Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BareRefBot
- The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard. The result of the discussion was Request Expired.
Contents
New to bots on Wikipedia? Read these primers!
- Approval process – How this discussion works
- Overview/Policy – What bots are/What they can (or can't) do
- Dictionary – Explains bot-related jargon
Operator: Rlink2 (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)
Time filed: 21:35, Thursday, January 20, 2022 (UTC)
Function overview: The function of this bot is to fill in Bare references. A bare reference is a reference with no information about it included in the citaiton, example of this is <ref>https://wikipedia.org</ref> instead of <ref>{{cite web | url = https://encarta.microsoft.com | title = Microsoft Encarta}}</ref>. More detail can be found on Wikipedia:Bare_URLs and User:BrownHairedGirl/Articles_with_bare_links.
Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic, mistakes will be corrected as it goes.
Programming language(s): Multiple.
Source code available: Not yet.
Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): WP:Bare_URLs, but citation bot already fills bare refs, and is approved to do so.
Edit period(s): Continuous.
Estimated number of pages affected: around 200,000 pages, maybe less, maybe more.
Namespace(s): Mainspace.
Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes.
Function details: The purpose of the bot is to provide a better way of fixing bare refs. As explained by Enterprisey, our citation tools could do better. Citation bot is overloaded, and Reflinks consistently fails to get the title of the webpage. ReFill is slightly better but is very buggy due to architectual failures in the software pointed out by the author of the tool.
As evidenced by my AWB run, my script can get the title of many sites that Reflinks, reFill, or Citation Bot can not get. The tool is like a "booster" to other tools like Citation bot, it picks up where other tools left off.
There are a few exceptions for when the bot will not fill in the title. For example, if the title is shorter than 5 chacters, it will not fill it in since it is highly unlikely that the title has any useful information. Twitter links will be left alone, as the Sand Doctor has a bot that can do a more complete filling.
There has been discussion over the "incompleteness" of the filling of these refs. For example, it wouldn't fill in the "work="/"website=" parameter unless its a whitelisted site (NYT, Youtube, etc...). This is similar to what Citation bot does IIRC. While these other parameters would usually not filled, the consensus is that "perfect is the enemy of the good" and that any sort of filling will represent an improvement in the citation. Any filled cites can always be improved even further by editors or another bot.
Examples:
Discussion
editPre-trial discussion
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{{BotOnHold}} pending closure of Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Rlink2. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:25, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Initial questions and thoughts (in no particular order):
ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:25, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Opening comments: I've seen <!--Bot generated title--> inserted in similar initiatives. Would that be a useful sort of thing to do here? It is acknowledged that the titles proposed to be inserted by this bot can be verbose and repetitive, terse or plainly wrong. Manual improvements will be desired in many cases. How do we help editors interested in doing this work?
Like ProcrastinatingReader I am interested in understanding bot permission precedence here. I'm not convinced that these edits are universally productive. I believe there has been restraint exercised in the past on bot jobs for which there is not a strong consensus that the changes are making significant improvements. I think improvements need to be large enough to overcome the downside of all the noise this will be adding to watchlists. I'm not convinced that bar is cleared here. See User_talk:Rlink2#A_little_mindless for background. ~Kvng (talk) 16:53, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like a lot of cites use
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Source code
edit- Speaking of fine tuning, do you intend to publish your source code? I think we may be able to identify additional gotchas though code review. ~Kvng (talk) 22:44, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Hopefully, but not right now. It wouldn't be very useful for "code review" in the way you are thinking. If there are bugs though, you can always report it. Rlink2 (talk) 22:54, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Rlink2: I have to disagree with you on this. As a general principle, I am very much in favour of open-source code. That applies even more strongly in a collaborative environment such as Wikipedia, so I approach bots with a basic presumption that the code should be available, unless there is very good reason to make an exception.
- Publishing the code brings several benefits:
- it allows other editors to verify that the code does what it claims to do
- it allows other editors to help find any bugs
- it helps others who may want to develop tools for related tasks
- So if a bot-owner does not publish the source code, I expect a good explanation of why it is being withheld. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:35, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @BrownHairedGirl: Ok, nice to see your perspective on it. I will definetly be making it open source then. When should I make it avaliable? I can provide a link later in the week, or should I wait until the bot enters trial? Where would I even post the code anyway? Thanks for your opinion. Rlink2 (talk) 00:39, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Rlink2: Up to you, but my practice is to make it available whenever I am ready to start a trial. That is usually before a trial is authorised.
- I usually put the code in a sub-page (or pages) of the BRFA page. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:06, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @BrownHairedGirl: Sounds good, I will follow your example and make it avaliable as soon as I can (later this week). Subpage sounds great, good idea and keeps everything on wiki. Rlink2 (talk) 01:11, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- There is preliminary code up on Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/BareRefBot/Code. There is more to the script than that (eg: networking code, wikitext code ) but this is the core of it. Will be releasing more as time goes on and I have time to comment the additional portions. Rlink2 (talk) 20:08, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Code review comments and discussion at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval/BareRefBot/Code
- There is preliminary code up on Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/BareRefBot/Code. There is more to the script than that (eg: networking code, wikitext code ) but this is the core of it. Will be releasing more as time goes on and I have time to comment the additional portions. Rlink2 (talk) 20:08, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @BrownHairedGirl: Sounds good, I will follow your example and make it avaliable as soon as I can (later this week). Subpage sounds great, good idea and keeps everything on wiki. Rlink2 (talk) 01:11, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @BrownHairedGirl: Ok, nice to see your perspective on it. I will definetly be making it open source then. When should I make it avaliable? I can provide a link later in the week, or should I wait until the bot enters trial? Where would I even post the code anyway? Thanks for your opinion. Rlink2 (talk) 00:39, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Hopefully, but not right now. It wouldn't be very useful for "code review" in the way you are thinking. If there are bugs though, you can always report it. Rlink2 (talk) 22:54, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Trial
editTrial 1
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Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. As I mentioned above, this is most likely not going to be the only time the bot ends up in trial, and even if there is 100% success in this first round it might get shipped for a larger trial anyway depending on feedback. Primefac (talk) 14:12, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Couple thoughts:
-- GreenC 15:18, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I went through all 52 so that my contribution to this venture wouldn't be limited to re-enacting the Spanish Inquisition at ANI.
I wonder if the concerns in #1-4 could be addressed by simply adding
I've taken the time to review the first 25 edits. My findings:
Problems with bare link titles are mostly about the
Most of my concerns have to do with dead link detection. This is turning out to be the distraction I predicted. There were only 3 articles with bare link and dead link edits: [27], [28], [29]. Running these as separate tasks will require 12% more edits and I don't think that's a big deal. I again request we disable dead link detection and marking and focus on filling bare links now.
It's now over 7 days since the trial edits. @Rlink2: have you made list of what changes have been proposed, and which you have accepted? I think that a review of that list would get us closer to a second trial. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:47, 5 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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Trial 2
editTrial 2
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Approved for extended trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Sorry for the delay here, second trial looks good. Primefac (talk) 14:35, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
VAR thisURL = "http://exmple.com/fubar" VAR domainName = FunctionGetDomainNamefromURL(thisURL) VAR articleTitle = FunctionGetTitleFromURL(thisURL) // start by setting default value for websiteParam VAR websiteParam = domainName // e.g. "magicseaweed.com" // now see if we can get a website name VAR foundWebsiteName == FunctionToFindWebsiteNameAndDoAsanityCheck() IF foundWebsiteName IS NOT BLANK // e.g. "Magic Seaweed" for https://magicseaweed.com/ THEN BEGIN websiteParam = foundWebsiteName IF articleTitle INCLUDES foundWebsiteName THEN BEGIN VAR trimmedArticleTitle = articleTitle - foundWebsiteName IF trimmedArticleTitle IS NOT BLANK OR CRAP THEN articleTitle = trimmedArticleTitle ENDIF END ENDIF END ENDIF FunctionMakeCiteTemplate(thisURL, articleTitle, websiteParam)
@Rlink2 and Primefac: it is now 4 weeks since the second trial, and Rlink2 has resolved all the issues raised. Isn't it time for a third trial? I suggest that this trial should be bigger, say 250 edits, to give a higher chance of detecting edge cases. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:14, 12 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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BareRefBot as a secondary tool
editI would like to ask that BareRefBot be run as a secondary tool, i.e. that it should be targeted as far as possible to work on refs where the more polished Citation bot has tried and failed.
This is a big issue which I should probably have raised at the start. The URLs-that-Citation-but-cannot-fill are why I have been so keen to get BareRefBot working, and I should have explained this in full earlier on. Pinging the other contributors to this BRFA: @Rlink2, Primefac, GreenC, ProcrastinatingReader, Kvng, Levivich, Pppery, 1234qwer1234qwer4, and Thryduulf, whose input on this proposal would be helpful.
I propose this because on the links which Citation bot can handle, it does a very thorough job. It uses the zotero servers to extract a lot of metadata such as date and author which BareRefBot cannot get, and it has a large and well-developed set of lookups to fix issues with individual sites, such as using {{cite news}} or {{cite journal}} when appropriate. It also has well-developed lookup tables for converting domain names to work titles.
So ideally, all bare URLs would be filled by the well-polished Citation bot. Unfortunately, there are many websites which Citation bot cannot fill, because the zotero provides no data. Other tools such as WP:REFLINKS and WP:REFILL often can handle those URLs, but none of them works in batch mode and individual editors cannot do the manual work fast enough to keep up with Citation bot's omissions.
The USP of BareRefBot is that thanks to Rlink2's cunning programming, it can do this followup work in batch mode, and that is where it should be targeted. That way we get the best of both worlds: Citation bot does a polished job if it can, and BareRefBot does the best it can with the rest.
I am systematically feeding Citation bot with long lists of articles with bare URLs, in two sets:
- User:BrownHairedGirl/Articles with new bare URL refs, consisting of the Articles with bare URL refs (ABURs) which were in the latest database dump but not in the previous dump. The 20220220 dump had 4,904 new ABURS, of which there were 4,518 ABURs which still hsd bare URLs.
- User:BrownHairedGirl/Articles with bare links, consisting of articles not part of my Citation bot lists since a cutoff date. The bot is currently about halfway through a set of 33,239 articles which Citation bot had not processed since 1 December 2021.
If BareRefBot is targeted at these lists after Citation bot has done them, we get the best of both worlds. Currently, these lists are easily accessed: all my use of Citation bot is publicly logged in the pages linked and I will happily email Rlink2 copies of the full (unsplit lists) if that is more convenient. If I get run over by a bus or otherwise stop feeding Citation bot, then it would be simple for Rlink2 or anyone else to take over the work of first feeding Citation bot.
What do others think? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:25, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Here is an example of what I propose.
- Matt Wieters is page #2178 in my list Not processed since 1 December - part 6 of 11 (2,847 pages), which is currently being processed by Citation bot.
- Citation bot edited the article at 11:26, 2 March 2022, but it didn't fill any bare URL refs. I followed up by using WP:REFLINKS to fill the 1 bare URL ref, in this edit.
- That followup is what I propose that BareRefBot should do. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:42, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- I think first and foremost you should look both ways before crossing the road so you don't get run over by a bus. :-D It strikes me as more efficient to have BRB follow CB as suggested. I don't see any downside. Levivich 19:28, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @BrownHairedGirl
- This makes sense, I think that citation bot is better at filling out refs completely. One thing that would be intresting to know is if Citation Bot can improve already filled refs. For example, let's say we have a source that citation bot can get the author, title, name, and date for, but BareRefBot can only get the title. If BareRefBot only fills in the title, and citation bot comes after it, would citation bot fill in the rest?
and it has a large and well-developed set of lookups to fix issues with individual sites, such as using cite news or cite journal when appropriate.
I agree .It uses the zotero servers to extract a lot of metadata such as date and author which BareRefBot cannot get, and it has a large and well-developed set of lookups to fix issues with individual sites
Correct.It also has well-developed lookup tables for converting domain names to work titles.
Yes, do note that list could be ported to Bare Ref Bot (list can be found here)That way we get the best of both worlds: Citation bot does a polished job if it can, and BareRefBot does the best it can with the rest.
I agree. Let's see what others have to say Rlink2 (talk) 19:38, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]- Glad we agree in principle, @Rlink2. You raise some useful questions:
One thing that would be intresting to know is if Citation Bot can improve already filled refs.
- yes, it can and does. But I don't think it overwrites all existing data, which is why I think it's better to give it the first pass.
For example, let's say we have a source that citation bot can get the author, title, name, and date for, but BareRefBot can only get the title. If BareRefBot only fills in the title, and citation bot comes after it, would citation bot fill in the rest?
- If an existing cite has only
|title=
filled, Citation Bot often adds many other parameters (see e.g. [42]). - However, I thought we had agreed that BareRefBot was always going to add and fill a
|website=
parameter? - My concern is mostly with the
|title=
. Citation Bot does quite a good job of stripping extraneous stuff from the title when it fills a bare ref, but I don't think that it re-processes an existing title. So I think it's best to give Citation Bot the first pass at filling the title.
- If an existing cite has only
- Hope that helps. Maybe CB's maintainer AManWithNoPlan can check my evaluation and let us know if I have misunderstood anything about how Citation Bot handles partially-filled refs. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:27, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- I think you are correct. Citation bot relies mostly on the wikipedia zotero - there are a few that we go beyond zotero: IEEE might be the only one. A bit thing that the bot does is extensive error checking (bad dates, authors of "check the rss feed" and such). Also, almost never overwrites existing data. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:35, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Many thanks to @AManWithNoPlan for that prompt and helpful clarification. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:51, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @BrownHairedGirl @AManWithNoPlan
But I don't think it overwrites all existing data, which is why I think it's better to give it the first pass.
Yeah, i think John raised up this point at the Citation Bot talk page, and AManWithNoPlan has said above that it can add new info but no overwrite the old ones..However, I thought we had agreed that BareRefBot was always going to add and fill a
Yes, this hasn't changed. I forgot to say "title and website" while Citation Bot can get author, title, website, date, etc.....So I think it's best to give Citation Bot the first pass at filling the title.
This makes sense.Citation Bot does quite a good job of stripping extraneous stuff from the title when it fills a bare ref,
I agree. Maybe AManWithNoPlan could share the techniques used so they can be ported to BareRefBot? Or is the stripping done on the Zotero servers? He would have more information regarding this.- I also have a question about the turnaround of the list making process. How long does it usually take for Citation Bot to finish a batch of articles? Rlink2 (talk) 20:43, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- See https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/#/Citation/getCitation and https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/blob/master/Zotero.php it has list of NO_DATE_WEBITES, tidy_date function, etc. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:45, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Rlink2: Citation Bot processes my lists of ABURs at a rate of about 3,000 articles per day. There's quite a lot of variation in that (e.g. big lists are slooow, wee stubs are fast), but 3k/day is a good ballpark.
- The 20220301 database dump contains 155K ABURs, so we are looking at ~50 days to process the backlog. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:47, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @BrownHairedGirl
- So every 50 days there will be a new list, or you will break the list up into pieces and give the list of articles citation bot did not fix to me incrementally? Rlink2 (talk) 21:01, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Rlink2: it's in batches of up to 2,850 pages, which is the limit for Citation Bot batches.
- See my job list pages: User:BrownHairedGirl/Articles with bare links and User:BrownHairedGirl/Articles with new bare URL refs. I can email you the lists as they are done, usually about one per day. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:27, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- I think you are correct. Citation bot relies mostly on the wikipedia zotero - there are a few that we go beyond zotero: IEEE might be the only one. A bit thing that the bot does is extensive error checking (bad dates, authors of "check the rss feed" and such). Also, almost never overwrites existing data. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:35, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Duh @me.
- @Rlink2, I just realised that in order to follow Citation Bot, BareRefBot's worklist does not need to be built solely off my worklists.
- Citation Bot has 4 channels, so my lists comprise only about a quarter of Citation Bot's work. The other edits are done on behalf of other editors, both as batch jobs and as individual requests. Most editors do not publish their work lists like I do, but Citation Bot's contribs list is a record of the pages which the bot edited on their behalf, so it is a partial job list (obviously, it does not include pages which Citation bot processed but did not edit).
- https://en.wikiscan.org/user/Citation%20bot shows the bot averaging ~2,500 edits per day. So if BareRefBot grab says the last 10,000 edits by Citation Bot, that will usually amount to about four days work by CB, which would be a good list to work on. Most editors do not not choose their Citation bot jobs on the basis of bare URLs, so the incidence of bare URLs in those lists will be low ... but any bare URLs which are there will have been recently processed by Citation Bot.
- Also, I don't see any problem with BareRefBot doing a run in which the bot does no filling, but just applies {{Bare URL PDF}} where appropriate. A crude search shows that there are currently over such 30,000 refs to be tagged, which should keep the bot busy for a few days: just disable filling, and let it run in tagging mode.
- Hope this helps. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:20, 4 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @BrownHairedGirl:
BareRefBot's worklist does not need to be built solely off my worklists.
Oh yes, I forgot about the contribution list as well.So if BareRefBot grab says the last 10,000 edits by Citation Bot, that will usually amount to about four days work by CB, which would be a good list to work on.
I agree.Most editors do not not choose their Citation bot jobs on the basis of bare URLs, so the incidence of bare URLs in those lists will be low ... but any bare URLs which are there will have been recently processed by Citation Bot.
True. Just note that tying the bot to Citation bot will mean that the bot can only go as fast as citation bot goes, that's fine with me since there isn't really a big rush, but just something to note.Also, I don't see any problem with BareRefBot doing a run in which the bot does no filling,
Me neither. Rlink2 (talk) 01:44, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]- Thanks, @Rlink2.
- I had kinda hoped that once BareRefBot was authorised, it could start working around the clock. At say 7 edits per minute. it would do ~10,000 pages per day, and clear the backlog in under 3 weeks.
- By making it follow Citation bot, we restrict it to about 3,000 pages per day. That means that it may take up to 10 weeks, which is a pity. But I think we will get better results this way. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:58, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @BrownHairedGirl: Maybe a hybrid model could work, for example it could avoid filling in refs for websites where the bot knows citation bot could possibly get better data (e.x: nytimes, journals, websites with metadata tags the barerefbot doesn't understand, etc..). That way we have the best of both worlds - the speed of barerefbot, and the (higher) quality of citation bot. Rlink2 (talk) 02:02, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Rlink2: that is theoretically possible, but I think it adds a lot of complexity with no gain.
- The problem that BareRefBot exists to resolve is the opposite of that set, viz. the URLs which Citation bot cannot fill, and we can't get a definitive list of those. My experience of trying to make such a list for Reflinks was daunting: the sub-pages of User:BrownHairedGirl/No-reflinks websites list over 1400 sites, and it's far from complete. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:16, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @BrownHairedGirl: Maybe a hybrid model could work, for example it could avoid filling in refs for websites where the bot knows citation bot could possibly get better data (e.x: nytimes, journals, websites with metadata tags the barerefbot doesn't understand, etc..). That way we have the best of both worlds - the speed of barerefbot, and the (higher) quality of citation bot. Rlink2 (talk) 02:02, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Some numbers. @Rlink2: I did some analsysis of the numbers, using AWB's list comparer and pre-parser. The TL;DR is that there are indeed very slim pickings for BareRefBot in the other articles processed by Citation bot: ~16 per day.
- I took CB's latest 10,000 edits, as of about midday UTC today. That took me back to just two hours short of five days, on 28 Feb. Of those 10K, only 4,041 were not from my list. Only 13 of them still have a {{Bare URL inline}} tag, and 93 have an untagged, non-PDF bare URL ref. After removing duplicates, that left 104 pages, but 25 of those were drafts, leaving only 79 mainspace articles.
- So CB's contribs list gives an average of only 16 non-BHG-suggested articles per day for BareRefBot to work on.
- In those 5 days, I fed CB with 14,168 articles, on which the bot made just short of 6,000 edits. Of those 14,168 articles, 2,366 still have a {{Bare URL inline}} tag, and 10,107 have an untagged, non-PDF bare URL ref. After removing duplicates, that left 10,143 articles for BareRefBot to work on. That is about 2,000 per day.
- So in those 5 days, Citation bot filled all the bare URLs on 28.5% of the articles I fed it. (Ther are more articles where it filed some but not all bare refs). It will be great if BareRefBot can make a big dent in the remainder.
- Hope this helps. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:03, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- For what it's worth, I dislike the idea of having a bot whose sole task is to clean up after another bot; we should be improving the other bot in that case. If this bot can edit other pages outside of those done by Citation bot, then it should do so. Primefac (talk) 12:52, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Primefac, well that's also a good way of thinking about it. I'm personally fine with any of the options (work on its own or follow citation bot), its up to others to come to a consensus over what is best. Rlink2 (talk) 12:55, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Primefac: my proposal is not
clean up after another bot
, which describes one bot fixing errors by another. - My proposal is different: that this bot should do the tasks that Citation bot has failed to do. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:37, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- BrownHairedGirl is right, the proposal is not cleaning up the other bots errors, it is with what Citation Bot is not doing (more specifically, the bare refs not being filled). Rlink2 (talk) 17:55, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Primefac: Also, there seems to me to be no scope for extending the range of URLs Citation bot can fill. CB uses the zotero servers for its info on the bare URLs, and if the zotero doesn't provide the info, CB is helpless.
- It is of course theoretically conceivable that CB could be extended with a whole bunch of code of its own to gather data about the URLs which the zoteros can't handle. But that would be a big job, and I don't see anyone volunteering to do that.
- But what we do have is a very willing editor who has developed a separate tool to do some of what CB doesn't do. Please don't let the ideal of an all-encompassing Citation Bot (which is not even on the drawing board) become the enemy of the good, i.e. of the ready-to-roll BareRefBot.
- This BRFA is now Rlink2 in it tenth week. Rlink2 has been very patient, but please lets try to get this bot up and running without further long delay. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:25, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Maybe I misread your initial idea, but you have definitely misread my reply. I was saying that if this were just a case of cleaning up after CB, then CB should be fixed. Clearly, there are other pages to be dealt with, which makes that entire statement void, and I never suggested that CB be expanded purely to take over this task. Primefac (talk) 18:31, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Primefac: maybe we went the long way around, but it's good to find that in the end we agree that there is a job for BareRefBot to do. Please can we try to get it over the line without much more time? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:11, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Maybe I misread your initial idea, but you have definitely misread my reply. I was saying that if this were just a case of cleaning up after CB, then CB should be fixed. Clearly, there are other pages to be dealt with, which makes that entire statement void, and I never suggested that CB be expanded purely to take over this task. Primefac (talk) 18:31, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- BrownHairedGirl is right, the proposal is not cleaning up the other bots errors, it is with what Citation Bot is not doing (more specifically, the bare refs not being filled). Rlink2 (talk) 17:55, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Primefac: my proposal is not
- @Primefac, well that's also a good way of thinking about it. I'm personally fine with any of the options (work on its own or follow citation bot), its up to others to come to a consensus over what is best. Rlink2 (talk) 12:55, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Trial 3
editApproved for extended trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Primefac (talk) 12:48, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Rlink2: Has this trial happened? * Pppery * it has begun... 01:42, 17 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Pppery Not yet, busy with IRL stuff. But will get to it soon (by end of next week latest) Rlink2 (talk) 02:37, 17 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Rlink2, now? ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:08, 3 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Qwerfjkl Not yet, i am still tracting up after my mini wikibreak. I will try to get to it next week. At the absolute latest done by middle of next month (it will probably be done way sooner but I would rather provide a definite upper bound rather than say "maybe this week" and pass the deadline). Rlink2 (talk) 12:29, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Rlink2: any news?
- It's now almost mid-June, which was your absolute latest target.
- What is your current thinking? Are you losing interest in this task? Or just busy with other things?
- We are all volunteers, so if you no longer want to put your great talents into this task, that's absolutely fine. But it's been on hold now for three months, so it would be helpful to know where it's going. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:19, 12 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Qwerfjkl Not yet, i am still tracting up after my mini wikibreak. I will try to get to it next week. At the absolute latest done by middle of next month (it will probably be done way sooner but I would rather provide a definite upper bound rather than say "maybe this week" and pass the deadline). Rlink2 (talk) 12:29, 4 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Rlink2, now? ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:08, 3 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Pppery Not yet, busy with IRL stuff. But will get to it soon (by end of next week latest) Rlink2 (talk) 02:37, 17 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have done extensive testing since the 2nd trial and I think we are finally ready for a third one, after some turbelence. What do people here think? Rlink2 (talk) 08:35, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Rlink2, Have you done the trial approved above? If so, can you link to the edits here? Otherwise, you should complete the trial and post the results here, then wait for feedback. — Qwerfjkltalk 06:44, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- A user has requested the attention of the operator. Once the operator has seen this message and replied, please deactivate this tag. (user notified) Primefac (talk) 15:26, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Request Expired. As much as this task seemed like it was going in a good direction towards being approved, the bot operator has not responded to the above queries and it has been four months. No prejudice against re-opening this and continuing where we left off if desired. Primefac (talk) 12:18, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- A user has requested the attention of the operator. Once the operator has seen this message and replied, please deactivate this tag. (user notified) Primefac (talk) 15:26, 20 November 2022 (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 Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard.