Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SpeedyBot


 * 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

SpeedyBot
Operator:

Time filed: 12:45, Tuesday January 8, 2013 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: somewhere between supervised and automatic

Programming language(s): Perl (MediaWiki::Bot), Python (Pywikipediabot) (I run some scripts from Pywikipediabot set of scripts, when doing custom things I'm more inclined to do it in Perl)

Source code available: Standard Pywikipediabot

Function overview: interwiki fixes

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): when needed

Estimated number of pages affected: 100-1.000 per one bot run

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Already has a bot flag (Yes/No): Yes (not on this project)

Function details: Interwiki fixes. Bot is handling category renaming on hr wikipedia, when there are less than 5 or 10 categories I fix interwikis by hand, but as need arose for more than 100 such edits I made bot. When some account with bot designation in nickname and/or bot status on other Wikimedia projects make more than 50 or 100 edits on hr wiki I ask bot owner to make request for bot status on hr wiki also, so I guess it would be nice of me to reciprocate and ask for status here myself before somebody asks me/warns me that it would be polite to request a bot status for my bot.

Discussion

 * This bot appears to have edited since this BRFA was filed. Bots may not edit outside their own or their operator's userspace unless approved or approved for trial. AnomieBOT ⚡ 15:23, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Edits are either made by human user from browser or in supervised mode (every edit is checked at most 120 seconds after edit). Speedy  Gonsales  17:15, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

You should be using a more informative edit summary than "interwiki". Preferably include the name of the interwiki being changed (e.g. lang:abc -> lang:def). I'm also curious about the code, you said "Standard Pywikipediabot" in the source code, but listed both Perl and Python in the language. Is this bot just using a pre-written pywikipediabot script, or one you've written yourself? - Kingpin13 (talk) 18:03, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Edit summary "hr:interwiki", consider it done.
 * As written above, "I run some scripts from Pywikipediabot set of scripts, when doing custom things I'm more inclined to do it in Perl", that means I do not intend to run bot all the time, but only when there is a need, and then choice of Perl/Python is just matter is there out-of-the-box script that can do the task, or isn't. If there is - I'll use it, if there isn't, I'll probably write it in Perl. But custom modification of Pywikipediabot framework is also not totally out of the question.
 * Example: on hr wiki I run welcome.py and replace.py often, but as replace.py is limited I wrote in Perl template beautifier script for one specific template (I'm on Linux, so AWB isn't an option). Speedy  Gonsales  19:18, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Which namespaces will your bot editing? mabdul 07:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Please note that on the English Wikipedia, if your bot is approved for interwiki fixes then it may do only that; if you want it to do something else as well, you would need to request approval for the additional task. In general, it would be best to indicate whether you're using Python (standard pywikipedia or custom code) or Perl for the specific task being requested. See WP:Bot policy for details. Anomie⚔ 12:44, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree that we need more specific code being used and we need to know exactly what will be done. BTW, you can run AWB (with limited functionality, but it should still work for your purposes) on Linux with Wine. Vacation nine 14:50, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Namespace (answer to Mabdul) - all namespaces where interwiki fixes with bot are appropriate. Till now that translate as main namespace (ns-0) and Category namespace (ns-14), but mostly Category namespace.
 * Interwiki, code (answer to Anomie) - I do not see problem with my bot limited (here) only to interwiki, as that is what I wrote above under Function overview and Function details. Regarding code, over 90% of current edits of SpeedyBot account on en wiki (106 edits) are made by custom Perl bot. I quoted using Pywikipediabot as I used before also  script before, stopped after I saw shortcomings of the script, but maybe I start using it again.
 * Purpose of bot (answer to Vacation9) - As written above, bot is handling renaming of categories on hr wikipedia. As you probably know, there is currently no easy way to rename categories on any mediawiki site. If number of categories edited/changed is sufficiently high, you can ask developers to change it directly in DB using bugzilla.wikimedia.org, but that also warrants community talk/consensus process, which means category name probably will be changed, but probably it would be quicker for you to do it by hand than..... you get my point. On hr wiki community is smaller, but developers are not faster because of that (you can check Set wgContentNamespaces for hrwiki - currently something over 2 months for a simple script run and clock is still ticking. Not that I complain, but my remarks are not drawn from thin air, but based on my experience and that means 2004-2013). And changing categories by hand for large categories with hundreds of articles is also out of the question. That can be done locally with bot, and interwiki can be changed by hand. But what to do when you need to change category tree? Meaning hundreds of categories in ONE category, coupled together with hundreds of interwikis? Well, that's the exact reason why I'm writing these words here. :) Or, I recently changed one such tree consisting of 102 categories. Using Perl bot. In fully supervised mode. Good thing though is that here bot can not make mistake: it simply gets en interwiki from old category name, if it (en interwiki) exists bot changes it (on en wiki) to new category name after new category is successfully created and populated on local (meaning Croatian) wikipedia.
 * I could ask for global bot status for this purpose (if my bot would handle all interwiki fixes), but as my code currently changes only en interwiki it seemed easier to just ask for en wiki bot status here. If I correctly answer your questions here, probably on meta getting global bot status process will be faster. One can always hope. :)
 * AWB on Linux - yes, I know (I'm using WINE quite often), but I talked at Wikimania 2012. with a guy having AWB presentation that it would be nice to have AWB written in some multi-platform language or toolkit (e.g. Java or C++ using e.g. Qt/GTK/WxWidgets). Speedy  Gonsales  09:40, 10 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid I'm no interwiki expert, python expert, or a BAG member, so I can't really do anything here. A BAG member should probably approve this for a trial or decline it.  I'm just here to say that requests can go unanswered for some time so please be patient.— cyberpower ChatLimited Access 14:23, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
 *  MBisanz  talk 18:01, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Your bot has exceeded trial limitations. Please shut it down.— cyberpower ChatOffline 23:28, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
 * He did exceed the limit, but the edits look fine.  MBisanz  talk 18:43, 31 January 2013 (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.