Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/HotArticlesBot


 * 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.

HotArticlesBot
Operator:

Time filed: 01:06, Tuesday January 11, 2011 (UTC)

Automatic or Manually assisted: Automatic (unsupervised)

Programming language(s): PHP

Source code available: User:HotArticlesBot/Source_code + botclasses.php

Function overview: This bot will update Hot Article lists for WikiProjects that subscribe to the service (example here). The lists are updated once per day via a cronjob. Here is an example edit performed by one of my other bots for testing purposes.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Bot requests

Edit period(s): daily

Estimated number of pages affected: 2 to start with. More added as subscriptions are requested by various WikiProjects.

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): No, this is an opt-in system, not opt-out.

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

Function details: For all WikiProjects that have a Hot Articles list and want to subscribe to have it automatically updated, this bot will perform the update once per day. The data comes from Tim1357's HotArticles toolserver page. Only WikiProjects with 2000 or fewer articles are processed, otherwise they are skipped. The subscriptions are added to the tool manually.

Discussion
Per BOTPOL, Please use your main account for communication and miscellaneous edits, not bot's account. Also don't use your other bot account for testing purposes outside bot's/your userspace.

You should manually add about 10 or so subscribed projects for trial purposes.

Some thoughts: 2000 is a big number, most smaller projects don't have that many pages. Also, can it be set how many pages it reports? — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:35, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I can reduce the maximum category size if needed. I set it at 2000 to accommodate WikiProject Spiders which is one of the Projects I'm testing it on. Each subscription is set to return 1-10 Hot Articles and can be configured to look back 1 to 7 days. Sorry about the improper testing. I'm pretty much the only person who edits the two WikiProjects I'm testing on, so I didn't think it would bother anyone. I'll see if I can recruit some other Projects for testing. Thanks! Kaldari (talk) 17:50, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, I misread that! I thought only projects with more than 2000 is processed. Never mind about that comment. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:58, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, I didn't find any other projects to participate yet, but I generated list updates for the 2 test projects for 7 days. Seems to have run smoothly. Kaldari (talk) 18:04, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

You can keep on running for now to have a longer testing period. I also recommend you select some projects yourself, without them necessarily subscribing. For example, can you add WP Video Games? If any BAGger feels like approving straight away, feel free; but I don't think there's any prejudice to this continuing to run for now. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:43, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Video Games might be too large (> 30,000 articles). I added WikiProject Statistics instead. Since the query is pretty expensive, I'm limiting it to smaller WikiProjects for now. Kaldari (talk) 23:00, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Turtles has signed up now as well. By the way, does 14 day extended trial mean a new trial period that is 14 days long, or that the trial period has been extended to 14 days? If the 2nd is true, the extended trial should now be complete. Kaldari (talk) 19:04, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It meant "14 more days" — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 19:05, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * In that case, I'm going to be well outside of civilization when the trial concludes. Would it be problematic if the bot continues to run for a few days past the new trial? It's currently running for 4 projects once a day. Kaldari (talk) 19:10, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No problem. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 19:11, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Looks like the bot made a whoopsie today. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:00, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Weird. I just re-ran it and it worked fine. I've added a few extra checks to make sure the output is valid before performing the edit. That should prevent any problems even if the data source is corrupt or unavailable. If it's OK with you, I'd like to run it for a few more days with the new checks in place to make sure it works smoothly. Kaldari (talk) 18:15, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Go ahead. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:18, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
 * WP:WikiProject Cats/Hot articles the "&" didn't show up until I added it. --Highspeedrailguy (talk) 18:37, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I haven't been able to fix this yet. It seems to be related to the parsing of the XML. Kaldari (talk) 01:50, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Any updates?  MBisanz  talk 10:13, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I haven't had time to dig deeper into fixing the ampersand problem. So basically, the bot works great except for once in a blue moon when an article has an ampersand in it. Should I just turn the bot off until I have time to fix this? It's still running currently for the trial group, which is only 5 projects. Kaldari (talk) 23:40, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
 * As long as the projects are happy, let's keep it running in trial until you have more time to work on it.  MBisanz  talk 05:42, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I found the problem. It's in the data supplied by tim1357's toolserver script. I've made a request for tim1357 to correct the problem, but unfortunately there's nothing I can do on my end in the meantime. Kaldari (talk) 03:30, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks like Tim's on wikibreak for the next month :( Kaldari (talk) 22:25, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Tim fixed the ampersand issue, so everything should be in smooth working order now. Kaldari (talk) 23:59, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Looks good. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 07:13, 3 May 2011 (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.