User:B. Wolterding/Article alerts/Test phase

The article alerts bot is now implemented in most parts. But before making it available to a large number of projects, we (User:B. Wolterding and User:Legoktm) would like to evaluate it in a test phase, a small-scale “live test” for a select number of WikiProjects.

Goals

The goal of this test phase is to identify necessary changes early, before the bot is rolled out to a larger audience; see details below. Your feedback is requested during the test phase. If you have comments or suggestions, please post these at User talk:B. Wolterding/Article alerts.

Evaluate the system under realistic conditions; spot possible errors

While the bot has been tested to a considerable extent, it is possible that the output is not accurate in some instances. Some of these problems may show up only in a longer-term test. In fact, since Wikipedia's workflows were not designed with automation in mind, it may not always be possible to fix these problems. However, if you notice a problem in the article alerts list – such as a GA candidate that is listed as promoted, but has in fact not been; or a nominator being incorrectly listed – please notify us.

Identify potential for enhancements and additions

To a limited amount, it may be reasonable to enlarge the scope of the bot before it goes live. For example, in some cases an additional link to a discussion page, etc. may be desired. Further, the bot certainly does not monitor all workflows on Wikipedia; e.g. Wikipedia:Featured image candidates or Category:Categories for renaming are not currently included. If you think that these or any others are relevant for your project, please let us know.

Evaluate and improve wording and graphical design

The wording of the bot's messages is not yet fine-tuned, and there are certainly many options to change it in one way or the other. Should they be lengthier? Or should they be shortened, to allow more messages to display? Should they be more like originally proposed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Current activity? Changes at this point are typically simple to make.

Also, it is still open how to display the article alerts on the project's main page. The alerts page is designed for transclusion. But would it best be displayed in the main text; or in a box, with three columns; or should there just be a link leading to the alerts page? Should it appear in the TOC? Your suggestions are welcome, and will be the base of “standardized solutions” that can later be offered to more WikiProjects. (It will always be possible to transclude the alerts page in a custom place if needed.)

Restrictions

During the test phase, some technical restrictions apply, as opposed to the live bot later.

Projects cannot add and remove subscriptions to the alerts directly. Rather, subscriptions can be modified by the bot operator only.
“Closed” workflow items, e.g. AfD nominees that have been deleted, will be removed from the alert list after 5 days. (For the live bot, this period will be 14 days by default, configurable per project.) This change is made to facilitate testing over the limited time frame of the test phase.
When changes to the bot code become necessary, it may happen that closed workflow items on the list are lost, in whole or in parts.

Participants and schedule

The test phase will begin once bot approval has passed, and will last presumably until end of mid-October 2008. Trial edits can be found here.

Participants in the test phase are:

A * indicates they were part of the BRFA trial.