Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BU RoBOT 3


 * The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA. The result of the discussion was Symbol keep vote.svg Approved

BU RoBOT 3
Operator:

Time filed: 13:11, Thursday, August 27, 2015 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): AWB

Source code available: AWB

Function overview: Removes Ballet from articles that are not linked from the navbox as per WP:BIDIRECTIONAL.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):
 * Bot requests
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ballet

Edit period(s): One time run Multiple runs (probably 2-3), see discussion

Estimated number of pages affected: 1,366

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Already has a bot flag (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: Finds and removes  from articles that are not linked from the navbox as per WP:BIDIRECTIONAL.

Discussion

 * Please see the comment I left at Bots/Requests_for_approval/BU_RoBOT_2.—cyberpower  Chat:Online 14:15, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Responded there. ~ RobTalk 14:44, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your time, and I apologize for any hard feelings this may have caused.—cyberpower  Chat:Online 15:22, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * No worries. I can appreciate that this is a widely-held concern about new editors, even if I don't think it should be. If you hadn't brought it up, someone else would have. ~ RobTalk 15:49, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Actually someone else did off wiki, and presented their concerns, which is why I asked, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered asking. Having read your response, I think you are simply a new user, torpedoing his/her way towards adminship. :-)—cyberpower Chat:Limited Access 16:12, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Eh, I doubt that. It seems more hassle than it's worth to request the tools. Besides, grad school beckons, and I don't know how much time I'll be left with a year from now. ~ RobTalk 16:23, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Is there any plan to check for a category or something similar as part of the removal process? E.g., Bolshoi Theatre clearly states it's a ballet and opera house, and one of the categories does place it in Russian ballet, which is what's presumably desired as a valid replacement for, but is there a check to see if there's categorization/list alternatives of others? Also, are you ensuring this will only affect the article namespace? (e.g., some people like to put nav templates in their user space for quick access to topics they frequently edit). -- slakr \ talk / 01:18, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The list of articles will be restricted to the mainspace, yes. Sorry, should have specified that. As far as categories go, the vast majority of these articles are already placed in proper categories. If they aren't, I see that as a separate and relatively minor issue, given the fairly small number of articles affected. I do not plan to add or remove any categories with this task. It appears editors have used Ballet almost like one would a project template on the talk page, and this task attempts only to correct that. ~ RobTalk 01:27, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I thought further on this. On the off chance orphaned articles are on the list for this task, the navbox should probably not be removed until they are categorized. I'll add a restriction so the task does not run on orphaned articles. ~ RobTalk 19:14, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * BAGAssistanceNeeded >7 days since last response. ~ RobTalk 13:47, 4 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you for taking on this task. A couple things:
 * Does you regex handle templates with params? There is a state.
 * I agree with your orphaned articles behavior, but I'm wondering if we should be a little safer. How about skipping articles with Ballet but no categories that are subcategories of Category:Ballet? Perhaps we can pre-generate that list and manually check it if it's small. Ultimately, I'm concerned about losing navigation functionality. It's often bothered me how user-unfriendly categories are, but it does seem better than transcluding Ballet everywhere.
 * Ping me when you reply, please. —  Earwig   talk 02:34, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for taking a look at this. I'll alter my regex to handle parameters. I could run this task on the recursive list of articles in Category:Ballet instead of the list of articles that transcludes Ballet. I fear a large amount of pages would be leftover because category trees are probably the worst maintained part of the project, as I learned when someone created a recursive list of all templates that are within subcategories of Category:Navigational boxes, but this could be a start at the very least. I'd likely need multiple runs of this task in that event, as I'd pass the list over to WP:WikiProject Ballet to categorize and then run the task again. I've updated the field above accordingly. ~ RobTalk 03:47, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Hmm. Well, I didn't mean to overcomplicate this, but multiple runs might work – I figure we should see how many pages remain after the first run is complete and determine whether those can be manually cleaned up. I just tried to run a CatScan on the template and category tree but the tool seems offline. In the mean time, we can test out the removal process from a technical perspective. Let's give it a shot by traversing the category tree. —  Earwig   talk  04:17, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Edits can be found here. There was three edits before those that didn't work as intended due to a typo in my regex (missed a parenthesis), but I rolled them back and redid them with the correction. After the first five or so edits on that list, I altered how white space was handled to avoid taking more than is desirable. After the typo correction and tweak to white space, spot-checking revealed no further issues. ~ RobTalk 04:54, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Some of the spacing still feels a little wonky – case where there is a newline before and after the template, e.g. 1 and 2, resulting in the double-newline. Not sure why 3 or 4 added a space. Fairly minor gripes, though. Looks good otherwise. I am going to sleep, so any further comments will not be read for another ~16 hours. Thanks! —  Earwig   talk 05:19, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The best way to handle spacing may be just to run AWB general fixes along with this, which would run after the find and replace and remove excess white space. Thoughts on that? And no rush. I just pinged you a few times because you had asked for a ping when I responded, not because there is a great sense of urgency. The world will keep spinning with some extra navboxes for a day or two. ~ RobTalk 05:28, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Sure, let's give that a shot. Any reason to not enable genfixes? Just a sanity check. Yes, we can wait, but BRFA tends to be unfairly slow often and I feel bad when requests stagnate for too long.  —  Earwig   talk  04:19, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Edits are here. Spacing now looks fine and there's still no errors on the template removal itself that I found in the 50 edits. I have no particular reason for avoiding running general fixes on this task other than a distaste for automating the general fixes at all, since I can't control any errors that may pop up there. ~ RobTalk 04:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah; I do tend to notice occasional weirdness with genfixes but for the most part it's fine. —  Earwig   talk  01:54, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA.