Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BannerBot


 * The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. The result of the discussion was Symbol neutral vote.svg Request Expired.

BannerBot
Operator: Adam McCormick

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic - Semi-supervised

Programming Language(s): Python (Modified pywikipediabot Framework)

Function Summary: Basically, the bot will use the "What Links Here" page to find new transclusions of the WikiProject Schools assorted banners and templates, and log them for review. Logging will also include adding the WPSchools banner to the articles if not present.

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Daily/Weekly and as requested by the Schools Project

Edit rate requested: 10 / Minute or Less

Function Details: The bot will log in, request "What Links Here" pages for each of a list of templates (such as WPSchools -> Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:WPSchools) and then traverse all of the gatherred lists. It will compare all transclusions to a list of existing pages (generated by a previous run, initially empty), It will make sure each new page has WPSchools banner (and add it to Category:WikiProject Schools articles to be catalogued by User:BoxCrawler otherwise). The bot will then make a detailed log and post it for human review. The first run will not generate a log, but will be used as a baseline for future runs. After a large initial run, this bot can be expected (from my experience) to find about 10 new articles a week and need to make no edits other than its log entry.


 * Applicable Templates:
 * Initially, only those listed on WikiProject_Schools and WikiProject_Schools
 * Other templates such as Buckinghamshire-school-stub will be added as requested by the Project

Discussion
As long as this bot merely edits in its own userspace and keeps its edit rate below two edits per minute, it does not need to be flagged. — madman bum and angel 20:48, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * As stated, it also edits talk pages to add them to a category if they include templates from the project without including the actual banner. I would also prefer it to be flagged as it is not a sockpuppet. Adam McCormick 20:52, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * All right; I just read the function summary. Carry on.  :P — madman bum and angel 20:53, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I initially missed that too: can you update the function summary to make those edits explicit there, too?  Thanks.  If this is specific to WPJ schools, I think it essentially just needs some sanity checking on the "assorted" templates, and screening for whether they're likely to be at all false-positive-prone.  If it's open-ended in scope, the same caveat, in more general terms:  you should probably agree a specific set of templates on a per-WPJ basis with the editors concerned.  Alai 18:18, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I've added a few more details. What do you mean as far as "sanity checking"? I already have code from User:BoxCrawler that detects the banner (fairly simple regex), and I plan on addapting those regexes to look for these templates. If other Projects expressed interest I would work with them on speficic templates and logs, but for now it's only for WP:Schools. Also, as i did with BoxCrawler, I intend to do many small runs (even after approval) to perfect the operation and account for special cases. Adam McCormick 21:30, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
 * By "sanity checking" I mean for templates that are "schools WPJ temples" in some sense (you don't state what your precise criteria for that are), but that are not 100% reliable indicators for an article being in the project's scope. Alai 22:39, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
 * How much more specific than the two lists I provided can I be? The schools project works on any and all articles about secondary schools and lower. If a school identifies itself as such, what's the problem? Adam McCormick 00:47, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Eh, you asked what I meant by what I asked before you added any such list of templates. If said template do all positively identify an article as a school, then fair enough.  Alai 01:13, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds pretty safe... can you give us a few edits as examples (under 20 or so) -- Tawker 04:06, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm in the process of writing the bot. I will post before I run it (should be within the week). Thanks Adam McCormick 19:53, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

– no trial for three weeks. Feel free to reactivate this task request once the code has been written. — madman bum and angel 13:29, 24 October 2007 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.