Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Yobot 35

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

Denied.

Yobot 35[edit]

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

Time filed: 00:16, Thursday, February 2, 2017 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): AWB / WPCleaner

Source code available: -

Function overview: Remove/Fix invisible unicode characters from pages

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): Daily

Estimated number of pages affected: 300 per day

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

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

Function details: Regex: \u200E|\uFEFF|\u200B|\u2028|\u202A|\u202C|\u202D|\u202E|\u00AD can be removed. Regex: \u2004|\u2005|\u2006|\u2007|\u2008 can be replaced by space. Additionally \u00A0 in most cases be replaced by normal space or by nbsp. This case will be done semi-automatically. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:16, 2 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

What exactly is the benefit to the wiki here? Is this an accessibility concern? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 00:30, 2 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It causes problems to Visual Editor, wikimarkup editors, AWB's edit box, adding non-visible characters inside urls it's a potential hack that could result in url hijacking, etc. -- Magioladitis (talk) 06:28, 2 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The task description does not mention any general fixes being run, and provided they are not enabled this appears to be a fine task for a bot to perform. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:14, 2 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The URL hijacking would be concerning/should be fixed, but I don't see why faulty tools shouldn't be corrected to properly handle common characters like these. I'm probably in the minority on that, though, so I won't stand in the way. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 13:14, 2 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Denied. There does not seem to be any consensus established for these replacements, and I suspect it might turn out that replacing some or all of these invisible characters with HTML entities rather than removing them entirely would be preferable. Neither of the BRFAs linked as "discussions" here seem to have anything to do with the proposed edits. Furthermore, I find flooding WP:BRFA with 20 requests all at once is probably bordering on WP:POINT: I suggest you limit yourself to fewer than 5 open requests at a time so you can more easily express yourself clearly and so you and the community can have time for necessary discussion. Anomie ⚔ 02:16, 3 February 2017 (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.