Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/FA RotBot
Operator: GreenC (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)
Time filed: 15:06, Friday, August 25, 2017 (UTC)
Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic
Programming language(s): GNU Awk
Source code available: Yes (TBD)
Function overview: FARotBot is a bot-triggering-bot. FARotBot will tell IABot to run on a list of Featured Articles every X days (X to be determined). IABot fixes link rot and has been approved.
Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):
- Initial discussion by Featured Article co-coordinators
- Discussion with Cyberpower678 author of IABot.
Edit period(s): Once every X days
Estimated number of pages affected: All featured articles and lists. 8,297 at time of BRFA.
Namespace(s): Mainspace
Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes
Function details: The bot function is straightforward: it runs from cron on Tools every X days and using the IABot API, triggers IABot to process the Featured content for link rot. FARotBot doesn't make any changes to Wikitext itself, only communicates with IABot as a sort of director, a bot triggering bot.
When IABot is triggered by a third party, it leaves the name of the calling party in the edit summary ("Dweller" in this example). This will be "FARotBot" and that account will be owned and and managed by the Featured Article co-ordinators with Dweller in the lead. Thus there will be two entities running this bot: GreenC will write the code and handle any technical issues (bot stops working, adjust number of days it runs). And Dweller and the FA coordinators will manage any issues that come up with IABot's edits, such as soft 404s.
@Dweller, Cyberpower678, Xaosflux, and Dank: