Forums: Index > Watercooler > Heavy weapons
I notice that Rtol and Thurstan have been making good use of AWB. Although it seems a little intimidating at first, this tool is really not that much harder than search and replace in a word processor.
An example of how to perform a massive edit on large numbers of Familypedia articles is given at Help:AutoWikiaBrowser#Simple_example. It would be nice if lots more of our sophisticated users began to use it for making larger scale fixes to problems they have seen at Familypedia.
This same tool is used by several hundred editors at Wikipedia. If there are improvements that you'd like to see in it, I'd like to hear your opinions. Please drop me a note. Thanks - User:Phlox 20:48, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
- One small restriction on the range of contributors who can use it is that it does not work on ancient operating systems such as Windows Millennium Edition. I hope I'm the only regular contributor who is so technologically backward. Those of you who can try it - please do! A job that would help us all to use Wikia's new clever editing tools better is the tweaking of a few thousand info pages to bypass the deleterious effect of the CategorySelect tool, as described in the "simple example" mentioned above. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 15:21, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
- It also does not run on Linux and its variants or Macs that cannot run Windows XP or vista in a compatibility box. For these users, there is pywikipedia, though this is more technically challenging to use. It is significantly more flexible and powerful than AWB. To continue the metaphor, it is to AWB what a Sherman tank is to a 50MM machine gun. Goes more places but lights on fire more easily. I have instructions on its use (here. AMK used that a bit, but it is tough to understand unless you are a programmer, so I abandonned supporting that tool in favor of AWB. I think the more folks able to use assisted edit/bot tools the better for familypedia. -~ Phlox 17:01, 28 June 2009 (UTC)