Ladies and gentlemen, I thank everyone for their input on the matter. It has become apparent to me throughout the course of this discussion that yes, talk pages of redirected articles are important. There are instances where articles have been redirected, and the talk page should have been redirected along with it (but wasn't), but a bot isn't qualified to make that distinction. With that, I have decided to discontinue ListasBot 3.
Again, I thank everyone who participated in this discussion for their input.
Regards, Matt ( talk) 08:29, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
![]() | This is a centralized forum for providing input on whether or not the
bot
ListasBot 3 should continue operating as is, make changes to the way it operates, or stop operating completely. |
ListasBot 3 is an approved bot, whose function is to identify talk pages that were orphaned when their corresponding articles were turned into redirects, and to replace those talk pages with a redirect to the new article's talk page. In other words, if article A was redirected to article B, but Talk:A was left alone, the bot would replace Talk:A with a redirect to Talk:B. Or, if Talk:B does not exist, the bot moves Talk:A to Talk:B. Since the bot usually works with biography-related talk pages (e.g., Category:Biography articles without listas parameter is where it spends most of its time), those are the ones that will usually be most affected.
The bot also looks at the contents of the talk page, before replacing it with a redirect. If there is anything more than templates (including WikiProject banners) on the page, the contents of the page are logged to User:ListasBot/old talk pages, so that a human can review them, and decide whether the content is truly significant. In the past, I have done the following:
There were a couple of reasons for writing this bot:
However, another editor has brought up that this behavior may not be desirable, and indicated that there are WikiProjects that keep track of their redirects, and that my bot is destroying the mechanisms that those WikiProjects are using to keep track of their redirects. I have tried to request input from other editors on the matter, but so far I have failed to get any significant input on the matter. So, with that, I am requesting input from everyone that feels they may be affected by this decision.
Questions that need to be answered in this discussion are:
This discussion will run until 11:59PM GMT 11 June 2009.
Hello. I have just noticed your bot's function 3 ( Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ListasBot 3) and I have a few concerns about it. Firstly, a fair number of WikiProjects actively keep track of redirects within their scope by marking them as Redirect-Class. By redirecting the talk page, you are destroying this information which may be useful to the project. Secondly I just wonder at the usefulness of this function - is anyone likely to type the name of the talk page into the search bar? Personally I have never done this and I would always want "Talk" to take me to the talk page of the page I am looking at. Have you had any other comments about this? I don't know if your bot is still doing this operation, but if so, perhaps you would consider stopping and discussing this a bit more? Best wishes, — Martin ( MSGJ · talk) 14:38, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Hi Martin,
The reason for this particular bot function in the first place was that one of my bot's other functions was looking at the article page and trying to find a sort tag on there, but was instead being redirected somewhere else and grabbing a sort tag off of another article. This isn't quite such a good idea when, for instance, you have Funky Green Dogs redirecting to Murk (band). I've also seen other bots tagging redirect talk pages with new banners, effectively destroying the redirect in the process. I personally don't see much point in keeping these pages, as they don't seem to be looked at other than by bots. However, it was brought up at the BRfA that there could be some useful content on the talk page, so the bot is designed such that if it detects anything other than templates and whitespace on the page, it will post the talk page's former contents to User:ListasBot/old talk pages, so that someone can review them. I've gone through there regularly and done merges, page moves (where either 1. I ask for the new talk page to be deleted and the old one moved into its place, or 2. I move the old talk page to an archive subpage of the new talk page, where it's a little more visible), and even found instances where history merges needed to be done on the articles.
I hope this eases your mind a little bit, but if not, you're in luck, because ListasBot 3 has been suspended for the simple fact that I can't have it running while ListasBot 5 is doing trial runs. Lemme know. :-) Matt ( talk) 17:33, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Folks, I know I've brought this up before, but I didn't get any response last time. ANY. So, I'm going to post this question again:
Are there any WikiProjects that care about talk pages of redirects? Or where there's no significant history to the talk page?
For purposes of this discussion, "significant" excludes vandalism/non-constructive edits, pages with nothing more than templates and whitespace, and edits of the theme "this is the same as X, it should be merged/redirected to there".— Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikaey ( talk • contribs)
(e/c) There are several WikiProjects which, for various reasons, actively tag redirects within their scope. I cannot speak for other projects, but at WikiProject Articles for creation we like to keep track of the redirects that we create on behalf of unregistered users. According to Category:Redirect-Class articles there are likely to be 124 projects which use Redirect-Class (although some of these may have followed other projects rather than actively choosing to ...). Therefore I don't think it is helpful to exclude templates in your definition of "significant", because these banners may be considered important by the projects. — Martin ( MSGJ · talk) 19:28, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Hi folks,
Because my bot has been stirring up a little bit of controversy over the subject, I'm going to pose this question to you:
How much does a WikiProject, such as this one, care about talk pages of redirects?
Thanks, Matt ( talk) 16:59, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
Could someone please tell me what the process is (if indeed there is a process) for getting the approval of a bot task overturned? ListasBot's third task was approved after a discussion involving only two editors (the bot owner and one BAG member), and I feel the the decision may have to be reassessed. Thanks, — Martin ( MSGJ · talk) 15:05, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Parent project: WikiProject Food and Drink | |
Child projects: | Task forces: (All inactive) |
|
|
Related projects: | |
I wonder if there's a solution that I've overlooked. Folks, hear me out for a minute.
This would cause the page to be removed from the maintenance categories that the bot is normally dealing with, would put the redirect in place, and would leave the contents of the old talk page intact.
Drawback: Other bots would still have a tendency to prepend other WikiProject banners to the beginning of the page, thereby destroying the redirect.
Thoughts? Matt ( talk) 04:21, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
Wikiproject Biography doesn't support Redirect class and why should? They are tenths of thousands redirects of individuals for hundreds of reasons. Redirects should not be tagged with Wikiproject Biography. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 17:14, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
Some discussions of the past: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Empty talk pages of redirects, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive151 (under the section Empty talk pages and speedy deletion), Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_30#Empty_talk_pages_and_speedy_deletion. All these discussions are dealing in fact with the same subject: Should redirects have banners and what happens then? -- Magioladitis ( talk) 17:22, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
Sorry if it's been mentioned, and I haven't read the discussion, but I created the template {{ talkpage of redirect}} recently which may have relevance here. Skomorokh 09:22, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I'm getting the gist from everyone here, talk pages are important. I'm going to try to take this discussion in a new direction here.
When article A gets redirected to article B, but Talk:A is left alone, it may be for a variety of reasons. It could be that the talk page had details of a discussion to redirect the article somewhere else. It may be that there was a significant amount of discussion on the talk page that should not have been destroyed when the article was redirected. It could be simple laziness or inexperience on the part of the person that performed the redirect.
However, the fact remains that most users will go to Talk:B to discuss an article, and will never see any of the comments on Talk:A. There could be multiple different pages that all redirect to Talk:B that have comments and discussions that are pertinent to article B. How do we make users aware of those old talk pages?
|ListasBot3=n
" inside the template. It generally wouldn't do or display anything (though it could if the template designer wanted to), but your bot could check the templates for that, and if any have it, ignore the page. Otherwise, treat as normal. Another option would be to add opting out templates to a list (i.e., if a listed template is found on a talk page, skip the page). I think any of those options would work, so it's probably whatever would have the lowest impact on the most people while balancing the ease for you to make the changes and maintain them in the future. If any of these options were possible, then I'd support leaving the bot running as-is on all other pages. —
Willscrlt (
“Talk” ) 05:19, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
{{
bots|deny=ListasBot}}
. On the other hand, if we're going to do it on a per-project basis, it could get a little more complicated. I suppose I could start an "opt-out" list that would list the WikiProject banner templates of the projects that have chosen to opt out of having their redirects replaced.
Matt (
talk) 06:06, 12 May 2009 (UTC)class=Redirect
insted. –
pjoef (
talk •
contribs) 10:12, 12 May 2009 (UTC){{
WikiProject Tulips}}
on
Talk:Foo, that normally displays as "this project is within the scope of
Wikipedia:WikiProject Tulips, then
Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:WikiProject Tulips then lists Talk:Foo as a redirect; as does
Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:WikiProject Tulips, as does any other page normally linked on the banner. Templates to place on redirects need to be carefully written to avoid this issue; mainly by only including links to categories. Random content and normal templates are not appropriate.
Happy‑
melon 12:52, 12 May 2009 (UTC)This option added as a proposed solution on 12 May 2009 03:50 UTC.
#
Agathoclea (
talk) 09:00, 12 May 2009 (UTC) actually redirect class still might need list-as parameter.
Agathoclea (
talk) 13:50, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
This option added as a proposed solution on 13 May 2009 04:25 UTC.
This option added as a proposed solution on 13 May 2009 06:20 UTC.
This option added as a proposed solution on 16 May 2009 09:27 UTC.
?redirect=no
(and this might not be a bad idea anyway, no matter how ListasBot ends up functioning). The larger issue seems to be that there is currently no one size fits all approach to redirecting talk pages of merged articles (moved articles usually have their talk pages redirected anyway when the talk pages are moved as well), so it is going to be split across the board with different editors and projects wanting to handle things differently.
Tothwolf (
talk) 10:52, 22 May 2009 (UTC)Ladies and gentlemen, I thank everyone for their input on the matter. It has become apparent to me throughout the course of this discussion that yes, talk pages of redirected articles are important. There are instances where articles have been redirected, and the talk page should have been redirected along with it (but wasn't), but a bot isn't qualified to make that distinction. With that, I have decided to discontinue ListasBot 3.
Again, I thank everyone who participated in this discussion for their input.
Regards, Matt ( talk) 08:29, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
![]() | This is a centralized forum for providing input on whether or not the
bot
ListasBot 3 should continue operating as is, make changes to the way it operates, or stop operating completely. |
ListasBot 3 is an approved bot, whose function is to identify talk pages that were orphaned when their corresponding articles were turned into redirects, and to replace those talk pages with a redirect to the new article's talk page. In other words, if article A was redirected to article B, but Talk:A was left alone, the bot would replace Talk:A with a redirect to Talk:B. Or, if Talk:B does not exist, the bot moves Talk:A to Talk:B. Since the bot usually works with biography-related talk pages (e.g., Category:Biography articles without listas parameter is where it spends most of its time), those are the ones that will usually be most affected.
The bot also looks at the contents of the talk page, before replacing it with a redirect. If there is anything more than templates (including WikiProject banners) on the page, the contents of the page are logged to User:ListasBot/old talk pages, so that a human can review them, and decide whether the content is truly significant. In the past, I have done the following:
There were a couple of reasons for writing this bot:
However, another editor has brought up that this behavior may not be desirable, and indicated that there are WikiProjects that keep track of their redirects, and that my bot is destroying the mechanisms that those WikiProjects are using to keep track of their redirects. I have tried to request input from other editors on the matter, but so far I have failed to get any significant input on the matter. So, with that, I am requesting input from everyone that feels they may be affected by this decision.
Questions that need to be answered in this discussion are:
This discussion will run until 11:59PM GMT 11 June 2009.
Hello. I have just noticed your bot's function 3 ( Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ListasBot 3) and I have a few concerns about it. Firstly, a fair number of WikiProjects actively keep track of redirects within their scope by marking them as Redirect-Class. By redirecting the talk page, you are destroying this information which may be useful to the project. Secondly I just wonder at the usefulness of this function - is anyone likely to type the name of the talk page into the search bar? Personally I have never done this and I would always want "Talk" to take me to the talk page of the page I am looking at. Have you had any other comments about this? I don't know if your bot is still doing this operation, but if so, perhaps you would consider stopping and discussing this a bit more? Best wishes, — Martin ( MSGJ · talk) 14:38, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Hi Martin,
The reason for this particular bot function in the first place was that one of my bot's other functions was looking at the article page and trying to find a sort tag on there, but was instead being redirected somewhere else and grabbing a sort tag off of another article. This isn't quite such a good idea when, for instance, you have Funky Green Dogs redirecting to Murk (band). I've also seen other bots tagging redirect talk pages with new banners, effectively destroying the redirect in the process. I personally don't see much point in keeping these pages, as they don't seem to be looked at other than by bots. However, it was brought up at the BRfA that there could be some useful content on the talk page, so the bot is designed such that if it detects anything other than templates and whitespace on the page, it will post the talk page's former contents to User:ListasBot/old talk pages, so that someone can review them. I've gone through there regularly and done merges, page moves (where either 1. I ask for the new talk page to be deleted and the old one moved into its place, or 2. I move the old talk page to an archive subpage of the new talk page, where it's a little more visible), and even found instances where history merges needed to be done on the articles.
I hope this eases your mind a little bit, but if not, you're in luck, because ListasBot 3 has been suspended for the simple fact that I can't have it running while ListasBot 5 is doing trial runs. Lemme know. :-) Matt ( talk) 17:33, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Folks, I know I've brought this up before, but I didn't get any response last time. ANY. So, I'm going to post this question again:
Are there any WikiProjects that care about talk pages of redirects? Or where there's no significant history to the talk page?
For purposes of this discussion, "significant" excludes vandalism/non-constructive edits, pages with nothing more than templates and whitespace, and edits of the theme "this is the same as X, it should be merged/redirected to there".— Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikaey ( talk • contribs)
(e/c) There are several WikiProjects which, for various reasons, actively tag redirects within their scope. I cannot speak for other projects, but at WikiProject Articles for creation we like to keep track of the redirects that we create on behalf of unregistered users. According to Category:Redirect-Class articles there are likely to be 124 projects which use Redirect-Class (although some of these may have followed other projects rather than actively choosing to ...). Therefore I don't think it is helpful to exclude templates in your definition of "significant", because these banners may be considered important by the projects. — Martin ( MSGJ · talk) 19:28, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Hi folks,
Because my bot has been stirring up a little bit of controversy over the subject, I'm going to pose this question to you:
How much does a WikiProject, such as this one, care about talk pages of redirects?
Thanks, Matt ( talk) 16:59, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
Could someone please tell me what the process is (if indeed there is a process) for getting the approval of a bot task overturned? ListasBot's third task was approved after a discussion involving only two editors (the bot owner and one BAG member), and I feel the the decision may have to be reassessed. Thanks, — Martin ( MSGJ · talk) 15:05, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Parent project: WikiProject Food and Drink | |
Child projects: | Task forces: (All inactive) |
|
|
Related projects: | |
I wonder if there's a solution that I've overlooked. Folks, hear me out for a minute.
This would cause the page to be removed from the maintenance categories that the bot is normally dealing with, would put the redirect in place, and would leave the contents of the old talk page intact.
Drawback: Other bots would still have a tendency to prepend other WikiProject banners to the beginning of the page, thereby destroying the redirect.
Thoughts? Matt ( talk) 04:21, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
Wikiproject Biography doesn't support Redirect class and why should? They are tenths of thousands redirects of individuals for hundreds of reasons. Redirects should not be tagged with Wikiproject Biography. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 17:14, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
Some discussions of the past: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Empty talk pages of redirects, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive151 (under the section Empty talk pages and speedy deletion), Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_30#Empty_talk_pages_and_speedy_deletion. All these discussions are dealing in fact with the same subject: Should redirects have banners and what happens then? -- Magioladitis ( talk) 17:22, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
Sorry if it's been mentioned, and I haven't read the discussion, but I created the template {{ talkpage of redirect}} recently which may have relevance here. Skomorokh 09:22, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I'm getting the gist from everyone here, talk pages are important. I'm going to try to take this discussion in a new direction here.
When article A gets redirected to article B, but Talk:A is left alone, it may be for a variety of reasons. It could be that the talk page had details of a discussion to redirect the article somewhere else. It may be that there was a significant amount of discussion on the talk page that should not have been destroyed when the article was redirected. It could be simple laziness or inexperience on the part of the person that performed the redirect.
However, the fact remains that most users will go to Talk:B to discuss an article, and will never see any of the comments on Talk:A. There could be multiple different pages that all redirect to Talk:B that have comments and discussions that are pertinent to article B. How do we make users aware of those old talk pages?
|ListasBot3=n
" inside the template. It generally wouldn't do or display anything (though it could if the template designer wanted to), but your bot could check the templates for that, and if any have it, ignore the page. Otherwise, treat as normal. Another option would be to add opting out templates to a list (i.e., if a listed template is found on a talk page, skip the page). I think any of those options would work, so it's probably whatever would have the lowest impact on the most people while balancing the ease for you to make the changes and maintain them in the future. If any of these options were possible, then I'd support leaving the bot running as-is on all other pages. —
Willscrlt (
“Talk” ) 05:19, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
{{
bots|deny=ListasBot}}
. On the other hand, if we're going to do it on a per-project basis, it could get a little more complicated. I suppose I could start an "opt-out" list that would list the WikiProject banner templates of the projects that have chosen to opt out of having their redirects replaced.
Matt (
talk) 06:06, 12 May 2009 (UTC)class=Redirect
insted. –
pjoef (
talk •
contribs) 10:12, 12 May 2009 (UTC){{
WikiProject Tulips}}
on
Talk:Foo, that normally displays as "this project is within the scope of
Wikipedia:WikiProject Tulips, then
Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:WikiProject Tulips then lists Talk:Foo as a redirect; as does
Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:WikiProject Tulips, as does any other page normally linked on the banner. Templates to place on redirects need to be carefully written to avoid this issue; mainly by only including links to categories. Random content and normal templates are not appropriate.
Happy‑
melon 12:52, 12 May 2009 (UTC)This option added as a proposed solution on 12 May 2009 03:50 UTC.
#
Agathoclea (
talk) 09:00, 12 May 2009 (UTC) actually redirect class still might need list-as parameter.
Agathoclea (
talk) 13:50, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
This option added as a proposed solution on 13 May 2009 04:25 UTC.
This option added as a proposed solution on 13 May 2009 06:20 UTC.
This option added as a proposed solution on 16 May 2009 09:27 UTC.
?redirect=no
(and this might not be a bad idea anyway, no matter how ListasBot ends up functioning). The larger issue seems to be that there is currently no one size fits all approach to redirecting talk pages of merged articles (moved articles usually have their talk pages redirected anyway when the talk pages are moved as well), so it is going to be split across the board with different editors and projects wanting to handle things differently.
Tothwolf (
talk) 10:52, 22 May 2009 (UTC)