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 Approved.

DrTrigonBot

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Operator: DrTrigon (talk · contribs)

Time filed: 21:39, Tuesday December 20, 2011 (UTC)

Automatic or Manual: Automatic unsupervised

Programming language(s): Python (pywikipediabot framework with extensions - long time usage in dewiki)

Source code available: https://fisheye.toolserver.org/changelog/drtrigon

Function overview: "SubsterBot" as already operating on w:de:Spezial:Beiträge/DrTrigonBot - provides on-request functions to sync data from external sources automatically

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): daily (as well as continuous)

Estimated number of pages affected: currently about 50 per day on dewiki (depends on the usage of the bot template - request by users)

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): Y (pywikipediabot)

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): w:de:User:DrTrigonBot

Function details: This bot provides a simple and programmable interface to automatic data substitution (or synchronization) from external sources to wiki pages (mostly meta templates; containing data like e.g. world rankings or else). It is already running on dewiki (German Wiki) and frrwiki (Nordfriisk Wiki) with quite some success - now the idea is to enable it here on enwiki in order to give users access to the bot functions. The bot becomes active only if a bot template with settings was placed on a page, thus just enabling the bot changes nothing until somebody wants actually to use the bot.

On dewiki this bot is used e.g. for following pages:

...the possible usages of the bot are converging against infinite - depending on the creativity of users.

Discussion

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Hmm, this seems like a pretty cool idea. My only concern is from a security perspective (e.g. a specially crafted regex and url could possibly crash the bot/server). Also, since this is user operated, can we please have a more detailed explanation of how it operates, what commands it responds to, etc (you should also probably some instructions on how to operate it, to it's user page) --Chris 09:42, 22 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your positive answer! ;)
At the moment there is a security check protecting from abuse of url parameter to read file content from toolserver (e.g. /etc/passwd) as you can see in the code source (subster.py; line 288). In fact I am aware of the issue of violent code intrusion but not an expert what kind of abuse with url and regex is possible. Is an expert out there to give any hints? All I can say is until now there was no such problem (but in fact that does not help at all).
The other point concerning more detailed instructions can be answered by mentioning the page w:de:Benutzer:DrTrigon/Entwurf/Vorlage:Subster which contains a documentation (covering about 90-95% of the options) but in German only - I wanted to translate it to English once the bot runs but if you want I can start translating right now. I think the section w:de:Benutzer:DrTrigon/Entwurf/Vorlage:Subster#Parameter whould be the most interesting and useful to you!? To be honest in dewiki - until now - most of the bot templates usages where assisted by myself, since it is not that easy to use them, but once you know what you are doing the bot acts as good enhancement to Help:Magic words#Parser functions... ;) (I mean you should have some programming skills...) --DrTrigon (talk) 20:15, 22 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

((BAG assistance needed))

Lets see how this goes Approved for trial. Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. --Chris 10:04, 26 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So I looked for a first job to show how the bot works and thanks to the nice guys at the chess portal I got Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess#Automatic updated FIDE rating in infobox (by bot) to work on. I will report the progress here. Greetings and thank you very much for the trial (by the way ;)) ! --DrTrigon (talk) 13:17, 30 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
May be I should also mention, that I translated most of the docs meanwhile, please have a look at User:DrTrigonBot/Subster. Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 16:28, 30 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Today the bot did his first edit - let me know what you think about it! ;) Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 13:48, 31 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

((OperatorAssistanceNeeded)) Any updates? Edits look good as far as I can see. --Chris 12:25, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your reply. As stated the docs are translated and the bot works fine too. But it's a little bit a pitty since I do not get any feedback from the guys at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess#Automatic updated FIDE rating in infobox (by bot). I did the changes mentioned but the data are not used yet as far as I can see (item 3).
Then - as far as I know - there could be a request in future to maintain the analogue to w:de:Vorlage:ITTF-Weltranglistendaten (International Table Tennis Federation world rankings) here on enwiki, but I am not sure about this yet.
So what's your conclusion? Greetings --DrTrigon (talk) 13:50, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Automatic update of the table tennis world rankings work fine. Look for example into the infobox at or . I think this feature woold be very nice for en-WP too. --Tsor (talk) 17:05, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete.

The trial looks good  Approved. and I think this is a pretty cool task. You might want to advertise it somewhere like on the WP:Village Pump, to find other people with possible uses for it. --Chris 11:20, 8 January 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.
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