Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MelonBot 11


 * 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.

MelonBot
Operator: Happy‑melon

Automatic or Manually Assisted: supervised automatic

Programming Language(s): pywiki

Function Summary: redirecting talk pages

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

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

Function Details: There are innumerable talk pages for which the corresponding subject page has been turned into a redirect. In almost every case readers clicking on a link to Talk:Foo are looking for the talk page attached to the content at Foo, not Talk:Foo itself. So if Foo is a redirect to Bar then in almost every case a reader would appreciate being redirected from Talk:Foo to Talk:Bar. There are very occasional exceptions where the content of the talk page discusses the redirect itself; although these are rare, they are enough to preclude an en-masse campaign to redirect every talk page on en.wiki. However, if the talk page contains no content other than WikiProject banners it is safe to conclude that there is no such discussion. So my request is for a bot to search for redirects where the talk page both exists and contains no content other than WikiProject banners, and to redirect those talk pages to the talk page of the redirect target. Odd-even redirects (from a subject page to a talk page) will be skipped, as will (for obvious reasons) pages marked as "Redirect-Class". Happy‑melon 22:30, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Discussion
Not sure there is any point to doing this. The only way someone would see such a talk page is if they first clicked back to the article being redirected from and then clicked talk. Presumably no one would do this unless they were looking for talk specifically about the redirect. Since these sort of talk pages (ones with nothing but wiki project templates) serve no purpose, wouldn't it make more sense just to delete them? --ThaddeusB (talk) 23:04, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Er, you can link to talk pages, you know :D. Happy‑melon 23:41, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I suppose it is reasonably plausible that a user could make a link to Talk:{some typo} where some typo is a redirect. Still I'd think it's mostly that user's responsibility to fix their typo.  I still don't see much point of talk redirects. --ThaddeusB (talk) 06:02, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

It would probably be good to move the wikiproject tags, if they weren't already moved, rather than just blanking them. I would also suggest, if the talk page has no incoming links, to tag it with db-g8 rather than making a redirect that no one's ever going to use. Mr.Z-man 04:18, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Why should we be deleting them? We've established in various places at various times that deleting pages is actually messier than just leaving them. It makes intuitive sense (to me at least) that talk pages should mirror their corresponding subject pages, so I don't see how deletion is more useful than redirecting; it doesn't matter how infrequently they're used, they do no damage by being there. Happy‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 13:49, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Please don't take offense to this, but tagging pages "Redirect-Class" has to be one of the dumbest possible uses of time, short of working on a "WikiProject Talk pages." Seriously. There are surely better uses of time and resources. I have no idea who added this class to the rating scheme, but it should be deprecated and removed everywhere, certainly not expanded. Also, I agree with Mr.Z-man, except for the part about tagging the pages. Just make a list and then delete them. No need to add revisions needlessly. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:26, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh don't worry, I think the "Redirect-Class" is ridiculous just as much as you. But BRFA is certainly not the place to go about changing that.  But it's mainly been your deletions, MZ, where people decided that deletion is often not the best solution here.  While it might look cleaner on the outside, it's actually both internally messy and rather unnecessary; I can't think of any situation where redirecting to the talk page of the subject's target is the wrong thing to do.  <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 13:49, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * That's a rather silly and uninformed assertion to be making. ;-) An entire novel could be written about the effect of deletions showing up in watchlists; the hysteria and paranoia that I witnessed was certainly a direct result of it. This is evident because the same type of deletions had been done by me and others for literally years without any real substantive objection. And if you think Redirect-Class is absurd as it is, why not just skip that part entirely? By using it, you only serve to expand its legitimacy. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:44, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I never said I'd be using it, I'd be ignoring it in the hope that it goes away :D. I certainly have no intention of expanding its use. I'll take your first sentence as a joke, those arguments have been had elsewhere many times, I have no desire to have them again. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:55, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I support the implementation of such a bot as I regularly type Talk:redirectedphrase and end up at the wrong thing.--<font face="verdana"; font size="2"; font color="green">Patton <font face="verdana"; font size="2"; font color="green">t /<font face="verdana"; font size="2"; font color="green">c 21:06, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Let's get things moving, I tend to agree that redirecting such pages if they already exist is just as good, if not better than deleting them. <em style="font:bold 12px Verdana;"><font color="#186">Richard <font color="#186">0612 17:12, 24 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Did these edits ever happen? §hep  Talk  03:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Could you please take a look at Bot_requests before deploying this bot en masse? Instead of hard redirects, a message such as "You are on a redirect talk page. You might be looking for Talk:TARGET." would be better. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}<sub style="margin-left:-4.0ex;">κοντριβς – WP Physics} 03:56, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Hello??? §hep Talk  21:48, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
 * My head hurts... how have we ended up with a request for user attention and a request for BAG attention again? Surely we must be waiting on only one of them? So tired, so very tired... zzz... - Jarry1250 (t, c) 22:00, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Seems Happy-Melon is effectively ignoring the message from the bot about my question (or totally missed it), so I figured the next step was to ask BAG why this has been sitting for so long. Any ideas? §hep  Talk  03:46, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I'll expire it for now, and Happy-Melon is free to reopen it whenever. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 07:55, 12 March 2009 (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.

Meh. The situation was actually the third door, Shep: I got the message, even wrote a bit of code, but I just didn't (and don't) have the time to complete it. I guess I should have withdrawn the BRFA until I had the time to follow it through. Sorry for leaving it in the lurch. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 13:16, 13 March 2009 (UTC)