Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/VulpesBot 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 Bots/Noticeboard. The result of the discussion was

VulpesBot 3
Operator:

Time filed: 07:30, Sunday, December 31, 2023 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: automatic

Programming language(s): AWB

Source code available:

Function overview: Fix template values in pages that end with break. Leaving this unfixed can cause pages to have whitespace errors. I do not see an active bot currently addressing this issue. WP:CHECKWIKI

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): Once backlog is reduced the bot will run at least monthly

Estimated number of pages affected: 14606

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

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

Function details: At the end of a value in a template there is a break. (For example ) This break should be inside the template but not in the value; you can delete this break.

I plan to manually load this list of pages with this error into AWB.

Discussion

 * Question: How will the bot know to avoid false positives? Having never encountered this error flag before, I went to the Checkwiki page for error 59 and clicked on a page at random, 2015–16 Ulster Rugby season. That page has an error flagged as, but the actual code on the page, which looks fine to me, is:   The above appears to be valid, and renders fine. Removing the first br tag would change the rendered output in an undesirable way.


 * I then clicked on 2019 Women's PSA World Tour Finals, which has a br tag after "Qualification" that does not render unwanted whitespace. If the bot removed the br in that template, it would be a cosmetic edit, which is generally frowned upon.


 * Given that I was 0-for-2 in choosing articles listed in the report that demonstrated the usefulness of removing the identified br tag, and 1-for-2 in finding a removal that would make the page worse, how should this proposed task proceed? – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:36, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I have raised a couple of issues about this "error" at the WP CW talk page. This is looking very much like it would produce a lot of cosmetic edits, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. Maybe, if there are legitimate edits to be made, the bot would need to constrain its scope to specific templates or template parameters. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:17, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @Jonesey95 That's a really great point that I didn't taken into account so thanks for bringing it up. I moved over to WP:CLEANER instead of AWB and ran some test edits. There are whitespace errors are present on the 2015–16 Ulster Rugby season page in the Rugbybox collapsible2 template that cause the edit section links to not display. I made the edit and included a screenshot of what I'm talking about. The right side is the old version with the whitespace error and the left side is after correcting the error in the Rugbybox collapsible2 template. As for the 2019 Women's PSA World Tour Finals article the br isn't causing any display issues so both WP:CLEANER and WP:AWB ignore it. It appears that WP:CLEANER knows not to edit infoboxes but the bot that is tagging errors is including articles that have br tags but that aren't breaking anything. So the number of articles that need to be edited will be much lower. For my quick example here I checked the first 30 pages and only 6 needed edits done.  Dr vulpes  (Talk) 21:05, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * CW 59 Example.png Screenshot CW Error #59]]  Dr vulpes  (Talk) 21:05, 31 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Are you sure about the lack of an edit link? Pages that are not the current page do not have section edit links. Also, I find it hard to imagine a mechanism in which a stray br tag way down the page causes an edit link to go missing up above. I copied the old version into User:Jonesey95/sandbox and edit links are visible. What were the six pages in which your bot edits appeared to have an effect? I looked at half a dozen of your edits in the time range around your edit to 2022 F4 Brazilian Championship, and I see no visible effect on the rendered page from this edit. The more I look, the more I think there will be very few actual errors. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:18, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Well I learned something new today, I guess your right @Jonesey95 I can't really see any improvement these edits would make. Sorry for taking up your time with this. When I saw the edit link disappear I had a real light bulb moment, now I feel a little silly! I'll take another crack at this and see if I can find any sort of edge case where this would be useful but if I can't then I'll pull the BRFA since it wouldn't really be improving anything. Seriously, thanks for pointing this out and for taking the time to follow up with it.  Dr vulpes  (Talk) 22:55, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Please disable this tag if the task is to proceed, or add BotWithdrawn if you plan on withdrawing. Primefac (talk) 13:23, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * No worries. I had just never seen this CheckWiki "error" before, and I've seen plenty of harmless br tags in my gnoming, so I had fun digging into it. I have yet to see a case where it causes a problem. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:02, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to assume that since it's been over two months with no motion that this task has been "withdrawn" per my above comment. If this is not the case feel free to revert and re-file. Primefac (talk) 21:00, 10 March 2024 (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 Bots/Noticeboard.