User:H3llBot/ALA

H3llBot This user account is a bot operated by Hellknowz (talk). It is a legitimate alternative account, used to make repetitive automated edits that would be extremely tedious to do manually. The bot is approved, but currently inactive; the relevant requests for approval can be seen here. Administrators: if this bot is malfunctioning or causing harm, please block it.
Home	Talk page (Issues, problems, questions)	Active tasks	Archiving dead links via Internet Archive (ADL, MCD, MDY, RDT)
			Converting citation urls pointing to archived copy to archive fields (U2A, A2U, MAD)
			Remove incorrect Wayback usage from citation fields (RWF)
			Converting {{Wayback}} template to preceding citation's archive fields (W2A)
			Move links from author/editor fields to author/editorlink= (ALA)

Task explanation

Quite often authors and editors are linked to their article directly in |author= and |editor= fields, but the article name and displayed part differ. Even more inconsistent if |first= or |last= are linked alone or both to the same target. These links should be placed in the |authorlink= and |editor-link= fields instead. This makes parsing easier, potentially allowing automatic generation of hidden metadata parser/scraper info for external tools, such as, already produced COinS. It also makes potential changes to linking possible from the main citation templates. The bot won't change unpiped links.

Algorithm

If |first= and |last= are set; and |author= and |authorlink= are not set

If |first= is a piped¹ wikilink and |last= is text

Strip wikilink from |first= and move to |authorlink=

If |last= is a piped wikilink and |first= is text

Strip wikilink from |last= and move to |authorlink=

If both |first= and |last= are piped wikilinks to the same target

Strip wikilink from |last= and move to |authorlink=

If |author= is set; and |first=, |last=, and |authorlink= are not set

If |author= is a piped wikilink to different target

Strip wikilink from |author= and move to |authorlink=

Temporarily disabled pending discussion

The logic is applied to numbered fields as well: |author=, |author1=, |author2= .. |author8=; as well as |editor=, |editor-first=, |editor-last=, |editor-link= group and numbered fields thereof.

• ¹ If the link is not piped, then the target article is only the visible part of the link, which needs human review. For example, with |last=[[Smith]] and |first=John, is the target really Smith?

Links

• Bot request for approval – H3llBot 8.
• Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 42#Citation template authorlink generation