Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SuggestBot 7


 * 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

SuggestBot 7
Operator:

Time filed: 20:20, Monday July 30, 2012 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): Python (using the pywikipediabot rewrite framework)

Source code available: source code on bitbucket

Function overview: Update Community portal/Opentask regularly

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): The task was handled by User:FlBot but stopped in Feburary 2012. Having another bot take over the task has been discussed previously, e.g. Bot requests/Archive 41, but apparently nothing has happened.

Edit period(s): once every hour

Estimated number of pages affected: 1

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Already has a bot flag (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: The bot runs on the Toolserver and uses its database to find a handful of random pages from several categories containing pages in need of improvement. Each category has an associated ID which matches the ID of a span element on the Opentask page. Once a list of pages is generated it substitutes the content inside each span element using the IDs to identify which category it is replacing.

For the long term there has been interest in testing other strategies for selection of articles to potentially replace the random selection, see for instance meta:Research:Community portal redesign. Thus it is likely that the underlying algorithm for picking the pages will change at some point in the future, while the rest of the bot's functionality stays intact.

Discussion
Seems simple enough (restricted to one page, replacing an inactive bot), so let's have a trial. I'm also interested in knowing what percent of articles in the open tasks area are processed over the course of the time they're up, and whether it makes sense to update less (or even more?) frequently. —  Earwig   talk 20:03, 3 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Based on data from stats.grok.se, the Community Portal has about 10k views per day on average. One of the things we're very much interested in is, of course, the same as you mention: how much traffic do the listed articles see and what happens to them (do they get edited at all, etc…)


 * I've started the trial and done two updates so far, and later updates will occur once every hour. Will monitor it and stop it a few days from now. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 23:31, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

The bot's edits to Community Portal/Opentask during the trial period can be found in this listing.

The source code link was updated on August 8 to reflect that it also updated the section of re-listed AfDs, which FlBot also used to do. Thus the last five edits the bot made (19:19, 20:19, 21:20, 22:20, and 23:19 UTC on August 8) also updated that section.

One issue that came up during the trial was handling delays in the system. During the Wikipedia downtime on August 6 the cronjob ended up queueing for a long time before finally running and updating the page at 18:05 UTC. The next cronjob executed at 18:19 UTC, leading to just 14 minutes between the two updates. I considered adding some code to make sure the page doesn't get updated too quickly, e.g. if it detects such a short delay since last update it'll skip one, but thought I'd solicit feedback on the issue first.

Apart from that things appear to have run smoothly. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 00:00, 9 August 2012 (UTC)


 * What's the status of this request? This is a promising feature that could liven up the community portal. -Mabeenot (talk) 15:35, 14 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm happy to hear this has got some interest, thanks! Having SuggestBot take over updating the list of open tasks is part of the project of figuring out what the Community Portal needs, where they're currently testing the order of tasks (see for instance Community portal/Redesign 2012).


 * Usually I leave about a week for comments from others before I expect something to happen. Since it's been about a week I've added the template bringing it to the Bot Approval Group's attention. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 10:44, 17 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Trial looked great. &mdash; madman 05:00, 21 August 2012 (UTC)