Wikipedia talk:Article alerts

Hi, I noticed that in Special:Diff/1313095307 today, 435,000 bytes of content was removed from Wikipedia:WikiProject Athletics/Article alerts and I'm not sure why. The CfD listings taking up most of the removed bytes are still active, and several open AfDs like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Benjamin Keleketu and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Victor Razafindrakoto were de-listed as well. CC @Headbomb in case this page isn't watched. Thank you, --Habst (talk) 13:28, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Bot crashed today, I'm looking into it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:40, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Huh. It's like it didn't have data files? —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 09:08, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

The run logs on IRC were full of errors. Wikipedia was also very wonky in general yesterday morning. I'd open 10 different articles and be logged out on the 3rd through 8th, but again logged in on the 9th and 10th. Then if I wanted to edit/save, it was a game of roulette if it would actually save on account of being logged out or in when I was previously logged in or out.

Anyway, I got someone to undo the run and reran the bot and things looked fine after that. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:17, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! I wonder if it had anything to do with the meta:Server switch yesterday. --Habst (talk) 12:19, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

Possibly. The run happened well before the switch though, but so did the general instability. Things were stable after. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:25, 25 September 2025 (UTC)

@Headbomb, I initiated a mass CfD rename and I noticed it made Wikipedia:WikiProject Athletics/Article alerts hit the page size limit. The categories CfD'ed are all listed here: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 October 1#Category:Canadian female sprinters

Would it be possible to have the bot exclude those categories on its next run, so that the page size is in bounds and we can still see the other article alerts? Thank you for your work. --Habst (talk) 13:18, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

There's no such functionality in the bot code at the moment, so it's not possible to exclude specific pages besides messing with their on-wiki categories and such. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 09:07, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

@Hellknowz, thanks, is the bot open source? I would be open to adding this feature myself or possibly splitting too-long alerts into multiple pages. --Habst (talk) 14:10, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

It isn't at the moment I'm afraid. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 16:34, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

@Hellknowz, OK, I'm going to try to add some code into {{WikiProject Athletics}} then to temporarily remove categories from these mass CfDed pages to get the bot working again. I see these three are used -- which ones do I need to remove for the bot to stop tracking them?

1. Category:Category-Class Athletics pages

2. Category:NA-importance Athletics pages

3. Category:WikiProject Athletics articles

Thanks, --Habst (talk) 23:20, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

It currently works off {{WikiProject Athletics}} being on the page. You'd have to change the subscription itself to use categories first then before disabling that specific category, probably the third option. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 09:34, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

@Hellknowz, do you know why it still says "The report page has exceeded the page size limit"? The mass CfD has since been closed, and I made a change here to remove the tracked category from all category talk pages anyways here: Special:Diff/1317665726. I'm not sure what could be causing it. Thanks, --Habst (talk) 22:46, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm not really sure. Exceeding the page size is a very rare edge case. The bot still internally tracks pages and makes a report, it just literally fails to write the page content. There aren't any direct mechanisms to retry or validate previous writes or anything like that. I have no idea if it still thinks the pages belong to the project or if it simply hasn't tried to update the page or if something else is broken. The bot probably needs to see a change to some other page before it attempts a new report; it hasn't attempted any deliveries for the past week. "Losing" pages from the project is technically not a "change", because it's also a kind of edge case where it simply no longer has an item it previously had, so there's nothing to see as changed. Since CfD closed while the pages were not part of the project, this wasn't a "change". I mean, I have no idea. Exceeding page size has happened may be a few times ever. When things change midprocess like this, it becomes really really complicated to debug. I assume the project needs to see a change. So may be try putting some obvious page into a process, like PROD or something to "force an update". —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 09:31, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

I can see there were changes in that time; for example, Derby Half Marathon was AfDed yesterday. I understand that this is a big ask for a volunteer project, but can you please check the log or tell AAlertBot to simply cut off the reports at $wgMaxArticleSize (minus a few bytes for safety)? I feel like I've done everything I can do from my side but without access to the bot code I don't know what I can do to fix the page. --Habst (talk) 14:33, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Adding the comment here made the bot completely ignore the subscription entry. I didn't even think of it. It's not really doing full wiki markup parsing when reading the subscription page, so it's basically been ignoring it due to invalid syntax. I removed it, so let's see what it does tomorrow. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 21:36, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Looks like the report got delivered now. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 08:50, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Fantastic, thank you so much for looking into this. --Habst (talk) 12:05, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Physics/Article_alerts has many entries that are long past the "alert" status. For example the section Articles for deletion has many entries that were closed. Is that expected? Johnjbarton (talk) 17:30, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

@Johnjbarton: The physics alerts are set to archive after 60 days, per Wikipedia:Article alerts/Subscription list (you'll have to edit to see details). That should put the threshold at ~7 August. No pages have had their last relevant action from before that date. E.g. for the entry

• 01 Aug 2025 – The History of Physics in Trinity College Dublin (talk · edit · hist) AfDed by Ldm1954 (t · c) was closed as delete by Explicit (t · c) on 08 Aug 2025; see discussion (6 participants)

August 8 is the last relevant action (60 days ago), and should get archived tomorrow, when 61 days have occured. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:56, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Ok thanks! Johnjbarton (talk) 18:00, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

@Johnjbarton: feel free to change the archive period. 30 days would be very reasonable IMO. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:14, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Ok I changed to 30 to see how it works, thanks. Johnjbarton (talk) 20:04, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Along those same lines, Wikipedia:WikiProject New York City/Article alerts#SPL is showing two entries from 2020 (Jamaica Savings Bank and Riverdale, Bronx), plus some from 2022, 2023, and 2024. How do I clear those out? RoySmith (talk) 14:57, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Depends on what you mean by "clear those out"? For example, Jamaica Savings Bank has {{split}} on the page. If you remove the banner the bot will stop seeing it in Category:All articles proposed for splitting. I assume the rest are the same. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 15:28, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Heh, I didn't even notice that on JSB. I spent all of my time looking at Riverdale, Bronx, and now I see that it does indeed have a {{split}}, but buried deep down in the middle of the article where I didn't see it. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. RoySmith (talk) 15:43, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Hello, the BOT appears to have archived 2 split entries, but the templates remain in the articles. Unsure why they were removed from the article alert report. See log. Keith D (talk) 19:08, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

Urgh, the bot failed to find any merge or split pages because workflow categories were moved: Category:All articles to be split to Category:All articles proposed for splitting and Category:All articles to be merged to Category:All articles proposed for merging and we didn't get notified about this (despite a huge banner at the top of the pages...) I will need to change the categories the bot uses. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 19:09, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

Apologies for being delinquent on notifications when implementing that as closing admin; I should have done better (although in some sense it was the nominator's responsibility, not mine). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 18:03, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

(The redirect target's documentation, Template:AfC submission, says to notify for "breaking changes" to the template. This might not be, but just in case it does affect article alerts...)

The redirect Template:Draft submission has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 January 10 § Template:Draft submission until a consensus is reached. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 11:29, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi there, AAlertBot seems to have crashed 3 days ago. Am I really the first one to notice? -- Deeday-UK (talk) 09:18, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for notifying! You are probably not the first to notice, but the first to report. I reran it. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 10:51, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

There still appears to be an issue with AAlertBot, on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket/Article alerts as an example, several AFDs, FLC and GANs have been removed from the 24th March version despite them remaining open. JP (Talk) 13:02, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Huh, something seems to have really broken and I'm not sure what. Like, there were no errors or anything during the run, but a lot of pages simply seem to not "exist" anymore. I'll take a look... —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 13:48, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

I reran it and it's fine now, although I have no idea what went wrong. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 17:10, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Good job, thank you. -- Deeday-UK (talk) 09:28, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

Hello all, not sure how much of an effect this will cause, but following this RM the new name for {{tfm}} will be {{Template for merging}}. Courtesy ping to Hellknowz for bot-related changes that might need to be made. (please do not ping on reply) Primefac (talk) 01:26, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, the bot needs to be changed for renamed templates it uses, because otherwise it cannot get the redirects for the template. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 09:36, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

|Climbing=

How do it set up / create an article alerts page for WikiProject Climbing? thanks. Aszx5000 (talk) 19:09, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Why |Climbing=? Surely {{WikiProject Climbing}} is what should be searched for? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:43, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that is what I meant, I want it for WikiProject Climbing. Have been keeping an eye on this project and updating the core articles. A resource like Article Alerts for WikiProject Climbing would make my job a lot easier :) Aszx5000 (talk) 17:18, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Article alerts/Subscribing#Basic subscription Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:26, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for that ! Aszx5000 (talk) 17:38, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

Several portal subpages were tagged for MfD yesterday by Metropolitan90 (talk · contribs), but are being handled inconsistently by aalerts.

Consider first this tagging of Portal:London transport/London transport news; it was correctly reported to Wikipedia:WikiProject London Transport/Article alerts#MfD. There is a date; the portal subpage is correctly linked; the tagger's name is present; and the "discussion" link is blue - it leads (correctly) to Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Slovakia/Slovakia news.

Now consider a similar tagging of Portal:Doctor Who/Current events; when this was reported to Wikipedia:WikiProject Doctor Who/Article alerts#MfD. It shows "undated", the portal main page (not the subpage) is linked; the name of the tagger is absent; and the "discussion" link is red - it leads (incorrectly) to Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Doctor Who.

Why has this inconsistency occurred? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:26, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it's because the template was renamed from {{Mfd}} to {{Miscellany for deletion}}, but I never updated the code since and no one reported this. I assume the bot is just skipping the template on the page, but since most pages just use the same MfD subpage as the page name, then it worked... mostly. I need to update the template that's being used. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 13:44, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

The puzzle is that both of the original taggings were the same - each one added {{mfd|Portal:Slovakia/Slovakia news}} a s new line before the existing content. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:13, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

I investigated further. I didn't notice myself before, but this is firstly because Portal talk:Doctor Who/Current events isn't actually tagged as belonging to the Doctor Who subscription (whereas Portal talk:London transport/London transport news is tagged with project banner). Secondly, because the {{mfd}} template was not no-included on Portal:Doctor Who/Current events and Portal:Doctor Who transcludes this subpage, then the Portal:Doctor Who parent page itself is in Category:Miscellaneous pages for deletion (whereas Portal:London transport does not transclude its news subpage). So Portal:Doctor Who is the page the bot actually reports (whereas it reports Portal:London transport/London transport news for the other one). But then it failed to find the "responsible template" for being in MfD for Portal:Doctor Who to determine author/date/discussion since it's not actually on that page, and so it defaulted to page name subpage, i.e. Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Doctor Who (whereas Portal:London transport/London transport news has the actual template where it read that the discussion page is non-default and given).

The actual solution for this would be to implement detecting all subpages as belonging to the parent page and thus parent page's subscription. This would have detected Portal:Doctor Who/Current events then (also the parent, but then the issue would be more obvious).

Another issue is that I normally don't skip pages just because I cannot find the responsible template. Otherwise, a lot of legitimate pages would not be reported simply because they have broken nomination syntax and such. I only do this for some specific cases where I encountered too many false positives. Ideally, I would have skipped (and logged) this. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 10:05, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. I created Portal talk:Doctor Who/Current events with {{WikiProject Doctor Who}}. Should I add something to User:AAlertBot/RegetPages, and if so, what? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:52, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

No need. The bot didn't parse it before (because it wasn't part of any subscription), so it should just parse it now for the first time. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 20:41, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

 Template:Tfm has been nominated for merging with Template:Tfd. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. FaviFake (talk) 20:44, 3 July 2026 (UTC) FaviFake (talk) 20:45, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

Would it be possible, or would there be any interest, in expanding the Article Alerts system to support custom lists of pages rather than only WikiProject scopes?

For example, if I created User:Example/My custom list, containing nothing but a list of around 10,000 wikilinks to pages I chose (e.g. collected from different categories using PetScan), such as:

* [[Article 1]]
* [[Article 2]]
...
* [[Article 10,000]]

Would it then be possible to create User:Example/My custom list/Article alerts to track the pages linked from that "User:Example/My custom list"? Kliituu (talk) 08:49, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

@Kliituu: The present system isn't limited to WikiProjects. See Wikipedia:Article alerts/Subscribing#Custom subscription - there are several methods, which may be used in combination. For example, pages in a given category, or having a particular infobox. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:07, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

The main issue with a custom list, is that it would either likely duplicate current methods of subscribing, making it pointless, or be of interest to only one person (articles I've created, plus only the pokémon from Pokemon Red, plus Asian flags), which is not something that is of much benefit to the project. And since it would be a hard list, as articles are created, those don't get added to the list, so you'd have to manually keep the list up to date.

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:51, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

Technically, it is of course possible to implement something like that. After all, subscriptions are just "lists" of pages too. Even existing system can work with custom templates and categories (although it's not encouraged to use arbitrary selections, those are there to aid locating untagged project pages). Without knowing your specific use case, the general problem is that this would be somewhat out of scope of the project. Basically, all AAB features are based on already-existing wiki features. So a project subscription uses pages that people already tag for that project and will continue tagging whether AAB uses them or not. Similarly, all the workflows like AFD, FTC, PR, etc. are existing workflows. And everything else from templates to categories is all based on existing and established processes. In short, AAB project does not create anything itself and so remains "neutral" so to speak. There are also technical and effort/maintenance reasons as mentioned above. The point of the alerts is to reach more people of relevant interest in a central location. It's not really meant for one or few editors to "watch" specific pages. And if there are multiple editors interested in grouping certain articles by topic and than following/maintaining them, then that essentially just describes a WikiProject (or task force). —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 16:39, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

According to the bot's contributions, the bot ran up until Wikipedia:WikiProject Catholicism/Article alerts and then stopped. Cunard (talk) 05:52, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Should be good again. Crashed on my PC, but I'm not home, so Headbomb is now running it. Had to redo already-processed pages, but not a huge deal. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 12:52, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

Yip Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:13, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you both! Cunard (talk) 09:53, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

At WP:UKT/AA we have two articles that were failed at GAN then have been resubmitted, and both with the correct parameters as far as I can see.

• The bot is correctly detecting that John Wykeham Jacomb-Hood is on its second nomination and thus testing for the existence of Talk:John Wykeham Jacomb-Hood/GA2, then displaying "start discussion"
• The bot is not correctly detecting that Brighton and Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway is on its second nomination and thus testing for the existence of Talk:Brighton and Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway/GA1, then incorrectly displaying "see discussion" (and linking to the completed first GAN).

Any help would be appreciated. (in solidarity), JacobTheRox^{(talk|contributions)} 08:57, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, unfortunately having the same workflow close and open in quick succession causes issue like this. It's very difficult to detect. I'll set the two pages to reprocess, which should get the latest values, see what happens. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 10:36, 21 July 2026 (UTC)