Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Ahechtbot 4

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

Withdrawn by operator.

Ahechtbot 4[edit]

Operator: Ahecht (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 21:26, Sunday, November 25, 2018 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: automatic

Programming language(s): AutoWikiBrowser

Source code available: AWB, replacement strings posted at User:Ahechtbot#Task 4

Function overview: Fixes the specific signatures and substituted template text with unclosed formatting tags listed at User:Ahechtbot#Task 4. These are now causing linter errors and/or formatting issues on entire pages due to the Change from HTML Tidy to RemexHTML. Also fixes unclosed <s>...</s> tags where found on pages where other changes are already being made.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Continuation of approved tasks at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Ahechtbot, Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Ahechtbot_2, and Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Ahechtbot_3.

Edit period(s): Will be run in several batches, due to Wikipedia search having a 10,000 item limit.

Estimated number of pages affected: ~450,000 (the vast majority of which will be fixes to substitutions of templates such as {{Afd bottom}})

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

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

Function details: Continuation from Task 3 with another batch of strings to replace. These strings are listed at User:Ahechtbot#Task 4. No "Automatic changes" (genfixes, etc.) will be enabled. All edits will be marked as "bot" and "minor".

Discussion[edit]

Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. SQL ^{Query me!} 20:35, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. Special:Contributions/Ahechtbot. At least four pages were run for each replacement string. I had to make a few tweaks to the regexes to simplify them a bit, and I added one to catch an additional bad template transcluded by Journalist along with his signature. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 04:21, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

{{BAG assistance needed}} It's been a week and a half since the trial was completed. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:50, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ahecht: it the Spinningspark section of your fix sheet, it appears you will be creating an unmatched '''. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:03, 16 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Xaosflux: Removing the''' balances a bold started earlier in the signature (outside the search string). See Special:Diff/870965498 for an example. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 01:20, 16 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Edits for "substituted template text" fixes like these here three appear to be somewhat beyond the Lint-error fixing task as they replace the whole archive bottom wrapper. Not saying this is a bad edit necessarily, but it does change archived content beyond technical fixes. I'm not sure how I feel about this for this many changes without consensus or at least more visible notices somewhere. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 13:06, 18 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it's slightly beyond lint fixing. I'm replacing the substed text with the current version on the template, which is important because the old versions refer to things like "Votes for Deletion" and "Votes for Undeletion" instead of "Articles for Deletion" and "Deletion Review", for example). It seems like these should be done during the same edit as long as other changes are being made, to reduce impact on the server. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 13:48, 18 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What I mean to say is, is there consensus (WP:BOTREQUIRE#4) that what was previously VFD/VFU should be retroactively changed to AFD/DR? They are AFD in 2018, they were not in 2005 when the comments were written and the process was closed. Otherwise, the same logic can be applied to any number of substed templates all over the archives. There are many renamed, deprecated and changed processes like this. I don't think I have seen archives updated like this. I don't recall any bot that was approved for such a task. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 19:20, 18 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I concur; it's one thing to fix lint errors, but the links are historically accurate and I'm not sure they should be changed without some form of consensus-based approval. Primefac (talk) 17:59, 25 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Request withdrawn for now. I'll refactor this task to remove the xfd templates until I gain consensus for them and submit for a new BFRA. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:11, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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 WT:BRFA.