Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/JoelHelperBot


 * 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 neutral vote.svg Request Expired.

JoelHelperBot
Operator:

Time filed: 07:49, Friday, November 4, 2016 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Supervised

Programming language(s): Python

Source code available: Github (Editing functionality untested, pending trial approval)

Function overview: Assists in maintaining and creating pages in the United States presidential election imagemaps category, which are currently misaligned and only partially complete, and are easily generate-able.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): One-time initial run, followed by manually-initiated runs as updates are needed or new pages are created

Estimated number of pages affected: 58 for the current set, plus one additional one every 4 years. Plus, any pages the templates are included in.

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

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

Function details: Generates imagemaps programmatically, based on a curated set of state outlines, combined as needed for each year, and edits the imagemap templates to ensure consistency and accuracy.

It uses pywikibot for the edit functionality, which I believe I have configured correctly via pwb.py to log in via OAuth. I've set up a sub-account under my account for the bot, and created an OAuth Consumer for it to use.

Discussion
The bot is generically named because I foresee using it for other similar tasks (editing large categories of pages that are generate-able), but this request is just for the initial functionality of the election imagemaps.

As a demonstration, I've copy/pasted the output from the bot to make a manual edit on the 2012 imagemap. This is the nature of the edits the bot would be making, plus a comment at the top noting that the content was generated. In order to see the improvement you'll have to open the old page alongside the new page and hover over the states - notice how the linked areas in the new version are much better aligned (compare, for instance, Florida). There are further improvements to be made - the callout labels are a mess, and DC isn't even included at all - put I plan to do an initial round of edits to fix the alignments, then get to work on the callout labels. Once that's done, I plan on generating maps for all the elections, starting with the modern-map ones not represented yet that are ready to be generated (1848-1872), followed by the earlier ones that require more manual editing. The Human Spellchecker (talk) 09:30, 4 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Please make some test edits, and post your results here. — xaosflux  Talk 02:22, 5 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I did a few test edits that all went as planned - I tested having the bot update an existing page, update several existing pages, and create a new imagemap for an existing image. I also had it run an update on 2000-2016 after doing the tests, and as expected, it found that the pages looked like it wanted them to and left well enough alone.  I didn't yet test fixing the callout labels, because I haven't yet created those areas, and it's the same procedure as updating alignment, just with a different end-result for the wikitext. The Human Spellchecker (talk) 07:07, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Do not include "credits" in the wikitext (e.g.  ) the edit summary in the page history serves this purpose. —  xaosflux  Talk 16:37, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks, I've removed that bit from the code, so the next edits will trim that out. I realized too the "(semi-automated by JoelHelperBot)" in the edit text may be duplicative, perhaps just "(semi-automated)", or leave it off entirely? The Human Spellchecker (talk) 19:51, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I'd just leave it out, the edit summary should tell the story. One thing you could do is like what I do with User:Fluxbot - describe the functions on the userpage, and then just link to the task in the edit summary (e.g. Special:Diff/747894924).  This becomes more and more useful as you get multiple tasks to do. —  xaosflux  Talk 20:45, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Other example: meta:User:Fluxbot. — xaosflux  Talk 20:47, 6 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Please make a final trial run with your updated settings. — xaosflux  Talk 16:21, 11 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Do you still want to proceed with this? — xaosflux  Talk 15:25, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

No response from operator. — xaosflux  Talk 22:34, 30 November 2016 (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.