This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
Looking through the days of the year pages, I have noticed that quite a few contain such ugly things as hyphens instead of dashes, and the use of the "conventional quoting style". I have been going through fixing these, but there are simply too many to do manually. Would anybody mind if I wrote a bot to do this? It should be a straight-forward text replacement (eg. s/ - / – /). — Wereon 15:16, 24 May 2004 (UTC)
I am planning to put hunderes of stubs for Japanes authors using bots. Any objection? The format should be like Hozumi Shigeto -- Taku 04:47 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
What is the benefit of adding all these authors using a bot? Is it truly contributing to the content of wikipedia, or just cluttering the database? If people feel that they need to add content about a particular topic, then surely to benefit readers, it should have at least a little content. Kabads
First of all, stub articles have inadequate information but the purpose of them is to provide a good starting point to write an article. Finding out the birth date and death date is a tedious job and particularly putting Japanese characters are difficult to job for those who can't type Japanese. Secondly, we already have the List of Japanese authors. It means soon or later we will have articles for all of them. There is no reason to postpone making articles unless we are unsure we need such a article. Yeah, we need a little more at least, where he/she was born and died. I think I can put such information because I have it.
Yeah, maybe bots are a little too overwhelming. I will put stubs by hand if we can agree with having stub articles for Japanese authors.
Yes. I believe my bot is useful, harmless and not server hog.
I would like to use a bot to make a stub of Japanese city. The format should be like Funabashi. I will wait to use it until enough dicussion is done. I welcome any sort of comment, really any. -- Taku 04:18 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)
Yes, it is less than adequate stub. I put population and I will put area. Unfortunately I couldn't find out the complete set of stat data like census in USA. So we have to get each data like population individually. What else do you think we need? -- Taku 22:27 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)
Of course, I wish I could. If someone has good stats in English, I will appreciate. But I doubt there is such. Maybe we need to add history or such by hand later. Anyway we can't expect artciels like US cities articles. -- Taku 16:14 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)
Taku: for population, how about this?
[1]
Tomos 20:05 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)
for more demographics,
[2] (files are in .xls format, and you would perhaps need japanese font)
and land areas
[3]
Tomos 21:21 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)
First of all, thank you for all of those who gave me comments. Particularly pages Toms gave seems quite useful making an city article bot will add decent probably. I am working on a converting Japanese into English and writing the script of bot. Feel free to keep discussing formatting or whatever. -- Taku 02:02 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)
I updated Funaba article. I think it is still short but adequate stub. For some reason, I can't access [4]. If someone can download the excel file and upload it somewhere or send it to me, I will appreciate. -- Taku 04:30 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)
Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump
I would like to create a bot that gets info from various U.S. Department of State websites, and makes articles. I have no experience making this type of program, could someone point me in the direction as to what I need to learn, or a where to start? MB 20:26 27 May 2003 (UTC)
Automated content is generally disliked here: the value of Wikipedia comes from the fact that human beings interested in each subject have written and edited the articles. If you really feel that you must auto-create, you can test the bot on my server first; mail me and I'll give you all the info. LDC
Wapcaplet has asked me to help upload approximately 5000 images for U.S. locations within states. Here is an example:
File:Map of Alaska highlighting Aleutians East Borough.png
I have an auto-uploader program debugged and ready to go. I have registered an account User:The Anomebot for this purpose. Could someone please approve this, and add the Anomebot to the list of registered bots? -- The Anome 11:30 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Perhaps the attribution should read
"Public domain map courtesy of The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin, modified to show counties. Released under GFDL. See Wikipedia:U.S. county maps."
Then we can put the credits on the Wikipedia:U.S. county map page, where there is plenty of space to credit contributors. This would also neatly link them back to a single page. In fact, I'll do that now. -- The Anome 13:54 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I believe my IP address has been banned because I swamped the server with a script. (It was retrieving and not updating, but being automated I suppose it qualifies as a bot anyways. I thought it was slow enough, but apparently not.) Strangely, though, my IP address does not show up in Special:Ipblocklist. How do I go about verifying that is what happened, and perform appropriate apologies and grovelling to get re-instated? Thanks for any advice. -- Amillar 19:16 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I am looking for a program to load a mass of articles (batch load) to Wiki.
I try to add new articles to the newly born Hebrew Wikipedia.
Can U pl. give me some directions? --
Dod1 12:17 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Is it the User:The_Anomebot that is slowing down the server? -- User:Docu
For most of the day (19 Jul 2003), it ran much faster: one image per minute [5] -- User_Docu
Image uploads are probably more complex, possibly the length of Wikipedia:Upload_log slows down things as well. Maybe an administrator can archive it? -- User:Docu
The problem persisted after User:The_Anomebot stopped, thus it's likely that it was something else. In the meantime, the bot had just been more efficient getting to the site. -- User:Docu
I couldn't figure out where else to put this question. Is there a client for Wikipedia that allows you to edit articles without a web browser? Specifically, I would want to be able to make edits to an article directly as with a wordprocesser. I think it would be relatively simple to implement. You would use it by clicking exactly where you would like to make a change, and then just type. Ezra Wax 23:16, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
The client would require a custom editor. Possibly scintilla could be used. There are also some links there to custom editors. Possibly mozilla's Html editor could be customized to do the job. Ezra Wax 13:59, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I am planning to use a bot to create Rambot-like articles on Israeli cities. The discussion thread on wikiEN-l starts here. The example article is at User:AdamRaizen/Ramla. Comment there or at User_talk:AdamRaizen or User_talk:IsraBot. -- AdamRaizen 14:08, 2003 Sep 15 (UTC)
From the Village pump
Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump on Thursday, September 25th, 0 2003.
With the Israbot adding to the output of Rambot and others a lot of 'statty' settlement articles are being created.
IMO these articles are non-encyclopedic and are cluttering the main namespace (I'd also say they are valueless additions, but there you go ;). I think it is time for a gazatteer.wikipedia.org, or similar, to hold these articles. TwoOneTwo 21:16, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)
If you've got some comments on Rambot (to stay or to delete), drop a note @ User talk:Rambot/Delete. -- Menchi 00:36, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)
They are distorting the value of Wikipedia content, especially article counts and size counts into giving an unwarranted impression of the depth of Wikipedia. I'm not saying delete I'm saying move, like the sep11 material they are specialised and not generally usable. With a separate namespace for the raw articles, as and when they are improved they can be moved back. TwoOneTwo 14:29, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)
An encyclopedia is not an almanac! I think we should take a stand on this. An encyclopedia article is human-written and gives context, weighs relevance, etc. Bot-entries are not articles, they're data. If I want raw data on every county in the US for example, I go to an almanac; if I want context, filtered by a knowledgable human, I go to an encyclopedia. In an encyclopedia, I can rely on the fact that someone has taken the time to include the important facts and leave out the cruft. That's why I went there, and not to the almanac. I'd like to see Wikipedia is not an almanac added to the basic tenets of Wikipedia. Axlrosen 22:37, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Rob Hooft has written a bot to simplify Disambiguations. Given the name of a disambiguation page, it gets the pages that link to that page, shows the disambiguators, and lets the user choose one of them or 'none', then changing that page.
It has been used with success on nl:, and I would like to ask whether it would be okay to use it here as well? Andre Engels 09:01, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
According to the discussion at Talk:List_of_members_of_the_Swiss_Federal_Council I wrote a bot to update the navigation of members of the Swiss Federal Council. The bot has been tested on my local copy of the data set and works fine. For every change I manually enter the start and end year and accept the changes. Any objections to this? -- Patrice Neff 14:18, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
is there a way to build a bot?
I'd like a bot that could track (somehow) party standings from official websites that keep track of these, and automatically update pages with these party standings. (political pages)
is there a way to make such a bot? if so, respond in my talk page
Pellaken 06:32, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I'm attempting to include the coats of arms of a very large number of towns, cities, boroughs, districts and counties in England and Wales on the towns' Wikipedia pages. (See User:Marnanel/CivicHeraldry_pages for more information, background, and what has been done so far.) I've done all the entries for one county by hand: there were about 17 images to upload and describe, and around the same number of pages to include the images on. It was a pretty mechanistic process and took a couple of hours. Since this is only about 5% of the full corpus, I'd like to request permission to use a bot to do the uploading and renaming of the pictures automatically, and possibly then the inclusion of those pictures on the relevant pages semi-automatically (though this would perhaps be easier done by hand anyway). I'm a pretty competent programmer, and it shouldn't be too hard for me to do while keeping within the rules. Marnanel 03:58, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
195.50.12.118 and User talk:195.50.12.115 are unregistered bots which have been attempting to add spacing to all taxoboxes accross the Wiki. They have been blocked, but I fear they shall be back soon from another IP. Fennec 20:56, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I want to use a bot in order to add a bulgarian interwiki on the year ( 1800- 2009) and calendar pages. It will wait at least 60 seconds between edits. -- Borislav 04:15, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
It is, perhaps, pointless to do so, but I would like to request a bot. The amount I know about computer programming could be written in large letters on the back of a stamp, so I can't write it myself. The pointers to WikiProjects on the talk pages of articles (see, for example, Talk:Urban Hymns, Talk:Chimpanzee, Talk:Mount Airy, Maryland) could be created using [[mediawiki:{{{1}}}|message with id '{{{1}}}']] ([[mediawiki talk:{{{1}}}|talk]]) tags by adding it to the talk pages of everything linked to from the list of albums, list of primates, list of cities in Maryland, etc, updated perhaps every month. There seems to be much support for these messages, and using [[mediawiki:{{{1}}}|message with id '{{{1}}}']] ([[mediawiki talk:{{{1}}}|talk]]) means they could be easily changed as needed, also providing much more visibility for the WikiProject as well as for the very idea that the article itself can be changed by any casual user. It also strikes me as being very likely simple to program -- anybody willing to do it? Anybody object to it being done? Tuf-Kat 04:56, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)
I made a script that downloads pages from my list of articles with common misspellings, fixes any of the common misspellings, and then lists other potentially misspelled words, which I can correct with the click of a button. I review every change before it is submitted, but the script allows me to correct pages faster and more accurately as compared to changing articles by hand.
I'm not sure if I need permission for this, but I thought I'd ask to be safe. My script should be:
I could even allow others to help because the script runs off my personal computer through a web interface. Thanks. Wmahan . 21:55, 2004 Apr 8 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. I don't think that the primary objection to spelling bots, namely that they perform erroneous changes, applies here because every change is reviewed by a human before being submitted. So this method shouldn't make any changes that I wouldn't make by hand; it only speeds the process up. I've emailed WikiEN-l as you suggested for confirmation. Wmahan . 03:34, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC)
I'm claiming that my bot will be different from others that might run amok in that I will be aware of context when I review each change. I agree that it is easy to make a mistake in approving a bot's changes; that's why I must explicitly request any correction that doesn't appear on the list of common misspellings, which has been reviewed for potential pitfalls. If this bot is approved, I will be conservative and not make changes that I'm unsure about.
I admit that there is a possibility, though small, that the bot will make an incorrect change, and then I approve it. My points here are that there are that 1) because I am responsible for the changes, anyone who notices the mistake is free to yell at me on my talk page; and 2) one can interpret the maxim be bold in updating pages as an argument that even if I make a few mistakes in making many corrections, I'm justified by the overall benefit to Wikipedia.
To summarize, I share your concern about assuming that bots are perfect, but I won't make such an assumption. Thus I think that your blanket rejection of spelling bots is a little too cautious. Wmahan . 15:14, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC)
Addendum: I thought I should let you know that Jimbo agrees with the idea, see WikiEN-l. But I'm not trying to bypass anyone's opinion, and I'm willing to listen to any further objections or comments. Wmahan . 18:25, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC)
Please do. As far as being bold goes, how well you do will be the best way of judging whether it's good or bad. If you get it wrong regularly, people will object.:) Jamesday 14:17, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Let's give a shot. After all, the whole point of wikipedia is any mistake would be corrected soon or later. -- Taku 15:07, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)
Update: I have made about 1500 corrections using the above method, receiving one complaint and several thanks. The complaint was regarding three articles where I changed barbeque to barbecue. I had checked dictionary.com prior to that change, but alas, it failed to include the alternate spelling. Thanks for everyone's comments and support! Wmahan . 04:24, 2004 Apr 25 (UTC)
I haven't been paying much attention to the approval of bots, but to me this statement looks wrong: "You must get permission from an administrator before using a bot." What is the relevance of administrator status here? As I understand it, administrators have extra technical capabilities, but no extra decision-making authority. Here's a suggested policy that doesn't rely on setting up a cabal: "Before running a bot, you must get approval on Wikipedia talk:Bots. State there precisely what the bot will do. If a rough consensus emerges that it is a good idea, wait a week to see if there are any further objections, and if there aren't, go ahead and run it." What do you think? -- Oliver P. 18:06, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I ( User:Chuq) have registered a user User:ChuqBot to use to edit links to avoid redirects - specifically, change all links to Hobart, Tasmania or Hobart, Australia to Hobart. I plan to user pywikipediabot to do this. Any tips or advice for a first time wikipedia bot/script user? -- ChuqBot 14:11, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
Looking through the days of the year pages, I have noticed that quite a few contain such ugly things as hyphens instead of dashes, and the use of the "conventional quoting style". I have been going through fixing these, but there are simply too many to do manually. Would anybody mind if I wrote a bot to do this? It should be a straight-forward text replacement (eg. s/ - / – /). — Wereon 15:16, 24 May 2004 (UTC)
I am planning to put hunderes of stubs for Japanes authors using bots. Any objection? The format should be like Hozumi Shigeto -- Taku 04:47 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
What is the benefit of adding all these authors using a bot? Is it truly contributing to the content of wikipedia, or just cluttering the database? If people feel that they need to add content about a particular topic, then surely to benefit readers, it should have at least a little content. Kabads
First of all, stub articles have inadequate information but the purpose of them is to provide a good starting point to write an article. Finding out the birth date and death date is a tedious job and particularly putting Japanese characters are difficult to job for those who can't type Japanese. Secondly, we already have the List of Japanese authors. It means soon or later we will have articles for all of them. There is no reason to postpone making articles unless we are unsure we need such a article. Yeah, we need a little more at least, where he/she was born and died. I think I can put such information because I have it.
Yeah, maybe bots are a little too overwhelming. I will put stubs by hand if we can agree with having stub articles for Japanese authors.
Yes. I believe my bot is useful, harmless and not server hog.
I would like to use a bot to make a stub of Japanese city. The format should be like Funabashi. I will wait to use it until enough dicussion is done. I welcome any sort of comment, really any. -- Taku 04:18 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)
Yes, it is less than adequate stub. I put population and I will put area. Unfortunately I couldn't find out the complete set of stat data like census in USA. So we have to get each data like population individually. What else do you think we need? -- Taku 22:27 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)
Of course, I wish I could. If someone has good stats in English, I will appreciate. But I doubt there is such. Maybe we need to add history or such by hand later. Anyway we can't expect artciels like US cities articles. -- Taku 16:14 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)
Taku: for population, how about this?
[1]
Tomos 20:05 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)
for more demographics,
[2] (files are in .xls format, and you would perhaps need japanese font)
and land areas
[3]
Tomos 21:21 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)
First of all, thank you for all of those who gave me comments. Particularly pages Toms gave seems quite useful making an city article bot will add decent probably. I am working on a converting Japanese into English and writing the script of bot. Feel free to keep discussing formatting or whatever. -- Taku 02:02 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)
I updated Funaba article. I think it is still short but adequate stub. For some reason, I can't access [4]. If someone can download the excel file and upload it somewhere or send it to me, I will appreciate. -- Taku 04:30 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)
Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump
I would like to create a bot that gets info from various U.S. Department of State websites, and makes articles. I have no experience making this type of program, could someone point me in the direction as to what I need to learn, or a where to start? MB 20:26 27 May 2003 (UTC)
Automated content is generally disliked here: the value of Wikipedia comes from the fact that human beings interested in each subject have written and edited the articles. If you really feel that you must auto-create, you can test the bot on my server first; mail me and I'll give you all the info. LDC
Wapcaplet has asked me to help upload approximately 5000 images for U.S. locations within states. Here is an example:
File:Map of Alaska highlighting Aleutians East Borough.png
I have an auto-uploader program debugged and ready to go. I have registered an account User:The Anomebot for this purpose. Could someone please approve this, and add the Anomebot to the list of registered bots? -- The Anome 11:30 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Perhaps the attribution should read
"Public domain map courtesy of The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin, modified to show counties. Released under GFDL. See Wikipedia:U.S. county maps."
Then we can put the credits on the Wikipedia:U.S. county map page, where there is plenty of space to credit contributors. This would also neatly link them back to a single page. In fact, I'll do that now. -- The Anome 13:54 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I believe my IP address has been banned because I swamped the server with a script. (It was retrieving and not updating, but being automated I suppose it qualifies as a bot anyways. I thought it was slow enough, but apparently not.) Strangely, though, my IP address does not show up in Special:Ipblocklist. How do I go about verifying that is what happened, and perform appropriate apologies and grovelling to get re-instated? Thanks for any advice. -- Amillar 19:16 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I am looking for a program to load a mass of articles (batch load) to Wiki.
I try to add new articles to the newly born Hebrew Wikipedia.
Can U pl. give me some directions? --
Dod1 12:17 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Is it the User:The_Anomebot that is slowing down the server? -- User:Docu
For most of the day (19 Jul 2003), it ran much faster: one image per minute [5] -- User_Docu
Image uploads are probably more complex, possibly the length of Wikipedia:Upload_log slows down things as well. Maybe an administrator can archive it? -- User:Docu
The problem persisted after User:The_Anomebot stopped, thus it's likely that it was something else. In the meantime, the bot had just been more efficient getting to the site. -- User:Docu
I couldn't figure out where else to put this question. Is there a client for Wikipedia that allows you to edit articles without a web browser? Specifically, I would want to be able to make edits to an article directly as with a wordprocesser. I think it would be relatively simple to implement. You would use it by clicking exactly where you would like to make a change, and then just type. Ezra Wax 23:16, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
The client would require a custom editor. Possibly scintilla could be used. There are also some links there to custom editors. Possibly mozilla's Html editor could be customized to do the job. Ezra Wax 13:59, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I am planning to use a bot to create Rambot-like articles on Israeli cities. The discussion thread on wikiEN-l starts here. The example article is at User:AdamRaizen/Ramla. Comment there or at User_talk:AdamRaizen or User_talk:IsraBot. -- AdamRaizen 14:08, 2003 Sep 15 (UTC)
From the Village pump
Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump on Thursday, September 25th, 0 2003.
With the Israbot adding to the output of Rambot and others a lot of 'statty' settlement articles are being created.
IMO these articles are non-encyclopedic and are cluttering the main namespace (I'd also say they are valueless additions, but there you go ;). I think it is time for a gazatteer.wikipedia.org, or similar, to hold these articles. TwoOneTwo 21:16, 21 Sep 2003 (UTC)
If you've got some comments on Rambot (to stay or to delete), drop a note @ User talk:Rambot/Delete. -- Menchi 00:36, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)
They are distorting the value of Wikipedia content, especially article counts and size counts into giving an unwarranted impression of the depth of Wikipedia. I'm not saying delete I'm saying move, like the sep11 material they are specialised and not generally usable. With a separate namespace for the raw articles, as and when they are improved they can be moved back. TwoOneTwo 14:29, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)
An encyclopedia is not an almanac! I think we should take a stand on this. An encyclopedia article is human-written and gives context, weighs relevance, etc. Bot-entries are not articles, they're data. If I want raw data on every county in the US for example, I go to an almanac; if I want context, filtered by a knowledgable human, I go to an encyclopedia. In an encyclopedia, I can rely on the fact that someone has taken the time to include the important facts and leave out the cruft. That's why I went there, and not to the almanac. I'd like to see Wikipedia is not an almanac added to the basic tenets of Wikipedia. Axlrosen 22:37, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Rob Hooft has written a bot to simplify Disambiguations. Given the name of a disambiguation page, it gets the pages that link to that page, shows the disambiguators, and lets the user choose one of them or 'none', then changing that page.
It has been used with success on nl:, and I would like to ask whether it would be okay to use it here as well? Andre Engels 09:01, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
According to the discussion at Talk:List_of_members_of_the_Swiss_Federal_Council I wrote a bot to update the navigation of members of the Swiss Federal Council. The bot has been tested on my local copy of the data set and works fine. For every change I manually enter the start and end year and accept the changes. Any objections to this? -- Patrice Neff 14:18, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
is there a way to build a bot?
I'd like a bot that could track (somehow) party standings from official websites that keep track of these, and automatically update pages with these party standings. (political pages)
is there a way to make such a bot? if so, respond in my talk page
Pellaken 06:32, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I'm attempting to include the coats of arms of a very large number of towns, cities, boroughs, districts and counties in England and Wales on the towns' Wikipedia pages. (See User:Marnanel/CivicHeraldry_pages for more information, background, and what has been done so far.) I've done all the entries for one county by hand: there were about 17 images to upload and describe, and around the same number of pages to include the images on. It was a pretty mechanistic process and took a couple of hours. Since this is only about 5% of the full corpus, I'd like to request permission to use a bot to do the uploading and renaming of the pictures automatically, and possibly then the inclusion of those pictures on the relevant pages semi-automatically (though this would perhaps be easier done by hand anyway). I'm a pretty competent programmer, and it shouldn't be too hard for me to do while keeping within the rules. Marnanel 03:58, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
195.50.12.118 and User talk:195.50.12.115 are unregistered bots which have been attempting to add spacing to all taxoboxes accross the Wiki. They have been blocked, but I fear they shall be back soon from another IP. Fennec 20:56, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I want to use a bot in order to add a bulgarian interwiki on the year ( 1800- 2009) and calendar pages. It will wait at least 60 seconds between edits. -- Borislav 04:15, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
It is, perhaps, pointless to do so, but I would like to request a bot. The amount I know about computer programming could be written in large letters on the back of a stamp, so I can't write it myself. The pointers to WikiProjects on the talk pages of articles (see, for example, Talk:Urban Hymns, Talk:Chimpanzee, Talk:Mount Airy, Maryland) could be created using [[mediawiki:{{{1}}}|message with id '{{{1}}}']] ([[mediawiki talk:{{{1}}}|talk]]) tags by adding it to the talk pages of everything linked to from the list of albums, list of primates, list of cities in Maryland, etc, updated perhaps every month. There seems to be much support for these messages, and using [[mediawiki:{{{1}}}|message with id '{{{1}}}']] ([[mediawiki talk:{{{1}}}|talk]]) means they could be easily changed as needed, also providing much more visibility for the WikiProject as well as for the very idea that the article itself can be changed by any casual user. It also strikes me as being very likely simple to program -- anybody willing to do it? Anybody object to it being done? Tuf-Kat 04:56, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)
I made a script that downloads pages from my list of articles with common misspellings, fixes any of the common misspellings, and then lists other potentially misspelled words, which I can correct with the click of a button. I review every change before it is submitted, but the script allows me to correct pages faster and more accurately as compared to changing articles by hand.
I'm not sure if I need permission for this, but I thought I'd ask to be safe. My script should be:
I could even allow others to help because the script runs off my personal computer through a web interface. Thanks. Wmahan . 21:55, 2004 Apr 8 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. I don't think that the primary objection to spelling bots, namely that they perform erroneous changes, applies here because every change is reviewed by a human before being submitted. So this method shouldn't make any changes that I wouldn't make by hand; it only speeds the process up. I've emailed WikiEN-l as you suggested for confirmation. Wmahan . 03:34, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC)
I'm claiming that my bot will be different from others that might run amok in that I will be aware of context when I review each change. I agree that it is easy to make a mistake in approving a bot's changes; that's why I must explicitly request any correction that doesn't appear on the list of common misspellings, which has been reviewed for potential pitfalls. If this bot is approved, I will be conservative and not make changes that I'm unsure about.
I admit that there is a possibility, though small, that the bot will make an incorrect change, and then I approve it. My points here are that there are that 1) because I am responsible for the changes, anyone who notices the mistake is free to yell at me on my talk page; and 2) one can interpret the maxim be bold in updating pages as an argument that even if I make a few mistakes in making many corrections, I'm justified by the overall benefit to Wikipedia.
To summarize, I share your concern about assuming that bots are perfect, but I won't make such an assumption. Thus I think that your blanket rejection of spelling bots is a little too cautious. Wmahan . 15:14, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC)
Addendum: I thought I should let you know that Jimbo agrees with the idea, see WikiEN-l. But I'm not trying to bypass anyone's opinion, and I'm willing to listen to any further objections or comments. Wmahan . 18:25, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC)
Please do. As far as being bold goes, how well you do will be the best way of judging whether it's good or bad. If you get it wrong regularly, people will object.:) Jamesday 14:17, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Let's give a shot. After all, the whole point of wikipedia is any mistake would be corrected soon or later. -- Taku 15:07, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)
Update: I have made about 1500 corrections using the above method, receiving one complaint and several thanks. The complaint was regarding three articles where I changed barbeque to barbecue. I had checked dictionary.com prior to that change, but alas, it failed to include the alternate spelling. Thanks for everyone's comments and support! Wmahan . 04:24, 2004 Apr 25 (UTC)
I haven't been paying much attention to the approval of bots, but to me this statement looks wrong: "You must get permission from an administrator before using a bot." What is the relevance of administrator status here? As I understand it, administrators have extra technical capabilities, but no extra decision-making authority. Here's a suggested policy that doesn't rely on setting up a cabal: "Before running a bot, you must get approval on Wikipedia talk:Bots. State there precisely what the bot will do. If a rough consensus emerges that it is a good idea, wait a week to see if there are any further objections, and if there aren't, go ahead and run it." What do you think? -- Oliver P. 18:06, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I ( User:Chuq) have registered a user User:ChuqBot to use to edit links to avoid redirects - specifically, change all links to Hobart, Tasmania or Hobart, Australia to Hobart. I plan to user pywikipediabot to do this. Any tips or advice for a first time wikipedia bot/script user? -- ChuqBot 14:11, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)