Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Philosopher-Bot 2


 * 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.

Philosopher-Bot 2
Operator:

Time filed: 20:10, Tuesday December 21, 2010 (UTC)

Automatic or Manually assisted: Automatic.

Programming language(s): Auto-Wiki-Browser

Source code available: WP:AWB

Function overview: Sort articles for the new Communities taskforce of WikiProject Iowa, adds the 'communities=yes' parameter to the existing talk page template.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Requested by founder of the new taskforce, User:RifeIdeas at User talk:Philosopher. See also WikiProject Iowa/Communities.

Edit period(s): One-time run.

Estimated number of pages affected: All Iowa community talk pages - a little more than 1,000 pages.

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): N

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

Function details: See above. This just uses AWB to add the 'communities=yes' parameter to the existing iterations of WikiProject Iowa banners on the talk pages of pages belonging in the WikiProject Iowa communities taskforce. This bot is not exclusion compliant - it only affects the template on the page.

Discussion
So what this does is go through a list of Communities taskforce articles and adds yes to WikiProject Iowa talk page banners if necessary. Plus a sort of articles on one project page. Given this is similar to tagging but virtually error-free, I think this is un-controversial and definitely useful for the taskforce.
 * Um, adding the tag is performing the sort. I'll go ahead and do 30 tags. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 05:23, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Done. See Special:Contributions/Philosopher-Bot.  --User:Philosopher-Bot Thinking mechanical thoughts.  05:59, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, I thought you meant you would make also a list of sorted pages on some project page. Also, please post messages with your main account, and only use bot account for approved bot tasks.
 * As of trial, see . Make sure no more than 1 instance of text is added and don't add anything past the first section header. Also, is it possible to implement logic to ignore and    tags? I don't know if AWB has any function for this. —  HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:35, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) The list of sorted pages is created by adding the parameter to WikiProject Iowa, as the template categorizes the talk pages for the Project. 2) Yeah, sorry, I forgot to log out first.  3) I don't believe it's possible for AWB to do those other things you requested, but it shouldn't need to do them - what it is doing is finding ' ' - only where it occurs within the ' ' marks and replacing it with ' ' where ' ' isn't already on the page.  The only times it will be making more than one edit on a page is when it runs into the unsigned notice (created by SkiersBot, but left unsigned) as at Talk:Bancroft County, Iowa - these sorts of changes are already made by similar uses of AWB (see the edit before mine) and the change is not negative - since the notice incorporates the exact text of the templates above, updating the notice to match the template, while a side effect of what the bot is doing, is actually useful. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 00:51, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The side-effect is useful in this case, because it happened on a bot-like notice and did not change the meaning. What you actually did is modify another user's post. If it was me that had posted and I said something like  "Guys is it OK to correct to  for this one?"  your bot would have messed that up. Looking for template  tags around the banner name is in itself prone to error, and anything more than 1 match certainly requires human inspection. An automated bot task is to be non-controversial and only make edits it is supposed to. Your task is to add yes to the banner, not any other instances that happen to be there. —  HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:28, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I have discovered a way to limit the changes AWB makes so they don't affect internal/external wiki links, images, nowiki, math, and while still limiting it to finding   and replacing it with   only where   isn't already on the page. This would make it skip all or virtually all instances where the template is simply being discussed by skipping nowiki sections and by skipping instances where templates are being used to discuss it ( doesn't match  ). I had missed this option before, because while AWB's "Normal" find and replace settings have that option, its "Advanced" find and replace settings don't. There still is no way to limit AWB to making only one edit because, as far as I can tell, that functionality is simply not part of AWB. (As an aside, my bot would have skipped your suggested comment in any case because you used, but your point is taken). --Philosopher Let us reason together. 04:05, 31 December 2010 (UTC) BAG assistance needed


 * I am not sure how the rest of BAG feels that the bot may make >1 replacement. I sure thought AWB would have an option for just 1 replace per page. It should be quite trivial to implement. Will leave BAN up for now for someone else to comment. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:09, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's possible that the option is there, but if it is, I can't find it. It does seem like a potentially useful feature considering how many bots use AWB.  --Philosopher Let us reason together. 04:12, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

BAG hasn't commented, so let's extend this. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 17:29, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks good! It looks like I underestimated the numbers of these articles (2-3k? - I forgot that townships would be included in this) but the trial looks like a success - one edit on each page, doing exactly what was expected. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 22:04, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I think you make the bot exclusion compliant - sometimes maybe a page would fall into the bot's worklist because of categories but for some reason or another, isn't under the scope of the task force. In these cases, a task force member would manually remove the tag (or parameter) and then add a statement that your bot should obey (I suppose if this is only a one-time run this isn't as relevant). Another suggestion (if the task force and parent project desire) would be to do some kind of autoassessing (suchlike User:Xenobot/A - I have some code I wrote a while back that you can use if you like) to increase the utility of the edits. Everything looks fine otherwise. . – xeno talk  17:22, 21 January 2011 (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.