Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Andrea105Bot

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

Revoked.

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

Approved.

Andrea105Bot[edit]

Operator: Andrea105

BRFA filed at: 17:09, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Automatic or Manually assisted: automatic

Programming language(s): AutoWikiBrowser

Source code available: yes, AWB is open-source

Function overview: Addition of AfricaProject banners to talk pages of certain Angola-related articles.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Angola_tagging

Edit period(s): continuous

Estimated number of pages affected: 1163

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): Yes

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): No

Function details: All talk pages of articles in the categories listed at User:John Carter/Africa categories will have {{AfricaProject|class=|importance=|Angola=yes|Angola-importance=}} added to them, if the AfricaProject banner is not already present. If the banner is present, then the parameters Angola=yes|Angola-importance= would be added, if necessary. Also, any of the redirects to template:talk header will be replaced with a direct call to the template, and the |nested= parameter removed from the template call, but only if the talk page is being edited for the primary task.

Discussion[edit]

Hey there Andrea :), this your first bot? WikiProject tagging is a fairly common bot task, and in general uncontroversial. So most bots doing this task are approved to do all WikiProject tagging in one BRfA,rather than getting approval for each single run. Would you prefer to get approval for all WikiProject tagging for your bot? And have you considered using the AWB plugin Plugin++, it's fairly easy to use, and has a lot of functionality in WikiProject tagging (e.g. it understands Template:WikiProjectBannerShell). Best - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 18:02, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ideally, approval for any Wikiproject tagging could be obtained in a single BRFA. However, as I've never previously operated a bot on enwiki, I believe that it might be easier to obtain more narrow approval for a particular tagging task, then seek a broader approval after the first task has run. This particular task can be accomplished with manually created regular expressions in AWB; however, the plugin might also be useful. Andrea105 (talk) 18:43, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, that's fine and dandy. I see you have only been active for a few days, and have mostly done vandalism reversion. But I presume you are a returning user. I can't see anybody who has asked you already, so would you be willing to tell us what your previous account(s) are/is or not? - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 18:59, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I previously edited anonymously; I'd rather not post specific IPs here, however :) Andrea105 (talk) 19:03, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Naturally not :). You may not know, but has the project already been notified? I'll ask John Carter as well :) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 19:11, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewing Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Africa, I didn't see a notice. I've posted one there now [1]. Andrea105 (talk) 19:18, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Angola [2]. Andrea105 (talk) 19:23, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Meanwhile, you should consider not making the bot's talk page a redirect. If I'm correct, users should be able to leave a message there which will stop the bot (through AWB). - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 08:45, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Prevention of automatic bot stops is the purpose of the redirect -- if it were not present, then any comment relating to the bot would cause an automatic shutdown, even if not so requested by the editor leaving the message. The bot will be well-configured and supervised, so there shouldn't be a need for editors to rush to the talk page with emergency stop requests. In the (very unlikely) event that an emergency stop is necessary, it could be effectuated through the conventional mechanism of blocking. Andrea105 (talk) 16:51, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not entirely sure why I was told of this discussion. I personally have no knowledge of bots one way or another; I just want them to slavishly indulge my every whim and do what I want them to do. Nor am I particularly sure what the exact features of the bot in question would be. If it were around to make it easier to maybe automatically tag articles that have either been recategorized with a directly project-related category or new articles, though, maybe in conjunction with WP:CATSCAN, I think that would be wonderfully useful. John Carter (talk) 14:56, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I've found it necessary to modify the task somewhat along those lines. AWB has no feature to automatically retrieve all of the articles included in categories linked from a certain page, so use of User:John Carter/Africa categories directly would require cutting and pasting a category into a box, then pressing a button, 359 times :( Instead, talk pages of articles in Category:Angola or any subcategory, parsed recursively, will be processed, which I believe is equivalent to your list :) I've prepared a list of 3076 Angola-related articles detected in my userspace. Andrea105 (talk) 16:35, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

@Carter: I was just wondering if you'd notified any of the projects :). @Andrea: That's probably not a good idea; each category should be checked manually, to insure they are within the scope of the project. If you give me a mo, I'll make a list of all the pages to tag with a C# program, and save them in my userspace as a non-formatted list, if you then save them to a txt, AWB can load like that. Also, the redirect is fine, I just wasn't sure if you were aware that AWB had this feature. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 16:55, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks :) Andrea105 (talk) 17:02, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pages are at User:Kingpin13/Angola pages, if you copy and paste them to a text file, it should work with AWB. So, will this bot be able to understand Template:WikiProjectBannerShell? If it's a bother to do, you could just skip them and then look over them manually. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 17:17, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand the syntax for Template:WikiProjectBannerShell, completes calls to each WikiProject template are included as parameters. The bot is fully compatible with this system, since it will recognize {{WikiProject Africa..., regardless of where it occurs in the text of a talk page, or whether nested in other template calls. Where a WikiProject Africa template is to be added to a talk page and the WikiProjectBannerShell template is present, the latter template will be detected, and the WikiProject Africa template will be placed inside of it. Andrea105 (talk) 17:28, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. Would it also be possible to make sure the banner is placed underneath any existing {{talk header}} template? - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 17:35, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. Andrea105 (talk) 17:39, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to ask the following: In the articles this bot will run through to a) replace "talkheader" with "talk header" and b) remove |nested=. Thanks, Magioladitis (talk) 23:53, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done. I've modified the task such that any of the redirects to template:talk header will be replaced with a direct template call, and the "nested" parameter will be removed, if the talk page would otherwise be edited. Andrea105 (talk) 00:30, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Perfect. -- Magioladitis (talk) 05:17, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looks fine in general, operator starting with a single task for first bot, responsive to questions, understands how the templates work that the bot will edit, community task, etc.

I have a question about the redirect, though. Why does the bot's talk page automatically shut it down if someone posts? Bot talk pages are the usual place to post issues about bots, it keeps the discussions all in one place for other users with similar concerns. As I understand the emergency shut-off button, it is just an administrator block, anyway. So, if that's what it does elsewhere, why can't it be the same way for this bot, and what's the advantage of having it done differently for this bot? If there's no good reason for this the bot should operate in the standard way, users post issues to talk page. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 05:49, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Because the bot uses AWB, it will stop editing when someone edits the bot's talk page. This should still be possible by editing the redirect. But it means that messages not intended to shut down the bot will be left on Andrea's talkpage, and therefore won't accidentally interrupt the bot's editing. Although I wouldn't be surprised if there's an option in AWB to turn it off. Besides which, it's fairly standard for ops to redirect their bot's talkpages to their own - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 09:45, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Can you explore this option, I prefer for new bots in particular, and bots that are doing a lot of tagging, and bots with multiple tasks that bot talk pages be the place for discussions about problems. It's hard to see, particularly in a very active editor's talk page, a history of bad conduct on the part of a bot unless it's all in one location. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 21:52, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If the bot's talk page itself were utilized for messages relating to its operation, then every time a message was posted, I would need to manually log in under the bot account to clear the new message dialog (this cannot be done from AWB), so as to permit editing to continue. Alternatively, if comments were posted on a sub-page of the bot's userspace, not triggering a new message notification under either account, it would be easy to accidentally delay reading messages of time-critical importance. Bot operators conventionally redirect their bots' talk pages to the talk pages for their primary accounts to ensure that they are notified immediately (if logged in) when comments concerning their bots are posted, without the undue burden of automatic shutdowns. Andrea105 (talk) 04:40, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'd prefer to wait for at least some input from the projects before all of these pages are tagged. But I'd also like to see a trial, to weed out any bugs. Tagging a few of the pages shouldn't cause any harm, so

Approved for trial (30 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 09:53, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Seems appropriate as the bot operator has been very responsive and it's a single task. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 21:52, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The trial has been successfully completed :) Andrea105 (talk) 04:22, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good. The bot should insert the Angola and Angola-interest after other countries,http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:African_Fish_Eagle&diff=prev&oldid=325564779 not before the project Africa class and importance ratings.

Instead of:

{{AfricaProject|Angola=Yes|Angola-importance=|class=Start|importance=|Uganda=yes}}

It should be:

{{AfricaProject|class=Start|importance=|Uganda=yes|Angola=Yes|Angola-importance=}}

For continental level organisms, if there are a number of countries, it is almost impossible in the next tags to find the country level tags if they're lost in a sea of country tags.

I'm still checking, but this for starters. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 05:16, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also, group the Angola-importance tag right after the Angola tag always, instead of:

{{WP Africa|Angola-importance=|class=stub|importance=mid|Angola=yes}}

Use:

{{WP Africa|class=stub|importance=mid|Angola=yes|Angola-importance=}}

Articles which add the wp:Africa banner do have it in the correct order. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 05:51, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've modified the task such that if no Angola related parameters are present, |Angola=yes|Angola-importance= are placed at the end of the AfricaProject template, if only |Angola-importance= is present, |Angola=yes is placed directly preceding it, and if only |Angola=yes is present, |Angola-importance= is placed directly following it. I have also rolled back the bot edits not in conformity to these rules, and reinserted the parameters in the correct order using AWB on my main account [3]. Andrea105 (talk) 17:47, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably, a new trial should be run for the reconfigured task :) Andrea105 (talk) 17:49, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, please request another trial to run on a new set of articles. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 22:39, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Does the bot understand the template when it has newlines in it? For example;
{{WP Africa
|importance=
|class=
}}? - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 18:13, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It does now :) The convention of using or omitting newline characters after the template parameters will be adhered to when new parameters are added. Andrea105 (talk) 18:41, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Great, sorry I haven't commented here for a while. I'd still like to wait to give the projects some chance to respond, but likely as not they won't. However, while we're waiting, a further trial to check if these additions to the bot haven't messed it up, should do no harm, Approved for extended trial (30 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.- Kingpin¹³ (talk) 10:16, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The trial has been successfully completed. Really :) Andrea105 (talk) 02:46, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It looks good;but when the bot adds the wikiproject Africa banner, that banner should be placed below all existing project banners, and existing BLP banners, but above any {{reqphoto|}} tags.[4] The bot did put any talk headers at the top of the page, though. I apologize for not knowing the ins and outs of adding banners before hand. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 03:56, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have reconfigured the bot as described to insert new placements of the AfricaProject banner below any existing WikiProject banners, but above any reqphoto template, under the assumption (which holds for every properly formatted talk page) that all WikiProject banners are consecutive templates, with no intervening text. (I am delaying until tomorrow entry of the 30 or so redirects to the reqphoto template.) This late request for a modification to the bot's operations may require a third trial run. Andrea105 (talk) 05:10, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Probably a good idea to always do a trial run, but I hope BAG agrees with me that after that it looks like the bot can be fast-forwarded based on these trials and the next oen. None of these corrections are bot operator or coding errors, the operator has been politely and quickly responsive to suggestions from users, is following what the bot does, and the bot does an appropriate bot task, and there were no bot errors in the trial run. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 05:33, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with IP69 on this one, there' been no controversy, we have a good bot op, and the edit from the bot look great. It's a shame that we haven't had any input from the projects, but WikiProject tagging is rarely opposed. So

Approved. I'd suggest that you make sure that you make the first few edit semi-automated before going on to automated, just to be check the last change didn't mess anything up :) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 14:00, 2 December 2009 (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.

Revoked. Operator has been blocked as a sockpuppet of a banned user. Anomie ⚔ 03:51, 17 December 2009 (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.