Greetings. I'm a Unix/Linux programmer who has been active in en:WP for
some time. I recently used a modified pywikipedia tool to create
templates for flag icon templates such as {{flag|USA}} (displays small
flag with text link to country's page).
I have code which I will upload shortly for a footnote/References tool.
It converts various footnotes to [[Wikipedia:Footnote3]] format
([[Template:Ref]]/[[Template:Note]]). It converts inline external links
to Footnote3 links, and makes matching entries in the References section,
with an attempt to get a Title by extracting a <title> entry through the
URL. Testing has revealed some needed adjustments before release.
A sample modification is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:SEWilco/Sandbox&diff=1830920…
Note that only five of the numbered References had been manually created
before the bot ran.
Discussion of the syntax being used is at
[[Wikipedia_talk:Footnote3#Footnotes_vs._inline_web_references]]
Summary of bot and future direction is at
[[Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Wikicite#Citations_bot]]
(Wiki links for your cut and paste enjoyment. If there is a WP-enabled
mail tool do let me know.)
To all bot users: With the switch to MediaWiki version 1.5 you need to
login your bots again. It seems that the bot can edit anonymously
again now, but it is still considered very bad manners to do so.
Andre Engels