Wiktionary:Votes/bt-2009-10/User:Di gama bot for bot status

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User:Di gama bot for bot status[edit]

  • Nomination: I hereby request the Bot flag for User:Di gama bot for the following purposes:
    It is not intended for any long-term 24×7 operations, but rather for short-term "projects" involving many edits. At the moment, it is being geared up for a mass page move of sign language entries following a change in the entry name style, in accordance with the proposal at Wiktionary talk:About sign languages. The matter is not yet settled, but a change of some sort is likely and this bot is intended to do the heavy lifting.
    The job does require the ability to move pages and I don't think bots innately have that privilege, so it would need to be autoconfirmed as well. The program is not hashed out yet, but it will use a stock script of Pywikipedia in conjunction with a hand-gathered list of moves to be done. It is a short-term project, and will be monitored by me for the duration. Any future projects using this bot will be requested similarly.
    Di gama (t • c • w) 02:57, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    In retrospect, I haven't been all that clear about the nitty-gritty logistic details of the purpose of the bot, so let me clarify:
    This bot will move all sign language pages of the form xxx@yyy-zzz-XXX@YYY-ZZZ (basically the two-handed ones) to the form xxx@yyy-zzz+XXX@YYY-ZZZ (note that the center divider is a + now), for clarity, among other things: see the discussion. It will also change all such names in the text of the ASL articles including redlinked and unlinked names likewise. (The ambiguity of such a target demonstrates why I am so reticent to let the bot "run free", as it were.) The source of the group "ASL articles" is defined as the set of pages which link to Category:American Sign Language or its subcategories. A preliminary estimate of the number of links and page moves is at least 2,000 (pulled out of thin air), which demonstrates why a bot is necessary.
    To the user community, not necessarily ASL-knowledgeable:
    1. Should I target talk pages and/or user pages? There are some very large lists of terms in these namespaces, and it would make review of these pages in the future more difficult if they all use incorrect names, user-comment sanctity notwithstanding.
    2. These page moves will leave a lot of redirect residue. Should I (or more accurately, an admin) delete the redirects? This, of course, makes the answer to question 1 even more important, as redlinks are worse than redirects. Of course, I could always screen WhatLinksHere for the useless ones, but if talk pages are left alone, a majority will likely remain.
    If option 2 is chosen, I could deliver a line-break-separated list (or other format) of orphan redirects to remove. —Di gama (t • c • w) 06:22, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    How many different users would actually be affected? Have they been informed about the change and about this vote? Could this be run first on the pages of users who vote as a test? DCDuring TALK 00:41, 20 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Vote ends: 23:59 21 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Vote started: 02:57, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Support[edit]

  1. SupportRod (A. Smith) 22:24, 4 October 2009 (UTC) Manually renaming sign language entries is tedious, thankless work, so I welcome the bot that does it for us. —Rod (A. Smith) 22:24, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  2. I dislike holding a vote where what we're voting on is ambiguous (note that the "target talk pages" and "delete the redirects" issues raised above have not been addressed), but I'm voting in support anyway, inasmuch as I'd support the botting no matter the answer to those questions. That said, I think that talk pages should be targeted also (with an HTML comment indicating that the bot has changed the original text), and the redirects deleted.​—msh210 17:18, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't want anyone to feel deceived by this vote due to the issues I mentioned above. They are NOT the topic of the vote, since, as you state, there is no consensus. The vote (at this point) is to make User:Di gama bot a bot (and autoconfirmed). I don't think I will activate the bot, though, until the above two questions are agreed upon (or at least that I get a few more concurring opinions). Of course, to delete any redirects, I will need an admin regardless, and the admin would have the opportunity to consent or deny the request anyway (after all, he's the one with the big red button). —Di gama (t • c • w) 20:33, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support per Rod A. Smith and msh210. —RuakhTALK 19:24, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support I am trusting Rodasmith to do this right. DCDuring TALK 00:29, 20 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support, with the understanding that this will be implemented in the cautious manner described above. -- Visviva 07:01, 20 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  6. SupportMichael (ECUgrad96) 22:24, 4 October 2009 (UTC) I agree with Rod on this. It is FUN, but at the same time can be sometimes tedious. If a bot can speed up the efficiency, then I vote my support :) —ECUgrad96 (ECUgrad96) 22:24, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose[edit]

  1. Oppose EncycloPetey 03:11, 4 October 2009 (UTC) I oppose because the code is not yet hashed out, and the issue necessitating the bot is not settled. WT:BOT requires posting the bot's code, and prefers test edits be made prior to approval. --EncycloPetey 03:11, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually, as I approach the execution of the project, I think I won't have any custom code. Like I said, it is a one-time deal, so at this point the job would be most accurately described as a series of assisted edits. Actually, I have run a "bot" before, but the idea of sending a bot to do thousands of edits before you can verify their accuracy freaks me out, so I (at the time) set up a system whereby the bot would find potential edits and I would approve or adjust them as necessary. I think the reason behind this vote system (and rightfully so) is to prevent bots from tearing up the wiki like supervandals, but I want to stress that I don't run bots this way; as I said, I don't want to deal with a rogue bot, and certainly not my own. The only reason I am applying for a bot is because I can nevertheless make edits fast enough (even with my personal supervision) to spam RecentChanges.
    As far as the discussion which spawned the bot, I actually am not sure if consensus was reached. (I have this complaint of wiki-discussion places like wikt, namely that discussions just tend to stop without resolution if the are superseded by a new header for discussion below; they leave me unsure about the matter of discussion.) You tell me—have we reached consensus? Maybe Rod can tell me if/when he gets here. —Di gama (t • c • w) 06:22, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure we have a quorum here yet. It would be nice to get follow-up feedback from Positivesigner, Msh210, Neskaya, ECUgrad96, or anyone else, but as you say, these discussions often just peter out. —Rod (A. Smith) 17:50, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain[edit]

  • Abstain I don't know anything about sign languages, let alone our handling of them, let alone let alone technical details about the need for bots to handle a change to our handling of them. (But if Rodasmith and msh210 support, that'll be good enough for me.) —RuakhTALK 03:05, 4 October 2009 (UTC) changed to support 19:24, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Decision[edit]