Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard

Bots noticeboard

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BRFA

Hey, I'm making 10 edits per minute to fix or remove invalid parameters on pages in the Category:Infoboxes with unknown parameters and its subcategories using AWB. I would like to point out that I review every edit before saving. Do you think I need a BRFA for this? – DreamRimmer (talk) 06:44, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

@Primefac, I apologize for bothering you with this ping. Could you please provide some suggestions? – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:01, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

My very short answer is "probably not".

10epm isn't that bad, and I have a feeling (based on experiences with my own bot) that a bot won't really do you much good; while there are ~50k pages that have invalid parameters, many of those infoboxes will only have a handful of invalid parameters, never mind the fact that they might not all be the same bad param (which is why my bot takes care of, incidentally). Bot runs are really only good if you're going to be editing hundreds of pages with very similar circumstances - for example, my bot would never catch something like Special:Diff/1183152060; that's something that would be better handled by a human user. Even a spelling/typo situation like Special:Diff/1183152431 would be difficult to predict unless there is a known case where someone did it a lot and you could just quickly go through and fix a bunch of them.

In other words, I don't see anything wrong with your edit rate, and the types of problems you want to fix are probably best dealt with manually anyway. If there is a huge group of pages with the same issue, though, let me know and I'll run my bot on it and save you some hassle. Primefac (talk) 14:12, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate your helpful response. If I ever need assistance, I'll be sure to reach out to you. Regards! – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:33, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

"It depends" :D 10epm in a burst is no big deal, if you want to do it all day every day for weeks it is. What is the volume of pages you want to deal with? Keep in mind, that without a flag you are more likely to bother people who have watchlisted those pages or do recent changes patrolling. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:55, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

I plan to further reduce this epm rate. My goal is to process approximately 500-600 pages within a 24-hour period. – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:06, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

And yet... there are those who do that anyway. Primefac (talk) 15:06, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

.....yea.....— xaosflux ^Talk 18:56, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

• @DreamRimmer: epm, and watchlist cluttering are not the only things that needs consideration. If the number of affected pages is very large, then pressing "ctrl+S" is boring, and borderline waste of time (in case the operation is perfect). I don't know the total details of the task, but maybe Primefac's bot could do it? If not, and if the number of pages is large, then you should plan for all possibilities that might occur, and prepare the task for it. As you have already edited a lot of pages: if you are confident there would not be undesired edits, then I think you should file a BRfA. That would save the time, as well as cluttering of watchlists. —usernamekiran (talk) 16:04, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  DreamRimmer, thanks for taking on these edits. I did a spot-check of your edits, and it looked like you were fixing just one parameter in each infobox, on multiple pages, and doing so correctly. I have done a bunch of this infobox cleanup, and the biggest concern if you want to do it well is deciding between removing a parameter entirely and converting the parameter name to something that is supported. To make this decision requires reading both the template's documentation and the template's code, since the documentation is not always complete. There are also rare occasions in which a parameter is actually supported by the template but the unknown parameter checking code is wrong. If in doubt, leave the page alone and come back to it after you have fixed all of the easy ones, or ask for help on the infobox's Template talk page. Also, periodically check Category:Articles using duplicate arguments in template calls to see if you have accidentally put an article or two in there. Feel free to ping me from a Template talk page or or drop a line on my User talk page if you have questions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:24, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  @Usernamekiran, sure, if there are any future tasks for me, I'll consider creating my own bot account. @Jonesey95, the removal of that one parameter was in response to a request at WP:AWB/T. Additionally, I've cleaned up these categories by removing unknown parameters and fixing some parameters that could have been changed. I also reviewed the template documentation before creating these regexes. If needed, I'll definitely contact you. I appreciate everyone who took the time to comment. – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:40, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Bad edits by a double-redirect-fixing bot

My relevant contribution history

Xqbot was speedily approved to resolve double redirects using m:redirect.py way back in December 2009.

I reported a problem to operator Xqt in April 2020, and again in June 2020 (and September 2020).

They responded by opening phab:T254839 which is currently "Open, In Progress, High" – it's been over three years, and still not resolved. Though it seems there was progress in September?

I just cleaned up twenty bad Xqbot edits caused by this bug (somebody mass-moved a whole lot of redirects)

not articles – well, the SUBJECTSPACE pages were articles, but their talk were {{R from avoided double redirect}}s to an {{R from remote talk page}}

I noticed that EmausBot was also working these double-redirects, without having the same problem with them (e.g., DIFF)

EmausBot was approved in December 2010 – to use the standard script redirect.py !

What puzzles me is why I can't recall ever seeing EmausBot make this error? Is that bot just incredibly lucky, or is it configured differently, in a way that avoids making bad edits like that? wbm1058 (talk) 20:37, 29 November 2023 (UTC)