Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Ganeshbot 11

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

Speedily Approved.

Ganeshbot 11

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

Time filed: 01:20, Friday August 31, 2012 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Supervised

Programming language(s): AutoWikiBrowser and CSVLoader plugin

Source code available: Yes

Function overview: The function of the bot is to automate basic stub creation for sea snails and slugs. This will be done under the supervision from the Gastropod project. This request is for increasing the limit from 100 to 500 stubs at a time.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): One time run for each approved task

Estimated number of pages affected: 500 stubs per run

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

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

Function details: In the last BRFA, Ganeshbot was approved to create basic stubs for snails and slugs under the supervision of the Gastropod project. It was approved to create 100 stubs at a time and wait for review by a project member. It has created 1857 stubs since the approval (in October 2011) and has taken 10 months to do it. The process is slow and would take years to complete. I would like request BAG to allow the bot to create 500 stubs at a time. This will really speed up the process. I don't have confirmed numbers, but there may be another 10,000-15,000 stubs that need creating. The bot has received no major issues/errors so far.

Discussion

I just wanted to say that as an active member of Project Gastropods since 2007, I support this request. Ganeshbot has proved itself to be extremely reliable ever since we started using it a few years ago. It has helped us to create new needed stubs, which are gradually attracting photos and other additions of info. It is extremely time-consuming to create stubs by hand, and in my experience, hand-made stubs are considerably more likely to contain errors than Ganeshbot-created stubs. If we could increase the number of stubs made a one time, we would be able to complete the process of creating stubs fairly soon and turn the majority of our our attention to work that only humans can do. Invertzoo (talk) 23:20, 3 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've reviewed the last run of stubs and as long as the functionality's exactly the same as the previously approved task, I see no problem with speedy approval of this change in parameters. The only thing I noticed was that you had to follow up on every stub with a cleanup to remove white space. Could the bot simply not output this white space in the first place? — madman 03:03, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is a limitation of MediaWiki parser functions; they strip the newlines during comparison. See mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions#Stripping_whitespace. The parser functions are used in the stub template. This led to empty lines being created. So I get AWB to run a genfixes after the bot run to remove these empty lines. — Ganeshk (talk) 15:07, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is the need for the increased number of articles at one time? It seems human editing would be the bottleneck; if this is the case, why do you need to create 500 articles at a time? Are human editors checking the 100 at a time so fast, they need more to be delivered before they can finish and request more? I don't really see the need for this approval. 68.107.140.60 (talk) 21:31, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IP, thanks for your comments. I would suggest looking at the track record of the bot in creating accurate articles. The bot has huge support from the Gastropod project members. There would be no harm done in increasing the frequency of the articles created at one time. I would like to get this project done before I turn 60. :) — Ganeshk (talk) 01:24, 9 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Per the above, Speedily Approved. — madman 02:43, 9 September 2012 (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.