT III didn't issue a broken redirect report on its regular schedule. So, maybe it needs a restart. Thank you.Liz^Read!Talk!23:53, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I cleaned up the bot's config file earlier, removing the passwords that shouldn't have been being used for years since I switched to OAuth. But in some of the older tasks there was some code still incorrectly checking that a password was set. That should be fixed now.Anomie⚔00:03, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Pages that should not be manually archived