Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TarHippoBot

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[edit] TarHippoBot

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Operator: Hippo (talk)

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic

Programming Language(s): Python using pywikipedia

Function Summary: Linking Wikipedia articles with corresponding Commons galleries and/or categories

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Periodically (when operator is online)

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

Function Details: There seem to be several bots resolving interwiki links, but less (if any) resolving inter-project links. This bot would seek to identify articles for which there is a gallery and/or a populated category on Commons and add a {{commons}} or {{commons cat}} tag per the guidance in Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects if it is absent. In time, with approval there, it could also add the appropriate [[en: ... ]] tag to the Commons page.

[edit] Discussion

As a side note if you need to include templates in discussion like that there is the {{tl}} template instead of having to do weird nowiki stuff. Q T C 21:12, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I was trying to work out how to do that! Hippo (talk) 21:18, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

How will it know that the gallery on commons is on the same topic as the article? Where will it be added to in the article? Will you only do this for commons? -- maelgwn - talk 00:51, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

My first thought was just looking at galleries/categories with identical names to the article, but I could also check by looking at the names of images used in the article and see if they are in the gallery and/or category. It wouldn't catch as many articles, but it would make a very accurate link.
The guidelines mention where the links to sister projects are best placed, and current usage seems to be to put the commons tag in the "External links", so that's my initial idea. I'd love to see something like the Dutch Wikipedia where they have "in andere projecten" above the interwiki links, but that's a topic for elsewhere.
At the moment I'm just proposing Commons, but I don't think there's any reason why the idea couldn't be scaled to a few other projects such as Wikispecies, Wikiquote, and Wikisource in time, though they would certainly be made as new requests for approval, and would probably use different heuristics. Hippo (talk) 01:44, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
Ok so you are saying the name is the same and there is a picture from that category/page on commons in the article the link is being added to? Do you have any idea of the scale of the task? -- maelgwn - talk 06:35, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Just spotted this request on Commons, which suggests there may be some demand. Hippo (talk) 04:14, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

nl:User:Multichill has written a bot called commonscat.py and used it on the Dutch Wikipedia. You might want to check it out. He's committed the source to pywikipedia's SVN repository and it's that bot he's talking about on Commons. --Erwin85 (talk) 08:43, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
Looks promising, especially if it's already working on Dutch Wikipedia, and it's a strategy I hadn't though of (following interwiki links and looking for commons templates on other wikis). Hippo (talk) 16:24, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
I should add that bot adds tags to Wikipedia categories as opposed to articles as far as I can tell, but that might be a good place to start anyway. Hippo (talk) 16:33, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
Hi TarHippo, I already noticed this request, but didnt have time to respond. A while ago i started adding commonscat templates. I matched the names of interwiki links to en wikipedia categories with the names of categories at commons (web version, just choose a language). I also figured out it would be nice to use the work of other wikipedia's to add commonscat links, so i wrote commonscat. The commonscat template got added to a lot of categories (about 12000, 1 in 3 categories). I couldnt add more templates using a bot so i started at this wikipedia and some others. I did already write some code to make backlinks from commons (and did a test run), but i have to fine tune that to keep everybody happy. I sticked to category namespace because i can have an 1 on 1 relationship, makes it much easier to program a bot. multichill (talk) 18:13, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
I somehow missed that you were already running on en.... I guess the question then is whether there is demand for an approach for articles and/or categories for which there aren't any interwiki links, or indeed articles in general. I certainly don't want to duplicate your bot as it seems to work so well. Hippo (talk) 16:58, 14 June 2008 (UTC)