Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Philosopher-Bot 2

Philosopher-Bot 2

Operator: Philosopher (talk · contribs)

Time filed: 20:10, Tuesday December 21, 2010 (UTC)

Automatic or Manually assisted: Automatic.

Programming language(s): Auto-Wiki-Browser

Function overview: Sort articles for the new Communities taskforce of WikiProject Iowa, adds the 'communities=yes' parameter to the existing talk page template.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Requested by founder of the new taskforce, User:RifeIdeas at User talk:Philosopher#WikiProject Iowa/Communities. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Iowa/Communities.

Edit period(s): One-time run.

Estimated number of pages affected: All Iowa community talk pages - a little more than 1,000 pages.

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): N

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): Y

Function details: See above. This just uses AWB to add the 'communities=yes' parameter to the existing iterations of {{WikiProject Iowa}} banners on the talk pages of pages belonging in the WikiProject Iowa communities taskforce. This bot is not exclusion compliant - it only affects the template on the page.

Discussion

So what this does is go through a list of Communities taskforce articles and adds |communities=yes to {{WikiProject Iowa}} talk page banners if necessary. Plus a sort of articles on one project page. Given this is similar to tagging but virtually error-free, I think this is un-controversial and definitely useful for the taskforce.
Approved for trial (30 banner tags and 1 sort). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.

Um, adding the tag is performing the sort. I'll go ahead and do 30 tags. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 05:23, 27 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete.Done. See Special:Contributions/Philosopher-Bot. --User:Philosopher-Bot ^{Thinking mechanical thoughts.} 05:59, 27 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I thought you meant you would make also a list of sorted pages on some project page. Also, please post messages with your main account, and only use bot account for approved bot tasks.

As of trial, see [1]. Make sure no more than 1 instance of text is added and don't add anything past the first section header. Also, is it possible to implement logic to ignore  and <nowiki></nowiki> tags? I don't know if AWB has any function for this. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 13:35, 27 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

1) The list of sorted pages is created by adding the parameter to {{WikiProject Iowa}}, as the template categorizes the talk pages for the Project. 2) Yeah, sorry, I forgot to log out first. 3) I don't believe it's possible for AWB to do those other things you requested, but it shouldn't need to do them - what it is doing is finding 'WikiProject Iowa' - only where it occurs within the '{{ }}' marks and replacing it with 'Project Iowa|communities=yes' where 'communities=yes' isn't already on the page. The only times it will be making more than one edit on a page is when it runs into the unsigned notice (created by SkiersBot, but left unsigned) as at Talk:Bancroft County, Iowa - these sorts of changes are already made by similar uses of AWB (see the edit before mine) and the change is not negative - since the notice incorporates the exact text of the templates above, updating the notice to match the template, while a side effect of what the bot is doing, is actually useful. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:51, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The side-effect is useful in this case, because it happened on a bot-like notice and did not change the meaning. What you actually did is modify another user's post. If it was me that had posted and I said something like "Guys is it OK to correct {{WikiProject Iowa}} to {{Project Iowa|communities=yes}} for this one?" your bot would have messed that up. Looking for template {{ }} tags around the banner name is in itself prone to error, and anything more than 1 match certainly requires human inspection. An automated bot task is to be non-controversial and only make edits it is supposed to. Your task is to add |communities=yes to the banner, not any other instances that happen to be there. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 09:28, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]