Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT 78

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 Speedily Approved.

AnomieBOT 78

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

Time filed: 16:03, Sunday, February 2, 2020 (UTC)

Function overview: Substitute templates to implement TFD (or other XfD) discussions.

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): Perl

Source code available: User:AnomieBOT/source/tasks/TFDTemplateSubster.pm

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): User talk:AnomieBOT#Custom edit summary for User:AnomieBOT/TemplateSubster force

Edit period(s): Continuous

Estimated number of pages affected: Depends on how many templates need substing and whether editors instruct the bot to do so.

Namespace(s): All

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: The bot will take instruction from a work page (currently at User:AnomieBOT/TFDTemplateSubster), and will substitute listed templates using the same logic as for the existing TemplateSubster task (AnomieBOT 45).

Discussion

Yes, there are already at least three currently active bots already approved for implementing the results of TFD: SporkBot run by Plastikspork, PrimeBOT run by Primefac, and DannyS712 bot run by DannyS712. Trialpears has also requested approval for PearBOT to do the same. So why AnomieBOT too?

1. All of the above bots appear to be manually assisted: the operator has to craft regular expressions for each individual template. AnomieBOT will require only listing the template-to-substitute on a (protected) work page.
2. AnomieBOT's TemplateSubster task is already being (ab)used for this purpose. The differences between the two tasks aren't in the actual edits, merely in the trigger for the edits (a work page rather than a category) and in the edit summaries produced.

The bot does not operate off of WP:TFD/H directly, for several reasons:

• That page isn't protected. I'd rather not let any random IP trigger mass substitutions.
• Some substitutions may not be as simple as "blindly subst every transclusion of the template".
• Someone needs to verify that the template will subst correctly before the bot gets to work.

I already did a small amount of testing while developing the code: Based on these test entries on the work page, the bot made this edit. Note I've since added a link to User talk:AnomieBOT/TFDTemplateSubster to the edit summaries. Anomie⚔ 16:03, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

• Speedily Approved. This is the optimal situation, as the original "complaints" that I have seen were the edit summaries over the actual implementation/usage of the bot. Primefac (talk) 16:08, 2 February 2020 (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.