User talk:VulpesBot

Hi. I thought VulpesBot was going to leave shared IP tags like Template:SharedIPEdu in place when clearing pages. This is helpful for editors and admins when those IPs start vandalizing again. For instance, if it's a primary school, an admin may choose to block a long time. In other cases, they may apply just short blocks.

Some of these IPs haven't edited in several years but that's often because they have long multi-year blocks. When those expire, they'll be back.

For now, I'm manually restoring templates for pages on my watchlist but that's time-consuming. You can look at my recent edits to user talk pages] if you want examples of specific pages.

Thanks for your work! --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 22:04, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I just counted: 66 hand-restorations starting 5 July. In most cases, my edit summary does not mention VulpesBot. In almost all cases, I didn't revert VulpesBot since that would have left stale warnings in place, too. Instead, I added the old template back to the newly scrubbed page.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 22:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Uggg I must have messed something up. Can you let me know which templates I missed and I’ll start working on checking the pages to correct this. Knowing my luck it’s some silly fat finger mistype on my end. Thank you for pointing this out I thought I had explicitly addressed this as per our conversation at BRFA. Dr vulpes ^{(💬 • 📝)} 23:09, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

These problems started just a few days ago - I think something changed. Here's what I seen:

• Template:sharedipedu
• Template:schoolip
• Template:SharedIPEDU
• Template:sharedIPedu
• Template:School IP

These all redirect to Template:Shared IP edu

There are a 22 reedirects to Shared IP edu. Here's the list.

I hope this helps. Your bot is useful.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 00:20, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hey @A. B., I'm really sorry for leaving you hanging for almost six months. I got hit with a bunch of stuff all at once (new job, COVID, parents getting joints replaced, and, and, and....) I'll take a look at the AWB setting and make the fixes. Dr vulpes ^{(💬 • 📝)} 06:47, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Life intervenes. This is just a hobby. No problem. I forgot all about this anyway myself. —A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 14:08, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is this bot task going to run again? It was very helpful in clearing syntax errors from pages so that other bots would not have to fix stale pages. I just stumbled across User talk:80.44.206.81, which appears to meet the criteria for blanking and which has a Linter error on it. It would be better for your bot to blank it than for a bot or human editor to fix a 14-year-old error. (Also User talk:68.80.181.16. I am sure there are more.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:06, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hey @Jonesey95, yeah I'll get @VulpesBot up and running either tonight or tomorrow. I just got swamped with a lot of stuff in my personal life and dropped the ball. Dr vulpes ^{(💬 • 📝)} 06:48, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. Thanks and welcome back. I wish you calm seas. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:26, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know how the bot picks pages or decides when to stop, but I just stumbled across User talk:180.183.18.59, which had not been edited since August 2018 and seemed to meet all of the criteria. Blanking it fixed 35 Linter errors; I'm sure there are more like it. Do you have energy for another run? – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:41, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like the bot is running in batches. Does it still have a long list of pages to process? I just stumbled across User talk:92.3.209.157 in my Linter-error-fixing work, and I think it met the criteria for blanking. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:52, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here's another one, if it helps you with searching for batches to process: User talk:205.155.240.176. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:52, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

These 300+ pages, with just a couple of false positives, appear to meet the blanking criteria: five years with no human edits. The search string excludes pages with date stamps from 2020 through 2025. I limited the search to pages containing font tags, since I'm primarily concerned with removing Linter errors, and fixing up old IP talk pages seems like a waste of time. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:40, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I noticed that the bot blanked User:216.22.26.46. I just wanted to check whether or not this was expected behaviour, given that the the bot’s userpage/BRFA only mentions blanking talk pages (as far as I can see).

All the best ^user:A smart kitten_meow 15:11, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hey @A smart kitten, thanks for letting me know about this. I looked into this and figured out one of two ways that this could have happened. When I copied the list of pages into AWB I deleted part of the line and manually moved it back which cased two pages to get the "talk" part of the page title removed. Or the script I'm using to collect all the pages has a typo. I'm going to chalk this up to my own fat fingers and I'll check the sql code later tonight but if you notice it again please let me know! Dr vulpes ^{(💬 • 📝)} 18:45, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Dr vulpes: In case it helps; since leaving my previous message, I noticed that the talk page of that IP address is (strangely) a redirect to its user page. I’m not sure why that’s the case (I’m guessing there’s some historical reason for it), but I thought I’d let you know in case that’s what caused this Best, ^user:A smart kitten_meow 18:51, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Dr vulpes: FYI, VulpesBot has done the same thing again in Special:Diff/1191187552 & Special:Diff/1191194313. Best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 12:15, 22 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have tidied up those pages. Maybe ask the bot not to follow redirects, or exclude User pages? – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:51, 22 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yep sorry about that, I'll fix that now. I loaded an old config file by mistake that still had that turned on. I'll go back and check to see if it made any other errors. Thanks @A smart kitten and @Jonesey95 for letting me know. Dr vulpes ^{(💬 • 📝)} 20:17, 22 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. Thanks for all the work. No good deed goes unpunished! – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:51, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You're doing a fantastic job resetting stale IP talks. Thank you! – DreamRimmer (talk) 10:46, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Can you make this bot mark its edits as minor edits so they don't notify the IP user who had their talk page edited? Thanks. 65.122.128.194 (talk) 02:13, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Dr vulpes Maintenance edits to IP talk pages should be marked as minor edit and bot edit. Not doing so causes the IPs to get a new message notification. I just got one myself when I was logged out (for a edit made months ago). Thanks. – SD0001 (talk) 17:36, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the heads up, fixing it now. Dr vulpes (Talk) 17:37, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the speedy fix! – SD0001 (talk) 10:45, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]