Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Hmainsbot1

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.

Hmainsbot1

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

Time filed: 21:07, Sunday May 20, 2012 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): AutoWikiBrowser

Source code available: AWB base plus my AWB find and replace code which I can provide if you tell me where to put it.

Function overview: The purpose of this bot is to delink date fields in articles that are not calendar articles, such as days, months, years, decades, centuries, day of the week. This is primarily to implement WP:DATELINK and WP:YEARLINK. Make AWB general fixes only if there is also a delink change to the article.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): The delinking of these dates was exhaustively discussed by WP prior to the current wording of WP:DATELINK and WP:YEARLINK and MOS:UNLINKDATES being agreed upon.

Edit period(s): Whenever I invoke AWB to make these changes. It will be based on the date links that I want to fix at that time, say for a range of years, or a set of decades. I do work on WP daily, but not all the time.

Estimated number of pages affected: 20-25,000 per month

Exclusion compliant (Yes): If AWB cannot natively handle this, I will add {{bots}} to my AWB 'skip' list.

Already has a bot flag (Yes/No):

Function details: I will manually use AWB to set up my link criteria, such as look for all the links to article 2000 or 2000s. This will produce a list of articles. I will then invoke AWB as a BOT to work on this list.

A combination of filtering articles by certain words or phrases in the article name and skipping articles with certain templates, words or phrases in the text will be used to avoid editing articles that are themselves calendar articles, including day, month, year, decade and century articles. This exclusion will also extend to other articles, such as timeline articles, articles about numbers themselves and so on.

filter by name:

calendar|day|week|month|year|decade|century|millennium|Showa|Shōwa|Meiji|Taisho|Taishō| in |Other events|(number)|(disambiguation)|Aught-|SO 8601|Timeline|acronyms|initialisms

skip by content:

{{Decadebox|{{Year dab|{{Year nav|{{Month header}}|{{Day}}|Category:Days of the year|{{Portal:Current events/Events by month}}|Months in the|Eastern Orthodox liturgical days|#REDIRECT|disambig|{{events by month links}}|month category|Months of the|The following events occurred in

These filters and skips will be adjusted as needed to ensure that the bot does not touch articles that WP:DATELINK and WP:YEARLINK allow to have date links or that otherwise need manual review prior to changes (if any) being made to them.

Delink changes throughout the selected articles will include:

[[year]] to year; Example: [[2010]] to 2010

[[year|nn]] to year; Example: [[2012|12]] to 2012 for end of ranges --> not to be done

[[monthname]] to monthname; Example: [[January]] to January

[[monthname day]] to monthname day; Example: [[January 3]] to January 3

[[day monthname]] to day monthname; Example: [[3 January]] to 3 Janaury

[[monthname year]] to monthname year; Example: [[January 1998]] to January 1998

[[monthname day year]] to monthname day year; Example: [[January 3, 2010]] to January 3, 2010

[[decade]] to decade; Example: [[1990s]] to 1990s

[[nnth century]] to nnth century; Example: [[19th century]] to 19th century

[[dayname]] to dayname; Example: [[Monday]] to Monday

Logic will handle variations of the above, such as [[January 1st]] to January 1. Logic will handle piped links of the above, such as [[January|Jan]] to Jan.

I will adjust my logic as necessary to complete coverage for this kind of delinking, as well as to ensure my changes meet the requirements of the MOS WP:Date.

AWB will be set to apply AWB General Fixes only if there is also a delink change to the article. Adding General Fixes is only done as a service for the WP articles involved.

I have been testing this logic using AWB manually for several months now, changing many articles, but there are so many that automation is needed if there is any hope for getting this work done on the existing article content. Later, the work will only have to be done on a maintenance basis. This is my first attempt to obtain a bot.

Discussion

Note: This bot has edited its own BRFA page. Bot policy states that the bot account is only for edits on approved tasks or trials approved by BAG; the operator must log into their normal account to make any non-bot edits. AnomieBOT ⚡ 21:25, 20 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just trying my best to follow the instuctions on setting up bots. I will correct whatever is needed. First time attempt. Any help is welcome. Hmains (talk) 23:20, 20 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Please prove that there is a strong consensus for this task. People seem to get very antsy over date de-linking (arbcom case). Also, check out User:Full-date unlinking bot and Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Full-date unlinking bot. --Chris 03:19, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure how to show a strong consensus. These changes reflect what has been in the MOS referenced above for several years now and are not being challenged. I waited for some years after the MOS revision to not link most dates before I started doing my date de-linking with AWB manually. I have made thousands of such edits which have had no objections (I answer concerns by pointing to the MOS) so that I remember to the edits that I am proposing in this BOT--which is a subset of the edits I do with AWB manually. My edits, which are not in the BOT proposal, require human reading to make sure they are correct and are proper only for AWB manual work. I know about the arbcom case and watched it unfold years ago. That is over now, with the MOS date guidelines (mostly don't link) in place. I looked at the full-date unlinking bot. That was a one-time effort for full-dates only and was concluded in December 2009 so it is now doing nothing about articles that contain these full-date links or any other links mentioned in my bot proposal. Writers of new articles continue to link many dates, regardless of the MOS, so continuing work is required. Hmains (talk) 17:00, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

{{BAG assistance needed}} Hmains (talk) 02:36, 8 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I would recommend you do the following:
1. Open a discussion at WT:MOSDATE about whether this bot is desired.
2. Post a link to the discussion at WP:VPT, WP:VPR, and WP:AN.
3. You may also wish to send a neutrally-worded invitation to participate in that discussion to those users who participated in any of Wikipedia talk:Full-date unlinking bot, Wikipedia:Date formatting and linking poll, Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Full-date unlinking bot, and/or WP:ARBDATE.
While your manual edits may not have met with much controversy, historically there have been issues and concerns with bots running through them automatically at a much higher rate with less supervision. You've mentioned that concerns have been raised about your manual edits - you can expect the number of these concerns to increase significantly if your bot is running at a much faster rate and constantly. Simply pointing at the MOS may not be enough to allay concerns - establishing a consensus beforehand demonstrates that the changes are supported, and gives those with concerns a chance to voice them before the changes are made. Hersfold non-admin^(t/a/c) 15:28, 14 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I will see what I can write. But there are many things I don't know know how to do in WP, such as collecting a lot of user names from this or that place. Hmains (talk) 03:13, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I have implemented your first two suggestions above. Hmains (talk) 19:51, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Adding links to the discussions Hmains added, since I had to hunt them down :P

--slakr^\ talk / 02:03, 21 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#Delinking_dates has about run its course. My summary of that is nearly everyone is ok with my proposed bot to delink the dates I plan to work on; a few disagree with the MOS, but that is not the matter at hand here. What next now? Thanks Hmains (talk) 01:56, 4 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
{{BAG assistance needed}} Hmains (talk) 02:02, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- I have reviewed and closed the request for comment. Per the consensus of the discussion, Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. — madman 18:23, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - Thank you for your confidence. I have never done a bot before so I have questions. Is there something that must be done (by whom) for AWB to recognize this trial so I can use it for this bot? What kind of record/report do I make for the trial? Hmains (talk) 01:53, 11 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    - AWB will not allow you to run this as an automated task until your bot account has a bot flag; just run it as you normally would, confirming each edit. When you place {{BotTrialComplete}} on this page, I or another BAG member will review the edits just to make sure all the edits went well. Cheers! — madman 07:06, 11 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I ran date tests and checked them. I found an error in my code and fixed it. My code still changed, for example: [[2012|12]] to 2012, which I was not going to do; it now changes to 12. I also tested how to make the AWB BOT work and fixed up the hmainsbot page and talk page. In working on this, I made a mistake somehow and edited my hmains talk page while logged in with hmainsbot1 userid. Otherwise, Trial complete.. Thanks Hmains (talk) 03:34, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Why were 183 edits performed in the trial instead of 50 edits which were approved? I'm glad this trial helped you iron out some bugs in your code/regular expressions, but please understand that BAG members tend to review all edits in a trial, though we're not required to, and doing more edits than approved does not bolster our confidence in your understanding of the bot policy and the bot approvals process. — madman 17:12, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - I am sorry about doing more edits than specified. It was from my testing and then re-testing. Also, the AWB bot limit field was rather confusing. Sometimes, I would put in a number and it claimed I had already done that number. So I logged completely out and put in the number again and got more edits. I understand now how it the AWB fields work. Hmains (talk) 23:42, 15 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- The trial looked good. Overall, a very low error rate, good selection of articles, and excellent regular expressions catching a number of cases I wouldn't have thought of. Here the bot delinked September, which was a reference to an Earth, Wind, and Fire song; however, the link should have been disambiguated and it was fixed by a human contributor very, very quickly (in fact, the list was completely rewritten). Here spaces inside links broke the spacing once they were delinked, but that's simply broken syntax; garbage in, garbage out. I'd consider both of those edge cases. I wouldn't consider [[2012|12]] an edge case, so please demonstrate in a sandbox that this case has been fixed, and I will approve the task. Thanks, — madman 14:59, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - Ok good. Please see hmains sandbox. I made the edit with hmains userid exercising the same AWB code I will use for hmainsbot1. Hmains (talk) 02:30, 17 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    - The latest edit in the sandbox is incorrect. [[1995|95]] should be changed to 95, not 1995. — madman 14:10, 17 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      - So true. See now. Hmains (talk) 02:13, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        Approved. — madman 02:22, 18 July 2012 (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.