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]

• There seems to be a consensus for this. But I'm gonna let this request sit for a while to let any users who see the transcluded notice comment (as was suggested on the proposal discussion page). - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 07:00, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sounds good. This certainly isn't urgent. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 14:00, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• It looks to me as if great effort has been made to include community involvement on this bot, in fact, the task for this bot is the result of a request in a community discussion. The task is appropriate for a bot. The bot owner appears to be presenting a straight-forward bot task, properly monitored, based on community consensus. Looks good, imo. --68.127.233.138 (talk) 03:59, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  Not on the bot. But this is a large task, which will effect many pages. Since the notifaction message was only included in the ((future)) templates recently, I want to wait for a while to see if anybody turns up at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Deprecating "Future" templates who wasn't aware of it. And as Drilnoth said, there's no hurry here, so we might as well make sure - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 11:22, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks for the support 68.127.233.138, but as Kingpin13 said, this should wait a few days yet. I actually don't feel ready to start the bot because not enough time has passed for reaction to the template notices to pop up. It's easier to wait a few days and be sure than to just do the task and then have to revert the whole thing. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 17:40, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm not urging speedy approval or anything, just commenting that it looks as if you're a responsible bot owner. This has been a major concern of mine with bots, their being run by careless operators. My comment is more like a note that I don't see anything to comment about here and won't be watching this particular bot. --68.127.233.138 (talk) 01:25, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  Ah, okay; thanks for the clarification. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:50, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

 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.