The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard. The result of the discussion was  Approved.

Operator: Sdkb ( talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 20:14, Monday, May 17, 2021 ( UTC)

Function overview: Removes inappropriate spaces between quotes ending sentences and references, in accordance with WP:REFPUNCT.

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): AutoWikiBrowser

Source code available: I'm not sure how to share source code on AWB, but the process is to compile a list using the wiki search text insource:/\.\" \<ref/ and insource:/\"\. \<ref/ and then use the find and replace option to replace ". <ref with ".<ref and ." <ref with ."<ref.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Consensus is presumed because of the presence of the WP:REFPUNCT section of the Manual of Style, a Wikipedia guideline. The task does not fall under WP:COSMETICBOT because the erroneous spaces are visible to readers.

Edit period(s): daily

Estimated number of pages affected: Based on the AWB work I've been doing on this task so far, I estimate the initial backlog is somewhere very roughly on the order of 10,000. For after that, the rate at which the spacing errors accrue is unknown, so I'm not sure.

Namespace(s): Mainspace

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: This bot seeks out articles with instances where a space has been erroneously inserted between a quote at the end of a sentence and a footnoted reference. It removes the space to bring the article into compliance with WP:REFPUNCT. The edit summary will be removed erroneous space, marked as minor and tagged with the AWB tag.

Discussion

This is my first bot proposal; I looked through the guidance, but this is a complex area, so please help me out if I've done anything incorrectly above. I'm bringing this here because I've done several thousand edits with this task on AWB and have not yet run into any instance where I've needed to skip, so I think it would be pretty safe to automate. Some other considerations:

• There are obviously many more instances of this error beyond just ones occurring after a quote. I'm starting out with this subset since I cannot imagine any instance in which ". <ref would appear and we wouldn't want to correct it, but if this goes smoothly, I may wish to expand the operation to try to handle instances of this error more comprehensively.
• Given the number of pages this bot will be editing, it would be nice to enable GENFIXes as well, but the latest stable release of AWB still includes the short description layout error, so I don't think that's currently advisable.
• I'm not fully sure what the optimal edit period or rate limit would be. Thoughts about whether daily is too frequent/infrequent would be welcome.

Cheers, {{u| Sdkb}}  ^talk 20:14, 17 May 2021 (UTC) reply

I recommend including a link to WP:REFPUNCT in your edit summary, along with a link to this BRFA. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 22:26, 17 May 2021 (UTC) reply

Jonesey95, my proposed summary above includes a piped link to REFPUNCT. The bot user page has a link to this page for anyone who wants the technical details, but for the general user just wondering what the MOS recommendation is, REFPUNCT will probably be a better/sufficient target. {{u| Sdkb}}  ^talk 22:54, 17 May 2021 (UTC) reply

Erp, my mistake, I didn't see it because it renders as all green for me. The normal edit summary will have a more obvious link, of course. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 23:17, 17 May 2021 (UTC) reply

According to citenote 22 on WP:REFPUNCT there can be cases where a space is acceptable, though I appreciate this would be the minority. Is the bot able to deal with those? ProcrastinatingReader ( talk) 12:00, 18 May 2021 (UTC) reply

ProcrastinatingReader, do you mean footnote o, about adding a hair space following exponents? In that case it wouldn't be following a period/quote mark, but I just checked in my sandbox just to be safe and the bot wouldn't treat hairspaces as spaces. So it seems to fully handle that case. {{u| Sdkb}}  ^talk 23:33, 18 May 2021 (UTC) reply

Regarding edit frequency: I see no issue with running daily. The guidance in WP:BOTPOL is bots doing non-urgent tasks may edit approximately once every ten seconds; since the backlog you estimate is on the order of 10,000 pages, that's about a day to clear the current backlog, and I assume errors do not accrue often enough for this frequency to be a problem past that. —  The Earwig ( talk) 00:19, 19 May 2021 (UTC) reply

Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Let's give it a trial. After trial, please also advertise the BRFA to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (as the talk page for WP:REFPUNCT) so we can have some people familiar with the guideline also review the BRFA and trial contribs. ProcrastinatingReader ( talk) 11:52, 20 May 2021 (UTC) reply

In order to complete the trial, I believe an admin will need to add the bot to the checkpage; thanks! {{u| Sdkb}}  ^talk 17:48, 20 May 2021 (UTC) reply

You can request at WP:PERM/AWB linking here. Or perhaps @ The Earwig and Primefac might be able to do it? ProcrastinatingReader ( talk) 20:01, 20 May 2021 (UTC) reply

@ Sdkb: Done. —  The Earwig ( talk) 23:58, 20 May 2021 (UTC) reply

• Trial results: Special:Contributions/SdkbBot. I had it do 25 edits to pages from the list with ". and 25 from the list with .". {{u| Sdkb}}  ^talk 01:22, 21 May 2021 (UTC) reply

Trial complete. For the status bot. —  The Earwig ( talk) 23:44, 29 May 2021 (UTC) reply

 Approved. Trial edits look fine. For MOS guidance it seemed nice to have commentary from MOS regulars on if edge cases may arise, but I suppose the notification didn't invite any participation. So based on my reading of the applicable guideline and trial contribs this seems fine. ProcrastinatingReader ( talk) 09:41, 30 May 2021 (UTC) reply

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 Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard.