Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/brest-bot

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.

brest-bot

Operator: Brest (talk · contribs)

Time filed: 01:31, Sunday January 30, 2011 (UTC)

Automatic or Manually assisted: Manually assisted

Programming language(s): Python

Source code available: Standard pywikipedia

Function overview: Redirects from Macedonian language

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): periodicaly

Estimated number of pages affected: about 10.000 new redirects from Macedonian terms

Exclusion compliant (Y/N):

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

Function details:

1. The bot will read articles from mk.wiki belongs to some categories, like biography, capitals, countries, ...

2. Article title should pass name-filter, like short titles, titles with few words, ...

3. If en interwiki link exist, create redirect page at en.wiki, categorize this redirect with {{R from Macedonian}} template.

Discussion

I made less then 100 new redirects with my normal account just for test purposes, until I was blocked. I think is usefull to have redirects pages of this kind, especialy for macedonian users, they will easily find the right articles.

Note:I've unblocked your main account now, since you've resolved the problem by stopping the trial editing. —Soap— 01:55, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I hope I didn't destroy anything.--Brest (talk) 02:06, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is the English Wikipedia. Is there any consensus at all that we need redirects from foreign language titles for topics such as "25 Април" to "April 25"? Anomie ⚔ 03:31, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think really it has been discussed at all, but WP:CSD does make mention that "redirects in other languages [are generally useful]" (R3). But that is by no means a statement that they should be made, only a disqualifier for speedy deletion. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 04:50, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly, it's just a disqualifier for CSD. And IMO it's meant for the foreign-language name of a topic related to that language, not that we want a redirect from every language for every title. Anyway, we can see how Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 January 30#13 Април goes. Anomie ⚔ 05:01, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As Shirik comment, WP:CSD does make mention that "redirects in other languages [are generally useful]". Realy we should see how Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 January 30#13 Април goes. I made few sets of redirects, just to see how the discusion will goes. One set of redirects is "25 Април" to "April 25". Other set is biography articles. Then capitals (Belgrade, Zagreb, Sofija, ...), ... and so on. --Brest (talk) 12:35, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think creating these types of redirects en masse is a good precedent to set. –xeno^talk 15:35, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- I second xeno's sentiment and would point to this now-archived discussion at Wikipedia talk:Redirect. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 19:28, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It has been suggested at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 January 30#13 Април that a good test for whether we should have a foreign language redirect is that someone has found it useful enough to create it manually. With few exceptions (which should be proposed and discussed individually at WP:RFD I think that's a perfectly good criteria to apply in the majority of cases. This would by definition exclude their creation by bot. The only exceptions to this rule in my opinion should be:
1. Redirects from the official name of a ~~settlement~~ place in the official language(s) of that place or the state (or higher) political entity it is in, iff this official name is bolded in the first paragraph of the target article. [note: slightly expanded scope Thryduulf (talk) 19:21, 5 February 2011 (UTC)][reply]
2. Redirects from the names of people in their native language, iff this name is bolded in the first paragraph of the target article.

Any redirects that do not meet these strict criteria can be created manually if someone thinks it would be useful (and ideally they should be prepared to explain their usefulness if asked). Thryduulf (talk) 15:50, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Thryduulf. Mass-creating redirects that no one will use is just a waste of resources. This is the English Wikipedia; it is expected that if someone is here, they probably do know at least some English. If a Macedonian user doesn't know the English word for Април, the article at April will likely be completely unintelligible for them. Mr.Z-man 19:03, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also if it would be ineligible but they don't know the name, then they can look for Април at wikt:Април (for a definition in English), wikt:mk:Април (for the English translation) and/or mk:Април (for an interwiki link to the English article). Note that I've expanded my first criterion above to include places other than settlements as the Macedonian name for Mavrovo and Rostuša Municipality (Маврово и Ростуша) is just as useful as the Macedonian name for Rostuša (Ростуша) a settlement in the municpality. Thryduulf (talk) 19:21, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Mr.Z-man/Thryduulf we assume that large number of users will use these redirects, at least I know some of them who like to use these redirects, at least I'm one of them. We should look at these redirects as a tool to help those users to reach the appropriate content at English Wikipedia, i.e. as a shortcut to the target article. We shouldn't look at these redirects as a waste of resources but as a useful properties of mediawiki software which help people to improve their knowledge of English, the host wiki language in this case.--Brest (talk) 13:16, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The definion of the rules is very strong. Existens of article for some place or name at appropriate language edition of Wikipedia should be enough. If there is no such article at the foreign language edition of Wikipedia then the second condition of your rules should be valid: iff this name is bolded in the first paragraph of the target article.--Brest (talk) 13:16, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We should have foreign language redirects on the English Wikipedia for articles that have a strong connection with that language, as people are likely to look up these articles at the foreign language title.

For example there is a strong connection between Rostuša and the Macedonian language, so Ростуша is a useful redirect. However there isn't a strong connection between Bristol and the Macedonain language, so Бристол is probably not a useful redirect.

There are too many languages in the world to have a redirect from all of them to every article on the English Wikipedia, the interwiki links between different language Wikipedias, and between Wiktionaries and Wikipedias perform the navigation function you are attempting to perform here. According to Wikipedia#Language editions there are currently 262 language editions of Wikipedia, so if we allow redirects from foreign languages without restriction there are going to be upwards of 200 redirects to each article - making the "what links here" list valueless in addition to being unmaintainable.

This also ignores the problems of conflicts between languages, for example Rat is an article about a rodent. However de:rat is a disambiguation page between several topics inlcuding councils, da:rat and mk:rat are articles about steering wheels and hr:rat is an article about war. Additionally in Romani it means blood. If we have redirects from German, Danish, Macedonian, Croatian and Romani language terms to articles with no strong connection to those languages, then we should logically have hatnotes to these topics at rat. I doubt you will get anything approaching consensus to add these. Thryduulf (talk) 17:08, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, at least we agree that we have a set of useful redirects of this kind Ростуша to Rostuša. So if we have a list of pairs ('x', 'y') where 'x' is foreign name of place in Foreigndonia then the redirect from 'x' to 'y' is valid if 'y' exist and 'x' doesn't exist at English Wikipedia. If 'x' exist at English Wikipedia it means that maybe it is English term or English redirect to some article or already created foreign redirect or already created other foreign language redirect. And I hope we can agree that there is no problem to create redirects of this kind with bot. For the second set of redirects, Бристол to Bristol we should discuss how these redirects can be useful not how strong is connection? I say that these trivia redirects, Бристол to Bristol, Бирмингем to Birmingham, are useful, for illustration imagine opposite situation, you are at Foreign Wikipedia and you want to read Foreign article for Birmingham, normally you will type 'Бирмингем' at search box, but probably you do not have installed foreign script/Cyrillic support at your computer and probably you don't know how to type/spell in foreign/Cyrillic - Birmingham, so it will be nice if you can type 'Birmingham' at search box and get redirected to 'Бирмингем' article at Foreign Wikipedia. --Brest (talk) 20:40, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Currently Macedonian Wikipedia has about 43k articles, which is about 1.22% of 3.5M articles in English Wikipedia. Huge number of 262 language editions of Wikipedia has even smaller number of articles. Some languages use same alphabet and probably a big number of articles will be named equaly, like articles in Category:Main_Belt_asteroids, and there is no need for redirections.--Brest (talk) 20:40, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Nice example. If you follow me, I propose creation of redirects 'x' to 'y' only if 'y' exist and 'x' doesn't exist at English Wikipedia. So there will be no redirects from de:rat, da:rat, hr:rat and so on to Rat, but de:Ratten, Rotte, hr:Štakori to Rat only if Ratten, Rotte, Štakori doesn't exist at English Wikipedia. --Brest (talk) 20:40, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For the first set of useful redirects, you're making the criteria far too complicated. All it needs is:

Is Article X about a place?
- If yes, is there an official name in a language other than English mentioned in the first paragraph?
  - If yes, does anything currently exist at $OfficialName?
    - If yes, do nothing
    - If no, create a redirect from $OfficialName to Article X
  - If no, do nothing
- If no, is Article X about a person?
  - If yes, is there a name in another language mentioned in the first paragraph?
    - If yes, does anything currently exist at $ForeignName?
      - If yes, do nothing
      - If no, create a redirect from $ForeignName to Article X
    - If no, do nothing.
End

Regarding set with no strong connection these redirects will so rarely be useful that in the cases where they are they should be created by a human (with explanation why it is useful) not a bot.

While there are only a (relatively) small number of articles in the Macedonian Wikipedia, if we have redirects from Macedonian we need to have redirects from the other 260 foreign languages, at lest 2 of which have more than 1 million articles each. If we only have redirects where the title does not match, then it is completely coincidental whether a user entering the foreign language term into the search box will reach what they are looking for - for example a Danish-speaking user looking for articles on different parts of cars searching the English Wikipedia in Danish would be taken to the article about the dashboard (Instrumentbræt) but not the steering wheel (rat). This means that they are unlikely to search using the Danish term.

If I wanted to read the Macedonian Wikipedia article about Birmingham and I didn't know the Macedonian word for "Birmingham" I would first go to the Brimingham article and then click the interwiki link to the Macedonian Wikipedia. Redirects are not useful for people who do not speak the language, as the article they are taken to is written in a language they cannot read. Thryduulf (talk) 22:17, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Denied. The writing is on the wall at the RFD: no consensus for the redirects proposed here, much less for a bot to create them. Before you attempt to file a new BRFA for a revised idea, please go to WP:Village pump (proposals) and get consensus for whatever your revised plan turns out to be (including using a bot to do it); if you don't you'll get a Needs wider discussion., so you may as well save the trouble by doing it first. Anomie ⚔ 04:36, 7 February 2011 (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.