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Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Theo's Little Bot 8

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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 The result of the discussion was Withdrawn by operator.

Theo's Little Bot 8

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

Time filed: 01:05, Wednesday April 17, 2013 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): Python + mwclient

Source code available: on github

Function overview: Automatically creates index lists for each category in Category:Protected areas by year of establishment, per WP:CLT.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): bot request (includes article skeleton)

Edit period(s): One time run

Estimated number of pages affected: 134

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): No, as if pages already exist, they shall be skipped

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

Function details: Goes through each category in Category:Protected areas by year of establishment. If the category ends with a year, it adds that year to a list. For each year in the list, the bot checks if List of protected areas established in XXXX exists and, if it doesn't, proceeds to create the page using the skeleton established in the bot request—this skeleton includes a dynamically-generated table, in which each row is an item in Category:Protected areas established in XXXX.

Discussion

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I made the initial request here. There is a question about referencing but that is a spurios question IMO. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 01:16, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Vigorously oppose until the bot is modified to include a citation to an independent, third-party source for each entry and some human approve that it actually supports inclusion. Copying data from a category (which can't be sourced for technical reasons) and generating lists without any step to verify that the articles are correctly placed in those categories and that there is sourcing for the entry is unacceptable behaviour for a bot. I know people argue that bluelinks are acceptable sourcing for lists. When it's a manual list, they aren't completely wrong, but at least building the list by hand implies that some human has done some checking. In this case, it's pure GIGO.—Kww(talk) 01:46, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Firstly, getting a bot to do the citations is impossible. Secondly, per WP:CITE factual info does not need referencing. So do you want refs for what? That they are protected areas? That they are in a particular country? That they ar a given area? Or all three? Besides all the info is but click away. Can you dig out a policy or guideline that states the need for the referencing of list entries? Finally, articles are not including in categories unless it the category topic is relevant. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:03, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I want citations on all three. You are right: getting the bot to do the citations correctly would be nearly impossible. That's why this isn't a good task for a bot.—Kww(talk) 02:17, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please read WP:CITE and then Wikipedia:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue and Wikipedia:Citation overkill essays. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:21, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You are asking for something that does nothing for Wikipedia and its readers and does everything to stifle improving Wikipedia. For fear of the [[WP:OTHERSTUFF] argument I challenge you to label every list that does not have that level of referencing with {{refimprove}}. And then see how many howls of protest that you will get. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:25, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've read them all. None of them apply. You are proposing that a bot create lists without checking at any step in the process that anything in the list it is creating belongs there. Once cite per entry is not overciting. And yes, you do need to cite that the sky is blue.—Kww(talk) 02:30, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The bot is using human generated lists. A human will be adding extra details (as discussed in the original proposal) and that in itself is fact checking. The citations that you want added will be one click away. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:37, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I will ask again: can you point to a guideline that says we should have that level of citation for lists? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:42, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you wanted this to be a supervised bot that provided a list of citations for a human operator to select from during article generation, I could support that. WP:Featured list criteria demands citations. The lack of citations in many of our lists results from a failure to follow guidelines: lists are just articles, and unsourced articles of any kind are a problem.—Kww(talk) 02:51, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Kww. There appears to be nothing on Wikipedia that says unsourced articles are fine if they are lists. I personally think this would be a good bot generated task if there were some way to add a citation to the articles; but, if the RFBA is going to be a fight to have a bot create articles that include no citations, I am against it. -68.107.137.178 (talk) 05:17, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The bot is to do the nuts and bolts, the grunt work, the tedious stuff that humans don't like doing. An actual human will have to complete the process. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:29, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd much rather a bot prepare these lists in userspace so humans can look them over and add sources before moving them to mainspace. It seems like a waste of time to generate these lists by hand when a bot can do it trivially, but at the same time it doesn't seem like a good idea to dump a bunch of unreferenced articles into mainspace. Legoktm (talk) 05:20, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Have a look at how many lists in Special:AllPages/List_of are unreferenced. I know that is sort of the WP:OTHERSTUFF argument but what it is saying is that the community tolerates a lower level of referencing in lists than in articles. Also, I will reiterate, facts do not need refs. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:00, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Facts absolutely need refs, Alan.—Kww(talk) 06:08, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There might be unreferenced stuff out there, but that doesn't mean we should be creating more if we can prevent it. Legoktm (talk) 06:10, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I will rephrase it - undeniable facts do not need refs. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:15, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So, does it matter that the source of the ref is two mouse clicks away rather than one? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:15, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(stand-alone_lists)#Citing_sources says that sources are not needed. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:27, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That something was established as a protected area in 2003 is not "the sky is blue." I think this battle for creating bot articles without references should be closed. I would support user space drafts that editors can move to article space, though. -166.137.210.39 (talk) 14:28, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • New topic: Why do we want these list articles? What will they do that the category doesn't already do? Are readers ever trying to search for all parks created in a certain year? Rmhermen (talk) 16:16, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This random sample gives me little confidence in using article links as the source. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:40, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The way this bot could work would be as a manual one.

  1. Read the category to build candidates
  2. Read each article in turn, and extract all citations
  3. Query the user as to which of the citations actually supports inclusion
  4. If the user selects a citation, insert the article and the citation into the list.
  5. If the user does not select a citation, remove the article from the category, and do not insert
  6. Create article after each candidate has been reviewed.

Even people that think we don't need citations for "sky is blue" kinds of things should be able to see, based on RockMagnetist's analysis, that this is not a case of indisputable facts .—Kww(talk) 18:04, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds potentially awkward - what do you do if you can't complete a list in one session? And it tries to formalize a process that will require judgement. Four of the five articles I looked at raised distinct issues, some of which hadn't occurred to me in advance, and some of which involve editing the articles themselves. Also, it may not be necessary to have an inline citation for each entry if appropriate general references can be found. RockMagnetist (talk) 19:38, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The first issues are simply beyond a bot's scope, which is why manual input is required. As the the last point, it is invariably best practice to have an inline citation for each entry in a list.—Kww(talk) 21:19, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We agree that manual input is required, but I think this is better achieved using the normal editing process. Hence my suggestion that the articles be created in Wikipedia space. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:29, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with that is that the proposed user of the bot has indicated that he has no intention of providing any citations and considers them to be unnecessary. If the bot doesn't force the inclusion of citations, the lists will remain unsourced.—Kww(talk) 21:32, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that a bot should enforce dramatically different standards for list creation than an editor would normally encounter. The behavior or intentions of a particular editor shouldn't be relevant here. RockMagnetist (talk) 22:07, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • So an editor that was under an editing restriction to not talk about categories was requesting a category reading bot to convert them into lists? Laughed out loud for the first time in days.—Kww(talk) 21:40, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • (It's he, but that's rather irrelevant.) Due to the points raised by Kww + RockMagnetist which indicate a need for this to be done at least semi-manually—which I have no interest in doing—I'd like to go ahead and say Withdrawn by operator. If anyone has any interest in this (or a task like it) in the future, don't hesitate to ping me on my talk page. Code doesn't expire...okay, I take that back, but I'm a firm believer in backwards compatibility, or at least keeping old versions of Python installed. :) —Theopolisme (talk) 23:29, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I also appreciate the laugh. I find lists much more useful than categories, and I think this would have been a useful user assisted bot. -166.137.210.25 (talk) 02:18, 18 April 2013 (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.
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