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Suggestion for new DYKupdateBot feature

While DYKUpdateBot usually works like a champ, from time to time something will happen that prevents the bot from performing its job at its normal time interval. This has the effect of altering not just the time when the affected update occurs but the time for all subsequent updates as well. As it is often convenient and desirable to have an update occur at 00:00 UTC (midnight) it would be nice if DYKUpdateBot could detect when some form of delay has occurred and automatically take appropriate actions to resync over time.

What I envision is DYKUpdateBot performing an extra check at each update to determine if things are scheduled in such a manner that either the current or an upcoming update will occur at midnight. If not, a small addition or subtraction to the time between updates will be made by the bot to allow for a resync to be made over the course of time. A new configuration value (MaxAdjustmentValue) would control the maximum adjustment the bot can perform during a single update. Setting MaxAdjustmentValue to a positive value would allow the bot to increase the time between each update by the indicated number of seconds while a negative value to the configuration value would authorize the bot to reduce the time between updates by a like amount. When an adjustment less the the maximum needed is required, the bot should obviously calculate the needed offset and use only the needed offset. A setting of zero should disable the feature for cases when synchronized operations are desirable or the time between updates has been set to a value that does not allow for midnight updates to occur on a daily basis.

This is obviously just a "nice to have", so no pressure if you have no interest in making this addition. --Allen3 ^talk 14:20, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

This is an interesting idea, but it might give the bot too much autonomy. My thought was to have the bot edit the Time Between Updates page to tweak the period, but what would happen if an admin tried to override the bot? The bot wouldn't be able to detect the override, and would revert to its version. Shubinator (talk) 05:50, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Instead of the bot editing the Time Between Updates page, I would suggest modifying the time stored at Template:Did you know/Next update/Time by the amount of the adjustment (e.g. for a 5 minute increase to the time between updates the bot would write a time 5 minutes later than the time of the latest update). As a sanity check the bot should ensure the value of MaxAdjustmentValue is smaller than TimeBetweenUpdates to prevent degenerative cases where the next update would occur before the current one is performed. In practice, when this type of adjustment has been performed manually, the adjustments have been only 3-5% of the time between updates. As a result, a hard limit on MaxAdjustmentValue of ±25 or 50% of TimeBetweenUpdates should be more than enough. --Allen3 ^talk 15:37, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I could definitely implement a version where the bot shifts updates by min(AdjustmentValue, difference between next update time and desired next update time). Having the bot calculate its own adjustment is a little trickier because of the edge cases, but I can look into that too. Would you want AdjustmentValue/MaxAdjustmentValue as a Wikipedia page (like TimeBetweenUpdates)? Shubinator (talk) 16:45, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

While not required, it would be preferable to have MaxAdjustmentValue as a Wikipedia page to facilitate configuration changes by DYK admins who do not have access to the tool server. --Allen3 ^talk 22:44, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok. It's on my to-do list. Shubinator (talk) 22:48, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Implemented, just as described. The bot will add/subtract the number of minutes specified at User:DYKUpdateBot/ResyncDrift, or the exact number of minutes required to resync (whichever is less). Setting both of the resync values to 0 will disable the feature. (MatSci, I haven't forgotten about your feature...I might be able to get to it soon.) Shubinator (talk) 18:02, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Did you know/DYK hook count

I see that you are away but if you see this you might want to look at DYKHousekeepingBot, Did you know/DYK hook count hasn't updated in nearly a week. Take care, J04n(talk page) 02:11, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Bot restarted. Thanks for the notice! Shubinator (talk) 21:14, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Seems like it hasn't updated again in the past three days. Cheers,--Giants27(T|C) 18:16, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Restarted. Thanks! Shubinator (talk) 18:19, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

DYKUpdatebot replacing, not adding, DYK notifications

See [1]. IIRC both of those appeared in the same queue - could be the reason. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 15:15, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

It's because the edits were spaced close together (in time), and Wikipedia's servers were lagging a bit judging by the bot log. Essentially the bot submitted another edit before the servers processed the first one. There are ways to address this, but none are ideal. (There's a balance to strike, and on the other side, the bot occasionally double-edits.) I'll leave it as-is for now, but if the bot does it frequently (multiple times a week) I'll reconsider it. Shubinator (talk) 19:52, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

DYKUpdatebot blanked WT:DYK

diff. cmadler (talk) 16:15, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

The bot also reported "Queue 4 is not tagged with {{DYKbotdo}}", yet an examination of the queue's text shows the template is present at the top of the current revision. I smell some form of connectivity issue between the toolserver and Wikipedia's servers. --Allen3 ^talk 16:20, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, the bot adds the "late" message to whatever is on WT:DYK, which means that when the bot read WT:DYK, it was empty. This suggests more of an error on Wikipedia's server side, actually, since the bot should detect when a read is badly formed. Shubinator (talk) 18:08, 28 April 2011 (UTC)