Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/CategoryBot

The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. The result of the discussion was

Withdrawn by operator.

CategoryBot

Operator: Foxy Loxy ^Pounce!

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic, but user requested.

Programming Language(s): PHP

Function Summary: Basically, I had an idea when looking through CfD that instead of admins running their own bots or asking bot owners, why don't we have a page on the toolserver where admins (the script will obviously check them to make sure they are who they are or perhaps on a approval basis) can submit category deleting/renaming jobs that this bot will perform, thus making the system easier.

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): When requested, simultanious jobs will be places into a queue.

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): N

Function Details: It will (hopefully) run off the toolserver with a PHP frontend where administrators can register and submit jobs, this will communicate to a PHP backend which will controll a bot running the SxWiki framework. This bot will, for rename requests, get a list of all pages in a category (that the category is directly on, not transclusions etc) and perform a find and replace on the category string and on delete requests, remove the category string from those articles. The edit summary would provide a job number that could be looked up on the toolserver page find out the name of the requesting admin and details of the job. The actual code hasn't been written yet but I thought I should come here first to find out if such a task would be ok.

Discussion

This seems horribly complex compared to just having a fully protected request page. BJ^Talk 19:44, 18 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The advantage is that you can enter a reason for deleting or moving categories. I've been running a bot like this on the Dutch Wikipedia and started with a fully protected request page to keep it simple. Later I wrote a PHP frontend so admins could enter a reason for their request. See nl:Special:Contributions/CategorieBot and tools:~erwin85/categoriebot/log.php. --Erwin(85) 20:24, 19 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can't imagine adding an optional reason to the current page, if desired would be difficult to implement, just something like:

*[[:Category:Adaptations of Shakespeare]] to [[:Category:Adaptations of works by William Shakespeare]] per <link to CFD>

where the bot just treats everything after the destination link as the reason. The current system seems to work well, I see no reason to completey change it, especially since we just went through a BRFA to give CydeBot admin rights. Mr.Z-man 02:40, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The listing format at Wikipedia:CFDW could easily be modified to accommodate custom bot edit summaries if that is what was really desired. It'd be a lot easier than setting up a whole new system on toolserver (seriously, it'd be a couple of lines worth of changes to CFDbot. But I just don't see a compelling reason to do it. Do we really need custom edit summaries? What more does the edit summary need than what Cydebot is already automatically generating, which is the old category name, the new category name, a link to a description of the CFD process, and a link to the CFD discussion page? Opening up the listing format to allow custom edit summaries could easily result in an overall decrease in quality, because getting all the category names and links correct is easily handled with 100% accuracy by a bot, but is annoying, error-prone drudge-work for humans. --Cyde Weys 15:51, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really see any difference between this proposal and the existing situation with Wikipedia:CFDW, except that the current situation uses a page on the English Wikipedia. Having the direction page for the bots being on the same wiki is actually better, in my mind, because it simplifies linking to the working page from the wiki, doesn't introduce additional external requirements, and most importantly, allows blame to be assigned for bad category decisions. If someone complains to me that Cydebot has done a "bad" move, the first thing I do is link them to the diff of the relevant listing on Wikipedia:CFDW. That way they can go on to talk to the person who made the listing, and I only have to get involved with cases where Cydebot malfunctioned and didn't implement a decision as listed. If you're going to move this system off-site, at the very least you're going to need to code up a revision control system for the bot directions that allows us to track, in perpetuity, who told the bot to do what. In terms of simplicity, it's easier to just continue using MediaWiki for this. --Cyde Weys 15:13, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If we want custom edit summaries, we could read that admin's edit summary (when editing Wikipedia:CFDW), and take it from there, which I assume would be difficult. Lego K^ontribs T^alkM 04:10, 22 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cyde asked me to answer some questions here, but I can't really see any that haven't been covered by discussion. I'm very meh about the bot if you guys don't like it. It was more of an idea that I now see is covered very well by the current system. Thanks anyway. Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 12:47, 24 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawn by operator. BJ^Talk 04:05, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.