Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/OgreBot


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 The result of the discussion was Symbol oppose vote.svg Withdrawn by operator.

OgreBot
Operator: Magog the Ogre (talk)

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic

Programming Language(s): PHP, Pillar framework.

Function Overview: Update MLB season pages

Edit period(s): Bot will check for final scores once per hour between 3PM-5AM, so theoretically 15 times per day. In actuality, probably about 6-7 wiki runs per day. There may also be periods when my computer is not online.

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

Function Details: Wikipedia has a plethora of {Insert Year} {Insert Team Name} season pages (e.g., 2009 Pittsburgh Pirates season), for many sports. The updating of these manually is tedious and error prone. I want to create a bot to update the statistics on these pages and corresponding templates (e.g., 2009 NL Central standings, 2009 NL Record vs. opponents). Per US judicial decision, this is simple information, and is not copyrighted.

I posted at WT:BASEBALL and did not get any disapproval. In order to avoid problems, the bot will have an editable subpage allowing color preferences (User:OgreBot/MLB.config), and an option to turn off the bot for a specific page. The bot will also honor the nobots template.

The information will be retrieved from http://mlb.com or http://sports.yahoo.com.

The bot will post errors on a subpage: User:OgreBot/MLB.errors. These may occur, for example, if the template coding on the the season pages is tampered (see below) or if there is an error in reading the configuration page. If there is an error, it must be manually fixed before the bot will be able to re-edit the page; it will not automatically fix, due to the potential for edit conflicts and errors.

The season pages will have code as such:
 * Is there really a need for this information to be updated so frequently? After all, Wikipedia is not a news source. Shouldn't once per day be sufficient? Anomie⚔ 12:34, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I have to agree here, once/day would be sufficient. --ThaddeusB (talk) 18:01, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * How will the bot handle it if mlb or sports.yahoo is temporarily down? – Quadell (talk) 13:15, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Still curious on this. – Quadell (talk) 18:01, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * And still curious about this. – Quadell (talk) 15:25, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * If the bot is not able to connect, it will post to the errors page listed above. Magog the Ogre (talk) 03:57, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * You cannot download the statistics from the mlb.com site, as their terms of service include a restriction that you may not "use automated scripts to collect information from or otherwise interact with the Website". While you might be able to get away with it, we can't condone it. I don't see any such restriction in Yahoo's TOS, though. Anomie⚔ 14:43, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Such terms of service are not binding. I can see why MLB would want you to think you can't do that, but it's a false claim. Unless you agreed to such terms, they don't apply to you. If MLB wanted to, they could have a front page with a warning "By checking this box and entering this site, you agree to blah blah. Click [I accept] or [No thanks]." But they don't. – Quadell (talk) 17:06, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * sports.yahoo it is then. In any case, the information is being updated, and at risk of giving an argument that we disavow in our deletion discussions, the information doesn't hurt. The information is currently being updated anyway by humans, and that seems tedious. Magog the Ogre (talk) 19:52, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Just FYI, I was hoping to move the bot beyond simply this scope to perhaps other sports and/or data (e.g., US executions). Magog the Ogre (talk) 20:35, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * As long as those are separate requests, that sounds like a good goal. – Quadell (talk) 18:03, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Is there any possibility that you could publish your source code? I entirely understand if you don't want to, but (a) it is the first time anyone except X! and I has attempted to use Pillar, so I'm curious; and (b) Pillar's documentation is currently rather sparse, and I might be able to find any issues with your implementation.  If you don't want to publish it but are willing to let me see it, my email address is . Equally, it's not a problem as far as I'm concerned if you don't want to share your code.   [[Sam Korn ]] (smoddy) 12:18, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I would certainly share the final product, though it's looks kind of like a messy bedroom right now (e.g., poorly commented, etc.). Magog the Ogre (talk) 20:58, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

– Quadell (talk) 13:07, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * What is the current status of this request? Q  T C 17:46, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Almost ready. Sorry, the project was more intense than I was expecting or hoping for. Magog the Ogre (talk) 12:32, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Just FYI, my computer hardware has been having massive failure issues, which has heavily impeded my abilty to roll this out in a timely fashion. Sorry all. Magog the Ogre (talk) 06:41, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Any news? – Quadell (talk) 13:33, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Just did a first run; will still be a few days til fully operational (sorry, again, very busy weekend). Magog the Ogre (talk) 13:57, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

A number of concerns have arisen from the Baseball WikiProject after the first run of this bot. Though the function of the bot was nominally approved by the Project, the format that the bot uses for the game logs was not discussed or approved. It is making several mistakes that are contrary to MOS: I think that the correct format needs to be determined through consensus and discussion at the project talk page before this bot is approved. KV5 ( Talk  •  Phils ) 16:00, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Concerns from the Baseball WikiProject
 * It uses hyphens instead of en-dashes for score ranges, team records, and pitcher records.
 * It delinks duplicated links; in this case, it is in violation of WP:LINK, which says that table rows should be able to stand on their own. Therefore, all occurrences of a name, team, etc. should be linked.
 * Linking to the corresponding team's current season isn't a problem, per se, but the principle of least astonishment says that it truly should link just to the team, not to a season article. To navigate between team seasons, we have a navbox.
 * Last, and perhaps most distressing, the bot removes links to specific pages, replacing them with a link to either disambiguation pages or completely incorrect pages (see WT:MLB for details).
 * I should note that as far as I know, the bot's edits have been reverted on the Mariners, Angels, Phillies, and Red Sox pages. I had done a good amount of work disambiguating names on the Mariners page. Most people with ambiguous names have the "(baseball)" parenthetical disambiguator in front of them, but there are some (Ramón Ramírez (disambiguation) is the most extreme example I've found thus far) where multiple baseball players with that name have Wikipedia articles and are disambiguated by position and/or year of birth. KuyaBriBri Talk 16:13, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I also want to note that I reverted the bot on the Yankees season page because of some factual errors in the log created by the bot. The Yankees lost a game on May 31 vs. the Indians that was not reflected in the game log (the game was simply not listed), and it also missed a rainout from April 20 vs. the Athletics. Of course I could have just fixed those small errors without reverting the game log itself, but there's always the possibility that there could be more errors in the future. Shamedog18 (talk) 01:39, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

What do you think of this feedback? Have you been working on the bugs? – Quadell (talk) 00:52, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
 * No, I haven't been working on it because I'm busy. But I've been reading all the feedback and plan to. Magog the Ogre (talk) 04:01, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Any updates? – Quadell (talk) 18:10, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes. Sorry, I'm working 50+ hours this week, hard to feel like programming after that, ha. Also, I am having second thoughts, as there is a high amount of resistance on these pages, making me wonder about the wisdom of this. That's the bets I can say; I wanted to work on it tonight, but I do have to work tomorrow (sigh). Magog the Ogre (talk) 04:49, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

At this point, you can close this bot request; there was simply too much opposite from WT:BASEBALL which I didn't anticipate, and the amount of benefit offered is not reasonable given the amount of work that would be required in my week. I may write another bot at some other time though, thank you. Magog the Ogre (talk) 06:45, 9 July 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.