Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Eubot 4


 * 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 keep vote.svg Approved.

Eubot 4
Operator: Eugène van der Pijll (talk)

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic

Programming Language(s): Perl

Function Summary: Adding redirects for abbreviated titles

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): one time run

Edit rate requested: about 6 edits per minute

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): Y

Function Details: As you can see at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people), there is no consensus on the format for initials in article titles. This leads to duplicate articles, such as C.N. Liew and C. N. Liew. I propose to create redirects to existing articles to prevent this from happening again. The bot recognizes titles in two formats, "X. Y." and "X.Y.", and creates missing redirects in four formats: "X. Y.", "X.Y.", "X Y" and "XY". For example, for the existing article R. C. Lucas, Eubot will create the redirects R C Lucas, R.C. Lucas, and RC Lucas.

This will be done for all articles with abbreviations in the above format, including:
 * Personal names with initials
 * Titles of books, songs, and movies (e.g. D O A (1950 film), D. O. A. (1950 film), DOA (1950 film) to D.O.A. (1950 film))
 * Football clubs (e.g. Darvel F C, Darvel F. C., Darvel FC to Darvel F.C.)
 * A lot of US related articles (e.g. Dismissal of U S attorneys controversy documents etc.)

I'd especially like some feedback on the last two categories; I could filter these out, but I don't think the redirects do any harm. There are some problematic titles: for example, does T.A.T.u. need a redirect T. A. T. u.? I'll try to filter these ones out by hand before running the bot.

I have an initial list of 30,000 redirects to add, based on the October database dump; when those are done, I will add new redirects irregularly.

I have mentioned this bot proposal at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people), and will also leave messages at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (abbreviations), where this topic has also been discussed. Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 02:09, 24 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Added: I will also create redirects for different styles of adding junior and senior suffixes ("Jr", "Jr.", "junior", both with and without commas).

Discussion

 * In the case of football clubs, what about the instances where "FC" is preferred over "F.C." in the country the club is from? Will a redirect be created at "F.C." for those? – PeeJay 08:18, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. To be clear: I will not move any articles, but those located now at "F.C." will get a redirect from "FC", and those at "FC" will get a redirect at "F.C.". -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 10:43, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I like what this bot is supposed to do, so  Dreamafter  Talk 19:04, 24 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Would it be possible to add a redirect classification template to the newly created pages? You could use R from alternative spelling, although I think it would be better to create R from alternative punctuation. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:00, 26 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Bot trial completed. See contributions. I've created R from alternative punctuation as suggested. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 23:34, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Looks good. — Coren (talk) 06:24, 27 December 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.