Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/UcuchaBot 4

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

Approved.

UcuchaBot 4

Operator: Ucucha (talk · contribs)

Time filed: 01:39, Sunday September 4, 2011 (UTC)

Automatic or Manual: Automatic unsupervised

Programming language(s): PHP

Source code available: On request

Function overview: Notify contributors of upcoming today's featured articles; add entry to ArticleHistory template

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): User talk:Tbhotch#TFA notifications

Edit period(s): Daily

Estimated number of pages affected: 2 to perhaps 10 (on the very high end) per TFA.

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): Y

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

Function details: The bot will check daily for newly created TFA blurbs (subpages of WP:Today's featured article), retrieve the TFA's name, post the notice User:UcuchaBot/TFA notice (which I will protect before the bot goes live) on the talk pages of main contributors, and add the |maindate= parameter to Template:ArticleHistory. The following contributors will be notified:

All nominators of the last successful featured article candidacy
All users with >90 edits among the last 5000 edits to the page.

Discussion

This task has been done manually for some time now by User:Tbhotch, to general acclaim. It can easily be done automatically, and I've written the code to do that. I will leave a notice at WT:Today's featured article/requests, but don't believe this bot is likely to be controversial. If users do not wish to receive the notices, they can place {{Bots|deny=UcuchaBot}} on their talk pages. Ucucha (talk) 01:39, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I just had the bot do test edits to User:UcuchaBot/Debug. The bug that led to this edit (which inserted a duplicate |maindate=) has been fixed. Ucucha (talk) 02:29, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Could it also report this on Wikiproject talk pages? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 00:20, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose, if so desired. Shouldn't be too difficult to get relevant WikiProjects with boxes on the talk page, find the WikiProject talk pages, and post there. However, I'm not sure it's a good idea—WikiProjects get spammed quite a bit already, and I think it's most important to inform the people who wrote the article. Ucucha (talk) 00:29, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Have an opt-out basis until WP:AALERTS handles them (then it could be opt-in)? Other than WP Hurricanes, MILHIST, Videogames, WP Albums, WP Songs, WP Biographies, I can't think of any project where this bot would drown the talk page with notices. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:03, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The main problem I could anticipate is that it's directly referencing an image, and it's going to increase the image's backlinks (i.e., the list of pages on the "File links" part of a File:* page), as its "image use" will appear much more rampant than it actually is. Additionally, it might generate confusion due to its direct substitution of text for the blurb= parameter; in theory, you'd rather want to feed {{Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 10, 2011}} to the blurb= parameter of your bot's template—but you wouldn't want to subst: it. That said, it's still gonna add funky nav links. --slakr^\ talk / 03:19, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Images are there to be used, so I don't see why you would consider that a problem. I don't know what you mean by "funky nav links". Ucucha (talk) 04:03, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Since whatlinkshere can be filtered by namespace, I don't really see a problem with that. As above, images are meant to be used. That said, would fair use images be allowed in blurbs transcluded in userspace? — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 12:47, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, but fair-use images aren't used in blurbs anyway. Ucucha (talk) 13:15, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for trial (a week's worth of TFA notifications to users). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 12:47, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'll start to run the bot during the weekend, as I'm too busy right now. I'll need to do some coding to make the WikiProject notifications work. Ucucha (talk) 01:55, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note, that the trial is just for the user notifications though. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 07:03, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The bot is now set up to check for newly scheduled TFAs every day. It should start editing the next time Raul654 or Dabomb87 schedules a batch. Ucucha (talk) 23:05, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK, it did a batch of notifications the other day. There was an issue with lack of spacing User:UcuchaBot/TFA notice, which I have fixed; otherwise it seems to work correctly. Note that I'm also adding {{para|maindate}] to the article's ArticleHistory templates, as requested in the function description above. Ucucha (talk) 22:38, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. It's done notifications for eight TFAs now and seems to be working fine; see the user talk and talk namespace edits in Special:Contributions/UcuchaBot. Ucucha (talk) 00:12, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Would you mind sending me the source code so that I can review it? --Chris 11:14, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I sent you the code that runs this specific task. Ucucha (talk) 11:37, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Approved. --Chris 12:27, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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.