Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MoohanBOT 7


 * 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 The result of the discussion was Symbol oppose vote.svg Withdrawn by operator.

MoohanBOT 7
Operator:

Time filed: 10:48, Monday September 22, 2014 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): AWB

Source code available:

Function overview: Stub sorting British people stubs

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): Periodically

Estimated number of pages affected: Could be a few hundred in first run then most likely significantly less than one hundred on subsequent runs

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

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

Function details: The bot will run through pages in Category:People stubs, Category:European people stubs and Category:British people stubs. It will check the page for the phrase ... is/was a British/English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish ... if it finds it is and the page also contains a less specific biographic stub tag it will replace the tag with UK-bio-stub, England-bio-stub, Wales-bio-stub, Scotland-bio-stub or NorthernIreland-bio-stub respectively. The bot will also perform general fixes and auto-tagging along with the main edit.

I have done some edits manually using the same find-replace settings on my account:,, , and

Discussion
I notified UK Wikipedians' notice board so that we get some feedback. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:45, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Just curious why you're only sorting British people stubs, and not Americans, Germans, French, etc. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:23, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Yep, just British (for now) I started to do it manually then came up with some find/replaces to do it, I was surprised at there being no false positives on the edits I performed so thought it could be farmed out to my bot. I would appreciate any suggestions for avoiding false positives however as my regex is rather basic at the moment. If the task has community approval and the bot proves itself capable of not making mistakes it should be trivial to expand it to other geographic biography categories. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 08:45, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

What would your bot do for "...is a British-American..."? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 16:55, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * In it's current form it would change the more general stub tag to UK-bio-stub whilst this isn't completely correct (it should probably have the applicable American tag as well) it will not have damaged the article and it will have improved its stub categorisation. If the bot was later expanded to other countries then these types would have to be dealt with as special cases. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 10:58, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Just passing through but what logic is used to stub Westminster politicians. David Cameron is from a Scottish family and has no influence in the UK? Should he have a UK stub or a Scottish stub? David Lloyd George, the well known Welsh speaking, Welshman who was born in Chorlton-on-Medlock,Manchester? Then there is Gideon Osbourne 18th Baron Osbourne to be, who is Anglo-Irish born in Paddington? Then Neil Kinnock born in Tredegar Wales- but a UK prime minister.-- Clem Rutter (talk) 20:48, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * To answer your queries one at a time;


 * David Cameron would not have anything changed as the article doesn't contain the key phrase
 * David LLoyd George would have UK-bio-stub added as the phrase ... was a British ... appears
 * Gideon Osbourse, it would depend on the article author(s)
 * Neil Kinnock would have UK-bio-stub added for the same reason as above.
 * However none of the above pages would actually have anything changed as they my bot will only look at pages with the broad stub tags of bio-stub, europe-bio-stub or UK-bio-stub and change this to UK/England/Wales/NI/Scottish if it thinks that would be better i.e. it finds a phrase like ... is an English ...


 * Oppose for bio-stub. I and others work on this category to sort people to more specific stubs. If they are moved out as UK-bio-stub they won't get that further sorting as they will be mixed with people where someone has looked, considered, and given that tag as the only suitable bio-stub tag. Category:People stubs ought to be empty, but this is not a good way to do it. Pam  D  07:32, 29 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Fair enough, thanks for the input PamD. I just preparsed the task and there are 17 pages that would be affected after the sorting of bio-stubs is removed. This obviously doesn't leave much for a bot to do! Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 14:02, 30 September 2014 (UTC)


 * This has been a useful discussion as it's prompted me to look at Category:European people stubs, Category:British people stubs and Category:English people stubs. There are a whole raft of stubs which were very badly sorted by one particular editor (no longer apparently active) a few months ago, and I've started to rescue some of them (he managed to label a Canadian singer as US-bio-stub, a Filipino volleyball player as Asia-stub, etc). The "European people stubs" are an interesting batch, as some of them are historical personages from no-longer-existent entities in Europe. Pam  D  21:15, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

any comments? Should I give green light for the bot trial? -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:16, 8 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Well from Jamesmcmahon0's comment above I wasn't sure he thought it worthwhile anyway? I'd certainly prefer not to see the Category:People stubs being emptied in this way. I'd rather see one stub moved into Category:British actors than half a dozen into Category:British people.  Pam  D  22:50, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I was unsure whether it would be worth while but after thinking for a while could we go ahead with the Bot trial, I won't touch Category:People stubs just apparently miscatorgaised ones in EU, or British. The main reason I'd like to proceed with this trial is (when I have some more time) I would like to expand it to perform the same task for other geographical regions. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 07:54, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Please report diffs, problems and notify me when it's complete. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:15, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

any updates on this? -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:50, 12 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Skeptical - This task doesn't seem to be a particularly pressing issue. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this task is just correcting formalities. Mind you, it is these formalities that make a wiki run smoothly. However, I don't have enough faith that an automated program can correctly slot a bunch of people into various article categories at a such a success rate that it would be operably acceptable. This task seems to have so many caveats (as indicated above by PamD) and quite a bit of room for error that one might say that it is irresponsible to approve this task. Maybe I'm wrong, though. Perhaps James' bot can operate successfully. Admittedly, I think it's reasonable to have the task operate, at least regularly, with human supervision. Just my 2cents.

By the way, it would seem this BRFA has been forsaken. :O -ceradon ( talk  •  contribs ) 09:09, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

did you finish the bot trial? -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:11, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi, sorry I've been absent on this bot req for a while, I have been preparsing the list of potential pages every now and again it seems, however that this is not an error that is made very often as there has not been a new page incorrectly tagged since I opened the bot req. I fixed all of the instances using my user account (13 pages on the 1st October). All of the changes were made using the above logic however so I think the idea works in principal. I think the best thing to do is probably end this bot req and I'll have a stab at the other geographic regions using the same logic on my user account when I have time, unless anyone has any other input or suggestions? Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 12:09, 24 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Non-BAG closure --ceradon ( talk  •  contribs ) 02:04, 30 December 2014 (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.