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: Drilnoth

Automatic or Manually assisted: Automatic; possibly manual if a particular template needs more supervision.

Programming language(s): AutoWikiBrowser

Source code available: No; will simply be using standard find/replace (with simple RegEx), and category- and template- based functions of AWB.

Function overview: Remove now-deprecated Future templates from articles.

Edit period(s): When I'm around enough to monitor the bot in case of trouble.

Estimated number of pages affected: About 6000

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): Yes.

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

Function details: Per Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Deprecating "Future" templates, the use of ((Future)) and its kin has been deprecated. Discussion there requests that a bot work to remove the templates from articles before they are deleted. DrilBot would: Remove all instances of a Future template (all of which are listed here) from an article; if the future template categorized the article, add that category to the appropriate place in the article, with sortkey if needed; and apply AWB genfixes to generally cleanup the article (as is already done with DrilBot's first task). For the most part, this should be able to be done automatically; manual updates may be needed in the case of the more complicated templates, but most of them should be easy to handle. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:10, 25 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

 Approved. Doesn't look like much more is happening there. You can now go when you like, although you may want to leave a notice on the page saying you are actually going to run the bot to remove the template from the pages with the aim of deleting the templates afterwards (if you plan to get them deleted). You could also let WP:SIGNPOST know, so more users hear about this. But not compulsory :). Go when you feel ready - Kingpin13 (talk) 01:37, 30 August 2009 (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.