Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MOSNUM Bot

MOSNUM Bot

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Operator: Ohconfucius (talk · contribs)

Time filed: 03:54, Wednesday February 2, 2011 (UTC)

Automatic or Manually assisted: Automatic, supervised, throttled at 5 edits per minute

Programming language(s): AWB

Source code available: Not yet established, but will be closely based on User:Ohconfucius/MOSNUM_dates.js – which has already been used on thousands of articles, specifically calling function Ohc_body_to_dmy() and function Ohc_body_to_mdy()

Function overview: It is aimed to make article dates fully compatible with the Manual of Style, by ensuring uniform presentation of dates within any given article.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

• There is long-standing, broad and general consensus on the consistent formatting of dates within the body of an article.

Edit period(s):

• Continuous

Estimated number of pages affected: upwards of 50,000+ (see this list from November 2009 as a point of reference)

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): Y

• will respect {{nobots}}
• will respect pre-existing date-maintenance templates (i.e. will not change date formats from dmy to mdy (or vice versa) if {{use dmy dates}} or {{use mdy dates}} tags already in place)
• will not change ISO8601-format dates within citation templates to dmy or mdy

Already has a bot flag (Y/N):

Function details:

• delinks full dates (but not lone day-month strings or years), days, months, decades, centuries,
• removes direct links to full dates, whether ISO8601, dd mmm yyyy or mmm dd, yyyy, including piped links of same to chronological articles in almost any imaginable form.
• converts all these date fragments – including date ranges – to the same format, either dd mmm yyyy or mmm dd, yyyy
• removes ordinal suffices and constructions such as 'the 5th of September', 'December the 25th' or 'October of 2003'
• adds commas where necessary (e.g. February 28 2001) – already a standard AWB fix
• removes redundant commas (e.g. July, 1997; 28 February, 2001) – already a standard AWB fix
• tags articles with {{use dmy dates}} or {{use mdy dates}} according to how the given article is processed
• articles will be aligned to dmy or mdy according to WP:TIES; article population to be acted upon will be based on carefully-chosen subcategories of national categories such as Category:United Kingdom, Category:Republic of Ireland, Category:Australia, Category:South Africa, Category:European Union, Category:Military of the United States for dmy, and Category:United States for mdy
• No autodetection of date format to be adopted – these will be based on manually selected categories as indicated above.
• Each bot run will execute rules to convert all dates to dmy, or mdy, but not both.

Discussion

• Recused MBisanz ^talk 08:08, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
• Are there any checks for quotations or for idiomatic forms such as Seventh of March Speech (which is expressly approved by MOSNUM and will not be linked every time it is mentioned)?
• Are there any checks to ensure that this does not keep editing the same article when intentionally reverted - which was one of the standing problems which brought on the date delinking case?
• Is the application of WP:TIES restticted to the specified cats, or is there a presumption that every article not expressly about America is international - even if it is written in American? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:51, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

• Idiomatic date forms where the numbers are written out in words will not be acted upon; the rules will include a list of exceptions that will be expanded as and when false positives are discovered. For the avoidance of doubt, such exceptions do not include protecting non-idiomatic formulations such as 'September the 11th' or '5th of November'.
• Occurrences of dates within filenames, citation titles, quotations etc will be suitably protected from conversion – for example by insertion of non-breaking spaces or underscores.
• In this proposed run, the bot will not visit articles already tagged with {{dmy}} or {{mdy}}, and I do not expect any editor will be making a wholescale revert which removes also the tagging (as opposed to a partial revert) without leaving a message on my talk page about the false positive. To this end, I will try my best to include explanations of 'how to' on the Userpage; In addition, the bot will be stopped either by activation of a panic button on the bot's user page, or by posting any comment on its talk page.
• There are two different and independent rules here, national date formats, which is the province of MOSNUM, and English variants of English, a province of MOS. Just because an article – let's take for example an article is on a Brazilian subject – is written in American English does not necessarily mean date formats will be aligned to one or other date formats. This bot, so named, will not apply ENGVAR fixes – that will come with a suitably named bot. ;-) Articles on American people, places, organisations are likely to adopt mdy dates per WP:TIES, and will be aligned to mdy if they have a mix of date formats; US military articles will be aligned universally to dmy format. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:41, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

• "Each bot run will execute rules to convert all dates to dmy, or mdy, but not both". Could you clarify what you mean by "all dates" - if you really mean "all" then this task should be denied. Gimmetoo (talk) 11:53, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

• I don't exactly understand the question. What I meant is that the bot is not going to automatically "decide" on its own what format is to be chosen for any given category of article. I will personally load the code with dmy conversion and ensure the category carefully chosen to match; or I will load the code with mdy conversion and choose the category carefully to correspond to that. "All dates" is as defined above.--Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 16:31, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

• Will the bot avoid engaging in edit wars, in case someone reverts it? Will the bot avoid changing dates inside direct quotes, media filenames, wikilinks to articles (e.g. March 17, 2007 anti-war protest currently breaks if changed to 17 March 2007 anti-war protest), website titles (e.g. |title= in citation templates), and so on? Anomie⚔ 17:32, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

• Needs wider discussion. Is there any evidence that the community at large (as opposed to just MOS regulars) wants a bot to do this automatically? And, for that matter, whether the community at large trusts someone with your history in this area to be running the bot? Anomie⚔ 17:32, 11 February 2011 (UTC)