Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/CleanupListingBot

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

CleanupListingBot

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Operator: Smallman12q (talk · contribs)

Automatic or Manually assisted: Automatic

Programming language(s): VB.net 2.0 using the DotNetWikiBot library(possibly rewritten in the future with FreeBasic/C++)

Source code available: See User:CleanupListingBot/Source

Function overview: To provide a cleanup listing review for WikiProject's similar to that of Wolterbot.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Wikipedia:Botreq#Replacement_for_Wolterbot

Edit period(s): Weekly/Monthly...depending on Wikiproject requests

Estimated number of pages affected: ~3-7 per WikiProject

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): No (will not be editing per se...only posting reports)

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): No

Function details: The bot will serve as a replacement to WolterBot. It will post to WikiProjects that request, details of which articles are in need of Cleanup.

Technical: It will first recursively download all article titles from Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month into selective directories. This category "database" will then be intersected with requested WikiProject categories. The results will be subsequently posted to the relevant WikiProject. Additional categories may be added to the "database" for more comprehensive results.

Discussion

I would say deny this request due to the operators choice of bot names and failure to follow recommended bot policy with regards to bot names. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 02:32, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I've changed the name of the bot to CleanupListingBot.Smallman12q (talk) 10:59, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Since the bot will be looking at a large number of pages and categories, will you be using database dumps? If I'm not mistaken WolterBot used those. - EdoDodo ^talk 14:24, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

WolterBot may have used database dumps...but I don't see a need for them... The bot will function like this:

1. Download Wikipedia Maintenance category- Download the Category:Wikipedia_maintenance_categories_sorted_by_month, creating a set of directories and index to keep structure. This will serve as the bots "database dump". (This only needs to be downloaded once to run against various WikiProjects.)
2. Download Wikiproject category- The bot will download the titles of all articles in the WikiProjects category...For example, for Wikipedia:WikiProject Equine, the bot will download the titles of all articles in [:[Category:WikiProject_Equine]] and save these to a list.
3. Intersect Wikproject cat with Maintenance cat-The bot will then intersect which of the titles in the Wikiproject appear in Category:Wikipedia_maintenance_categories_sorted_by_month and write a text file in the categories directory.
4. Report- The bot will then scan each directory for the intersection textfile and append it under the appropriate heading/depth and post this to the WikiProject.

(The bot will not be looking at pages, per se, it will be looking at categories. ) Please note that the bot does not download page text...only category trees containing page titles. I hope this clears up any misunderstanding...Smallman12q (talk) 15:55, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I've completed writing the bot (less than 400 lines)...though its untested & inefficient atm.Smallman12q (talk) 17:45, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

It's up to you, but I'd consider getting a toolserver account so you can generate the lists using a database query. The toolserver has only linux and solaris servers, but has mono installed on both so this bot should be able to run there, if you so choose. Tim1357 ^talk 20:49, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

In any case, because this is an opt-in bot, I see no reason why not to start a trial. Tim1357 ^talk 20:49, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Tim1357 ^talk 20:49, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I've made a sample listing at User:CleanupListingBot/Report_Test. I've downloaded the Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month and its 55mb and ~3400 categories in all. I'd like to know if the bot flag for User:CleanupListingBot could be turned on...it would allow me to make use of the bot API upper limit. As for the toolserver...I'll see...for now I don't really see a need. I hope this bot will prove to be of use.Smallman12q (talk) 02:01, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

One question: We don't exclusively use the monthly lists, we also really like the way it processes overall summaries (all articles to be merged, all articles requiring cleanup, etc.) Also, Wolterbot had lists of the articles with the most tags (VERY helpful to spot the trouble ones ASAP).. Will this script also to all that? Montanabw^(talk) 02:46, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

-Yes, it will make a table of tags and you can use the little "autosort" carrots to see which have the most. I've made two more examples for WPEQ. See User:CleanupListingBot/WPEQ Report and User:CleanupListingBot/WPEQ Report (Table). Depending on the size of the project, then the table and report may be split across several pages. Let me know if this is what you meant.Smallman12q (talk) 00:47, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Could the bot be given a bot flag during the trial? I don't see the point in forcing me to make 10x the API calls...Smallman12q (talk) 23:09, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Trial complete.-I ran it on WikiProject Wine and created Wikipedia:Wine/Reports/Cleanup by category for Sep 2010(0), Wikipedia:Wine/Reports/Cleanup by article for Sep 2010(0), Wikipedia:Wine/Reports/Index. I plan to run it on Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions. Please note that it currently uses Category:Counter categories, though I will expand it to include other cats soon. The pages are limited to ~200k characters. Also, I'll update the source once I clean it up a bit. Let me know what you think.Smallman12q (talk) 21:18, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

•  Approved. Opt-in bot that only edits in Wikipedia space... Seems uncontroversial. –xeno^talk 22:26, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

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 WT:BRFA.