Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/GimmeBot


 * 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.

GimmeBot
Operator: Gimmetrow

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic (changes not requiring confirmation)

Programming Language(s): pyWikipedia

Function Summary: Support FAC and FAR

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): twice a day As needed, once or twice a day

Edit rate requested: 3 edits per minute

Already has a bot flag (Y/N):

Function Details: The bot will check the featured log and archive pages for updates, add header/footer templates to closed FAC and FAR discussion pages, and update talk page templates of associated articles. It may handle moving FAC/FAR discussion pages.

Discussion

 * Will this go through all the already closed entries or not? It would be easy to go through the history of the FxC page and see what passed and not. The Placebo Effect 14:22, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, this may involve a one-time pass through all the old entries, subject to further discussion at FA. I'm going to track pages "newly added" to the FAC monthly archives. The way I've envisioned this, if the code is pointed at any older monthly archive, all discussions there would be flagged as "newly added" and would be tagged appropriately. However, my priority is really 1) updating talk page templates especially for non-promoted articles, and 2) tagging future discussions as they close. Gimmetrow 15:14, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Would this check whether Template:Featured article is added or removed (whatever is appropriate) on the articles as well? It would look bad if the bot changes a talk page tag to FACfailed but does not remove the small star on the article itself. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 03:37, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The star is removed through FA review. If FA review wants this bot to handle formerFA, then yes it will also remove featured article from the article page. The bot will probably not edit article pages for promoted articles; adding featured article is customarily left to the FA nominator or main article contributor. Articles which fail to be promoted, or are kept after review, will not need any changes on the article page. Gimmetrow 04:13, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks — Tutmosis 20:56, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Questions regarding tags for "notices to closed FAC discussion pages":
 * What kind of tags will the bot be using? Have this already been made into templates?
 * Will the tags feature the date the article was promoted/defeatured?
 * Will the tag be updated if the article passes but later fails an FAR? ex: "featured on [date], but was defeatured on [date]"? I ask this because if an article is defeatured, technically it would be incorrect for its FAC nom to continue to say say it "passed" since it means the article has featured status.
 * Are you willing to rewrite the bot if in the future new talk page templates are adopted such as the multi-function one discussed at Talk:FAC?
 * What you mean when you say the bot will be "Moving FAC and FAR discussion pages", moving them where?
 * He's referring to the problem with archives of failed FACs. When a subsequent FAC is submittted, editors don't always move the former to archive, before staring a new nomination page.  Archiving them *when* the FAC fails may be a better option, clearing the slate for subsequent FACs.  If Gimmetrow goes this way, the bot will have to make a pass to archive all old FACs (/Archive1 /Archive2 etc.).  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 00:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The current FAC nomination procedure expects nominators to move old FAC discussion pages, and this causes problems that SandyGeorgia usually has to fix. One idea was to preemptively move the pages as discussion closes. This would happen regularly (whenever discussions closed), and possibly once for all old FACs. The bot is seeking authorization to handle page moves within the WP:FA subpages in case this solution is adopted. Other solutions have been proposed, too.
 * The actual templates for closing nominations have not been written. Those who want this seem to want something simple, just "This article was promoted." FA discussion pages have never had closing templates nor date of closure. I could just note the month of promotion, which can (usually) be found from the name of the archive. "This article was promoted in January 2007." Whatever the template text is, the bot is basically going to read the nomination page, check if the templates are already there, and if not write back +text+ Exactly what goes in toptemplate, or whether bottomtemplate should exist, are details to be worked out.
 * Currently, when a FA is removed through FA review, the FA template is changed to formerFA, and it keeps a link to the original nomination page. Changing the template (eg, adding a paramter) on the old discussion would be doable, if that's what FA review wants.
 * If a talk page multi template were adopted, I'm sure I would have to rewrite the bot to handle it. Gimmetrow 02:55, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The template used for closing is actually FormerFA2 when status is removed; pages that keep their stars take FARpassed. These were changed when FARC was merged with FAR. Marskell 08:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * There are monthly/yearly pages for all failed/passed nominations, example would be Featured article candidates/Archived nominations/April 2006. If your bot will be archiving nomination pages it would have to update this corresponding lists as well, would the bot be doing that? — Tutmosis 17:37, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, if the bot moves any pages, it will update any links to the page to point to the new name. Most of these links are in the FAC log pages, but it will need to update any links elsewhere, too. Gimmetrow 18:07, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Symbol support vote.svg Bot trial run approved for the duration of one week. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 05:53, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Testing
The bot is archiving failed nominations as they close by moving the page to /archiveN. The redirect is then cleared so the page can be used for the next FAC. (One of those pages has already been used for a subsequent FAC: Featured article candidates/U2.) I had planned the bot to update any links to point to the the archived page, however there is a problem. When older failed FACs have been archived, links pointing to them have (generally) not been updated - neither in talk or wikiproject page, nor even in the old FAC archives. There are often old links pointing to the non-archived page - if the bot updates those links for a 2007 failed FAC, the links point to the 2007 archived page. Thus Featured article candidates/Cyrus the Great was moved to /archive2, but links to the non-archive page may have a context referring to either /archive1 or /archive2. This seems a bit to sort out. (Even the old FAC log from September 2006 had not been updated to point to /archive1 when the recent FAC was opened.) When there is only one failed FAC, all links will refer to that FAC discussion, so the bot could update links for this simple case. However, since the bot is leaving a link to the archive when it removes the redirect, I'm wondering if even that is needed, or if the limited benefit is worth the edits. Comments? Gimmetrow 18:54, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I haven't been involved, nor do I know too much about the FAC process to chip in here, but basically, have you sorted out all of the issues yet? — Mets501 (talk) 21:32, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I think the FAC process is fairly settled. However, they also decided to try to implement a new combo template for FA/PR at the same time, and some issues with that are still unresolved. This relates to which talk page templates are going to be incorporated into the new combo template. Pages edited by the regular/ongoing run of the bot can probably be adjusted by hand if things change with the talk page template. The one-time run of the bot, however, involves a large number of pages. Gimmetrow 21:51, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I see. Basically, my question is do you think that you would encounter many problems with the running of this bot automatically either in the first run or any subsequent runs?  Perhaps the answer is to fix all of the past problems by hand and then implement the bot for all the future things? — Mets501 (talk) 21:55, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The bot can handle archiving future FAC discussions with the corresponding page moves and talk page updates.
 * The bot is also supposed to do a one-time run to convert the old FAC pages (estimated about 3000) over to match the new system, because this is too much to do by hand. This isn't quite ready yet. Gimmetrow 22:05, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

What is the status of this bot now? It is past the one-week trial period. Gimmetrow 02:54, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I thought you said that the one-time run (which should probably come first, I'm assuming) isn't ready? — Mets501 (talk) 03:32, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * There are (or will be) FAC discussions to close. Can I continue to process these and work on the other functions of the bot? Gimmetrow 03:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, for now your bot may continue with any functions that don't have any problems. Just two questions: do you expect the other function to take very long to fix, and for the functions that are working perfectly, will the bot being making regular edits (i.e. more than once every minute or two)? — Mets501 (talk) 03:50, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I would definitely like a faster edit rate than once a minute, because I'm supervising diffs manually. The other functions are mostly a matter of discussion about what to do with certain cases. I don't know when that all will be resolved. Gimmetrow 04:06, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, so should we consider this approved for the first function and then when you're ready with that other function then you can submit a new request for approval? — Mets501 (talk) 04:09, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Seems OK to me. The one-time run seems rather substantial to me and I was planning on at least giving notice anyway. Substantial here means about 3000 articles needing 3-5 edits each (on different pages) to process. Gimmetrow 04:27, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

This bot shall run with a flag. Please create a new request for approval before the huge one-time run. — Mets501 (talk) 04:34, 27 January 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.