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

CopyToWiktionaryBot[edit]

Operator: Connel MacKenzie - wikt

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Batch run initiated monthly (ish)

Programming Language(s): Python, pywikipediabot's replace.py

Function Summary: After running my script on en.wiktionary (I'm a sysop there) to Special:Import all the Category:Copy to Wiktionary (CAT:MtW) pages into en.wiktionary.org's Transwiki: namespace, and after the Transwiki log is updated indicating the moves, this bot will remove the ((subst:Move to Wiktionary)) stuff from the transwiki'ed articles here.

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): I plan to run it once a month. If it works out to once a week, I'm sure Wikipedia will be happier, while Wiktionary would be sadder.

Edit rate requested: Couple hundred edits per run. (I'd prefer to run it un-throttled, as it is a minor number of total edits, once a month. In total, a very minor load to this server cluster.)

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

Function Details: See brief summary above.

Discussion[edit]

Will you manually confirm each edit? What will happen to the pages here in that category? Will you request them for speedy deletion or make them soft redirects?Voice-of-All 04:42, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

• I will not manually confirm each edit. The pages will no longer be listed in that category, instead they will only be listed on the Wikipedia:Transwiki log/Articles moved from here/en.wiktionary at which point you Wikipedians can figure out if you want to make them into redirects, delete them, request deletion, expand into full articles, or whatnot. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 05:07, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
  • The articles that are copied over to wiktionary should either be tagged with an appropriate clean up tag or made into soft redirects using the ((wi)) template.Voice-of-All 05:29, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
    • When I was asked if I could do this earlier tonight, it was made painfully clear to me that that is not always the case. As a Wiktionarian, I have very little chance of guessing which template is appropriate for any given Wikipedia Transwiki-to-Wiktionary entry, be it ((delete)), ((wi)), ((db)) or a #redirect. To me as a Wiktionarian, it doesn't matter either which-way. On the other hand, it does matter if the entries remain in the category that my Wiktionary import bot is feeding off. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 05:43, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Voice of All, this is incorrect. The transwiki procedure, which is what this bot is being proposed to do, merely involves the copying of an article to another wiki, and the notation that this has been done on wikipedia's transwiki log. At this point, editors can go through the transwiki log and decide what to do, cleanup, deletion, redirecting, whatever. Note the instructions on the transwiki log page, and note Wikipedia:Transwiki_log/Articles_moved_from_here/en.wikisource, for example, where various people are going through and deciding what to do with the articles here after they've been transwikiied. Also, and this is important: There is a serious perpetual backlog of articles waiting to be transwikied, normally no one gets around to doing it for many months at a time. Right now there are 500 articles waiting to be transwikied to wiktionary. The fact that we have someone here with a bot willing to help do it is a fortunate thing, especially since transwikiing is such a tedious process. Basically, it is only done on a wide scale by editors with bots, as without one it would take dozens of hours to transwiki 500 articles to wiktionary by hand. Let's not discourage someone who's actually willing to step up and get this done. --Xyzzyplugh 10:11, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
      • See this[1]. Obviously, if it just wants to add them to Wiktionary, then it doesn't matter. Since this is a bot, and it does add the page to the log, and there is no way to really deal with the articles since it runs automatically, it doesn't have to delete or even "wi" tag them. But it would be nice if some tag was added to note that it has been transwikied already, and may need manual cleanup (expand/delete/soft redirect/hard redirect). I don't thing adding a tag is that much to ask. I'd rather we not have a large amount of untagged dictionary articles as newcomers might get the perception that WP is also a dictionary.Voice-of-All 17:42, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment: note that there are a number of different redirect templates which are being used to mean "transwiki to wiktionary". For some reason, we've ended up accumulating an oddly high amount of these. After the transwiki process, the bot should be looking to remove any of the following: Template:Winad, Template:To wiktionary, Template:Dict, Template:Transwiki to Wiktionary, Template:Dicdef, Template:Dictdef, Template:Move to Wiktionary, and Template:Copy to Wiktionary (and we have additional templates like Template:Move to wiktionary, differing only in capitalization). --Xyzzyplugh 10:21, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Connel is right.

      Applying a transwikification notice is not a back-door route to deletion, nor should it be. Many editors misapply ((dicdef)), for example. They apply it to short articles, erroneously conflating "short" with "dictionary". (Connel will attest that many dictionary articles are far from short. Wiktionary is not paper, either, after all.) I've long held the view that that template should redirect to ((stub)), since that is really what editors mean when they apply it.

      Nor is the transwikification system a means for Wikipedians to avoid properly dealing with problem articles. We constructed several categories for articles to be placed in, for review by Wikipedians after transwikification, such as Category:Moved to Wiktionary. If you want some system in addition to simple inspection of the transwikification log to find articles to look at, then that is the system to use.

      We went through the discussion of what a transwikification 'bot should do when Dmcdevit and I first started flushing the queue. What Voice of All is asking for on top of the simple act of transwikification is something that we came to the conclusion then must be done by Wikipedians, manually, after the articles have been transwikified.

      For further reading on this subject, see also Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/8, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/9, and Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/10, which came later. Uncle G 11:26, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

      • So attested: many Wiktionary entries (e.g. wikt:lead) are far from short. Most are much shorter than their Wikipedia counterparts. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 04:17, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
      • The bot should remove any of the to-Wiktionary templates from the main article and place ((Transwikied to Wiktionary)) on the talk page, which will cat it into the appropriate category (Category:Transwikied to Wiktionary; the moved-to category is used for articles whose final fate has already been determined). --ais523 14:56, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
        • Sorry, I missed this in-line comment. Question: why not put ((Transwikied to Wiktionary)) on the article itself, since that is where I'm removing the other tags from. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 20:20, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I never said they had to be deletion tagged by the bot, but that some tag/category must still contain them, so we don't have to re-find all of these pages that were dictionary definitions. That would at least provide a good starting point for manual changes. Since you will not manually confirm them, it would be useful to replace the transwiki tag that with one flags them as having already been transwikied and needing possible cleanup, and leave the content.Voice-of-All 17:42, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
      • But they are listed centrally in the Transwiki log! Yes, of course it will leave the content alone, only remove the various MtW tags. Is there a "This has been Transwikied to Wiktionary" tag? --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 20:18, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
        • Yes, the log is useful in that sense, and I an aware that items will be added there, but it would be nice if the articles would have some sort of cleanup tag as most of those articles either violate WP:NOT or need expanding. Once the transwiki tag is gone, readers have no way of knowing this. I cannot find such a tag though (as I looked two days ago). I'd advice whipping up a new tag for that.Voice-of-All 04:24, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
          • As mentioned above, there is Template:Transwikied to Wiktionary, but this is meant to be put on an article's talk page. It is quite a large template and clearly not designed to go on the article's main page. It could be used on the article itself, but in my opinion should be rewritten first if that were to be done. And, by the way, this template adds articles to Category:Transwikied to Wiktionary, which is a category which no one pays the slightest attention to, it is utterly ignored. This is because after transwikiing, the Template:Transwikied to Wiktionary which has in the past sometimes been added to articles' talk pages has often never been removed, even long after the article was cleaned up. So the category as of now is a list of some of the articles which have been transwikied, some of which have been cleaned up, which makes it currently good for nothing really. --Xyzzyplugh 12:15, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
            • All the more reason why an article tag would be better for the readers. If a page has a now questionable existence or format, I'd rather readsers at least know that it is not the norm. Also, editors will be far more likely to fix it if they see the tag on the main page.Voice-of-All 17:04, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
• Ok Connel, run a cpl diffs and post -- Tawker 20:30, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
  • With a new template whipped up, I think this bot should be approved. ANON 9/19/2006 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.115.241.23 (talk • contribs)
    • Um, I'd feel much more comfortable if a Wikipedian created the template, in the Wikipedia style (of which I am mostly unfamiliar.) --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 02:53, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
      • I'm not a good writer, which is why I limit my editing to cleanup and other janitorial type tasks, and I don't really care if a template is written or not. However, if no one else is willing to do it, and if a template must be created, I will volunteer to create a poorly written one. I'd prefer that someone else do it, or if no one else will, that this go on without a template, though. --Xyzzyplugh 12:52, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
      • I just made Template:TWCleanup. It can be more or less tweaked into the kind of tag we need here.Voice-of-All 03:32, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
        • Sorry for the delay, I was a bit consumed by a particular vote on wikt: recently. I plan to run the Wiktionary import tonight, then post some diffs here. Thank you for that template. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 03:36, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
• Some diffs: [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]. These were before I scripted the complete set of variants above, and regex'ed the case varieties. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 06:23, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Well, since everyone is so busy flame-warring with the TawkerBlockerBot about crossed "i"s and dotted "t"s, I guess they feel the need to ignore all other pending requests. So I'll post cleaner diffs from when I ran it in a more automated fashion. [8] [9] [10] [11]. I'd have more to demonstrate, but the mighty wheels of Wikipedia cannot be stopped: quite a few seem to have disappeared already, from the various deletion processes. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 19:06, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Approved; the bot shall run with a flag. The contibs look fine. Keep edit rate to 1-3 per min until flagged.Voice-of-All 04:53, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Bot flag has been set. Redux 08:13, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Magnificent. Thank you all. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 18:48, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

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.