Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot 35

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.

SmackBot 35

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Operator: Rich Farmbrough (talk · contribs)

Automatic or Manually assisted: Automatic

Programming language(s): Perl/AWB

Source code available: AWB/Perl no.

Function overview: Canonicalise clean up tags to enable dating

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): N/A

Edit period(s): Continuousish

Estimated number of pages affected: 0 - this will only be done on pages already being edited.

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): N

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

Function details: For some, most or all maintenance tags (templates) on the page the following will be done:

1. removal replacement and reduction of leading, inter token and trailing spaces and underscores to the minimum number of spaces required.
2. removal of leading :, msg:, template: Template: Msg:
3. Replacement of some all or any template names listed on the what links here (redirects only) page by the template name as shown at the top of the page
4. Replacement of a large variety of mis-spellings of "date", together with known aliases of date that are not parameters of the templates
5. Replacement of a large variety of mis-spellings, abbreviations and translations of month names within the date parameter
6. Replacement of a modest variety of mis-formattings, abbreviations of years within the date parameter
7. Removal of un-desirable date components (time, day of week, day number time-zone etc)
8. Rearrangement of components into monthname 4-digit-year
9. Removal of duplicate date parameters
10. Removal of certain cruft, vandalism and errors from date parameters
11. De-substituting of the template
12. Replacement of invalid dates with the current date

For clarity maintenance tags excludes infoboxes, cite templates, navboxes, succession boxes, interwiki sister links (commons, wikitionary, wikisources etc.), portal boxes, convert, language, mark-up and formatting templates: to these only the rule 2 above will be applied.

In addition:

1. Mis-spellings of Subst:, use of various DATE/Date templates, substituting of templates such as "fact now", removal or corrections of copy-pastes from template documentation which break the intended syntax and other multifarious, nefarious and toothfarious errors.
2. Special re-arrangement and re-formatting where required of dated maintenance templates that do not use a date= parameter
3. Certain limited conversions between section versions of templates and templates with a section (list, table...) parameter
4. Certain limited conversions between non-stub and stub versions of cleanup templates.
5. Certain limited conversions between BLP and non BLP versions of templates.
6. AWB's General Fixes, excluding reference ordering, and with limited orphan tagging.
7. Replacement of Subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME and Subst:CURRENTYEAR with the build month and year of the ruleset (rules are generally built several times a month, and certainly for each new month) to overcome T4700.

Discussion

To do its dating task properly SmackBot has evolved many additional rules over and above simply inserting "|date=October 2010" inside templates. The importance of these rules cannot be overstated, and indeed many of them have become part of AWB general fixes, whether by knowledge sharing or independently. It is also the case that many minor fixes that are not essential to dating templates have been added, in order to get the most value out of each edit. By and large these fixes, trivial individually though they are, seem to appreciated by the community, or at least non-contentious. Nonetheless a change on 6th of September resulted in some high WikiDrama a few weeks later which readers may be familiar with. For this reason, and because drama knows no reason, nor yet bounds, I have pulled all SmackBot's custom find and replace rules, and fallen back to running on Full General Fixes (less reference ordering) alone, while I BRFA the more useful rules back. Since there are over 5000 rules, BAGGERs may be alarumned, especially if they are also reviewing Femto Bot 4. Have no fear! The urgent set are covered in this BRFA, the bulk of the rest should be in one additional batch: I will then review what is left.

As I said The importance of these rules cannot be overstated : the proof of the pudding is that without them 85% of pages requiring dating of tags fail to be dated. A rapid approval of this BRFA would be appreciated, whilst I am aware there is a lot here, I hope none if it actually causes any problems. Rich Farmbrough, 22:14, 6 October 2010 (UTC).

Detailed explanation to Fram

It is unclear to me what you intend to do here. If the purpose is to correct incorrect "date" parameters, then that seems fine. If this bot will also change e.g. "unsourced|date=October 2010" to "Unreferenced|date=October 2010", then I don't see the benefit of this at all. Could you clarify whether this bot will only change tagsthat are currently not working or not dated, or if it will change all templates that are using a redirect instead of the actual template name? Fram (talk) 10:10, 7 October 2010 (UTC) Yes it will change all templates that are using redirects to maintenance templates. Bearing in mind also that this will only apply to pages it is already visiting (i.e. the down-side is diff noise not watchlist noise) it has the following benefits: The rulebase scales in number of rules more like O(t) instead of O(t2) Some templates were specifically moved because the old name was considered unsatisfactory (Fact -> Citation needed for example) to use in wiki-code. This resolves that issue. Some redirects are typo catchers. This resolves that issue. Some redirects are cryptic shortcuts (wfy, cn, dl, uncat, unref, EB, VC, VS spring to mind). This resolves that issue. People learn templates through seeing them in source - if they "only" have 570 cleanup templates to see, rather than 2000 this makes learning about them easier. ...the one I forgot... Oh yes, it helps free up redirects, which are sometimes re-purposed. Rich Farmbrough, 12:14, 7 October 2010 (UTC). So if two templates are merged (e.g. Template:Unreferenced stub to Template:Unreferenced, your bot will, while doing other stuff, change the former to the latter, making an undo of the merge so much harder (if consensus changes and a separate template seems again better)? Will it also change Unref to Unreferenced, even though Unref is explcitly given as a shortcut to Unreferenced on the documentation of that page? Peobably it will, since you consider "unref" a "cryptic shortcut". What's the point in eventually changing the 2600 redirects from Onesource to One source? Basically, you may be right about point 1, although it seems highly improbable that the difference would be that huge (assuming only 100 templates, this would mean that every template has on average 100 redirects?). But these rules would only be simplified once all variations are removed and no new ones can be created, i.e. after these redirects are deleted or otherwise invalidated. Is that your aim? Point 2 and 3 are good reasons to do this task for those templates, not in general. Point 4 would need a list of what are "cryptic" shortcuts, and which aren't (unref isn't cryptic). Point 5, however, is the complete opposite of what you state. People don't have to remember whether it is "One Source" or "Onesource", whether it is "Unsourced" or "Unreferenced", etcetera. For editors, the more choice in whatever spelling variation they want to use, the easier it becomes. So, yes, apart from obvious misspellings and truly, generally unwanted redirects, I would oppose the changing of templates as having little to no benefits, while making it harder to find what Smackbot ahs actually changed on a page. Fram (talk) 13:30, 7 October 2010 (UTC) Seeing as I created {{Unreferenced stub}} that was merged, I feel qualified to answer this: demerging is trivial and indeed the bot specifically has the ability to switch between the two templates based on the stubbiness of the article. And if someone should want to be awkward and start putting {{R with possibilities}} on template redirects, then provided they let me know I can build in logic to deal with that. You say "unref" isn't cryptic - since I created the short cut documentation, let me state that I don't suppose it is widely read: in the 12 days since I wrote it it has been viewed 38 times, at least 4 of those were me, so at least 13,000,000 editors haven't seen that documentation. Big O notation is a growth characterising function, not an exact formula, its saying that the number increases faster than t and less than t cubed - in fact faster than t1.999 and less than t2.001: as time goes by the number of templates increase, and the numbers of redirects to them increase. So suppose 10 are added every month, and 1 redirect per template, at time t (in months) there would be something like C.10.t.t/2 rules (where C is a constant multiplier based on the number of rules per template - in the current case 2) - this is effectively a triangle formula, after 10 months you would have 100 templates some of which would have 10 redirects, some only 1. But it still goes with the square of time passed. And indeed we can see this in effect, older templates (up to eight years old, I would say) may have 20 to 30 redirects, younger ones one or none. And delightful though the idea that one can type any combination and hit a redirect is, while {{One source}} and {{Onesource}} exist, {{One Source}} {{One-source}} {{1 source}} etc. don't. Thinking you can simply create the extra redirects underestimates the combinatorial explosion. The actual redirects for {{Unreferenced}} some time ago were documented as: {{Citesource}} {{Citesources}} {{Cite source}} {{Cite sources}} {{Noref}} {{Norefs}} {{No ref}} {{No refs}} {{Noreference}} {{Noreferences}} {{No reference}} {{No references}} {{Nr}} {{Refneeded}} {{Refsneeded}} {{Ref needed}} {{Refs needed}} {{Reference needed}} {{References needed}} {{Uncited-article}} {{Unref}} {{Unreferenced}} {{Unrefarticle}} {{Unreferenced article}} {{Unreferenced stub}} {{Unsourced}} {{Unverified}} The following templates previously redirected to {{Unreferenced}}, but have been changed: {{Nosource}}, {{Nosources}}, {{No source}} and {{No sources}} (both now redirect to {{Di-no source}}) This was actually out of date even then, including both false positives excluding real redirects: however a glance will show that this is a very incomplete set. Some possible redirects /massive list of highly improbable redirects Here are some possibilities. Rich Farmbrough, 16:12, 7 October 2010 (UTC). So no changing templates to template redirects and such? [2] No more capitalizing every template on the page? [3] –xenotalk 12:58, 7 October 2010 (UTC) Correct, this BRFA does not include any templates => template redirects (unless the templates are moved really fast). And the example you give does not capitalise the cite template - but I understand that people may have got that impression. Rich Farmbrough, 16:12, 7 October 2010 (UTC). I'm asking about all other templates, not just cite templates. –xenotalk 16:21, 7 October 2010 (UTC) Correct, unless the changes fall in the scope of other BRFAs - "For some, most or all maintenance tags (templates) on the page the following will be done" . "For clarity maintenance tags excludes infoboxes, cite templates, navboxes, succession boxes, interwiki sister links (commons, wikitionary, wikisources etc.), portal boxes, convert, language, mark-up and formatting templates". Rich Farmbrough, 16:40, 7 October 2010 (UTC). I'm not really interested in further discussing this with someone who thinks that bloating this page up to 163Kb by adding a massive list of highly improbable redirects to the discussion is in any way helpful. If you want to forbid redirects to templates, start a proper discussion about that at the appropriate place. Until then, you haven't convinced me of the benefit of this bot task as described, and I oppose it. Fram (talk) 20:26, 7 October 2010 (UTC) But quite interested in suggesting bloating SmackBot's rulebase by multiple megabytes? And no I don't want to forbid redirects to templates, fairly clearly that is an absurd suggestion. And your opposition is noted, together with your lack of any cogent reason. Rich Farmbrough, 06:55, 8 October 2010 (UTC). As long as these redirects exist, rules for finding (and changing) them would still be needed. Forgive me my non-programming explanation, but it can't be harder to write a rule that says "If X redirects to template Y, do for X whatever you would do for template Y" than to write a rule that says "If X redirects to template Y, change X to Y". It takes the exact same check. Fram (talk) 07:40, 8 October 2010 (UTC) That is very astute, and it does appear that way. If all that was required was, let us say t1 => t3; t2 => t3; t3 => t3 dated; Then the advantage to the rulebase is small (and certainly not guaranteed to be one of size) compared to t1 => t1 dated; t2 => t2 dated; t3 => t3 dated; However the distinction is more like t1 => t3; t2 => t3; t3 => t3 dated; t3 Spetember => t3 September t3 octember => t3 October t3 fate => t3 date compared with t1 => t1 dated; t1 Spetember => t1 September t1 octember => t1 October t1 fate => t1 date t2 => t2 dated; t2 Spetember => t2 September t2 octember => t2 October t2 fate => t2 date t3 => t3 dated; t3 Spetember => t3 September t3 octember => t3 October t3 fate => t3 date It's a little more complicated than that, and in some ways not as bad, and in other ways worse than the example, but the principle is sound. Rich Farmbrough, 09:29, 8 October 2010 (UTC). I know you are giving the above as examples, not actual code language, so I'm not trying to nitpick, but I have the feeling that your final, most "realistic" example, is flawed. If we start from the point of view that whether it is T1, T2 or T3 is irrelevant, then your rules (or at least a number of them) aren't multiplied by the number of redirects. "Spetember" can always be changed into "September", no matter what the template. And assuming tht you can't lookup the redirecst at runtime but use a fixed list of redirect and template names, can't you use a variable? Every time you encounter a template name, check it with your hardcoded list, and if it is a template that is in the scope of the bottask, fill $template$ with the templatename? Then you have to write the rules only once, like "$template$ fate -> $template$ date", and it doesn't matter if you have one or 5000 templates and redirects to them. Obviously the actual syntax will be completely different, but any decent programming language permits a similar use of variables for such tasks. Fram (talk) 09:58, 8 October 2010 (UTC) An author, yesterday Yes, that's why I say it is a little more complicated. You are quite right to say that "date = spetember YYYY" => "date = September YYYY" is a pretty safe change (except on this page), but both "Spetember" and "Octember" in other places can be correct. ((See the image name to the right.) A rule for date changing might look like this: <Replacement> <Find>{{(1911 POV|Abbreviations|Advert|Afd-merge from|Afd-merge to|Album ratings prose|All plot|Ambiguous link|American English|ASF|Attribution needed|Australian English|Better source|Biased|Bible primary|Bio-coatrack|Bio-context|Bio-notability|BLP IMDB-only refimprove|BLP IMDB refimprove|BLP sources|BLP unsourced|BLP unsourced section|Booster|British English|British English Oxford spelling|By whom|Canadian English|Capitalization|Cat improve|Categorisation of people disputed|Catholic-cleanup|Chemformula|Chemical-importance|Circular-ref|Citation broken|Citation needed|Citation needed - Kent|Citation needed \(lead\)|Citation style|Citations broken|Citations missing|Cite-section|Cite check|Cite plot points|Cite quote|Clarify|Clarify-section|Cleanup|Cleanup-afd|Cleanup-article|Cleanup-because|Cleanup-book|Cleanup-chartable|Cleanup-comics|Cleanup-images|Cleanup-jargon|Cleanup-laundry|Cleanup-link rot|Cleanup-list|Cleanup-reason|Cleanup-remainder|Cleanup-reorganize|Cleanup-rewrite|Cleanup-school|Cleanup-section|Cleanup-spam|Cleanup-table|Cleanup-tracklist|Cleanup-university|Cleanup FJ biography|Cleanup split|Close paraphrase|Close paraphrasing|Coat rack|COI|COI-check|COI source|Colloquial|Comics-in-universe|Common sense|Company-importance|Concerttourdates|Condense|Conflated|Confusing|Confusing section|Contact information|Content|Context|Context-inline|Contradict|Contradict-inline|Contradict-other|Contradict-other-multiple|Contradiction-inline|Copy edit|Copy edit-section|Copy to Wikimedia Commons|Copypaste|Cr odc table footer|Cr table footer|Create-list|Criticism|Criticism section|Criticism title|Crystal|Current|Current-related|Current-section|Current disaster|Current election|Current person|Current related|Current section|Current spaceflight|Current sport|Dead end|Dead link|Dead link header|Dead links|Dead reference|Definition|Disambig-cleanup|Disputeabout|Disputed|Disputed-category|Disputed-inline|Disputed-list|Disputed-section|Disputed chem|Disputed diagram|Disputed title|Dubious|Editorial|Editorializing|Editorializing\?|Elucidate|Empty section|Episode|Essay|Essay-like|Essay-opinion|Example farm|Examples|Expand|Expand Afrikaans|Expand Albanian|Expand Alemannic|Expand Arabic|Expand Aragonese|Expand Asturian|Expand Azerbaijani|Expand Basque|Expand Bavarian|Expand Belarusian|Expand Belarusian \(Tarashkevitsa\)|Expand Bengali|Expand Bishnupriya Manipuri|Expand Bosnian|Expand Breton|Expand Bulgarian|Expand Cantonese|Expand Catalan|Expand Cebuano|Expand Chinese|Expand Corsican|Expand Crimean Tatar|Expand Croatian|Expand Czech|Expand Danish|Expand Dutch|Expand Egyptian Arabic|Expand Esperanto|Expand Estonian|Expand Faroese|Expand Finnish|Expand French|Expand Frisian|Expand Galician|Expand Georgian|Expand German|Expand Greek|Expand Haitian Creole|Expand Hebrew|Expand Hindi|Expand Hungarian|Expand Icelandic|Expand Ido|Expand Indonesian|Expand Italian|Expand Japanese|Expand Javanese|Expand Kannadaa|Expand Kazakh|Expand Khmer|Expand Korean|Expand Kurdish|Expand language|Expand language|Expand Latin|Expand Latvian|Expand list|Expand Lithuanian|Expand Luxembourgish|Expand Macedonian|Expand Malay|Expand Maltese|Expand Marathi|Expand Neapolitan|Expand Norwegian|Expand Norwegian \(Nynorsk\)|Expand Papiamento|Expand Persian|Expand Polish|Expand Portuguese|Expand Quechua|Expand Romanian|Expand Russian|Expand Samogitian|Expand Sardinian|Expand section|Expand Serbian|Expand Serbo-Croatian|Expand Sicilian|Expand Sinhalese|Expand Slovak|Expand Slovene|Expand Slovenian|Expand Spanish|Expand Swedish|Expand Tagalog|Expand Tamil|Expand Tatar|Expand Telugu|Expand Thai|Expand Tongan|Expand Turkish|Expand Ukrainian|Expand Urdu|Expand Uzbek|Expand Vietnamese|Expand Walloon|Expand Welsh|Expert|Expert-portal|Expert-subject|Expert-subject-multiple|Expert-verify|External links|Fact2|Facts|Failed verification|Fanpov|Fansite|Fb cl footer|Fb cm footer|Fb cs footer|Fb cs footer|Fb disc footer|Fb event|Fb in footer|Fb injured|Fb kit footer|Fb lo footer|Fb match|Fb match footer|Fb match221 footer|Fb mfs footer|Fb oi footer|Fb out footer|Fb out2 footer|Fb ps footer|Fb r footer|Fb rbr footer|Fb rbr pos footer|Fb rs footer|Fb sf footer|Fb si footer|Fb si4 footer|Fb ss footer|Fb ss2 footer|Fb ssx footer|Fb unavailable|Fbc rbr pos footer|Fct|Fiction|Fix-inline|Formula missing descriptions|Further reading cleanup|Game guide|Gamecleanup|Generalize|Generalize-section|Geo-orphan|Globalize|Globalize/Australia|Globalize/Belgium|Globalize/Canada|Globalize/China|Globalize/Common law|Globalize/Eng|Globalize/EU and USA|Globalize/Europe|Globalize/France|Globalize/Germany|Globalize/Greece|Globalize/India|Globalize/Netherlands|Globalize/North America|Globalize/Northern|Globalize/Pakistan|Globalize/Russia|Globalize/Southern|Globalize/UK|Globalize/UK and Canada|Globalize/USA|Globalize/West|Hiberno-English|How to|Howto|Ibid|Imagefact|Images needed|Importance-section|In-universe|In-universe/Anime and manga|In-universe/Comics|In-universe/Discworld|In-universe/Dungeons & Dragons|In-universe/Film|In-universe/Literature|In-universe/Sopranos|In-universe/Star Trek|In-universe/Star Wars|In-universe/Television|In-universe/Three Kingdoms|In-universe/Tolkien|In-universe/Transformers|In-universe/Video game|In-universe/Warhammer|In-universe/Warhammer 40,000|In popular culture|Inappropriate person|Inappropriate title|Inappropriate tone|Incoherent|Incomplete|Incomplete table|Indian cinema under construction|Indian English|Infobox German state|Infobox OS version|Infobox Russian district|Infobox Russian federal subject2|Infobox Russian inhabited locality|Inline relevance|Internal links|ISBN|Issue|Law unref|Lead missing|Lead rewrite|Lead section|Lead too long|Lead too short|Like resume|Linkage|List fact|List years|Listtable|Locate me|Locate me long|Lonely|Longish|Lopsided|Magazine|Manual|ME-fact|ME-importance|MEDRS|Merge|Merge disputed|Merge FJC|Merge from|Merge JRRT|Merge school|Merge to|Merging|Merging from|Missing|Missing information|Missing information|Missing information non-contentious|Mission|More footnotes|MOS|Move portions|Move portions|Move portions from|Move section|MTG pth footer|Multiple issues|Music-importance|MW 1935|Need consensus|Needs table|New|New unreviewed article|New Zealand English|News release|NO definition|No footnotes|No geolocation|Nonspecific|Not verified|Notability|NPOV language|Obituary|Off-topic|Off-topic\?|Oldfact|One source|Opinion|Or|Original research|Original research-section|Orphan|Out of date|Over detailed|Page needed|Page numbers improve|Page numbers needed|Pakistani English|PD-self|Pd-user|Peacock|Peacock term|Plot|Poor Enlgish|POV|POV-check|POV-check-section|POV-lead|POV-map|POV-section|POV-statement|POV-title|POV-title-section|POV assertion|Primary source claim|Primary sources|Pro and con list|Prose|Prune|Puffery|Quantify|Quote farm|Recent death|Recentism|Recently revised|Ref improve section|Reference necessary|References necessary|Refimprove|Religion primary|Religious text primary|Repetition|Request quotation|Review|Rewrite|Rs|Says who|Science review|Scottish English|Season needed|Section OR|Sections|SectOR|Self|Self-citation|Self-published|Self-published inline|South African English|Spacing|Spam link|Specific|Specify|Split|Split-apart|Split dab|Split section|Split sections|Split2|Story|Sub-sections|Summarize|Summary style|Syn|Synthesis|Systemic bias|Technical|Technical \(expert\)|Term paper|Textbook|Time-context|Tone-inline|Too abstract|Too few opinions|Too long|Too many categories|Too many links|Transreq|Travel guide|Trivia|Unbalanced|Unbalanced section|Uncategorized|Uncategorized stub|Uncited-article|Unclear date|Unclear section|Undue|Undue-inline|Undue-section|Unencyclopedic|Unlinked references|Unreferenced|Unreferenced Kent|Unreferenced section|UnreferencedMED|Unreliable sources|Unsorted|Update|Update|Use British \(Oxford\) English|Use British English|Use dmy dates|Use mdy dates|Use ymd dates|Userfy|Userspace draft|USgovtPOV|Vague|Verbose|Verifiability|Verify credibility|Verify source|Verify spelling|Very long|Views needing attribution|Volume needed|Weasel|Weasel-inline|Weasel section|Weather box|When|Where is it|Which\?|Who|Whom\?|Why\?|Wikify|Wikify section|WW|Year missing|Year needed|You)\|((?:[^\|}]*\|)*)[\s']*(?:(?:1|time|cite|mnth|monrth|month|since|from|fact|ate|dat|dated|da[rfghy65]e|d[qwszx\\]te|[a-z]ate|dat[3qwsdfr4e]|d+a+t+e+|dates|daue|dated|dater|dste|dat|data|dae|dtae|daet|daete|daste|datae|dte|dtea|datq|edate|datek)\s*)*-*=*\s*"*\s*(?:(?:|\d|\d\d)*\s*(?:201|1+)(?:0)(?:-|,|=)10*(?:[^\d])|\d\d\d\d(?:-\d\d)*)\s*(\||})</Find> <Replace>{{$1|$2date=October 2010$3</Replace> <Comment>fix nn nnnnn Year specific:Any ISO date or just year to current</Comment> <IsRegex>true</IsRegex> <Enabled>true</Enabled> <Minor>false</Minor> <RegularExpressionOptions>IgnoreCase</RegularExpressionOptions> </Replacement> (AWB is programmed with regular expressions, primarily.) So extending the list means more searching, potentially a lot more. If someone were to systematically start creating "reasonable" redirects it would be more still. With the current model I hit each redirect once with a rule like: <Replacement> <Find>{{\s*(Citation[ _]+needed|Facts|Citeneeded|Citationneeded|Cite[ _]+needed|Cite-needed|Citation[ _]+required|Uncited|Cn|Needs[ _]+citation|Reference[ _]+needed|Citation-needed|An|Sourceme|OS[ _]+cite[ _]+needed|Refneeded|Source[ _]+needed|Citation[ _]+missing|FACT|Cite[ _]+missing|Citation[ _]+Needed|Proveit|CN|Source\?|Fact|Refplease|Needcite|Cite[ _]+ref[ _]+pls|Needsref|Ref\?|Citationeeded|Are[ _]+you[ _]+sure\?|Citesource|Cite[ _]+source) *([\|}\n])</Find> <Replace>{{Citation needed$2</Replace> <Comment /> <IsRegex>true</IsRegex> <Enabled>true</Enabled> <Minor>false</Minor> <RegularExpressionOptions>IgnoreCase</RegularExpressionOptions> </Replacement> and then pick off the dating with a simple rule: <Replacement> <Find>{{(Citation[ _]+needed)((?:\|\s*(?:(?:text|reason|category|discuss|topic|1)\s*=[^\|{}]*|[^\|{}=]*))*)}}</Find> <Replace>{{$1$2|date=October 2010}}</Replace> <Comment /> <IsRegex>true</IsRegex> <Enabled>true</Enabled> <RegularExpressionOptions>IgnoreCase</RegularExpressionOptions> </Replacement> Followed up by some general "all dated clean-up templates" rules, and a few other like replacing "Sybst:" with "Subst:". This is the real nuts and blots stuff though. Rich Farmbrough, 14:42, 8 October 2010 (UTC). But why can't you combine the last two ones into one? Find 'list of partial strings' as $1, replace $1 with $1|date=october 2010? You need the first list anyway, to replace it with the single template, so I don't see what the gain is that you get by first searching and replacing the template, and then searching and replacing the date, when you can do (putting it simplified) the second replace while using the first search? Fram (talk) 14:59, 8 October 2010 (UTC) The goal is clarity and simplicity. These two rules are very simple (And could both be simplified a little more, the second now, the first subject to a BRFA to blanket remove surplus spaces from templates - something I might once have just added - 'cos really who is so anal as to object to "Infobox album" being replaced with "Infobox album"? Well there will be someone!) and suit almost all clean-up templates. However they do not suit some: for example (off the top of my head) As of and Multiple issues - these can use the same rule 1 and a different rule or rules for the rest of the process. I hope that clarifies that "Dating maintenance templates (and/or general fixes)" is not just a question of throwing a few regexes into AWB and hitting "go" (although it was when it started - even before that it was ctrl tab, alt e, F3, select, ctrl v, alt s (back before the key bindings were stolen by Firefox)), but a complex interplay between social interactions, templates, categories (I have created thousands of categories to support the scheme, as well as the auto-templating for the categories, the progress boxes, coding the categorization mechanism, rewriting whole or part almost all the clean up templates), hierarchies, tables, images, regular expressions, software engineering, perl, screen scraping, the API, HTML (even forced into C#) etc. etc.. It is all thought about, carefully, deeply and I hope clearly, and while there are considerable areas for improvement (like autodetecting duplicate templates) the basic structure is sound. Also the "complex" part of the ruleset (and other little tweaks), as I call it, is not created based on some theoretical idea, but on what people actually do. For example people write "subst:2010" - I created a template that makes that work. People write "date = =", SmackBot deals with it - they use ~~~~~ in the date field, they write "date=date", "date = today", and of course "date = insert image" and "date = Josh is ghey". And everything it doesn't deal with I fix manually (some 400 articles in September) because no-one else has any way of knowing that these are problems (unless I add a "pages SmackBot can't fix" template...). Rich Farmbrough, 15:32, 8 October 2010 (UTC). I hope I'm speaking on a relevant issue when I say this, because I'm jumping into the discussion late, but I, for one, am delighted to have SmackBot cut out a template redirect while it happens to be dating a maintenance template or doing everything else that it does. Besides convenience when adding a template to a page, and the aid to navigation function that redirects serve regardless of namespace, what other purpose do template redirects serve that they need to be preserved instead of made uniform? Meanwhile, uniformity increases recognition. I know on sight what {{unreferenced}} produces when I'm studying the code of a page, but I can't possibly memorize the dozens of redirects as being to that template, and why should I have to? It may not be pursuant to a guideline to do this, but it's good for the encyclopedia. --Bsherr (talk) 18:50, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Trial run

How about a 20,000 trial run? Rich Farmbrough, 16:05, 8 October 2010 (UTC).
5,000? Rich Farmbrough, 20:28, 8 October 2010 (UTC).
1,000? Rich Farmbrough, 23:34, 10 October 2010 (UTC).
500? Rich Farmbrough, 19:03, 11 October 2010 (UTC).
100? Rich Farmbrough, 22:56, 11 October 2010 (UTC).
20? Rich Farmbrough, 17:50, 12 October 2010 (UTC).
5? Rich Farmbrough, 22:07, 12 October 2010 (UTC).
1? Rich Farmbrough, 14:31, 13 October 2010 (UTC).

• Approved for trial (250 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. –xeno^talk 14:40, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Excellent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rich Farmbrough (talk • contribs) 18:20, 13 October 2010

Trial complete. here Rich Farmbrough, 01:06, 14 October 2010 (UTC).

• Could you explain these edits? [4] [5] [6] [7] [8][9] [10][11] They don't appear to do anything substantive. –xeno^talk 13:10, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Yes these are similar to the edits discussed on the foot of the page. The are items in [Category:Templates with invalid dates] which are there due to the changes to the {{Cleanup}} template on the 30th September which you saw discussed on my talk page that day. You will also have seen the request to clean the category on my talk page since. They will be cleaned out by any edit or within a month or two they will expire from cache. Fortunately or unfortunately this is the first category that SmackBot tackles and exceeds the size of the trial run by a factor of two (usual backlog is 10-15 articles). Rich Farmbrough, 04:31, 22 October 2010 (UTC).
    
    • Ok, so you chose to do dummy edits instead of null edits - probably not a choice I would have made, and probably not something you should have rolled into this trial which is supposed to cover the bot's normal operations. I don't think that approval should be granted to change the first-letter capitalization of templates when consensus does not exist for a "Ucfirst" schema - they should just be left as-is. –xeno^talk 13:44, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
      • Hm. Did you miss the point that no-one objects? Did you miss the point that the vast majority of cleanup templates are ucfirst, a defacto agreement? Did you miss the point that no-one objects? Rich Farmbrough, 03:20, 24 October 2010 (UTC).
        
        • Rich, the majority of cleanup templates being ucfirst is because your bot changed them to be that way. Please obtain consensus for your personal belief that templates should always be ucfirst. –xeno^talk 03:28, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
        • I read that a couple of times today, and apparently I have only imagined that several people objected to that, so let me state it here clearly:
          I now object to a bot changing capitalization of the first letter of a transcluded templates if that's all it does to that transclusion.
          Amalthea 18:04, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
          • We are talking cleanup templates here. But Amlathea's objection is the precise wording of what's needed to get this running again then someone say so. Rich Farmbrough, 04:48, 31 October 2010 (UTC).
            

Footnotes

{{BAG assistance needed}} Rich Farmbrough 23:30, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Irrelevant stuff

Discussion of trial run What's the advantage of adding a defaultsort to pages where the sorting is identical to the page title? I can't see an advantage, but it has the disadvantage that when a page gets moved to a different title, it will still be sorted at the old title, which usually is not what we want. Fram (talk) 07:16, 14 October 2010 (UTC) Example needed, please. (Although there are advantages I can dig up some good examples of that.)Rich Farmbrough, 12:04, 17 October 2010 (UTC). Oculogyric crisis. Fram (talk) 19:12, 17 October 2010 (UTC) Thank you, "Oculogyric crisis" sorts differently from "Oculogyric Crisis". Rich Farmbrough, 02:12, 20 October 2010 (UTC). Thank you for that totally non helpful answer. "Abracadabra" also sorts differently from "Oculogyric crisis". The question was what the advantage was of that defaultsort, and how it outweighs the disadvantage. Fram (talk) 06:59, 20 October 2010 (UTC) The effect of your defaultsort additions for different capitalisations is that in e.g. Category:Legal term stubs, Judicial misconduct is now incorrectly placed before "Judicial assistance", "Judicial deference", "Judicial economy", "Judicial estoppel" and "Judicial immunity". However, if you would add such a defaultsort to all these pages, the end result would again be the correct situation we had before all your changes, but with the added disadvantage of an incorrect defaultsort if any of these pages ever get moved. So: why? Fram (talk) 07:05, 20 October 2010 (UTC) I must have misunderstood something: I thought that you would only replace redirects to templates with the actual template name, but were not going to change the capitalization of templates? However, that is what you have done here. Here it is the only change you made to that page. Wasn't that one of the things the recent ANI-discussion was about? This creates a long list of diffs to plough through on some pages, for no apparent benefit, and to the annoyance of at least some editors. Fram (talk) 07:16, 14 October 2010 (UTC) Deshastha Brahmin: this is a specific for bulleted and numbered lists, I suppressed it later in the run. Mike and Angelo & Irminones: Combination of category lag, template migration and suppressing SmackBot for nearly a month. The item was in Category:Articles with invalid cleanup dates - or whatever it is called when last edited. I said on my talk page that this was going to be a problem - someone had cleverly blocked me at the time. (Of course all those who were reading my talk page had the opportunity to resolve the problem but seemed happier just opposing my unblock. <chuckle>) Anyway this should not be an ongoing problem, although if you read my FAQ you will find the reasons it can't be ruled out. Rich Farmbrough, 12:04, 17 October 2010 (UTC). I don't see why Irminones should fall under category lag or template migration. I see no reason why this should have been changed a month ago, so the suppression of Smackbot for a month shouldn't affect this either. If you can't guarantee that this won't happen again (or at least not as often as it seems to happen) I see no reason to allow this bot to run. Making unnecessary changes is bad, and if these are the only changes on a page, it's even worse. 19:12, 17 October 2010 (UTC) Irmiones was edited on 30th September, containing , as it does, {{Cleanup}} which template was changed earlier that day, it moved from Category:Articles needing cleanup from November 2008 to Category:Wikipedia articles needing cleanup from November 2008 (or possibly vice-versa) - which did not, at that point exist. This resulted in it also being in Category:Articles with invalid date parameter in template, in which it remained until SmackBot edited it. The reason that this appears to be common is that the first category SB tackles is Category:Articles with invalid date parameter in template, and there were at least several hundreds of cases like this due to the template change (which is extremely unusual - it's the first time I have not known about it in advance), although many have been fixed, and many more prevented by other noble self sacrificing agents. Rich Farmbrough, 03:31, 18 October 2010 (UTC). Which isn't a reason to update the article (never mind that the move from "articles needing cleanup" to "Wikipedia artiicles needing cleanup" was probably a bad, self-referential idea: either they are articles, or they are Wikipedia pages if other namespaces need to be included). Changing a category doesn't mean that all pages in that category need an empty update. Fram (talk) 06:17, 18 October 2010 (UTC) That's not why the article was updated. It was updated because it was in Category:Articles with invalid date parameter in template - which is a valid target category. The fact that accident and obduracy dumped a bunch of articles there that shouldn't be there is beyond my control - as demonstrated. Rich Farmbrough, 02:11, 20 October 2010 (UTC). This edit [12] was obstensibly for this trial but: The edit summary is for a different bot task The task description above says " this will only be done on pages already being edited." but there was no reason for SmackBot to edit the page. The edit summaries for bot trials must be specific to the trial, if anyone is supposed to be able to tell what is being tested! — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:31, 18 October 2010 (UTC) Actually I redacted that comment on your talk page as soon as I posted it. Rich Farmbrough, 00:01, 19 October 2010 (UTC).

{{BAG assistance needed}} Rich Farmbrough 23:37, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I think, unfortunately, that Rich sometimes attracts drama, which is of course why we are reading this BRFA in the first place. If, however, we look specifically at his ability to run this bot task, it would be a massive leap (not to mention a mistake) to render this anything other than  Approved.. - Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 17:13, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

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.