Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Elissonbot

The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

[edit] User:Elissonbot

– Elisson • Talk 22:28, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

if you would like i can have my bot do that automaticly if you give me the categories. I have all ready done so for Wikipedia:WikiProject Kentucky and Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Egypt. Betacommand 00:11, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but I would rather like to do it with my own bot (that's why I filed a request in the first place ;) ), so I do not have to rely on someone else to do the tagging. Having an approved bot also makes it easier in case any other functions might be needed in the future. – Elisson • Talk 00:28, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Could you provide an example? I assume you mean placing the tag on the talk page (i.e. Talk:Football (soccer)). The placing of automatic Wikiproject boilerplates has historically brought about some controversy. I once tried to place a notice for Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. cities on the talk pages of each of the 30,000+ U.S. city article, and it was met with resounding disapproval as spam. Nevertheless, that was a while ago, and I've seen plenty of boilerplates on talk pages. Perhaps sentiment for such things has shifted. I personally don't have a problem with this, however, if this is approved and persons start complaining, you must agree to stop immediately and address those concerns. If you knew of any evidence one way or another as to whether such things are approved that would be nice, but isn't required. — Ram-Man ^{(comment) (talk)} 23:24, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. The only task this will be doing if approved is to add {{Football}} to the talk page of football articles. I too had some concerns about boilerplates when I first created the template about a year ago, but since then, it seems the general view has changed, and I know of at least two bots—User:Kingbotk (with over a 100,000 edits, most of them adding {{WPBiography}}, I think) and User:Grafikbot—that do approximately the same work as Elissonbot is supposed to do. Their approvals should be in one of the archives, I guess. – Elisson • Talk 01:09, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, my guess is that the anti-boilerplate crowd exists in only certain venues, and as such those other bots were able to do so without attracting any attention. The number of articles makes a big deal too. But this is enough for me. Just so long as it is understood that approval to run the bot does not imply approval of mass boilerplating, since it was assumed here that there enough consensus. So I have no further objections. You should know that I'm not technically on the approvals group, so we'll wait to see if they have any comments first. — Ram-Man ^{(comment) (talk)} 14:53, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

(This is a general comment, and not a comment on this particular request) I think my bot has done enough edits to attract the attention of even those who dwell in, shall we say, the darkest corners of Wikipedia :) With 150,000 edits or so it must have touched the watchlist of every serious Wikipedian. As I observed on the general talk page, there seems to have been a shifting in opinion on this matter, as the Wikipedia 1.0 assessments system has gained widespread acceptance and approval. I think also that the change of the major WikiProjects towards claiming that an article is "within the scope of..." instead of "is part of" has helped. I know that when I've created a new article only to have it claimed as part of a WikiProject I don't contribute to I've felt a bit miffed, but if it says the article is within scope and needs to be assessed I don't mind. --kingboyk 12:03, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Approved. You are authorized to run a trial of no more than 50 articles, no more than 2 per minute (if you need more than that, let us know). That should be more than enough to detect any problems and you can do it in less than an hour. After that, we'll evaluate the trial and move on from there. While running your trial, I'd recommend picking a small number of articles (perhaps 1 to 3) from each category. That way you'll test the bot over a variety of categories, instead of just one large category with lots of articles. -- RM 03:19, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Trial run completed. – Elisson • Talk 21:43, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Approved Fully approved looks good. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 00:05, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.