Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Bots

A bot account is a special user account which has been flagged so that its edits are hidden by default on Special:RecentChanges and Special:Watchlist (visibility can be toggled with the "Show bots" option). These accounts are used to run bot scripts, programs that automate the process of performing repetitive edits across multiple pages.

While it is possible for normal users to run automated editing scripts/programs without a bot account, this is generally discouraged due to the potential for disruption, since the edits cannot be hidden from RC; this disruption is compounded if a script malfunctions.

If a bot account is observed to be malfunctioning, it is usually possible to halt the bot by posting on its talk page.

Currently active bots

for a system-generated list of all bots, see Special:Listusers/bot

• AWB Alex (talk • contribs • logs • block log) (bot+sysop) operated by Chieftain Alex
• Darqbot (talk • contribs • logs • block log) (bot) operated by Darqam
• J.A.R.V.I.S. (talk • contribs • logs • block log) (bot) operated by Doodleplex

Bot tasks

Requests that have been declined and accepted tasks that have been successfully completed are eventually archived at /Resolved tasks, however they should first be posted on this page for visibility.

Requests and discussion

List requests for bot tasks below. Be as specific as possible about the actions necessary to perform the task.

• Update {{prefix selection}} usage to reflect currently listed prefixes from the API. In particular: (1) substitute the badly named "all ascended" option for the prefixes, (2) use new prefix groups from the template where possible, (3) otherwise update other prefixes directly.

Figured out which pages to update. Starting with (1). -Chieftain Alex 18:55, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

1 Forgot to say I finished (2) + (3) too. -Chieftain Alex 09:41, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

• Remove prose usage of Template:Map objective - this template is to only be used on area articles in the "Locations and objectives" section. -Chieftain Alex 21:18, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

1 Replaced with either Template:Waypoint, Template:Map icon, a plain wikilink or plaintext. -Chieftain Alex 21:53, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

• Update old forum urls to link to gw2archive.eu instead.

1 Asked and completed as per these community portal posts. I'll leave it to you, Alex, to sign off below if you wish. G R E E N E R 03:26, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

• Currently the set parameter within infoboxes allows shorthands for weapon/armor sets. In theory this is good, but in practise it means we have to use redirects on pages where the set name is like "x weapon skins" instead of "x weapons" or "x armor". I'm going to spell out the full names of all currently specified sets. This change applies to {{armor infobox}}, {{weapon infobox}} and {{skin infobox}}. -Chieftain Alex 11:20, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

1 Complete: Weapon infobox + pages updated.

1 Complete: Armor infobox + pages updated.

1 Complete: Skin infobox temporarily de-SMW'd. Skin pages being updated. -Chieftain Alex 11:20, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Over 8000 pages edited. -Chieftain Alex 14:54, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

• Convert all instances of {{achievement box|name=Whatever}} within "Related achievements" sections to *{{achievement|Whatever}} (note the bullet). (Seems like all cases where we'd prefer to keep the box template aren't under a "Related achievements" header, so we should be good to go.) If possible, any existing bullet points beneath the achievement template should get an extra asterisk so they indent properly. —Idris 16:05, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Would have to loop over all the articles using {{achievement box}}, and just skip it if it does not contain "Related achievements". Messy but doable. Running the bot now (potentially will misfire if a page contains related achievements section below a valid use of the box template - can't really script it to only scan beneath a given section title). -Chieftain Alex 20:40, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

1 663 edits (85 manual). 1205 pages skipped. -Chieftain Alex 21:16, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I wasn't sure what was feasible to do with a bot. I can think of a couple of types of articles where this would have misfired (achievement articles and items acquired via achievement), but there shouldn't be too many and I can probably pick them out by hand. :) —Idris 21:48, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

My capabilities with a bot are pretty lame; find and replace, delete, move. Anything else is hard. Re-ordering sections needs some clever regular expressions but would need to be supervised since its so likely to go wrong. Chieftain Alex -5.65.85.217 23:17, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

• Change all of the "See Also" headers to "See also" (at least in main namespace & that the bot could find via text search).

1 Done. A total of 29 edits made by User:J.A.R.V.I.S. - Do_odleplex 19:33, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

• Change the casings of Resource Nodes/Crafting Resources/Ambient Dialogue headers to Resource nodes/Crafting resources/Ambient dialogue on area pages.

1 Done. Total of 232 edits made by User:J.A.R.V.I.S. - Do_odleplex 20:16, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

• Change all infoboxes using "gallery" instead of "gallery1" and switch it to "gallery1", which will fix the infobox looking for images and causing these images to show up Wanted pages.

1 Done. Total of 1482 pages changed by User:J.A.R.V.I.S. (which caused the wanted pages to drop by the same number). - Do_odleplex 01:48, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

• Change [[Miniature Moose]] to [[Mini Moose]], please.

Recurring tasks

This section lists tasks that, for various reasons, need to be repeated at a future time.

• Update all icons that use the redirect arenanet image to use {{ArenaNet image}}. This will probably need to be a recurring task. —Dr Ishmael 03:54, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Initial run complete, 1863 pages edited. —Dr Ishmael 21:28, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Run #2 complete, surprisingly few needed it. 242 pages edited. -Chieftain Alex 13:48, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Run #3 comple, only 9 pages edited. This task may not be as needed much anymore methinks. - Do_odleplex 21:45, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

• Update {{section-stub}} on NPC/location/item pages to the specific section-stub tag, Ie. {{section-stub|npc}}/{{section-stub|location}}/{{section-stub|item}}.(edit) Or just anything that has an infobox made for it, like events, Living World episodes, skills, etc. - Do_odleplex 19:46, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Initial run was done a few months ago; re-run just happened. -Darqam (talk) 20:25, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Forgot to mention: 28 edits done. -Darqam (talk) 20:38, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Ran again npc, 1 edit; event 0 edits; location: 17 edits -Darqam 23:31, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Ran again. Events: 6 Objects:16 NPC:23 Living World:3 Area pages:12 Items: 6. Total edits: 66. - Do_odleplex 05:32, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

4th run, 46 edits done. - Do_odleplex 22:32, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

• Same as above but for {{stub}} since that seems to have blown up. - Do_odleplex 22:32, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

First pass, got all objects (164) and locations (15) for a total of 179 edits. - Do_odleplex 03:44, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

• Regularly go over Category:ArenaNet icons and classify icons into appropriate sub-categories.

Creating this since I will most likely be repeating this task multiple times.

Ran 29 edits using AWB -Darqam 23:31, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

• With regards to Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Projects/NPC Coordinates I'll be saving the coordinates with the bot in order to reduce the amount of RC spam. I'll keep a note here of edits done. The edits performed simply add "| coordinates = [xxxxx, yyyyyy]" to npc infoboxes which do not have them, these coordinates are written out by hand. Edits will be done using pywikibot.

First run: 49 edits for Kessex Hills npcs. -Darqam 15:43, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

81 edits done for Queensdale npcs. More to be done later. -Darqam 05:21, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Finished Queensdale NPCs with 132 edits. -Darqam 00:33, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Added npc coords to npcs in Harathi Hinterlands. Made 114 edits. -Darqam 20:37, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Partial addition of npc coordinates done for Gendarran Fields, 81 edits performed. -Darqam 20:57, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

• When skills/traits get changed due to patch notes, have bots change links for the skills and skill icons. - Do_odleplex 21:31, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

For the first run, at least all of the links/icons for skills that have been renamed since April 24, 2018 have been fixed. A total of 343 edits made. - Do_odleplex 21:31, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

• I've noticed this quite often that people tend to leave an extra spaces in places, usually by mistake, so tasks to remove random spaces at the end of lines, after headers and random double spacing in the middle of sentences. - Do_odleplex 22:19, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

First run, just did Bestiary pages since NPC pages would take longer than I have atm. Total of 90 pages edited. - Do_odleplex 22:19, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Sorry but why would you convert "thumb" to "right" on images without descriptions? -Chieftain Alex 08:40, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

It was dead space imo, which was part of the point of the little removing extra spaces sweep. - Do_odleplex 15:24, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Besides having text, it adds some framing to the image which looks better imo, but importantly adds the little link button beneath which may prompt viewers unfamiliar with the wiki that they can click on the image to expand it. -Chieftain Alex 19:15, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Second run, just did Updates, total of 98 edits. Lots of double spacing and headers that either had no spacing or too much. - Do_odleplex 21:06, 24 June 2018 (UTC)