User talk:Eubot/Moretta

This looks good! Don't forget to include the interwiki links. (I don't know if you forgot them or left them hidden, like the categories in parentheses). Rigadoun (talk) 18:03, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now that I examine them, your bot didn't add the interwiki links for the Dutch town articles either. Is it impossible? I think it is necessary to have at least one link for User:YurikBot to pick it up. Rigadoun (talk) 18:14, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are lots of Dutch villages with the same name, so it's difficult to automate interwiki links, especially because not all of them are on the Dutch wikipedia. For Italian towns, it should be possible, as they are all on the Italian wikipedia, and they can (probably) be recognized from the province they're in. So I will try to add interwiki links. Eugène van der Pijll 20:14, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks pretty good to me. Since Italian will generally identify thousands with the use of a decimal, and a decimal with a comma (the exact opposite to what English does) - are you able to reverse these symbols automatically? I noted that the population had no comma (e.g. 4,226), I added it in, but I hope it can be done by the bot. This would be absolutely terrific. Do you pick up the existing provincial templates automatically? These exist for Sicily already, and ensure all the correct categories. It's also good that you are using the existing city IT template. For the most part, we will use the same disambig device already used by it.wiki, so that presents no problems either. πίππύ δ'Ω∑ - (waarom? jus'b'coz!) 10:01, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I can insert the comma automatically. Thanks for reminding me. I will use the existing provincial templates, and I think I will get the (disambiguated) article names from those templates. Eugène van der Pijll 10:35, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See User:Eubot/test/Moretta for the output of a test run of the bot. It's not perfect yet... Eugène van der Pijll 14:40, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's almost perfect now, so I have done a small test run: the first 10 towns in the province of Turin, e.g. Agliè. There are still some possible improvements to be made:

Recognizing when an existing article is replaceable. Currently, Eubot does not overwrite any article at all. See Alpignano for a replaceable article (but probably not one I can detect automatically).
More precise area. I have now found more precise data, but have not yet linked it with the other data.

Next test run will not be before I implemented these points. Eugène van der Pijll 22:27, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Two things I notice now that I didn't notice before:

There should be a period after the list of neighboring municipalities.

Done.

The population as of should be simply a year, not (for instance) 2004-12-31, which is a strange format in English and takes up too much space.

I'm not decided as yet; I think if I'd just say '2004', most people would think it was on January 1st; but it is almost a year later... 2004-12-31 is not ideal; I originally wrote that as "December 31, 2004", but that was much to long.

Yes, I see that. Perhaps just "Dec 2004"? I think it's strange in English to put the year first. Furthermore, "2004-12-31" still seems too long to me.

"Dec 2004" looks good. Eugène van der Pijll 21:19, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

When an article already exists, what does the bot do? It's probably safer to have it never overwrite, since even in a very short article there may be something useful that should be kept (in a merge). Since there seem to be a lot of Italian sub-stubs, you could keep the bot versions in a list somewhere so anyone (not just you, since it will take a while probably) can go through them and merge appropriate things. (Even in decent preexisting articles, there may be details or out-of-date facts which could be kept). Rigadoun (talk) 15:18, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I will replace a number of articles, but I will follow very strict criteria. Take a look at {{Province of Salerno}}. As you can see, all of those municipalities have articles, and almost all have the exaxt same text: "<name of town> is a town and comune in the province of Salerno in the Campania region of south-western Italy." + template + stub-message + interwikis. I will detect all cases in which this same text is used, and then keep only the interwiki links. I won't replace e.g. Alpignano, because it has the extra information that it lies "in the Susa valley". Eugène van der Pijll 22:10, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can we then paste in the infobox and graph for such municipalities by hand? Rigadoun (talk) 15:36, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I will first do all the easy ones, but I will keep a list of all the articles I didn't create. When I'm finished, I will create the infoboxes and graphs for those cases, and put them somewhere (perhaps in the user space of this bot; perhaps on the talk page of the articles). Eugène van der Pijll 21:19, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Italian communes[edit]

(moved from User talk:Eugene van der Pijll)

Hi Eugene. I see that you have started to automatically generate the Italian communes. Good stuff! I would like to make a couple of suggestions, though. Firstly (rather trivially) Template:Clear, according to its talk page, should probably be Subst’ed. More importantly, I am a bit worried about the inclusion of the full <timeline> code in the demographics sections. It is a big junk of stuff which could easily be accidentally altered (or indeed vandalized); also it does make the articles a bit intimidating to edit. I do think it might be better to follow the Italian wikipedia practice of making each a template and transcluding it into the article. As well as being friendlier to most editors, this would have the advantages that changes (probably vandalism) could easily be spotted and that automatic updating by a bot (after the next census, or to change the layout or include further existing data) would be very simple.

But keep up the good work. Cheers —Ian Spackman 20:55, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the comments. About Template:Clear: I also had a "<br clear=all>" just a few lines further; as only one of them is actually needed, I will remove the template. Personally, I prefer all data on the same page; I expect the articles to be better watched than the templates would be, so I'm not certain if your reasoning is correct. I would like to hear what other people think of this idea. Eugène van der Pijll 21:21, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We, as for spotting changes, my reasoning is that any change to the template would be just that: a change to the template, which a bot could look out for. A change to Alfiano Natta (which nobody is watching, perhaps, anyway) marked as minor and perhaps genuinely fixing a minor typo or two, but also damaging the template, could easily go unspotted.—Ian Spackman 21:44, 13 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]