Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/OpenlibraryBot


 * 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.

OpenlibraryBot
Operator:

Automatic or Manually assisted: Automatic and supervised

Programming language(s): Python

Source code available: available here

Function overview: Will add external links from authors and their works to the Open Library.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): not sure yet. likely an inital run to correlate wikipedia articles to their corresponding openlibrary pages, and then occasional runs to update new articles.

Estimated number of pages affected: in the first run, probably on the order of tens of thousands of articles for authors whose works are available via the Open Library. Expanding the scope of the program to link between works on wikipedia and OL will be done later.

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): Y

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

Function details: This bot will insert interwiki links from wikipedia to Open Library using the templates Template:OL_author and Template:OL_work. The links between wikipedia articles to Open Library articles will be restricted to:
 * Works available at Open Library as to read online such as Frankenstein.
 * Works available in the print disabled collection at Open Library such as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
 * Authors whose works are available at Open Library per the conditions above such as  Allan Cunningham, Oscar Wilde, and J. K. Rowling.

Discussion

 * Personally, I don't see the good of this task. When a link added by this user to Divine Comedy showed up on my watchlist and I went to the Open Library page to check it out, I failed to see that the link added any value to the article. Some of the OL content may be useful in certain cases, I guess, if they have digital copies of books that aren't available elsewhere online; but that wasn't so in this case, where links to booksellers seemed the main feature. My reading of WP:ELMAYBE and WP:ELNO suggests that botspamming these links indiscriminately across Wikipedia is almost certainly a bad idea. Deor (talk) 02:38, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback. Sorry for the link on the Divine Comedy - I added a few links to gauge the utility of this proposal and while the link from Divine Comedy to Open Library may not be immediately useful, others are.  Please have a look at the links added to the articles mentioned in the proposal.
 * Based on your feedback I've revised the proposal to be more restrictive and consistent with other interwiki links such as IMSLP.  Links will only be inserted per the revised proposal, where there is a book to read at Open Library.  Arielbackenroth (talk) 18:43, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Bot-adding of external links is often quite controversial, as some editors see it as spam. I notice that Open Library is affiliated with the Internet Archive, so you probably have a chance. Take the discussion to WP:Village pump (proposals), and post invitations to the discussion at WP:External links/Noticeboard, WT:WikiProject Books, WT:WikiProject Spam, maybe WT:External links, and anyplace else that seems appropriate. See WP:Publicising discussions for more info. Unless that discussion shows a strong community support for these links, this bot cannot be approved. I am also a bit concerned that you have just started editing Wednesday, and all your edits have been focused on adding these links to Wikipedia; prospective bot operators normally have much more experience with Wikipedia and its policies and guidelines as normal editors. Anomie⚔ 04:41, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I totally agree with Deor and Anomie. A quick look makes me think that the cause is noble, but a very wide discussion and solid consensus would be required before a bot starts adding what many will regard as promotional links. Johnuniq (talk) 10:29, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Discussion moved to WP:Village pump (proposals). Edward (talk) 22:45, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I see the discussion there fizzled, but of the two commenters one didn't seem to notice that links will only be added when Open Library has full text available and the other changed to support after that was pointed out. I'd like to review the code (I'd hate for there to be objections due to a code error), then I'll approve a trial to try to flush out more comments. For the purposes of the trial, I will be asking you to include a clear link to this page in the edit summaries (e.g. " ") and, if at all possible, to choose the most popular books/authors and a variety of different genres for the trial edits. Anomie⚔ 17:05, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Can you do what Anomie is asking?  MBisanz  talk 04:54, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delayed response, I've been on vacation. This sounds good.  I'll start writing up the code for your review and once that's done I'll run it as suggested. Arielbackenroth (talk) 21:04, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Excellent, thanks for the response.  MBisanz  talk 01:54, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I've updated the link above, to the VPR discussion.
 * I'm here to comment, because I saw the bot addition to Kevin Kelly (editor) on my watchlist. I endorsed the original idea at the VPR thread, and based on this test run, I reiterate my support. HTH. -- Quiddity (talk) 01:40, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I've done a test run of the bot on 15 or so wikipedia pages using the edit summary suggested. The pages I selected are mostly well known authors who have works readable on Open Library.  I also chose a couple of books.  The code is available for your review on github.  Any feedback is appreciated.  I'm gonna go through and add a README and some comments now.  I tried as best as possible to preserve whitespace and only insert into obvious looking lists of external links but there are likely more tweaks needed.  Arielbackenroth (talk) 23:57, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry it took so long for me to look at the code. I see your check for if the link template is already in the page is a bit broken, for example it will miss  (i.e. leaving out the underscore). It might be best to just use the API's   to check for the link directly (of course, that depends on there not being a prohibitive number of equivalent URLs to check for). I do like how it ensures that an "External links" section exists before trying to do anything.
 * You really shouldn't have made any trial edits without approval here, which will be given using the BotTrial template. I don't see any problems other than that in the edits, though. Anomie⚔ 01:08, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback - I've updated the code to both check extlinks and templates for any existing links. Let me know what the next steps are. Arielbackenroth (talk) 21:00, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks good. The next step is to give it a trial: Let's see if we can flush out some comments. Anomie⚔ 00:46, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok - so the 50 trial edits are done (I accidentally did 2 more and forgot to count them while testing so I actually did 52 - sorry about that). I've also revised the script (source code available at github) to be completely supervised to ensure that the bot is running within the guidelines specified here (it does).  Also - as i mentioned to Sadas, we will be reciprocating all links from Open Library to Wikipedia - this is a high priority project that I'm actively working on.  Let me know what the next steps are.  Thanks. Arielbackenroth (talk) 19:02, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

This looks like a great Idea, I was actually about to suggest something at one of the Village pumps but you all beat me to it, the examples I looked at looked pretty good. Sadads (talk) 17:35, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The bot should only add links to individuals (like Jack London = Jack London, 1876-1916), not to names (like "Franklin W. Dixon", no date of birth ). We could start with the OL authors who have a link "Wikipedia". --Kolja21 (talk) 00:23, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Why shouldn't it add a link on Franklin W. Dixon? Anomie⚔ 20:37, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Because it's not a link to a PERSON (or in this special case: "the pen name used by a variety of different authors"), it's a link to a NAME with no further information. Wikipedia writes about a "Franklin W. Dixon", who wrote The Hardy Boys novels. This "person" (in this special case a group) links to the name:
 * OL21219A/Franklin_W._Dixon
 * OL's "Franklin W. Dixon", that has got a link to the Wikipedia-Hardy-Boys-Dixon, is a different one:
 * OL2748474A/Franklin_W._Dixon
 * "Franklin W. Dixon" has also written books like Experiments Intro Physics I and Nonlinearoptimization. Are these mystery series for teens? I dought it. Conclusion: First you have to identify the OL record (adding basic infos to the name), then - in a second step - you can link the OL record with a Wikipedia article. --Kolja21 (talk) 01:31, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I see your point - this is a shared pen name for multiple authors. Also - the open library page for the author/pen name is not particularly high quality - it looks like multiple authors got merged into one and a different Franklin W Dixon got merged in and it needs to be cleaned up. Arielbackenroth (talk) 23:34, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * what is the current status of this request? ΔT The only constant 01:01, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what the current status is - I've completed the 50 trial edits, and with the exception of Franklin W Dixon haven't had any negative feedback and all edits made by the bot are still there. I'm looking for guidance from the bot approval group as to what the next steps are. Arielbackenroth (talk) 21:16, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I was waiting to see if anything more happened with the Franklin W Dixon question, but it seems that is resolved. I suggest performing the edits (at least to start) at a relatively low rate of speed, and of course if anyone raises major concerns please stop the bot until the concerns are resolved. Anomie⚔ 23:19, 17 November 2010 (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.