User talk:GrinningIodize

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A belated welcome!

Here's wishing you a belated welcome to Wikipedia, GrinningIodize! I see that you've already been around a while and wanted to thank you for your contributions. Though you seem to have been successful in finding your way around, you may still benefit from following some of the links below, which help editors get the most out of Wikipedia:

If you have questions, just use this link to ask for help; a volunteer will visit you here shortly!

Need some ideas of what kind of things need doing? Try the Task Center.

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Again, welcome! Mathglot (talk) 16:53, 27 August 2025 (UTC) Mathglot (talk) 16:53, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the cookies! I have appreciation for your appreciation, and I hope that you have a nice day every day! GrinningIodize (talk) 17:24, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but please stop your white space changes

Hi, GrinningIodize. I recently saw this edit of yours at Argentine Constitution of 1853, where you changed two blanks to one after punctuation. While you are indeed correct that Wikipedia's WP:Manual of style suggests only one blank, the fact is that HTML, the language of the web, turns two blanks (or any number of blanks) into one when it displays a web page in your browser. Wikipedia editing guidelines oppose making changes to Wikipedia articles that are not an improvement to the page, and changing a series of blanks down to just one does not improve the article in any way, and is not something that is visible to users. (Note: I am not going to revert, because by the same reasoning, putting it back to two blanks is pointless—just like reducing it to one was pointless.) Please do not make any more edits like this in the future. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 17:05, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for alerting me to this fact @Mathglot! I did not know that this wasn't rendered in the browser. For context, I wrote a script called WikiClicky that scans large swaths of the Wikipedia and finds possible WikiGnome edits that I can apply. Last night, I updated WikiClicky to fix double spaces, but now I realize my mistake. I'm sorry for my actions and I will cease performing such edits starting now.

If you see any more problems like this, please let me know and I'll see what I can do. GrinningIodize (talk) 17:21, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your cooperation. Your message above conflicted with the section below. Read on... Mathglot (talk) 17:23, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Use of unauthorized bot?

Courtesy link: Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard § Does this bot need a request/approval?

After leaving you the message above about white space changes at Argentine Constitution of 1853, I noticed that you had made the same change in these 74 contributions, made at a speed of up to three edits per minute. Is WickyClicky your bot, and are you using an unauthorized bot to make these edits or to assist in making them? Wikipedia's guidelines require bots to be approved at Wikipedia:Bot requests before using them. I checked the archives there, and I did not spot a previous request for WickyClicky. If this bot is approved, can you please furnish a link to the request/approval page? If not, please hold off using this bot for any purpose until it is approved. (edit conflict) Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 17:23, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WikiClicky is a semi-automatic editing tool that uses manual approval from me for each edit. I registered for an OAuth token here, and I believe that this complies with Wikipedia:Bot policy as no edits are performed without my manual supervision.

Here's an example of what the management console looks like for WikiClicky (sorry about it being so tiny; this is my first time using Wikimedia Commons):

An example image to show the manual approval process of WikiClicky.

GrinningIodize (talk) 17:37, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Below the screenshotted area (sorry about that), it reads:

Accept changes (y/n) [n]

The bot does not perform any actions while waiting for human approval. GrinningIodize (talk) 17:40, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your quick and detailed response. This sounds fairly similar to what WP:AWB is designed to do, and you should have a look at that to see if your bot is even necessary, because I am pretty sure that AWB could perform the type of edit you are interested in automating. Mathglot (talk) 17:53, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would use AWB, but it's a pain to setup on Ubuntu (my operating system). I figure that WikiClicky is a fun exercise anyway. GrinningIodize (talk) 18:34, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, while you've registered for an OAuth token, your tool (as of the most recent edits on August 27) is not actually using it. This isn't against the Bot policy (the policy doesn't care whether you use OAuth authentication, BotPasswords, or something else; it's the manual review of each edit that makes it fall under WP:ASSISTED rather than being a bot), but I thought it worth pointing out to you since you mentioned the OAuth token above. Anomie ⚔ 14:09, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, it's not?? I didn't give the bot my password in the pywikibot config (only the OAuth tokens) so I'm not sure what's going on there. GrinningIodize (talk) 21:37, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am not an expert in bots or approval requirements, and made a request at the Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard for someone more knowledgeable about the guidelines and procedures to weigh in here. Please stand by; someone should drop by at some point. (We are an all-volunteer project, so no guarantee on when that might be; please be patient!). Mathglot (talk) 17:57, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If it turns out that the OAuth token is all you need and everything is compliant and you want to keep on using it (rather than AWB, say), then one recommendation I would make is that it would be handy to have the term WickyClicky wikilinked to a page so that users who were curious could read up about it (maybe even use it?). You could just link your user page, where you already mention it, if you want, but if it were me, I would probably create a user subpage, e.g., User:GrinningIodize/WickyClicky, where you could describe the bot, and then link that page from your edit summary. Mathglot (talk) 18:07, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea! I'll probably work on that soon. GrinningIodize (talk) 18:32, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note: this is way, way, way down the list of importance, but still, accurate edit summaries are a desirable goal, and two blanks in a row are not a grammar error, therefore altering it is not a "grammar fix". Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 07:17, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That was my bad, sorry. I will not do that in the future. GrinningIodize (talk) 21:23, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Compare / contrast with AWB

Hi, GrinningIodize. Self-quote from above:

This sounds fairly similar to what WP:AWB is designed to do, and you should have a look at that to see if your bot is even necessary, because I am pretty sure that AWB could perform the type of edit you are interested in automating.

Just wanted to set this off in its own subsection, so we could concentrate a bit on this side-issue regarding your bot, namely, apart from any concern about bot approval (let's assume for the sake of argument that there is no objection to using it), my question is, does it make sense to use it, given that we have something like AWB that is mature and maintained and powerful, *if* AWB can handle WC functionality, and much, much more?

That is a big "if", so if you are willing, I would ask you to do a couple of things:

I know you are already thinking about writing up a page at User:GrinningIodize/WickyClickyUser:GrinningIodize/WickyClicky (currently a redirect) describing your bot, so please carry on with that new doc page. (Steal ideas from other bot pages linked from Wikipedia:Bot requests, or the many Archives if you like.)
Read up on AWB, sufficiently to get a decent idea of what it is capable of; (in a phrase: "semi-automated user-assisted regex-based edit engine").
After writing up your WC doc page, update it with a new subsection entitled something like, "Similarities and differences with AWB" or words to that effect.

Somewhere I read what you said about writing the bot being an exercise or for fun, and this is an all-volunteer project so I think it's fine to do that if it pleases you (as long as one complies with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, of course) but since you seem to have not only tech skills but also a level head and a desire to on-board properly and in accordance with P & G, I would also ask you to try to put on a neutral, "Wikipedia hat" and decide whether incorporating WC as a new bot is a general improvement for the community or whether AWB is good enough and we don't need another one. (I am not prejudging or leaning any which way, since I don't know what your bot is capable of, which is why I'd like to see a full description of it, and a comparison.)

If tinkering and playing and improving a bot is the fun part for you (as it is for me, when wearing my techhie hat), keep in mind that that might not be perfectly aligned with the goals of Wikipedia, which kind of freeze a bot in place, so to speak, once it is approved. That said, many bots have multiple sub-tasks (example: User:AnomieBOT), and each time, the bot owner has to go back and get approval for each new task, so if you are comfortable with that, you could, too. If you want to simply fly your botmaker energy without too much intervention or rules, then a test wiki is available at Wikipedia that is a completely separate environment, where you can do pretty much whatever you want, so that might be a better fit depending on where your focus and interests lie. If you need a link, lmk. Mathglot (talk) 18:31, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much @Mathglot! I don't have the time to write up a full description of WikiClicky today, but I'll try to do so whenever I can. As a quick preview of what the comparison section would read, here are the main differences and similarities:

WikiClicky is written in Python, which makes it easier to use on computers that don't run Windows (as opposed to .NET-based AWB, which requires special software on those same computers)
WikiClicky does not use a graphical user interface and only has two controls: approve or deny. AWB is much more fleshed-out in comparison, but this also means that there are more buttons to learn the meaning of.
WikiClicky is very "hacky" if you will. Where AWB would present a very professional interface that you could easily sell to people, WikiClicky presents a much scrappier and terser interface that makes things very efficient at the cost of usability.
WikiClicky does one thing and does it well; from your description, AWB sounds like a more versatile jack-of-all-trades tool that does a bit of everything

GrinningIodize (talk) 21:33, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WikiClicky

Hiya! Can we have a look at the source code for WikiClicky? Thanks, Polygnotus (talk) 22:21, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Polygnotus! Thank you for asking for the source code!

Here's the full code, released under the MIT license:

import pywikibot, re, difflib, langdetect</nowiki>
import mwparserfromhell as mwp
from tqdm import tqdm
from itertools import islice
print("Loaded.")
def clean_fragment(text):
return text.replace("  ", " ").replace(' , ', ', ').replace(' : ', ': ').replace(' ? ', '? ').replace(' !', '! ').replace(' ; ', '; ')
def fix_page(page):
if page.namespace() != 0:
print("[WARN] Page is not in main namespace, skipping edit suggestion")
return None
old_text = page.text
new_page = mwp.parse(old_text)
for i in new_page.nodes:
if isinstance(i, mwp.nodes.text.Text):
is_english = True
try:
is_english = langdetect.detect(i.value) == "en"
except:
# print("[WARN] Could not detect language!")
pass
if is_english:
i.value = clean_fragment(i.value)
plaintext_new = new_page.strip_code()
plaintext_old = mwp.parse(old_text).strip_code()
if plaintext_new != plaintext_old:
diff = difflib.unified_diff(plaintext_old.splitlines(), plaintext_new.splitlines(), lineterm='', n=0)''
print('\n'.join(list(diff)))
print('\n')
page.text = str(new_page)
if input("Accept changes? (y/n) [n] ").lower() == 'y':
page.save('WikiClicky: fix grammar and/or double spaces - revert if mistaken')  # Saves the page
else:
print("Canceled.")
site = pywikibot.Site('en', 'wikipedia')  # The site we want to run our bot on
# page = pywikibot.Page(site, 'Science')
need_help = pywikibot.Category(site, "All orphaned articles")
# print(islice(need_help, 10, 15))
last_page_number = 0
for i in range(int(need_help.categoryinfo["pages"]/100)):
chunk = islice(need_help.articles(), last_page_number, last_page_number + 100)
for j in tqdm(list(chunk)):
fix_page(j)
print(f'Completed chunk {int(last_page_number/100)+1} out of {int(need_help.categoryinfo['pages']/100)}!')
last_page_number += 100

I would advise you to not use this code for now, because it currently attempts to correct double-spacing, which is apparently considered bad practice here. Excuse my spaghetti code. GrinningIodize (talk) 22:49, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The tabs got messed up somehow, so you might have to fix that if you plan on using this code for anything. GrinningIodize (talk) 22:50, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, no. I don't think I'm allowed to license stuff under the MIT on Wikipedia. You can use it under either the MIT or CC BY-SA 4.0/GFDL. GrinningIodize (talk) 22:52, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! People are a bit scared of WP:COSMETIC bots, but there are many more 'substantial' edits one can make that people don't object to. Polygnotus (talk) 22:58, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Happy to help! If I get my way in the WikiClicky dispute, I am definitely going to decommission the double-space correction feature. GrinningIodize (talk) 23:01, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, its no dispute lol. And you are early enough in the devcycle that it is easy to pivot to a task that does not fall under WP:COSMETIC. For example, we often have punctuation marks that appear twice in a row, like in this example. Polygnotus (talk) 23:03, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It already corrects some grammatical errors; for example, "this sentence is bad , says GrinningIodize" becomes "this sentence is bad, says GrinningIodize" (notice the comma placement here). GrinningIodize (talk) 23:07, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

True, but people are kinda allergic to whitespace changes because there is a long history of some people (not you!) who made a bunch of pointless changes that polluted everyone's watchlist. So generally speaking for the really boring changes the account should have a botflag so that people's watchlists don't get polluted... but they only hand out botflags for stuff that can be fully automated without any human intervention. So the task of whitespace improvement is in the awkward situation that it is not fully automatable (so no botflag) but is 'boring' enough that it falls under WP:COSMETIC. In WP:AWB the approach is that boring edits only get done when combined with a more substantial edit. Polygnotus (talk) 23:09, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Polygnotus, they only hand out botflags for stuff that can be fully automated without any human intervention this is not true, you can get a bot flag for semi-automated edits. — Qwerfjkl talk 14:16, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Qwerfjkl Hm, looking at insource:"{{Infobox bot" +"semi-automatic" that appears to be true, for example User:Italic title bot. They appear to be more rare tho. I am not (yet) a bot expert. Thanks, Polygnotus (talk) 16:47, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

PAWS

Hiya! Have you discovered PAWS yet? It is pretty cool. You can find it here: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/PAWS and my snippets are here: User:Polygnotus/PAWS. Enjoy! Polygnotus (talk) 06:23, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've heard of it, but the idea of trusting someone else to execute my code faithfully and to never leak my secrets does not entice me very much. I live in a family that self-hosts most of our important services, and I decided to follow that path as well.

Your code snippets are awesome! I am quite impressed @Polygnotus! GrinningIodize (talk) 18:03, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]