jayvdb created this task. jayvdb claimed this task. jayvdb added a subscriber: jayvdb. jayvdb added projects: pywikibot-compat, Pywikibot-compat-to-core, Pywikibot-Other-scripts, pywikibot-core. Restricted Application added subscribers: Aklapper, pywikipedia-bugs. TASK DESCRIPTION -user: was added as a global argument to core in Dec 2008, and backported to compat in May 2012. https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/pywikipedia/6171 https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/pywikipedia/10261 However, -user was in use by several scripts, and used for a conflicting purpose. clean_sandbox.py : '-user' boolean to enable the bot to operate within userspace. It does work, as -user: and -user are different (global arg parsing ignores '-user' as it doesnt end in a colon). However it will present a major problem for the argparse implementation, and is very confusing. It is also buggy: T87634 -userlist was renamed -user in compat, Feb 2012, and copied to core, December 2012 https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/pywikipedia/9899 https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/pywikipedia/10768 template.py : '-user:' string argument to process pages by the user - impossible to use this argument, excepting selecting the bot's user account, as the global arg parser requires a password for that username. Added to compat in Nov 2010, and ported to core in Sep 2011 https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/pywikipedia/8698 https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/pywikipedia/9545 patrol.py : identical problem as template.py -user was part of the initial compat script, March 2011. not yet ported to core. https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/pywikipedia/9090 TASK DETAIL https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T87635 REPLY HANDLER ACTIONS Reply to comment or attach files, or !close, !claim, !unsubscribe or !assign <username>. EMAIL PREFERENCES https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/settings/panel/emailpreferences/ To: jayvdb Cc: pywikipedia-bugs, jayvdb, Aklapper, Anshoe, droid