Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/RichardcavellBot 2

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 Denied.

RichardcavellBot

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Operator: Richardcavell (talk · contribs)

Time filed: 12:41, Thursday April 7, 2011 (UTC)

Automatic or Manual: Automatic unsupervised. (Of course I will run it manually until it appears to be trustworthy).

Programming language(s): C, using the C99 standard.

Source code available: Yes, the source code is available here: at SourceForge

Function overview: Create redirects so that any article title that includes the word 'and' has a redirect from the same title with '&' in place of 'and', and vice versa.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Wikipedia_talk:Redirect#ampersand.3C-.3Eand, Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Ampersands.

Edit period(s): The task will be run regularly. I anticipate that the task would be best performed approximately once per month, or at most once per week.

Estimated number of pages affected: For the first run, there will be thousands of pages (unless someone beats me to it). Thereafter, I estimate that there would be fewer than 100 affected articles per month.

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): Not relevant. The only change to Wikipedia that will ever be made is the creation of a new page (a redirect). Since that page does not currently exist, the nobots template cannot be used.

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

Function details: The program will automatically step through every article that contains the text " and ", and imagine the article title with the text " and " replaced by " & ". It will check whether that second page exists at all. If it does, it takes no action. If it does not exist, it will create a redirect to the " and " version from the " & " version. And vice-versa. Note that articles/redirects that start with & such as &c. and titles that contain "and" as part of a larger word such as ampersand are not affected. Discussion is invited as to whether we should also include versions that have the ampersand without spaces (ie "&"). - Richard Cavell (talk) 12:41, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

I'm not certain of the widespread need for redirects without spaces; it might be useful for some examples, but not the majority IMO. The main task you highlight seems relatively uncontroversial though.

One question: will the bot be able to handle title's that hypothetically contain "and" twice (i.e. "A and B and C")? If so, how? Would it create redirects with all combinations of and/& - or just "A & B & C"? (FWIW my feeling is that only the latter is needed) --Errant ^(chat!) 12:01, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

It's trivial to implement either way. - Richard Cavell (talk) 20:46, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Errant on both points. Seems fine to me. Regards, MacMed^talk_stalk 22:35, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Per the my comments in the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Redirect#ampersand.3C-.3Eand, I support this only for the subset I explicitly listed there by default. I would support the bot being allowed to make runs for specific subsets of the other combinations when explicitly requested to. Additionally, I agree with ErrantX above, but where articles exist with a mix it should create redirects from all 'and' and all '&' titles. Thryduulf (talk) 14:07, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

There are numerous examples where this would be undesirable, or at least, not very useful: Economic and monetary union, "And" theory of conservatism, Sound recording and reproduction, Acronym and initialism, Race and intelligence, Sex and the City, Provinces and territories of Canada, Arts and Crafts Movement, Shimmy Rivers and and Canal, Tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands, Lewis and Clark and George How do you propose to filter for them? SpinningSpark 14:20, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

A far better approach, in my opinion, rather than a sea of unneeded redirects, is to have the Wikimedia search engine automatically offer article titles with "&" replaced by "and" in the same way that it currently automatically offers alternate capitalisation. SpinningSpark 14:23, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Ditto. Never got around to posting that. Rather we improve Mediawiki search than create so many redirects with a lot of marginal cases. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:32, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

This issue has come up in RfD sometimes. Generally we delete systematically-created "search assistant" redirects. As has been pointed out, it's much more efficient to make the search engine smarter than to create systematic redirects to "help it out". So I am opposed to the operation of this bot and I think that many others would be as well. Sorry. Gigs (talk) 13:25, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to call this no consensus at this time. Opinions are both ways; but ultimately false positives are possible, where editorial judgement is required, whether the redirect is needed. No prejudice to re-opening, should consensus be established. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:36, 19 April 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.