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Hi, for those who may be interested, I've posted the list of pages at User:Dawnseeker2000/Sandbox 3. I've been using some borrowed scripts to help keep the list from growing too much, but it's been at the 4,200 level for the last couple of years. This is about articles that have references that refer to Wikipedia articles, and the first four here will remove those references and the fifth one removes the {{Circular reference|date=July 2024}} template, if present.

• <ref[^<>]*>[^<>]*\|[ ]*url ?=https?:\/\/\w{2}\.wikipedia\.org\/w[^<>]*<\/ref>
• <ref>\s*https?:\/\/\w{2}\.wikipedia\.org\/wiki\/[^\s\]<]*<\/ref>
• <ref>\s*\[https?:\/\/\w{2}\.wikipedia\.org\/w[^\s\]]*[ ]+[\w\d][^\]]*\]<\/ref>
• <ref(?: name=[^<>]|)>[^<>]*\|\s*url[ ]*=[ ]*https?:\/\/\w{2}\.wikipedia\.org\/w[^\s\|\{\}<]*[^<>]*<\/ref>
• \{\{circular ?reference\s*\|date\s*=\s*\w{3,9}\s*\d{4}\}\}

Dawnseeker2000 05:46, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Dawnseeker2000 and Neils51: I don't think this is a good place to post a task like this, since it's not exactly suited for "easy" removal, and some may treat it like it is just that simple. Ideally, the circular link is followed, and replaced with an actual ref after doing a bit of reading & confirming. Failing that, the circular refs should be replaced with {{citation needed}} instead, and not just removed (unless there are additional supporting refs).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:16, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Tom.Reding:, I thought I would "test the waters" and see what transpired. I don't mind working through these occasionally (probably manually) and placing the {{citation needed}} template. Thanks Dawnseeker, for the list. Neils51 (talk) 12:44, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Might just be me, but a lot of times I see a "reference" which should have been a wikilink instead (e.g. such and such went to Example State University<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example_State_University</ref>) and might actually have a reference further down the way. Primefac (talk) 19:54, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

All of the member categories Category:Wikipedia non-empty soft redirected categories need to be purged or null-edited to update, as all but one are empty. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 00:54, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@LaundryPizza03: I ran a null edit script over the lot of them, should all be updated. Mdann52 (talk) 04:58, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What script, if it was different from AWB/JWB? –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 05:39, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just a quick PWB script I used. AWB won't neatly do null edits in bot mode so needs spamming the save button in my experience, PWB makes null editing simple. Mdann52 (talk) 19:37, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Eh, if I need a bunch of null edits, I'll go manual on my own AWB account; no point in accidentally having a bot edit if for some reason it decides to actually save a change. Primefac (talk) 20:09, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For null editing a category, I find User:Ahecht/Scripts/refresh usually does the trick. — Qwerfjkltalk 21:09, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! Can someone with AWB permissions have a quick go through the articles returned by a search for insource:"last Company first Rand McNally"?

These citations appear mostly to support claims of 1925 populations in United States populated places, from Rand McNally's 1925 Premier Atlas of the World etc. The citations do already correctly contain |publisher=Rand McNally & Company, and the source provides no other attribution, so the bogus |last=Company and |first=Rand McNally and parameters can simply be removed.

Thanks in advance, Folly Mox (talk) 13:29, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Folly Mox, seems reasonable. I'm  Doing... it. – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:16, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Folly Mox, I can see the author parameter when I export this citation, and it also lists Rand McNally and Company as a contributor, so should this really be removed? – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:42, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Attributing authorship to the entire company isn't an unreasonable proposition, although it does feel duplicative to the |publisher= field. If we wanted to retain corporate authorship attribution, then the substitution would be last= Company | first=Rand McNally and .

This is something of an editorial choice: I do see people citing sources where the publisher and corporate author are identical. As mentioned, it feels duplicative to me, but it's not an invalid approach. Having said that, google books is not a particularly accurate arbiter of what kind of attribution is necessary for Wikipedia (for example, their edited volumes never attribute chapter authorship in metadata, their periodicals don't have volume and issue information in metadata, etc).

In any regard, thanks for any fix you do perform. This is a lot of articles to go through by hand. Folly Mox (talk) 14:53, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Folly Mox  Done – DreamRimmer (talk) 09:23, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! 🙏🏽 Folly Mox (talk) 00:00, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the event that this sort of request turns up again, H:CS1 says at Help:Citation Style 1 § Authors:

When using |author= avoid citations like {{cite news |work=Weekday Times |author=''Weekday Times'' editors |title=...}}, unless the article is on a field in which the majority of professional journals covering that field use such a citation style.

I think that H:CS1 can be interpreted to cover cases where |lastn=Company |firstn=Rand McNally or |authorn=Rand McNally & Company unnecessarily duplicate |publisher=Rand McNally & Company.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:57, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When {{small}}, {{midsize}}, and other size-reducing templates are used inside infobox parameter values, it is almost always a violation of MOS:SMALLFONT, an accessibility guideline (exceptions are in enlarged parameters like |title=). I have found that an editor added {{midsize}} to {{Infobox judge}} parameter values in about 350 articles, and to {{infobox officeholder}} parameter values in as many as 960 articles. Is anyone available to tidy these up, like this? The fixes should be limited to infobox parameter values; uses in the body of the article are often acceptable. I expect that there will be another, similar request once those are cleared up and I can see where else {{midsize}} is being used. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:30, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No takers? Moving to WP:Bot requests. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:01, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Jonesey95 hey I’ll take a look at this in a couple hours. Dr vulpes (Talk) 20:08, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]