Wikipedia talk:Bots/Noticeboard

Archiving problem

The archive box (with links to the archives for the noticeboard) and the bot that is doing the archiving are not synchronized; would someone fix that? (Thanks). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:41, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Let me go a bit further - if the archiving bot is going to create a bunch of subpages of the format Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard/2008-3-21/foobar, then there should be a page called Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard/2008-3-21, with links to the subpages, and the 2008 archive should have a link to the page Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard/2008-3-21. Otherwise there is no (obvious) way for someone interested in coming up to speed on bot issues to browse the archives for interesting stuff. (I realize that browsing is possibly via the index of pages, but it's good practice to have multiple ways to accomplish the same thing, for the less expert - particularly if what is needed is to modify bot code and create a few more pages and links. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:51, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Archiving problem 2

There's no link in the archive box to Archive 6. The template is gibberish to me; I figure one of you could fix this quicker and easier than I could. As pointed out above, a search box would be awesome, too. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 10:04, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Added. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:45, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Code review...

...this may be the wrong place, but I'm looking for a code review on something I knocked together for this. It was genuinely knocked together in a naive way, and it would be great to get some experienced editors to point out any more elegant solutions to the problem, or good practice suggestions. The code is in python using the standard API.

import wikipedia 

def getNominatorx(article):
          article=article.replace("Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/","").replace('/archive1',).replace('/archive2',)
     page = wikipedia.Page(site, article)
     try:
         original_text = page.get()
         temp=original_text.split(' ');
         print article+" length "+str(len(temp))
         return
         temp= re.search(r'small>\'\'(.*)</small', original_text, flags=0)
         if temp:
             print  temp.group(1)
     except:
       return
     
def getAllForAMonth(pageIn):
   print pageIn
   page = wikipedia.Page(site, 'Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Featured_log/'+pageIn)
   if page:
       original_text = page.get()
       temp=original_text.split('\n')
       temp.pop(0)#removes the opening stuff
       temp.pop(0)#removes the opening stuff
       for line in temp:
           article=line.replace('{',).replace('}',).replace(' ','_')
           getNominatorx(article) 
       print 'end' + pageIn 
       return
   print 'page not found'    
site = wikipedia.getSite('en', 'wikipedia')
for year in range(2011,2013):
   print year
   for month in ['January','February','March','April','May','June','July','August', 'September', 'October', 'November', 'December']:
       getAllForAMonth(month+'_'+str(year))

Any suggestions? Fayedizard (talk) 23:38, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

The following will run much faster, and is much more expressive of what you want.

select
      page_title,
      page_len
from
      categorylinks
      join page
            on cl_from = page_id
where
      cl_to = 'Featured_articles'
      and page_namespace = 0
order by
      page_len asc;

3600 rows in set (0.02 sec)

-- Cobi^(t|c|b) 03:26, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

oooh - yes SQL would be a lovely way of doing that - but to ask a fairly naive question (google didn't help me much) what's my 'hello world' for using SQL within pywiki? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?Fayedizard (talk) 13:29, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

from __future__ import unicode_literals
import oursql

connection = oursql.connect(read_default_file="/home/sigma/.my.cnf", db="enwiki_p", host="enwiki-p.rrdb.toolserver.org")
cursor = connection.cursor(oursql.DictCursor)
cursor.execute("SELECT * FROM watchlist WHERE wl_title='Coal_ball' AND wl_namespace=0")
for stuff in cursor:
    print stuff

→Σσς. 18:44, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Superstar! Thank you :) Fayedizard (talk) 08:15, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

See Also

Hi all,

I'm considering the idea of a bot that looks at 'See Also' sections of articles, and does things like remove elements if they are already in the main article (per the "As a general rule the "See also" section should not repeat links which appear in the article's body or its navigation boxes" part of Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Layout#See_also_section). I enjoy writing code and it would be quite nice to write a bit of python that works it's way though a wikiproject and presents some edits to the bot runner for approval. I'm interested to know if a) this is reasonable functionality for a bot and b) if other bots already have this capability. Fayedizard (talk) 11:48, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it necessarily would be a good task for a bot, because linking to an article and dealing with its subject aren't the same thing. That said, I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm and there probably is a good task out there for you :) - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 12:34, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

How far should a BotOperator bend on additional requests after a task has been approved

I am getting significant push back from a single editor (who happens to be an Admin) who is wanting to significantly change the way that approved tasks function. I fundamentally disagree with their complaint and want to know how far am I required to bend to accommodate individual editors complaints about the bot's approved action. I am intentionally not making it about the individual editor or about the specific complaint, (but am willing to accept advice within the current context). I think I've already been very accommodating with respect to the approval and taking onboard reasonable requests, but I think that fundamentally changing the bot's activities to make it effectively toothless and a disservice to Wikipedia (why even bother nominating G13s if we're never making headway on the backlog). Hasteur (talk) 19:13, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I'll try to sum it up without going into any specifics of your case. Bots have to perform tasks that have consensus and consensus can change. BRFAs require consensus, either explicit discussion and links to policies/guidelines or silent for non-controversial or unopposed changes. At the time of approval, all BRFAs should (ideally) have such consensus to operate. As per BOTPOL, BAG have no authority over future botop's actions (except to revoke BRFAs at certain times). So it becomes botop's responsibility to adjust the bot to follow any changes in consensus. It is really up to you and community how you handle this. If you had a long discussion with many editors and strong support, then individual users can't really overthrow that without another similar discussion, or that's just disrupting the process. On the other hand, if hardly anyone commented and the consensus was more of a no opposition than support, then new concerns should carry weight. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 19:28, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

If you disagree with the editor's requests to change the behavior of your approved bot, then my opinion would be that it is then that editor's option to start a wider discussion to try to form a consensus for the way they want the bot to behave. Without a wider consensus, you're under no obligation to change the behavior of an otherwise approved bot, unless BAG revokes the bot's approval. ‑Scottywong| comment _ 23:47, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Snottywong's words are wise here. I am completely clueless about the details of the situation, but you will from time to time, run into people unwilling to bend, and demand that the BotOp does something otherwise blah blah blah. Sometimes the Bot Op is at fault, other times the user is being unreasonable. When you are at an impasse, an effective solution is to seek input from the community (Village Pump is a good place), or if it concerns mostly the articles of a specific project, the Wikiproject's talk page may also be a good place to hold a discussion. If consensus is on your side, you can carry on, and the other person has to accept that. If consensus is that the bot's behaviour needs ajustment, then the bot has to be modified in consequence, either by becoming more limited in scope to avoid the problem edits, or by having fancier and more refined logic. And a BRFA may be needed to put the new logic to test, depending on the scope of the modifications. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 00:33, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Agreed.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 01:08, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Template talk archiving

There isn't a problem for MiszaBot I or other bots to do archiving on template talk pages, is there? Harold O'Brian (talk) 03:05, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

MiszaBots (I, II, III) are inactive since October 2013, and Lowercase sigmabot 3 has took over all task of three MiszaBots. What you need is consensus to run archive bot on the page. (See Help:Archiving a talk page#Automated archival.) — Revi_complaint? 03:51, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

So you mean a lack of consensus makes it technically malfunctioning on template talk pages? Harold O'Brian (talk) 06:51, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

No consensus = No archiving. That's all. Nothing technical, AFAIK.. — Revi_complaint? 07:24, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Lowercase sigmabot III (talk · contribs) works quite happily to archive Template talk: pages. If a given page isn't being archived, it's usually because the {{User:MiszaBot/config}} is misformatted - or is simply absent. See the various threads at User talk:MiszaBot that have been answered by myself and John of Reading (talk · contribs). --Redrose64 (talk) 07:46, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

How can I create a new entrywith wikipedia?

How can I create a new entrywith wikipedia?