Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DannyS712 bot 50

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

Withdrawn by operator.

DannyS712 bot 50[edit]

Operator: DannyS712 (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 19:30, Thursday, June 27, 2019 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: automatic

Programming language(s): Javascript

Source code available: User:DannyS712 test/MEA clerk bot.js

Function overview: Clerking for Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles by removing entries that have been created

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Wikipedia:Bot requests#A bot to update and maintain Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles

Edit period(s): Ongoing

Estimated number of pages affected: <= 1084 (total subpages of Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles)

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): No

Already has a bot flag (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: Goes through and removes lines that are blue-linked. The current regex is build for pages in the format of Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/List of US Newspapers/Arkansas (2 links per line, the first link is the one that needs to be created) but will be adjusted for different pages (the regex will be set manually for different pages/groups of pages in the code) - ideally this BRFA will cover all of the subpages, not just those 50. Also, if there aren't any concerns about it, I'd like to run this trial with the edits flagged as bot trial (see Special:Tags) to make them easier to identify from the bot's other edits.

Discussion[edit]

@AmericanAir88: first BRFA filed --DannyS712 (talk) 19:31, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@DannyS712: Thank you. AmericanAir88^(talk) 19:31, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be overly detailed, this request is just for removing bluelinks in the project subpages, with the implication that steps 2-3 as outlined in the original BOTREQ will be done by module and/or manually? Primefac (talk) 20:18, 27 June 2019 (UTC) (please do not ping on reply)[reply]
Yes and no - to be overly detailed, this request is just for removing entries associated with bluelinks (including any connected notes/links etc, such as the cities connected to each newspaper at Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/List of US Newspapers/Arkansas). You are correct, however, that steps 2-3 as outlined in the original BOTREQ will be done separately, either by module, manually, or in a future BRFA --DannyS712 (talk) 20:40, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'll take you at your word that you have accounted for false positives, so...

Approved for trial (100 edits or 14 days). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. Please post the results here as well as notifying the WikiProject when the task is finished. Primefac (talk) 13:12, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@AmericanAir88: I've started the trial. So far I have regexes for the formats of the lists of US newspapers, as well as the "hotlists" and some of the other lists. I'm going to leave a few days for any project members to provide any feedback / point out any errors that I missed, and then finish the 100 edits. See the progress so far: [1]. (Also, side note: not going to do the tag for the edits, took too long to figure out. Maybe next time...) --DannyS712 (talk) 18:47, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@DannyS712: Looks great so far. Should I update the counters manually? AmericanAir88^(talk) 20:58, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@AmericanAir88: let me finish this run, and then I'll look into a module. Do you want me to just keep updating the pages I've edited so far for the rest of the trial (to get multiple edits to the same pages) or just edit the rest of the pages (to get a variety of edits). --DannyS712 (talk) 21:22, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@DannyS712: I have been checking the blue links left behind and realize that the bot does not remove redirects. Some of the blue links redirect to the actual article. Is there a way to configure it to remove redirects? AmericanAir88^(talk) 13:41, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@AmericanAir88: sure, it’s a trivial 1 line change, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea. I was intentionally skipping redirects, since they could also be pointing to something else entirely, and be tagged as “r with possibilities” with the idea that an article could be created. Are you sure redirects should be removed? —DannyS712 (talk) 13:51, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@DannyS712: Redirects to disambiguations should not be removed, but if they are to another article, they are fine. AmericanAir88^(talk) 14:05, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@AmericanAir88: sure. The parser tags redirects to disambiguation pages as both redirects and disambiguation pages (in terms of the link’s html classes) so that should be doable. But, since Primefac sent this to trial with the belief that redirects would be excluded, I’ll hold off until they confirm it’s okay. Thanks, —DannyS712 (talk) 15:22, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
DannyS712, it is not ok to remove redirects. For instance, Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/NZ/Dictionary of New Zealand Biography contains several entries that are redirects that should n't be removed. SD0001 (talk) 16:05, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- this edit looks problematic. eg: the bot removed the entry wolf - Celtic mythology simply on the basis that an article on wolf exists. But the bot has no way to know if the Celtic mythological ideas about wolf is covered in that article. Hotlists often contain these generic-looking terms. I would suggest ignoring the all the hotlists altogether. Also, removing the redirects can be problematic for many lists (though it is ok for the US newspapers list). The decision of whether to remove redirects should be taken on a list-by-list basis (the answer is probably no for most lists).

There is also the issue of an article existing but on a different topic (esp. for biographies and terms in hotlists as mentioned above). Overall for these reasons, I am doubtful whether this is a good bot task. I think it would be better to create a userscript along the lines of User:Enterprisey/req-helper to assist editors in this task. Also the VisualEditor (helps separate the blue from red) and Anomie's linkclassifer (helps tell apart redirects and disambigs) would further simplify the task to a good extent. SD0001 (talk) 14:36, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@SD0001: Any ideas on how to get Req helper over to missing articles. This bot is more than a helper, it is to keep the project fresh and updated. I feel that the missing article project has had fewer involvement as the years go on. AmericanAir88^(talk) 14:46, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
AmericanAir88, yes I am aware of that, having been involved in the project in the past and seen it become very inactive. But the red link lists remain a valuable resource and should not be dealt with in inappropriate ways.

The bot run may be useful on many of the lists. But the bot-op must use his judgement in deciding which pages to run it on. Running it on all 1184 project subpages without individual page supervision would be a disaster.

I don't think it would be difficult to port req-helper to work on WP: MISSING pages. But unfortunately I do not have the time to work on this at the moment. Try asking at Wp:User scripts/Requests. SD0001 (talk) 15:04, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

On Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/List_of_US_Newspapers/Pennsylvania, the entry for The Times Herald Norristown, Pennsylvania was removed though our article on The Times Herald is about the newspaper of Port Huron, Michigan. Similarly, Record Herald Waynesboro, Pennsylvania was removed despite our article on Record Herald being about the Washington Court House, Ohio newspaper; and Burlington County Times Doylestown, Pennsylvania was removed though Burlington County Times is about a New Jersey newspaper. SD0001 (talk) 16:42, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Given the feedback above, let’s put this on hold for a bit. I’ll look into converting it to a user script, or maybe into a tool to separate out the blue links into a separate section so that they can be more easily checked, rather than removing them. Other users should feel free to revert the trial edits made so far. thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 16:58, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to mark this as

Request withdrawn for now, since I couldn't figure out a better implementation as a bot task, and a user script would probably be more useful. --DannyS712 (talk) 19:56, 14 July 2019 (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.