Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/RichardcavellBot 3


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 The result of the discussion was Symbol oppose vote.svg Withdrawn by operator.

RichardcavellBot
Operator:

Time filed: 00:02, Sunday April 10, 2011 (UTC)

Automatic or Manual: Automatic unsupervised - of course I will manually supervise it until it seems trustworthy.

Programming language(s): C, in the C99 dialect.

Source code available: Yes, this is an open source project hosted at SourceForge.

Function overview: remove links from articles in the mainspace that point to the containing article (ie self-links). Additionally, if there is consensus, remove links that ultimately redirect to the same article (self-redirects).

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Wikipedia_talk:Redirect

Edit period(s): Continuous

Estimated number of pages affected: I really don't know. It could edit thousands of articles per year.

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): Yes, it is exclusion compliant.

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): No

Function details: The bot will select an article. This article will be selected randomly. The article is scanned to see whether it contains a link to itself. If it does, all such links are removed and the new version of the page is uploaded. The bot skips links that contain an intra-page target (such as Animals). If consensus agrees, the bot will also follow redirects to eliminate self-redirects in the same manner. I anticipate that eventually this function will be folded into a 'general fixes' routine that will be applied to pages automatically (similar to AWB's general fixes). - Richard Cavell (talk) 00:02, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Discussion
Random selection seems wildly inefficient; working from something like would be far better. Will it replace the link with plain text, or will it replace the link with  to preserve the bolding? Will it detect potential oddities with pages such as television season episode lists that are transcluded into other pages, and may contain ed self-links that should remain unmolested?

I also question whether bot-replacing all self-redirects is a good idea, for the same reasoning Thryduulf uses in the linked discussion: some redirects are plausible articles that just don't yet exist and shouldn't be bypassed for the same reason redlinks shouldn't be removed on sight. Anomie⚔ 23:33, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Anomie, thanks for that link to the tool. Yes, I propose to use that list, and a blacklist. Eventually I anticipate that this function will be just one of many that is applied to articles as part of 'general fixes' by my bot. It will remove the link and will not bold the previously-linked text. I didn't think of the case, but I think you're right, and that my bot should parse that tag too. - Richard Cavell (talk) 00:34, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

What's the point? The only justification you've offered for this seems to be "self-link/self-redirect is [...] an error," because "the software displays the text in bold." That isn't really cutting it for me. - Kingpin13 (talk) 23:40, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm still not getting the point.. If it's because we don't like the bolding, we can simply remove it with one edit in the global css, this would additonally allow users to effectively "opt-in" to see self links bolded if they wanted (there is a class for self-links). Although this was approved, way back in 2006, for STBot - Kingpin13 (talk) 12:07, 16 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Question from SpinningSpark if an editor informs you that they think your bot has made a mistake, what action will you take?  Sp in ni ng  Spark  17:57, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
 * If the bot has made a mistake, I would reverse the edit and modify the code so that it doesn't happen again. - Richard Cavell (talk) 01:11, 22 April 2011 (UTC)


 * (see below - Kingpin13 (talk)) I see the issue Kingpin mentions, but given that this seems to increase compliance with the MoS, I'm leaning towards approving. Will you make other general fixes when doing this?  MBisanz  talk 02:04, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
 * No, my bot will not make general fixes. I intend that my bot will be approved for all kinds of activities that would count as 'general fixes', but because my bot is intended to operate entirely unsupervised, I will seek approval for each such activity. (Of course I will supervise the bot for these 50 edits though). - Richard Cavell (talk) 10:17, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Regarding the approval, I have discussed this with MBisanz on IRC. The project is right in the middle of a mega-code review right now and we'd like to finish that before putting the bot to work, so we'll keep the trial approval up our sleeves for a while and finish the code review. - Richard Cavell (talk) 10:24, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment I have seen a lot of articles that use the self-link to bold the initial mention of the article title in the lede. The bot should preserve bolding when it is being so-used (required in MOS:BOLD).   Sp in ni  ng  Spark  06:20, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't those instances be using the standard bold code (   instead?  MBisanz  talk 03:42, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, but that is kind of my point. The MOS currently says don't use self-linking to achieve bolding, but that was not always the case and a lot of articles previously did just that.  I  still occassionally come across them.  Sp in ni  ng  Spark  15:59, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Dry run to see if the bot can differentiate between the issue above and that mentioned by Spinningspark - Kingpin13 (talk) 11:38, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Acknowledged, and to clarify, this means that we are proposing that my bot replace blah with blah in some circumstances. - Richard Cavell (talk) 11:39, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've discussed this task with several BAG members on IRC on Freenode. At the moment, my code is undergoing a substantial code review, and I wish to withdraw this BRFA. I don't want the code review to be under time pressure from the need to get on with the task, and I would consider it meaningless for the trial to use an outdated version of the bot. - Richard Cavell (talk) 17:20, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

- Kingpin13 (talk) 17:21, 16 May 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.