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 Approved.

Operator: BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Lists of target articles and categories generated with the assistance of AWB. Edits to be performed automatically after lists manually checked.

Programming Language(s): AWB

Function Summary: Tagging the talk pages of categories and articles with tags which identify the articles and categories as being within the scope of a particular WikiProject. Tagging will be done only on the basis of an explicit consensus at the WikiProject's talk page for the precise task in hand. The initial scope of the bot is ((WikiProject Ireland)), and I will seek further approval before offering its services to any other WikiProjects.

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): A series of lengthy initial runs to tag the 20,000 untagged articles within the scope of WikiProject Ireland, to be completed in stages with reviews in between (this may take a week or more). Further runs at infrequent points in future to tag new articles.

Edit rate requested: I am unsure what rate to set, so I will use AWB's delay function to limit the edit rate as advised here. The task involved is not urgent, so a generous delay would be fine.

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

Function Details: To identify whether the talk page of an existing article or category is already tagged with ((WikiProject Ireland)) or one of its aliases, and if so to add a tag with all parameters blank except those which identify the page as a category. There is one exception to this articles in Category:Ireland stubs will be tagged as stub class.

• Note: I created the bot account after having logged out. I understand that this may mean that verification is required, but am unsure how to do this. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:03, 4 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • PS I should have mentioned that I have done a lot of this tagging already using AWB, which was successful as far it went, but the slowness of it is what persuaded me that it is a job for a bot. The discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Ireland#Project_tagging_of_article_talk_pages may be relevant as background. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:58, 4 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The verification is easy enough, and in fact you've already done it; all you have to do is make an edit with each account that implies that they're controlled by the same person, and there are such edits in the history of the bot's userpage. --ais523 11:59, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
• As for delay: probably a 10 second delay is appropriate for this sort of task (30 seconds during testing), and if AWB allows you to set a maxlag setting (which tells the bot to slow down if the servers are under heavy load), I recommend 5 seconds of maxlag. --ais523 11:59, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks, I'll set a 10 second delay and a 5 second maxlag. Do I need to make a separate request for AWB approval for the bot? (My own account has been AWB-approved for about 16 months). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:10, 4 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • The bot needs to be listed as an approved bot on Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage for technical reasons (i.e. AWB will refuse to run without being 'allowed' by that page); an admin in the Bot Approvals Group should be able to do that for you, though, and you don't need to make a separate request. --ais523 12:15, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
• Maybe it should add an automatic default priority=low. If that seems wrong, somebody will alter it. - Kittybrewster ☎ 15:29, 4 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Umm, no. If the tag is left blank, the article will be categorised as being of unassessed importance. This is one of main objectives of is tagging: to categorise the articles needing assessment to assist editors seeking article needing assessment, and I would much rather not run a bot than have it add finite importance values without assessment. Many editors have put a lot of effort into assessing articles, and it degrades the value of the existing assesments if they are jumbled up with auto-added assessments. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:18, 4 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• As a member of the Irish WikiProject Assessment team, I would not want this bot to give the Irish articles any rating on an initial run by default. I am happy to have it tag any pages that have a stub template on the main page with a "stub-class" assessment, but not an importance rating. I feel that once an article has an assessment it is most unlikely to be revisited again to check the rating unless it is a popular article whereas any articles listed as "Unassessed" and "None" will eventually be looked at and assessed appropriately. ww2censor 16:55, 4 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • As above, I entirely agree with ww2censor, which is why my statement of the bot's purpose says under the "Function Details" heading that the intention is "to add a tag with all parameters blank except those which identify the page as a category", with the only exception of articles already tagged as stubs by ((Ireland-stub)) or one of its children. I think that this is a very important point, so I will add it to the User:BHGbot page with a note to "please STOP this bot if it appears to be breaking this rule".
    I can imagine that at a future point there might be consensus at Wikipedia:IE to auto-assess a particular class of articles (e.g. every article on an Irish county, or every article on previously agreed list of cabinet ministers), but I would like it to be agreed now that allowing BHGbot to expand its role in this way would require further explicit approval from Wikipedia:BRFA as well as consensus at Wikipedia:IE. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:18, 4 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• User:Kingbotk/P could be very useful for this task. — H₂O —  08:39, 6 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks! I'm looking at it now. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:43, 6 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Definately. For its generic template, its not so good at adding other parameters, but certainly for its major supported projects, its very good! Reedy Boy 20:45, 9 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • I have been testing it out, and it's certainly a useful tool. However, it would be most useful as tool for filling in parameters, and it doesn't do what BHGbot is proposed to do: the mass tagging with blank parameters of currently unatgged articles within the project's scope. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:08, 11 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• I'm not sure how long these requests usually take to be assessed, but I'd be grateful for some indication of whether this request is likely to be accepted. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:13, 11 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The reason task requests are left open for a reasonable amount time is to garner discussion such as that above, and to evaluate consensus. That having been done, I think this task is ready for a trial, as long as you know by which means you are going to perform it (which was somewhat fuzzy above). Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. — madman bum and angel 05:24, 11 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking as a contributor, I'd greatly prefer it were WikiProject banners be added to any existing ((WikiProjectBanners)) or ((WikiProjectBannerShell)) transclusions. Have you planned for this at all? I'm not sure if Kingboyk's plugin does this. — madman bum and angel 05:30, 11 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It does not. I may talk to Kingboyk about this or ((sofixit)) myself. — madman bum and angel 05:34, 11 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

((BAGAssistanceNeeded)) I need AWB approval before I can run the tial I have set up. I have listed BHGbot at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage#Bots; can anyone please authorise the bot? -BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:22, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done —Reedy Boy 22:59, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to Reedy Boy for enabling BHGbot. I have now completed the trial run of 50 edits, in two batches of 25 as follows:

• 25 categories tagged with ((WikiProject Ireland category)), using a long list of sub-categories of Category:Ireland, most of which were skipped because they had already been tagged.
• 25 stub articles tagged with ((WikiProject Ireland)), with the only parameter set being "class=stub". The article list was all the mainspace articles in Category:Ireland stubs and its subcats. The bot skipped the articles already tagged, and I stopped it after 25 edits. The only glitch was that the last item was dual-tagged, because it had been tagged with ((WPIRELAND)), a new alias for ((WikiProject Ireland)) which I hadn't spotted. (Lesson learnt: before each run, check for new aliases).

I'm not sure of the procedure now, but I presume that the trial run will be reviewed. In the hope that full approval may be forthcoming, I will post on BHGbot's pages details of the first substantive jobs planned for if and when the bot gets full approval (with links here when the job lists are complete). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:33, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me. I see what you mean about the "duplicate" tag. If there is already a plain ((WPIRELAND)) tag it can safely be replaced with this one, but if any parameters have been added then the bot must not tag the page. I wonder if that level of check is possible. ww2censor 17:31, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

BHGbot doesn't check whether any parameters have been added, it just skips any talk page where there is already a ((WikiProject Ireland)) tag or one of its aliases. The only glitch here was that I didn't know about that alias; if I had, the bot would simply have skipped the article. I think it's best that any replacement of an alias tag is best done separately. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:44, 14 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We can manually replace ((Irelandproj)) though there are 961 to do. ww2censor 17:05, 14 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's a bit tedious doing it manually. I suggest that if/when BHGbot is authorised, it does a specific run (using the excellent Kingbotk plugin) for the sole purpose of replace those tags. As above, I'll list the job before hand and seek consensus for it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:56, 15 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Definately. If you want, i can do this with Reedy Bot. Let me know if you wanted. —Reedy Boy 16:18, 18 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• ((BAGAssistanceNeeded)) There don't appear to be any outstanding issues here. Could BHGbot perhaps be approved now? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:45, 18 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah -  Approved.. Bot will run with a flag. —Reedy Boy 16:18, 18 November 2007 (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.