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: Pseudomonas_(talk)

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic

Programming Language(s): Perl 5, using perlwikipedia library

Function Summary: Remove a subset of inappropriate edits to the date pages, namely births and/or deaths added either with no link to a wikipedia article or a "redlink" to an nonexistent page. Give the editor responsible a friendly summary of why the reversion has been made.

Detects links to disambiguation pages and pages that don't mention the stated year of birth/death, and inform the editor.

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Continuous

Edit rate requested: Check watchlist every ten seconds (or other shortish period), check new edits to date pages as they arise.

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

Function Details: Provisionally, and subject to advice :) :
Check watchlist
Get list of most recent unseen changes for each article.
For each of these:

Ignore if made by self / not to a date page / edit already dealt with

Retrieve edited page

Get a list of Year/Name pairs in the Births and Deaths sections

If all the Year/Name pairs have been seen before and there are no years with unlinked names

this edit is OK.

Else

Retrieve the newest edit by another editor, find the Year/Name pairs that have been added by the most recent editor

Check the linked names for presence of a Wikipedia article

If there are unlinked or "redlinked" names

revert edit and notify editor.

Also: will implement some process to prevent repeated reverts; I don't want to block people who have a good reason for inserting unlinked births/deaths.

Note: I've now asked people here for input, since they know more about the date pages than I.

I think the bot should only revert one person once, after that leave it up to the RC patrollers. BJ^Talk 16:51, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This seems sensible, yes. Do you suggest a) one revert per editor, b) one revert per listed birth/death, or c) one revert per unique combination of (a) and (b)? Not sure, myself. Pseudomonas_(talk) 16:58, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Depends how good the bot would be about not reverting "good" editors, if you pull an edit count before reverting and don't revert "good" editors (over 50? 100?) then I think once per editor is fine. BJ^Talk 17:08, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's certainly do-able. IIRC most of the problem edits are by anons anyway, though. Pseudomonas_(talk) 19:23, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

you could expand that to all non-autoconfirmed users β^_command 19:27, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also I would recomend using the wikimedia IRC feed instead of a watchlist. β^_command 00:41, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikimedia IRC feed would indeed be preferable, as there'd be no hit on the servers until the bot actually had to do something. Last I heard, ariel was the only one serving the watchlists, so it'd be best not to have bots stepping all over her. Trying to limit reversions is essential too, though instead of checking user groups (which can again have more impact than it's worth), the general rule is that bots like this should not revert to their own revision. — madman bum and angel 18:00, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, I'm happy to use the IRC feeds instead. Pseudomonas_(talk) 19:04, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Great idea Pseudomonas, as a suggestion I would like to suggest that it could also revert edits by people who just want there name or there friends name on it. Sort of like the spambot does now, but for the Wikipedia Project Days of the Year page. The last suggestion I have is that this year, wikipedia did not automatically add what day of the week it was for every day of the year, this I noted and was fixed for 2008, however as a smaller job it could be good for this bot to do that. Good luck! --Talk to Stealth500 (talk) 11:31, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! The reverting edits by people who just want their names on it was the point of the exercise, though obviously I can't actually tell what people want, I can only tell whether they link their additions to an appropriate wikipedia article :) The day of the week thing isn't the same sort of project though (watching for changes and responding). Sounds like it might be a job for AWB or similar. Pseudomonas_(talk) 12:20, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh I am sorry! I hadn't realized exactly what it was in that case. I assumed that it wouldn't be for this bot but it was just an idea. :). Maybe this bot could be like the ClueBot, in which it has a list of the types of reasonable changes, and when one violates the list it changes it, however this would have to be easily undone by members if needed, and thereafter have it not rechanged. would that work? --Talk to Stealth500 (talk) 12:42, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(copied from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Days of the year)

1. Will it just do Births and Deaths, or can it do Events, Holidays and observances and External links too?
2. Can it detect entries where the name links to another person's article? I don't mean disambiguation, but often editors will add their friend John Smith born January 29, 1992.
3. Can it detect an event that doesn't link to an article that includes the specific date?
4. Can it remove all future events?
5. Can it detect entries that link to pages that are tagged for speedy deletion?
6. Can it detect changes to the established template? By that I mean new headings, comment changes/deletions, linked templates.
7. Can it detect certain key terms (Girl, Boy, Pimp, Legend, Hero, Icon, Citizen, Average, Random, Cool, Great guy, Amazing, Beautiful, Special, Sexiest, Hottest, and the interestingly common Badass)?
8. Can it detect completely unlinked entries?
9. Would it conflict with other bots like ClueBot on vandalism?

-- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 16:46, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• I'd like to stick to Births and Deaths for now; it'd be much harder to detect what good or bad events should look like, and they attract many fewer bad edits anyway.
• I think linking to the wrong article can be in part detected by checking the year (or date?) is present in the article in question; this will also cover good-faith links to disambiguation pages and similar. I'm wary of reverting on this basis; it might be better to just warn the editor that they've linked to a page that doesn't have the date in it.
• Removing future events - future births and deaths should almost certainly be removed (since I can't think of any possible way they'd be relevant). Future events I'm loath to remove - a) I want to stick to B&D, and b) there are rare cases they belong.
• It can check that all the sections are there OK; if there are other features that should be checked for it could do that, but I don't want feature creep for the time being.
• I'm not going to guess at terms that are suspicious at the moment; too much risk of reverting otherwise-good entries. Most of the bad entries are redlinks and should get caught that way.
• Completely unlinked entries: yes, it can detect them
• ClueBot probably won't be concerned with most of the edits that PseudoBot is concerned with, and I'm sure (I hope) that ClueBot's maintainer won't take the existence of PseudoBot as a slight! ;-) Pseudomonas_(talk) 19:20, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is this progressing? What's the status? -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 01:55, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Waiting for approval to run a trial, pretty much. Is that how things work? Pseudomonas_(talk) 07:08, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sure is, I would support a short trial for this bot (I'm not allowed to approve trials, sorry! :( ) SQL^{Query me!} 20:48, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Seems good, so Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. And, no, I don't take the existence of PseudoBot as a slight at all :) -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 08:39, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I'm away/busy for a bit, so I'll get this started when I'm free to give it the attention it needs, in a fortnight or so. Just so I don't make a fool of myself, are there any special guidelines that apply for these trials? Pseudomonas_(talk) 10:06, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just go make the requested number of edits ;) --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 12:47, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Any progress with this request? — Werdna talk 08:19, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

((BotExpired)) --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹoɟʇs(st47) 12:07, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

De-expired on user request. SQL^{Query me!} 01:22, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My previous request here expired (due to me being distracted with various non-WP stuff). I can't quite work out whether the proper procedure is to reactivate this application; I hope this is the right place. In any case, I've now got the bot ready to go (so far as I can tell), so there shouldn't be the same delay again. Pseudomonas_(talk) 19:56, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, I'll re-open it for you, and place it back on the main page, thanks! SQL^{Query me!} 01:21, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I've started running it, under close supervision... Pseudomonas_(talk) 08:56, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The 50 reversion/warning pairs have been made by User:PseudoBot. It was set to run very conservatively (no reverts-to-self, only one revert per editor, only IPs or non-autoconfirmed editors to be reverted, don't revert for links to pages that don't mention the year.) I don't think it made any unwarranted reversions, though one or two cases I couldn't tell if they were vandalism or typos. Pseudomonas_(talk) 23:39, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that most of the bot edits were appropriate except for a few. This one added an entry back that was properly removed (wrong date). This one was a typo, but I would have removed it too. This one was a valid interwiki link. I would suggest not setting it to revert removals (other bots will revert large removals). It seems to have done a great job of removing vanity entries. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 23:54, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for going through them for me! I'll look into the reversion of removals - it's not meant to be doing that! Pseudomonas_(talk) 00:01, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've tracked down the problem; some articles had entries that the bot considered bad, and it just reverted the first edit it saw to those articles, regardless of whether the bad entry was introduced then or previously. I'll try and fix it tomorrow. Pseudomonas_(talk) 00:42, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I believe I've fixed it, but time will tell. Pseudomonas_(talk) 12:36, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could you do me a huge favor, and run it for another 100 edits, to make sure the bugs are worked out? SQL^{Query me!} 19:37, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly. Pseudomonas_(talk) 20:00, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done. 07:19, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks great. I can finally retire! -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 18:08, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Mufka,  Approved. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹoɟʇs(st47) 23:17, 22 April 2008 (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.