Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/UcuchaBot 4

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.

UcuchaBot 4

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Operator: Ucucha (talk · contribs)

Time filed: 01:39, Sunday September 4, 2011 (UTC)

Automatic or Manual: Automatic unsupervised

Programming language(s): PHP

Source code available: On request

Function overview: Notify contributors of upcoming today's featured articles; add entry to ArticleHistory template

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): User talk:Tbhotch#TFA notifications

Edit period(s): Daily

Estimated number of pages affected: 2 to perhaps 10 (on the very high end) per TFA.

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): Y

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): Y

Function details: The bot will check daily for newly created TFA blurbs (subpages of WP:Today's featured article), retrieve the TFA's name, post the notice User:UcuchaBot/TFA notice (which I will protect before the bot goes live) on the talk pages of main contributors, and add the |maindate= parameter to Template:ArticleHistory. The following contributors will be notified:

1. All nominators of the last successful featured article candidacy
2. All users with >90 edits among the last 5000 edits to the page.

Discussion

This task has been done manually for some time now by User:Tbhotch, to general acclaim. It can easily be done automatically, and I've written the code to do that. I will leave a notice at WT:Today's featured article/requests, but don't believe this bot is likely to be controversial. If users do not wish to receive the notices, they can place {{Bots|deny=UcuchaBot}} on their talk pages. Ucucha (talk) 01:39, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I just had the bot do test edits to User:UcuchaBot/Debug. The bug that led to this edit (which inserted a duplicate |maindate=) has been fixed. Ucucha (talk) 02:29, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Could it also report this on Wikiproject talk pages? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 00:20, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

I suppose, if so desired. Shouldn't be too difficult to get relevant WikiProjects with boxes on the talk page, find the WikiProject talk pages, and post there. However, I'm not sure it's a good idea—WikiProjects get spammed quite a bit already, and I think it's most important to inform the people who wrote the article. Ucucha (talk) 00:29, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Have an opt-out basis until WP:AALERTS handles them (then it could be opt-in)? Other than WP Hurricanes, MILHIST, Videogames, WP Albums, WP Songs, WP Biographies, I can't think of any project where this bot would drown the talk page with notices. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:03, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

The main problem I could anticipate is that it's directly referencing an image, and it's going to increase the image's backlinks (i.e., the list of pages on the "File links" part of a File:* page), as its "image use" will appear much more rampant than it actually is. Additionally, it might generate confusion due to its direct substitution of text for the blurb= parameter; in theory, you'd rather want to feed {{Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 10, 2011}} to the blurb= parameter of your bot's template—but you wouldn't want to subst: it. That said, it's still gonna add funky nav links. --slakr^\ talk / 03:19, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Images are there to be used, so I don't see why you would consider that a problem. I don't know what you mean by "funky nav links". Ucucha (talk) 04:03, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Since whatlinkshere can be filtered by namespace, I don't really see a problem with that. As above, images are meant to be used. That said, would fair use images be allowed in blurbs transcluded in userspace? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:47, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

No, but fair-use images aren't used in blurbs anyway. Ucucha (talk) 13:15, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Approved for trial (a week's worth of TFA notifications to users). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:47, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll start to run the bot during the weekend, as I'm too busy right now. I'll need to do some coding to make the WikiProject notifications work. Ucucha (talk) 01:55, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Just a note, that the trial is just for the user notifications though. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 07:03, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

The bot is now set up to check for newly scheduled TFAs every day. It should start editing the next time Raul654 or Dabomb87 schedules a batch. Ucucha (talk) 23:05, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, it did a batch of notifications the other day. There was an issue with lack of spacing User:UcuchaBot/TFA notice, which I have fixed; otherwise it seems to work correctly. Note that I'm also adding {{para|maindate}] to the article's ArticleHistory templates, as requested in the function description above. Ucucha (talk) 22:38, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Trial complete. It's done notifications for eight TFAs now and seems to be working fine; see the user talk and talk namespace edits in Special:Contributions/UcuchaBot. Ucucha (talk) 00:12, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Would you mind sending me the source code so that I can review it? --Chris 11:14, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I sent you the code that runs this specific task. Ucucha (talk) 11:37, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

 Approved. --Chris 12:27, 13 October 2011 (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.