Wikipedia talk:Bots/Archive 3

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I can't help but notice (from hitting "Random page" over and over) that Wikipedia is chock full of information about Tolkien's universe, and that a bunch of it mirrors how Wikipedia treats the real universe. For example, just like there is a List of Danish monarchs, there is also a list of Kings of Gondor. And if you look at, say, the page of the Gondorian king Atanatar II, you'll see one of those "preceded by/followed by" boxes, just like on the page of Eric VI of Denmark. So clearly, these Tolkien fans have put quite a bit of effort into their corner of Wikipedia. Furthermore, many and quite possibly most of these Tolkien-related pages mention some year or years in the fictional timeline. So, although I'm not particularly into Tolkien myself, I wonder if people would like to have "Tolkien years" pages similar to the existing "real years" pages (and similarly, decades pages, centuries pages, et cetera, and potentially stuff like "Middle-earth leaders by year" to echo the real life "leaders by year" pages). Tolkien pages could then link to [[2037 TA]] (i.e. "2037 Third Age"), for example, instead of just having it be plain text. If so, clearly a bot would be the way to go to build the base year/decade/century/etc. pages, which could then be populated by Tolkien fans at leisure. If people are interested, and there's not significant opposition, I might be willing to write such a bot (no promises yet). So, any interest or opposition? -Rwv37 06:33, May 5, 2004 (UTC)

Personally, I would think that there wouldn't be enough material to have individual year pages for Tolkien--hell, most of the real year pages are terrible (see 500-1300 for some prime examples). Honestly, more Tolkien isn't a huge priority for me, but I would support the idea if that's your thing. Just make sure you don't create a bunch of pages with no possible content. Meelar 06:44, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

I like this idea. -- pne 11:47, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List_of_encyclopedia_topics lists many, if not mostly, topics which should be redirects or diambig pages. Some are very obvious, such as all the counties. Other articles have been deemed so seldom worthy of entry to be siphoned off into another page (that is, the list of viruses.) Therefore, I'd like to write a script to do the following things:

1. Remove viruses and worms from all the lists to be inserted into the list of viruses.
2. Remove user-created non-redirect articles with content over some number of characters.
3. Place all user-created redirects onto a page for scanning down by eye. For all those that seem sensible, they'll also be removed.
4. Compare every topic on the list with existing topics to determine if the names are different from current topics by the addition of words (the name of states or middle names in most cases). This will create a long list of script-proposed topics and redirect/disambiguation that I could scan for sensibility.
5. After scanning down the list, the script would make each disamb/redirect.
6. Finally, these would be removed from the lists, but rather than remove them from the numbered pages entirely, they'll be placed under a heading for each page so that other users can scan them for sensibility. The format would show both the old and redirected/disambiged links like "First Last -> First M. Last" and "Some County -> Some County, Texas & Some Country, Maryland"

I would try to make the script to edit each page on the list of topics once, but it would in all likelihood create thousands of redirect/disambig pages. The vast majority of these would be orphans. This has been discussed at Wikipedia talk:List of encyclopedia topics. Basically, if the orphans are kosher, I think a script should be made to eliminate the easy ones. If they're a bad idea, I think this should be made immediately clear. CHL 04:14, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

I'd like permission to run the bot us-states.py, written by Andre Engels, on the account User:Sethbot. Request has also been made on meta:Requests for permissions. -- Seth Ilys 23:11, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

Just to clarify... What this bot is designed to do is to create redirects from "CityName, SN" to "CityName, State Name" so that, for instance, Santa Monica, CA points to Santa Monica, California, for all 30k Rambot articles, so that people can use the familiar US postal code abbreviations to locate the Rambot city articles. There are a couple sample redirects on the account User:Sethbot from when I tested the bot, so you can see exactly what it does. -- Seth Ilys 04:21, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

• discussed with the above user on irc. seems good. Badanedwa 02:25, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure this is a good idea. I don't think the redirects the bot is going to make would be very useful, and I worry that they may encourage people to write the state abbreviations (which are meaningless for people like me who don't know them) in articles. --Camembert

One thing that the redirects will discourage, however, is the creation of articles about these locations using the abbreviations (which does happen from time to time). They'll also make it much easier for people who work on the Rambot articles extensively (like me) to navigate to them more quickly with the "Go" button. This seems to fall within the two criterion of "alternative spellings" and "abbreviations" described on Wikipedia:redirects. Furthermore, common misspellings are generally considered appropriate candidates for redirects, because they aid accidental linking (which, again, is intended to avert the creation of duplicate articles). -- Seth Ilys 02:36, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Hrm, I know I'm in trouble when somebody uses against me the same sorts of arguments I normally use against others... OK, consider me won over to the idea. --Camembert

LOL. I approve of the Sethbot a) 'cos I agree with Seth's logic in the matter b) trust that Seth has the best interests of the Wikipedia at heart, including testing & superintending his bot and c) am a proponent of intelligent bot use ... I'd like to see Bot-based redirection fixing, for instance (leaving the anchor as is), so I guess I have an axe to grind. --Tagishsimon

If you plan on converting CA into a redirect to California or Canada replacing the list of multiple uses we currently have (see also Disambiguation and abbreviations ) I don't see the advantage .. If you just want to add redirects as suggested on Talk:ISO_3166-2 (end of page) this may help, but the issue raised at the beginning of the page may stil need to be resolved. -- User:Docu

Hmm, I just read User:Sethbot (it says "CityName, SN redirects to CityName, StateName"), ok .. if you want to. Not sure if it's really very useful, but it will definitely be more likely that people will be using them when writing. You may want to add a msg to the redirect (see Wikipedia:MediaWiki_custom_messages#Redirect_pages ) -- User:Docu

Regardless, these redirects are entirely consistent with current redirect guidelines on Wikipedia:Redirects. These are probably good candidates for <nowiki>{{R from abbreviation}}</nowiki>, or perhaps a new msg should be created for this purpose. The bottom line is that I want these redirects because 1) they make sense, and 2) they'd make jumping between rambot articles significantly faster. -- Seth Ilys 04:21, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

It's much clearer now that there is an explication. BTW I'd create a msg for specially for these redirects, e.g. {{msg:R_from_state_code_format}} -- User:Docu

I just wanted to add my thoughts here. The sethbot is great and all, but one must make sure what when redirecting from [[City, ST]] to [[City, State]] that the [[City, State]] article is not a disambiguation page. In the situation where there is more than one City in the same state with the same name, then that page should be a disambiguation page, not a redirect. I have the full database of all the names of the cities in my database and in the future was planning to do just this. Whatever sethbot misses I will take care of later, but I will also make sure that a redirect vs. a disambiguation page is used appropriately. --RM and rambot

I'm a bit confused: Why wouldn't we want Germantown, MD to point to Germantown, Maryland? The redirect would point to the disambigation page, and that still facilitates finding the relevant article. The Sethbot pulls the list of articles off of Special:Allpages, so it should catch any articles that end in ", StateName" -- Seth Ilys 16:46, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Duh, I wasn't thinking. Good thing I didn't start the process myself! ;-) The Allpages sounds great. I guess I have no concerns then. Please disregard what I said above. Carry on. Oh one more thing: Are you checking to make sure that the article you are redirecting to is also not a redirect? We don't want double redirects. Minor issue I suppose. -- Ram-Man 16:52, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

The bot is programmed so as not to create double redirects. -- Seth Ilys 22:50, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Actually, it is not. The code Seth is probably referring to, is code that checks whether the page to be created already exists. In this case it is of course not created, and the operator is given a notification; the notification is different depending on whether the page is a normal page, a redirect page redirecting to the thing we intend to let a redirect to or a redirect page to somewhere else. If wanted, I'll program this functionality in, should be a matter of minutes only. - Andre Engels 08:59, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Andre's right; I misread the code. I've asked him on his talkpage for an adjustment to the code. -- Seth Ilys 20:56, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Probably a moot point by now, but I support this bot. anthony (see warning) 21:27, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Um, I do support this bot, but I actually think the two-letter state abbrviation should be lowercase--having it uppercase means (because of the odd mixed case) it won't be found by most users typing it in the search box, since they are likely to use all lower case (all lowercase also means it still gets found if they enter it the "right" way). I believe making them lowercase would also reduce (probably greatly) the 'using the abbreviation in articles' problem, as [[City, SN]] (which I believe is what most contributors would use in articles) would show as a red-link. Niteowlneils 22:39, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I don't know if this will ever be needed on the English Wikipedia, but in case it is, I would like to get a consensus on using it before it's actually needed. Angbot is a deletion bot using the PyWikipediaBot code (like the interlanguage-linking bots). The bot is only to be used in cases of mass page-creation vandalism. It was written in response to the recent situation at the Chinese Wikipedia where around 3000 pages needed to be deleted. The bot does not run autonomously. It simply makes the deletion process need one click instead of about four. I give it a list of pages to delete, it fetches those and displays each one to me in turn. I have to confirm whether I really want to delete the page. Is there any objection to running this on en if it's ever needed? It would not be used for normal deletion - only for very large cases of vandalism that would otherwise take hours to clear up. Angela. 17:33, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

Just for informational purposes, folks might also want to read meta:Vandalbot. BTW, Angela, sounds good. :) Is there a way to set things up so one of several trusted users can run such a bot as necessary on any Wikimedia wiki? They're all potential targets, after all... -- Seth Ilys 17:55, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

To run it, you'd need to install Python, get a copy of the PyWikipediaBot code from CVS, get the deletionbot code, and have your bot be given sysop access by a bureaucrat (and preferably bot status by a steward). However, the deletionbot code includes the following comment:

I would like to call on your responsibility in spreading this bot. Please do only give this out to trusted people. As a rule of thumb, only give it to people that you would trust enough to vote in favor of making them Stewards (or would not be in favor only for reasons unrelated to trust).

So far, the only people I am aware of that have it are Andre Engels (who wrote the code), Looxix, Rob Hooft, Shizhao, Brion Vibber and myself. Angela. 19:46, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

A copy now has been sent to Tim Starling as well, who put it on the server so that system developers can get it. Any reasonably trusted people can get the code if wanted. - Andre Engels 08:59, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

I oppose giving carte blanche authority to run this bot, especially as the source to it is not even public. If it is ever needed, then specific permission can be requested, but on en I'm not sure it ever will be, as a vandal would be caught and stopped long before creating 3000 pages. anthony (see warning) 21:33, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The problem is that if is needed, it needs to run as soon as possible. I don't want to have to wait a week obtaining support here for it after the vandalism attack occurs. Angela. 17:19, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I don't see what the urgency would be, or what the problem would be with waiting a week. In any case, if it's really needed and no one objects, then it doesn't matter whether or not support was obtained here first anyway. Just look at User:Template namespace initialisation script. anthony (see warning) 20:46, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

If there were thousands of insulting pages created, it surely would be urgent to delete them. The idea of putting this here before it is needed is to find out whether anyone does object rather than finding myself in an edit war over the page when it happens. Template namespace initialisation script was a script, not a bot. Angela. 02:30, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The page you link to says "This user is a bot". anthony (see warning)

Would you use it to delete the pages on User:Topbanana/Reports/Duplicate_article_title? I'd restore them afterwards, fixing the database problem. It's a bit slow to do this manually (see talk). -- User:Docu

No, the bot is for mass vandalism. I don't think it's appropriate for unnecessary maintenance like this. Angela. 17:43, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)

Why "unnecessary"? It has a negative effect on features like Special:Shortpages. -- User:Docu

I'd like to use a robot to upload certain series of pictures available on en: to cy: (for example, pictures of all the Popes). Does the downloading-from-en: part count as something I should ask permission for here? Marnanel 04:50, May 29, 2004 (UTC)

No, you only need permission here if your bot would be editing. If it is just downloading from here, I think that all you need to do is follow our robots.txt. Angela. 05:17, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I'd like to run the pywikipediabot as D6. Would you mark it as a bot? -- User:Docu

As there were no objections for over a week, D6 is now marked as a bot. Angela. 23:24, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

How fast can a human edit? One user seems to do sustained periods of editing at 3 to 4 edits a minute. Is this possible or an unauthorized bot? How fast do bots usually edit? Rmhermen 20:53, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)

I edited at that rate when I was fixing {{stub}} messages. I don't think it's a problem, unless the user is making major edits. Guanaco 22:02, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I would like to run the pywikipediabot as User:Guanabot to bypass redirects ([[twentieth century]] –> [[20th century|twentieth century]]), perform disambiguation, and update interwiki links. Guanaco 21:34, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

As there were no objections for over a week, Guanabot is now marked as a bot. Angela. 23:24, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Please block Guanabot. Gunanaco said that it would stop editing Talk pages (it should really stop editing all pages outside the article namespace), but it is still doing it, and thus it is not functioning correctly. This should be fixed before it is allowed to continue. VV[[]]

Bypassing redirects is a bad idea. The redirect may become a valid article in the future. anthony (see warning)

It depends on the redirect. I don't plan on bypassing any redirects that have any hope of becoming useful articles. Guanaco 20:55, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

You've already done it with vegetarian. Furthermore, many of the links to vegetarian are not adequetely covered by vegetarianism in the first place. anthony (see warning)

I'm not sure what you mean. What would you put in a Vegetarian article that's not suitable for coverage in Vegetarianism? VV 21:41, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Guanaco, "Vegetarian" might not be the best example, but there are plenty of redirects that are not so similar. When you say "I don't plan on...", how are you making that decision? Does the bot have some sort of title-parsing logic built in, or are you deciding on each one (which seems unlikely since it's a bot)? Hob 15:05, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Due to the lack of support of this bot, I have removed its bot flag. When it is unblocked, its edits will be shown in recent changes so people can check more easily that it is doing what it is meant to do. Angela. 21:51, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I am now running it on disambiguation pages with a 35 second delay. There is no reason to believe that this will cause problems, and there has been no objection to its use on disambiguation pages. If it makes a reasonable amount of edits without trouble, please reinstate its bot flag. Guanaco 00:29, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Ok. Angela. 19:47, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I would also like to use the pywikipediabot to help with categorization by more quickly moving pages between and adding pages to categories. This would make it easier to delete categories that don't follow the naming conventions and subcategorize mass listings such as the Pokémon characters. Guanaco 01:15, Jul 24, 2004 (UTC)

This is a good idea. If you create any custom scripts for this, or for bypassing redirects (which is very useful after page moves) please publish them as part of the pywikipediabot project (or elsewhere if this is too much hassle). Deco 22:32, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'd like to use various bot scripts under the account Wclarkbot. The first project I'd use a bot for would be to either move existing BC/AD pages to BCE/CE variants or else create BCE/CE redirects to the BC/AD pages (depending on the outcome of the discussion over at the Village Pump Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)).--Wclark 04:26, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)

Actually... in looking through some of the dates pages, it seems that a good deal of maintenance is needed anyway. For example, some otherwise empty dates are redirects to their appropriate decade (which makes sense) but other date pages are simply missing. In addition to any BCE redirects (since that's the way it seems to be leaning) I would most likely use a bot to make sure all date pages exist or at least redirect to their appropriate decade.--Wclark 05:51, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)

I strongly object to even making this change, let alone having a bot do it. 05:57, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

What change are you talking about? If you have a take on the BCE vs. BC issue, you can discuss it at the Village pump Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers). As I already pointed out, it looks like there's not going to be any consensus on switching to BCE. If you have an objection to creating redirects from 300 BCE to 300 BC (for example) I'd like to hear them.--Wclark 06:00, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)

I also strongly disagree with this change on the grounds that BC/AD are more common designations. BCE can be used in academia, but wikipedia is for every user. Moreover, i frequently read books on ancient history (my neardy hobby) and i can tell that BC/AD is at least as common as the ACE notation. I am also astonished with the suggestion that BC (before Christ) might be offensive to non cristhians. This is to much of a radical change for one single user like Wclark (although certainly with good intentions) to make. I think this deserves at least a poll. Muriel G 17:31, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This is not the place to discuss the BC vs. BCE debate. You can do that on Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers) (moved from Village pump). The question is whether anyone has any objections to a bot that EITHER renames BC pages to BCE versions (and creates appropriate redirects), OR creates BCE redirects to BC pages, depending on what type of consensus is reached (if any) in the other discussion. The way things are looking now, I'd most likely be using a bot to create the redirects from BCE to BC pages. If you have any objections to that then please raise them here, otherwise see the other discussion page.--Wclark 17:45, 2004 Jul 11 (UTC)

Since too many people are currently opposed to using BCE as the Wikipedia standard, I just went ahead and created all the remaining BCE -> BC redirect pages by hand (there were only a few hundred of them that needed to be done). So I don't need Wclarkbot to do this anymore. HOWEVER, there are plenty of pages that need to have [[333 BC|333 BCE]] style dates converted to [[333 BCE]] (at least 500 of them, based on a very simple search). I'd like to use a bot to help me with some of that, and to check for other date formatting issues. Any objections to the modified proposal? --Wclark 05:38, 2004 Jul 12 (UTC)

For objections to the change [[333 BC|333 BCE]] to to [[333 BCE]] see above (my post) and Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers). I would like to add that i dont think its proper to use this page to contour objections made to you in the cited link. (You dont need to SHOUT your opinions, i am not blind). Regards, Muriel G 13:31, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I don't see any objections that apply. Your complaint seems to be with switching over the actual pages to the BCE convention and making the BC pages redirects. I haven't done that, and never said I was going to do that unless that was the consensus decision. Again, if you have a complaint with using BCE redirects to the BC pages (so that those who prefer the BCE convention can simply link dates as [[333 BCE]] rather than having to do [[333 BC|333 BCE]], and also to ease tracking of BCE usage) -- or with my using a bot to alter these links -- I'd like to hear them. What I SHOUTED was not an opinion but a reiteration of my proposal (which most of those replying, including you, seemed to misunderstand). I don't follow what you mean by "countour objections" so could you please elaborate (perhaps on my talk page if you think this is the wrong place for the discussion)? --Wclark 15:46, 2004 Jul 13 (UTC)

My own typo in the above reply made me realize you may have meant "counter objections" which I don't think I've done. Everything I've written on this page appears to me to be neutral with regards to using BCE or BC. If you think the discussion on the two different pages (here and Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers) needs to be merged and moved elsewhere, let me know and I'll do so). --Wclark 15:55, 2004 Jul 13 (UTC)

I would like to run a bot to perform disambiguation. The bot would run the "solve_disambiguation.py" script that is included with the pywikipediabot software available at SourceForge. The script requires human intervention in order to choose the appropriate disambiguating link. I'll create an account for it once I think of a name and there are no objections. RedWolf 21:36, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

I've created a bot account called CanisRufus. RedWolf 00:16, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)

Now marked as a bot. Angela. 19:34, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)

Like RedWolf, I would also like to run a bot to perform disambiguation, also using the "solve_disambiguation.py" script included with pywikipediabot. I don't yet have an account for it. I may use it to perform other tedious tasks in the future, possibly including some custom tasks not included with pywikipediabot, at which point I will request permission for them. I have considered, for example, interactive spell-checking and checking for mislinks. As these tasks are all interactive, the bot would be naturally throttled in speed. Deco 03:32, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I have registered my bot, and it is boringly named DcoetzeeBot so that everyone knows it's mine. Deco 01:50, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Okay, it's been about a week, so I will commence with use of this bot for a short period before asking for a flag. Deco 01:33, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Okay, this bot seems to be working fine and hasn't received complaints. Could I have a bot flag on it? Also, out of curiousity, who has the authority to place bot flags? Deco 22:28, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Now marked as a bot. m:Stewards can set bot flags. The best place to request this is at m:requests for permissions. Angela. 19:34, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)