Replacer

Replacer is an online tool whose purpose is to provide a straightforward interface in order to help fixing the most common orthography or style errors in Wikipedia.

The tool has been created on the need of reviewing manually certain corrections which are difficult to automatize due to the existence of false positives.

It's available at https://replacer.toolforge.org

The tool is optimized to be used with mobiles, tablets and bigger screens. It's possible that it doesn't work completely in old browsers, as IE.

This README is based on the tool page in Spanish Wikipedia: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:Benjavalero/Replacer

Technical details can be found in https://github.com/benjavalero/replacer/blob/master/technical-design.md

Users

The first time is needed to log in with an existing user which is registered in Wikipedia.

All editions in Replacer are performed in the name of this user and therefore count as his/her contributions. Due to the importance of the changes performed by this tool, it is requested that users are at least auto-confirmed.

The description of the editions, available in the history of the pages, includes a reference to the use of the tool and to the replacements performed.

It's recommended not to perform a high amount of editions in little time in order to make easier the task for the Wikipedia users in charge of following the most recent changes. The tool may occasionally limit this amount of editions to accomplish the bot policy.

Languages

Once logged in, in the upper menu (at right) the username is displayed along with the language associated to the Wikipedia to work with, by default the Wikipedia in Spanish (es).

Currently, there exists also the option of working with the Wikipedia in Galizian (gl).

Don't mistake this language with the one used in the common texts of the application: buttons, menus, etc. At this moment the application is not internationalized yet and the interface, whatever the chosen Wikipedia to work with, will be displayed in Spanish.

Edit Pages

The tool contains several sections which help to find pages with replacements:

• Random Page. It opens the editor with a random page and all its potential replacements.
• Replacement List. It shows a list with all the replacement types and the approximated amount of pages having replacements of these types. Each replacement type contains a link to open the editor with a random page and the occurrences of the chosen replacement.
• Custom Replacement. It allows to introduce a replacement not existing in the tool. It opens the editor with a random page and the occurrences of the chosen replacement. The purpose of this section is to make easier those corrections with few occurrences and thus not appearing in the general listings. If a replacement has lots of occurrences it's recommended to include it in the general listings for an optimal maintenance.

Once Replacer finds a page to be reviewed, in the top is displayed the title of the page.

By the title is displayed a link which allows to edit the page in Wikipedia by the traditional way. If all the replacements to be reviewed are contained in the same section, then the link will open the edition of that specific section. By this link is displayed another one allowing to access the history of editions of the page.

Below, the potential replacements are displayed independently. Each replacement shows first a snippet of the text surrounding it, highlighting the replacement in red. Beneath the text, the different replacement options are listed, including the option for the original text which is selected by default.

Besides a fixed option is displayed as a button to edit the fragment of text around the replacement in case of the given options are not enough.

After reviewing all the replacements, there are two buttons:

• The button Save changes will be active if there is any replacement to be performed. In this case there is also a badge with the amount of replacements. After clicking this button, the selected replacements will be applied immediately in Wikipedia.
• The button Mark as reviewed (without changes) will always be active, even if there are replacements selected. On clicking this button, no modification will be performed in Wikipedia, and Replacer will mark the page internally as reviewed.

After clicking any of the two buttons, Replacer automatically will find the next page to be reviewed.

A page edited or reviewed without changes will not be offered again to be reviewed until the page has new relevant editions.

If none of the offered options is the right one, it's recommended to edit the page manually by using the link by the title, and save the page without changes.

Notice that orthography or style errors are usually signs of vandalism or a bad translation of the page or section. In this case, again it's recommended to edit the page manually and apply the action more convenient: revert the vandalism, rewrite the page or section, or add a warning template, like Copyedit.

Replacement Types

The replacement types are grouped in following categories:

• Orthography. Potentially misspelled words.

  • They are extracted from the general list in https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Corrector_ortogr%C3%A1fico/Listado. The list is refreshed every hour.
  • Each subtype matches with an item of the list.
  • Terms with non-alphabetic characters (dots, spaces or digits) are not taken into account. Terms included in the false positive list (detailed further) are ignored too.

• Composed. Expressions, with more than one word, potentially misspelled, or terms not fitting in the Orthography category.

  • They are extracted from the list in https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:Benjavalero/ComposedMisspellings. The list is refreshed every hour.

• Style

  • ó with accent for unnecessary uses of conjunction "ó" containing a diacritic (only in Spanish).
  • Century with no small caps helps to replace centuries with the appropriate template which displays the century Roman number with small caps.
  • Date for dates with wrong format, for instance:
    • Dates with the month in uppercase: 2 de Septiembre de 2019
    • Dates with the day starting with zero: 02 de septiembre de 2019
    • Dates with the year containing a dot: 2 de septiembre de 2.019
    • Dates with missing prepositions: 2 de septiembre 2019
    • Dates with wrong order: Mayo 3, 2020
    • Note: In Spanish it's recommended the cultivated use of «septiembre» instead of «setiembre». Nevertheless, this replacement is only offered along with another fix in the same fix. For instance the date «2 de setiembre de 2019» is not offered to be reviewed.
    • Dates in format of month and year are also offered to review when preceded by certain connectors: Desde Septiembre de 2019
  • Ordinal for Spanish ordinals with wrong format, for instance 2º or 1er.

False positives

There are certain parts of the content of page where most false positives usually appear. With the risk of letting some replacement without fixing, the tool ignores all the replacements contained in these parts:

• Some XML tags and all the content within, even other tags, e.g. <code>An <span>example</span>.</code>
• Template names, e.g. Bandera in {{Bandera|España}}
• Some complete templates, even with nested templates, e.g. {{Cite|A cite}}
• Template parameters, e.g. param in {{Template|param=value}}. For some specific parameters, we include in the result also the value, which is usually a taxonomy, a Commons category, etc. We also include the value if it seems like a file or a domain.
• Text in cursive and bold, e.g. ''cursive''
• Quoted text, e.g. «In Paris», "In Paris" or “In Paris”
• URLs, e.g. https://www.google.es
• XML tags, e.g. <span> or <br />
• XML comments, e.g. <!-- A comment -->
• Categories, e.g. [[Categoría:España]]
• Links with suffix, e.g. [[brasil]]eño
• The first part of aliased links, e.g. brasil in [[brasil|Brasil]]
• Inter-language links, e.g. [[pt:Title]]
• Filenames, e.g. xx.jpg in [[File:xx.jpg]]
• Known expressions which are (almost) always false positives, extracted from the list in: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:Benjavalero/FalsePositives. The list is refreshed every hour.
• Some proper nouns which can also be common nouns. If they are preceded or followed by a word with uppercase then they are ignored. For instance, Julio in Julio Verne, or Domingo in Plácido Domingo.
• Words in uppercase which are correct according to the punctuation, e.g. Enero in {{Cite|date=Enero de 2020}}. The considered punctuations are:
  • After dot
  • Parameter values
  • Unordered and ordered list items
  • After an HTML tag like a reference or a table cell
  • Wiki-table cells
  • Starting a paragraph
  • Starting a header
• Words in the page title
• Table-related styles, i.e. lines starting with {| or |-
• Some complete sections, e.g. Bibliografía

Cosmetic Changes

When the tool applies changes in a Wikipedia page, it takes profit to perform some cosmetic changes which usually have no effect in the page visualisation but in the internal maintenance of the wikitext:

• Links with the same link and alias, e.g. [[Coronavirus|coronavirus]] ==> [[coronavirus]]
• Space links where the space is in lowercase, e.g. [[archivo:x.jpg]] ==> [[Archivo:x.jpg]]
• Space links where the space is not translated, e.g. [[File:x.jpg]] ==> [[Archivo:x.jpg]]
• Template DEFAULTSORT including special characters, e.g. {{ DEFAULTSORT : AES_Andes_2 }} ==> {{DEFAULTSORT:AES Andes 2}}
• Categories containing unnecessary spaces, e.g. [[Categoría: Animal]] ==> [[Categoría:Animal]]
• Unicode white-spaces, e.g. \u2002
• Templates containing the useless template word, e.g. {{plantilla:DGRG}} ==> {{DGRG}}
• Tags with no content, e.g. <div style="text-align: right; font-size: 85%;"></div>
• Break with incorrect syntax, e.g. </br> ==> <br>
• List items ending with a break, e.g. * x <br> ==> * x
• Headlines with the complete text in bold, e.g. == '''Asia''' ==
• Headlines ending with a colon, e.g. == Asia: ==
• Unnecessary small tag in sup or ref tags, e.g. <sup><small>2</small></sup> ==> <sup>2</sup>
• Double small tags which make the text too tiny and less accessible, e.g. <small><small>Text</small></small> ==> <small>Text</small>
• External links with double HTTP, e.g. https://https://www.linkedin.com ==> https://www.linkedin.com

If appropriate, these changes are communicated to the wikiproject Check Wikipedia to update its counters.

Indexation

Replacer indexes weekly all pages in Wikipedia trying to find new replacements, as the content of the pages may change and so the lists containing the potential errors. The indexation uses the monthly dumps in https://dumps.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html. However, not all pages are taken into account:

• Only namespaces Article and Annex are indexed. For instance user or discussion pages are ignored.
• Redirection pages are ignored.
• The tool also ignores pages containing certain templates, for instance those tagged to be deleted or containing many issues.

Project developed with thanks to the JetBrains OpenSource support.