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: –xeno (talk)

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic (supervised)

Programming Language(s): AWB

Function Overview: Find and replace jobs

Edit period(s): Occasionally (when consensus exists for a job)

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

Function Details: A recent AN thread (permlink) uncovered an editor who had been adding the line "Based on the article in the French Wikipedia." to articles on French communes. This runs afoul of WP:SELFREF & WP:RS (and wasn't even always an accurate statement) and consensus developed to remove the line en masse. I had started doing this with my alternate account and I just realized there are over 21,000 instances remaining, so I would like to complete it with my bot. Note that my bot's tasks 2, 3 and 4 already involve some manner of find & replace.

Discussion[edit]

• I could run it with general fixes on to maximize the utility of the edits, if automated bots are allowed to apply general fixes. –xeno (talk) 02:25, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  I think general fixes are permitted in conjunction with the primary task, as long as you are willing to revert any mistakes made. How are you planning to supervise 21,000 edits? Wronkiew (talk) 05:11, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  By supervised, I mean that it would only run when I was around to babysit it; I would also do spot checks on the edits to ensure that no errors in the find/replace logic pop up. –xeno (talk) 12:38, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Any chance of false positives? Are there times when "Based on an article from the French Wikipedia" would be a valid reference to have? – Quadell ^(talk) 13:11, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  Doubtful, as wikipedia/wikis in general are not considered reliable sources; nevertheless, the bot is looking for a very specific formatting -

  ''Based on the article in the French Wikipedia''

  so even if an article were to have a line such as "Jimmy Wales commented that many scholars built upon knowledge based on an article in the French Wikipedia", the find/replace logic I am using would not match it. This particular task looks for a very specific line which, to my knowledge, has only been inserted only by one user. –xeno (talk) 14:45, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

 Approved. You've essentially already run a trial. I checked the edits, and they look great. – Quadell ^(talk) 17:56, 13 April 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.