Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/NedBot

The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. The result of the discussion was Speedily Approved.

[edit] NedBot

tasks • contribs • count • sul • logs • page moves • block user • block log • flag log • flag bot

Operator: Ned Scott

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic

Programming Language(s): pywikipedia

Function Summary: text replacement, updating links, category and template maintenance

Edit period(s): a few times a month for about 2 to 3 hours at a time on avarage

Edit rate requested: a few edits a minute, which I believe is pywikipedia's default, seems to be fine.

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

Function Details: NedBot has already been approved for basic text replacement related to WikiProject Digimon's tasks (see here). I've used the bot for other minor tasks such as template maintenance, but I didn't think it was major enough to need to list a new approval request. Some recent discussion has made me re-think this and I'd like to formally expand NedBot's tasks.

He'll be doing basic text replacement as described in the first approval request, as well as basic template and category maintenance such as updating template parameters, updating template names, bypassing redirected templates, category populating/depopulating. Tasks would only be for consensus driven changes and/or minor housekeeping tasks.

Since it has been run to do many of these things already, the bot's contribs contain many examples. (again, sorry about that, will ask ahead of time from now on).

[edit] Discussion

• Seems a little open-ended to me; could you enumerate these tasks in a little more detail? ("Family resemblance" to earlier edits isn't necessarily the clearest way to precisely delineate scope.) What type of template parameters? On what basis would you be populating and depopulating categories? Alai 22:52, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

For example, one time I had to reformat articles using the outdated {{Digimon episode}} to {{Japanese episode list}}, and one parameter changed in caps (one was "images" and one was "Images"). Along with the family of episode list templates, sometimes a list goes from {{Episode list}} to {{Japanese episode list}} for specific labeled parameters, so things like "Title" get changed to "EnglishTitle". Another example, WP:TV was merging some infoboxes, and the bot was being used to rename / bypass template redirects. When WP:LOE became a task force of WP:TV I used the bot to remove all the LOE talk page banners from articles (since it would be using WP:TV's banner from then on). I've also used the bot to subst a few templates that needed to be subst'ed.

Category population, depopulation would be very specific if ever used. The only time I think I've used the bot for category stuff was when WikiProject Digimon Systems Update renamed to WikiProject Digimon, and the related categories needed to be renamed as well. A task I'd like to give the bot would be categorizing some redirects Category:Redirects from Digimon, that's a part of WP:DIGI's article reorganization effort. In that situation a specific list of links would be checked to see if they are 1) a redirect, and 2) not already included in that category.

The first time I got the bot approved it was basically in relation to WP:DIGI. I guess you could say that all the tasks will still be WikiProject related, but expanded to WP:TV, WP:ANIME and possibly a few others, where all tasks for the bot would be something discussed ahead of time or be apart of non-controversial housekeeping. Most of such tasks are done in a day, and are not continual in nature. A lot of this stuff is the kind of thing one would use an assisted editor for, especially since some of the tasks only involve a handful of articles. However, I'm using Mac OS X, and pywikipedia is the closest thing I have available as an assisted editor. -- Ned Scott 04:33, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Ya know.. I think I'm just going to keep using the bot for this stuff. If you want to "officially" bless me, go ahead, but I'm not waiting another month and a half for approval of such painfully basic tasks that are hardly any different from the original approval request I made. -- Ned Scott 04:50, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Where is this "original approval"? Martinp23 17:18, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approvals/Archive2#NedBot. And sorry if I sounded harsh, it's just the first time around was a bit frustrating. -- Ned Scott 17:56, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I guess the question I should ask is this, do I even need approval for what I'm asking for? -- Ned Scott 05:07, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Oops, didn't mean to send it to you. Yes, you need approval, and since you've already been doing it, Speedily Approved. ST47Talk 09:59, 11 May 2007 (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.